Made to Measure: My Puzzled Penis

“If my sound advice you heed,
If you follow where I lead,
You’ll be healthy, you’ll be strong and you’ll be sleek.
You’ll have muscles that are thick and a pretty little prick,
You’ll be proud of your appearance and physique.”

Aristophanes
The Clouds

There’s always something new to worry about especially if like me, you read too many magazines and the advice contained in them. As if I don’t already have enough to worry about. Like Aristophanes in his comic play, my thoughts turn to the one thing that preoccupies most men most of the time: penis power. When I was twenty years old I used to think that the fountainhead of all human inspiration lay in the penis. Now I’m convinced that it is! Before all men had to worry about was limited to issues of length versus girth. Now I read in a women’s health magazine that when you’re twenty your erect penis stands at a proud one hundred and ten degrees. When you’re seventy it sags to a dismal sixty-five degrees. Panic stations! How many degrees does it drop every year? Do I weep uncontrollably or take the plunge and face the cold and maybe not so hard facts?

Men as all women know like to measure things. Elasticity and flexibility combined with a healthy dose of creativity is a good thing not so? The tape measure never lies. Really? A tape measure in the wrong hands is like relying on accuracy from statisticians, politicians and accountants. But the tape measure is not my immediate problem. I need to measure angles of approach like a navy pilot easing up on the throttle and trying to land his jet on a carriers heaving deck. When things get too much for me, I turn to superior wisdom for help and advice and ask my dear wife to lend a helping hand. She’s always more task orientated and practical when it comes to these things. She is also better at maths and trigonometry.

“Chrissie, do we have anything in the house that measures angles? You know one of those plastic semi-circular calibrated things that you used to get in your school maths kit.”
“You mean a protractor.”
“Yes, that’s it, a protractor is what I need.”
“What do you need it for? Comes the impatient reply.
“Well, I need to measure the angle of something here on my desk that’s been bothering me. It’s an experiment I’m conducting, you know, research, that sort of thing.”

My perplexed penis stands defiant. How do I work this damn plastic contraption? Am I holding it the right way, protractor in my left hand and dick in my right hand? Is it upside down? Do you measure the angle standing up or lying flat on your back on a hard surface? Do you lay it out on your desk and proceed from there? I just don’t know. I’m a complete novice when it comes to measuring angles especially when working with something that has a mind of its own.

How do I tell her that I want to measure the angle of my erection as an indication of sagging libido, as an early warning of impending middle age?
But then why worry. Everyday I read, hear and see men in their sixties and seventies having fun with women half their age. The Dolce Vita has given way to the Dolce Viagra. Take the example of Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando, both men in their sixties. Their respective spouses threw them out. So the two friends moved into an apartment together and started throwing wild parties.

The South African Garden & Home Magazine lies on the coffee table beckoning me. Could a solution come from this unlikely source? I page through the magazine, skipping the pages with plants on them, looking at pictures of renovated homes and architectural plans. Then there it is. On page 163, the eye-catching heading in capitals: “SIZE DOES COUNT.” What on earth do these women get up to in the garden? I start reading with apprehension only to discover to my dismay that it’s about trees – really big trees. But the accompanying diagram is very interesting. It shows the angle between the top of a tree and the horizontal distance to the tree trunk.
Low and behold. An inverted protractor is used as a means to measure and compare the size of big trees.

Should I write to the Dendrological Society of South Africa and ask for their assistance in this vexing matter? I read on and discover that this may not be a good idea. Our tree experts it seems find it hard to agree which tree is the largest. Should it be based on height, trunk girth, or the spread of crown? Where objects are large enough, the protractor measuring seems to work. But in much smaller objects certain adaptations are necessary. No need to get them all flustered about my small specimen. They have enough work on their hands, saving our magnificent trees.

It does however get me thinking. What if I place the straight-line surface of the inverted protractor on the underside of my penis? resting or sighting it as it were, underneath the shaft or “trunk” of my erection. Then I’d fix a piece of weighted string to the base of the protractor and read the angle from the top of its helmet look-alike head to the hanging string. It could work, but it’s far too complicated, I decide.

Do I get my spouse to help with the experiment all in the interest of science and fragile male virility? We could turn it into a fun-filled exercise like gardening in the nude. Christine’s always complaining that we don’t do enough fun things together. Then Eureka! The solution comes to me.

“Chrissie I’m going to strip naked down to my socks. Don’t be alarmed. I know it’s only nine thirty in the morning and the maid is downstairs ironing. We’ll close the curtains. Maybe I’ll keep my T-shirt on.” (Well fast-forward this bit. Use your imagination. Just make sure your research assistant has warm hands!)

I have a brainwave or is it a temporary surge of passion? I say to her: “Before we get started lets have a quick fifteen second Frenchie for old times sake, just to get the juices flowing. Like we used to do in the back seat of my Peugeot. No? OK let’s get started.” I always have the last word in our relationship. Christine says no and I say OK. The experiment goes something like this:

“Chrissie, I’m going to stand between the lampshade and the wall. I’d like you to get down on your knees and…… just press the protractor against the wall and keep your head out of the way. What? No, that won’t be necessary. Can’t you see he’s already….? You can keep your clothes on for now. Just please do as I say and stop arguing with me! Do me this favour and I’ll weed the flower- bed for you. Just measure the angle of the shadow that you see cast on the wall by Brutus and we can go and have a nice cup of tea. Mmm! That’s a rather good profile on the wall. Can you see the fireman’s helmet? There it is in perfect outline. I must say I think those Egyptian doctors knew what they were doing. Can you see how I was circumcised by the ancient but reliable Pharaonic oblique method? Thank god it was successful! I knew a poor fellow once whose bris went horribly wrong. The Rabbi botched his circumcision and left him with a cock that looks like a cauliflower!”

The angle looks reassuringly correct to me. Perception is reality and the mirror doesn’t lie. All else is an illusion thrown at us by the gleeful gods to torment us with their twisted sense of malevolent humour. We all know they are Janus faced. No need to be exact. Given a choice I’d rather settle for being interesting than accurate. I’m clearly no scientist and certainly no mathematician. As in politics, measuring penis angles is the art of the possible. Maybe there’s no reason to panic just yet.

My mind runs riot as my thoughts turn from the ridiculous to the truly bizarre. Maybe I should start a rigorous regime of Chinese penis pulling power exercises. Before you get excited and start preparing to pull on your penis, consider the following. “Penis hanging art”, apparently is a widely practised Chinese martial arts style. It’s called “Chiu Chiu Shen Gong”- nine, nine magic art. I don’t know what nine has to do with it but it sure sounds good. I discover that twenty Chinese men once tried to set a world record for pulling a Boeing 747 with their penises. To practice their sport they hang iron blocks hanging up to 300kg from their penises or testicles believing that it enhances virility and strength. And to think that all I have ever attempted was to hang a fairly large bath towel on my erect member as a way of impressing Christine with my prowess and it wasn’t even a wet towel. The experiment ended abruptly when Christine gave me a withering “grow-up stop being so obsessed with your thing” kind of look, which left the towel crumpled at my feet and Percy deflated and forlorn winking at the carpet.

For all the joys of pursuing a life filled with coffee and mental stimulation, the best advice I can give myself for everyday peace of mind is to stop measuring things and to keep my weekends free. For me the most effective mental medicine yet invented is watching Saturday afternoon rugby and chewing on a thick piece of biltong. Nothing beats that deadly combination of gladiatorial blood sport and salted meat to sate the most basic primordial instinct in us. And for the men out there, before you think of pulling out your penis, remember that measuring things is best left to kitchen cupboard installers and contractors who lay carpets and tiles for a living.

But I have to grudgingly concede that D.H. Lawrence has the final word on the penis. In his final novel “Tommy Dukes”, written as he battles against tuberculosis, he states the following:

“I believe in having a good heart, a chirpy penis, a lively intelligence and the courage to say shit in front of a lady. It would be wonderful to be intelligent: then one would be alive in all parts mentioned and unmentionable. The penis rouses his head and says: How do you do? – To any really intelligent person. Renoir said he painted his pictures with his penis…He did too, lovely pictures! I wish I did something with mine. God! When one can only talk!”

D.H Lawrence would have been pleased to know that in South Africa, homeland civil servants once invented a novel way to use their penises. They rolled their penises on inkpads and used them in lieu of fingerprints to submit fraudulent pension claims. As the old Latin phrase goes: “Out of Africa Always Something New.”

Costas Ayiotis