AN INCH, AN INCH,
MY KINGDOM FOR AN INCH

By Paul Costello
Contact the author via Chris Johnstone by e-mail at christopher.johnstone@ntlworld.com

On a recent evening in summer, I sat on the sofa like a proverbial potato awaiting my next fix of televisual starch. I curled up expectantly awaiting an episode of Frasier or Friends that I had seen less than ten times. On my left sat my wife who, with one nimble fingering of our televisual remote, disappointed me, yet at the same time awakened me. Far from the expected "...and now for the twentieth time this week it's the episode of Frasier where Niles drools over Daphne and where (just for change, wink, wink) Frasier has a moral crisis to ponder" the channel switched to BBC 3.

I thought, "why am I watching BBC3? ...I mean the only thing they’ve done is Little Britain and as amusing and quirky it is I hardly find it appropriate that I should subject my good lady wife and myself to it 'pon the midweek even if I am the only gay in our village.

After a heated exchange about changing the channel my gentle spouse blurted "I wan that one!" and with the quick wrist of Shane Warne and the even quicker wrist of Leslie Grantham she hit me between the eyes with the aforementioned remote and then, literally to add insult to injury sideswiped me with a retort which would have made Oscar Wilde himself proud. "Shut up, I want to watch this," she sighed.

As I cowered in my most heroic manner achievable and my fingers parted in front of my manly eyes I gazed in horror at the title of the celluloid monstrosity before me. In one inch lettering on a blue background ( at least I assumed it was one inch) the banner read "MY PENIS AND I". Suddenly I was whisked back to another sofa, another time. Instead of my handsome wife, there sat my mater et pater ( contrary to accepted social standing my mother ruffled the Golden Virginia in her pipe ...and my dad played delicately with his pipecleaner) , the words spoken by my mother in her gruff but feminine voice had a timeless resonance...

"Oh, turn the knob, Henry" and there followed the awkward middle-class shuffling of PG moments gone awry. If you are like me then you too will have sat red-faced willing the Nescafe girl-guy-thing to disappear in lieu of something less sexually challenging, like, I don't know, a Flake TM advert. (hang on...)

So... there we sat. She to me, "This looks good, don't turn it over, he's like, really sensitive..."

Me: "Oh my god, this is all about willies, and small ones at that"

The ensuing forty five minutes moved from uneasy twitching to metaphorical high-fives as we followed this unassuming, articulate and genitally-challenged guy along a journey of self exposure. He covered everything you would wish to. From his earliest days at the hands of ten-year old bullies, through to his quest for anatomical perfection via a plastic surgeon and on to his catharsis in a group of (admittedly gay) NY self-confessed small penis possessors, we watched him find ultimate acceptance at the hands of a plaster-caster penis sculptor who entombed him in a paradoxically liberating way. I felt reassured.

My own concern is that the old joke about women parking cars is something that the male psyche would have us believe, in that one inch is equivalent to six.

So when I check my own hairline for signs of backwards slippage I see an inch and I think, "Jesus Christ, I have got to tell her that an inch is really nothing to worry about!"

Other hoolet online articles by Paul Costello can be found at:
hoolet edition 46 - An Inch, An Inch, My Kingdom For An Inch

hoolet is the magazine of RCGP Scotland. It is supported intellectually, financially and emotionally by RCGP Scotland.

This issue maintained by Robert Hallam.

AN INCH, AN INCH, MY KINGDOM FOR AN INCH

AN INCH, AN INCH,
MY KINGDOM FOR AN INCH