Skip to main contentMeet My Penis, by byron beck
Having a Penis Is..., by grant menzies
Since Thespis fronted a chorus of phallus wavers at an ancient Greek festival of Dionysus in 534 B.C., the penis has been an integral part of theater. Though the time between the brandishing of cocks (these rods of god) and the modern bending of said organs into fanciful shapes (courtesy of Puppetry of the Penis) is long, there's a neatly potted history of drama that comes full circle.
Admittedly, old dick was folded away for most of this history, though homage was paid occasionally in the Renaissance--someone should count the ways Shakespeare could utter "knob." In fact, it's interesting that Shakespeare frequently used "cock" as a substitute for "God." Well, it rolls around the mouth nicer than YHWH. But surely he was bowing to the more exciting Dionysus--lord of wine, wild women and goat-song. So, back to Thespis.
In Greek Old Comedy, a century after Thespis, performers wore lengthy leather phalluses--sort of a pendulous putz--for laughs. The Greeks believed that long cocks were barbarous and ludicrous. Happily, we live in an enlightened age that knows the opposite to be true. Nonetheless, there they were, these great schlongs being whipped about and walked on...a sad end to the more ancient community cock worship, but such is progress.
Then the penis went underground for a couple of dozen centuries, popping out sporadically such as for the Earl of Rochester's play Sodom (1680), whose stage directions call for the "kissing and dandling" of men's "Codds" before the troupe "falls to fucking."
A classic.
Then a great ice age falls over the nether regions, and cock no longer crows. It will take some unselfconscious hippies (there were some once) to flash us with Hair and to recreate a orgiastic Bacchic rite in Dionysus in '69 (it also helped to have Joe Orton deliver us a dildo as the last earthly scrap of Winston Churchill in What the Butler Saw).
These days, it's rare to go to the theater and not see cocks, especially if one lives in the greater Belmont area. But one tends to see them in queer-themed dramas advertising defiant AIDS-era musculature. Fine. But the schmuck is democratic, and so the Puppetry of the Penis flesh-fiddlers are here to put a new twist in the old rope.
So what to expect from Puppetry of the Penis, the Australian sensation that has taken New York, London and Tasmania by storm? Think of it as rather intimate balloon sculpting. Everything from a dachshund to the Eiffel Tower can be stretched and folded from flesh. It's a Freudian field day. Does it hurt? The performers say no. Is it erotic? Strange, but the laughter from a house of pointing strangers has never yet produced arousal. Should you try it at home? Apparently, millions do. Are there special requirements? Heated stages and cool heads.
Hail, Dionysus! May all this please you.
Meet My Penis Puppet
BY BYRON BECK
bbeck@wweek.com
Byron Beck's penis puppet (worn here by a soap stand-in) takes a bow. According to a study by the Lifestyles Condom Co., and as reported by ABCNews.com reporter Buck Wolf, the average length of an erect male sex organ is 5.877 inches or, as Wolf says, "a grande cup of coffee at Starbucks (with the sip lid)."
Coming in just shy of 6.0, that makes my own fully aroused flesh twinkie just a tad above average. To help keep things interesting, and maintain an above-average rating, over the years I've had to teach my old hog a few new tricks. No, I can't wrap it into a wristwatch or roll it into a hamburger, but I sure can dress it up pretty.
Yes, it's true: I used to have a costume for my cock.
Before my life-changing relationship with my partner, I chewed through boyfriends faster than Star Jones at a casino buffet. Once I dropped one, I went on to another. And another. And sometimes all that sex stuff got a bit, well, flaccid, even for me. To help pick up the pace at certain particularly slow moments I would often reach into my bedside
drawer, pull out my "friend" I kept next to the K-Y and condoms, and quickly place it over my pink tornado.
No, ladies, it wasn't a dildo. It was a puppet. Actually an old-fashioned hand puppet, circa 1950, of which I had ripped the plastic head off, leaving open a gaping neck-hole for my own slightly perverse pleasure. Taking what had once been a kid's toy and turning it into a whole different type of "toy" had a reverse Pinocchio-like effect on me: I went from being a boy into wood.
And, boy oh boy, could this wooden puppet perform! Dressed in its two-dimensional rag-cloth outfit straight from the closet of Charlie Brown's arch rival, Lucy Van Pelt, my puppet could sing, dance--I could even make it stand on its head. Not a bit bashful at all, it did have a bad habit of turning beet-red, but that was always toward the end of the show.
To say my dates were a bit surprised at my humming mummer would probably be an understatement. Most of them were just pleasantly shocked. And, more often than not, they would always give my littlest entertainer a warm ovation and a nice peck on the head once the curtain closed.
But that was years ago. Like most of my teddy bears, I've kept my puppet tucked away, out of sight, for a very long time. A couple of days ago I pulled it out of its hiding place and dusted it off.
And that got me thinking: Who knows, now that the musical is back in style, maybe it's time I strutted my peppy puppet out for one last rousing, Chicago-style rendition of "All That Jizz."
Now, that would really razzle-dazzle them, don't you think?
Having a Penis Is...
BY GRANT MENZIES
(503) 243-2122
Men don't contemplate their navels. They contemplate their penises. Because having a penis means never having to admit you're lonely.
As any experienced old dame would tell you, the penis is no brash arriviste: It's as much a part of life as her marigolds. Like the universe's more durable creations, the penis is a democratic, all-purpose organ. It can go just about anywhere, do just about anything. When nature calls, males ignore demure roadside rest stops: We stand, ostensibly admiring the view from behind the car, and relieve our bladders against a tree. Provided it's not so cold you can't find your personal Magic Marker, you can also use it to write your golden name in a snowbank (though try as one might, one can never fully drain the damn thing of urine without performing jigs and rough grapplings).
Tender though it is, it's a fetishist's ultimate totem, capable of holding up under a Christmas tree's worth of piercing-parlor adornments, and all in secret, provided you don't set off the airport security alarm. The penis is an ideal communicator, too. For the tongue-tied among us, it's the easiest way to say, "I love you" (or, as is more often the case, "I want you"). And as the men of Puppetry of the Penis demonstrate, it's a work of constantly renewable art, flesh and blood Play-Doh with an easy elasticity that seems to come as a surprise to many women (and a few men).
The penis isn't perfect, not by a long stretch. Part of its charm is in its infinite, not to say disconcerting, variety. From a little acorn a big oak will grow, while a donkey dong will just hang there, forlornly engorged. There are circumcisions crooked and circumcisions handsome, foreskins tight and pointy (remember the "anteater" kid in grade school?) and foreskins loose and loopy. There are dicks that hang straight and dicks that jut at wild angles; dick heads mushroom-shaped, dick heads flat as squashed bowlers.
You can be sick as a dog and there's your eager penis, nudging up the belly for attention; conversely, you can command it to sit up for an admiring audience and all it will do is roll over. It can leak precum when aroused, even when safely flaccid--and usually when you're wearing those close-fitting, light-tan slacks and have to cross a crowded room with a puzzling stain down your leg. It's easy to joke about it getting caught in your zipper, but when it happens, you won't laugh.
Despite our mothers' admonishments not to "do that in public," the penis requires regular adjustments throughout the day
to be happy, usually at the least auspicious of moments. And if something ever goes wrong with it, however superficial and temporary, it's not just an annoyance, it's the end of the world as you know it. Which is why the undignified visibility of the penis also poses a mystery.
How much of a man's selfhood does his manhood represent? How much of a man's self-worth is contained in this capricious tube of mortal flesh? Ay, said a better man than I: There's the rub, because my impression, sexist though it may sound, is that the penis does more than just deliver loads. It bears all the murky, magnificent weight of male identity, in both form and function. So even if you can't make "The Hamburger" or the "Loch Ness Monster," take heart, guys. That's a beautiful tool you've got down there. Meet My Penis, by byron beck
Having a Penis Is..., by grant menzies
Since Thespis fronted a chorus of phallus wavers at an ancient Greek festival of Dionysus in 534 B.C., the penis has been an integral part of theater. Though the time between the brandishing of cocks (these rods of god) and the modern bending of said organs into fanciful shapes (courtesy of Puppetry of the Penis) is long, there's a neatly potted history of drama that comes full circle.
Admittedly, old dick was folded away for most of this history, though homage was paid occasionally in the Renaissance--someone should count the ways Shakespeare could utter "knob." In fact, it's interesting that Shakespeare frequently used "cock" as a substitute for "God." Well, it rolls around the mouth nicer than YHWH. But surely he was bowing to the more exciting Dionysus--lord of wine, wild women and goat-song. So, back to Thespis.
In Greek Old Comedy, a century after Thespis, performers wore lengthy leather phalluses--sort of a pendulous putz--for laughs. The Greeks believed that long cocks were barbarous and ludicrous. Happily, we live in an enlightened age that knows the opposite to be true. Nonetheless, there they were, these great schlongs being whipped about and walked on...a sad end to the more ancient community cock worship, but such is progress.
Then the penis went underground for a couple of dozen centuries, popping out sporadically such as for the Earl of Rochester's play Sodom (1680), whose stage directions call for the "kissing and dandling" of men's "Codds" before the troupe "falls to fucking."
A classic.
Then a great ice age falls over the nether regions, and cock no longer crows. It will take some unselfconscious hippies (there were some once) to flash us with Hair and to recreate a orgiastic Bacchic rite in Dionysus in '69 (it also helped to have Joe Orton deliver us a dildo as the last earthly scrap of Winston Churchill in What the Butler Saw).
These days, it's rare to go to the theater and not see cocks, especially if one lives in the greater Belmont area. But one tends to see them in queer-themed dramas advertising defiant AIDS-era musculature. Fine. But the schmuck is democratic, and so the Puppetry of the Penis flesh-fiddlers are here to put a new twist in the old rope.
So what to expect from Puppetry of the Penis, the Australian sensation that has taken New York, London and Tasmania by storm? Think of it as rather intimate balloon sculpting. Everything from a dachshund to the Eiffel Tower can be stretched and folded from flesh. It's a Freudian field day. Does it hurt? The performers say no. Is it erotic? Strange, but the laughter from a house of pointing strangers has never yet produced arousal. Should you try it at home? Apparently, millions do. Are there special requirements? Heated stages and cool heads.
Hail, Dionysus! May all this please you.
Meet My Penis Puppet
BY BYRON BECK
bbeck@wweek.com
Byron Beck's penis puppet (worn here by a soap stand-in) takes a bow. According to a study by the Lifestyles Condom Co., and as reported by ABCNews.com reporter Buck Wolf, the average length of an erect male sex organ is 5.877 inches or, as Wolf says, "a grande cup of coffee at Starbucks (with the sip lid)."
Coming in just shy of 6.0, that makes my own fully aroused flesh twinkie just a tad above average. To help keep things interesting, and maintain an above-average rating, over the years I've had to teach my old hog a few new tricks. No, I can't wrap it into a wristwatch or roll it into a hamburger, but I sure can dress it up pretty.
Yes, it's true: I used to have a costume for my cock.
Before my life-changing relationship with my partner, I chewed through boyfriends faster than Star Jones at a casino buffet. Once I dropped one, I went on to another. And another. And sometimes all that sex stuff got a bit, well, flaccid, even for me. To help pick up the pace at certain particularly slow moments I would often reach into my bedside
drawer, pull out my "friend" I kept next to the K-Y and condoms, and quickly place it over my pink tornado.
No, ladies, it wasn't a dildo. It was a puppet. Actually an old-fashioned hand puppet, circa 1950, of which I had ripped the plastic head off, leaving open a gaping neck-hole for my own slightly perverse pleasure. Taking what had once been a kid's toy and turning it into a whole different type of "toy" had a reverse Pinocchio-like effect on me: I went from being a boy into wood.
And, boy oh boy, could this wooden puppet perform! Dressed in its two-dimensional rag-cloth outfit straight from the closet of Charlie Brown's arch rival, Lucy Van Pelt, my puppet could sing, dance--I could even make it stand on its head. Not a bit bashful at all, it did have a bad habit of turning beet-red, but that was always toward the end of the show.
To say my dates were a bit surprised at my humming mummer would probably be an understatement. Most of them were just pleasantly shocked. And, more often than not, they would always give my littlest entertainer a warm ovation and a nice peck on the head once the curtain closed.
But that was years ago. Like most of my teddy bears, I've kept my puppet tucked away, out of sight, for a very long time. A couple of days ago I pulled it out of its hiding place and dusted it off.
And that got me thinking: Who knows, now that the musical is back in style, maybe it's time I strutted my peppy puppet out for one last rousing, Chicago-style rendition of "All That Jizz."
Now, that would really razzle-dazzle them, don't you think?
Having a Penis Is...
BY GRANT MENZIES
(503) 243-2122
Men don't contemplate their navels. They contemplate their penises. Because having a penis means never having to admit you're lonely.
As any experienced old dame would tell you, the penis is no brash arriviste: It's as much a part of life as her marigolds. Like the universe's more durable creations, the penis is a democratic, all-purpose organ. It can go just about anywhere, do just about anything. When nature calls, males ignore demure roadside rest stops: We stand, ostensibly admiring the view from behind the car, and relieve our bladders against a tree. Provided it's not so cold you can't find your personal Magic Marker, you can also use it to write your golden name in a snowbank (though try as one might, one can never fully drain the damn thing of urine without performing jigs and rough grapplings).
Tender though it is, it's a fetishist's ultimate totem, capable of holding up under a Christmas tree's worth of piercing-parlor adornments, and all in secret, provided you don't set off the airport security alarm. The penis is an ideal communicator, too. For the tongue-tied among us, it's the easiest way to say, "I love you" (or, as is more often the case, "I want you"). And as the men of Puppetry of the Penis demonstrate, it's a work of constantly renewable art, flesh and blood Play-Doh with an easy elasticity that seems to come as a surprise to many women (and a few men).
The penis isn't perfect, not by a long stretch. Part of its charm is in its infinite, not to say disconcerting, variety. From a little acorn a big oak will grow, while a donkey dong will just hang there, forlornly engorged. There are circumcisions crooked and circumcisions handsome, foreskins tight and pointy (remember the "anteater" kid in grade school?) and foreskins loose and loopy. There are dicks that hang straight and dicks that jut at wild angles; dick heads mushroom-shaped, dick heads flat as squashed bowlers.
You can be sick as a dog and there's your eager penis, nudging up the belly for attention; conversely, you can command it to sit up for an admiring audience and all it will do is roll over. It can leak precum when aroused, even when safely flaccid--and usually when you're wearing those close-fitting, light-tan slacks and have to cross a crowded room with a puzzling stain down your leg. It's easy to joke about it getting caught in your zipper, but when it happens, you won't laugh.
Despite our mothers' admonishments not to "do that in public," the penis requires regular adjustments throughout the day
to be happy, usually at the least auspicious of moments. And if something ever goes wrong with it, however superficial and temporary, it's not just an annoyance, it's the end of the world as you know it. Which is why the undignified visibility of the penis also poses a mystery.
How much of a man's selfhood does his manhood represent? How much of a man's self-worth is contained in this capricious tube of mortal flesh? Ay, said a better man than I: There's the rub, because my impression, sexist though it may sound, is that the penis does more than just deliver loads. It bears all the murky, magnificent weight of male identity, in both form and function. So even if you can't make "The Hamburger" or the "Loch Ness Monster," take heart, guys. That's a beautiful tool you've got down there.
Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie Ave., 233- 1994. 8 pm Tuesday-Thursday, 7 pm Friday- Sunday, 9:30 pm Friday- Saturday, Feb. 4-9. $35-$39+ advance (Ticketmaster).
The original puppeteers were Australians Simon Morley and David Friend, who began performing in 1998.
A documentary,
, follows the pair on their national tour of Australia.
WWeek 2015