CRANBERRY BOGS

Hemorrhoids: Your Editor May Have Had Them

Don’t be alarmed!

As a public service I’m letting MuddyUm readers and writers — as well as the higher ups at Medium who may wish to avoid exposure in future litigation — that some of our editors may have had hemorrhoids at some time in the past. How does this effect you? I don’t know, but I feel the need to manage the expectations of our audience.

MuddyUm with hemorrhoids is different than MuddyUm without. In what ways?

Hemorrhoids make you wise

If you talk to someone who’s had hemorrhoids and someone who has not you will notice an immediate difference in sagacity, intelligence, and depth. It’s like when someone says, “You wouldn’t understand unless you had a baby of your own,” except that’s bullshit because we’ve all at least been a baby. Very few of us have been hemorrhoids. Folks who’ve had hemorrhoids may not be “old souls,” but some of their immaturity and callousness was sliced away from their anus.

Hemorrhoids alter your sense of what is wonderful

For example, lying on your side on a doctor’s table with no pants on, your knees tucked into your chest, and that snikt feeling of the scalpel at your asshole— pick, tear, pick — like a tailor removing stiches from an old coat.

The doctor says, “Wow. Hey. Wow!”

The nurse brings in a specimen jar, “We should save this for display.”

“We’ll need a bigger jar.”

That’s kind of wonderful.

Hemorrhoids make you a better editor

Just because that fucking word is so goddamn hard to spell! Seriously, the autocorrect suggests hemerobiid. I am not making that up. Having hemorrhoids means you level up as an editor.

Hemorrhoids prepare you for COVID

So many of us are struggling with a sense of disappointment in our fellow humans in the age of COVID. We’re somehow surprised by the, forgive the phrase, assholery. People who’ve had hemorrhoids were not surprised.

Imagine, for example, standing in line at the Walgreens. For months your rectum has been a virtual cranberry bog, and the doctor has harvested those cranberries. Now it’s time to heal. Except your asshole is not quite ready to heal. It wants to keep bleeding for a while, the way assholes do. Slowly your pants stain, then your socks, then there’s drip on the floor. And you don’t notice until someone laughs.

Not at you! They’re laughing at someone else — a short person, or someone dressed in an Imagine Dragons tee shirt. But you thought they were laughing at you and this changes your view of humanity forever.

So, hemorrhoiders were not surprised by anti-vaxxers and maskless death cult worshippers. We’ve seen it before. When you’ve had hemorrhoids you already know that the cruelty is the point.

What should you do?

First of all, don’t bring it up? Don’t mention hemorrhoids or say something insensitive like, “Could I get an editor who’s had hemorrhoids? They might be wise enough to see the brilliance of my piece.”

Another strategy might be to just assume (ha) that all of us editors have had hemorrhoids, saving yourself from an excremental faux pas. Some folks go the other way and assume (ha) that none of us has hemorrhoids, but I think the “I don’t see hemorrhoids!” approach really points to the privilege of the “smooth rimmed” community. It undermines justice for everyone in this country, hemorrhoidal and non-hemorrhoidal alike.

To quote Martin Luther King’s proctologist, “As long as one asshole is oppressed in this country, they all are.”