Last night, over dinner, I was caught off guard when a female friend of mine—a bookish writer who’s rarely the type to talk explicitly about sex—said to me, “I think guys with really tiny penises should be made to wear a warning.” She continued sternly, “It’s the worst when you meet a guy you’re really into, the chemistry and flirtation are wonderful, and then you find out he has a small dick. I just think, for god’s sake, I wish I would have known, so I could have avoided investing all that time and energy.”
I have to say, it felt like I was living inside an episode of Sex and the City. Specifically the final episode of the first season, when Samantha starts dating a lawyer named James, only to find that his penis is so tiny that she can’t even tell when it’s inside her. As she sobs at this revelation in a bathroom stall, Charlotte tries to remain optimistic by asking, “Is he a good kisser?” To which Samantha responds: “Who . . . cares! His dick is like a gherkin!”
Like most women, I carry around my own small-penis story, to be shared at moments precisely like this. It was a few years ago (I’ve changed a few small details to protect his identity), and I had a crush on a 28-year-old filmmaker who frequented the bar I worked in. After months of flirtation, he finally invited me to the screening of a short film that he’d written, directed, and starred in. I went, and actually got butterflies in my stomach while watching him on the big screen. Look how cute he looks, moving around, and saying things like that!, I thought to myself while trying to imagine him naked. But then came the scene where his character made a joke about having a small dick. I might have let the joke slip by unanalyzed if it weren’t for how he went into lengthy detail about the years of insecurity he’d suffered because of his tiny penis, confessing that he special-orders tiny condoms online, because even the smallest condoms available in stores are too baggy and just slip off. All of this was in the name of comedy, of course, but as everyone in the theater around me roared with laughter, I found myself thinking: Only a man who actually has a microscopic dick would ever write a joke like that.
We all know that humor is a coping mechanism. And maybe I had enough of a warning sign. But despite this, I agreed to go on a dinner date with the filmmaker the following week, because, well, I really liked him.
Before I finish my story, I should probably mention that I don’t really mind small dicks. Don’t get me wrong, there’s something very beautiful and majestic and virile about the sight of a large, erect penis. But aesthetics aside, once the sex is underway, it doesn’t necessarily make that much of a difference. Anyone who’s seen Blue Is the Warmest Colorknows that sex can be transcendentally hot and orgasmic with no penises involved at all. Clearly, it’s chemistry, passion, and technique that matter most. Thus, my problem with small dicks isn’t that they result in a lack of pleasure, but rather that they can be kind of, well . . . awkward.
In the past, whenever I’ve gone to bed with a guy and realized he had a small penis, I immediately became worried that he was embarrassed or uncomfortable, which, of course, made me feel uncomfortable for him, which then made the whole situation uneasy. I also always become hyperaware that if I sleep with a guy with a small penis only once, it’s going to appear as if I didn’t want to see him again because of his size. Maybe the reason I worry about these things is because women have a nurturing instinct—we naturally want to care for and encourage—or maybe I’m just a very anxious person. Either way, I totally empathize with the insecurities of less-endowed men, because there’s just nothing they can do about it. For everything else, we have plastic surgery—girls (and guys) can suck stuff out and stick stuff in and so much more if we get really desperate or insecure about a body part. But a man with a small penis? You have to play the hand you’re dealt.
But back to the filmmaker. Our date turned out wonderful—he was funny, successful, hot, blah blah blah—the perfect guy. So we get into bed, and I move my hand down, and there it was—a baby carrot inside his tighty-whities. It was probably the smallest I’d ever touched, with the unfortunate luck of being both short and slim. I sort of expected him to acknowledge it—especially given his film’s epic tiny peen monologue—but instead he just flipped me over and spanked me. He was really dominant in bed, which totally turned me on, and his confidence prevented me from having to feel any vicarious sexual anxieties, as I had with most of the small-dicked men of my past. At one point he even told me to “choke on it.” In my head I was like, “I could probably fit five of these in my mouth without triggering my gag reflex,” but I just went along with it and made fake choking sounds, because why not? It was hot, and fun, and sex is theater most of the time anyway. And when I recounted our sex to my friends, it was always something like, “I slept with this guy, it was awesome. Oh, and he had a really small dick . . . but it wasn’t an issue.”
He and I went on to sleep together for a few months. At the time, neither of us were looking to get into a committed relationship, which allowed for us to have one of those pressure-free, fun flings that are often the most uninhibited and hedonistic of romances. We even had a threesome once, with another girl he was seeing at the time, and at the end of the night, when she and I were both lying on our backs in post-orgasmic bliss, he smiled down at us and said casually, “The little dick that could . . . am I right?!”
I don’t want to sugarcoat it: I know that for some girls, including my bookish writer friend, small dicks are a dealbreaker. And that’s fine, because we all have our own personal preferences. I won’t deny that I’ve been in situations in the past where a guy’s lack of size certainly didn’t help matters. However, I can sooner imagine myself seriously dating a guy with a small dick than I can a guy who’s shorter than I am—that’s just me.
In the case of the filmmaker, he made up for his size in other ways, by being attentive, skilled at talking dirty, and gifted with his hands and mouth. And yeah, when it was inside, it kind of felt like nothing, but honestly a lot of dicks feel like nothing to me, unless they’re really big, at which point they often just become painful. Penises—they’re all or nothing! Also, I tend to be wary of very well-endowed men—those guys who since high school have been hearing girls shriek “Oh my god, it’s so big!”—and as a result, think all they have to do is show up, whereas smaller and normal-size guys tend to be less lazy. But that’s for another column.
Karley Sciortino writes the blog Slutever. Read her last post, “When the Life You Choose Is a Life Less Ordinary.”
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