The Lengths of My Deception
Confessions of the first man to lie about his size.
by Craig Davidson
July 31, 2006
Confession time.
I am a liar. A fabricator. A falsifier. A teller of tall tales. A spinner of specious stories. A fraudulent forger of fallacious fictions. A . . . well, listen, you get the point.
Lies come easier to me than to most people, and my embellishments possess the ring of believability. This is due to something I learned long ago: begin with a kernel of truth. Every convincing lie is formed around a grain of fact, enrobed by several layers of fabrication. A good lie is like a pearl: a tiny grit of truth covered with a dense nacre of falsities.
Why do I lie? Most likely because I consider my life to be drab and seek to add notes of humor, absurdity, or cinematic panache to its humdrum circumstances. I often feel as though I am tendering my life in the form of a screenplay to an old-school, cigar-chomping Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer producer:
PRODUCER: I read your script, Davidson, and it stinks to high heaven. Nothing to sink your teeth into — where's the rising action, the falling action, the sultry love interest and saucy boudoir scenes? Your main character, he's a sap! A nervous Neddie! Make him a fighter pilot or a boxer or, goddamnit, a secret agent behind Kraut lines. Punchier, Davidson — give me PUNCHIER!
So I lie. I lie in my job as a writer, and I lie off the clock. The problem, as all inveterate liars know, is that invariably these lies catch up. This is especially true when it comes to relationships. Quite honestly, I've broken off more than one relationship due to an accumulation of falsehoods. It would get so I was paranoid leaving my girlfriend alone with family or friends, for fear of an exchange such as the following:
MY MOTHER: Craig told you that, did he? How ... interesting.
GIRLFRIEND: Did I get it wrong? He said the orphans —
MY MOTHER: The ones he rescued?
GIRLFRIEND: Yes, those ones. He said he was able to crawl into a dumbwaiter and haul himself up to the third floor —
MY MOTHER: Of the burning orphanage?
GIRLFRIEND: You look confused — am I describing it wrong?
MY MOTHER: Oh, heavens, no. It's just my son is such a modest boy; he rarely talks of his heroics. [queasy smile]
Of course, I've never told quite so flagrant a lie, nor ever dated anyone so incredulous that she might have swallowed it. But I did lie compulsively and, instead of simply admitting I'd done so and trying to move on, fled relationships like a chicken-gutted soldier fleeing the battlefield, salting the earth behind me as I went.
It's an awful admission, but the encouraging fact is that a few years ago I never would've made the admission at all. This whole piece, the confessions found following — I would never have set them down. I now make a habit of brutal honesty. I'm like a raging alcoholic turned teetotaler. And as with a reformed alcoholic, I know that one lie, like one drink, leads to another and another and soon I'm claiming to share the bloodlines of Danish royalty or that I once wrestled a spotted snow leopard. Nowadays I am a fastidious truth-teller, no matter how poor a light it casts me in.
Which brings us to the following tale. It needs only a minor preface: years ago I dated a woman — let's call her "R." — and had taken her out to dinner. We'd been friends for some time, so there was a sense of familiarity coupled with the unease of us moving from friends to something more intimate.
We'd had wine with dinner and drinks afterwards. R. was wearing the most revealing blouse I'd ever seen her in. It was difficult not to stare. She caught me looking.
"You like?"
R. was canny. She left out the qualifier "it" — which would direct me to comment upon the blouse — or "them," directing me to comment upon what the blouse kept in check.
"I do. What bra size are you?"
I'll admit it was crass. Also out of character: crassness is not my style when it comes to the ladies, if I can be said to possess any style at all, which truthfully I cannot.
After the slightest pause she replied with "34C."
I said something lame like "Good to know" and sipped my scotch and soda, feeling every inch the suave master-seducer.
"How about you?"
"How about me what?"
R. considered me coyly, staring out of the tops of her eyes. "What size are you?"
We were drunk, the talk had turned salacious: she wasn't asking my collar size. In light of future events, I should've fobbed off her question with a sunny smile and said, "Oh, thirty-four waist, thirty-two leg." But as I said, those were the lying years.
I pursed my lips, searching for a suitable number. "Around eight inches."
I don't know why I settled on eight, except to say that it seemed then — and seems to this day — a solid penis size. Not too flashy, no brickbat, but the sort of size that'll get the job done with satisfaction.
It was an utter lie. Note how it began with a kernel of truth (I did, in fact, have a penis) before falling headlong off the cliff of factuality. It was a two-inch lie — which, considering the appendage in question, was a mighty big lie indeed.
Because of course, I had measured my penis. It's my naive assumption that most guys have done so, seeing as throughout puberty our penises are a chief source of fascination. It's ludicrous to think that most every boy didn't find himself within reach of a ruler and allow curiosity to get the better of him.
Certainly I had. First in my late teens, then again in my early twenties under the belief it had grown. Both times the measurement was the same: six inches, root to tip. Or six inches and a little — but because "and a little" signified mere millimeters, I thought it was mathematically incumbent upon me to round down.
Six inches put me in the fiftieth percentile of penis size nationwide. The very definition of average. And yes, I've heard the platitudes: It's not the size of the wizard's staff, it's the spell it casts. Not the size of the bat but the skill of the batsman. Not the size of the boat but the motion of the ocean.
All phrases I suspect were coined by men cursed with substandard penises.
Today I am in a better headspace regarding my endowment. If anyone were to ask, I would answer with, "Six inches even, and not particularly girthy, either." But back then I was embarrassed about it — and when I was embarrassed, I lied.
R.'s eyes did a funny thing when I said eight inches: they lit up, as though a tiny fire had been kindled in each iris. I wondered if I was in the presence of a size queen.
It seemed unlikely. I'd always felt certain I'd be able to spot a size queen: she'd be the rapacious, wild-eyed minx with blood-red lipstick and long harlequin fingernails. But maybe size queens took on the most innocuous guises — such as the pretty young woman sitting across from me. And who but a size queen would so boldly inquire as to a man's penis size in the first place?
The evening progressed, as did our drunkenness. We ended up at her place. R. fixed some drinks and we drank them and found ourselves making out on the sofa.
I realized my mistake: I'd told a lie that, if events advanced down their natural line, stood a 100% chance of discovery. It was like telling a podiatrist I had twelve toes before taking my socks off — an expectation I could not possibly fulfill.
My primal desires were in direct conflict with the desire not to expose my fraudulent diameters. I weighed the pros and cons and elected to continue forward with the following goals:
1. Get us into the bedroom with the lights off. If R. were to glimpse my unit in stark light, its shortcomings would be deathly apparent. But if she could only feel it . . .
2. Make sure I was as fully erect, as priapically tumescent as possible when she first laid hands upon me. With favorable lighting and obscure angles, I might temporarily pass for what I was not — like a dwarf with lifts in his shoes.
When I suggested we move things into the bedroom, she agreed. When I suggested we leave the lights off, she acquiesced. Unfortunately, her bedroom window bordered the street; a streetlamp glowed not twenty feet away. Fearful that she'd think me a prude or a predator if I insisted upon drawing the curtains, my only option was to deal with the unwelcome visibility.
"Let's get those pants off," R. growled, snatching at my trouser button.
She really was a size queen — and I was to be her latest conquest!
A bizarre vision sprung into my head: R sitting on an overstuffed leather chair in a dim oak-paneled room, bearskin rug on the floor and a roaring fire in the grate. A hunter's trophy chamber. R with a monocle socked over one eye, extolling her conquests to a young acolyte.
R: [pointing to a large plaster-of-paris penis mounted on a wall plaque] Now, my dear, that one was a wily devil. He led me on a merry chase, I don't mind telling you! But in the end I tamed him — he was no match for a Size Queen of my abilities. [pointing to my own penis, much smaller than the others] Sometimes the hunt isn't worth the bounty. You have to take your quarry at his word, but I'm afraid some men are frightful liars. That one I took purely for spite.
Then my pants were off, boxer shorts tugged down, and I was exposed. I performed the most vigorous Kegel of my life, pumping the silly thing full of as much blood as it could bear.
R. laid her hands upon me delicately, running her index finger from the base of my penis up over the head. And if her finger's journey was shorter than she'd been expecting, if she felt like a mountaineer who'd geared up to scale K2 only to find herself at the foot of a sand dune, well, her face did not register the disappointment. For which I was grateful.
The sex was good. By which I mean to say, good for me. Sex is always good for me, due to the simple fact it is sex, and I am having it. Sex with R. was doubly enjoyable, as my head was bobbing with twin euphorias: the euphoria at breaking my pitiful celibate streak paired with the compulsive liar's euphoria of getting away with one.
Or I should say, the sex was good up to a point.
The exact moment where things soured was after I'd fumbled myself into a condom — my back to R., in a pocket of shadow at the edge of the bed — and was attempting the awkward next step. A degree of finesse is required, especially the first time between two people; evidently I made a misstep because R. gritted her teeth and sucked air through them.
"Are you all right?" I asked.
"It's just that . . . you're so big."
Have you ever been to dinner at a friend's house and they've served something that you didn't fancy but ate out of courtesy? When asked how it tasted, you said, "Oh, really . . . good."
R's pause told me everything I needed to know. That pause was the moment when she considered telling me the truth before opting to spare my feelings.
I knew that pause. I used that pause all the time.
Things went downhill. My mind kept coming up with alternate endings to R.'s sentence:
"It's just that . . . it's like getting poked with a darning needle."
"It's just that . . . you're hung like a guitar string."
"It's just that . . . it's like a giant mosquito proboscis sucking all the vigor out of me."
"It's just that . . . I feel like I'm being probed by E.T.'s glowing finger. Except not as big."
Then, as with the majority of my sexual dalliances, it just . . . ended. We lay in bed together awhile, then I made an excuse about having to get up early the next morning. We saw each other a few more times before things fizzled, mainly due to my own apathy and shame. We resolved to be friends, though we've hardly spoken to one another since.
Of course, it's entirely my fault. I lost a good friend, and why? Because I fibbed about the length of my penis. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I am working to change. This admission is a baby step forward, but there are many more to be made. It's a slippery slope for the compulsive liar, but I am doing my best.
My name is Craig Davidson. I have a six-inch penis. And not particularly girthy, either.
But I do enjoy cuddling.
Actually, in all truth, I do not enjoy cuddling. At all. I'd rather just go to bed.
Kinda sucks being honest.
©2006 Craig Davidson and hooksexup.com