oooh baby do you know what that's worth?

The Pope's Penis

It hangs deep in his robes, a delicate
clapper at the center of a bell.
It moves when he moves, a ghostly fish in a
halo of silver seaweed, the hair
swaying in the dark and the heat --- and at night,
while his eyes sleep, it stands up
in praise of God.

--Sharon Olds

Um, I'm going to have to come back to this a little later. Might be quite late. I shame myself for not posting yesterday, and will make up for it at another date. But see, I lost by more than a 10 point spread at bowling tonight, and well, let's just say the wager was stiff...

Ha! The Pope's penis, indeed. More to follow.

Later...

So, the Pope's penis. Despite the clearly irreverent subject matter there's definitely something here. Ms. Olds has to delight Freud. The poem before this one is titled "Early Images of Heaven" and it is all about penises, the beauty of them, before birth becoming from them, etc. etc. I get it; you like the penis. Maybe you even covet the penis. Nothing wrong with that.

Early on in our friendship, me and my best friend were talking out on her back porch about the years I exclusively dated women. She asked why I went back to men, and my cheeky response was that, "There's nothing like a big, fat, weiner." It's true, and my off-the-cuff remark has become part of our lexicon and a long-running joke. I certainly hope most heterosexual women feel that way about the penis (but, sadly, I know they don't). What I believe Freud gets very, very wrong is that women don't experience penis envy (we don't want one of those; I like my genitalia neatly on the inside, thanks); we experience penis delight and curiosity (in the best circumstances).

Now, our poem takes us to the just plain odd idea of the Pope's penis. I know he has one, but frankly, I hadn't ever thought of it much. Furthermore, I could probably have lived the rest of my days not ever considering the Pope's pubic hair. The images Ms. Olds gives us of the Pope's member (not of the congregation, hee!) are almost of dumbly swaying things, not exactly without purpose--bell won't ring without a clapper, and a fish in the water isn't without a function--but there's something mindless in these metaphors. Ah wait, not mindless but of their own accord. You can't get much more sexless than the Pope, but our poem reminds us that everyone is sexual. It's a biology thing and inescapable. In a Human Sexuality course I took early in my college career the overriding message was that we were all sexual beings from womb to tomb. So, even if (like the Pope) we choose a chaste life, our sexuality remains and it has its own accord. The penis will stand; whether for a beautiful woman, or a beautiful man, or nice summer breeze...the Dude abides. Maybe the Pope's penis really does stand in praise of God, and if so, what is more of a praise than that? It would be whole praise, totally of its own accord.