About ten years ago I was first introduced to social media and started reuniting friendships with people that I hadn't seen in more than a decade before that. In the beginning it was slow and only a few people found me but by the end of the first year I was getting reacquainted with many of my lost friendships. One of the first people to start communicating with me happened to be a woman I hadn't seen in sixteen years. She was very eager to show me the tattoo work she had received in our time away from each other, which were actually very good work and a lot of it. Over the first few days of messaging each other she sent a series of pictures displaying it proudly.
I too had a fair amount of tattoo work but one particular piece was that of a dragon blowing smoke rings on the shaft of my penis. Thinking it would be funny I took a picture of it and sent it to her with the statement "it's not my only tattoo but it must be my favorite because I can't seem to keep my hands off of it!" It was just a flaccid picture, I was trying to be funny not creepy but her reply wasn't really what I had expected at all. "omg who tattooed that babies arm", it was just something I hadn't even considered. Quick to throw some wit though, I answered her with "the camera adds 10 pounds you know"
For some reason penis size has never really occurred to me, not mine, not anyone's. But as my picture became displayed I became known as the guy with the huge penis. The absurd part about this was that I was thirty eight at the time. I had just ended a ten year relationship and been sexually active for more than 20 years and never once did it occur to me that I am not average. Even when partners would comment on my penis I assumed they were only trying to get me more excited and turned on.
Since then, knowledge of my tattoo became common among everyone in my social group and the single picture of my flaccid penis was requested evidence by others as well. In my peer group drunken nudity is not uncommon as many of my friends are somewhat fringe people themselves; punks, bikers, tattoo artists and other assorted freaks, we can tend to get a little rowdy, immature and carried away.
So about a year later I found myself invited to a photo party at a friend's tattoo studio who was looking to reinvigorate himself and his shop. It was an after hour's private party and the drinks flowed as many friends that had been tattooed in the shop got pictures of their work taken. One man had almost his entire body tattooed with the exception of his face. He was around seventy years old, had done quite well for himself and very flamboyantly gay. Over the previous twenty years he had gotten his entire body tattooed at the studio but more so he helped the owner make financial and business decisions that would see the business flourish. I don't think I could ever say enough good things about this man.
Well that night, in the height of the party he figured he should get naked for his photos as he is the only one to have his penis tattooed and so it should be somewhere in the pictures. But he didn't know about mine and soon was corrected. He then invited me to join him in the photo and get a picture of our tattooed dicks together. I didn't get my tattoo done at this studio but sure, why not?
The room was somewhat crowded but I suppose I had enough liquor in me to not really care about exposing myself in front of a camera with a gay man. Not to say any of it really ever would have bothered me except that I have never really been entirely happy with my own body and so not that comfortable exposing it. As we dropped trow, you could see that his entire body was a flowing design that went right onto his genitals. It was colorful and artful and looked quite amazing. My art on the other hand, was not so good. My tattoo was over ten years old and almost half of the color had faded, some of the line work had blown out and it didn't even come close to covering a quarter of my shaft. But there was something else that became quite apparent right away as well; just dangling next to each other my penis was easily twice the size of his, my balls dwarfed his immensely. I had never really been exposed that close to another naked man or ever taken notice and so even I was a little surprised by the difference. Not one to ever miss an opportunity, my picture partner reached out and grabbed the underside of my dick and held it for the camera.
I never did see those pictures; I'm sure they got dismissed as drunken craziness but had no real value other than a good laugh. They certainly had no use to help shop advertising or exposure as was intended by the party. The event did start to boost my confidence about my body image though and made me actually realize that just maybe my penis isn't really average after all.
When I originally got tattooed I was in a relationship with a tattoo artist who had wanted to see what it would be like to tattoo a dick. The entire event happened rather spontaneously after a phone call from my dad who was a bit drunk and trying to be cheeky. He had no tattoos and couldn't really stomach the idea of getting one but in a joking manner told my girlfriend that he was going to get her to tattoo him. When she asked what the design would be he said it doesn't matter but the tattoo will be on his dick. I took the phone and told him he is way behind the times and the dick tattoos are so last year, I had one, everyone out here has one and that he has to come up with something a bit better than that. We all got a good chuckle out of it but after hanging up the phone my girl told me that I can't go around saying that I have my dick tattooed if it isn't true. I asked her if she had any designs in mind and soon was being shown a four page portfolio of ideas that she had come up with for that exact location. I picked one out and she applied it on me that very night.
Oddly enough it soon became a plight of our relationship as friends wanted to see and then show their friends and she became increasingly uncomfortable with my penis getting attention. At the time I was sort of blind to what was really going on as most comments referred first to my size and then to the tattoo. I honestly thought people were just joking with me in order to keep the moment fun and relaxed. The novelty wore off soon though and as I struggled within that relationship I lost all comfort of displaying myself or even talking about it.