The icy prostate lies prostrate on the earth, praying to no gods in particular. Even if its mighty head glares up upon the stars, it knows no salvation. The scrotal lump at its base, decorated with tiny sticks for hairs, but with no warm hands to stroke them. Veins poke out of the snowy skin like ripples in a tiny ocean, but they’re never going to throb with lust. They stand as totems to the human condition so omnipresent, “Build a snow penis or count how many you see” is number 35 on “161 Things Every Cornellian Should Do.” Each snowstorm, I wander the tundric landscape to behold a mass erection of phalluses. They might last a night in the Arts Quad, but come morning all are demolished by unseen forces.
As a journalist of sex, I began to ask my probing questions. What are the penises trying to communicate? Who is demolishing them?
I thought it possible Cornell had a Snow Penis Task Force to dispatch whenever a girthy meat popsicle popped up on campus. It would make sense for the administration to frown upon rampant genitalia. Such sculptures remind us of the insecure, snot-nosed middle schooler living inside each of us like a stirring parasite. They are in denial that such a monster still exists: taking control from time to time to make its mark in the snowdrift.
Those who tear down these semen-shooting obelisks should be reminded of the ubiquitous nature of such a symbol across time and culture. Our species does not agree on most things, but the drawing of phallic imagery is a unifying force. Almost everyone has drawn one at some point.
Beyond prepubescent notebooks, college blackboards and the cars of strangers sprinkled with a perfect layer of red dust, even I resist the urge to trace a throbbing cock on the face of any unsuspecting person who falls asleep at the a capella afterparty. I feel less juvenile when I remember the ancient Roman city of Pompeii. Dicks here were not only etched as crude grafiti, but also served as official road markers.
With enough snow penises, our campus too could mirror the glory of Rome.
We cannot talk about phallic fixation without mentioning Sigmund Freud, who thought it was an important part of psychosexual development. To him, young boys have an obsession with their own pee-pee, and it’s subconsciously traumatic for them to realize not everyone has one. After a momentary glimpse of a nude form in the J.C. Penny’s dressing room, the boy wonders if his penis could one day disappear, too. This, Freud claimed, represents the deep-rooted fear of castration — to have an empty space where your sexcalibur once was. To assert that they are packin’ the peen, people place dicks everywhere, even as a subconscious metaphor for power. Freud would argue that even the Washington Monument and the Empire State Building are akin to a raging snow penis in their statements of masculine might.
The abundance of permafrost phallic architecture might not be completely thanks to the subconscious urge to perpetuate male power. Penises are also just funny. I don’t care how old and refined you are, some part of you finds the cultural taboos of genitalia somewhat abhorrent or amusing. Scatological humor (pertaining to bodily functions like shit and cum) can even garnish a weak smile from a table of international diplomats. This explains why one of the top college newspapers continues to publish a column about foot fetishes and eating ass, and to this I am grateful. I’m glad my voice is not stomped out like a chilly chode. It is a testament to creative expression to have a place in the Daily Sun and the untouched snow for a throbbing, monster cock.
Anya Neeze is a student at Cornell University. Comments can be sent to [email protected]. Boink! runs during alternate Sex on Thursdays this semester.