by Eurydice (c) 1999

Penis Size 101
 

    Every couple of weeks my girlfriends and I meet at some bar and talk about men?those we love, or covet, or live with, or flirt with, or want to live with, or want to leave?and yet we never bring up penis sizes. I find this interesting because the Age-Old Debate (Does Size Matter?) rages on in locker rooms and in most men's minds. Every man I've been with has put to me the Big Question: How Do I Rate? (the one occasion in which I recommend the value of the white lie), or has preempted my presumed comparisons by asserting the Immature Boast: I Am Well-Hung, or the Ridiculous Question: Am I Too Big For You? In contrast, the rare times girls mention penis size involve an overall physical description of the man-of-the-topic and are devoid of judgment?for instance, in the process of saying that he is blond, dark, tall, short, etc. one may feel enthusiastic enough to add that he is long or thick or stubby in the same breath she'll note penile color changes or other markings; but those anomalous occasions are met with bored silence by a female audience. What men can't seem to understand is that, when they talk about sex, women talk about talk; they list exhausting details of pertinent dialogues accented by feelings and conjectures. Even girls who brassly divulge graphic acrobatics in the presence of men essentially do so to turn the men on; left among them-selves, they discuss psychology. Women know penis size taste is up to the body of the beholder: a richly-endowed man hurts the average vagina and makes its owner feel either inadequate or abused; a smaller man matches a smaller woman, a horse matches a mare, and all that is learned in practice, and a slight mismatch can be ignored in the face of a wondrous romance. The fact is indifferently-hung well-spoken men get the girls. 
     What men seem to assume instead is that women want a monstrous member (somehow linked to performance), or power and money. (A big corporate player or the President, the reasoning goes, wins all the girls. Of course a cursory look at the females allegedly entangled with the President is enough to dispel those notions: not the cream of the crop. Fascinating young women worth their catch don't get aroused by financial prowess, at least not before the age of 35. Paleolithic biology is not stronger than sociology and the influence of romantic drivel on modern careering chicks, certainly not before, or after, procreation time.) The idea that in the post-industrial jungle, money has replaced masculine traits desirable in millennia past—virility, musculature, agility, courage, honor—that wealth is perennially potent and can even resolve male anxieties of size and anatomy, offering every man, from every walk of life, equal libidinal success to what his wallet can achieve, is fantasy. It stems from the long colorful history of men paying women to be courtesans, from stripclubs and porn, from our representations of sex that retranslate the complex primal struggle between penis and pussy into an easier one between the authority of money and the power of alluring flesh.
     What men need to work on, if they want to be irresistible or just get laid, is not the expert use of cock rings or herbal potency enhancers, penile enlargements or the miracle tricks of Viagra and showers of gifts. First and foremost, they need byronic language. (A bonus for all the English lit. graduates maligning unheralded out there.) Sex being the prime mover of all inventions, I bet this was why spoken language was invented: as a seduction tool, a shortcut to convincing others to trust us and do our bidding. Language is the magic pill that separates sex from plumbing; the Hook. "Let's have a quickie," however honest it may be, won't bag the trophy stranger at a bar; "I could disappear in you," said softly enough to appear vulnerable, probably will. "I adore you" is better than "I'm into you" and even than "I love you." Verbal prowess is more potent than phallic talent, both in the all-important courting stage and along every step of an affair. (Later on in the affair, most women won't even mind being a piece of meat; once they believe they are loved, they can romanticize anything?denigration, possessiveness, S or M become signs of love. I'd say love was invented as an aphrodisiac. Love raises the sexual stakes, and makes women feel they serve a noble cause when they fuck, so their senses and performances are heightened. Love makes miserable lovers seem sublime, fragile, intense. Love persuades girls that their beloved is better than anyone who came before or who could come tomorrow, and they'll overlook shortcomings to protect their love investment.) So the Cure of any lingering anatomical insecurities is in the knowledge that emotion achieves more than technique in sex. The guy who tells a woman, "You are desire," or "You are a genius," his face becoming a guileless mask of concentrated tenderness, tells a woman what she secretly wants to hear. The key to success is to not be afraid of ridicule; to be unabashed, unselfconscious; to remember conversation is the mating game.
     This is why men with a strong sense of tragedy get laid better. This is why pestering wooers who babytalk and sigh ultimately score: because women like to be swept away by tokens of passion that seem to leave them no choice and may never be re-experienced. The assumption of uniqueness is a necessary embellishment of lust; women like prettifying the panicky reality of pounded grunts and genital humping. "I've never felt this way before," "I sense I belong with you," "I can imagine you barefoot and pregnant," "I want to protect you from anything mean and dour," all guarantee her sexual arousal. It's only a euphemistic front, but if it works, no man can afford to scorn it. The ear, not the eye, is a woman's primary sexual organ.
     Don Juan—our lasting archetype of uncontaminated sexuality, satyr, tomcat, superstud, the predator all men would love to be if they were free to—is the perfect model. Read his memoirs. His method is to 'care' about his lays like a doctor cares about his sick. He doesn't boast; he focuses on them. Deftly, sagaciously, devotedly, he signals that he sees in them what no other man has: inspiration, wit, beauty. He undertakes the most elaborate reckless quests for their affections. He offers them unequivocal worship, peerless danger, and fun. So what if he does it to every female he meets? So what if he trades in hyperbole and is driven by a rapacious libido, equally drawn to young and old, sharp and dim, lady and maid, virgin and whore? He enables women to feel admired, treasured, loved. He makes their reality feel fantastic and their dreams real. But without words, he'd be emasculated—just another horny cock loose in the hen house.
     It's not easy: a womanizer can't afford to be honest or follow his internal mirror or pride or censor, and must believe his own lines and not worry about trifling with women's hearts. And women start with the assumption that most guys could fuck a headless woman, that men have a sex wish that can be satisfied at any Burger King of eroticism, that in and of itself, sex is shallow, a hasty mechanical reiteration. Women are attracted to energy, not physical bodies. Because they've been raised to save themselves from wanton rods, women hate to fuck-and-wish-they-were-doing-the-dishes. They want to go so far into annihilation that there's no world, no God, no mind, no responsibility. Otherwise they feel guilty, diminished, used.
     So instead of storming the fortress of a disembodied pussy, men should plough and smother the girlie soul. It sounds like a tall order, and it may take some time for clumsy initiates to master the oratory of true romance, but the returns are fool-proof and the practice beats sitting at home watching TV all day.