I Feel Bad About My Dick

Darryl Ponicsán’s path led from a coal mining town in Pennsylvania to a teaching job in upstate New York, to the Navy, and then to a solo drive across the country in a battered TR-3, carrying little more than the manuscript of his first novel, “The Last Detail.” He rolled into Los Angeles with three gallons of gas in the tank and $95.25 in his pocket. He became a social worker in south central LA just in time to become embroiled in the original Watts riot, the only white man living in a black rooming house within the curfew area.He finished his novel and wrote a second navy novel, “Cinderella Liberty.” The film versions of both novels opened on the same weekend, making him the hottest writer in Hollywood, though by that time he had already moved out of LA, first to Ojai, then Bainbridge Island, Seattle, Sonoma, and Palm Springs. Where he is now is anyone’s guess.At a library used book sale he picked up a copy of Nora Ephron’s bestseller, “I Feel Bad About My Neck.” It inspired him over the next several years to answer her observations from the male point of view and over a different bodily part, and to direct it to Ephron’s audience. The result is “I Feel Bad About My Dick.”Part memoir, part parody, part social analysis, the book deconstructs the battle of the sexes to its primal curiosity: “You show me yours and I’ll show you mine.”