I was going to use the “p” word, but I didn’t want to get lumped in with a bunch of dicks.
I was also going to expound upon the brilliant and amazing diversity that men carry around in their pants, but my memories kept going back to what some would consider an incredible tragedy in my life. (Me, I don’t really see it as a tragedy, more like a “cautionary tale”, but everyone has their opinion.)
I speak of the Dick With A Penis (or DWAP to preserve my typing speed.)
DWAP was a round-about online connection through a non-dating channel, but we seemed to have a great deal in common. I’m a Buddhist – he is, too! I love math and science – what a coincidence! I like tall guys on occasion, and he likes petite ladies. <voice=”sarcasm”>Wow!</voice>
So, we meet for coffee, and it goes well. He’s an odd looking duck, but there’s just something about him. We meet again, and it gets very intense, very quickly. And then, I get poked in the belly button. From the outside. Over the top of his pants.
Seriously, hands down (no pun intended), he had the largest willy I think I’ve ever seen, let alone had personal knowledge of. And he wasn’t a “pounder” but really knew how to use it delicately, which was good because, as we all know, I am not a big woman.
The problem was that the rest of him was not so well developed. As the three months of our relationship ran its course, and the NRE wore off to show the true colors of what was going on, we were revealed to be completely incompatible and even totally diametrically opposed. I’m autodidactic, he believed in university training – but reading a book did not equal education in his eyes. He was a hell of an artist, but couldn’t wrap his brain around the basic legal facts of copyrights. He “only smoked out for pain relief”, but did it so often – and then other harder drugs on top of it – that when I questioned his alleged non-addiction, it was a tense and uncomfortable and led to a lot of ongoing defensiveness on his part.
The last straw came when he asked for my tutoring in a subject where he had some weaknesses, and when I wanted to assess his level, it became a pissing match with only one of us pissing. (Hint: it wasn’t me.) Words were said, manipulations were attempted, feelings were hurt, personhoods were diminished… and then I said, “Wow, you’re really getting to be a jerk. I don’t think I’m going to talk to you anymore. Ever.”
Now, rather than go into the specifics of the “he said, she said,” I’d like to identify where each of us made our mistakes.
My Culpability:
My first error was in not doing my homework and in taking him at face value. (This is, by the way, why I am such a huge fan of online dating.) I let myself skip over the “me, too’s” without a whole lot of investigation, mostly because I wanted to believe that he was what he said he was. This is my biggest stupid and has traditionally been my Achilles heel: I want so much for the partner to be what they say they are that I ignore the multitudinous red flags and indications that it is not as advertised.
This is not the same thing as saying that every person I’ve had this exchange with is lying. That’s a slightly different action that comes from a place of specific intention. Rather, the chemistry between two people amplifies parts of a personality, bringing them to the forefront, and in that blissful “wow we really like each other a lot!” phase, we can forget that these resonances do not make up all of us.
His Culpability:
Probably the greatest weakness that DWAP had was his overestimation of his self-concept and self-awareness. He loved to accuse me of being surrounded by “Yes-Men” when, not surprisingly, that’s more who he was surrounded by. And with a carefully designed self-perpetuating system of ego-validation, you’re not going to grow very much. This meant that me pointing out that his pot/drug use was excessive was met with defensiveness and derision since his other friends said that his pot/drug usage was fine.
The second greatest weakness actually comes not from DWAP himself but from our cultural love-hate relationship with penises. Men gauge so much of their prowess and self-worth on a factor that is, for all intents and purposes, completely beyond their control. Yes, you can encourage limited growth with continual use (just as not using it leads to a kind of atrophic shrinkage), and you can modify it with piercings and body-mods, but for the most part, you’re pretty much stuck with what genetics gave you.
And yet, the identification of a man’s worth is tied up in his penis.
I suppose that’s similar to the knee-jerk perception that large-breasted women are better nurturers (not an automatic truth, by the way, and only marginally correlative), but the ultimate practice is that believing that a large penis automatically makes someone a better man somehow relieves his responsibility to actually be a better man. Whether this awareness is conscious or not does not negate the observed relationship between the two.
The Final Analysis:
There is nothing about this relationship that I miss. I am grateful that I experienced it, but I am more grateful that it was short. It helped me realize that I really can spot the bullshit, but that I still needed work on trusting my instincts. It also showed me that there is such a thing as “too much”, and that even fantastic, exciting sex does not diminish the negative impact of a complete and utter dick.
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