Some Perspectives on the Penis

The first time I saw an adult penis. I was very young, perhaps around three. My father was a prudish and private person. He didn't allow me to follow him into the bathroom the way my mother did. He never let me watch him take a bath or shower, as she did. One Sunday morning, I walked into the living room. My father, who seemed enormous, was in his bathrobe. He was holding a cup of coffee, his elbow on the window sill. Suddenly, the bathrobe swung open. My eyes went directly to his member. He rapidly closed his robe. My eyes had shifted almost immediately, anyway--I didn't want to appear to stare--yet not before I saw it: a (continued on page 179)Perspectives on the Penis(continued from page 151) trefoil of three large dangling pieces of flesh. It wasn't until I was an adolescent and saw a penis again in a different context that I recalled that image and changed my idea that men had three penises.

My friend Marilyn's parents took nudity for granted. She was permitted to observe her father's penis in all of its changing states, her parents imagining she'd develop a healthy casualness about sex. "But," says Marilyn, "I never felt casual about it. I was always aware of the sexuality and it made me uneasy. There were always questions I wanted to ask about things I couldn't understand and didn't even know how to put into words. Besides, as a child, I always felt like the outsider. After all, I didn't share their sexual relationship, nor could I imagine it. And I couldn't be casual about an organ that was so unlike my mother's and mine, that varied so, and swung so, and was so obvious. And, most of all, was so enormous--or so it seemed to me then."

Most women seem to have been able to relate more comfortably to a young male sibling's genitalia as very natural and much less formidable--just as they viewed the person it was on. Joan often took a bath with her brother. After washing each other's organs carefully, he lay in the tub and she lay on top of him. feeling his entire body, including his penis.

It was not little boys' penises that turned me on so much as the fear, mystery and eroticism inherent in knowing too little. Sexuality was inherent in the curiosity itself, something I often miss now. One of my most sexually charged experiences as a child was a variant on group sex. Fronzie Feinblatt, Laura Greenhood and I decided to seduce little Jordan Rudnick into showing us his penis. I recall the aura of sexuality of the experience from the moment we began thinking about it. Convincing Jordan to submit was part of it, but he wasn't interested. He was playing on the stoop with a car.

"Jordan," said Fronzie, as we surrounded him, "let's do something exciting."

"What?" asked Jordan, not even looking up. Our excited whispers surely indicated something that never reached Jordan. We looked around. There were windows everywhere. Laura had a bathroom in her basement that we were all afraid to use. Somehow it seemed the perfect place.

"Don't you have to go to the bathroom, Jordan? You've been out for hours."

"Uh, uh," said Jordan.

"I bet you're chicken to go to the little bathroom in Laura's basement," I said.

"I am not," said Jordan. "I just don't want to."

"We'll give you a nickel if you prove it. You can buy candy with a nickel. And when you get there, all you have to do is pull down your pants."

We quietly followed Jordan into the dark cellar, frightened ourselves watching out for Laura's mother. We were all excited and breathing hard. Jordan was either shy or terrified. We had a hard time convincing him to pull down his pants in the creepy little bathroom we were squeezed into. We had to offer him another nickel. As Jordan hesitantly lowered his pants, the room was filled with a sexuality none of us knew what to do with. This was resolved by a shrill scream from Laura's mother, who had followed us. The spanking we witnessed did not turn us on, nor did the threat of her informing on us. Despite Laura's mother, I learned two things from that experience--neither of which was that sexuality is bad. One lesson was that the fastest way to a boy's penis is through his stomach; the other, that five-year-old-boys' pricks aren't very impressive.

•

Did we all really wish to be endowed similarly to Jordan? Not I. Frankly, at that age, I got the same thrill from making Grace Daddario pull down her pants while lying on the cellar door. Psychoanalyst Erik H. Erikson's opinion that "Many of the original conclusions of psychoanalysis concerning womanhood hinge on the so-called genital trauma, i.e., the little girl's sudden comprehension of the fact that she does not and never will have a penis," seems to be how Freud and other therapists imagined a young female would feel, which is how they, most likely, as men. would feel. I never felt deficient in not possessing a penis. I knew there were boys and girls and that we'd grow into men and women. It never occurred to me to want to switch. Not until later, anyway, when I envied Jordan's manhood privileges, not his organ.

The boys on my block often had pissing contests. They'd stand on the curb, flys unzipped, holding their penises, and see who could spray the farthest. Some, with proper handling, could piss arabesques. These contests I observed complacently, interested only in who might win.

The only thing I really envied about possessing a penis had nothing to do with sexuality. It was the neatness and ease of opening the fly to urinate. Urinating presents complexities to the young, such as always having to do it when there's no bathroom around. Sheldon Drazner could stand casually at the curb and aim wherever he liked, staring glazedly ahead. I could go behind a bush and squat, my pants around my ankles. But they always got wet--shoes and socks, too. I recently saw scrawled on a ladies'-room wall, "What good is a penis? It's handy for peeing when hiking."

I once attempted to urinate standing up, facing a wall. Perhaps I felt that by trying it, I'd really experience how a man does it. Reality fell with the first drops down my leg.

Although I don't long to have a penis, it doesn't follow that I would mind borrowing one. As an adult, I've annoyed many an indifferent man by imploring. "What does it feel like to have it always there? Can you feel it when you walk? Does it rub on your pants? Do your balls get crushed when you squeeze your legs together? Aren't you aware of it every moment? What does it feel like when it's big and hard? Is it hot? Does it feel swollen?"

I've tried to imagine what having a penis feels like. I've often tried to imagine lying on top of a woman and pressing it inside. In that way. watching a man masturbate can turn me on. On one level I'm observing, while my empathetic me is feeling. As he moves his hand, I watch, move, imagine the pleasure, feel the pleasure until it's almost me. I can almost come when he does.

As a masturbation fantasy. I once imagined I had a penis. I closed my eyes and pictured it rising hard between my legs. I imagined how it would feel, when swollen, needing to be touched. Clasping my fist around an imaginary rod. I moved it slowly up and down, silkily, then harder, as if something were really there, moving my hips. My hand, as it moved up and down the imaginary shaft, hit my clitoris gently again and again until I came.

Men can be arrogant about the penis. Yet, more often, they are incredibly casual about their member, while I simply watch it in absolute wonder.

Sometimes the penis seems to have an identity of its own that is expressed in its often idiosyncratic, autonomous behavior. This may serve as a reminder that our impulses may not be as rational as we think. My best lovers have been those men who have achieved a balance of respect and understanding toward their penis, taking it seriously and yet retaining a sense of humor about it, recognizing and heeding its signals.

Patrick is disturbed that his penis often chooses women who are wrong for him. "My penis." he says, "is attracted to certain types, falls in love, but those women and I never get along." He also feels oppressed by his penis in other ways. "I may wish not to think about sex, or to ignore the sexuality of someone at work, perhaps, or someone who is married. I try my best, but my prick begins waving like a flag."

He's annoyed by, but affectionate toward his member, which he thinks is extremely demanding. He feels they can reach a civilized compromise only if he propitiates it with a certain amount of sexual activity, without allowing it to control him to the point of exhaustion. I've often heard Patrick bargain with his prick. "If I give you this one, then you leave me alone for a while," he tells it with a sigh.

Some men refer to their penis as "him." In my opinion, that is showing undue regard for what is really still part of one's body. The Chinese, says my friend Tuen-Ping, call the penis "little brother" (someone you learn to live with) or "small boss" (a good excuse for certain behavior).

Other men give their penis a name such as John Henry, John Thomas, Joseph or Rover. That is most embarrassing to me and I've often refused to call a prick by name when it's been introduced to me that way. But I know many women love that, often make up their own name for their lover's penis and think of it as someone they can share, like a dog or a baby.

•

A step away from thinking of the penis as a separate entity is treating it as a sex object. It seems a likely subject to be objectified, although, in my experience, that doesn't happen much. I think that may be because--while boys learn the socially acceptable practices of staring at, making noises about or comparing the shapes of breasts, asses and cunts quite apart from whom they belong to--my female upbringing was definitely against focusing on the penis as an erotic object in itself. Satisfaction from a male was to come from areas other than those of a sexual or visual nature. My mother, when discussing a man's sexual attributes, stressed his education, his profession, his appearance, rather than his looks. She never said, "The man you marry should be a good lay." She never advised me to look for a man with a large dick. As young girls, we never sat around listening to our mothers joke about thin or wide pricks as they played bridge. I was taught implicitly to look away from crotches. It would have been unseemly for little girls to stare at men's

crotches, attempting to imagine how well endowed they might be. Yet I'm often embarrassed by males of ten or eleven years of age staring at my ass or breasts, exhibiting frankly sexual and obviously imitative behavior.

Since I was a child, things have changed. Is it maturity, liberation or pure perversion that has me watching a man's small, tight buttocks as I follow him down the street? Why do I find myself staring down a man's shirt for a glimpse of his smooth, tan pectorals?

I find myself part of female locker room discussions during which we rate performance, size--which includes width and length--general penis appearance, as well as technique, or "penisability."

"He's not that good in bed." Ruth might say, "but he makes it up in size."

Joan says, "I like Alan's prick. It's very fat."

"I went out with Joe Bonomo," says Carole. "I think he's cute. He's also very sweet. But he has an ugly prick."

While these discussions are very true, they are usually characterized by lots of laughter and exist more in the realm of satire.

To one of my friends, the size and appearance of the penis seems important quite apart from whom it belongs to. Judyth definitely requires a large organ. She discusses penis size as a first requirement, as most women might focus on general appearance, or a personality trait, almost as if the man were incidental. Unfortunately, she's had to accept the fact that they're attached. She was in love for a long time with someone who she said had a ten-inch penis, but. unfortunately, he was very mean to her. I find that separation of man and penis quite rare. If someone showed me a series of flash cards of disembodied penises, the only thing it would turn me on to do would be to laugh a lot.

While to me a penis derives its eroticism from being part of someone who is erotic to me, it's quite possible to enjoy it as an erotic object without depersonalizing it. Although my friend Carole once said to me. "I wasn't turned on by Dave until I saw his prick. Then it was love at first sight." the erotic nature of a penis to me is not simply characterized by its appearance or size. I have never rejected a man because of penis size, but then again, most of my lovers have been of average size.

Although women have preferences as far as appearance goes, there is little actual prejudice. As an aesthetic factor, circumcision is rarely discussed. Most of my lovers have been circumcised, and until recently, I imagined most men were. When I was 19, I had an older lover who wasn't, and though it may indicate certain deficiencies in our relationship, his penis seemed like a stranger. I couldn't feel at home with its sheathed appearance: it seemed sneaky to me and was the opposite of erotic. Much later, I was in love with someone else who wasn't circumcised and now that seems more beautiful, natural and, of course, sexy to me. Circumcised organs now seem so shiny, so naked.

Men tend to objectify their own penis, often self-consciously worrying about size, appearance, color and technique, as if it were a piece of clothing that they weren't sure looked good on them but wasn't returnable. Perhaps that is because a lot of men I know often think about women's breasts and buttocks that way.

It's easier to discuss appearance than technique. Fucking, intercourse, balling, making love are combinations of too many elements. One organ (penis) or its technique can't be centrifuged apart from feeling, physical attraction, affection, friendship, loyalty, trust, tenderness, even love. Very often it's love or other special and magical combinations that inspire new heights of technique and sexuality.

The kind of penis I like for sex is a well-rounded one that enjoys everything. It's used with confidence, but, like a divining rod, is sensitive, picking up feedback for physical communion. I don't like a penis that thinks it knows what I want. I want one strong but receptive. That way, every act of intercourse varies, has a different feeling or personality, dependent on our moods.

Even anger has been a wonderful sexual stimulant. So the prick should work with the rest of the person, who, it's hoped, can be aware of how both he and I feel.

I like a penis with imagination, one that can play, that can invent games--one that can see any game I might initiate and go along with it. For instance, I like it to be hard and strong, aggressive like the sword of a conquerer, play hard to get, be poky, long and slow, be passive, chase me, be cuddly, funny or wildly passionate.

•

I've met men who didn't like one thing or another, but I've never met any who didn't love fellatio. But do women enjoy fellatio as much as men? In porno books and movies, the women love it, perform it skillfully, never refuse to do it, either on moral grounds or in disgust.

Fellatio is, for women, probably one of the most acquired tastes in the sexual lexicon. Apart from those women who have always been erotically fixated on or stimulated by sucking penises--and, to be honest. I have never met any of those--most women I know have never really enjoyed it excessively or found it particularly exciting until later in life, or until it is within the context of a mature and very sexually satisfying relationship.

"I like it OK if it's part of everything else," says Nancy. "But some men just like to come in your mouth and that's it. That certainly doesn't satisfy me."

"I won't suck anyone who doesn't do it to me," says Carole. "But I really only go crazy about it when I'm in love."

I don't know any women who refuse to go down on a man, but more than a few men have told me that they've had lovers who would rather die than fellate them, disgusted either by the penis in their mouth or by the idea of it. "One woman told me," said Eric, "that she didn't believe in sucking. She said it wasn't 'right.' "

The first penis I ever sucked belonged to David Marcus. I was baby-sitting and he often kept me company. We'd been necking and petting for months. Although we'd never fucked, his penis was no stranger to me--we'd often felt each other and jerked each other off. We had just come out of a clinch. My face was flushed, the area around my lips all pink and tender. David was tense. His pants already opened, he suddenly ripped them down over his hips, his garrison belt still in the loops. I remember the clang of the buckle. He sat in an easy chair, pants rolled to his knees, feet straight out, breathing hard, as if his prick were suddenly strangling and he was giving it air. Indeed, it seemed to be breathing. It stood straight up. hard as igneous rock. It was almost purple and pulsated rhythmically.

"Kneel," he whispered dryly, leaning forward. "Kiss it." He gave those orders hoarsely in a pleading tone. I kissed the tip. It felt smooth and dry, hot. David made a choking sound. A single drop of fluid appeared at the tip. He touched my head. "Lick it," he said, "with your tongue." I touched the sharp tip of my tongue to the drop. It was salty like tears but had the consistency of saliva. I ran my tongue all over the throbbing prick. David writhed and groaned. "That's it!"

I watched how that made him feel without feeling anything sexual myself. Moreover, I felt ambivalent about following his orders; at the same time, he appeared to be completely at my mercy. It was with a sense of compassion that I continued. There was also an element of experimentation. It was much like being told to taste a new food; therefore, the absence of any particular strong taste was extremely noticeable. "Open your mouth . . . put your lips around it," gasped David. It seemed enormous. I'd never put anything as large into my mouth since infancy, and felt like gagging. "Watch your teeth!" he shouted. (I remembered my mother telling me to take small bites and chew them well.) His penis felt and tasted like bean curd. A musty odor of soap mixed with clay arose from his pubic area. "Ohhh, suck it!" he moaned. "Move your head up and down." He pressed on my head. "Wet it. Move your tongue." It went deeper, felt harder, if that were possible. I gagged. I tried to tell him something, but he was moving his hips and it was going even deeper.

David suddenly became still, but completely tense, as if he'd died in the throes of a fit. He groaned loudly, and I thought the baby might waken. I tried to lift my head, it was choking me to death. It pulsated suddenly, and David relaxed. I sat up, surprised, my mouth full. I looked around for a place to spit the substance that tasted like the Clorox it had smelled like. Angry, I spit it onto his abdomen and watched it pool in his navel. An aftertaste rose from my throat like acid. David got me a glass of water. "I'll never do that again!" I said.

•

"Of course I enjoy fellatio," said Sarah, "but I'd never swallow it."

I was surprised. "Sarah wouldn't swallow it." I told Ruth, while questioning her. From the way she looked at me, I knew suddenly that she wouldn't, either. After interviewing a few more friends. I began to think I was the only woman in the greater New York area who swallowed cum. Jon reassured me. Although not all of his lovers would suck him. the ones who did didn't spit it out.

Do I like the taste? It's impossible to ask that the way one would ask about liking broccoli or watermelon. I don't like the taste as something I might eat for breakfast, or garnish a grapefruit with. Nevertheless, ejaculate, as part of ejaculation, is delicious to me, and an incredible turn-on. When my lover and I are both very passionate, his penis held deeply, his ejaculate seems to shoot back into my throat, where there are no taste buds, and is swallowed almost automatically. I like the smell of it, too. It has a subliminal appeal to me of very generalized sexuality.

Before I ever knew about semen, as a child, I was affected strangely by the odor of bleach. And the tiny white flowers, thalictrum, that covered the bushes in front of our house in spring, filling the air with a semenlike fragrance. There's only one bush of that kind where I now live, but when the flowers are blooming, I can't pass by without standing under it and simply inhaling deeply for a few moments.

I like my lover to love every part of me. Putting myself in the man's place, I quite honestly wouldn't like anyone to spit out anything that came from my body at one of my most vulnerable and trusting moments of physical and emotional communion. Besides, ejaculation in a woman's mouth can be a passionate experience for some women.

•

What a penis ejaculates is one thing; when it does it is a more major issue to most women. If a man hasn't developed a certain amount of control over ejaculation, sex becomes unsatisfying, or develops the character of a race, the goal being for the woman to win. And even that is possible only if the woman also has developed a certain amount of desirable control over her own orgasm. Yet, to me, the most exciting aspect of orgasm is that it is a loss of control, a sort of giving yourself up. While everyone enjoys his or her own orgasm, everyone I know also enjoys his or her partner's. For me, a man's orgasm, the pulsations, the passion, the sounds, the spurts, the pressure, is such an enormous turn-on that it can make me come, too.

The quantity of ejaculate emitted and how far it shoots are attractive and often sources of wonder to women; yet giving up semen, like losing blood, seems to symbolize to some of my lovers loss of strength or transfer of their health and energy into my body. For some men, that goes beyond symbolism. I had a Chinese lover who believed that too many ejaculations could cause illness, even death. That was not an excuse to avoid having sex; he loved frequent lovemaking. It was frequent ejaculation he feared. For that reason, he'd developed, with the help of ancient Chinese texts and practices, almost perfect control over his thing, or ejaculation.

What did his ejaculating or not mean to me? It meant that he was an incredible lover who could spend endless time and inventiveness without fear. It meant that I could relax with complete confidence that I'd be satisfied in every way. But once his control was appreciated, then taken for granted, such perfect control during an act that is also emotional became more than annoying. Once in a while, I'd want him to come when I did. Long sessions are not necessary or even desirable every time. Once in a while. I'd want to drive him wildly to uncontrollable orgasm. He was so good at control that if he didn't decide to come, nothing I did could make him. It seemed that only he could decide where or when.

I began to feel powerless and lethargic about sex. I also felt I'd allowed myself to become vulnerable to him without his doing the same, that he was withholding something precious even when he knew how much it meant to me. Sex soon became a power struggle, a fight, which is, indeed, one way the Chinese envision the sex act, the one holding out longer being the victor. When I tried holding out forever, it made him just as angry as his holding out made me. "But men and women are different," he said. He was one of my best lovers, but after a point, his excellent ejaculation contol seemed to me to be a way of retaining other kinds of control, including emotional. Perhaps it derives from another ancient Chinese practice, polygamy. When you are obligated to please five or six women, you'd better worry about your thing.

•

"The bridge to the future is the phallus," said D. H. Lawrence, but I prefer to interpret that symbolically, especially since Lawrence has delegated all responsibility to the male organ and none to the female. What he must have meant is, if we deny sexuality, we face a future that's arid and mechanistic, lonely and dead.

My women friends and I discussed the sex scene played by Jane Fonda and Jon Voight in Coming Home. "Could he feel it?" Ellen asked. None of us was quite certain what condition his prick was in, what it could or couldn't do.

"She was sitting on it," I said hopefully.

"But," said Ruth, "when Jane Fonda asks whether he can feel it, he says no, but that he can see it. Doesn't that mean he doesn't have a hard-on? Then he sucks her to make her come." Well, whether or not Jon Voight had an erection or a paralyzed prick in Coming Home, there wasn't one of us who hadn't been turned on by that scene. That is not to say that we can all get along without penises, or that we're all turned on by paraplegics. The two most obvious aspects of that scene that excited me were the powerful feeling that the characters had for each other and the consummate tenderness of the character played by Voight.

•

I'm lying in the bathtub, my legs spread--each hanging over one side--so that Robert, who is getting ready to cautiously place his foot between them in the parboiling water, has room to sit down. He stands there for a moment, a look of pain on his face, becoming acclimated to the hot water I love. Then he kneels between my legs. His penis, at my eye level, begins to harden as he observes me lying back, my legs surrounding him.

"Rob," I say, "your prick looks so beautiful." As if in response, it hardens more.

Later, on my bed, when I'm nearly asleep, Robert asks, "Which is more beautiful, me or my prick?"

"What kind of question is that?"

"Ordinarily, I'd never think about it, but when you called me, you said you'd been up to your neck in penises because of this article you're writing, thought about nothing else, dreamed about them, reminisced about them. You wouldn't even have dinner before we made love. Then, instead of saying that I looked beautiful, you said my prick looked beautiful. Normally, that would just excite me, but now I feel insecure. Maybe I'm just a sex object, just a prick for you."

I thought for a moment. How could I separate Rob from his prick any more than I could separate the sex from the other aspects of our relationship? Why should Rob imagine himself in competition with his own penis?

Although I've given the subject a lot of consideration over the years, I've never been able to isolate or analyze the elements of my loves and attractions. When I was eight, I had a crush on Joseph Weinstein. Did I ever try to imagine his penis? Did I ever see it? Never. We sent love notes to each other every day in class. The apex of my feeling for him arrived concurrently with a carefully traced picture of a man on horseback carrying a swooning woman in front of him in his arms, her silky dress draped around and falling below the saddle.

In the sixth grade, when I was in love with Marc Ratner, who was always being punished, did I fantasize about his penis? No. I liked the way he stood, the way he rolled his T-shirt sleeves over his brown and hairless shoulders. I was in love with his rebellion, his badness. And Murray Berger. Did I ever think about Murray's penis? I was more intrigued by the fact that he had diabetes and might die young. Admittedly, I think much more about penises now than when I was younger, but always as part of someone, never generalized.

"Rob," I whisper, nudging him in the ribs as his eyes are closing.

"Huh!" he jumps.

"Rob, I love the way you make love with me."

"Uh-huh." His eyes close.

"Rob, I desired you before I ever saw your penis, and while I'm fond of it, it isn't your penis I'm in love with," I whisper, putting a leg and one arm over him. "Without you," I say, "your penis would be nothing--absolutely nothing."

But he's already asleep.

"Although I don't long to have a penis, it doesn't follow that I would mind borrowing one."