This is a post about hemorrhoids. Does that gross you out? Because guess what, someday you might have a human being burst through your pussy and you will probably crap all over it in the process, so grow up. Our bodies are gross. This column is about that. But it is also a touching tale of a doctor named Wang, and how he liberated the bowels of the woman he loves. And no it was not written by me, it was written by someone we'll call Poshterior Spice, and you can thank Intern Cheryl for the high art.

Who had printed that? Must have been Star. How awful for her. Because let's face it, while all cancer is horrific anal cancer has the added bonus of being really really really embarrassing. The only disease I can think of that is actually more embarrassing than anal cancer is Elephantitis of the balls, which is, at least, fun to say. I bet Farrah first discovered she had anal cancer just like this I thought moodily, sitting on the toilet. The stars, so like us! I pictured her all skinny and scared, clutching a piece of soiled toilet paper and wondering if she could trust her doctor or make him sign a nondisclosure agreement.

I decided I would not tell anyone about what I had seen in the bathroom. I intuitively grasped that "I have unexplained rectal bleeding," is not a phrase that anyone wants to hear. The Internet was of little help: My rectal bleeding could be caused by hemroids, it said, but hemroids are more of a male problem. What I probably have is anal cancer.

I would just wait it out, I said to myself, and adopted the strategy, oft-employed by those of us with insufficient healthcare plans, of deep denial. Either the condition, whatever it was, would go away, or rivers of blood would come pouring out my anus and I'd be forced to take action. I conducted the rest of the day's activities with the solemn dignity of Mandy Moore in Walk to Remember, taking care to be extra pleasant to my coworkers so that they would say nice things about me when I died (of unknown causes).

Several days passed, and I forgot all about the blood and the cancer. I resumed being antisocial and sarcastic at the office. Then, perhaps inevitably, I had to shit again.

That night I woke up from a dream about a picnic hosted by Ryan O'Neal sweating and panicked. I dialed the hospital and was assigned an appointment with a Dr. Wang. I joked on the phone that this will be the first wang I've ever had in my butt. Silence. "Er, great then," I stammered. "Thanks." Why. Why do I try to joke with the colo-rectal people? What is wrong with me?

After listening patiently to my hysterical tirade against medical message board Chicken Littles and Star, Dr. Wang instructed me lie on my side, facing away from him. "I'm going to tell you everything I'm doing, so they'll be no surprises," he said. I heard the squirting of KY.

"I'm inserting a small camera into your rectum now," he said soothingly, as though this happens all the time. "I can that there's no internal bleeding. I can see hard stool up there."

"Is it possible to take prints home?" I asked. Why do I do this? But Dr. Wang chuckled. Yay!

"Now I'm going to insert this, so I can see the edge of your rectum," he says. He dangles a metal object shaped like a large crooked index finger in front of me. It looks like a prop from Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.

"Oh," I say meekly. Moments later, I sense that even if I get really poor, selling my anal virginity on eBay is no longer an option.

"You have hemorrhoids," said Dr. Wang, as I sheepishly adjust my clothes.

"I thought only 60-year-old men got hemorrhoids," I said.

He shakes his head. "Many more women get them than men, actually," he said. "But no one ever wants to talk about it." He says this with a trace of bitterness. Dr. Wang can find no one who wants to talk about their ass with him! How sad he must be.

Apparently, women have a lot more problems with constipation than men, and when you strain to pass a bowel movement, it causes blood vessels in your butt to swell. If you remain constipated, and thusly your shits are hard, it irritates the swelling and the swollen blood vessels tear, which causes the bleeding. It's very common in women in their twenties and thirties, especially those who, like me, take birth control pills.

"No one ever tells you this!" I said. "They should show you a film strip in school! The Second Period."

"I know," Dr. Wang said glumly.

While Dr. Wang talked about how softening the stool with fiber and over-the-counter stool softeners will relieve the hemroids, I tried to maintain eye contact, because it must be hard to be a colorectal surgeon who no one ever wants to make eye contact with. He seemed to appreciate this and opened up a little.

"When I first met my wife, she only had a bowel movement around once a week," he said. "She used to get bloated, to cry out from the pain. And she's little, like you! She's thin. I used to say to her, I can feel the stool when I press on your belly."

This, I think, has to be the most romantic thing any man has said to a woman.

"I started her on fiber supplements," he said proudly, "the drink, not the pills. The pills barely do anything. In a few weeks, she was much better." He pressed a package of Konsyl into my hands and smiled paternally.

Dr. Wang and his wife have been married for eight years, and in all that time she has been hemorrhoid-free. Now, he says, she shits at least every other day.

The pharmaceutical industry is sort of like women's magazines: staffed by blandly attractive people, determined to make you feel bad about yourself, and brimming with new ways to stop you from being fat! Unlike women's magazines, however, Big Pharma has come up with a few weight loss ideas that actually work, which is why have learned to sit back in consent as it decimates the American health care system. With that in mind, welcome to our first installment of 'Pillhead', in which a real connoisseur reports on this exciting field and tries not to crap her pants in the process.

Some basics about Alli, if you've missed the huge marketing campaign:

• It's the first FDA approved over-the-counter diet drug.
  
• It became available late last week at drugstores and online.
  
• It works by keeping some of the fat you eat in each meal from being digested.
  
• It costs $60 a month, which depending on your situation is generally cheaper than Adderall.
  
• If you take it with a meal that has too much fat, ORANGE OIL COMES CASCADING OUT OF YOUR ASS IN A RIVER DOWN YOUR LEG AND INTO YOUR BOYFRIEND'S FACE.

  Okay, that's not exactly what the marketing materials say, but they do suggest that you wear dark pants.

  The makers of Alli call the side effects of taking an Alli pill and then going crazy with a Bloomin' Onion "treatment effects". The message board posters more cleverly call it an "Alli-oops". I call it "IM-ing Moe and saying "Oh my god I can't do this. What are you making me do? I can't do this!"

  A survey of the "personal experiences" board yields mostly callouts to join groups (40 Year Olds, Brides-to-Be, People Who Live in New Jersey) and most of the posters seem to have not yet experienced any of the dreaded "treatment effects". But then there are the posts like these that I'm praying were written by pranksters:

  I Can't Believe I Just **** All Over Myself!

  Oh god.

  As a husband, just want to clue you in on a request....when you head to the ladies room, by all means turn the fan on. Something is indeed needed to mask the ungodly sounds emanating from the toilet. It sort of takes away the mystery, the romance if you will of a romantic interlude. Plus, the kids find it hysterical...I have even had my 11 year old record mom's tunes and has created a digitalized version with her actual sound samples (and god knows there were plenty!). Just a heads up ladies, turn the fan on, or even better wait until no one is home to start your syphmony.

  I took a picture of what came out of me today (gross, I know, but the people need to know), but I don't know how to load it. The water in the toilet actually had grease floating on the surface...a lot of it!

  All of which adds up to "AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!", but I am willing, gentle reader, to try Alli for one week and report back, Slutmachine TMI style. Mostly because I'm getting paid. And not planning to eat any fat of any kind. You're welcome!

  But don't worry, no pictures.

Ew! Well, then we had the thought "this is gross." And then we thought: "Yeah. Gross even for us." But then we realized that porn is something we talk about almost exclusively with guys, and we have no idea what actually gets girls off. So we sent around a mass email to our best friends, most of whom ignored us, except these fine people!:

I use my imagination. I'm supportive of the industry but it doesn't turn me on. Well except guys jizzing on skateboards porn.

I am the opposite of myself when I am using porn; I want to see big tits, preferably fake, no distractingly exotic or pretty faces, no guys. The chubby guys I generally like seem to be underrepresented in porn, which is probably a good thing, since imagining the video version of the guys I like in bed is, er... not actually something that gets me off. I go through phases where I'll use it a lot. I used to really like "Girls Gone Wild" videos but I accidentally enrolled in the DVD of the month club when I bought a membership to their site (drunk! obvs!!) and uh well, bad scene. The DVDs weren't even good; the videos on the site were good. What I try never to ponder is why the girls whose existences my mind knows are everything that is wrong with the culture are the ones that get me off. Miss Nevada. Antonella Barba. And all these tanning-salon college sluts who are interchangable from every other tanning salon college slut and for that matter Barbie... it has to be some childhood shit. Whatever, I refuse to ponder this any longer, you using, brain-raping blogger bitch.

I use porn to jill off. My friend and her BF have a login and password to videobox.com, and shared with me as a "sorry you're single again" gift. And I go in phases in regards to frequency, but I really just always watch 30 seconds of random doggystyle, preferably involving a nice white girl like me and a black man. I mean, those are some big fucking cocks on those guys. Oh, and I hate the screaming and moaning those bitches do. Let me hear the guy enjoying himself for once, please.

I always thought girl porn like Sweet Action was really icky. Like, I'm pretty irked by the assumption that I want to look "real people." I may date guys that look like that, but it's not because they look hot naked. Also I don't want to look at fat or pale chicks. Also I might see them Urban Outfitters later and feel gross. I like my porn people tanned buff and hairless with their anuses bleached, like everyone else.

G and I went to a sex shop a few weeks ago. Actually it was just a bodega and cigar shop but there was a sex shop attached. (Normally you're supposed to pay $1 as cover to go in, but the cashier let us in for free.) I was drunk and I bought a small vibrator and a 1967 issue of Playboy, but I'm afraid to unwrap the plastic, thinking there might be jizz on it. That's the only porn I've ever bought. But I should open it, because there's an article by Maurice Sendack (or is it Shel Silverstein?) in it. I need more of a back story and suspense than regular porn gives, so i just watch foreign films most of the time.

I like videos with guys who have a bit of flab, and hairy chests. For some reason, a pot belly (a small one! not one of those pregnant old-guy bellies!) also turns me on. What I don't like: Fake breasts. Totally hairless women. I've been out of a porn phase for 3 years. I was actually relieved when my vibrator broke.

Rachel Kramer Bussell: Is There Such A Thing As Porn For Women? [Huffington Post]