Dicks.

People with penises want to show me - you, all of us - their dicks. Maybe, on some level, that translates to their desire to be really seen, their vulnerabilities, hopes, disappointments, and ennui. Maybe?

If I sound hopeful here, it’s because I am. I have been searching for healthy romantic connection with men since back in my “Sweet Valley High” days when I longed for my first kiss and had a painful crush on Silver Spoons-era Jason Bateman. 

My mom provided my first close-up dick when she gave me a Playgirl magazine with an uncircumcised centerfold. I had requested anatomical explanation - I was ten-years-old and curious - and was delivered this grown-ass, hirsute and mustachioed 80’s centerfold.

That was followed by a more old guys who showed me their dicks in my early teens (mmmm, the 80’s). Once from across a parking lot, another time from across a Greyhound bus aisle.

Alas, these unfortunate early sightings did nothing to deter me from heterosexuality. I had a couple of boyfriends during boarding school, a few hook-ups on vacations, and drunken, sad, but hopeful, but ultimately sad sexual encounters during my first year of college. 

"Sad but hopeful” is a common theme for all of my early sex. I was sex-curious but seeking connection from boys who had neither the emotional capacity nor the physical expertise to satisfy my complicated young desires. The lone standout was the sweet boy who is now a gay man. He was unabashedly unsure about what to do with either of our bodies, and we laughed a lot. We both did musical theater, he said my toes were “aristocratic,” we were light and fun together. Every young girl should date a closeted gay boy, it’s a safe space.

With monogamy as the default in my early romantic pursuits, there were limits on whom I had sex with, it limited my sexual agency, my safety, and put powerful limits everyone’s gender roles. I was seeking freedom in a box, looking for my sexuality through the most traditional channels. 

My first real boyfriend (who’s been my husband for decades now) came in to the picture when I was 20-years-old. Until I turned 40 he was the dick in residence, my baseline penis. I didn’t have reason, desire, or wherewithal to venture further or to seek out other dicks. 

Enter the magic calculous: perimenopause + long-term marriage + kids in full time school + gym membership = Swinger.

When we opened our marriage and started swinging it was suddenly dick-city. I got to see dicks in every possible milieu. Every party, beach, club, orgy, and threesome there was always at least a few unfettered penises in the room.

I’d never seen so many dicks. Big, curved, narrow, small headed, big headed, circumcised and not, flaccid and not. I’ve known metaphorical dicks and real, live, in-my-hand dicks. It’s a staggering amount of dicks.

In my “research” I’ve noticed that when a guy is flaccid he’s relaxed, jovial, sometimes even funny - you can have a full-on conversation with a guy when his dick is soft. But once that dick gets even the tiniest bit hard, it’s all business. Something must be done with this emergent dick! Does everyone see this? The gravitas around a boner is immensely entertaining. 

The only thing more serious than a hard dick is an inconveniently soft dick during an orgy-kinda thing. Suddenly it’s everyone’s problem. There’s the initial incredulity, “This never happens!” which is then followed by a team effort to rehab the erection. So much tending and caring and succor gets focused on this not-so-rare occurrence and all of the sexiness gets sucked out of the room. 

I imagine it’s disappointing to be in a bucket-list sexual scenario and find that the one thing that should be working is defying expectations. To these men I say, welcome to a woman’s brain. I’ve been in an orgy and started thinking about the cookies I needed to make for the 7th grade basketball team end-of-season party the following day. Did I force the orgy to stop and focus on my “problem?” No I did not, and that’s because I’m a woman and I can fake my way through most everything with a smile on my face and a plate of warm cookies at the ready. 

A friend of mine has seen many more dicks than I have. She’s a veritable dick-tionary and has degrees and work experience on the subject. She posits that men are shamed for erections in their earliest years when their teeny little penises could get hard for any old thing that feels good - a nice smell, a funny tickle, a favorite teacher - and the immediate response from the adult(s) in the room was “Not here!” “That’s for private time!” For shame, for shame is the first erectile experience for almost every person born with a penis. 

That shame gets baked in to the nervous system and then transmutes in to terrible things like misogyny and systemic oppression of uteruses. Men’s desire was shamed in its most tender beginnings and because of that their lascivious thoughts are women’s responsibility to manage forevermore. 

In the early days at Sanctuary the dearest little 70-year-old woman replied to our call for artists for our monthly Erotic Art Show. She painted bouquets of colorful dicks, exuberant single schlongs, and parades of happy penises. This was her chosen hobby in her senior years, she made dick paintings. What a thoughtful, elegant way to de-demonize men, she softened their plight through whimsical renderings of dicks amongst flowers and frills. Iconic.

I appreciate the care and grace that my friend the dick-tionary and the septuagenarian dick painter bestow toward men and their enormous … problems. I get caught in the “but men are so (fill in the blank)” trap. What would men do if they knew there were women our there who felt compassion for their penises? 

It must be so hard to have a dick (pun entirely intended). Imagine having an appendage with scant voluntary control! What if one of our fingers was like that? Just one, lonely digit on your hand that responded only to your brain’s deepest desires and longings. There’d be a mitten shortage for sure.

Now let’s imagine that instead of pity, men felt compassion for vaginas. I predict a ten-fold increase in sexual desire from women, better birth control for all genders, and parades of happy penises.