Dear Playboy Advisor: Questions From Men and Women to the Advice Column of Playboy Magazine (41 page)

Will my penis piercing set off airport metal detectors?—H.J., St. Louis, Missouri

Piercings rarely set off alarms—when they do, it’s usually because your jewelry is concentrated in one area or the rings are of a particularly heavy gauge. Handheld wands, however, may pick them up, which could create a scene straight out of
This is Spinal Tap
. What gets you in trouble typically isn’t the piercings but the baggage you’re carrying. About five years ago Turkish authorities stopped a British dancer who had triggered an airport alarm, and a search revealed a total of six metal rings in her nipples and genitals. She also had three kilos of heroin strapped to her chest. More recently, a woman posting to the online Cock and Ball Torture Forum related how she had asked her husband/slave to pick her up at the airport. He was delayed not because of his thick nipple and penis piercings, which had never been a problem, but because of two small padlocks his wife used to tightly bind his balls whenever the couple were apart. Let that be a lesson.

Tanning while nude

Whenever I tan nude at the salon, I feel the need to cover my penis. Is my package in any danger from the ultraviolet rays if I don’t cover it?—B.G., Evansville, Indiana

They won’t boil your sperm, if that’s what you mean. Because your penis and testicles haven’t been dangling in sunlight, they’ll be more sensitive. Ease them into the rotation.

Me and my big dick

I often travel to Europe, where it doesn’t seem to be a problem to mention to women that I’m well hung. But here in the U.S. I can get the strangest looks. I believe in being up front about this because so many women have told me they enjoy my ample size. If women can wear low-cut blouses and short skirts to advertise their goods, why can’t I mention my endowment?—M.S., Prescott, Arizona

You don’t have anything more interesting to talk about?

Your response was perfect. I talked to some of my girlfriends about this, and the majority of well-endowed guys we know are jerks. One guy I dated called his penis “the weapon.” Has there ever been a study relating a man’s penis size to his personality?—M.B., Glendale, Arizona

No, just as there has never been a study of breast size and personality.

Boxers or briefs?

Is it better for your balls if you wear boxers or briefs?—M.S., Portland, Oregon

There’s no difference, at least according to a study reported in the
Journal of Urology
. The scrotum is generally a few degrees cooler than the rest of the body because sperm like it that way. The idea is that wearing briefs raises the temperature and limits production, which can be good or bad, depending on your desire to be a father. One experiment in the 1960s attempted to raise scrotal temperature using an insulated jockstrap and a lightbulb. But it wasn’t until the mid-1990s, when two urologists at the State University of New York at Stony Brook took careful measurements of 97 patients, that we had any real insight into the matter. They found the average boxer ball temperature to be 97.9 degrees and the average brief ball temperature to be 97.7, leading to the conclusion that “the hyperthermic effect of briefs has been exaggerated.” More recently another State University of New York urologist found that sitting with the knees together to support a laptop caused the scrotal temperature of his 29 volunteers to rise by about one degree, even before the computer was turned on. Long-term, he said, this could cause fertility problems. The only previous research on this topic was a 2002 letter to the
Lancet
in which a physician described a patient whose laptop got so hot it burned his penis through his pants and underwear.

Penis transplants

Has there ever been a successful penis transplant?—C.D., Seattle, Washington

Are you in search of one or looking to donate? What might have been the world’s first transplant took place in 2003 at the Nil Ratan Sircar Medical College Hospital in Calcutta, India. Doctors transplanted the penis of a one-year-old who had been born with two to a seven-month-old born without one. As John Wayne Bobbitt can attest, it’s more common to have your own penis reattached. We’ll keep this brief, but here are two cases of note: (1) German doctors twice reattached the penis of a psychiatric patient who cut it off in incidents 10 years apart; (2) in Milwaukee in 1992 a man who lost his organ in a lawn mower accident had it sewn beneath the skin of his forearm (with the head protruding) for a month to keep it alive while his perineum healed. The surgeons who performed this amazing operation concluded that “in penile amputation, replantation remains the treatment of choice.” God forbid.

That lawn mower incident sounds like bullshit. I bet he got Bobbittized by his wife and needed a story to tell the doctors. I thought the Advisor, if anyone, would be more skeptical.—G.C., Dallas, Texas

There was grass in the wound. That’s all the evidence we need.

Will a fish bite my penis?

I have never gone skinny-dipping because I’m afraid a fish will bite my penis. Do you know if something like that has ever happened?—A.E., Loveland, Colorado

As long you don’t swim in a jungle river near a dam, you’ll be okay. That’s because the fish most likely to take a chance like that is the speckled piranha or one of its toothed cousins, and they gather near dams. They aren’t aiming for your privates but for whatever flesh they can find to defend their young. Dr. Vidal Haddad Jr. of the Botucatu School of Medicine in Sao Paulo, an expert on fish attacks, knows of only one study that even mentions penis bites (published in 1972), and he hasn’t heard of any incidents in his own research. There is a well-documented case of a tiny catfish, known as a candiru, jumping into a man’s urethra as he stood thigh-deep in the Amazon to urinate. He needed surgery to remove it.

While skinny-dipping in the Severn River near Annapolis, Maryland I was stung by a jellyfish on the most sensitive square inch of my body. I set a record for the one-armed dog paddle to shore. The pain and swelling eventually subsided, but I still have a faint red mark the size of a dime on the head of my penis. Fish attacks may be rare, but there is good reason not to swim nude at night in strange waters.—C.M., Richmond, Virginia

While researching attacks on the penis, we found the case of a farmer in Brazil who was stung through his pants by a scorpion. You two should have a beer.

Penis tattoos

I plan to get a tattoo on the shaft of my cock and perhaps the head. My girlfriend has agreed to keep me hard, but any other advice you can offer would be appreciated.—V.J., Ashland, Wisconsin

We have never placed anything sharper than a woman’s teeth near our penis, so we asked for counsel from Gerry Beckerman of Ozark Ink Tattoo in Ava, Missouri (and formerly of Phoenix and Fort Lauderdale), who has done a number of penis tattoos during his three decades in the business. He says you don’t need to be erect to have it done; the skin simply needs to be pulled taut. It’s usually stretched by the artist, an assistant or a girlfriend or wife. “The tattooing isn’t that painful, but it’s still a sobering experience for most guys,” he says. “I just did the penis of a friend who wanted ‘Mary’ in Old English script on his shaft and a tribal design on his scrotum. Mary pulled the skin as I worked. The skin of the shaft is thin, so it may scar unless you hire an experienced artist. The underside is less forgiving than the top. The scrotum is another matter. It’s like tattooing a basketball.” You can draw just about anything on a penis, Beckerman says, though most men keep it simple. “I’ve done more than one fly or smiley face on the head,” he says. “But I also turned one guy’s shaft into a barber pole.” Other designs at the body-modification site bmezine.com include stars, an eyeball, ladybugs, butterflies, an elaborate dragon whose wings and tail extend up the guy’s abdomen, an entirely green or black shaft and/or head, hot-rod flames, hula dancers, roses, a fish, webbing, scorpions, a dagger, Satan and labels that read “USDA Inspected” and “Warning: Choking Hazard.”

PORN

It’s all in the lighting.

How can I break in?

I am a 50-year-old retired professional who would like to act in porn. I’m six feet tall, 200 pounds, with brown hair and blue eyes, and I’ve lasted more than seven hours. What do I need to do?—T.E., Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

You don’t want to work in porn; you want to have sex with porn babes. In all likelihood, you don’t have what it takes to be a professional fucker. Build and penis size have nothing to do with whether you would be cast. All that matters is whether you can get hard and come on cue with a woman you don’t necessarily find attractive, under hot lights, in front of an impatient crew. Once you’re erect, you must remain hard for hours as you’re repositioned to create the illusion of spontaneous sex. You have to get hard again after lunch and potty breaks. You’ll spend much of your time absentmindedly stroking yourself. The pay sucks—maybe a few hundred dollars for a shoot that includes two or three pop shots. You need to live in southern California. And there’s no way you’ll get an audition unless (1) you know a director or producer who will take a chance on casting you, since he’ll be out a good sum if you can’t perform, or (2) you know a woman who’s supermodel gorgeous and who wants to become a hard-core star but insists she won’t fuck anyone but you. If you can attract someone like that, you don’t need help getting laid. You also could make your own videos, which might work as an introduction. But you’ll have to find the women by yourself.

My wife and I were watching a talk show that featured a couple who had launched a sex site. They set up a camera in their bedroom and transmitted live images to the Internet. Surfers pay by credit card to watch the couple have sex. They claimed to gross around $30,000 a month. Is this easy to set up? What software do you need? Is it legal?—S.W., Louisville, Kentucky

Check out ifriends.com. You supply a webcam, the site provides the software and you earn 50 percent of revenues from pay-per-view and private sessions. It’s much more difficult to launch an independent site. The market is saturated, and it takes a substantial investment to attract enough surfers to churn a profit. We can’t get into the legalities (they vary from county to county) but you’ll find guidance at the Adult Webmaster Resource Center at ynot.com. It includes information on software, hardware, billing, suppliers, commerce, hosts, designers, advertising and promotion.

I have this great idea for a porn film

I’ve toyed with the idea of writing a porn movie. Where should I send my screenplay? Are the sex scenes scripted, or is that left to the actors and director?—D.S., Oakland Gardens, New York

We could provide a list of production houses, but unless you’re giving the stuff away, it’s a waste of your time and theirs. Most porn directors write their own scripts. Even if someone purchased your 35 pages of dialogue, you’d earn only a few hundred dollars. Plots, when they exist, are usually inspired by convenience—a director considers which locations, sets, props and actors he can get on the cheap, then weaves a story around them. The sex isn’t scripted unless there’s some plot point, such as a good girl refusing anal sex. Plus, the director is going to film his fantasies, not yours.

Land of the free

My wife and I enjoy watching adult videos, but stores in this area don’t sell or rent them. I e-mailed two websites and both said they don’t ship to Alabama. We thought about getting a satellite dish, but our state is one that doesn’t allow hard-core channels. How can we get movies without having to travel out of state?—J.L., Montgomery, Alabama

While most high-profile sites refuse to ship porn to Alabama or other sexually repressive states for fear of prosecution, hundreds of smaller operations will take the chance to have you as a customer. They don’t advertise this fact, for obvious reasons, so the only way to know for sure is to submit an order. If you get an e-mail saying it’s been canceled, continue your search. If you prefer to return the evidence, a number of sites offer seven-day porn rentals for about $5 each.