I have no qualms about my half-foot hero.

The other day at Lincoln Center near the Metropolitan Opera House I overheard two African-American beauties talking: “…and then they create these institutions so they can keep down the people they have enslaved,” one says. The other gesticulates at a massive poster of the Philip Glass opera Akhnaten, in agreement. I think to myself, “Gurl, that opera, probably about a Pharoah who told all his male peeps that they have pint-sized peckers. Now go build me some pyramids.”

HALF-FOOT HEROES BY BEN UMAYAM 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 87

At the age of 13, a typical pubescent Filipino boy, I was obsessed with my inadequacy in the penis department. I was taught the Asian Myth. Asians have minuscule members. The other guys and all the girls knew your Asian putz was smaller.

What happened? A couple of years ago my partner Mike and I moved to Queens after living 40 years in Manhattan. Queens is the most diverse of New York City’s boroughs. There are as many as 800 languages spoken. Our neighborhood i…