Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (May 5, 2000)
may5.2Q0û’ SIZE MATTERS 5 process has made him feel “whole” and | reports increased sensitivity of the glans and s more pleasure in sex—and it’s working! | | Continued from Page 25 fit in. “They have the impression that’s what being gay is,” he says. Men who felt reasonably attractive as het erosexuals suddenly become very insecure when facing the scrutiny of gay men. I’m reminded of Aaron the barfly: “One flaw, and that’s it—you’re out." Writer Michelangelo Signorile calls it “body fascism,” and let’s face it, boys, we’ve been doing it for years. You think it was straight guys who got the bright idea to paint naked muscle boys all over Renaissance cathedrals. 1 don t en dissatisfied with the size of their penises, however, must go—ahem—to much greater lengths. According to Dr. Kilgore, surgical enlarge ment is possible by releasing the interior mus cles that connect the penis to the body, but this lengthening will only increase the flaccid size. The muscles in the penis that affect vol ume during erection can’t be manipulated. Although some surgeons are injecting fat into the penis to increase girth, the problem there is that the fat can turn lumpy or be absorbed back into the body—which seems to me to be an excessively cruel joke on nature’s part. (Why doesn’t the fat in my butt get absorbed back into the body, huh?) So just how important is size? The ancient Greeks valued a small flaccid penis as an indication of man’s control over his baser, animalistic nature. Nowadays, Viagra is—par don the pun—a growth industry, and pom stars peddle dildo replicas of their codes that are so large you could bunt a baseball with them. “Oh, I hate size queens,” says my friend Jeremy. “I hate size queens and small dicks.” Jeremy has slept with a number of well- endowed men, so naturally I hang on his every word. “I’m mostly a top,” he says, “and, as has been my experience, most tops don’t care how big their bottom’s penises are, but I really do. If I’m being totally honest, I would prefer a 10- inch dick with plenty of girth any day of the week. Otherwise, I feel like it’s a waste of my time.” Perhaps I should fix him up with Larry, a well-hung Portland man who advertises his bounty on the Internet. I e-mailed Larry (all in the name of journalistic research, of course) and asked him how he feels about being amply endowed. “I’ve always felt good about having a large cock,” he said. (Quelle surprise.) “I may get the response that it’s too large for most, but the ones who are able to take it just love it.” Or, as Jeremy puts it, “Sometimes it’s so big you can’t fuck it, you can’t suck it, all you can do is put your arms around it and weep.” But most men I spoke with had a more real istic grasp on penis size. “I don’t worry about it,” says Richard, a physically fit 45-year-old runner. "Not on myself or other guys. I’m not exactly what you would call ‘gifted’ but, you know, I’m happy. I would never think of asking a guy ‘How big are you?’ If some guy asked me that, I would proba bly tell him ‘You’re never going to find out.’ ” I like Richard’s attitude. He seems to be the mature, spiritually evolved person I strive (and fail) to be. He exercises daily, but not to excess, and he manages to keep his physical life in bal ance with the rest of his life. And even though I’ve cited the more extreme examples, Richard seems to speak for the majority of Portlanders. M Plastic makes perfect pparently I’m not alone. My friend Jim Kilgore, a plastic sur- geon in Tualatin, tells me he’s seen the number of cosmetic procedures for men dou ble in the last 15 years, the operation of choice being liposuction on love handles, at a cost of about $2,000 per handle. His average male patient is in his 40s and is physically fit already. “Liposuction is a body contour operation,” he says, “not a weight-reducing procedure.” The good news is that fat cells are unipo tential (meaning they can’t reproduce them selves), so they can’t grow back once you suck them out of an area. The bad news is that, because it can cover a large area, lipo suction is the most invasive plastic surgery there is, resulting in more complications and more deaths (yeah, you read that right: deaths) than any other cosmetic procedure. Yet I still find myself thinking, “Hey, it might be worth $4,000 to be able to take my shirt off at gay pride.” I ask Bill Belcher, a gay mental health counselor I know from PABA, if I’m nuts. No, he says, my thinking is typical of thirty-some things. In his g practice Belcher ° has seen obsession 1 with perfection > grow as gay men 2 reach their mid to i late 20s. “In general, gay teens are tuned into being unique,” he says. “The beads, the colored hair, the piercings...but once they enter Counselor Bill Belcher ‘the scene,’ they often start com paring themselves to others and become accul- turated to conform to the ‘Ken doll’ standard." (Except, of course, in the genitalia depart ment, where—to my childhood frustration, and Barbie’s no doubt—Ken has always been lack ing.) "It’s almost like they go through a ‘gay machine,’ ” says Belcher. “They go to the bars, they get the haircut, they get the gym body.... Once they realize the bloom is off the rose, they start fertilizing.” Belcher sees a mellowing and self-accep tance in gay men as they reach their 40s, except in cases of older men coming out. Men who have been married and whose only expo sure to gay culture has been the media feel they have to be buff and tan and have their hair to Yank my doodle— it’s a dandy think so. To look at Genre or Out magazines, you’d think all gay men are young and gorgeous and having way more fun than you are. have endured for centuries. (My friends who work out at 24 Hour Fitness in Northwest Port land testify to the ever-lengthening toilette of some men, as they fuss with various emollients and creams ad nauseam. It might not be long before we refuse to leave the house without owhere is this pressure more apparent than “putting our faces on.”) in the story of Evan, a buff 33-year-old Sernas’ decision to go au naturel with regard actor friend of mine. Evan had been mak to body hair was part of the process of embrac ing beaucoup bucks doing commercials in Los ing his Portuguese heritage, and it led him in Angeles when a rare spinal disorder rendered an unexpected direction: “I look at myself and him unable to walk more than a city block, 1 see a natural, hairy body, more primitive, if you will,” he says. and even that with immense strain and spastic ity. “Sitting down, I’m still a hottie by L.A. standards,” he says. “In fact, as a result of drag ging these useless legs around, my upper body has never looked better. “I was at this party in the Hollywood Hills, being superbly charming, and 1 could tell this guy was falling in love with me right there,” he continues. "Then, when I got up to walk to the dining room, my legs began to shake uncon trollably and this guy walked right past me, def initely not loving me. It was brutal, but that’s L.A., babe.” Sensing Evan’s humiliation, a female friend took him by the arm, noted his wildly bucking “And my penis didn’t look right to me cir hips and said lewdly for everyone to hear, “Mmm, I wish I coulciget underneath that." cumcised,” he adds. So Sernas began the process of foreskin I urge Evan to move to Portland. “It’s not restoration. (No, I’m not making this up.) like that here,” I say, but then I think of Using a penile uncircumcision device, or PUD, Aaron’s words— "One flaw...”—and 1 wonder. Sernas is in the midst of a four- to five-year process of stretching the skin on the shaft of his penis to cover the head, effectively forming a new foreskin. lavio Sernas, a hairy 43-year-old Portlander I won’t go into all the details—see The Joy of Portuguese descent, tells me he has actu of Uncircumcision if you’re ally had men say to him interested—but I will tell “Look who just got out of you it can involve subject the zoo" when they see his ing one’s penis to all man hairy shoulders and back— ner of hardware-store ake for instance, Patrick, a 38-year-old sci and I think, “Geez, it is paraphernalia: O-rings, worse than high school." ence professor, who has found self-accep duct tape, weights and Sernas sees more and tance by maintaining a realistic reference alligator clips, to name a point. more men with shaved few. “If 1 compare myself to the guys in pom bodies at Oregon’s gay Just having penis and magazines, of course 1 feel lousy,” he says. “But nude beaches, one more duct tope appear in the if I compare myself to other scientists, hey, 1 way in which we’re suc cumbing to the kinds of same sentence makes me cosmetic pressures women L Continued on Page 29 cringe, but Sernas says the LA. confidential n Au naturel F On. average T |27
