For my senior year high-school spring break trip, I went to Cuba with some classmates. Now, I was moderately overweight and was always worried about appearing shirtless in public because of my man-boobs and prominent nipples. But I figured “To hell with it”, and decided to enjoy the beach for the week anyways.
All was well until a few days in, where I overheard one of my friends discussing something on the beach, and heard the word “shrivelled”.
“What’s shrivelled?” I asked in a casually curious tone.
“NOT your nipples,” replied one girl, with a sarcastic smirk.
And BAM. It didn’t matter that I’d said “To hell with it”. It didn’t matter that I decided I’d be comfortable with myself. It didn’t matter that there wasn’t even uproarious laughter, that the conversation carried on after a brief chuckle. A trait that I had alwasy disliked was brought to the fore by a member of the gender to which I was attracted, and it knocked me down a notch. A notch I would have liked to keep.
I spent the rest of the trip inside, wearing at leat a t-shirt, and wore heavy sweaters for the rest of the school year. I was lucky this didn’t happen in junior high, though I didn’t feel all that lucky at the time.
This stuff is less about penis than about self image. Like Glenn said, roundly, men are far more obsessed with penis size than are women. Why do you think women generally drool over the likes of JFK Jr (RIP) and Sean Connery, instead of Ron Jeremy and John Holmes?
I forget why I wrote this. Maybe I just needed to tell it. Thanks all for listening.
And by no means am I trying to “one-up” the other stories here: some of you guys have been in quite unenviable situations. Good on you that you’re doing something about it though =) I just hope you’re working on the mental as well as the penile.
Good gains to you all, in body and in spirit.