Your Penis Isn’t a Secret

Man Bulge: Everybody already knows it’s there, bro.

One of the more interesting (to someone who defines themselves as a ‘penis enthusiast’ on social media, anyway) cultural gaps I’ve been lucky to explore in moving to Germany four years ago, is how another culture handles bodies and sexuality. Through daily trips to the gym showers, frequent visits to Berlin’s best men’s sauna, and my work as an escort, I’ve had a lot of first hand experience with both bodies and sexuality auf deutsch. And while there’s loads of cultural overlap with the Germans and Americans (like a LOT—way more than you’d ever expect), there’s little true understanding of how deeply and universally weird Americans are about nudity and sex.

It isn’t something that’s understood and sort of chuckled about here the way other typically American traits or stereotypes can be (loud talking, terrible beer, Fox News). It isn’t something most Germans who haven’t lived in the US understand about Americans at all. In fact, given the thunderous presentation of capital S SEX in American movies, video games, tv series, and advertising, most Germans probably (reasonably) assume that Americans are just horny cocksure fuckers, constantly on the hunt for something to publicly inseminate. That porn-style sex is a normal and ever-present part of being alive in the USA. Rock flag and eagle 🤘🇺🇸🦅.

But as someone who grew up in the US, I can tell you: the Germans are far hornier and with an approach to body ownership that easily outpaces the Americans in both enjoyment and long-term sustainability. To German people, particularly those over the age of 40 or so, having a body and having it viewed is not something that is meaningful in any significant way. Shame that penises, testicles, and anuses exist seems simply absent from the German cultural mind. Particularly when it is contrasted against the visiting Americans who insist on changing clothes under their towels.

Where did this fear of being seen come from?

Growing up in the American south in the 90s/00s, I still had to go to gym class in school and I still had to shower there (no clue if kids do this today, but I presume not). I was a theatre kid so there was lots of clothes changing and bodies exposed there. And I had home internet access which allowed me to see, research, and explore exactly the parts of the man bulge pics I needed to know more about. There were lots of opportunities in my life to see and be seen, but the idea of someone actually looking at my clothed bulge or exposed penis (or getting caught looking at someone else’s) was still avoided like it was radioactive. It scared me.

It’s hard to pin down exactly where the unacceptability of genital prominence or visibility arose. Certainly at school, any indication that somebody could see your penis (or your constantly present erection) was a ceaseless target for ridicule. Even the guys rumoured to have big dicks kept them shrouded in the frustrating mystery of boxer shorts and baggy denim.

At home, there weren’t many proper discussions about it, but a few incidents remain seared into my mind even in adulthood. These included my mom saying she wasn’t going to buy me a speedo in 9th grade because she believed I would “never wear it in public.” Because everyone would be able to “see my stuff.” To this day I’m not sure if that idea embarrassed her, or if she was protecting me from being embarrassed.

And as a child of the era, I got plenty of Stranger Danger talks about how only medical professionals should ever be allowed to see me in any state of undress. Everyone else who tried to look at my penis was a pervert; a sicko trying to destroy my life (?) by touching my penis (?) and…

It never resolved cleanly to me even as a child, this line of thinking. By the time I was 11 or 12, I was already desperate for someone to want to see all the cool stuff my boner could do, but was still being regularly reminded that anybody with a passing interest in that part of me was evil and wanted only to ruin me. Unsurprisingly, this often came with a lot of coded homophobic talk about that eternally feared sword of Damocles hanging over all men since the dawn of time: anal penetration.

Why are you hiding your penis?

Certainly the most easily identifiable source of inherited shame and fear came from role models. There were approximately zero men in my real life from age 0-20 who ever dressed in a way that indicated they possessed anything beyond flushly sanded Ken doll parts down there. No big bulge, no outlines, no nothing. They talked about their dicks or would grab or adjust themselves occasionally. But standing in clothing, there was no indication they had anything at all in pressing need of adjusting. Teachers, cops, coaches, uncles: It was all just billowing fabrics and cargo pockets.

The men on tv who boasted blue jean bulges or any sort of brief-cut swimsuit were “just looking for attention down there” or somehow abstractly accosting women by daring to insinuate that they had genitals, according to my parents.

I can remember being in a Florida gift shop at 8 or ten years old, witnessing my mother scoff at a rack of beefcake postcards featuring men in small swimsuits with things like “FLORIDA: wish you were here!” printed across them.

“Guys like that are always trying to make you look at it,” she groaned. As though just the existence of their bodies somehow forced one to feel uncomfortable or accosted.

Did she know men like this? Were they trying to get her to “look at it?” Would I be allowed to look at it? What if I wanted to look?

Why the endless rows of postcards featuring women with large breasts in bikinis didn’t force the viewer into any similar type of nonconsensual relationship remained unclear.

The Penis is a Weapon: male bodies symbolize violence

The lesson to be intuited seemed consistently to be: Men who display their bodies are doing something to you. Women’s bodies merely exist.

As a young man, I knew I didn’t want to do anything TO anybody, or be perceived as though I wanted to. Like many young men I also didn’t want to call any extra attention to myself sexually, at school or otherwise. So I spent the next ten years wearing the same boxer shorts and baggy pants as everyone else my age. But inside, I kept questioning what we were all doing.

At home alone, I would put on the 2-3 “cool” pairs of underwear I had collected (these consisted of red briefs with a mesh panel, a single black Jockey bikini brief, and a pair of Hanes which I had altered on the sewing machine to be far more snug than ever intended) and marvel at my bulge in the mirror; how could I stack everything so it would look effortlessly fuller? Could I comfortably bend my permanent erection around my balls so it appeared I had a very naturally large penis? What pants could I wear over this perfect package that would let me occasionally catch a glimpse of it, but not grab anyone else’s attention?

I created a secret second self at home who wasn’t worried about anyone seeing my genitals because they looked cool af in my black Jockeys. Somebody might even want to look. It was exciting to me and something I was gradually building up the courage to “get away with” in public—the undeniable having of adult-shaped body parts. I felt grown up and proud of a body that the world around me was instead saying I should hide as much and as often as possible.

Releasing the threat and accepting the discomfort of others

Maybe there are men out there who work to wield their penis as a weapon. Something they want perceived as a threat. That could be a legitimate trope, and the idea certainly came from somewhere. Maybe they can only feel safe and validated if they are known to be capable of violence or overpowering others. To these men, perhaps the idea of inflating and displaying their inches is a coveted red flag, warning onlookers that they can and might DO something to them. No reason for them to feel shy or ashamed, because they are able to cause harm.

I can’t speak for any of these men because I haven’t ever encountered them. Sure, I’ve known lots of men who needed to have threatening postures, muscles, and trucks. Excited to puff their chest up and crush through a handshake. But I’ve yet to meet a man who wears his penis in the same fashion. These types are always much too afraid of other men noticing or coveting their genitals to wield them thusly. There is a cowardice that seems inextricable from men who need to be perceived as violent, aggressive alphas. And somehow it’s always wound deftly around their penis.

Even online, the men who want their “private parts” well displayed under clothes, or in full view of others, seem to do so only because they know what I knew as a boy with my early underwear collection: these parts are here and they’re incredible! They look cool and feel cool and bring pleasure! Hiding them is physically uncomfortable and counterintuitive to what we want other people to know about them.

In Berlin, where I reside today, almost no one seems to give a shit about how another person’s body looks. Coed saunas are a regular and uncomplicated part of normal life; in there, nudity is mandatory (you’ll be promptly yelled out the door for wearing shorts or swimsuits). Dicks and balls and labia sit side by side and their presence doesn’t seem to mean very much to anyone involved. In the gym, men (read: me) wear compression shorts or leggings without considering whether they’ll be noticed, or whether someone else might be made uncomfortable by their presence. On the street, bulges abound, unencumbered by thoughts of threat, fear, or ridicule. They’re just there.

Man buldges made of penises and testicles: they’re just there.

And that’s the crucial point to all of this. Beyond their natural association with sex and pleasure, these parts simply exist! They are there! Making believe that hiding them in clothes or with changes in posture will somehow make the bearers socially acceptable is lunacy once it’s actually spelled out.

Owning a body that comes in so many incredible shapes, sizes, and varieties, should be, at minimum, a neutral experience. In the same way that women with large breasts shouldn’t have to do anything to obscure the plain fact that those breasts exist, or to feel any shame or fear about possessing them, men shouldn’t need to wear underwear that smashes their body unnaturally flat. Or spend $14.00 on “modesty pads” for their sports clothes.

Or waste years of their lives pretending that their penises don’t exist except when they piss, fuck, or masturbate. Or that hiding them keeps them safe from the judgement of others.

Big bulge or small bulge, or somewhere between those vague and useless designations, your parts exist and are what make you who you are. Accept that others will react to you, and then release any import that reaction has. It simply doesn’t matter. Learn to be proud of your penis.

-t