Sizing Him Up

A friend of mine made a comment to me a few years ago that you'll probably find as difficult to believe as I did.

We were sitting in the pub one evening after lectures and the two of us were chatting about what was going on the medical faculty: primarily, who was sleeping with who. The rest of our friends were playing doubles at a pool table nearby and Carol and I were catching up on news while we waited our turn.

I told her that I'd noticed that Tara Phillips, a girl we both knew, was starting to be seen around the department with a lanky, greasy guy from veterinary who looked like a weasel.

Carol had smiled and nodded. "Jonathon Thomas. One of my housemates went out with him for a while."

"But he's disgusting," I laughed. "What do they see in him?"

She took a drink from her vodka and tonic. "He has his charms."

"Well if he has, they need a bloody good wash, whatever they are."

She smiled. "There's more to him than... well..."

"Greasy hair and spots?" I suggested.

She chuckled. "Well... yeah..."

I took a swig from my pint. "Well, I'm all for dating people for their personality -"

"Like Helen, you mean?" she asked with a mischievous grin.

"Er... yeah... kind of..." I smirked at her, appreciating the dig at my slightly eccentric current choice of girlfriend. "But that guy seems to have none. I know I've only seen him a couple of times, but he seems a bit... well..."

"Drippy?"

I suggested: "Vacant."

She laughed. "Yeah. I guess he's pretty hard work on the conversation side. He's heavily into tanks or trucks or something... he can talk all night about those. And, with him being into veterinary, he can give a pretty good account of what the innards of a sheep look like..."

"Just what you want as an ice-breaker at a party..."

She smiled and took another sip from her drink. "But, like I say, he has his attractions..."

I waited to hear specifics but none came. I shrugged and prompted her: "And they are...?"

She chuckled again. "It's girlie stuff, Seb. Not the kind of stuff you'd understand..."

I smiled. "I'm extremely liberated, I'll have you know..."

"Not to the point of discussing what makes guys attractive..."

"I dunno... I'd be interested to hear about that actually... I mean, if Jonathon whatever-his-name is considered attractive by girls as good-looking as Tara Phillips, clearly I'm kind of missing out on some crucial aspect of the female psyche. It might be useful for me know..."

Carol smiled. "I dunno, Seb. I think only a minority of attractive girls would go out with guys like Jonathon... they'd have to be into something very specific to find him interesting..."

"Tanks and trucks?"

She made a face. "Er... not quite..."

I smiled. "What then?"

She hesitated. "I dunno if I should be telling you this, Seb. I'd probably be breaking some unspoken understanding between womankind, or something..."

I waited but again nothing came. "And the thing you shouldn't be telling me but are going to is..."

"I don't know how to explain it, exactly. It's kind of like having built-in radar. Some girls can look at a guy and... well...."

I shrugged, amused and intrigued to hear where this was leading.

She took another drink from her glass. "Some girls like guys who are... how should I put it... generously proportioned in the trousers department..."

"Aah..." I nodded.

She grinned. "And some girls know exactly who... er... fits the bill..."

"And Jonathon is a big lad, then, is he?"

She smiled and nodded. "Extremely..."

"Your flatmate told you?"

"She didn't have to. I already knew."

I laughed. "You have this... er... 'gift', then, have you?"

Carol chuckled. "Yeah... I guess..."

"So how does it work? What do you look for?"

"To be honest, I don't exactly know. It's just a hunch I get when I meet a guy. And judging by those I've become more friendly with, it's seems to be pretty accurate..."

I took another drink from my pint. "Size is important, then?"

"Not for me, no. But for some girls..."

We were interrupted by the losing pair from the pool-game returning to our table. The conversation was dropped and we went to play the next game.

What she'd said had sparked my curiosity, though.

I didn't for a minute think it was true that some girls have a kind of dick-radar, but it would go some way to explaining why interesting, attractive girls sometimes start dating the most freakish guys.

I figured that some girls, girls for whom size was an issue, must look out for signals to work out what was going on in a guy's trousers long before they decided whether he was worth undressing.

The problem was working out what those signals might be.

I thought that my mornings working as a student doctor at the University Hospital might provide me with a few clues. I was only part-qualified by then and so I was limited to performing routine examinations and making elementary diagnoses; most of my time was spent carrying out check-ups on final year students. But while I was working there, I started to notice, I guess as a result of what Carol had told me, the huge variety in the size and shape of the cocks and balls of the men I was examining.

Some guys had cocks like great German sausages, flopping halfway down to their knees; while others were so small that they barely poked out from their owner's pubic hair. And some men had balls which were so big that they'd swing low like they were too heavy for their scrotums; others had balls like tiny peas which seemed to cower inside tight, wrinkled sacs.

I began to wonder whether girls with Carol's 'radar' were merely looking for tell-tale bulges in the front of guys' trousers.

Unfortunately, it wasn't that simple.

A guy who came in to have a medical as part of the recruitment process to get a job at Glaxo proved that to me.

He was a tall, good looking guy, pleasant and chatty, who undressed to reveal a pair of briefs which were as flat against his crotch as a girl's panties are, and who turned out to have a cock the size of a baby's little finger dangling over a pair of virtually-non-existent balls.

I was thinking, "You wouldn't even be registering on the 'radar', mate..."

He happened to mention, as I examined him, that he often felt like he needed to take a piss but would find, when he tried to do so, that very little was produced. Before he had time to say, "I'm sure it's really nothing...", I had my rubber glove on, my forefinger lubed up as far as the knuckle, and was asking him if he would just mind opening his legs and bending forwards.

I don't remember finding any problems, nothing a few antibiotics for a urethra infection couldn't sort out, but when I stood up and moved around to face him, I was pretty stunned to find him sporting an erection that could only be described as... well... magnificent!

In spite of its earlier lack of promise, it was now about seven inches in size, as thick as a cucumber and curving upward like it was proud of itself. His foreskin had partially retracted to expose a head so large and engorged that it looked like a ripened plum.

He'd blushed a deep shade of scarlet, as dark as the head of his cock, and had muttered, "Jesus... I'm sorry..."

I'd laughed and said, "You should be feeling proud of it, not sorry!"

He'd smiled and relaxed a little. "I don't know why it happened..."

I pulled off my glove and discarded it, and started washing my hands. "It's a common response, don't worry about it. It's purely physiological..."

He pulled up his briefs and had difficulty stuffing his enormous organ back into them.

I realised that, contrary to my earlier presumption, this guy would actually score pretty favourably on the 'radar'. I'd heard, from sex education lessons when I was in my early teens, that the size of a guy's limp cock doesn't give a direct indication of how it will look when it's fully-aroused, but I hadn't realised the change could be so dramatic.

I was thinking, "So there must be more to this 'radar' thing than just looking out for bulges..."

I next saw Carol a few weeks later, sitting in the refectory having a sandwich one lunchtime. A few tables away, Tara Phillips was sitting eating with the scrawny, weasel-like Jonathon.

I took my own lunch over to join Carol.

"It's still going strong for love's young dream, then," I laughed, glancing over to the couple.

Carol smiled and nodded. "I guess he has everything she looks for in a man..."

I opened the plastic wrapper around my sandwiches. "It must be nice to be like her... to have such a limited view of what makes a good relationship..."

Carol nodded. "It would make finding the right partner a lot more straightforward...

I smiled. "If you've got the 'radar'... if it exists..."

She chuckled. "You're still sceptical...?"

"It's just that it's impossible to judge stuff like that from external appearances..." I told her what had happened with the guy going for the Glaxo job, while obviously keeping his identity a secret.

She grinned. "It doesn't work like that. I could have told you that from the beginning..."

"It must be at least a part of it..."

She shook her head. "No. I went out with this guy, back at home, who was pretty... er... nicely proportioned when he was limp. I'd figured him to be average, using my 'radar' as you put it, and so I thought I must be wrong. It turned out, though, that when he got a hard-on, his willy just... well... it sort of stood up but it didn't change its size or anything. So my 'radar' turned out to be right yet again..."

"So what's the secret... how can you size a guy up from just looking at him?"

"From his manner, I suppose. His confidence, whether he looks you in the eye... that sort of stuff..."

I laughed, "Bollocks!"

She laughed back. "No, you can't get any idea of those!"

After a swig of coffee, I smiled and asked, "So what about me? Surely your 'radar' works on me?"

She shrugged. "You're a friend. I don't think of you on those terms..."

"But it must be coming up with something..."

She finished off the last of her sandwich, flashed me a coy grin and said, "Eight inches."

My eyes widened. "Have you been talking to Helen? Or Kaz?"

She chuckled, "It wouldn't really be the sort of thing I'd have asked either of them, would it? And it's hardly likely to, if you pardon the expression, come up in conversation..."

I took another drink of my coffee.

She smiled at me. "So I'm right. Yet again."

I felt my cheeks flush slightly at her knowing something about me we wouldn't ordinarily have mentioned. "You might be."

She said, "So that can't have been the reason Kaz dumped you, then."

"No... that kind of thing wasn't important to her. Anyway, she didn't dump me... it was a... er... mutual thing... democratic, you know..."

"Yeah right."

I tried to recognise the signs Carol had mentioned using the guys who came into the University Hospital for check-ups. Although few developed erections in my presence, I started spotting other clues to help me work out their potential. Like, for example, some guys with pretty insubstantial limp cocks would be wearing briefs which had stretched and baggy fronts: something must have been going on down there, at certain times of the day, to stretch the material like that. Or occasionally there'd be traces of dried precum or semen on their boxer shorts (some of these guys weren't exactly meticulous as far as hygiene was concerned!) such a long way from their cocks it was almost level with their hips.