I need to say something, and I need you to not laugh. Or laugh, but gently. I'm in love with my penis. Not fond of it. Not grateful to it. In love — the kind where you look at something first thing in the morning and your chest goes soft. The kind where you rearrange your day around it. The kind where you buy it little presents and take it places. I know how that sounds. Men are supposed to have a relationship with their penis that's about pride, or performance, or a punchline. Mine is a romance. And it started as one, which is the part people get wrong. I met it at twelve, at a creek, because of a woman in a fur bikini in a film from 1970. That's not a joke either. Something opened in me at the water's edge and never closed. At thirteen, in a shower, I found out what it was for. And from that day on there has been no other constant in my life. Not a person, not a city, not a career. Just this smooth, ridiculous, exquisite thing between my legs that has never once let me down and has been the reason for nearly every good decision I've made since. So yes, I talk to it. Yes, I named the mood it gets. Yes, I take it to the lake and let it feel the sun like it's been released from prison — because it has. Yes, I oil it slowly, the way you'd oil something expensive. Yes, I put it in my mouth when I can be bothered to fold myself in half, and no, that never stops being funny. And here's the part that made me retire: it taught me how to be present. There is nothing in the world like the fifteen minutes after an orgasm, when you're lying there stupid and luminous and the whole day has been reset. Nothing. I chased that feeling until it stopped being a hobby and became a life. I'm not confused about it anymore. I'm in a relationship. It's monogamous in spirit and shameless in practice, and it's the healthiest one I've ever had. If you're reading this and something in you just went hm, yes — good. You're one of mine.