The Penis As An Object of Beauty
by Perry Brass
Something horrible happened to Western culture in
the first 200 years after the death of the spiritual leader known
as Jesus. The soul, which the Jews associated only with God (Jehovah),
this thing that belonged exclusively to Him, was at one moment set free
and then immediately re-captured by the Church and its often
either psychotic or closetedly queer minions.
In other words, friends, your soul was now yours, to
do with as you pleased, but you could lose it at the drop of your
pants. So, you had your eternal soul (and the religious wars
that went with it),
but it was always going to be in conflict with your body.
In a nutshell, any time your thoughts strayed to
the region below your belly button, you were in danger of Hell, eternal
fire and brimstone, etc.
Sex became a curse; the Devil's playground. And sex,
as you probably figured out, quickly dragged the rest of the body with
it. The Greeks, corrupt and evil as they were (after all, they'd
only brought us something called "civilization"), believed the
body was beautiful. They
saw the beauty of the body as part of the beauty of the
soul itself, even if their version of the soul was a fairly small one
that just wandered around gloomily after Death, trying to find a picnic.
But the Greeks and other pagans of that ilk
thought the body, naked, free, beautiful—well, wow! It was a darned
good thing.
They loved it. Adored it. Worshipped it,
especially in the form of boy worship, something we cannot even get a
handle on today. ("Boy" today = Little League Baseball. Even Jesus went
express from being infant to Son of Man.) Christianity decided the
soul was eternal, and the body, where the soul was imprisoned, was the
place where shit got manufactured, that the worms would later
eat.
So, except as something to kill, main, mutilate,
spindle, torture, and degrade, it was worthless as crap.
So the poor penis went into exile.
Scorned, it was an object
of such revulsion that you'd think the thing you peed with,
which produced rug rats, which responded to any number of cues and
stimuli
and which was so amazingly sensitive to any number of injuries and
insults
it might stop functioning at any time (as the rich makers
of
Viagra and Cialis can tell you) was the stinking thinking cap of Satan,
Nicodemus,
Beelzebub, Osama Bin Laden, as well as George Bush, Jr. all combined.
In other words, if you truly hated it, it had to come
from your dick.
It was a sorry state of affairs. Your crown jewels
had to be hidden under six layers of material, including a special
Teflon pouch. The slightest sight of a little pecker could turn grown
people to
stone. Imagine Janet Jackson’s famous costume “malfunction” at the
Superbowl
exploded to the four-hundredth degree, and you'd get a mere inkling of
the reaction if, say, Brad Pitt's dear John Henry had somehow come
a-loose in any of the scenes in Troy.
I mean, we might get a quick fanny shot, but actual,
in-the-flesh schlong . . . whole established governments
have fallen
for less.
However, there is some hope on the horizon for those
few wayward people whose eternal souls are in jeopardy, like myself,
Michelangelo, Walt Whitman, Thomas Eakins, Jeff Stryyker, and a few
others who believe the
penis, itself, is beautiful.
There is a glimmer of light on the horizon. This
jewel of the male body, the "lingam," associated
with the god Shiva—one of the primal
sources of creative energy—which the Greeks believed was sacred to
Herm (the phallic god), and which so many men still fear and despise
with a
self-rejecting intensity that should be rightly
aimed at
air pollution,
infant mortality, and global warming—
There is hope, gentle readers,
for once again realizing the aesthetic loveliness of this often
forlorn, but biologically well-designed
anatomical detail.
Although it is still hidden from view with the
sustained effort with which the Bush White House conceals pictures of
coffins coming home from Iraq, teens (the most important marketing
target in the U.S., the
"demographic" to whom our entire culture is now aimed) are starting to
enjoy—and even admit enjoying—sucking
it.
Teen girls are putting this loathsome, discredited,
and often unpredictable thing in their brightly lipsticked mouths, and
once something gets in there, then you have to admit that at the very
least
it can't be anything but . . . cool.
Even the august New York Times, in a
not-too-long-ago
"Thursday Style" piece, is starting to admit that teen "oral
sex parties" are getting out of hand—the way that teen drinking
parties are. In fact, drinking and cocksucking are working loathsomely
hand-in . . .
Anyway, it’s easy to get the message: Girls are
doing it all over, going down quicker than the Dow after the price of
oil
shoots up. And even some boys are revealing that they, too, are trying
to
figure out why the girls get to have all the fun—and what's so
bad about putting this little gizmo in your chops and giving it a short
twirl,
especially if it makes some good buddy happy?
Now, there is one potent "Get Out Of Jail Free"
card here:
The kids are telling us, just as William Jefferson
Clinton
did, that oral sex is not sex
at all. It's just good ol'-fashioned
fun, something Monica Lewinski lead the way with. And now, along with
the Name-status handbag, a little midway-throating (as opposed to
deep-throating) is a sure badge of being "in."
In some ways, the Christian Right, which insists on
virginity at all costs, is responsible here. The Christian Right
has always had a mere glancing relationship with the truth, so defining
sex as only being "missionary position" goes along with that. O.K., so
Oral Sex is not sex. In fact, "Oral" is just the first name of a brand
of toothbrush, which everyone knows your dentist recommends.
Therefore, in a nutshell, "oral" and
"sex" are not one and the same
thing.
Get it?
But, if it's good enough to stick in your mouth, it
must have some endearment of its own, even if the kids still use
"suck" as a grossly pejorative term, as in: "It sucks": meaning,
uncool. Not Abercrombie
and
Fitch. Weird. Fit only for parents.
Which is what parents are for. They know nothing
(Understandable. And oral sex is not
sex.) However, this does not
stop
a movement, currently underground, to allow the penis to emerge finally
from
centuries of repression, 13-button sailor pants, codpieces, and
other
concealments. Therefore, let it all hang out.
Penises are "coming out." At teen oral sex parties.
In the backseats at mall parking lots. In the backrows of Scream XVI and other wholesome
kiddy movies. And so
are those sweet kids having a good time sucking them.
This definitely is going to do something good for
the
world. And eventually, I hope that within the next two weeks or so, we
will see the incredible, singular, individual beauty of the penis. And
as Whitman once sang, “the body
electric,” in totality itself.
What did you think about this—isn't it time to bring the dick
out of disgrace? Email
me and tell me your thoughts.
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