EVERY SO OFTEN YOU SEE SOMETHING that makes you stop and think a bit. I had that experience today. I was deleting the Spam out of my inbox when I came across a post for a product promising me a permanently growing penis. Not just a large penis, not a porn star penis, but a penis that would never stop growing. That made me stop and think. What would I do with such a penis? What could be done with such a penis? I suppose that in the early stages of growth I could be a porn star. Granted, I am not the best looking guy in the world, but after all, Ron Jeremy is a porn star and the only thing that guy has going for him is his thing. But what would I do about the next stage of development? Clearly no porn actress is going to want to work with a man with a twenty-four inch penis, or a thirty-six inch penis either. A penis several feet long would mean I could not be in the same money shot with the actress in question, and I would have to take a lot of Viagra to maintain an erection, although renting a forklift is always a possibility, I suppose. A ten to twenty foot penis would end my porn career, I think, although at fifty feet I could tie a knot in it and join the rodeo as a cattle roper, and, of course, at a hundred yards I could get work in pro football as a line marker. This would require tattooing my penis with hash marks and numbers, which is a more than vaguely painful thought, now that I think of it. Work as a stripper’s pole might be a way around this, but I don’t think the girls will want to step over the rest of me in order to get a tip.

Beyond what I could do with a permanently growing penis is the problem of how to store it when I am not actually using it. Obviously, there are only so many ways of pleating a pair of pants to hide such a protuberance, and there are only so many times it can be wrapped around my waist before people start asking me if I’m gaining weight. In the privacy of my own home I could paint it green and tell the next door neighbors, who I don’t like very much, that it’s a garden hose, especially after parties where I’ve had too much to drink. I could roll it out and drench their prize azaleas with my beery urine and they’d never know I did it.

Of course, beyond a certain point there’s no hiding the thing. Then my fifteen minutes of fame will begin, as everyone from Oprah to Jerry Springer will want me to appear on their shows. There will be controversy, to be sure, since the FCC will not allow these people to show on American television sets just what it is I’m famous for. Hustler will pay a cool million to see the thing unrolled, I think. Maybe I’ll get invited to the Playboy Mansion and the Playmates will use it for a jump rope, and if I can learn to do some tricks with it maybe I can get on Letterman’s Stupid Pet Tricks. You never know how far you can go with a permanently growing penis, although I suspect to go anywhere with it I'll have to go Federal Express.