"A Matter of Measurements"

I was re-reading A Moveable Feast, wondering why I don’t live in Paris, and why I have to use so many words in all my sentences, when I came to my favorite part, the part where Hemingway recounts how F. Scott Fitzgerald had some issues about his…size. In the male sense of the word. Zelda had told him he was too small to ever satisfy her, and so he was despondent and appealed to Hemingway for an honest opinion. Because, if I were a man, and I thought my penis was too small, the first person I’d ask to look at it would be my friend the hard-drinking egomaniac bullfighting enthusiast.

But Hemingway, ever tender and caring toward his friend, took Fitzgerald into the bathroom and assured him that his Princeton-educated winkie was just as manly as any other he’d seen. He told him, “You look at yourself from above and you look forshortened.” He even cleverly suggested that Zelda was just fucking with him by telling him it was small because Zelda was, well, we all know Zelda was crazy. And then Hemingway offered to take him to the Louvre and show him all the naked people so he could compare. Oh, the kindness of dead famous alcoholic writers.