In Praise of His Penis Sometimes, like when I wake up with my partner on a weekend morning and look down to find him hard, his penis curving gently as if to greet his belly-button a good morning, or when he changes his clothes in stages, making tea, all bottom-naked, his packed-away penis peeking hide-and-seek between his shirttails, my shoulders shiver with this pleasant prick of amazement at just how cool that caution-to-the-wind penis of his is. Rabid feminist that I am, this penis awe (not envy -- I have his, don't need my own) surprises me, and I even feel a bit guilty at getting such pleasure out of a thing that I have generally believed to be the root of all evil. Though the motivation for lesbianism makes much more sense to me than do the urgings toward heterosexuality, I found myself thinking last night that lesbians are really missing out on this multi-morphous little toy. I cannot resist the penis's disinterested beckonings. When I unexpectedly catch a glimpse of my lover's lovely bits -- when he is disrobing for an impromptu shower, for instance -- I must drop what I'm doing and run to his body, going down on my knees to wrap my lips around his perfectly wrinkled, resting-safely penis. Or at the very least, I must squeeze my hand around its awesome compactness, letting my fingers circle its tip and flick at its ridge. I prefer to feel it grow in my mouth, though, feeling more and more powerful with each successive unfolding. I attack it when it least expects, when it isn't begging for my attention. I marvel at how smooth the full-length penis is, its baby-soft skin so perfect to my fingers. I study its little hole that looks like a mouth, and squeeze it so that it talks to me soundlessly. I love when I feel the penis pulse agitatedly against me, its erratic little bursts uncontrolled by either lover, and it makes me laugh with a possessive mirth when I catch sight of its independent little hoppings. It is a part of many personalities; sometimes demanding and insistent; sometimes nonchalant; sometimes carefree and careless; sometimes unsure, stressed-out, and wanting to be coaxed. It comforts and nourishes, celebrates and invades, it plays and dances and sleeps. It is a toy that I like to twirl with my finger, watching it flop this way and that, giggling at its limpness. But as it grows and stiffens, my giggles fall silent and my breathing grows shorter and I find myself straddling, sitting on a pelvis, staring at a pulsing penis. The technology of the penis is a marvel to me. I can barely express the delight, a strange kind of joy, I feel at its ability to metamorphose from this little, shriveled, dangly thing to the commanding arc of its greatly-elongated, stand-at-attention presence. It is a study in clarity and conciseness -- its desires and states of being are always a known factor. Don't you wish you could express yourself so elegantly? What a perfect use of mobility and flexibility. The penis is definitely a demander of attention, an easy object of obsession. Whenever I find my body pressed against my partner, I immediately know where his penis is pressing my body, I'm focussed on the hardness flattening my belly or pushed into the curve of my back. It excites the fuck out of me. A piece of my attention stays with the pressing penis, even through the distraction of kisses and bites and tickles and pinches. I stay with the penis until it is in me, when my attention broadens to absorb the wonderful encompassing sensation of penis-inside-me, filling me with the most intimate fullness I have ever encountered and infusing me with an indescribable feeling of rightness and wholeness and love and comfort and happiness. Text by Rachel Funari. Rachel is primarily an essayist rather than an eroticist, though being a still somewhat newish inductee into the world of sex, she's been writing about that a bit lately. Also being new to publishing, her writing is only found on her own Web site at the moment. Sculpture, "He and She," by C.L. Wilson, who has been interested in genital sculpture since the 1970's when he saw an exhibit in New York. More of C.L. Wilson's work can be seen on his Web site, and also in the Clean Sheets Gallery.