Thoughts on “the Junk”

I’ve been keeping this blog for awhile now, and really haven’t given a lot of attention to male genitalia. That’s probably because the subject is a lot less important to us women than it is to men. As was mentioned in my household during a recent screening of the film “300,” referring to the loincloth-sporting Spartans, “That’s okay, we don’t need to see their junk.” Chests, obviously, are another matter. (Good lord, have you ever seen so many pectorals in one place as at this re-imagined Battle of Thermopylae? It was like a fire sale at the Harlequin factory.) Even posteriors (or if you’re me, especially posteriors) are always a welcome treat as well. But the junk is usually better left to the imagination.

Why? Because what the organ represents is a lot prettier than the organ itself. Face it, a penis is a funny looking critter. Not bad, but not gorgeous either. But what it stands for (no pun intended) is a whole nother matter. It stands for a whole passel full of wonderfully erotic things: power, virility, dominance, strength, superiority, aggression, lust, force of will, and the list goes on and on like the resume of a romantic hero. That’s why you find women not so interested in pulling down men’s pants (except for a rear view, especially if you’re me) as they are in seeing men’s jeans bulge. It’s the suggestion that gives rise (what’s with these word choices?) to exciting fantasies about male sexuality.

And the suggestion can pack a wallop.

Case in point: After the aforementioned viewing of “300,” my family took in the wildly anticipated premiere of Season 2 of “Survivorman,” in which Les Stroud (my hero! swoon) takes on the hellishly inhospitable Kalahari Desert. In this episode, Les shares a number of survival tips that will help you immensely the next time you are lost in an arid clime. Among them is the handy “urine still,” a technique for turning your own pee into potable water.

Having crafted his still in the sand with a piece of heavy plastic wrap, Les, as he so eloquently puts it, “does the deed.” Of course this is the Discovery Channel, and this is All-Canadian Boy Les Stroud, who doesn’t even say bleepable words when slicing his finger to the bone while lost in the jungle. So no, you see no stream of fluid and you certainly don’t see any junk.

However, the man does turn from the camera and unzip and without a doubt extricates himself from his sandy khakis.

Is anyone besides me losing it over this mental picture? Judging by the things people search on to find my blog posts about Survivorman, I’m guessing yes.

All right, enough of the goofy schoolgirl crush stuff, I’m trying to make a point here. The female viewer with an affinity for Survivorman doesn’t need to see length and girth to get all giddy over this scene. The exciting part is the gesture. It’s our hero doing something essentially masculine, acknowledging he has that wondrous equipment. And even though peeing is not an erotic act (at least not in my world!!), there are other situations in which men unzip that definitely fall into that category.

So I admit, after this eclectic double-bill of home theater viewing, I did not spend the next day daydreaming about the rippling abs of the 300 Spartans. Not even those of David Wenham, whom I fell in love with as Faramir in the Lord of the Rings movies. Nor those of Rodrigo Santoro, possibly the handsomest man on the planet, who was substantially less attractive in his Xerxes piercings than he was in glasses as Karl in “Love Actually.”

No, my dreams were haunted by the sound of pants unzipping in the Kalahari.

Men, take note of the subtleties of the female mind. You can be as ripped as the computer-enhanced army of Leonidas, only to lose out to a guy from Ontario, simply because the latter knows how to make drinking water from pee. Obviously if you want to lure us, having “the junk” is key, but we don’t care a whiz...I mean whit...about the specifics of said junk.