Really, I suppose if you do want to know about the penis, the having and the not-having, you should always go to transsexuals. After all, they should know, right? I remember Rhonda. She was one of a pair of identical twin boys except one had gone one way and the other had gone the other. One grew up to be a beer-gutted bikie, the other became a very attractive transsexual. Now Rhonda actually hadn't had the op and would come off female hormones every so often for a month or so, for health reasons. I asked her about the difference between the two states. 'Well I do get to be reminded how much men are led around by their dicks,' she said. 'It's like it has got a life of its own.' And for some reason, I have always remembered those words. The dick is really an interesting organ. For starters it is an appendage. Although it is still attached to you it is almost outside the body. Ever watched men sleep and the way their hands tend to hold their own dicks like they were a security blanket or something. The dick at once is part of you and it is not quite part of you. Because of this, little kids have a tendency to name their dicks. You've got the simple 'Willy' or 'Dick' but I once heard a man confess that as a six-year old he'd called his 'Tony'. And dicks have this alarming tendency to do things by themselves. Swell up, get hard. Just lie there. Swell up, get hard. Just lie there. Get half-way up. Get half-way down. It is like they've got a mind of their own. And this can be interesting. There I am talking to a new employee at work and hey, what's this, that pesky dick is standing up. Uh-oh, does this mean I want my new acquaintance in an unprofessional manner? And here I am at a rugby game, the guy on the next seat's leg is touching my leg and, jeez, my dick is going all hard, and it-is-not-happening, it-is-not-happening. Recent history has been full of men denying their dicks. All of us can sit there and think about men we know whose life has been a perpetual battle between themselves and their penile proclivities. No, no, no, it's not getting hard when I look at men's butts. It doesn't get stiff when Johnno does a down-trou at the pub, really it doesn't. And you do wonder in this battle why more dicks don't end up in hospital with wrung necks because they've risen 'inappropriately' on some closet-case once too-damn often. And you get the opposite effect when Mr Dickie stubbornly won't stand-up for ladies. Mr Dickie still ends up in medical care, but this time he's getting shot-full of Viagra or something. So it should be a fundamental rule of life to listen to your dick. I suspect if we actually all listened to it there wouldn't quite be so many screwed up people and I also suspect we'd be a little more broad-minded. And just like I know a number of straight men who'd be surprised at who and what gender they can find sexually interesting, so too I know a number of gay men who might be a little more bi-sexual than they had previously considered. And, apart from basic screwed-upness, I also suspect listening to your dick would change a few other things in life too. Like the current fashion for gay bodies to be buffed and smooth and muscular. Now this is supposed to be an ideal, but, hello, just who for, huh? Me, I think people have been watching too many American porn videos where ram-rod buffed studs grunt and groan lots. I also think the gym-buffed body is a little like Chinese foot-binding, where women's feet were unmercifully tortured to fit into tiny shoes. Every second gay man is torturing himself at the gym, and for what? Who really really likes gym-buffed bods, huh? In my experience of people's tastes they cover the whole range from chubby-chasers to bear-fetishists, and everything in between. There are rice-queens and there are dinge-queens. Whatever race you are, whatever body-shape you are, whatever degree of hairiness you are, there is someone who will really, really like you. And it is all in the dick. So if we are supposed to be going for smooth and buffed, then how come my dick is perking up at the thought of skinny and hairy, or fat and bald? Hmmm? I suspect many a dull sexual encounter would have been avoided if people truly listened to their dicks and followed their lead. I suspect many a sexual confusion would have been resolved by charting the rise and fall of the penis. After all dicks travel x centimetres in front of you, right? They're really out there. They're there first. And where they lead, why not follow? David Herkt - 29th August 2001