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He hoped he wouldn’t regret it later.
But of course, he would regret it later. That was the point. Anesthesia, like smoke, made the world black. A quick curtain like the blink of an eye – - and when Brad opened his lids again, there was a man in a white coat speaking to him. “Move your arm.” Brad blinked. “Move your arm.” Brad took a moment to find his limbs again, and then moved his arm. “Thank you.” A flicker of tubing beneath the white blanket that was draped over Brad’s lap. “Take a few minutes for the anesthesia to wear off.” So Brad did. He felt… well, he didn’t feel aroused anymore, which was something, and probably had something to do with the anesthesia. He felt… disoriented… but that was probably to be expected too. He wanted to look at his groin to see what it was like now that his penis was missing, but his limbs felt leaden and hung limply by his sides. He felt like he was dreaming of being awake. Were you supposed to look at your wounds in a hospital anyway? Would they be disgusting? Was someone going to come back? In a distant room, people were talking. Low voices. A water cooler was visible outside the door to Brad’s private room. Bubbles inched upward through the aqua. There were no windows. Brad wanted to move the blanket, and look down. He refrained. His hand twitched with a spasm in his palm. He felt his penis ache. Um. Now, Brad really wanted to move the blanket. Had they made a mistake and left his penis? Or what if they’d made a mistake and taken his testicles instead? That was supposed to be bad for the physique. What would he say to a physician if he wanted to get hormone therapy? His penis throbbed painfully, near the head. Sensitive. He winced. He reached down. His hand took a moment to respond, but soon he recalled how to work his fingers. The blood was sudden and prickly in his fingertips. He peered out the hall, tried to listen to the voices in the next room. Was anything coming nearer? Hearing nothing, he twitched the blanket aside. A catheter ran from his groin. His penis was gone. It was. His testicles were there, drooping sleepily in their red sack, beneath bandages. The catheter shone between them, running a glistening thread down the middle of his scrotum. Oddly, the lack of his pubic hair was the strangest looking thing. He looked juvenile, childlike, which was sort of disturbing. He felt like he was staring at a child’s crotch, voyeuristically, and the sexual ramifications of it scared him into moving the blanket back over his crotch. His penis ached. What the hell? He reached down and moved the blanket again. His penis *was* gone. Definitely. And this time, when he looked, after the shock of the bandages and the catheter and the lack of public hair had already registered, he felt a lava-like stirring in his groin building toward – well, nowhere, which was the point. His penis was gone. He’d done it. He felt a sexual surge, and he wanted to masturbate, and he knew he couldn’t, which was the big kick, and a little nagging voice in the back of his head said “So how long is it going to be before you’re sick of this?” but it was drowned in the surge of lust which was eternal because it couldn’t be released except… it could, couldn’t it? If he could get fucked? But then he’d have to show someone what he’d done, and who would want to fuck him then? He stared down at the bandages, and tried to picture what his groin would look like healed, without his penis. Bald was the word that came to mind. “Ahem.” Brad looked up. One of the doctors was there. He rapidly pushed the blanket over his penis. It ached again, and he flinched visibly. “Is something wrong?” the doctor asked. “Uh,” Brad said, embarrassed, “I just… thought I felt a pain… but there’s nothing there…” “Phantom limb syndrome,” the doctor provided, grumbling. “It’s in the release information. Read through your copy. You can take local painkillers, or learn to live with it. Your brain is trying to reconnect with nerves which are gone.” A pause. The pain again, fainter. “You can call a cab and take it back to your hotel now. Make sure you’re met with a wheelchair, and take plenty of bed rest.” * * *
“Come in,” Brad called, when room service arrived. A platter of eggs and sausage. After the attendant pulled the dish dome off of the faux-silver tray, Brad smirked. He speared a sausage with his fork, and nibbled on the flesh of it. He was feeling better – could probably go out now and enjoy himself. The bandages were snug, and less painful to remove. He probably shouldn’t go swimming. But he had only another three days on Walanii, and he figured he should enjoy himself. Besides, the island had a virtue which was unexplored – here, where the entire tourist industry was a little shady – here, he might be able to confess homosexuality, penectomy, the entire bundle, without having to cope with it when he got home and had to retrieve the mantle of false heterosexuality and normality which was waiting for him there. And he wanted to fuck. He wondered if this was to become a habit, a single and necessary outlet for him; he wondered if he’d have to come back here yearly for sex… Could he stand having release only yearly? Today, he’d go out and see what he could find. * * * Lydia and Tyler, by the beach. She in a white bikini. Him in day-glow orange swim trunks which were a disappointment – Brad had been hoping for a speedo. The surf lapped the shore, licking slowly. Brad felt his libido crest. Since the surgery, it hadn’t taken much – even the idea of waves. He could remember the sensation of warm water in the shower pouring over his penis. Warm and wet and encompassing. He had, during showers, spent some time watching the drops prickle down his shaft like dew on a flower stem, and every once in a while, one would nibble on the skin near his urethra. He’d never come to orgasm from that stimulation, but he had fantasized that someday he would just dissolve like sugar in the water which had been one of his first castration fantasies, wavering and indistinct. Tyler noticed him and waved. His penis, soft, was nevertheless a present bulge in the front of his shorts. “Hey! Haven’t seen you; thought you went home!” Lydia turned slightly and glanced in his direction without much interest. Sea foam lapped at her ankles. Tyler bounded toward him, leaping over the thread of shell fragments which was drawn like a line across the beach where the high tide had pushed them. “No, I didn’t go home,” Brad said. “Good!” Tyler enthused. The thought unbidden: Tyler holding him from behind, his arms wrapped around Brad’s chest – like a safety belt – their bodies spooning, Tyler’s genitals pressing at Brad’s buttocks, soft and hard at the same time, rough like ostrich skin. The hands moving down, touching his nipples, then up again to caress his chest. Tyler’s penis growing hard against his back, a serpent clinging to the shallow where his buttocks collided with his spine. Tyler’s hands wrapping around to touch Brad’s penis and finding nothing and the thought crested, and Brad felt a phantom pain in his penis as his testicles asserted themselves by descending toward the cotton crotch of his pants. “Are you guys…” Brad didn’t know where to begin. He hadn’t even gotten the hang of asking girls out, and that involved much less risk. “Um… interested in going to bars tonight?” “Yeah, all right.” Tyler shouted to Lydia, “What do you think?” She was bent over, examining a fragment of mother of pearl. “If you want to,” she said. She flipped the slice of shell into her palm, and stood up, and walked away from them toward a large rock-formation which broke the waves on the east end of the beach. “She’s trying to get out of the way,” Tyler said. “Ah,” said Brad. “I don’t think she likes me much.” “She’s my ex,” Tyler explained. “She doesn’t want to interfere. She thinks you’re interested in me.” “Ah?” “And she knows I’m looking for a guy,” Tyler continued. “Ah.” And that information tightened Brad’s stomach unpleasantly, for some reason he couldn’t fathom. Anxiety? The phantom pain again, but without a pleasant side-effect. “I want to grab a shower, though. Do you drink Tequila?” “Um…” Brad had, in his life, once sampled a friend’s Kiddish cup. “Sure.” “I’ll bring some with us, in a thermos,” Tyler said, “So we don’t have to spend as much money at the bar.” * * *
Brad tried the tequila. His face screwed up like a small dog’s, briefly managed wrinkled as cellophane, and then settled on merely horrible. “Um, strong Tequila,” he stammered. Tyler laughed, and took a swig from the thermos. “If you hadn’t tried it before, why didn’t you just tell me?” Lydia took the thermos and drank too. They were outside the bars which were strewn along the beach in a florescent line like Christmas lights. Dotted glaring pink and yellow, they flared and winked. A man in a too-tight shirt that had rolled up above his beer gut stumbled past them, and goosed Brad. “So that’s where the gay bars are,” Lydia commented dryly, indicating the bar from which the man had stumbled with a flick of her eyes. “We know where to go then,” Tyler said with a grin. Brad looked over at Lydia. He felt sorry for her, and awkward, because he wasn’t sure if he was Tyler’s date, but if he was, then that meant that they were in an awkward position, and he couldn’t understand why she was here with Tyler anyway, or what the two of them could possibly have had in common, and it was all very confusing, and so he asked, “Do you mind?” Lydia shrugged. “I’ll sit by the piano.” “She sings.” “I’ll sit,” she repeated, “and watch the pianist play.” Tyler grinned. And another thought: fingers which could play a piano, dextrous and long, and winding through his hair, or better yet, playing through the muscles of his back as if he were a piano – weaving down his skin, slick with sweat, kneading into his buttocks and further – one finger probing in – two fingers, twisted into a sign language “R” in rapid staccato bursts of in, out, in, out, in, out – “Let’s go in already,” Lydia complained. Hitching up the hem of her pale blue sarong, she stepped into the bar. Tyler grabbed Brad’s arm, and pulled him in behind her. Okay, so it was a date.
* * * They got drunk. More than a little. And Tyler, sloshing over the bar where a squat gilded statue of an undefined nature God glared at the patrons, fumbled his fingers over Brad’s shoulder. “Let me tell you what I want,” he sloshed. Somewhere else, there was the noise of vomiting. A man in a velour jacket pushed noisily by, and his foot pushed Brad’s stool closer to the bar. “I want a guy to fuck me,” Tyler slurred. “Fuckity fuck fuck. Just… curious, you know? Cuz, clit’s okay, but I want to see a cock. Cuz, like, with a clitoris you have to stammer around, wait if you’ve struck the right note, I mean, diddle, diddle, and maybe it doesn’t come to anything, but a cock, man -” A gentle refrain melted into the air with the smoke, which was legal in bars on the island, but which clotted in Brad’s used-to-fresh-air lungs. “Like that’s something you know how to play. Or to blow. Don’t shee how – see howsh – see how you can go wrong with that. Besides, I want to know what itsh like for a woman, or maybe I juscht want to be fucked and is there anything wrong with that? No, there’s not.” And, in Brad’s mind: His own hard penis thrusting in and out of Tyler’s buttocks that were gold as if they were Midas’ buttocks, tanned and perfect as golden sculptures, but moldable too, like pure gold, which would give to his fingers, and his cock and of course he didn’t have one. He swigged his drink. “So whatchdyou think?” Tyler asked. And what was Brad going to say? Should he say ‘I’m sorry, I would love to fuck you, but unfortunately I’ve just had my penis cut off, so it would be fabulous if you’d turn that around and just fuck me instead?’ No. So he said, “I’m not really comfortable with the idea of having sex with someone.” There was momentary silence. A glass tinkled as it smashed on the floor, across the bar. “I feel like sex is something for a commitment,” he continued, and then, more boldly because the Tequila had promised him it would be all right, “I could give you a blow job, maybe, though.” “Naw, if you’re not into it, it’s okay. You’re not going to offend me,” Tyler said. The offer vanished into the scratches worn into the countertop. Brad tried to push down the thought of having Tyler’s cock in his throat – the warm, salty taste of it – the movement of it swaying gently up and down like a live thing, like a buouy in the peer against his lips. More, Tyler’s voice in pleasure, assonant and gasping, spun like a thread which thickened as the wool pulled before refining into quick, thin moans – “Okay,” Brad said. His testicles tightened closer to his body. And regret set in. He wanted to fuck Tyler, and he couldn’t, and that was the end of it. “Excuse me,” Tyler said. He picked himself up off the barstool and tripped slightly before righting himself. “I’m going to the mensch mensss men’s room,” he said, but on the way, he found a tall, lanky boy with black hair, and Brad watched the incendiary moment happen. Their conversaion was flying. He turned back to his drink. “Brave of you to turn him down.” Lydia’s voice. He looked up and she was next to him, holding a faintly pink drink at half arm’s length. “Maybe brave isn’t the word I mean,” she said, “but… resolute. I did overhear. Sorry. Tyler speaks loudly, and I’m used to attending his conversation.” “Oh,” Brad said, “It’s okay.” “You wanted him pretty badly, didn’t you? Why didn’t you just tell him you were a bottom?” “That wasn’t what he wanted,” Brad said. And he wasn’t sure why he hadn’t said it, really. But he thought it had something to do with the fact that, bottom or top, if what Tyler wanted was a penis, he couldn’t provide. “Nevermind,” Lydia said. “He’s fair-weather anyway. Just don’t take him too seriously. He wants you to see him as a careless fop, and it’s easier if you do.” She sat next to him. Brad wasn’t much in the mood for talking. “I want to go back to my hotel room,” he announced, with crisp dictation. He pushed on the countertop and tried to pull his legs underneath him, but the world swam. He didn’t quite fall, but he did end up on his knees, staring up at the weird gilded godhead that was sitting on the counter. “Okay,” Lydia said. “But I think you need an escort.” * * * Brad’s head was buried in her shoulder as they stumbled in the door to his room. It was dark, and his clothes and the various other belongings he’d brought were strewn on the floor so that it was hard for them to navigate toward the bed without tripping. Particularly since his weight was on her, and she was drunk herself. But eventually they found the bed, and she pushed him onto it, and stumbled into the bathroom to splash water on her face. It made her pupils dilate, but didn’t do much to wake her up. She stumbled back to the bed, and lay down next to him. Brad was crying. She didn’t say anything. He kept crying, and she folded herself up, and put her arms around her knees, and he was still crying, so she experimentally put a hand on his shoulder. But that felt unnatural too, so she moved it again, and crossed her arms. “What is it?” she asked. And he didn’t answer. “You really wanted Tyler, didn’t you?” And she couldn’t see his face in the dark, with only slices of streetlights bisecting the carpet beneath the window on the northern wall, but the darkness winked a yes. And she sighed. “He’s charismatic,” she said. “You wouldn’t understand,” Brad said. “No, probably not.” There were no cicadas. A ceiling fan whirred. “Shhh,” Lydia said, and she started to undress him. Her hands were forward and cool, and Brad winced as she nudged the sleeve of his t-shirt down his arm. “I’m not interested in girls,” Brad said. “I know that,” she said. “I feel sorry for you,” she added, “and I’ve done this with Tyler a lot, and it sort of sucks for both of us – and I’ll be honest, there is a hollow feeling in the morning, as if you were a reed which had been used, and left to drown in the Nile – but I do know what I’m doing, and if you close your eyes and concentrate on what he looks like enough, maybe it won’t be so bad.” Brad was drunk, and his head hurt, and her hands were soft, and it was dark. And he felt depressed now, sunken, and completely detached from this whole venture, and the once-sexy prospects of having his penis cut off, and he just wanted someone to touch/hold him, really, so he didn’t move. And she pulled his clothing off of him, and the air from the ceiling fan moved across their skin in tiny white gusts. And she kept her clothing on. And she forked her fingers and spooned them into him, and he closed his eyes tight and pictured Tyler’s cock, hard and red and ready and glistening and wet. She pushed, and he thought of Tyler’s hips pushing. She reached around to caress him, and she must have felt the bandages, but she didn’t say anything. Maybe she assumed he was injured, because she silently moved her hand down and caressed his testicles gently. Cupping them and he thought of Tyler’s big hands holding his testicles, and thought of Tyler’s breath grunting in his ear – even though it was only the ceiling fan, and Lydia’s breath – and she kept pushing, and he tried to feel the way Tyler would fit on his back, huge as a bear, but warm and good, and golden. Flat chest fitted to shoulders, waist pressed against the small of the back, thighs tight on buttocks and the feeling built, and his testicles coiled, and he felt the ejaculation come – without semen, probably because of his injury – but sharp nonetheless and the phantom pain was red, but the ejaculation was so white and good and cool that it overwhelmed the tingling in his missing penis and washed over him and exhausted him and he fell asleep on top of the sheets, and Lydia tucked a pillow under his head, and left the room. And in the morning when he woke, he would feel confused, and disappointed, and hollow like a cut reed.
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