To the penis-possessor his erection is a thing as wondrous as the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butterfly, even a recurrent miracle. His erection is
a marvel of hydraulic engineering. In its enduring, reliable and repetitive efficiency it may be compared to the Gatun locks of the Panama Canal, which since 1914 have been raising ocean liners with swift and safe smoothness to 85 feet above the Atlantic and Pacific swell. The unstoppable power of the penile mechanism matches in ingenuity the channelling of mountain torrents, which since 1910 have whirred the turbines brilliantly to electrify the lamps of innumerable distant towns. The clever simplicity of penile erection, in applying fluid pressure to achieve motive power, recalls the mechanics of the hydraulic ram, or of the water-mills once scattered across the land . . .
Penis-possessors would not want this positively Rabelaisian logorrhoea from John Gordon’s
The Alarming History of Sex
to be ironical. And what they want from women on their erect penis’s behalf, and which almost certainly they cannot articulate, is
awe
. Awe is what all males in the animal kingdom crave, Lorenz Konrad, Nobel prize-winning zoologist and father of ethnology, extrapolated from his study of tropical fish – the ‘cichlid effect’ notion of physiology. This, from D.H. Lawrence, complete with tumescent thicket of exclamation marks:
‘Let me see you!’
He dropped the shirt and stood still, looking towards her. The sun through the low window sent a beam that lit up his thighs and slim belly, and the erect phallos rising darkish and hot-looking from the little cloud of vivid goldred hair. She was startled and afraid.
‘How strange!’ she said slowly. ‘How strange he stands there! So big! And so dark and cocksure! Is he like that?’
The man looked down the front of his slender white body, and laughed. Between the slim breasts the hair was dark, almost black. But at the root of the belly, where the phallos rose thick and arching, it was gold-red, vivid in a little cloud.
‘So proud!’ she murmured, uneasy. ‘And so lordly! Now I know why men are so overbearing. But he’s
lovely
, really. Like another being! A bit terrifying! But lovely really! And he comes to me!–’ She caught her lower lip between her teeth, in fear and excitement. (
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
)
Connie Chatterley’s reaction is exactly as it should be, men are likely to think at some level of their being (and approve of the thicket of tumescent exclamation marks too). Sadly again, what we have here is the projection of more male wishful thinking.
The penis erect, according to Esther Vilar, ‘appears so grotesque to a woman the first time she hears about it that she can hardly believe it exists’. A first encounter is not likely to improve the situation for, as Inge and Sten Hegeler gently put it, ‘an erect penis bears no resemblance to the kind that they have seen on statues in parks or on small boys paddling by the seashore’. Isadora Wing is remarkably unfazed by her first encounter with a ‘phallos’ (like Lawrence, Erica Jong favoured the Greek spelling); indeed she is intrigued by its ‘most memorable abstract design of blue veins on its Kandinsky-purple underside’ (well, she is an arts major). But most women are more likely to find echoes of their own experience in an article written by Lorraine Slater for
FHM
magazine:
The first time I actually saw a real, live dick with my own eyes will be etched in my memory for ever. I was 15 and a few Pernods over the eight, squashed against a wall with my new guy, when all of a sudden he tried to force my hand down his keks. For some reason, he wanted me to fondle a smooth, rounded growth near navel-level. As I looked down I saw a glistening, angry-looking peeled plum thing glaring at me from above his belt-buckle. ‘Jesus,’ I remember thinking, horrified. ‘That’s his bell-end?’ My mind whirled. How the hell did it get up there? Why
a marvel of hydraulic engineering. In its enduring, reliable and repetitive efficiency it may be compared to the Gatun locks of the Panama Canal, which since 1914 have been raising ocean liners with swift and safe smoothness to 85 feet above the Atlantic and Pacific swell. The unstoppable power of the penile mechanism matches in ingenuity the channelling of mountain torrents, which since 1910 have whirred the turbines brilliantly to electrify the lamps of innumerable distant towns. The clever simplicity of penile erection, in applying fluid pressure to achieve motive power, recalls the mechanics of the hydraulic ram, or of the water-mills once scattered across the land . . .
Penis-possessors would not want this positively Rabelaisian logorrhoea from John Gordon’s
The Alarming History of Sex
to be ironical. And what they want from women on their erect penis’s behalf, and which almost certainly they cannot articulate, is
awe
. Awe is what all males in the animal kingdom crave, Lorenz Konrad, Nobel prize-winning zoologist and father of ethnology, extrapolated from his study of tropical fish – the ‘cichlid effect’ notion of physiology. This, from D.H. Lawrence, complete with tumescent thicket of exclamation marks:
‘Let me see you!’
He dropped the shirt and stood still, looking towards her. The sun through the low window sent a beam that lit up his thighs and slim belly, and the erect phallos rising darkish and hot-looking from the little cloud of vivid goldred hair. She was startled and afraid.
‘How strange!’ she said slowly. ‘How strange he stands there! So big! And so dark and cocksure! Is he like that?’
The man looked down the front of his slender white body, and laughed. Between the slim breasts the hair was dark, almost black. But at the root of the belly, where the phallos rose thick and arching, it was gold-red, vivid in a little cloud.
‘So proud!’ she murmured, uneasy. ‘And so lordly! Now I know why men are so overbearing. But he’s
lovely
, really. Like another being! A bit terrifying! But lovely really! And he comes to me!–’ She caught her lower lip between her teeth, in fear and excitement. (
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
)
Connie Chatterley’s reaction is exactly as it should be, men are likely to think at some level of their being (and approve of the thicket of tumescent exclamation marks too). Sadly again, what we have here is the projection of more male wishful thinking.
The penis erect, according to Esther Vilar, ‘appears so grotesque to a woman the first time she hears about it that she can hardly believe it exists’. A first encounter is not likely to improve the situation for, as Inge and Sten Hegeler gently put it, ‘an erect penis bears no resemblance to the kind that they have seen on statues in parks or on small boys paddling by the seashore’. Isadora Wing is remarkably unfazed by her first encounter with a ‘phallos’ (like Lawrence, Erica Jong favoured the Greek spelling); indeed she is intrigued by its ‘most memorable abstract design of blue veins on its Kandinsky-purple underside’ (well, she is an arts major). But most women are more likely to find echoes of their own experience in an article written by Lorraine Slater for
FHM
magazine:
The first time I actually saw a real, live dick with my own eyes will be etched in my memory for ever. I was 15 and a few Pernods over the eight, squashed against a wall with my new guy, when all of a sudden he tried to force my hand down his keks. For some reason, he wanted me to fondle a smooth, rounded growth near navel-level. As I looked down I saw a glistening, angry-looking peeled plum thing glaring at me from above his belt-buckle. ‘Jesus,’ I remember thinking, horrified. ‘That’s his bell-end?’ My mind whirled. How the hell did it get up there? Why
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