It is my contention that every member of the Department has, at one time or another, fantasized about sucking a dick. I reckon that some have even done it. I don't think enough is made of this. It isn't that I find the situation troubling I do not find the situation troubling. In fact, I derive a certain serenity from it all. That is the word that comes to mind serenity when I think of someone sucking a dick.
You see . . . my generation, in America, grew up with pornography. We grew up looking at pictures of women—and in that rare special find, even pictures of men—sucking dicks. And there is a certain sort of dick-sucking picture—a certain genre, one might say—that has always interested me. It's the sort where the dick-sucker is looking right into the camera . . . It's portrait, but portrait with dick in mouth.
I recall I had this prissy girlfriend one time . . . and we went over to visit a friend of hers, and this friend was a heroin-addict, and had a heroin-addict room-mate. Well, this room-mate couldn't have been more than 19, and she had clearly lived a hard life; she dressed in the punk fashion and one did not get the impression she was posing. But this one day she was dressed up more in the "trust me, I am mediocre" fashion perhaps she had had to go to a job interview or something. And my prissy girlfriend says to her: "You look nice . . . " And the young woman replies: "you should see me with a dick in my mouth."
Her comment has always stayed with me. And I have come, finally, to wonder if everyone might look better with a dick in his or her mouth. Perhaps better isn't exactly the right word—perhaps more true, or more serene . . . I don't know. Think, for instance, of that little display case by the Department door you know, the one with little dickless portraits of all the Department members. If that case was filled instead with dick-sucking portraits, I think it would be nicer, and would more powerfully convey to students exactly who is who.
But why is that? I have been thinking long and hard. What I've come up with is this: you always, in truth, have a dick in your mouth. It is the dick of the god that opened your mouth in the first place; and why did he open it, and why does he hold it open with his dick? It is so that he may come, and he does come—he comes in your mouth. One day you will choke and die from his coming . . . but until that day, be glad of the dick in your mouth. Be glad of its erratic issue. Be glad you are not whole, and not discrete, and not in control of what comes into your mouth. And let the portraits you have taken distinguish you from the discretion at the heart of every devoted mediocrity.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Joe Wenderoth grew up near Baltimore. Wesleyan University Press published his first two books of poems: Disfortune (1995), and It Is If I Speak (2000). Shortline Editions published a chapbook, The Endearment (1999, now available from Verse Press), and a novel, Letters To Wendy's, was published by Verse Press in 2000. Wenderoth is Assistant Professor of English at the University of California at Davis.
