Let me describe a scene. A man and a woman who have been flirting with the idea of becoming nude in the same room together, for whatever reason, though the reason is usually quite clear, however coyly they have avoided discussing it expressly. It may be less than 24 hours since they have met, or it may be on their wedding night. No matter how close they are socially, the ritual that occurs seems, to me, to be quite common, with few variants. Though, I must state that popular dramatic media such as literature and movies have trodden over this occasion with such banal generalness, and at such a high rate of repetition, that when we think of this moment, we might play a clip from Top Gun in our heads instead of a real memory.
An aside. I am tempted to write an entire essay on this subject (media‘s effect on reality with regard to human interaction), but I am afraid it must have been written already, over and over, with equivalent banal repetition as the subject itself. I am still tempted to clarify my point as briefly as possible. It is a simple and obvious point, so it requires little explanation. Human interaction in real life is, mostly, quite boring and awkward. We say the right things at the right time very infrequently. Most of our time is spent silently with each other. We stutter and fumble. Movies, literature, and other forms of entertainment do not contain these characteristics, unless they are trying at some sort of irony. And so, if entertainment mirrored reality in a precise way, why on earth would we bother with it instead of just going on with our lives? It must dramatize real life to be called entertainment at all. It does have an unintended effect, though, which I feel silly even mentioning. It causes us, as humans in real life, to expect real life to be as exciting as what we see in movies or read in books. I feel silly saying this because I feel silly for behaving this way. But I do. We all do, to some degree. We seek entertainment (in the form of movies and books and so on) in some way to supplement the lack of interesting shit in our lives that we expect because of entertainment. It’s a big, moronic cycle, but so sadly true.
Let me continue with the scenario. The precise moment when our fantasy comes to a halt is the moment of first nudity. This is a moment when we are brought away from the drama of flirting or dating or behaving like those people in movies, and back to fumbling reality. The ritual. For women, the thought process is similar to men to the extent that both parties are wholly focused on themselves. They have little to no awareness of the other naked person in the room. But I must remove the variants before I continue this discussion.
One main variant to this scenario involves a man who will not allow himself to be seen naked until he is fully ready. The term ‘ready’ here refers to the readiness of his penis. There are such men who will go to great lengths to never allow their partners to see their flaccid penises, even in long-term relationships. This appears to be more common than I had realized before discussing this subject with others (women, specifically). How this sort of secrecy can be maintained over the course of years baffles me, and the psychological implications are just too shallow and base to warrant discussion here. The female equivalent to this behavior would be the lights-off-during-sex type of woman. Another variant, though much less common, I am sure, involves men whose penises are about the same size when flaccid and erect. There is a colloquial term for this, usually expressed inversely as an excuse for men who insist their penises change form and size quite a bit from one state to the other. We all know the saying, and I frankly don’t care to type it out here, but I will remind you that it rhymes, in case we are on different pages.
With those exceptions removed, I must now discuss the difference between men and women, for interests of clarity and fairness. Women, in the moment of first nudity, can and generally do experience the same anxiety and self-consciousness as men. This is obvious and, in our society, well-established: women are expected to be insecure about their bodies. Men are expected to be less aware. And, to the point, men can be very unaware of their entire bodies at this moment of nudity. They tend to me more focused on a single body part. And finally, the argument I have been trying to get to, through all of this digression and rambling, is that men have a distinct, hilarious reaction to their self-consciousness at this very moment, which is quite different to women. Women, as a reaction to the feeling of self-consciousness and acute awareness of their bodies, tend to do their best to appear attractive. This might have been practiced in early puberty, and onward, in front of a mirror.
The woman in the moment of first nudity will try to strike what she has determined to be an attractive pose. Whether it involves arching the back, or making sure never to bend forward, for fear of allowing the belly to show any miniscule sign of a roll of fat (no matter how skinny she is, mind you), she will find some position that she has determined flattering. If only she knew that the man in the room with her has close to zero percent of his attention placed on her. He may be looking right at her, even speaking to her about her appearance, but let me assure you that he has only the smallest bit of his awareness focused on her, if any at all.
The man, in this instance, feels all of that self-consciousness and hyper-awareness that is usually reserved for the fragile woman and not the strong, dumb, loping man, but which occurs in all of us, at I assume a similar frequency across the sexes, with the only difference being the way we react to this feeling. And this is my point. This is, finally, where I get to discuss a very bizarre behavior exhibited by men in reaction to this universal feeling of self-consciousness. Instead of trying to strike an attractive pose or act naturally and confident, men tend to swat at their penises.
Yes.
Swat may be too violent of a verb. Call it juggling or bobbling or batting. The point is that the man immediately and quite frantically touches his flaccid penis in an attempt to grow it. This must be, I am sure, some sort of subconscious reflex. If the man knew what he looked like when batting at his penis, if he was even slightly aware of his appearance and how bizarre it looks, he might decide that the softness of his penis is a much lesser worry. The fact that he is juggling his genitalia like so many baboons at the zoo is much more embarrassing than the natural state of said battered genitalia.
This behavior baffles me. As a result of our alertness of our bodies as something to be seen and evaluated, we choose the most unflattering action possible. Truly, like a monkey. And the whole tableaux is more than just a little funny. The woman is arching quite uncomfortably and artificially on one side of the room, wondering what the man thinks about each self-perceived imperfection on her body. The man, on the other side of the room, is frantically bobbling his junk (or variably tugging on it like taffy), completely unaware of anything but the thoughts in his head, which usually include the paradox of trying to will his penis to a larger state while knowing all the while that the more he thinks about it, the more difficult it will be to achieve erection (note that I chose the word ‘difficult’ instead of ‘hard’ to avoid confusion). There could be a home invader in between the two, or a giant, ferocious grizzly, or zombie Hitler, and neither the man nor the woman would have a clue.
Pointing out the ludicrousness of this scenario would be redundant, but it’s still fun. This is a moment where connection tends to jump to a whole new level. Sex bonds people in a rapid way, whether they just met or are long-time friends. But at this moment just before the bond occurs, there is absolutely zero connection, except for the rare occasion where both people become simultaneously aware of how self-conscious they both are, and a moment of eye-contact and psychic connection causes instant laughter at the ridiculousness of the whole thing, which (the laughter) can create an even more powerful bond than the sex to follow, because it is a moment of unspoken but real honesty.
And, much like the sex to follow, this essay ends abruptly, with little satisfaction to likely be derived.
