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In Defense of Mark Wahlberg’s 13-Incher in Boogie Nights

by Matt Mitchell

Movie still from Boogie Nights. A row of tanding people in '70s clothing: tight shirts, dresses, and jeans. The frame cuts their heads off.

of course u think it’s magnetic, the equatorial pull of a flaccid third leg
towards the sticky of a Hollywood floor turned light parakeet yellow.
because the atom bomb-sized appendage of Marky Mark sans Funky Bunch,
the dangling of his foot-long hog in front of a porno dressing room mirror,
the infamous last-scene trouser snake (which has always been prosthetic,
as any fella will quickly point out to u during a rewatch),
could’ve been a sky of diamonds exploding with all of that prop shop girth,
and we’d still have sunk our eyes, ovaled as halved strawberries, into it delicately.
according to science, Earth’s average penis size is about 3.61 inches,
but the average penis size of someone who quickly points out the prosthesis
of the Boogie Nights penis is about 2.9 inches. look, I don’t know
how many times u can unzip a pants fly before out comes nothing but bees.
I only know how to be the barrel of a gun and also the holster.
but the intersex guys, love has kissed us in beautiful ways, with handfuls of smoke
and trapezoids of white cells slanted golden onto a patio broken by morning.
lookalike Dirk Digglers, all fake dicks and Corvette Stingray bodies, mouths stuffed shut
with glove compartment goodbyes and swimming pool-bottomed velvet.
we have long understood the truth, that this world has never known decent cock,
only the aching garden from which it blooms thru sometimes gleamingly.
any man asked about the American Dream between 1997 and Y2K probably said
it was about 13 inches long. our whole world could be rubber ocean, don’t u see?
combs of honeyed salt and bull kelp. a legacy of plastic under Mexican suns.
all things that will surely outlive this generation and probably the next.
so let us bring all the men to the water and ask them to swim across.
press our lips against their ears, softly whisper all of this is prosthetic,
and watch their confidence in reaching the other side wane itself into pulp.

of course u think it’s magnetic, the equatorial pull of a flaccid third leg
towards the sticky of a Hollywood floor turned light parakeet yellow.
because the atom bomb-sized appendage of Marky Mark sans Funky Bunch,
the dangling of his foot-long hog in front of a porno dressing room mirror,
the infamous last-scene trouser snake (which has always been prosthetic,
as any fella will quickly point out to u during a rewatch),
could’ve been a sky of diamonds exploding with all of that prop shop girth,
and we’d still have sunk our eyes, ovaled as halved strawberries, into it delicately.
according to science, Earth’s average penis size is about 3.61 inches,
but the average penis size of someone who quickly points out the prosthesis
of the Boogie Nights penis is about 2.9 inches. look, I don’t know
how many times u can unzip a pants fly before out comes nothing but bees.
I only know how to be the barrel of a gun and also the holster.
but the intersex guys, love has kissed us in beautiful ways, with handfuls of smoke
and trapezoids of white cells slanted golden onto a patio broken by morning.
lookalike Dirk Digglers, all fake dicks and Corvette Stingray bodies, mouths stuffed shut
with glove compartment goodbyes and swimming pool-bottomed velvet.
we have long understood the truth, that this world has never known decent cock,
only the aching garden from which it blooms thru sometimes gleamingly.
any man asked about the American Dream between 1997 and Y2K probably said
it was about 13 inches long. our whole world could be rubber ocean, don’t u see?
combs of honeyed salt and bull kelp. a legacy of plastic under Mexican suns.
all things that will surely outlive this generation and probably the next.
so let us bring all the men to the water and ask them to swim across.
press our lips against their ears, softly whisper all of this is prosthetic,
and watch their confidence in reaching the other side wane itself into pulp.