-1-
I am in a sexual relationship I never thought I'd be in. Not that I mind it. It's so off the wall that I like it. Best yet, it clears my performance anxiety and doesn't require birth control.
My cock has been the same every morning. Every day and night, too. No matter how much I take it in my hands and try to revive it, it stays limp. I am afraid. It has been this way for a year now. And I had seen it coming for a few years. It hasn't been standing as tall. Two years ago it was standing straight up. By last year, at a 90-degree angle. Now, never higher than 45 degrees.
Why I still masturbate, I don't know.
I try to think of the positives: I can now fit the whole thing into a woman's mouth. I won't wake up with it jackknifed in my underwear. No embarrassing moments while sitting down.
Of course, I also can't have sex.
I dropped the hint to a platonic lady friend who never dates. Lisa is beautiful, striking, intelligent, and very unhappy. She is a frustrated intellectual. I know she uses vibrators and dildos because she hinted at it once when we were drunk. She is disillusioned with men. Her father had never let her defend herself when she was young. Her whole life was silence. She says we men masturbate too much. We're not connected to our feelings. We're too much into pornography and not real women. We don't care about relationships. Blah blah blah.
"That thing," she told me more than once, "is always getting in the way."
"Gee, do you think we should remove them?"
"I know lots of women who would be happy to do it for you."
"So it's about the penis and not the man?"
She didn't answer. "You should date a eunuch," I told her. "They're becoming more common these days."
"Well, I'm glad there are some men who are coming to their senses."
I smiled. "You could have a man without that "thing," as you call it."
"David, dear, eunuchs do have that "thing." It's the two things behind it that they don't have."
"Lisa, dear, that "thing" usually doesn't work in eunuchs. Sometimes, but not always. That's what I mean."
She didn't hear me say "you have penis envy" under my breath.
Oddly, we spend a lot of time together: a woman impotent with rage and a man impotent with sex. We go over the same things when we're together. Why are men this way? Why are they that way? Why is no one electing a woman President? And why are women this way? I counter. And why are they that way? And why the hell are they always trying to keep their privileges once they've gotten their rights?
She comes over, drinks my beer, eats my food, raids my fridge like Kramer on Seinfeld, and I like it. She lounges on the couch with her legs spread carelessly, knowing full well that it's turning me on. She says "fuck" right and left. Sometimes the first thing that comes out of her mouth when she enters my apartment is a tirade against men. But I'm convinced we like each other. I massage her tense shoulders, she massages mine, we kid each other about our neurotic lives, and sometimes we even spend the night, sexless and passionless.
I cook for Lisa quite frequently. I make lewd jokes about the cucumbers and zucchini. Once in a while she will make a joke, and we will laugh together. I envy these shared moments. Once she showed me her penis—not a penis between her legs, but the one she had to draw for sex-ed class. It was a pretty sad-looking penis. It depressed me, so I drew a happy one that stood straight up, proudly and happily.
"Here, Lisa, I'm showing you my penis," I laughed.
"Is that all I get?" she asked.
What did she mean by that?
I am impotent, just like her penis was.
-2-
One night, we were discussing what we wanted in a relationship. Lisa did not know. She asked me if I had read the sex advice column in the paper. The one where a woman asked how common it really is for guys to enjoy taking it up the ass from a woman wearing a dildo.
"More common than you think, Lisa. A lot of guys want to know what it's like on the receiving end."
"Is that so? You fucking men never cease to amaze me."
"Yeah. It's quite so. Actually, Lisa, that would be the ideal relationship for you. You taking control of the dick that you think is always oppressing women, then leaving the guy's dick out of the picture, and just pumping away. And these days, strap-ons can stimulate your clitoris while they're on you."
