March 22, 2009
Chapter One: The Chronicles of Testaclese

Posted at 10:48 pm, in: The Chronicles of Testaclese
Tags: chronicles of testaclese

As promised, your weekly edition of The Chronicles of Testaclese. For more on the trouble we got into over this, this might help. Don’t forget to read the Introduction! As I have stated before, this is (almost) exactly The Vagina Monologues.

I bet you’re worried. I was worried. That’s why I began this piece. I was worried about what we think about penises, and even more worried that we don’t think about them. I worried about my own penis. It needed a context of other penises—a community, a culture of penises. There’s so much darkness and secrecy surrounding them—like the Bermuda Triangle. Nobody every reports back from there. Except for Monica Lewinsky, she reported back from President Clinton’s.

In the first place, it’s not easy to even find your penis. Men go weeks, months, sometimes years without looking at it. I interviewed a high-powered businessman once who told me he was too busy; he didn’t have the time. Looking at your penis is a full day’s work. You have to pull down your pants. You’ve got to get in the perfect position, with the perfect light, and pull out a mirror. There are sides of it you may never see. You get all twisted up. You’re slouching over, killing your neck. You’re exhausted by then. He said he didn’t have the time for that. He was busy.

So, I decided to talk to men about their penises, to do penis interviews, which became The Chronicles of Testaclese. I talked with over two hundred men. I talked to older men, young men, married men, single men, gay men, smelly men, homeless men, male prostitutes, male strippers, fat men, ugly men. At first men were reluctant to talk. They were a little shy. But once they got going, you couldn’t shut them up about their penises. They got very excited (which I could tell by their erection), mainly because no one has ever asked them before.

Let’s just start with the word “penis.” It sounds like an weapon of mass destruction at best, maybe a fungus: “Hurry, Nurse, bring me some antibiotics to kill that penis.” “Penis.” “Penis.” Doesn’t matter how many times you say it, it never sounds like a word you want to say. It’s a totally ridiculous, completely unsexy word. If you use it during sex, trying to be politically correct—“Darling, could you stroke my penis?”—you kill the act right there.

I’m worried about penises, what we call them and don’t call them.

In Great Neck, they call it a “snake.” A man there told me that his father used to tell him, “Don’t wear tighty-whities underneath your pajamas, son, you need to let your snake breathe.” In Westchester they called it a pole, in New Jersey a hose. There’s “stick,” “pee-pee,” “wee-wee,” “thingy,” “python,” “pipe,” “rod,” “shaft,” “mushroom,” “harry,” “little (insert name here),” “carrot stick,” “dip stick,” “poker.” I’m worried about penises.