16

Back home you gulp down the tablets. The walk has done you good, you think – the monster seems a trifle more subdued. Nope. Without your undies, boing – it’s up again – like an illustration from a human biology textbook or a Kathy Acker novel – banana curve, taut testicles.

More lying watching tele – M.A.S.H. now. No change. A while later, one more tablet. No dice. No dizziness either. Just one distended cock.

It’s time for the ice. You wrap it in a towel, as advised, but that doesn’t seem cold enough. Instead, you drape the towel round your penis with the ice-cubes on the inside.

You penis starts to burn. Water begins to leak out. It’s painful – hot and cold at once – but, yes, it’s going down.

You stagger off to the bathroom and piss the rest away.

Hot shower, soap, steam, and you’re feeling almost human. Your dick’s still red and sore, but detumescent, thank God, at last.

Later still you talk it over on the phone.

“God, I wish I’d been there! You should have rung me.”

“I guess I should have, but sometimes – you know – bashfulness intervenes.”

On the morning of the departure of their fleet for
Sicily, the people of Athens awoke to find that
vandals had been busy during the night, knocking
the phallus off every Hermes in the city