15

Walking out, you notice for the first time just what a serious erection this is – a real woody, painful in its distension of your pallid arteries.

Back home you can’t restrain yourself – ignoring all the advice about how to masturbate correctly in the Premature Ejaculation pamphlet (no fantasizing, no magazines, make it last), you throw yourself on the bed and let rip. The come is thick and copious.

But that’s not all. After an hour or so you start to wonder when it will go down. An hour later, and you’ve started to employ some of the recommended remedies for “Priapism” (Any erection prolonged beyond six hours constitutes a urological emergency, the notes on the back of the Instructions to Consulting Physicians form explain helpfully.)

You squeeze it, first, for twenty minutes or so (the video’s on the blink – you watch your way through Sesame Street, some Pokémon-style Japanese cartoons, even – God help you! – Gilligan’s Island. Two hours have now gone by – you’re entering the danger zone (Average initial erection: sixty minutes, explains one of the other pamphlets).

There’s nothing for it. Strapping it down as far as you can, you sally forth to purchase Sudafed from the local chemist (Available from any pharmacy).

“D’you have Sudafed?” you demand, bursting into the shop.

The pharmacist seems a little alarmed. You must look like a madman, staring eyes, gaunt cheeks, trousers stuffed to bursting. An obvious homebake fiend.

“Why do you need it? Do you have a congested nose?”

“No.”

“Why then?”

“They told me at the clinic I might need it.”

“What clinic?”

“Can I talk to you in private?”

She draws you off to one side, away from the staring eyes of all the smock-clad girls who’ve materialised behind the dispensing counter.

“The male impotence clinic – to bring down an erection.”

She doesn’t look convinced, but sells it to you anyway.

“You may get dizzy if you take two tablets at a time,” she warns, and you limp out.