In grade school I constructed a penis pump out of PVC pipe, duct tape, and miscellaneous medical supplies. I was good with my hands. They had yet to be twisted into useless hooks from excessive masturbation, and my creativity had yet to be co-opted by sex hormones. At the time, abstaining from sex until marriage seemed as doable as becoming a professional ball player. This is to say my intentions with my penis pump were pure. I had no interest in wowing women. I wanted a big dick for one reason: the bigger the meat, the more masculine the man. This connection was as obvious to every boy of my generation as the fact that baseball cards were a sound financial investment.
The first thing boys learn about the differences between the sexes is that boys have penises and girls have some sort of abyss where their penises should be. As children, this is the only meaningful difference between the sexes. From this observation, many children deduce that all the differences that arise between men and women as adults stem from the presence, or absence, of a penis.
As boys, our genitals were sacred jewels, the source of masculinity, the keys to unlocking the door to manhood. But, we also knew our dicks had the capacity for evil, which was why we were not supposed to unsheathe them in pubic or dip them in the peanut butter. We also knew to keep them out of the hands of mustached men with vans and candy who would try to convert our dicks to the dark side. As a whole, our dicks were mysteries—magic wands given to apprentice wizards.
My father was the only adult I could consult about my dick concerns. He was my ambassador to the world of man dicks. Once I confronted my dad with my "limp father of thousands" in hand and said, "What's the deal here? Sometimes it looks young and sometimes it's old and wrinkly." My father was like Socrates, answering my dick questions with deeper, philosophical questions, such as, "Why did you draw on your penis with permanent marker?"
The only concrete answer my father ever gave me to my dick conundrums was when he bought me the book Where Did I Come From? This children's book featured a cartoon illustration of a boy staring down at his tiny penis. The caption read, "It gets bigger as you get bigger." This was reassuring, but not nearly as useful as if the authors had included a measuring stick on the back cover with average dick lengths for different age groups.
From birth I could compare my dick size against my older brother to make sure it was on a normal trajectory, but this stopped along with our shared baths. The only other time I saw my bother's penis after that was when it swelled up with poison ivy. I remember thinking, "Where can I find some poison ivy?"
For the bulk of my adolescence, my dick was left to complete his man training alone, with no concept of how his rivals were fairing. Growing up in the 80s, boys lived in constant fear of catching homosexuality. We couldn't look a penis in the eye for fear of it charming us with gay magic. These were the days before the Internet, which was a mixed blessing. I shudder to think what would have happened if I could have Googled "10-year-old penises." And, I can only imagine how the beef hammers of cock stars would have smashed my self-esteem.
I really wasn't worried about what women would think of my penis. At that point I assumed the only time a woman would see my wedding tackle was on our honeymoon, at which point it would be too late for her to run away. In fact, the only time my penis insecurities really impacted my behavior were the seven years I was forced to be on the swim team. In all those years I competed in a single swim meet. I was undersized for my age and just couldn't keep up with the lanky freaks. I didn't just lose. Parents clapped when I finished the way fans cheer the physically challenged, or when medics remove a lame player from the field so the game can resume. But, my lack of talent is not what kept me out of competitions. I refused to compete because we were required to wear Speedos to meets and I feared mine made me look like a Ken Doll.
It was probably shortly after my first and last swim meet that I got serious about beefing up. I became a witch doctor of the dark dick arts, an alchemist conjuring up a golden shaft. I didn't realize that if there had been a simple and safe way to permanently boost penis size, men would have discovered it around the time homo sapeins started walking.
At 10, fostering a bigger dick seemed simple. The pages of National Geographic taught me that some African women stretched their necks with metal spacers. Rocky 3 showed me that muscle could be built in dark, sweaty garages with weights and shirtless dudes. I modified these methods to fit my needs. I followed a regiment of doing dick curls with bath towels. Then I sewed a Velcro dick-harness that allowed me to dead-lift weights. At the time I treated my penis like Silly Putty, thinking it could be molded to fit my desires.
I had never seen an actual penis pump, but I knew the basics. You stuck your dick in a tube and sucked out the air. I sawed a PVC pipe to a suitable length and sanded the edges. I used the plunger of a syringe in reverse to remove the air through a small tube I fit to the end of the PVC with plastic and duct tape. Had my parents been foolish enough to buy me pump basketball shoes, I'm sure I'd have gutted those to fit my purpose. As it was, I had to work with what I had. This was the first lesson my mother taught me about building. If only I had applied this teaching to my body—to work with what I had.
When I finished my penis pump, my dick had butterflies in his tummy. He felt like a test pilot preparing to ride an experimental aircraft. When I tried to dock my dick with the device, a strange thing happened. It didn't fit. During the entire construction process I assumed my penis was smaller than the PVC pipe. It was not.
You'd think this revelation would have filled me with penis pride. It did not. I was frustrated. I searched the garage for a larger length of PVC piping with which to modify my contraption. To this day, I occasionally think of ways that I could have improved this design. No matter how big a dick becomes, no matter what exotic realms it explores or what legends swell around it, no dick will ever be big enough to satisfy a male's imagination of what it means to be a man.
Read these previous chapters of Adventures in Virginity
- Birth of an Affection Fetish
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