I Was Told There'd Be Cock: A Night At The Penis Party
LatestLast night Anna North and I went to a restaurant for a Japanese penis party. “I plan to eat as much dick as I can,” I IMed a friend before leaving. “Okay,” he replied. “I’m gonna…go to the gym.”
The event was being held in celebration of Japan’s Kawasaki Penis Festival, an annual festival/fertility party. Sadly, there was not that much dick available. Who knows what possessed the restaurant that was hosting the weiner shindig to schedule the festivities for April Fools’ Day, instead of some more likely date, like Valentine’s Day, or Prostate Awareness Month, or international Gay Pride Week. “NO STRINGS ATTACHED!” read the press release, which had promised a “P*enis Festival” (“Please pardon the asterisk, but as you can imagine, we’ve been having a problem with spam filters!”) replete with “Kelly Cutrone’s People’s Revolution…proving [sic] special celebrity guest stars,” free condoms, and that all-important step that predates the usage of many a complimentary prophylactic: Free drinks. It was a fucking penis party. A bunch of boners. A plethora of phalluses. A conclave of knobs. A Johnson junction. We were told there’d be cock. How could we not go?
The first dick-shaped treat tasted, well, like a banana wrapped in pastry, served with chocolate ice cream testicles. The pubic hair was represented by dill, which, we all agreed, was just weird. We availed ourselves of free prosecco, and hoped that we might attract some other penis-snacks. Instead, we attracted a photographer, who hit on my Polish friend Zosia. When he sidled up to her on the banquette and complained of boredom, she turned to him and said, “Really. My father, he always say, ‘Zosia, only unintelligent people are ever bored.'” I remarked that in French, the verb “to bore” always takes the reflexive case. Je m’ennuie: I bore myself. The photographer frowned and slunk away.