We are all unique individuals, my experience is mine alone. The way lower surgery impacted me may bear no resemblance to your experience for any number of reasons. So I’ll start with Reasons our experience may wildly differ. The singularity of my experience shouldn’t erase the validity of your truth, and I welcome adding yours in a comment.

Disclosure

Lube and Condoms

Sensation and Shifts in Preferred Sexual Activities

Closing Thoughts

Where I was coming from, where I’m going aka your mileage may vary

I’m a solo poly bi top. This could mean a myriad of things to different people. Emotionally, on a day to day level when it comes to making or working towards major life plans and decisions, I feel effectively single. I have multiple sexual friendships, those are friendships that include a sexual component. My biness includes attraction to non-binary people; I have personal reasons for not qualifying myself as pansexual. I mostly care to partake in select sexual acts in a way generally categorised as “topping” and I don’t care to partake in most of the sexual acts in a way generally categorised as “bottoming.” It’s not a case of being into anything as long as it’s as a top or never ever being versatile. This leads to a few things that changed following lower surgeries.

I’ve always been a top. Prior to surgery, kink was a part of my sexual life to a degree. I was never into Discipline and wondered if in the absence of dysphoria I might be versatile. The better I understood my dysphoria, and the more intense it became, the less I was into kink. Obviously people who don’t experience dysphoria, and no doubt many who do, have different mileage than me. But the more I understood how much my attraction to kink rested on my crumbling relationship to self, the less I could utilise it or partake in it while juggling increasingly difficult mental gymnastics. Far from shaming anyone who partakes in kink, I wavered from sadness to distress as my relationship to it faded. The pain that came with stage 1 of my lower surgeries, while physiologically bearable, fundamentally changed my psychological relationship to it.

This coupled with an overnight tremendous reduction in dysphoria as well as an inability to penetrate (until penile implant insertion) left me feeling like anything but a top. I tried a multitude of external devices to be able to penetrate in between stages, the desire to top never vanished. But with each new defeat, the more I desired to explore which ways I might feel comfortable bottoming. My dysphoria diminishing made it comfortable to explore, but I enjoyed very little bottoming. Bittersweet. It was sexually frustrating not to be able to lean into bottoming while I couldn’t top in the ways I had hoped, but it made me love and appreciate bottoms even more than before.

Sidebar\ Obviously all the ways to top prior to lower surgeries (e.g. using hands, toys) remained available in between stages. But rare were the intimate encounters interested in those upon seeing my post-stage 1 pre-stage 3 genitals. ymmv/rant



[Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash. Description: an upright half pealed banana.]

Disclosure

Prior to stage 1, I preferred to disclosed to intimate partners. I internalised some of the lower surgery stigma, esp around the appearance necessarily giving away a surgical origin of a post-phalloplasty cock. I was my worse critic, and couldn’t conceive of my genitals not disclosing me following stage 1. But a series of unexpected events during intimate encounters, proved I was wrong. It turns out, Captain Obvious, horny people are primarily focused on getting off. If your body parts work out with how they’re hoping to get off, that’s the level of scrutiny most will give your genitals. Comments, when they are made about my genitals by those to whom I haven’t disclosed, to date all revolve around size. That’s it.



[Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash. Description: corn wrapped in measuring tape.]

Prior to getting my penile implant, I expected people to suggest cock rings for my lack of erections, but no one did. Since getting it, I thought some might wonder why my erections don’t have much angle when I’m on my feet, but it’s common among bigger/heavier congenital flesh cocks to similarly fail to point forward or upwards. No one thinks it’s out of the ordinary, and none of them care because it in no way impedes which position we can take. I still disclose some times but I love that the choice doesn’t alter if/how I manage my body. It can be fully exposed and it remains my decision.

An awareness note that non-disclosure of trans medical history is a crime in the UK and Israel. My choice to not disclose outside the UK is framed from having lived in places where non-disclosure of trans medical history aren’t criminalised./



[Photo by Chris Liverani on Unsplash. Description: 2 cherries dripping with water.]

Lube and Condoms

The only positive association I had with my genitals prior to lower surgery was the personal lube production. Now, I produce zero pre-cum. *cue small violin* Remember, in the immortal words of sexual health experts everywhere, “too much lube is almost enough.” If you’re wearing a condom, after pinching the tip but before rolling it on, I echo others who recommend adding some lube on the inside for increased sensation. Speaking of condoms…



[Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash. Description: a cucumber partially unwrapped from its plastic.]

When I wore gloves or put a condom on a non-flesh cock, it was done quickly and with a minimum of attention. Most penile implants will be set to end around the start of the glans or part way through it (they are exceptions, ymmv.) A condom in that respect, can come as a welcome as it provides pressure all around the outside of the glans, while the penile implant provides pressure on the “back” of it (inside your shaft) and with the two combined, your glans ends up hard-ish. The small “but” is that getting the condom on can requires a minimum amount of concentration so it doesn’t slip off from my glans’ squishiness until it’s gotten past the start of my rods. I don’t doubt there are more than one way to achieve this, and if you’re in a similar situation: enjoy practising until you find what works best for you. This leads nicely to…

Captain Obvious says condoms were designed for congenital flesh cocks. While they’re as great a barrier to post-phalloplasty cocks as any other, it’s inconvenient in one way. Our sensation tends to work out differently. The glans is typically the most sensitive part of a congenital flesh cock. Mine is the bottom half of my cock. This means the elastic band portion of a condom is squeezing the most sensitive part of my genitals. It’s mostly an “ouch” at the moment of rolling the condom down and shortly after. It becomes a non-affair the more I’m getting off and the sensation intensifies the further up my shaft. I mention it because I can get a “stunned/pinched” look on my face when the elastic band reaches the most sensitive area. That has startled partners who wonder what’s wrong but the look is over before they finish inquiring. If you’ve disclosed and feel like explaining, you can give a head’s up it’s no big deal, or not, whatever. My point is only that I’ve become more mindful upon putting a condom on. On the topic of sensation and penile implant…

Sensation and Shifts in Preferred Sexual Activities

Most of what I could find around sex post-penile implant was less than glowing. In the better outcomes, they suggested there was modest pressure against the pelvic bone, and basically, guys were confined to gentle vanilla sex. I choose to believe it’s a case of “those without a problem don’t feel a need to state everything is working fine” and crossed my fingers ahead of getting my implant. I don’t feel the implant against my pelvic bone. Icing on the cake: when pumped, my inflated rods provide constant, enjoyable pressure against my buried congenital glans. That’s on top of whatever stimulation is going on on the outside of my cock. It gets better…

My congenital glans was wrapped around my urethral extension. Meaning, I feel my cum passing through it on its way out and that is the icing on the cakeI wish I could go back in time and tell pre-op me to fantasize. I could ejaculate pre-lower-op but it was a rare affair requiring a low level of dysphoria and superior mental gymnastics. Now it’s the norm.



[Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash. Description: a strawberry dipped in whip cream.]

A sidebar\ While I ejaculate regularly when I cum, it doesn’t always come out the tip without some manual encouragement. That’s because it’s comparatively little (to my before, ymmv) and our urethral extension isn’t surrounded by smooth muscle (aka involuntary muscle that automatically push content of hollow organs along) like our congenital urethra is. So once it goes beyond our congenital urethra, the teaspoon or so can remain trapped in your shaft. Depends on what position you’re in, what movement you’ve got going on, yadi yada. I mention this because another brave post-op guy wondered if he was the only one who had a delay between when he came and when the ejaculate came out. It turned out among those who responded to him to be a portion of our experience none of us had previously shared with other post-op guys and thus none of us realised was common./



[Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash. Description: 2 brown coconuts.]

Another common happy outcome of lower surgeries is the erotisation of the skin that becomes our scrotum. I’ve heard a few theories as to why that is. One attributes it to the skinning of the congenital glans prior to burial. This might lead to some exposed nerves from it spreading down the scrotum. Personally, my scrotum became erogenous before my congenital glans was buried, so that’s not it.

Maybe other guys who had meta could echo my experience. Another theory says it has to do with how the scrotal implants are placed above the muscles, which is why we can move our balls a little and I guess the nerves that were around the muscles in turn also drop with the implants. I don’t recall if I realised my scrotum had become an erogenous zone in its own right before or only after I got my scrotal implants. I just remember the tremendously wonderful surprise of finally understanding the appeal in tea bagging. That act had been lost on me before.

Another shift in preferred sexual activities has been between receiving head, hand jobs and penetration. It used to be that receiving hand jobs were a solid way to get me off, and the best was receiving head. It got me hot and bothered to fuck other people, but regardless of what I was using pre-lower surgery, it wasn’t getting me off. I loved starting with that because getting other people off is my top turn on. But then I had to move unto whatever was going to get me off (myself, receiving a hand or blow job.)



[Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash. Description: a mechanical hand holding a cucumber upright.]

Getting other people off remains my main turn on, but my sensation expanding as it does as I get off, blow jobs focused on my glans will get me hot and bothered but not off. Whereas tea bagging or focusing on the bottom half of my shaft (at least to start) are way better bets. Penetration has become an amazing way to get me off. This was less than convenient up until I was done healing from my penile implant, but there are no tears shed over this nowadays.



[Photo by Charles Deluvio on Unsplash. Description: a phone pearing out from under a duvet.]

Closing Thoughts

As cliché as it is, the truth is that the brain is the biggest and most important sex organ. The single most important reason I get off more easily and more often now is that I’m no longer doing mental gymnastics to manage dysphoria; I’m more mentally present during sexual intimacy. So whatever gets you off, so long as lower surgery increases your quality of life, odds are good your sex life will improve (if you have and care for one.)