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SIZE
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5 process has made him feel “whole” and
| reports increased sensitivity of the glans and
s more pleasure in sex—and it’s working!
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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
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