My First Penis
It’s not too big
It’s not too small
If you don’t look
It’s not there at all
Seven years ago, at a frustrated and virginal twenty-eight years old, I saw my first penis. Because my conservative upbringing had left me unexposed to and nervous about accessing porn, my search was restricted to hours in Blockbuster looking for R-rated or NR movies that said, in the tiny ratings box, “nudity/sexual content.” It seemed acceptable to see a penis in a regular movie, almost accidental. My goodness! Look at that! And clearly crucial to the plot. Unfortunately, movies showed plenty of breasts and buttocks, but the camera always stopped just after skimming the male hipbone (oh, that breathtaking ridge, that sunken hollow!). For a brief month, my TV picked up a scrambled Spice Channel, but I couldn’t distinguish any penises through the jagged green waves on the screen. I began to feel like someone–God?–had determined before I was born that I should never see the naked male body except as depicted by Michelangelo (and how I hoped those tiny cauliflower-like clusters were a lie! How disappointing! How pointless! How like God to play such a trick!).
What I could piece together from anatomical descriptions and slang led me to imagine the penis as something very large and powerful and, when hard, as inflexible as a flutophone or rolling pin. I couldn’t understand how couples managed so many different twisting positions. I could understand how terribly painful and frightening sex might be for a woman.
My first penis sighting occurred when I least expected it. By then, hope had soured. I’d concluded that Hollywood had put a taboo on the penis even though everything else–especially a woman’s body–was open to exploitation. I sat on my couch, watching a dull movie that had warned of “nudity/sexual content.” I don’t remember the name of the movie, and it didn’t star anyone I recognized. The men wore tight breeches, and women wore big dresses with tight bodices. I watched the stupid, slow tea parties, the long, slow walks; I endured the romantic love-blather, looked at my watch during jealous spats between the husband and his wife’s brother, who had screwed his sister for years and wasn’t about to stop just because she got married.
And then, as the brother and sister were at play in the sister’s ornate four-poster bed, draped haphazardly with gauzy material, in which I could barely see the copulation for all the sheets and pillows, suddenly the sister’s husband burst in, her brother jumped up, and there! There!! I sprang forward on the couch. There, before my eyes, the brother’s still-erect penis flopped in the air for about five seconds while he scrambled into his breeches. A dream realized feels like another dream. I rewound and hit pause. And there it was.
A penis: erect, pale, not huge, floppy. Floppy?? I rewound again. Yes, indeed–it moved! Up and down, side to side, vulnerable and kind of silly. It touched the knot in my stomach, stirred my desire. Before this, penis had meant Man, in all my misconceived notions of masculinity–brutal, uncompromising, all-powerful. Now, my mind whirled to reconfigure itself. Not brutal, not strong, not rigid–just wonderfully unwitting, eager, a child raising his hand in class, Me! Me! Me!
I walked around pleasantly dazed for a few hours before the restlessness set in. A movie can’t capture real experience. Plus, the movie penis, after all, was shot at a distance. My first live penis was attached to the first person I dated, about six months later, and he was very eager to educate me. With Gene, I saw erection, an experience so magical it caught my breath. We were lying on the floor, fully clothed, he on his back, me on my side, arm draped over his chest, heart pounding because I’d never been this close to a man. He had one hand under his head, and the other traced circles on my waist. About two minutes after finagling into this position, I happened to glance down and see his jeans peaked at the crotch. He looked down, shifted a bit, and said, quite calmly, “God, I get an erection just from touching you.” I tried to pretend calm, too, but my heart pounded fear and excitement. I thrilled at my own power and at the power that lay in his penis, so strong it could lift denim like a feather. Not weak, not silly, but real, with a life of its own.
Over the next few weeks, Gene and I began to squirm a little closer, kiss a little harder, and all of it felt precarious to me, frightening and real. Did I like Gene? My “yes” didn’t come quickly enough to put me at ease. Gene teased me about his penis. “Do you want to see it?”
“No. Not yet.”
“Come on–you don’t have to touch it. Just look at it.”
“No. I don’t– not yet.”
He tried to guide my hand toward the peak of his jeans, laughing when I resisted. Why did I resist? Why put off this moment I’d yearned for during the past decade? If I saw and touched the penis, I feared, the next step would be sex, and I knew I wasn’t ready for that, at least not with Gene. I resisted, too, because I didn’t like being pushed. I didn’t quite trust Gene, who gloated in my inexperience and whose aggression excited and repulsed me. He seemed to sense the stubbornness under my surface shyness, which made him tease me more.
On his bed once (and how he teased me about being in his bed!), still fully-clothed, he began again. Do you want to see it? No. But he reached in his pants and pulled it up so that the bare tip stuck out from under his waistband. I looked down, not realizing what he’d done, and jumped.
Gene giggled. “He just wanted to see you.” I looked at the pink tip, the little slit at the end looking at me. I couldn’t help laughing. “Stop!” I yelled.
“Here.” Gene unzipped his pants, and my throat constricted. My blood rushed in my ears. I watched in terror, anticipation, helplessness, and a barely acknowledged anger. Mostly I felt excited. I wanted to see this. I’d been wanting to see this for a very long time. Maybe it didn’t matter that I didn’t feel ready. Who ever feels ready?
And there it stood, Gene’s penis, rising up through his boxers, tall, dark pink, not too big, not too small. It moved back and forth. I stared in wonder.
“You can make it move?” I asked. Gene laughed, and the penis moved in my direction. I looked at it and felt suddenly calm. I didn’t blame it for Gene’s manipulation. This piece of flesh seemed alive and vulnerable, like a small animal, and beautiful. I wanted, suddenly, for it to be inside me, not because it was Gene’s but because it was itself, full of bravado and shyness and oh so eager. I knew it would open me, touch me in ways I could barely imagine.
“Touch it,” Gene said, bending it toward me. I held back, still struck with awe. My rainbow after the flood, my burning bush.
“Just touch it! What are you afraid of?”
Because the penis was itself, and not Gene, and because I wanted to, I gingerly traced my index finger down its side–one light stroke. So unforeseeably silky! Why did I want to cry?
“You can touch it more than that.”
But because the penis was Gene’s, and not only itself, I didn’t.
Note: I wrote this next essay in 2008, I think. It was published in The Interrobang, a journal that is now defunct (although a new venue called The Interrobang has appeared--I have no idea if it's connected to The Interrobang that published my essay) and I've been torn ever since: do I list this publication on my CV? I have two versions of my CV now, one with "My First Penis" listed and one without it. And here I am, sharing it with, theoretically, the world.
It’s not too small
If you don’t look
It’s not there at all
Seven years ago, at a frustrated and virginal twenty-eight years old, I saw my first penis. Because my conservative upbringing had left me unexposed to and nervous about accessing porn, my search was restricted to hours in Blockbuster looking for R-rated or NR movies that said, in the tiny ratings box, “nudity/sexual content.” It seemed acceptable to see a penis in a regular movie, almost accidental. My goodness! Look at that! And clearly crucial to the plot. Unfortunately, movies showed plenty of breasts and buttocks, but the camera always stopped just after skimming the male hipbone (oh, that breathtaking ridge, that sunken hollow!). For a brief month, my TV picked up a scrambled Spice Channel, but I couldn’t distinguish any penises through the jagged green waves on the screen. I began to feel like someone–God?–had determined before I was born that I should never see the naked male body except as depicted by Michelangelo (and how I hoped those tiny cauliflower-like clusters were a lie! How disappointing! How pointless! How like God to play such a trick!).
What I could piece together from anatomical descriptions and slang led me to imagine the penis as something very large and powerful and, when hard, as inflexible as a flutophone or rolling pin. I couldn’t understand how couples managed so many different twisting positions. I could understand how terribly painful and frightening sex might be for a woman.
My first penis sighting occurred when I least expected it. By then, hope had soured. I’d concluded that Hollywood had put a taboo on the penis even though everything else–especially a woman’s body–was open to exploitation. I sat on my couch, watching a dull movie that had warned of “nudity/sexual content.” I don’t remember the name of the movie, and it didn’t star anyone I recognized. The men wore tight breeches, and women wore big dresses with tight bodices. I watched the stupid, slow tea parties, the long, slow walks; I endured the romantic love-blather, looked at my watch during jealous spats between the husband and his wife’s brother, who had screwed his sister for years and wasn’t about to stop just because she got married.
And then, as the brother and sister were at play in the sister’s ornate four-poster bed, draped haphazardly with gauzy material, in which I could barely see the copulation for all the sheets and pillows, suddenly the sister’s husband burst in, her brother jumped up, and there! There!! I sprang forward on the couch. There, before my eyes, the brother’s still-erect penis flopped in the air for about five seconds while he scrambled into his breeches. A dream realized feels like another dream. I rewound and hit pause. And there it was.
A penis: erect, pale, not huge, floppy. Floppy?? I rewound again. Yes, indeed–it moved! Up and down, side to side, vulnerable and kind of silly. It touched the knot in my stomach, stirred my desire. Before this, penis had meant Man, in all my misconceived notions of masculinity–brutal, uncompromising, all-powerful. Now, my mind whirled to reconfigure itself. Not brutal, not strong, not rigid–just wonderfully unwitting, eager, a child raising his hand in class, Me! Me! Me!
I walked around pleasantly dazed for a few hours before the restlessness set in. A movie can’t capture real experience. Plus, the movie penis, after all, was shot at a distance. My first live penis was attached to the first person I dated, about six months later, and he was very eager to educate me. With Gene, I saw erection, an experience so magical it caught my breath. We were lying on the floor, fully clothed, he on his back, me on my side, arm draped over his chest, heart pounding because I’d never been this close to a man. He had one hand under his head, and the other traced circles on my waist. About two minutes after finagling into this position, I happened to glance down and see his jeans peaked at the crotch. He looked down, shifted a bit, and said, quite calmly, “God, I get an erection just from touching you.” I tried to pretend calm, too, but my heart pounded fear and excitement. I thrilled at my own power and at the power that lay in his penis, so strong it could lift denim like a feather. Not weak, not silly, but real, with a life of its own.
Over the next few weeks, Gene and I began to squirm a little closer, kiss a little harder, and all of it felt precarious to me, frightening and real. Did I like Gene? My “yes” didn’t come quickly enough to put me at ease. Gene teased me about his penis. “Do you want to see it?”
“No. Not yet.”
“Come on–you don’t have to touch it. Just look at it.”
“No. I don’t– not yet.”
He tried to guide my hand toward the peak of his jeans, laughing when I resisted. Why did I resist? Why put off this moment I’d yearned for during the past decade? If I saw and touched the penis, I feared, the next step would be sex, and I knew I wasn’t ready for that, at least not with Gene. I resisted, too, because I didn’t like being pushed. I didn’t quite trust Gene, who gloated in my inexperience and whose aggression excited and repulsed me. He seemed to sense the stubbornness under my surface shyness, which made him tease me more.
On his bed once (and how he teased me about being in his bed!), still fully-clothed, he began again. Do you want to see it? No. But he reached in his pants and pulled it up so that the bare tip stuck out from under his waistband. I looked down, not realizing what he’d done, and jumped.
Gene giggled. “He just wanted to see you.” I looked at the pink tip, the little slit at the end looking at me. I couldn’t help laughing. “Stop!” I yelled.
“Here.” Gene unzipped his pants, and my throat constricted. My blood rushed in my ears. I watched in terror, anticipation, helplessness, and a barely acknowledged anger. Mostly I felt excited. I wanted to see this. I’d been wanting to see this for a very long time. Maybe it didn’t matter that I didn’t feel ready. Who ever feels ready?
And there it stood, Gene’s penis, rising up through his boxers, tall, dark pink, not too big, not too small. It moved back and forth. I stared in wonder.
“You can make it move?” I asked. Gene laughed, and the penis moved in my direction. I looked at it and felt suddenly calm. I didn’t blame it for Gene’s manipulation. This piece of flesh seemed alive and vulnerable, like a small animal, and beautiful. I wanted, suddenly, for it to be inside me, not because it was Gene’s but because it was itself, full of bravado and shyness and oh so eager. I knew it would open me, touch me in ways I could barely imagine.
“Touch it,” Gene said, bending it toward me. I held back, still struck with awe. My rainbow after the flood, my burning bush.
“Just touch it! What are you afraid of?”
Because the penis was itself, and not Gene, and because I wanted to, I gingerly traced my index finger down its side–one light stroke. So unforeseeably silky! Why did I want to cry?
“You can touch it more than that.”
But because the penis was Gene’s, and not only itself, I didn’t.
Note: I wrote this next essay in 2008, I think. It was published in The Interrobang, a journal that is now defunct (although a new venue called The Interrobang has appeared--I have no idea if it's connected to The Interrobang that published my essay) and I've been torn ever since: do I list this publication on my CV? I have two versions of my CV now, one with "My First Penis" listed and one without it. And here I am, sharing it with, theoretically, the world.
