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A Paean to Peen

Bedroom Eyes

My dear readers: you and I have only two awkward, uncomfortable mornings left together. I’m going to try to treat my second-to-last installment with the same ambition with which I approach my weekends by packing as much penis into this piece as possible. Plus, last week’s column — with all its bonerkilling talk of lovesickness and labels — was kind of a bummer, no?

But no bummers today! The sun is shining, spring has arrived and people are smiling. Every year, I fail to realize how many couples inhabit our fair campus until the weather gets like this. Do people in relationships stay hunkered down in their rooms together until the sun shines so everyone can see them? Is there no point in flaunting your relationship until the backdrop is akin to a Garnier Fructis ad? Or does your love just burst and bloom like a boner in basketball shorts when the weather makes us not hate each other?

Whatever the reason, someone seems to be falling in love with something everywhere I look. Miniskirt season is upon us and we’re falling in love with the feeling of the sleaze-breeze (you know what I mean), while the ever-increasing prevalence of Axe Body Spray is giving women campuswide a reason to grow particularly fond of their stuffy noses and spring allergies. Cornell Days has allowed for a fresh-faced batch of pimply-cheeked high-schoolers to descend upon the Arts Quad to get a head start on their four-year love affair with the campus; meanwhile, soon-to-be graduates are clinging to their Big Red stomping grounds with all the tenacity of dried baby gravy to bedsheets.

Love is in the air — and even this cold, slutty sex columnist’s heart is thawing in her final weeks. I don’t know how it happened, but suddenly I opened my eyes one day and realized it: I’m in a serious relationship.

… with peen. (Oh come on; you should have been able to predict that line by now). I know I’ve dissed him. I’ve called him a fair-weather friend. I’ve even directed a fairly large-scale production dedicated to praising his mortal enemy: the vagina. But I am truly devoted to him and know, in my heart of hearts, that our bond will outlast all of my relationships.

I hereby dedicate this column to all the beautiful, veiny penises out there and the males attached to them. As a favor to you, peen, allow me to dispel — for the sake of you and all my other readers — some of the unrealistic expectations out there. I’m no authority, but our culture has some pretty busted ideas when it comes to sex. I don’t know where the fuck you people hear these things, but they’re not true.

Let’s start with pubic hair. I haven’t bothered writing about it at all this year because, well, what right do I (or you) have to advise Cornellians on how to maintain their personal crotch coifs? Let me ask you something: do you criticize your friends’ haircuts (above the waist) because you think that one ’do should be the norm? No. You don’t. I don’t care what you do with your hair down there as long as it doesn’t inhibit any access to anything. Hairstyles are what make us all beautiful, unique snowflakes. Thus, establishing a standard way of landscaping our love shrubs and demanding that we all shave, trim or wax our pubes in the interest of a uniform Cornell crotch would be pretty obnoxious, no?

I will leave you with this, at least: men, if your woman has gotten a bikini wax — whether she has done so for herself or to satisfy some request of yours — acknowledge it. Say something. Go down on her. Please. Please. Do it. This may come as a surprise, but the professional images you’ve been bombarding yourself with since the tender age of, um, whenever you figured out that such images existed — are almost always loaded with vaginas that have been impeccably waxed. When you come across a living, breathing woman who has put as much effort into her own picket fence as what you’ve seen boinking around on your computer screen, you had best open your mouth and let her know you appreciate it. Use your voice, use your tongue, whatever — just praise her. Why? Because getting a bikini wax feels like having your spirit, your soul, your hopes, dreams, memories and wishes ripped from your body via your vagina. It hurts.

And now that I mention things that hurt, remember when I lamented the absence of the mythical cunnilingus cowboy? I never wrote a similar column about fellatio. Here’s why: despite what other sex columnists would have you believe, penises need an instruction manual about as in-depth and fact-packed as the one that comes with a Bic pen. Don’t use your teeth, employ your hand if you need backup artillery, and if you have trouble stomaching the end result, think of a super-flavorful liquid like Dr. Pepper. And until “so, and then I went down on her” makes its way into standard Sunday morning brunch conversation, there is no reason to give fellatio more than its deserved 15 minutes.

Perhaps it could take the place of 69 in those conversations. I never discussed it because I hate it. This is a personal preference, yes — but I could never bring myself to objectively discuss something so highly overrated; something which I consider to be such an egregious assault on my comfort level (sort of like Mike Huckabee). If someone can describe to me any other situation in which a woman willingly contorts herself into a totally uncomfortable position while trying to divide her energy between pleasuring a partner, enjoying oral stimulation and constantly worrying about farting in a dude’s face, then I may reconsider my position on this. But 69 is a serious undertaking, and, you know, if multitasking meant so much to me, I’d get an iPhone. Can we please strike 69 from the menu? Guys? Please?

I’m sure I’ve said some stupid, misinformed shit over the last two semesters, but I have the column and you don’t. But listen, peen: I do it all — the bitching, the whining, the sacrificing my vagina for the common good — because I love you. And not just because of the springtime.

Jenna B. is a senior. She can be contacted at opinion@cornellsun.com. Bedroom Eyes appears alternate Thursdays.

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