Something hideous happened to me at school, when I learned that all men were not created equal. It knocked the stuffing out of my self confidence. Until puberty penetrated the playground, life had been a breeze. Suddenly, the most unlikely boys in school took to unfurling enormous, pliable hoses and waving them around in the back row of the geometry class for all, except teachers, to see. I was horrified. The owners of these impressive appendages seemed also to be taken by surprise. And I was left to the wayside with my small penis.

Meanwhile, puberty was passing me by. More and more of my peers were sprouting hairs and hanging heavies, while my own genitals remained assertively small. I was normally of a plucky, cheerful disposition, but my self-esteem gradually evaporated and sports days turned into a nightmare.

Others in the class sensed an uncharacteristic reserve and sniffed out its cause. When I was sixteen, my cock was still no larger than a toddler's. Word spread through the locker rooms, and to a chorus of giggles and blatant derision I would cower before the shower. Sometimes the humiliation was brutal and public.

Image via New York Daily News

Puberty! Finally!

These were not the happiest days of my life. Eventually, a year or so later, in a desultory, languid way, when the other kids had all but forgotten their own metamorphoses, my cock registered a modest enlargement. Flaccid, it was still about the size of a thimble, erect, it stretched to an unimpressive 4 1/2". At last I was a man—just barely. According to most surveys, this growth put it in the category of "below average." Five to 5 1/2" is considered normal, while some men sport 8, 9, 10" and beyond.

It is not such statistics that matter most. It's attitude. Do you love or hate your own cock and balls? Men relate to their penis as to a separate being. It is an independent entity with a personality of its own, which is in no way bound by the desires of its possessor. A maturing penis arrives between the legs like an uninvited house guest, and a man must make the best accommodation possible. Among couples it is the eternal third party often personified as George, Fido, Willie, or some other sobriquet, as though it were a pet, which in a way it is.

The workings, or otherwise, of the genitals are often a clue to the psychic state of man, but what about the other way around? Can the personality of the penis affect the personality of its owner?

My own attitude toward life was undoubtedly distorted by the traumas of the locker room. It led to a mild form of Satyriasis, a need to dominate my sexual desires as a way to feel more like a man, wherein every conquest became a subliminal confirmation of manhood. While these sexual conquests have been invariably pleasing and enjoyable, what now seems absurdly vulgar and demeaning to women is the camouflaged boasting involved, the bruiting abroad of one's sexual whereabouts. What began as compensation for a belated puberty continued too long as the weary entertainment of an aging man.

Image via Huffington Post

Penis Personality

Here, too, penis personality plays its part. Because early maturers have less time for ego growth, they greet their inner urges with panic. They must summon up overwhelmingly powerful controls to conquer their own impulses, controls that they eventually extend to others in "a classic pattern of authoritarian development." Reports have also claimed that "one tries to control in others what threatens oneself from within" and generally consider late maturers to be "more liberal, introspective, and less threatened by sex."

Sometime between my leaving school and my researching of this article, my cock thankfully achieved another inch, which made it easily average, although when flaccid it still seems more minuscule than most. I console myself by saying “I’m a grower, not a shower.” To the tailor's question: "On which side do you dress?" my instinctive reply is “In the middle." When I'm with women, size has never been an issue, not even with those lovers who are used to men of huge dimensions. Indeed, modest endowment has certain advantages, which will be listed elsewhere, but it is generally not women who are uptight about size. It's men. At the root of all cock complexes is a threatened masculinity.

As any sex therapist will confirm, most men think that they have small penises. Why?

I believe that this fear stems from a psycho-optical illusion, one which is formulated in these pages for the first time. In public urinals and other places of exposure, this law applies. His seems bigger than yours. It's that simple, like all great truths. And the corollary is this: The more furtive the glance, the grander the illusion.

What a disheartening distortion. It is one that freezes too many men in a mental posture of inadequacy and traps them in a permanent delusion of diminution. The average man remains a victim of this law, known as Neville's Illusion, so long as the taboo against looking openly at another man's genitals persists. It is the last cover-up and probably derives from the fear of being thought gay. Let us abandon the shower-room etiquette that makes us stare studiously elsewhere when undressing with other men. Instead:

"Say Nick, yours is a funny shape..."

"Yeah, I know. It looks a bit like a balloon animal losing air, but when I get a hard-on it straightens out"

"Oh really? When I get horny mine bends. It looks like a freakin’ boomerang..."

This may seem ridiculous, but it's the quickest way to kill off lingering complexes.

Image via Sunday News

Porn Sized Penises

Here's another unfortunate fact that tends to reinforce most men's feelings of inferiority: There is always someone around with a whopper. I call the phenomenon the Ron Jeremy Syndrome, after the porn star who is reputed to penis that is larger than 9", and definitely fucks some of the hottest women in the world.

Such people are a menace. They spoil things for the rest of us who have small penises. A disdainful aura emanates from them as they strut into view—the ghastly glow of the show-off. One of the by-products of the sexual revolution is that such unrepresentative beefcakes are given parts in erotic movies. Consequently, most of the men in the audience feel uncomfortable, and most of the women in the audience feel deprived.

This feeling of deficiency even got to Al Goldstein, publisher of the sex paper Screw, who reviewed such films for many years. I once asked him how he felt about his cock. “I thought of myself as normal," said Al, “until I started going to porno movies. As the men on the screen got bigger and bigger, my own cock seemed to get smaller and smaller. Now I do feel inadequate." I queried his dimensions. "Seven inches," he replied.

If Al's got problems, we've all got problems. And according to one sex therapist interviewed, that's practically the case. Doctor D. E. Keller, professor of biology at Pace University in New York, told me that most men who come to her for surgery are convinced that they have small penises. What does she do for them? “" have a normal-size penis in the closet," she said, "which I take out and show to them. 'That's normal,' I tell them; 'How does it compare with yours?' In most cases they are instantly relieved."

Thank you, Dr. Keller. For the treatment of the rare and unfortunate few whose organs are of genuine pygmy proportions, the technique is to deemphasize the cock as a sexual implement and to encourage the patient to explore alternative methods of arousal and satisfaction. Although Dr. Keller could not confirm my theory that those with truly small penis tend to compensate vividly, I still believe that penis problems can lead some men into negative or hostile attitudes regarding sex toward themselves or toward the world.

There are other kinds of compensation, too, less manic. I understand that Arnold Schwarzenegger is a very nice man, personable and charming, who was five times Mr. Olympia and the former governor of California. He has devoted his life to packaging his masculinity and looks a treat; and in no way was I surprised when, in a conversation with a woman of our mutual acquaintance, his name cropped up in connection with this research.

Nearly all men, except for the few who were blessed with a Buick between their legs, seem to fear having a small penis. For years many magazines and websites have been protesting too much that women are indifferent to penis size. Many therapists now believe this is ridiculous, among them Dr. Keller. Basing her conclusions on in-depth studies with 57 active women over a two-year period, she writes: "Overwhelming evidence from sexually active females who are in a real position to assess and assay effectiveness of male sexual functioning within the context of penis size reports over and over again that males with similar techniques using similar positions during sexual intercourse—but with penises of different length and/or width—create differing degrees of sexual pleasure." Thank you, Dr. Keller.

It's an example of more wonderful fallout from the sexual revolution. Increasing sexual mobility has provided women with grounds for comparison. Until recently, when women sensed dissatisfaction, they blamed themselves for being too big. That attitude is now changing, and some women are beginning to admit in private to sexual therapists that they are disappointed by their husbands' dimensions.

In the oncoming bedroom holocaust, Mr. Average and Below will have to learn to tough it out. Don't try to make it bigger "There is only one safe way to enlarge the penis" according to Dr. Keller, "and that's with a magnifying glass."

Whatever the contemporary attitudes of fantasies of women, a terrific time can still be had by all in bed, no matter what size the various attributes of participants are. Sex, after all, is 99 percent imagination and emotion. The other 1 percent can be done with an elbow, if necessary. Should any readers fear a crisis of confidence on a future occasion, screenshot this article and save it for a pep talk later on.

Image via Shroomery

Penis Positivity

Little cocks can go places big cocks cannot. Many women are too terrified to take huge members into the mouth of anus. Straight away this gives you a two-hole lead. Small is beautiful. Generalize. Make the most of your tongue and your hands and any objects that are lying about. It’s not the size of the boat. It’s the motion of the ocean. It’s okay to be a grower, not a shower. Big cocks often deliver less than they promise. Higher hopes are harder to satisfy The vaginal canal averages six inches in depth. The "orgasmic platform" is the outer third. Two inches is as good as a mile. Big things come in small packages.

In the end, size is irrelevant. Great, cosmic fucks are remembered, not in inches, but as engulfing tidal waves of spiritual ecstasy– as the last fling of untrammeled animality. Sex should not be suffocated by statistics or doused in silly fears. Pull out the stops, relish it to the full, and don't be daunted by a slide rule.