“Are we going to kiss now?” My friend asked, as she pounced on me in the alleyway behind a bar in Brooklyn. I had forgotten how good it felt. Not just to be kissed—but to be kissed unexpectedly, to be pounced on wildly.

“I don’t know why you make jokes about your penis,” she whispered. She was sizing it up through my pants. “You have nothing to joke about.” When people talk about my penis in the presence of my penis, it notices.