Many Whitman students saw the production of “The Vagina Monologues” more than a month ago. It was a rather touching symphony that led to questioning, revelation and understanding by the audience. One was seized by the moment, physically struggling to contain his emotion. Another found the monologues too much to take and fell down to the floor in amazement, crawling about in epiphany. Needless to say, “The Vagina Monologues” left quite an impression.
But there is another production, very similar to “The Vagina Monologues,” that was written just a few months after Eve Ensler’s world-renowned piece. The year was 1996, and while Ensler and other women were worried about vaginas, men were also worried about penises. One man in particular was very worried about the male reproductive organ. His name was Steve Mensler.
“The idea for the piece came to me when one day I just thought, ‘When was the last time that I saw a penis that wasn’t my own?,” Mensler recalls in one of his many interviews. Once he started thinking about penises, a floodgate opened in his mind. “I realized there are so many penises out there in the world, but you don’t see much of them, or hear about that really,” said Mensler. “So I decided to correct that.” After months of interviews with men of all shapes and sizes, he began to compile them together into what would soon be known as “The Penis Soliloquies.”
“The Penis Soliloquies” were initially composed of eight monologues and three dialogues, all about the male naughty bits. Mensler’s goal was to capture the viewpoints of all men, especially those that had been downtrodden by women and society. He wanted to give his audience a barrage of penises that they would not soon forget. And it is for this reason that the play itself begins with a long list of penis slang, such as: dick, schlong, weenie, one-eyed trouser snake, joystick, tallywacker, tent-pole, ding-a-ling, Big E and the Smalls, bald-headed yogurt slinger, and this author’s personal favorite: Long Dong Silver.
The soliloquies themselves are very diverse in content. In “The Levies Broke Way Too Soon,” a man recounts an experience with his first and only girlfriend. They were in his car making out for the first time, when her finger lightly grazed the inside of his thigh and he had a premature reaction.
“She said I was stupid and inexperienced,” said the unfortunate man. “She said that if I came that easily then I would never be able to get her off. I tried to explain that she was my first girlfriend and that I’d never done anything with anyone else. I tried to tell her that sometimes my penis would do that if I’m holding hands with or next to someone I like, if I hear a particular song, if I eat a grape, if someone I like calls me, if my alarm goes off, if I open my window and the breeze comes in, and if I’m at a supermarket and someone asks ‘cash or credit?’. I tried to explain these things but she just said, ‘I need a real man, not a fake man like you,’ and she told me to drive her home.”
“The Penis Workshop” is about someone who doesn’t know how to masturbate so he learns how to do it in a room full of other men, because back in 1996 the internet wasn’t the wonderful tool that it is today. The instructor starts by asking how many people in the room have given themselves an orgasm. No one raises their hands.
“I’m not surprised,” he says, “because you’ll never get an orgasm without someone else present.” Quite a few people leave after this, but not everyone.
“He told us to try and get ourselves off as best we could,” says the protagonist of the piece. “He said for many of us, it would be best to find a corner and face the wall, to forget that we were in a room with other men. One man asked if he could watch me while he masturbated, saying it would help. At the time, I didn’t really know why he wanted to watch me and not picture some attractive woman in his head, but now I think it’s because I was wearing plaid at the time. Sometimes plaid gets me off.” The man tries to masturbate but just finds himself flustered on the floor. The instructor sees his frustration and walks over to him. “He saw my feeble attempts to make myself feel even the smallest bit of pleasure, and just smiled. ‘That’s no way to do it,’ he said. ‘You need friction.'”
In “The Little Love Shaft that Could,” a man remembers that when he was 16, a 24-year old man invited him into his car and kissed him. Later he invites the underage boy into his house and engages in sexual activities with him. The boy’s mother calls to make sure there aren’t any girls in the house.
“Don’t worry ma’am, there aren’t any girls around here,” says the man. The man could have also said, “What I mean to say, ma’am, is that your son will not be doing anything inappropriate with girls his own age, but rather, he will be doing some naughty stuff with me. He, a 16-year old, will be having sex with me, a 24-year old. So you’ve got nothing to worry about.” But instead the man doesn’t say what’s going on at the house for some reason, and instead the two have a great time together. He also teaches the boy how to masturbate, so that he’ll never have to rely on a woman, because you know how bad they are, saying, “Your penis, untouched by women, smells so nice, so fresh, wish I could keep it that way forever,” because of course women smell terrible and pollute penises.
“Because She Liked To Look At It” is an interesting part of the show in that it is just about the only “Penis Soliloquy” to feature a woman in a positive light. In most of the monologues, women are depicted as cruel villains who have a disturbing joy with punching men in the balls, talking about punching men in the balls, and watching movies where men get punched in the balls. They tell men that their penises are ugly and too small. They constantly refer to needing real men. But the woman in this monologue loves penises, so much so that she finds more pleasure in just looking at them than she does in having sex.
The man in this monologue meets this woman named Jane, by whom he is initially turned off. But after accidentally touching her hand, he figures he should probably have sex with her. Though he initially plans on having fumbly first time sex in the dark, she turns the light on and gazes at his penis for almost an hour. Her face turns into that of a hungry beast, and the man is initially turned off, then turned on as he sees that she truly thinks his penis is beautiful, and then he is turned off again after literally 40 minutes of standing in a room doing nothing except looking at a woman’s facial features that are twisted into the not-so-pleasant characteristics of a hungry beast. The woman loves his penis so much that she comments on it thoroughly.
“You’re beautiful,” she says. “You’re a man, a real man, a tough man that no one should mess with if they know what’s good for them. But you’re also loving and gentle and compassionate. You care for people. And your parents weren’t particularly Catholic.” The man is stunned, feeling like she’s read his soul.
“Could you really tell all that from my reproductive organ, whose shape and appearance is almost entirely determined by genetics?” he asks. “Well, the first part is what everyone wants to hear,” she says. “The bit about the Catholicism I could see in your soul.”
Whitman student Bobby Dangler has read “The Penis Soliloquies” more times than he can count, but he’s not that good at math, so that’s not saying much. He has found the piece particularly moving and relevant.
“For too long ‘The Vagina Monologues’ have been the only performance about genitalia at Whitman, and they don’t have many kind things to say about penises,” says Dangler. This year, he and a few other Whitman students decided that this unfair prominence of Vagina theater would end, and that they would perform the “Penis Soliloquies” on campus. “I think that the ‘Penis Soliloquies’ are just as relevant today as they were almost 20 years ago,” said Dangler. “I mean, just look at the issues raised by ‘My Angry Penis.’ There are still products out there that restrict pleasure from penises, like condoms. They still haven’t made underwear with blowjob machines in them because they couldn’t stand men coming all day, every day, everywhere. They couldn’t stand men groaning out in pleasure constantly all over the world. No, they couldn’t stand it. And of course, even today my penis is angry that it can’t have sex with the majority of women out there. These issues are still paramount in our society and people need to be reminded of them.”
As Dangler indicates, the message of the Soliloquies is surprisingly current. One reason for this is that Steve Mensler has not stopped writing soliloquies for his piece. One such new addition: “They Tried to Get the Boy Out of My Girl Through Often Violent Means but not so Much Because Then They Would Have to Hit a Girl Even Though I’m Not One,” deals with transgender males. First performed in 2004, this piece addressed the fact that Mensler could no longer ignore the fact that gender isn’t as simple as many would like it to be. The soliloquy is about several transgender men who receive phalloplasties, making them real men. All of them are elated by the acquisition of their new penises.
“I love my new penis,” says one of the people in the piece. “Now I’m allowed to drive well. I don’t have to spend my life in a kitchen and I can open doors for myself.”
“The masculine is in your actions,” said another. “I don’t whine all the time. I don’t cry every five seconds. And I eat meat.” While this soliloquy was written more recently than most of the others, there are some confusing lines, such as: “Men are monotone and flat, Southern accents are really excellent, Jewish accents really help. (In a Jewish accent) ‘Hello my friend.'” When asked what this line actually means, Mensler was vague.
“Oh, I have no clue whatsoever,” said Mensler. “I took that line word for word from ‘The Vagina Monologues.’ I don’t think anyone knows what the hell that means.”
Performing “The Penis Soliloquies” at Whitman is not just Bobby Dangler’s dream. About 20 men and two women (don’t worry, the women are only directing a few of the Soliloquies and you won’t see them on stage, so you can rest assured that you will see only men, all lads, just the way it should be) have been putting the Soliloquies together for about a month now.
“For everyone here, the performance is very important to us,” said Dangler. “We’ve gone out of our way to make everyone feel comfortable, and we’ve truly bonded as a cast.” The group has even engaged in some traditional penis bonding activities developed for casts of the Soliloquies. For instance, before one rehearsal they all said what their penises would wear, if they were to wear something. Most people said that if their penises had to they would wear something made out of latex, but they would rather not. For one piece of homework the cast was asked to draw their penises as they saw them. Many of the cast got really into this assignment, drawing detailed penises complete with measurements. The smallest penis drawn was a foot long.
One night after rehearsal, the cast went around campus chalking up sidewalks and walls with pictures of penises and the many names for the male reproductive organ. This activity further served to bond the cast together in penis brotherhood, and it also served the practical purpose of advertising the show.
“We were pleasantly surprised to discover that many people were already excited about the Soliloquies,” said Dangler. “We found that in anticipation of the performance people had drawn pictures of penises everywhere, accompanied by various penis slang. We found pictures and words on walls, in bathrooms and in textbooks. We were elated with this support from the Whitman community. Walla Walla truly is a penis friendly city, as we will claim during our performance without actually polling even a small percentage of the city’s population.” But the cast was troubled by another discovery.
“We discovered that some of these pictures and words had been altered to change their message,” said Dangler. “For instance, some of the penises had been changed into flowers or rocket ships. Sometimes the entire picture or words had been blacked out.” The cast concluded that at least some people at Whitman didn’t wish to see “The Penis Soliloquies” succeed. “The fact that some people at Whitman hate penises so much makes it all the more important that we perform our show. Our vision of penises cannot be stopped,” said Dangler.
Well there you have it. The exact show times of “The Penis Soliloquies” have not yet been announced, but they are sure to go off with a splash.
“The Vagina Monologues have only been popular thus far because people don’t have a choice,” said Dangler. “I mean, what would you rather see? Some women whining and talking on stage, sometimes pretending to experience an orgasm? Or some real men dominating the stage, often groaning loudly and gyrating their hips in an expression of male superiority that’s really the only way to prove your manhood? There’s no contest.” Well this author, speaking as a man, can certainly say that the “Penis Soliloquies” will certainly provide “The Vagina Monologues” with some stiff competition.
