People look at me like I’m out of my mind when I tell them I decided to have my penis surgically enlarged. Women especially. They always say, “It’s not the size of the boat, it’s the motion of the ocean.” I tell them they never tried to cross the Atlantic in a dinghy. They always tell me they fall in love with the man, not the organ. But they don’t have to listen to the most humiliating question a man can ever hear:

“Is it in yet?”

I used to have a girlfriend. Her name was Sheila. I really liked Sheila. You might even say I loved her. We met at Arty’s, a train store on the north side. I collect trains, and I have a track that runs all through my house, it’s really fun, you should see it. Anyway, Sheila’s dad was a conductor. When she tells people, they often say, “For what symphony?” and she says, “The Illinois Central.” It’s a very funny joke, in my opinion, and I always liked it when she said it. She had a wonderful sense of humor, she really did. She’s very attractive, as well. She thinks she’s a bit heavy, but I think she’s perfect. She’s very active and quite fit, actually, and I always tell her if she’s been around in the Botticelli era, she’d have been the belle of every ball. She says I’m not objective. But beauty’s in the eye of the beholder, and to me she’s beautiful. We went out a long time before we became intimate. We kissed and were very affectionate with each other, physically speaking. Sheila was a very sensuous person. I was particularly affectionate in an oral sense with her, and she was very grateful and satisfied, I was sure of that, because she expressed this frequently. And frankly, I enjoyed this immensely, no pressure on me, and it was very gratifying to make a woman I felt so strongly about feel that good. But I would never let her handle or see my equipment, even though she expressed an interest in doing so. Well, eventually, she asked me what was wrong. I said nothing was wrong, I was just a little shy. I’m not really shy at all, but I wasn’t about to tell her that of the last three women who had seen it, one had laughed, and the other two had sighed in disgust. The one who laughed was a professional, so you know that’s money out of her pocket.

As you can imagine, eventually I had to expose my shortcoming. At least she didn’t laugh. Sheila was not that kind of person. She didn’t say anything. But you could tell she was disappointed. You could feel it. And the first time we had intercourse, you could tell she was unsure whether I had entered her. Which I’m sure she wasn’t. And I was so worried and disturbed that I had trouble performing. So would you if you were trying to drive in a nail with a toothpick. So basically that was a disaster. But Sheila was great, she really was. She was extremely encouraging, considering the circumstances. Naturally it was quite a while before we attempted intercourse again. I continued to give her oral pleasure, and that was fine withme, truthfully, but Sheila insisted upon more intercourse. She said, “It’s not the size of the boat, it’s the motion of the ocean.” She said she was in love with the person, not the organ.

Well, when we attempted intercourse again, she was very anxious, and I was a wreck. Frankly, she over-compensated. Sheila is a very passionate person, don’t get me wrong, but she was moaning and panting in such an artificial way it was clear she was insincere. It felt like she was trying to prove how exciting it was to have intercourse with a cue-tip. She then began to verbalize, saying overtly sexual words, which only served to make me feel more anxious, because it was so transparent how unsexual she felt, and how insufficient I was. I felt disconnected from my body, like I was a floating head watching some man with a little boy’s wee-wee trying to satisfy a woman.

Then Sheila said, “I want you to intercourse (although that was obviously not the word she used) me with your vagina.”

She called my penis a vagina.

She was mortified, you could tell. I just closed my eyes, pretended to have vigorous intercourse with her, and then simulated an orgasm.

When we were finished, she just got up, put her clothes on, mumbled some excuse I couldn’t quite catch, and left. This was unusual, because she always spent the night at my house. I have an alarm clock worked into my train system, so she wakes up to my train. She used to love being woken up by my train. But not that night.

The next day I got the dreaded, “We have to have a talk” call. I told her not to worry about it, that I understood, that it was okay. She was very nice. You could tell she felt awkward. She said it wasn’t me, it was her, that she wasn’t ready for a commitment, blah blah blah. I felt for her, I truly did. I put her in a very uncomfortable position with my penis. I tried calling her a few times after that, but I always got her machine, and she never returned my calls.

So when the doctor asked me how many inches I wanted to add, I said, “How many you got?” He laughed, but I told him that honestly, if I could get to six inches, I’d be ecstatic. I said I’d love eight. The surgeon said he wasn’t a miracle worker.

But this much I’m sure of: as soon as I’ve been through my post-operative physical penile rehabilitation, I’m gonna pay a little visit to Sheila, Viagra in hand, and I’m going to take her around the world in my new luxury liner.