It was any other Saturday night. I was at a gay bar, drinking too many vodka redbulls and losing my mind over Britney song after GaGa song, having a good time with my friends. I was wearing new clothes and I felt like I looked good, a confidence that helps in environments like gay bars.
I have a small bladder, so I told my friends I’d be right back and was just going to the bathroom. I peed, completely unaware of who was around me, and as I went to do my pants back up at the urinal, the 40-something-year-old man next to me told me that I shouldn’t bother doing them back up. He then proceeded to force his hand down my pants and grab my dick through my underwear.
I slapped his hand away, asked him what the fuck was wrong with him and told him he was a pervert. I washed my hands and went back to my friends. I was furious, yet my friends were not surprised – common practice in a gay bar.
“You’re gorgeous, you can hardly blame him,” one of them told me, wrapping a compliment around an excuse for the man who had just assaulted me.
I didn’t do anything. I didn’t tell security, I didn’t leave and I didn’t find him and punch him in the dick as hard as I could (as much as I might’ve wanted to); I just tried to forget about it and still have a good night. I didn’t do anything because, as sad as it is, it happens all the time and it is only one in a long list of stories that I could tell about sexual assault. Long since, I’ve been scared of confrontation.
I am learning what it is to be a gay man in an environment where we only view each other as bodies, or dicks, or holes, and what we want to do with that object.
Things you know about me so far then are that I’m gay, I’m subjectively good looking, I like vodka redbulls and I have been sexually assaulted — more than once. Other things you should know are that I’m tall, close to two metres; I like fashion (original, I know); I work in retail fashion and I have a dick that is above average size (bear with me).
I could talk a lot about having a large dick. It is desired, but can also be really fucking annoying. I know it isn’t something I should complain about, and so many people see having a big dick as amazing, but anyone who has to hold their genitalia when they sit down in a public bathroom lest it touch the bowl or toilet paper or god knows what else knows that it isn’t always sexy.
Don’t get me wrong – I’ve had plenty of good times with my dick too. But while men using my height to hit on me is an eye-roll-and-a-half, men asking if the rest of me is proportional is downright not okay. Sexual harassment is still sexual harassment; I don’t care if it is done in good jest.
Such behaviour penetrates every aspect of my life. I was at work once, wearing an outfit I loved and feeling good about myself, when a customer pointed out that outline of my dick was visible. He told me not out of kindness or wanting to spare me embarrassment, but out of arousal. Not even a week later, another customer slid his hand up my leg and cupped my genitals, asking me to join him in the fitting room when I was only trying to do my job.
Even in my private life there are problems. Sex is a wonderful thing, but when someone I adore is in pain from having sex with me, I find it hard to see having a big dick as a good thing. As soon as someone is uncomfortable, my dick pretty much crawls back up inside me. Sex could never be that important to me. I can’t look at someone and only see them for the body they live in.
So I’m pretty and I’m tall and I have a big dick, all things that are to be desired, that people like. But then my mind wanders back to that man at the urinal and I think about how he was almost definitely looking at my dick while I peed, and that brought out some animalistic tendency in him that he just could not control, excusing it because of my appearance, or my tight clothes, or my attitude or whatever else. I don’t care if you find me attractive, you cannot touch me without my consent.
Incidents like this make me wish I was something I am not. It has made me want my appearance to be different so that I’ll be left alone, so that I can have a meaningful connection with someone before I suck their dick in a bathroom stall, so that I have to fight less, so that I can wear what I want without hesitation, so that bad casual sex can fuck right off. If having a big dick holds me back from that, is it worth it?
Last year, I said, “I am not a body for your consumption,” more than I said, “I care for you,” because we have trained ourselves to dehumanise our companions and make them an object for us to blow our load over. And it isn’t my fault. I refuse to live my life differently, to stop going to clubs or to wear baggier clothing because people can’t keep their dick in their pants (quite literally) and I will keep standing up for myself. My body is mine and I make no apologies in protecting it, using it, or doing with it whatever I damn well please.