Penis Size

I called a hundred New York actors today, leaving so many messages I began to feel like a machine myself. “If you’re interested, send your resume and headshot to our casting address.” Gods.

My respite came in the form of seeing a college play in my neighborhood with Fred and Tippy—scouting talent, as always. There was none to be had. None whatsoever. In fact, one kid was so bad Fred spat “I hate that pig-faced boy. I hate him.” The play was so bad I’d rather have been back at the rental house making calls to voice mailboxes the whole time. Thank the gods we get industry comps and don’t have to pay to see these travesties.

Fritzie and Brick wanted a night out. I decided to take a night off the diet (one must live, mustn’t one?) and join them in some house-made fries and low-priced cocktails at Moody’s. Brick came over to my apartment and we shared some of my communion wine, chatted. He was having problems with Juanito but didn’t want to talk—he just wanted to drink. As a friend, I felt it was my solemn duty to raise a glass with him. Misery shared is misery made light, after all.

We met Fritzie on the corner and walked north, facing the cold and the breeze, knowing the exercise was necessary to keep ourselves a tiny bit balanced on this night of promised excess.

Moody’s was packed, but there was one booth left in the back near the fireplace. Cozy and perfect. It’s even a non-smoking bar, so I didn’t have to worry about reverting to my all-too-recent smoking past.

After our beers, fries, sangrias, and onion rings, we were all feeling the love. Fritzie expounded on the joys of drinking with old friends, waxed poetic on the unique energies our spirits brought to the world, and ultimately, with my gentle coaxing, cut to the chase and started talking about penis size. We used the mustard and ketchup bottles the waitress had left on our table for comparison.

Holding up his hand in a cupping motion, Fritzie turned to Brick and said, “I don’t need giant, and I’m not a size queen, but I need something I can enjoy.”
“Heft,” I said. “You need to feel the heft of it.” (It seemed a particularly fitting word at the time.)
Brick rolled his eyes.

Fritzie went on to tell us of the man he’d gone home with once whose manhood was so tiny he could masturbate it with just his fingertips. “I had to get out of there,” he breathed, holding up a limp French fry to represent the offending member. “No thanks.”

We paid the bill and headed out again, deciding to try the Sovereign. Instead, we came across a Scottish place, Old St. Andrew’s. Fritzie has a thing for dive bars. In we went, Brick thrilled to discover it was a smoker’s paradise. We drank Macallans and watched a stumbling-drunk blond woman in leopard-print suede stiletto boots try to play pool as every man in the place jockeyed for position, hoping to be the owner of the arms she eventually toppled into for the night. Brick and Fritzie drooled over some guy across the room—I didn’t think much of him, but then my taste in men doesn’t run that way. I prefer even the cheesiest Eurotrash to poor white trash.

Brick finally went off in a cab as Fritzie and I walked home by way of Walgreen’s and the twenty-four hour taqueria on the corner (why was there an entire family inside at 2 a.m?). A quick hug and kiss parted us and I was glad again to live so near a friend with whom to discuss sex disasters, penis size and the dirty little secrets of attraction.