Scott Keneally: Writer at Large

BEWARE OF VERY ROUGH FIRST DRAFTS. Don't expect anything too pretty or polished. I'm simply trying to squeeze out some rough ideas across the face of this blog. These musings may or may not find their way to the pages of my book. But as you will see, I'm taking certain liberties in voice and style that deviate from my published writings. I hope you enjoy, in spite of all of that.

Censored!!!

The following words are excerpted from my new story, "NEUROTIC." Sorry I had to censor the photo, but I didn't want to scare anyone.

I WISH, originally uploaded by skinnyreds.

Playing college football didn’t exactly boost my self-image, either. Not just because the locker room was packed with annoyingly fit guys but mainly because of the communal shower. For most of my life I had purposely avoided communal showers. I was young and homophobic and rather repulsed by the idea of being around other men’s naked penises. But on day one of winter camp I was forced into it. Everyone showered. I stood at my locker looking down, terrified and trying not to see the shadows, the shadows of men dangling as they strolled past. I wasn’t ready to make my entrance.

"Come on," I told it. "Give me something." I was, of course, talking to my penis, coaching it to spare me a couple more inches. It’s not that I had a small penis, it’s that when flaccid I had a diminutive penis. Sometimes when I step into the shower my girlfriend stares at it and says, “Awe,” as if it were a baby spider monkey. I was what some people liked to call a grower, not a shower.

"Come on, plllllease," I begged. No luck. If anything, it was retracting. So I took to casually sweeping my towel across it. "Finally," I thought, and walked to the shower with a very small handful of dignity that quickly circled the drain. I just wasn’t prepared for the extent of other men’s endowments. Granted, these athletes were taller, stronger and just plain bigger than most anyone and so their penis should be to scale and reflect that. But I was very tall and wore big gloves and shoes too, why wasn’t I to scale? Even though I was a bit over the six-inch average when fully erect, "a bit over the average" looks shockingly small on a guy of my height.

Penis problems and paranoia? Check.

posted by Scott Keneally @ 12:58 AM