Most guys wouldn't say no to a bigger penis, even if they fall within the range of 4.5 to 6.5 inches, the average size of an erect penis.

While there are ways to surgically enhance your penis to make it bigger , the practices are cost-prohibitive and even a little dangerous. Most of us are stuck with what we've got.

, the practices are cost-prohibitive and even a little dangerous. Most of us are stuck with what we've got. But it turns out having a big penis comes with its fair share of problems, too. It can be tough to fit your erect penis completely inside of a vagina. You also become known as the “big dick guy," your identity reduced to one part of your body.

There was Willie Jordan, flanked by a dozen friends and a few curious strangers in the back corner of a dimly lit pub.

“Get it out, get it out!” the rowdy spectators screamed. “Not here, not tonight,” Jordan answered. He liked this bar, and he didn’t want to get banned for performing his party trick.

Nonsense, they said, as they formed an ironclad circle around Jordan to protect him. He had found himself in this situation so many times before, and he knew when it was time to admit defeat.

So Jordan took a breath, carefully unbuttoned his pants, and pulled out his penis.

The audience erupted, delighted to catch a front-row glimpse of the biggest penis in Newcastle. It was a legendary penis in the North East England town, and its owner had become a quasi-celebrity because of it.

In his 20s, Jordan ate up the attention, showing off his super-sized schlong to whoever wanted to see it—and as rumors spread, his crowds ballooned.

“I understand human curiosity,” he says. “If I had a friend who had six or seven fingers on each hand, or two heads, I’d be curious to see them, too.”

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But Jordan was now pushing 40, and the novelty of being a carnival attraction had long worn off. Desperate to get on with the night, he instinctively swung his big penis around like a piece of rope—the usual act—and stuffed it back into his briefs. The show was over.

Or so he thought. One inebriated fan—the same man who had repeatedly asked Jordan to sleep with his girlfriend that evening—demanded an encore, asking the performer to “just let it hang.” Fine, Jordan thought. Whatever will shut him up.

But as soon as he brought his prized possession back out, the groupie grabbed it. “He literally tried to pull it off my body,” says Jordan. “Maybe he was on drugs, trying to drag a man’s penis off like that.”

Jordan fell down and sprinted home. Within 10 minutes, his whole shaft—base to tip—was black and bruised, as if it had been through battle.

Flabbergasted, Jordan flocked to Facebook to post about his crazy encounter. Ten thousand miles across the Atlantic, his friend Jonah Falcon—himself the owner of an abnormally big penis, reportedly the biggest in the world—was the first to comment.

“You’re not trying to catch up to me, are you?”

This is how it goes for guys with really big penises.

Sometimes you’re left scrambling for the bar exit after a drunken stranger has seized your dick, and other times, you rupture a cyst on your girlfriend’s ovary during intercourse. That’s what happened to Todd—who requested anonymity for this story—back in high school, the first of many sexual mishaps caused by his big penis.

“She was doubled over in pain after we finished,” says Todd, 36. “Looking back, I don’t know how we avoided the emergency room.”

The repercussions of packing a python aren’t always so severe, but they’re endless. “When I tell people that, they kind of laugh,” Jordan says, “as if I don’t have a right to say it.”

You might roll your eyes, too, but Jordan, Falcon, and Todd do have “problematically large” penises, according to Brian Steixner, M.D., Medical Director of Urology at Barton Health. Per data in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, the average flaccid penis is somewhere between 3.5 to 4 inches, while the average erection falls in the 4.5- to 6.5-inch range.

“From what I can determine, if your penis is larger than 8 inches in length when erect, it puts you in the top 2 percent of people in the world,” Dr. Steixner says.

"In my 20s, I was like a kid in a candy store."

Todd measures 10 inches erect, Jordan one-ups him by about an inch, and Falcon boasts a whopping 13.5 inches at full mast. The 44-year-old New Yorker doesn’t officially own the world record, but that’s because there isn’t one.

Falcon’s big penis has been documented on HBO, in Rolling Stone, and on The Howard Stern Show, and he has pledged to donate his massive member to the Icelandic Phallological Museum when he dies.

Being famous for having a big penis sounds pretty great, and to be fair, all of the guys we interviewed for this story have used their good fortune to their sexual advantage. Falcon, for example, became a fixture in the horny NYC underground club scene thanks to his hog.

“If a guy could have sex with almost anyone he wanted to,” Falcon says, “he most certainly would. In my 20s, I was like a kid in a candy store.”

But eventually, the burdens start to overshadow the blessing.

“When guys tell me they wish they had my penis, they look up to me from a sexual, alpha-male point of view,” says Jordan. “But what percentage of your life do you spend actually using your penis for sex? Compare that number to how much you have to carry the burdens of it around, and the sexual ratio is quite the minority.”

Take something as simple as riding a bike. “It’s a nightmare,” Jordan says. “Where do I put my penis when I’m on a bike seat? I have to keep my legs closed, but they’re constantly rubbing. I end up just sitting on the thing. If I want to go for a nice ride in the country, the pain distracts from the euphoria of the journey itself.”

Using the restroom is an equally dicey proposition. “In a public urinal, if I’m not careful, my penis will hang down and touch the edge of the urinal—or the water,” Todd says. “Unfortunately, I’m a germaphobe.” (To avoid the same issue, Falcon has resigned to a life of peeing sitting down.)

Then there’s the condom conundrum. “I use the largest size possible—around 7.5 inches—and it only covers half my cock,” says Falcon.

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When you constantly have to keep one hand on your rubber to make sure it doesn’t slip off during sex, as Todd does, it sucks some fun out of the process. “Even then, a lot of times the condoms end up either breaking or slipping inside of her when it’s all said and done,” he says.

As for other roadblocks in the bedroom, oral sex is often a nuisance. “My penis is thicker than my wrist, so girls have to adjust to the girth,” Falcon says. “But I’ve met very few people who can handle the width—and as a result, there’s a lot of teeth scraping. So I don’t really get off on getting sucked.”

Sometimes the trickiest part of sex is addressing the elephant in the room.

“Telling a woman about your penis size is just awkward in itself,” says Jordan. “A girl doesn’t want to feel like she has to have sex any differently with you. She wants to go with the flow, and not have to stop and slow things down if she’s in pain.”

For Jordan, the threat of these clumsy conversations looms heavy in his head. “It’s a shame when you’ve got a really intimate mental connection with someone and you feel like, ‘Do I want to tell this person, or just let it happen? It’s gotten to the point now where I avoid it.”

Recently, Jordan has instituted a 3-month, no-sex rule. “I’ll tell girls that I want to wait quite a few months before we do it.” His mission: to weed out the women who are interested in him primarily for his penis.

“I feel like I’ve been used for my penis in the past,” he says, “and now I just want to find my soul mate. I want a chick who wants to be with me for the right reasons.”

***

While Jordan is looking for love, the newly unemployed Falcon is looking for work—but his manhood is getting in the way.

Falcon is a budding actor who wades through desk jobs to pay the bills. He isn’t optimistic about his current search.

“Notoriety has robbed me of work,” he says. “When employers do a background check on me, they see that I’m famous for having a huge penis—and for whatever reason, that means I can’t do the job.”

Such discrimination shouldn’t happen, says Falcon, but it does. “I don’t get hired for one of two reasons: Either people are going to find out about my penis and hound me at work, or I’m going to walk around wearing bike shorts and hit on all the women there. But no one ever tells me that stuff when they don’t hire me, because then I could sue them.”

"I'm an actor, and I want to do real stuff. If I do porn, that's the end."

You’re probably thinking that an actor with a boner the size of a wine bottle could easily make a killing doing porn. Falcon has certainly been approached by producers, but he has rebuffed their offers every time.

“I’m an actor, and I want to do real stuff,” he insists. “If I do porn, that’s the end. I’ll never get another job besides porn. And men are just dildos as far as porn companies are concerned. How many rich male porn stars do you know aside from Ron Jeremy?”

Falcon’s job stress comes with side effects. “I’m always looking for steady work, so I don’t have the energy to find someone to be with,” he says.

“And when you’re constantly concerned about finding money and not being homeless, that tends to make you stressed out all the time. I’m not able to get it up for anybody.”

Many of Falcon’s life problems seem to trace back to those 13.5 inches. Which ultimately begs the question: Does he wish he was smaller?

“No,” he answers emphatically. “Would things be different if I had a 4-inch cock? I think so. I’d probably get more work, and I think I would’ve accomplished a lot more with my life. But I don’t like to be anything other than me.”

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Todd, despite a long sexual history of “inserting my penis and feeling like I just killed somebody,” wouldn’t shrink down either.

“When I’m with a girl and pull down my pants, and then I see the look on her face, it’s a huge confidence builder in every regard,” says Todd.

And what about Jordan, the poor victim of an unfortunate sneak penis attack?

“If I had a graph that showed how many people on Earth would give anything to have my penis, for that reason alone, I should appreciate everything I have,” he says.

Call it pecker perspective. “It comes back to human nature. We have this great ability to adapt to our surroundings. Riding a bike is uncomfortable as hell, but I found the way to ride differently than anybody else. I’ve adapted.”

Including one big tweak to his behavior at the bar.

“Now I don’t pull out my penis for a crowd anymore.”

Andrew Daniels Andrew Daniels is the How To editor for Popular Mechanics.

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