The serious writer has never measured the length of his penis. He didn’t see the need because he knew its size and form depended entirely on the woman. In mid-life, he had accepted the estimation of one’s genitals as a creative endeavour rather than a mathematical exercise.

“You’re huge”, A. said after she had unbuttoned him.

“Oh”, he said, uncharacteristically short in his reply but with a world of pleasant associations rushing to his head like a horde of wild buffalo to a water hole.

“But not too huge”, she added a little later once they’d found a mutually convenient position for their wordless play. The serious writer always remembered her as a devout, objective reader of his work.

“Don’t show it to me”, said B., the horticulturist, and reached across his chest uncomfortably to switch off the small bedside Tiffany lamp, “or I won’t be able to forget it.”

“Why should you want to forget it?”, asked the serious writer.

“Because I don’t want to compare it”, she said. He saw her point, though he always found it hard to orient himself in the dark. The serious writer imagined B. was thinking of a large, luscious, potentially dangerous jungle plant when touching his knob.

C., a fellow writer, looked at the serious writer’s penis for a long time before she carefully took it between index finger and thumb and shook it a little as if to see whether it would come to life.

“It seems a little small”, she said. The serious writer sighed, loudly, and said nothing.

“But I’m sure it’ll do”, she said. Among peers, C. was known for her delicacy, which permeated all her writing. Much later, the serious writer paid her back using these same words in a very long, altogether positive, critical review of her novel.

“Only strong personalities can endure such size, the weak ones are extinguished by it”, said D., a red head with an imposing chest, eyeing his cock. The serious writer, his past fogged by reckless existentialist thought, recognised the Nietzschean rudiment and smiled knowingly.

Good humour, the serious writer thought, is the strongest aphrodisiac.

published in Metazen – frank hinton in an interview on fictionaut blog.