Every Inch Counts

I haven't written in almost 3 months now. Wow! It was getting tough to write because as I became more intertwined with my boyfriend, my thoughts naturally revolved around the "him" and the "we" and the "us". I could probably have written a dissertation on communication, patience, boundaries, or the evolution of sex in a relationship just in the last few months, but I have chosen instead to spare my boyfriend the public analysis of those thoughts. I decided to wait until I could focus on the funny stories that inevitably find me.

Sure enough, a whole new type of penis story found me last week. It was just asking to be blogged about. So here goes...

I went to visit my work friend Cristi at her cube last week, and after the standard salutations she said she had a private question for me and asked me to follow her to a nearby conference room. Once we were seated in safe, silent security, she started giving me the context for her question. Her son is almost two years old. When he was born her and her husband had him circumcised, for no other reason than to have his penis match his fathers. This logic is essentially lost on me, but maybe because I wasn't raised with a father I can't understand all the bonding that apparently happens as father and son compare penises through the kid's childhood.

Anyway, several months ago, Cristi's husband started mentioning that the circumcision appeared to be tight. He brought to Cristi's attention that the other kids at day care all had bigger wee-wee's than their baby. Cristi realized that he had a point, but didn't think much of it. She tried to forget it, but unfortunately, her husband has started compulsively worrying that their baby is going to live the life of a man with a little wee-wee. Now Cristi is starting to go crazy too. So, her question: "Do you know of any way to make a baby's penis grow more?"

"No. Its impossible," was my short answer as the self proclaimed Wise Wizard of Penistry. There is no pill. Surgery is impossible on a child, and even on an adult surgery can only increase length by cutting the muscle that makes it stick up/out, so it would just hang there. You can also inject fat into the shaft for girth, but there is a high likelihood that the fat will settle in clumps and then later just get reabsorbed. Stretching is theoretically possible, but it would take hours of stretching day after day for months on end, and even if the skin could survive intact there is no way a kid could ever go through that. The only thing that might make sense is checking to see if there is some way to loosen the circumcision by adding back some skin, but I have never heard of that being done. It might be worth exploring because the average circumcised penis is 1/2 inch shorter than the average uncircumcised penis. Did you know that? True story. And it is attributed to the circumcision being too tight. Again, why do we circumcise? Viva la foreskin!

My last piece of advice was by far the most relevant. "Don't ever let your son know that you have ever even thought that he might have a small penis. Don't look at it, don't talk about it or even suggest it verbally around him. It will be bad enough if he notices his penis is smaller than other kids. Having his parents point it out would be horrible!"

I can't imagine what that would be like. I remember when I first became conscious of other boy's wee-wee's. It was 7th grade; the first grade where we had open showers in the locker room for Physical Education. I had seen one or two of my friends' wankers before that, but PE was full of boys you didn't know. And probably like every other boy, I don't remember the ones that were the same size as mine or smaller. I remember the big ones, and I remember that mine look horribly insanely painfully small compared to theirs. As a gay boy, this also mixed with a dirty exciting happy feeling too. In fact, I remember a blond boy named Jeremy with short curly blond hair who made me feel all those things. Of my 4 memories of 7th grade PE, two are of Jeremy. One is of standing next to Jeremy at the urinal and seeing his penis out of the corner of my eye (that's where I learned to stare out of the corner of my eye). It looked twice as big as mine. Despite my embarrassment, he became a crush of mine, and my 2nd memory is of "accidentally" brushing up against his butt as we changed for class. That was hot.

Anyway, my point is that men have a lot of confidence issues wrapped up around their penis. That feeling that I had in the locker room in 7th grade has persisted to some extent even to today. When I shower at the gym, despite 15 years of informal "research" and finding that mine is somewhere in the range of Not So Bad to Pretty Good, I still get a little shy, and it is only magnified by the donkey schlongs in the room. (However, as an adult, my strong mental stability allows me to overcome my insecurity and instead focus hypnotically on the swinging dingy before me.) Actually, now that I mention it, I wonder if my uncontrollable hypnosis can be traced back to that time period where I first noticed mine vs. theirs?

Ok really, back to the point. Geez its hard to focus when I'm thinking about big'uns. Chances are that through puberty, it will all even out and Cristi's son will figure out that he was just slow to catch up. If he doesn't, he is going to notice at some point that his is not as big as "theirs". If that happens, his response will in part depend on the confidence that he has learned up to that point. Cristi needs to focus on what's fabulous with her little guy, and forget that she ever worried about the missing inch.