Flavor of the Week: There Are No Small Parts

| 13 Aug 2014 | 04:40

    FOR 18 YEARS, FROM 1982 to 2000, actress Marlene Danielle played a cat named Bombalurina at the Winter Garden Theater. And for the last five years, I’ve played a guy from Staten Island with a small dick.

     

    Let me clarify. When I say “with a small dick,” I don’t mean to suggest that he’s on the shorter end of the dick-size spectrum. He’s on the shortest end. He’s frightfully small, likening his ill-fated cock to baby corn. If there’s one thing that Rick is not, it’s discreet.

    I had the good fortune to originate the role at the New York Fringe Festival in 2005, and we’ve been holding staged readings annually since then. Only recently have we been blessed with an Off-Broadway run of [The Irish Curse] at the intimate [SoHo Playhouse](http://www.sohoplayhouse.com/), a space perfectly suited (and sized) for a play about guys with miniature members.

    Let me answer the question that’s already burning in your mind: No, we don’t show our dicks in the play—nor did we drop our drawers as part of the audition process —though playwright Martin Casella and director Matt Lenz love to share stories of strapping Italians walking into the room, audition sides in hand, wide-eyed and pale white, apologizing because they couldn’t possibly read for this part. “It’ll show,” they huffed, gesturing to God’s gift to their pants. “I’m not like this. It’ll be too obvious.”

    Non-actors ask if we compared cocks as part of the rehearsal process. Fellow actors ask if anyone in our cast suffers from “the curse.” And after each show, without fail, someone will pose the question, “So... is it true?” And while our typical response is to shrug and smile, I can’t help but admit that questions like these have plagued me during my five-year tenure as Rick.

    Eight shows a week of exchanging details about our characters’ dwarfish dongs can rightly fuck with your head. You begin to observe how men carry themselves, carry their cocks. You’re even less patient with that dude at the gym with the footlong dick who showers, drops his towel and then makes a sandwich right there in the locker room, taking his sweet time before pulling on his briefs. And I’m more conscious of my own cock—how it looks, how it moves, and which jeans showcase it better. Recently my dick asked me to begin sleeping nude. “You might like it,” he said. And goddammit, he was right.

    While we were in previews, the producers decided that we should purchase a web domain, namely the address that Rick touts during his share at the self-help meeting: www.RickIGotASmallDick.com. Knowing that I was a writer (and confident that I knew Rick well enough to write in his own dialect), they asked me if I would pen a blog, a personal column strictly from Rick’s perspective, in which he discusses anything from female conquests to sports stats to the reality of living day-to-day with a tiny cock. Without hesitation, I agreed. And while I’m still not 100 percent comfortable when pulling up the website in public, it is a pleasure to delve further into his psyche. How much time do we all spend wrapping our minds around our own insecurities, whether it’s our dicks or our hair, our height or thighs or skin? As Rick would say, “Too friggin’ much.”

    I neglected to mention that Rick spends the entire 90 minutes of the play with a sock in his pants. Costume designer Michael McDonald first credited my own generously proportioned prick for the bulge in my pants, until I burst his bubble and told him I’d purchased the perfect tube sock nearly five years ago when Rick and I first met, when I was fresh out of college and willing to do anything to be onstage. “I just booked my first job, Mom. Yup, I play a guy with a ridiculously small dick.”

    For 18 years, Marlene Danielle got on that stage at the Winter Garden in tons of make-up and a form-fitting costume and purred her heart out. Eighteen years of straight pussy. And now every night at the SoHo Playhouse, I spend my half-hour prior to show rolling and adjusting the sock in my pants, balancing it with my own cock, finding the perfect lump. The boys tease me backstage, but let’s be honest: It’s theater. It’s theatrical. Nothing is real in the traditional sense. Not even my manhood… Though perhaps it’s worth mentioning that our stage manager, Jovon Shuck, keeps the theater, backstage area and dressing rooms absolutely frigid.

    ------

    Brian Leahy is an actor and blogger currently living in Manhattan. The Irish Curse runs Tuesday through Sunday at the [SoHo Playhouse]; [www.theirishcurse.com](http://theirishcurse.com/).