The penis is a magnificent piece of design. If you actually sit down with a biology textbook and study all the little things that need to slip into place, the way tab A slides effortlessly into tab B, the bending and folding and precision engineering that is required to actually ignite an erection, even the most complicated piece of self-assembly furniture suddenly becomes a walk in the park. Plus, it can do it in the dark! Plus it won’t collapse the first time you put something on it.
The penis is a beautiful piece of art. We may, girls together with a few drinks inside us and the mood turning snarky, joke about ridges and big veins and bumps, compare them to gastropods, vegetables and worse. But there’s a world of dildo manufacturers out there striving to unleash the ultimate realistic lookalike, and although there’s a whole universe of different models and designs to choose from, I’ve bought a lot more toys that look like cocks (and a few that claim to feel like one) than anything else on the shelves. The Star Trek flight deck sci-fi playthings have their place as well. But you cannot beat some old-fashioned meat. Even if it is made of silicone.
The penis smells good (we’re leaving bad hygiene out of this conversation), it feels good, some will say it tastes good. The penis is versatile. The penis is inventive. The penis is full of surprises. I don’t think it matters how long you have been with the owner of a penis, there are still times when it will surprise you with something you have never imagined it doing before.
And it is so damned easy to operate!
Growing up an only child, opportunities to catch a glimpse of a penis were all but non-existent. Friends with brothers would report back giggling how they’d got a quick flash while passing his room; one returned from a summer weekend to reveal how she’d watched him and his mates skinny-dipping in the pool, when they thought the rest of the house was asleep. Another told us how she once traded an action figure she found on the street for a peek down a classmate’s pants...and then, rather cruelly, made sure we all knew which classmate it was.
At that age (we’re talking middle school here, early high school at best), of course, curiosity is the driving passion, and “I don’t know what the fuss is about” is usually the final judgement. A sleeping penis is a thing of beauty once you’ve got to know a few. But when your first sight of this mythical beast is an inch or so of soft, thumb-like flesh lying curled up in its nest of underpants, it’s very easy for your mind to flash onto other things entirely - a baby rodent, hairless and sightless, is a polite reiteration of one report I heard.
None of which, of course, will dampen your own curiosity. Neither will repeat airings of the same reactions. All through those years of passive discovery, you search for fresh sightings with the passion of the most devout UFO hunter, in the hope that one voice, one day, will add to your slowly growing horde of knowledge. You collect eyewitness reports from those friends who claim they’ve seen one. You glean anecdotal evidence from magazines, books and movies. You learn about “erections” and wonder how they work.
If you’re of a generation whose awakening took place in the years since the arrival of the Internet, maybe you passed over some of the quainter methods of gathering information; and, again for those with brothers on hand, a stash of hardcore magazines or pictures can take a lot of the wondering out of the wonder.
But the fact is, no matter how much legwork you put in to your research activities, still nothing can truly prepare you for your first sighting of the real thing. There is a reason, I’ve often thought, why penises look a little like the Loch Ness Monster. Because, until you’ve actually had a face to face encounter with one, it’s hard to believe that they really exist.
Even harder to believe that they can actually do all the things that it says on the box.
Boys cheat. Boys know all the basics long before they unveil their treasure in public, which is one of the reasons why they also have a stock collection of gestures, grunts and phrases to explain what they want you to do with it. They know instinctively the things that they think will feel good, and as curious as we are to start probing the mystery, so they are desperate to discover if the hyperbole is true.
Unwrapping your first penis is a little like opening a new CD by a band you’ve heard is brilliant. Especially if he’s already hard. That’s more like opening a box set, and you don’t even know how many discs there will be. It doesn’t matter how many pictures of a hard cock you’ve seen, or how well your sex ed explained the mechanics, the fact that anything can go from that size to this is going to take your breath away.
But back to the box set. There’s the anticipation as you get through the shrink wrap. There’s the thrill as you look at the booklet, and your heart starts to pound as you pick up the first disc. There’s that moment of excitement as the first song starts to play; and then, if you’re lucky, there’s forty more minutes of unfolding delight before the final song splashes its last secret onto your hand. And (again if you’re lucky), you’re hooked.
Of course, at this age/stage, forty minutes might be somewhat over-optimistic. Forty seconds is more like it, and even that is a stretch. The first time I ever tasted cum in my mouth was about ten seconds after I put his penis in there. The first time I ever wondered just how efficient a condom really is arrived about half a minute after he’d put the thing on.
Lying there sticky while he runs through his apologies (“it’s never happened before!” he splutters, all bewildered... without ever adding that of course it hasn’t; he’s as virginally new to this as you are), again you wonder what all the fuss is about. It’s only gradually that you realize that, like any new toy or handheld device, it takes time to figure out all the things it can do. The day I got my first iPad home was no different, and I stared at it for hours, just trying to work out exactly how it worked. And he’s no help because playing the XBox on your own is very different to playing it with somebody else.
Well, first you plug it in....
Yes, first you plug it in, then you press a button. Then you use your fingers and just get the feel of things. You’ll know if you’re pressing too hard or too lightly; and the more you do it, the easier it gets. The more secrets will be gently revealed, and if you really pay attention to everything you do, and everything that happens when you do them, soon it will feel like an extension of your own body.
Which is the other amazing thing about penises. Wherever you hold it, however you handle it, and even if you just lie back and admire it, it has the ability to become a part of you. A fantastically designed, magnificently engineered, artistically wrought and sensorily divine extension of your own beautiful body; and it responds really well to compliments, too.
So next time you have one handy, whether it’s ready for action or not, let it know that you love it. Let it know it’s handsome, let it know it’s strong; let it know it’s everything you ever dreamed of in the past.
Then pull it close and prove it.
Make today Penis Appreciation Day; and if it goes as well as it ought to, make tomorrow that as well.