Jonah Falcon, owner of the largest documented penis in the world, has generated dozens of headlines since the native New Yorker was featured in the 1999 HBO documentary, Private Dicks: Men Exposed.
“The publicity is like a double-edged sword,” said Falcon, speaking from his Brooklyn home. “I try to have as normal a life as possible, but once I decided to expose myself it’s not like I can wave a wand and make it magically go away.”
The latest headline attached to Falcon took place earlier this summer at the Putnam County Fair in Carmel, New York. “I try and go there ever year. I love fairs. All the food – all the events – I’ve been known to overdose on hotdogs, and I’m the first one to put my John Hancock on the sign up sheet for every event I can get my hands on.”
One of those fair events was the “three-legged race.”
The familiar competition involves two people, one leg from each team member tied together, racing to try and be the first to finish.
“Almost every county fair has one out here. Gobs of people signed up. You put a donation in a charity basket, so it’s really very popular and helps out the firemen’s fund. So, all these teams line up and people without a partner start to pair off,” explained Falcon. “I happened to come alone, so I didn’t have a partner.”
With the race about to start, Falcon found himself standing off to the left.
“Maybe some people recognized me, maybe they were a little afraid of having me for partner, I’m not sure. All I do know is, I was left hanging. I could have just forgotten about it, but I decided I wasn’t going to let the ball drop.”
Critics believe that Falcon engineered this story as a cheap grab for publicity, but he disagrees. “That’s a lot of baloney,” Falcon says. “I went up to the master of ceremonies and complained. He said the three-legged race logically has to involve two people, but I thought it was unfair that I couldn’t participate, especially since I had something in the basket. He didn’t want to hold things up, so he said I could run the race solo. We decided to tie both my legs together so I wouldn’t have a leg up on the other participants.”
There were some grumblings from a few contestants. “Yeah, one of the guys who runs a smoothie stand, this bald-headed yogurt slinger kept spouting off with these snide remarks – but I just turned my head the other way and ignored him. I took the ‘I am rubber, you are glue’ attitude and let it slide, like water off a duck’s back.”
As it turned out, Falcon won the race. “Everyone was really good about it and I gave the trophy to the couple who came in behind me. Even the yogurt guy shook my hand. ‘No big thing,’ I told him.”
“All in all, it was a great day,” said Falcon. “That’s the whole point of a fair – to have fun. I could have spent the rest of the day being Mr. Sad Sack about the whole thing, but instead I walked away being Mr. Happy!”
Curious onlookers had to know more, and they asked the obvious question – exactly how big is Falcon, anyway?
“I tend to not talk numbers in public,” Falcon said, with a wink. “But those people my age and older, they remember the adult film star John Holmes. Well, it’s like that. Only bigger.”