You walk
carefully, the tray of five mocktails more precariously balanced than ideal, especially
after the duo of decidedly un-mock drinks you and your Better Half have downed
in rather quick succession. Your drinks
contained equal amounts gin, green Chartreuse, maraschino liqueur and freshly
pressed lime juice, shaken with ice and strained. Very pleasing. Very drinkable also. Rather moreish, to use your Better Half’s
turn of phrase, rather moreish indeed.
(The mocktails on
the tray of course contain none of the gin, green Chartreuse, or maraschino
liqueur, but you’re quietly proud of the verisimilitudinous combinations of
pungency, spiciness, and cherry-sour sweetness you’ve achieved without the
aforementioned alcoholic liqueurs. Don’t
want the girls getting tipsy, even if they are of an age when alcohol could
most likely be responsibly introduced, you decide firmly. No, not on your watch, nor the watch of your
Better Half; save that sort of shenanigan for one of the shabbier parents, one
of the smoking single dads or something, one of those Middle-Australian parents
who don’t take all the proper precautions with their teenaged charges, don’t
take their custodian roles altogether seriously. No, you are firm about this kind of thing:
mocktails until sixteen, that’s the rule.)
The tray is
difficult to balance, but you soldier on: no shirker of difficulty you, most
definitely not. Five mocktails on thin
stems on a gleaming silver tray, and nary a drop is spilt. If there were medals awarded for the
responsible and stylish serving of non-alcoholic drinks to giggling gaggles of
teenagers, you’re convinced that you’d be first in line. Nary a drop, you note again, proudly.
You pause on
this side of Angelica’s stout darkwood door, not to eavesdrop, quite: more to
listen without being observed, in a parental capacity. To take decent and
proper care of an aforementioned gaggle of teenagers, sometimes one must bend
the rules of common etiquette in order to more fully understand the details of
the situation at hand, you decide firmly.
There is much
giggling going on, of the sort to be expected when five
fourteen-to-fifteen-year-olds of the female persuasion are in shared company,
safely secured behind a stout and dark-wooded bedroom door, a door which, while
not expensive, was definitely more pricey than one’s Better Half had led one to
believe, but no matter. One pays for
quality.
You are quite
literally about to knock upon the door (a complicated but doable maneuver, with
the palm of your left hand directly centre beneath the serving tray’s underside
– and, true to form, the full sum of the liquid remains contained within the
five evenly-spaced vessels upon the topside), when you hear, quite clearly,
quite unexpectedly, and quite definitely, from the enclosed space of Angelica’s
bedroom, your fifteen-year-old daughter giggling about the small size of your
penis.
The exact words
she used are lost in a blur of shock and disappointment and gin, but the
overall anecdote is as clear as day: back when she was a young child, the two
of you shared the occasional bath, and, in her memory of these shared bathing
experiences, you had, for want of a better word, a tiny, tiny penis. Tittering.
She remembers it clearly, she says.
Tittering once more.
The sharing of
this gross distortion of the truth results in her peers cackling with mirth, as
though the size of a man’s appendage were any laughing matter at the best of
times, let alone while said man was in the really quite difficult process of
bringing a tray full of drinks from kitchen to bedroom while nary spilling a
single drop. And gross distortion of the
truth it is, you know in your heart: not that you’ve spent much of your adult
life comparing dimensions, to be fair, but you have caught the accidental
glimpse of another man’s package at various times (and even, though you are
loathe to admit it, once or twice Googled the various averages of length, width
and girth as found in different races and age demographics), and, damn it all,
you are certain that your own attributes, while not on the rampantly gargantuan
end of the bell curve, fall well within the acceptable.
“It was like a
cashew, a teensy cashew!” is not a phrase that any man likes to hear, and is
not a phrase that you ever thought might be directed in a descriptive sense at
your own nether regions, but that particular phrase you can’t help but
overhear, nor can you help but overhear the raucous unfeminine laughter that
the cruel and blatantly untrue phrase brings forth behind that scandalously
over-priced dark-wood door.
Your hands shake
with furious horror, and the glasses lose a small amount of their contents onto
the gleaming tray. Not a large amount
given the severity of the circumstances, you note, but still. Damn it all.
There’s no way
any man could enter that room at that moment, you decide. Even the most grandly-bestowed gentleman in
the world could hardly enter a room in which he knows a chirruping gaggle of just-pubescent
harridans are chuckling crudely (and cruelly) at his God-given organ. Instead, you turn on your shaking ankles and
march right back to the kitchen, where your Better Half is busy preparing
another cocktail.
“They’re just so
moreish,” she says, and stops, looking you up and down. “What happened? The girls didn’t want them? Too much lime?”
You rest the
tray on the bench top and breathe deeply.
You remove a perfectly-ironed and bleached white kerchief from the
pocket of your bone/camel slacks and wipe your forehead. The kerchief smells of fabric softener. You turn to your Better Half.
“Those
children,” you begin. You reach for your
drink and down it rather too quickly, but forgivably given the state of
affairs. “Those girls,” you try again.
“They’re not
smoking, are they dear?”
“What? No!” you
bellow, then sigh, then wipe your forehead again. “They were talking… they were laughing, you
see… Angelica was telling her little friends… about bath time.”
Your Better Half
has an uncomprehending look on her aging face.
Damned woman, why can’t she read between the lines! Fine cheekbones but no sense of
subtlety. She’s going to make you spell
it out in all it’s confounding detail, isn’t she.
“Well, of course
they can have baths if that’s what they’d like, dear. But the hot water system-”
“Angelica said I
have a tiny cock.” Damnation, the curse
just bursts out of you like a bullet. You attempt to blunten your harsh
language with a softer tone. “I
overheard her telling her friends I have a very tiny penis.”
And damn it all,
your Better Half doesn’t draw you into a sympathetic embrace, or attempt to
soothe your sorrows through kindness, or even silently but ruefully pour you
another drink: she laughs.
“I’m sorry,
dear,” she says, trying to hide her cruel amusement behind sad eyes and a
caring gesture, “that was unexpected.
Your… really, what context… are you certain?”
“Yes,
dammit! I heard it with my own ears,
clear as day. Like a cashew, she said.”
Your Better Half
hides her disgusting joviality behind her hand, her petty tittering beneath
her. Oh the shame, to be surrounded by
the weaker sex, to be so alone in this moment of ridicule, so damned alone at
this time of torment.
“Oh dearest,”
she says, too late, and through lips that struggle to carry compassion rather than
mirth, “you’re really not that small.“
“You think I
don’t know that, woman?” you want to shout at her. “A man knows the size of his
own endowment! A man knows the hang of
his own heft, and I know that, statistically-speaking, my dimensions fall well within
the racial average! I’m not an idiot!” you
want to scream, red-faced and ruddy. “I
was having a bath! Any fool knows that
the coolness of the surrounding air relative to the heat of the water causes a
certain amount of shrinkage! Any damned
fool knows that!” you want to rave, fists waving and jaw jutting
pugilistically. You want to huff and
puff, you want to roar, perhaps even break some crockery (not the good set –
heaven forbid! – no, the ugly set given to you by your Better Half’s
Middle-Australian sister with no taste).
But instead you say nothing, stare at the kitchen bench in awkward fuming
silence. You don’t like raising your
voice, and, now that you’ve said it, it seems that your Better Half finds your
concerns petty and amusing. You don’t
know that you can take more humiliation.
“Well, no point
crying over spilt milk, is there dear.“ Your Better Half says, wiping the tray
clean of drips, few as they are. “What’s done is done. No point getting all worked up about it-”
“Not for you!” you
say, raising your voice. You immediately
regret it: your Better Half has had no part to play in this ghastly farce. You breathe again and try to get her to see
reason. “It’s all right for you,
dear. They’re not in there casting aspersions
about your whatsit, are they. It’s me they’re making fun of! A cashew!
It’s much larger than a cashew, you know it is. They’re laughing about the most precious
portion of a man, his very manhood itself. It’s just so unfair, it really is. I can’t go back in there. A cashew!”
With a look she
normally reserves for political issues or besting you at whist, your Better
Half picks up the tray and expertly carries it aloft.
“You’re a grown
man. I really don’t see what all the
fuss is about.”
With that she
whisks the rather convincing mocktails away with fluid motions that really do
seem to minimise the actual amount of effort and concentration that it takes to carefully
balance so many drinks on such a thin and valuable tray. She waltzes briskly from the kitchen as
though carrying several stout-bottomed tumblers, rather than five spindly and
elegantly-shaped cocktail glasses made of pure crystal dammit. Dammit dammit dammit.
Damn her to
heck.
As silence
settles into the kitchen around you, you imagine a whole series of cruel and
angry epithets to call your Better Half when she returns. Pouring equal measures of gin, green
Chartreuse, maraschino liqueur and freshly pressed lime juice, you imagine
cursing her repeatedly with increasingly witty retorts, until you are
empty. As you shake the mixture, only
partly hearing it sluice and clunk inside the gleaming metal canister, you
realise that really, instead of taking your embarrassment and anger out on your
Better Half, you should funnel it into something more constructive. Namely, shaming your daughter and her vulgar
acne-infested brace-toothed associates.
The cheek! The damnable cheek of
those pimply harridans, those selfie-worshipping narcissistic unsexed
nincompoops: as though they even know how a proudly turgid male organ appears
when properly tumescent! How little
experience, you think, how little practical knowledge these giggling children
have in such matters! What do they know
about the male organ’s expected dimensions?
They are simply unqualified to judge!
How dare they. How dare such
ignorant infantile schoolgirls pass judgment upon one’s flaccid member (effected
by cold-air shrinkage, no less!), when the real test of a manhood’s mettle is
in the swollen glory of arousal – about which they knew nothing! It was like judging a peacock without its
tail, or, or, well, some other thing with a central component missing! Why, if these spotty-faced immature waifs ever
glimpsed his shuttle in full-flight, they’d think twice about laughing-
“Delivered, without
incident.” Your Better Half’s paucity
with words is matched by the limited range of emotion displayed by her sullen gaze.
“I’m sorry
dear,” you apologise, quickly pouring the cocktails, though with your angry quivering hands,
they do come together with far less panache than usual.
“You need to
forget all about it,” she says, her sternness melting away at your stammering
apology. She touches one hand to the
shoulder of your cardigan. “They’ve
already moved on, let it go. Put it
behind you, that’s the way.”
“You’re right,
dear.”
“Forget all
about them. They’re just silly school
girls.”
“They are,
dear.”
“Now,” she says,
“let us drink to something. To what
shall we toast?”
“Maybe…” you
start, then stop. Then start again. “Maybe you could just have a quick word with
them.”
“Pardon?”
The shame, the
hurt, the statistical untruth of it all!
“Maybe you
could, you know, put in a good word for me.
Just pop in, mention offhand something about the perfectly regular dimensions
of my, you know. My hardware.” Your
Better Half doesn’t say anything. “Just,
perhaps, maybe, I don’t know, balance the debate somewhat. Unskew the, you know, data. Add to
the discussion.” Still nothing. Just a look. “The, ah.
Help right the scales of justice, so to speak.” Is that too much to ask, dammit? Is that really too much to ask?
Your Better
Half’s usually quite tolerable face is now a frown-eyed hatchet-featured
fishwife’s, a wrinkle-lined axe-head of a thing. Most unflattering.
Silence.
“Have you finished?”
“Ah. Yes, I believe I have.”
She glares at
you. “Are you seriously asking me to
waltz into my daughter’s bedroom-”
“Our
daughter-“
“You want me to
confront my daughter and her friends, and tell them that you, my husband and
Angelica’s father, have a perfectly standard-sized penis, thank you very much,
have a lovely evening.”
“Well-”
“You want me to
announce, to a room full of children – that’s right, children – you want
me announce to them, loudly and clearly, that your penis is an average size. Is that what you’re asking me to do?”
“Slightly above
average, if you believe the figures-”
“Is that what
you’re asking? Am I correct?”
You take a sip
of your cocktail. It’s hard to focus on
its deliciousness when she’s looking at you like that. And those are top shelf liqueurs, top
shelf. What a waste.
“Yes,” you say
quietly, “yes please.”
Her glare is
cold, so very cold. Colder than the ice
slowly thawing in the strainer.
“I think perhaps
you ought to retire upstairs for the evening,” the damnable woman says, “I can
take care of everything down here. I
think maybe the cocktails have gone to your head.”
“I’m fine!” you
bellow, then quieten down. “I’m fine. I’m just,
I’d just like this to be, ah, laid to rest.”
“I’m not doing
it.”
“Please.”
“I’m not doing
it,” the damnable woman insists, looking for all the world like a stubborn
ruminant.
“Just a quick
word.”
“No.”
“One word,
please.”
“No.”
“Please, just
one small tiny little-“
“No!”
“Damn you!” you
explode, like red fireworks. Why won’t
she help? Are they all on one team,
automatically, just because of whatever damnable biological mishap made them
female instead of male? Hateful,
spiteful, weak creatures, united against common decency and the Standard of
Truth! “I’m not asking you to lie, dear! Just to correct their mistake!”
“If you talk to
me like this much longer,” says your Better Half, barely moving her cold thin
lips in a treacherous murmur, “you may not be welcome in the bedroom tonight at
all.”
Bah! It could all be so simple, but no. No, first scandalous lies about one’s
proportions, then complete and utter mutiny from someone who is supposed,
according to your solemn vows of betrothal, to stand by you through all binary
extremes. No support! No help!
What do marriage vows mean, to what do those sacred promises tally, if,
when it comes to moments like this, your Better Half chooses to side with
injustice over truth? Bah!
“I’m going to
smoke a cigarillo in the den,” you mutter angrily, turning on your heel and
marching away from your supposed partner.
The den is plushly carpeted, and
barely audible smooth jazz skitters along persistently from your towering black
German speakers (cost a small fortune, but the quality of sound is highly
praised by audiophiles from London to Detroit).
Normally, a slender cigarillo and a cocksure smattering of anonymous
swing standards does wonders to rouse you from even the most sullen moods, but
you can’t seem to let this one go. It’s
not just about your personal groinal aspect, no: it’s the lies, the untruths,
the spreading of falsehoods. That’s what
you can’t abide.
The more you
think about it, the more the situation appears to require some sort of reparative
action. Despite your Better Half’s
insistence that you move past the issue, that you “drop it” in today’s
parlance, you still feel that a Great Wrong has been committed. Despite her assurances and protestations and
damned advice, despite her suggestions that everything is all right, it feels
all wrong. The entire state of affairs
is just so unfair, so monstrously unreasonable, that you can barely think
straight – that, and the continuing series of neat single-malt whiskies you pour yourself in the den to help
ease your mounting fury.
Your member was flaccid! Of course it was flaccid! Is it unreasonable to expect that a man’s
member remain flaccid during a bath with his own infant daughter? Of course not! Indeed, had your protuberance been engorged
to its fullest during said bath, warning bells would – and indeed, should
– ring out! No man of sound principles
would be tumescent in such a situation, couldn’t that coven of cackling pock-faced
harpies understand that? The fact that
your manhood had sat tucked so
honourably in repose, so decently atrophied, so sensibly
and properly petite – this, this should have been the focus of the
discussions! Proof you are a good
man! Proof you’re not some deviant! Its smallness – not that it was even all that
small, let’s be clear here, it was well within the averages, slightly towards
the larger end – its smallness should be recognised as a mark of honour, not seen as
some matter for cruel childish amusement!
Would they rather you be some swollen predator, some
inappropriately-sexed miscreant? Damn
them all!
You throw back
another Scotch. Damn them all.
Your cigarillo
is pleasing, if not entirely to the tongue, at least to the spirit. You are not a bad man. You are not a small man. You are a good man, and a sensibly-sized
man. Damn them. You are a man of the correct
proportions. And the truth will out.
Another puff on
the cigarillo, another shot of the single-malted peat-smoky top shelf
Scotch. Pricey, but in this state you
are in no mood to care. But still, quite
pricey.
The plan is
clear: you will massage yourself in the area in question, until you are
properly turgid, properly engorged.
Then, once your manhood is undeniably within the middle-to-upper side of
the statistically-appropriate limits, you will simply deliver the irksome ingrates
another tray of mocktails, or some other beverage more suited to the late
hour. Perhaps hot chocolate, it doesn’t
matter. Perhaps just tea. Anyway, doesn’t matter what the beverage is,
damn it all. In the process of
delivering the aforementioned drinks – perhaps hot chocolate, perhaps tea, it
really doesn’t matter – in the process of delivering these drinks, the dull
chattering urchins won’t be able to help but notice your lower portions, stiff with
pride beneath your bone/camel slacks, and, as their eyes widen with mixtures of
both shock and appreciation (as well as some red-faced flushes of pubescent
lust, let’s not quibble), you simply leave the room without a word. Justice, as well as some suitable beverage –
perhaps tea, perhaps hot chocolate, nevermind which – will have been served. And no-one needs ever speak of these events
again. You will have been restored to
your rightful position, and all and sundry shall know your true
dimensions. Truth will out! Victorious.
And righteous. And all without
actually exposing yourself to teenagers.
You drink to
that. You, sir, are a genius.
Your cigarillo
now resting in the crystal ashtray, one hand reaches at what lies between your
legs beneath the bone/camel slacks, and, once it makes purchase on your hidden
and sleeping shaft, you begin fondling
your manhood beneath the cloth, caressing it into action. Despite the bitterness, despite the
humiliation, and despite the copious alcoholic drinks, you sense movement down
there, and your breathing quickens. You
close your eyes and picture your Better Half when she was a great deal younger,
that one night in the hotel room in Luxembourg when she let you erupt while
still in her mouth (that one time, that one precious, memorable time, revisited
on so many occasions in the theatre of your memories), and you can feel the
tightness in your undertrousers growing.
You feel harder than ever, to be quite frank. They’re not going to be able to believe their
eyes.
A niggling voice
creeps into your consciousness, saying:
This is not
right.
(Almost
immediately, your todger begins to cool in your lap, and you sigh, frowning.)
You clear your
throat and adjust your belt. You pour
another really quite pricey Scotch.
This is not
right. This is not right at all.
It’s too subtle! Blinkered self-obsessed square-eyed ignoramuses
like Angelica’s flibbertigibbet school-mates could easily miss even the largest
trouser bulge, and the whole thing, the whole damn enterprise, would be rendered
pointless. As though flighty witless Twitter-fed
youngsters like that would even look up at you as you brought them
beverages! As though they’d even
look! They were likely to grunt
something incomprehensible while locked on their smart-phones, not even a thank
you, let alone an acknowledgement of substantial groinal sizability. Or, knowing them, they’d just titter, titter
like the sparrow-witted harpies they are, laugh right in your face, with nary a
look beneath the belt for what wonders may there lurk! Stupid man!
Furthermore, a tray of beverages, whether carrying mocktails, hot
chocolate, or tea, it really didn’t matter, a tray of beverages – or snacks,
that was always another option, you suppose, not that it matters now – a tray
of any sort would likely cast shadow across the very region you’re hoping to
highlight! What were you thinking? A tray?
Madness! No, this plan is a bad
one, no two ways about it. Too subtle,
and too obscuritan. You need something
more powerful. Something that can not be
missed.
“Are you in
here?” Your Better Half startles you
with her unwanted words, and you jump in your aged leather armchair.
“Yes, yes dear.”
She enters:
she’s carrying a small plate of biscuits.
But the biscuits are not what fills you with rage, no: it’s her
expression. The biscuits look delicious,
to be perfectly honest. But that look,
that expression on her tired, aging face: it’s a look of pity.
“You’re not
still thinking about it are you dear?” she asks, putting the really quite
tasty-looking biscuits on the coffee-table next to your extinguished cigarillo
and your empty tumbler.
“Leave me alone,
woman!” you want to bark, ferocious that she fill your den – your own private
space! – with that most inappropriate of emotions, pity! As though you had already lost! As though you had seen humiliation and simply
taken it, lying down! Prostrate, helpless,
defeated, the hideous girls stomping all over you and your manhood with their
expensive heels, laughing, always laughing – well, no! “I think you’ve done quite enough, don’t
you?” you want to yell at her, make her quake a little – just a little – at
your lion-like rage, your animal prowess, your silver-backed might. But instead, you mutter quietly:
“Sorry,
what? Thinking about what, dear?”
She smiles
gently. Still that damnable look of
pity, like she’s humouring a small child.
Damn her straight to heck.
“Come to bed,
dear. It’s getting late.”
She’s complicit
in all this, refusing to help you in your time of need. She’s One Of Them.
“I’ll come soon,
dear,” you say quietly, “I’m just enjoying a little Maynard Ferguson.” The nearest CD cover with the largest writing
on the cover says ‘Maynard Ferguson’, and you know your Better Half has even
less of an idea who’s currently playing on the 5-CD random shuffle than you
do. “I’ll join you later.”
Your Better Half
glances at the bottle of really very expensive single-malted peat-smoky Scotch
on the coffee-table, damn her eyes, and then back at you. Pity, and concern. Concern!
Bah!
“You’re
slurring, dear. Please.“
“I’m fine dear. Off you go.”
You wait, closing
your eyes and nodding slightly to the beat of the smooth jazz whispering from
those towering great audiophile-approved speakers, until she sighs, stands up,
and leaves. Immediately you get up and
close and bolt the door behind her. You
stride back to your throne and collapse into it (slightly more forcefully than
you’d hoped, but righteous indignation can make one fragile at the knees).
You pour
yourself quite a sloppily large Scotch, and weigh your options.
If you decide to
simply “man up” as they say, march right in there and set the girls straight
with a clear and descriptive oration about the exact size and shape of your
package, both flaccid and erect, and all the good and proper reasons why your
member appeared so wanting in the bath so many moons ago, turn to page 18.
If you decide to
slip into your daughter’s room once she and her friends are asleep, find her
phone, take a picture of your upstanding member with the telephone’s ingenius
in-built camera (a “dick pic” is apparently the modern terminology for such an
intimate portrait, you’ve heard), and then proceed to send said “dick pic” to
her friends, as lasting proof that her description of your organ fell far short
of the truth, turn to page 23.
If you decide to
change into your snug-fitting bathing suit, engorge yourself, arm yourself with
a towel, and confront the roomful of chattering pubescents under the guise of quite
innocently asking if any of them would care for a midnight swim, turn to page 25.
If you decide to
wait, naked and aroused, in the bathroom (under the pretence of being about to
have a shower), lurking with the bathroom door ajar, waiting until one of the
giggling young ladies accidentally comes in and spots your resplendent
outcropping in its proper state before rushing back to the herd and
breathlessly reporting on your correct size and stature, turn to page 31.
If you decide to
strip down to nothing, stumble drunkenly into your daughter’s bedroom, swearing
and spitting incoherently, and brazenly stand there, angry stamen in full
bloom, red-faced and shiny and slick with perspiration and drool, shouting
momentarily, arms flailing, reaching, grabbing at limbs, yanking at hair, forcing
yourself upon that disrespectul teenaged harem with brutal bright carnivorous
vengeance, before you collapse, cross-eyed and brittle, having been struck over
the back of the head with one of Angelica’s heavy netball trophies by a
quick-witted and instinct-driven young friend of Angelica’s who had already
seen too much at the hands of an abusive step-father of her own and was not
going to take this kind of shit ever again so God help her, turn to page 37.
If you decide to
sit alone and rock back and forth slightly as you cry salty silent
ethanol-scented tears of hopelessness and embarrassment and futile worthless
despair in a plush-carpeted prison of your own making, turn to page 42.
