Tough Penis

Max Kruger-Dull

Sammy developed a tough penis. 

From when he was twelve to when he stopped caring about caution, Sammy waved goodnight to Mom every evening and went up to his bedroom. He thought, I’m walking to my bedroom with my penis. 

Sammy had a queen mattress on wheels that he imagined as a traveling throne. Every night, he pushed his bed in front of the door to keep Mom out and far away. As the bed rolled, the floor made unhappy noises that startled Mom. Mom asked him about those noises, accepting them as part of her home after Sammy explained he was afraid of burglars or heisters (or whoever) and was blocking off the door for protection. 

He thought of his bed more as a place to masturbate than a place to sleep. Every night, Sammy, naked except for the string bracelet on his left wrist, lay face down on the mattress with his left arm under his stomach against his penis. This was the only way he masturbated, rubbing his penis against both his wrist and the bed like they were pulling something out of him. He mostly thrusted tamely, but even minor thrusts could make his bed hit the door like a bongo; Mom never brought up those noises. 

While Sammy masturbated, the string bracelet crept up his forearm and choked his skin. In a porn, he learned about autoerotic asphyxiation and wondered if strangling his forearm was similar.  

Sammy skipped straight porn and started with straightforward gay porn—kissing into sucking into fucking—but moved to the aggressive when he was fourteen. Slapping. Caging. Humiliating. He loved when the top called the bottom a sissy. 

He mostly watched porn on his phone. One actor, Kurt Jones, specialized in throwing eggs and bacon and pancake batter on his partners as they serviced. Sammy liked Kurt’s simple name but worried that, in the future, he’d need to find actors more and more twisted than Kurt to cum. 

Every night, Sammy tried to cum at least once but usually twice or more. The task took him five minutes in the beginning but kept elongating and loosening as he grew older until a single stretch of masturbation could cut far into his sleep time. On the nights he couldn’t finish, he’d thrust until his body gave up.

Sammy put a lot of stress on his penis, and back, and neck, and wrist. His penis was always weary. His back and neck were always stiff. His hand would hurt while using pencils at school if he’d held his phone too long while masturbating the night before. In school, a charming teacher had said that masturbation was healthier than apples, and Sammy thought, For everyone but me. 

Over the years, Sammy’s penis toughened until he began to think of it as a genie that could always grant one more wish. At twenty, Sammy learned how impossible it’d gotten to cum without the pressure of his body on top of his penis on top of a mattress. Pressure is your middle name, he’d look down at his dick and think.  

Men didn’t like that Sammy couldn’t cum without his mattress or get hard without rough porn. One man—a swimmer with a habit of caressing skin like he was moving through water—took on the challenge of arousing Sammy. He stood over Sammy as if to say, “I’m hot.” Sammy hoped to get hard for his swimmer. To be hard is to be lovely, he thought. His swimmer put work into Sammy’s penis, pumping the flesh like it was a raft to inflate. His penis didn’t inflate. The swimmer gave up and said, “Your dick must like to stay small,” a statement that made Sammy hard for two seconds. The swimmer fucked Sammy and left. 

At twenty-seven, Sammy’s bartender took him to a meeting for sex addicts, assuring him that masturbation addicts counted too. The walls of the meeting room were painted the color of Sammy’s penis after it’d chafed from too much work. Six people showed up, one of whom took Sammy home after the meeting. “I’m not supposed to be taking you home,” this gentle-faced man said in the taxi. On the man’s vast bed, they kissed for a while, pushed around skin for a while. The man grabbed Sammy’s penis but couldn’t make it do anything, so he said, “No worries,” in such a calm, open voice and let go. The man kissed Sammy like he understood how baffling sex could be. Then Sammy flipped onto his stomach and reached for his phone and put on unruly porn. And he made use of the man’s pleasant mattress. The man massaged Sammy’s scalp until he realized his hands were a distraction from Sammy’s porn stars. The man sat in front of Sammy and watched as he thrusted. In moments, Sammy looked up from his porn into generous eyes and then back down again.