In this moment, right now, you can be thankful that you stuck with Fleshbot Gay through shitty and shittier. It was all a test. You made it! We have the full hyped-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life locker room penis scene from the new HBO series Euphoria, and truly, honestly, TBH, IRL, it does not disappoint! This thing is fucking epoch people.
I'm pretty damn sure that shows like Euphoria - which is aimed at media-savvy Gen Z-ers and younger Millennials - enlist a slew of popular Twitter accounts to generate buzz leading up to a series' premiere. A lot of that hype is penis related. As it should be. Seemingly out of nowhere, Twitter erupted over a cock explosion in the horror movie Ma. And surely you don't need to be reminded about the Chris Pine-is Gate of 2018.
Similarly, leading up to the first episode of Euphoria - which is a gritty high school drama about teens losing themselves in sex, drugs, and social media - we caught wind that 80 penises were going to be featured in one scene. Then it was announced that most of the penises were cut and the number went down to 30. And now it's officially at 21. HOWEVER, if I know you guys, you're not about to throw 21 penises out of bed for eating crackers, especially when they're as fat, floppy, and de-damn delicious as these!
The fake news media will still have you believe that we see 30 penises, but oh, we counted. And additionally, my coworker identified some of the penises as repeats. BUT NONE OF THIS MATTERS. Frankly we see like a billion penises on HBO's Chernobyl. The number of penises doesn't matter. It's all about context baby. And the context in Euphoria is well, a high school locker room. And if the CW has taught us anything, it's that zany stuff goes down in high school locker rooms.
Beyond the locker room, the context is actually pretty fucked up. Via Esquire:
The scene centers around Nate (played by Jacob Elordi), the star athlete with anger issues and some serious sexual anxiety. All those penises are just a short aside in the story of Nate's life, which gets a brief overview at the top of the episode. He's not just the son of a man who has regularly preyed upon trans women and gay men, but the son who carries that secret around after discovering his collection of homemade porn featuring his father in the act.
Ew. Esquire goes on to say that, as Nate has seen his dad's penis be weaponized, he views all penises as threatening:
Zendaya's voiceover explains, 'He hated how casual his teammates were about being naked. How they'd talk to him with their dicks hanging out. He made a concerted effort to always maintain eye contact during those exchanges.' It's all a very long-winded way of turning other penises into Nate's enemy—a reminder that his father is a serial cheater who fetishizes trans women.
Those of you willing the scene to be more explicitly gay than Esquire describes can take Jezebel at its word.
Euphoria also does an excellent job of exploring the effects of toxic masculinity. Nate, the hyper-masculine star quarterback, is seemingly infatuated with his ex-girlfriend. However, he secretly struggles with his sexuality, and frequently uses the gay hookup app Grindr to initiate conversations with men. Conflicted and unable to express himself, he takes out his anger and frustration with gratuitous violence towards men and contempt for most women.
They claim that his moment in the locker room is a gay come-to-penis. Basically, we're only two episodes into Euphoria and no one knows what the hell is going on. What's our official take on Euphoria? It's white-hot hamfisted garbagio? And we stan obvy? Check out all penises from this legion dairy Euphoria scene below! And can we just take a second to give it up for penises? Like let's give them some goddamn credit people! Look at 'em. Go penises go!
Photo Credit: HBO