SPEAKING OF SMALL MEAT

Doug has one. It's pretty, it works, and it's less than four inches long when hard.

And when Doug got older, he discovered that - contrary to the notion that all gay men are size queens - some guys thought men with small dicks were a big turn-on. His self-confidence swelled. "At the gym," he says, "I used to love to walk around naked to show the guys, loved getting into the Jacuzzi when there were already men in there. I knew they were looking right at it."

For some guys, having a partner with a small cock brings practical advantages; little meat may be easier to suck or more comfy to get fucked by. But the pleasure can be aesthetic, too. "I like it if my piece is bigger than theirs," says one man with a pretty hefty whanger. "It gives me a little bit of psychological power, and I like to think they're licking their lips when they see what I've got. Guys with enormous equipment sometimes can't get it up, or don't know what to do with it when they do. Besides, I think little ones are cute." Being the notorious sexhounds gay men are, Web sites have even arisen devoted to pics of men with little willies.

Some men would no doubt object to their throbbing manhoods being called "cute," but as long as good sex isn't measured by the millimetre, there's no denying that bigger may not always be better. At least not for everyone. A humongous tallywhacker may signify masculinity to some people, but there's certainly no scientifically established link between "big" and "butch." Doug, for instance, has a hunky, hairy body, and if the dick between his muscled thighs is on the small side, that's okay with him. If anything, he might seem a teensy bit arrogant. "Most guys are more than happy to even get attention from me," he says. "So when the pants come off there's a moment of surprise maybe, but they get right down to business."

Neither is there any correlation between "big" and "top." One notoriously well-endowed porn actor used to complain that, because of a few extra inches, the guys he'd meet would automatically assume he was a top, which he most assuredly wasn't: "I got tired of explaining that I wanted to be the one who got plowed."

Plastic surgery aside, most of us have the dicks we were, through no fault of our own, born with. This is a society that, from super-sized fries to monster truck rallies, sometimes seems greedily obsessed by quantity. But quality counts, too. Good things, after all, do come in small packages. If anything, it seems odd that otherwise adult men would stake a significant chunk of their egos on the presence or absence of an inch or two of flesh. But it's what we do with the raw material that counts. As the old song says, "It ain't the meat, it's the motion..."

Simon Sheppard

San Francisco artist and activist Simon Sheppard is best known for his contributions to the erotic literary scene. He wrote hundreds of stories that appeared in S/M magazines; erotic anthologies; and over twenty editions of Best Gay Erotica and Best American Erotica. His Sextalk column has appeared on OutUK for more than 20 years. You can find out more about Simon Sheppard in this OutUK feature and tribute, or take a look at some of his many books that are still available:

       

Looking for something very sexy and just as smart? Man on Man collects the best and hottest gay sex writing by Simon, who is also co-editor of Rough Stuff: Tales of Gay Men, Sex, and Power as well as a collection of gay erotica called Hotter Than Hell.

In KINKORAMA : Dispatches from the Front Lines of Perversion he takes readers behind the unmarked doors and black vinyl curtains that lead to the sometimes shocking, often hilarious, relentlessly arousing scenarios of extreme sex. There are also stories of bears in Tales from the Bear Cult: Beat Bear Stories from the Best Magazines.