3:AM Magazine

By Gavin James Bower.

Read Part One here.

Part Two: Man Up

Man, the fuck, up. Isn’t that what people say?

People say a lot of things, though. People say, beauty is more than skin deep. People say, time is a healer. People say, you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.

People say a lot of things.

I’ve been out of hospital two weeks, and can only now face going outside. For the first few days, I just stayed in bed. I remember waking in the night to the sound of my mother sobbing, but I didn’t have anything left.

You’d think I would’ve had enough of lying around — I was in that hospital for a month, half of it voluntary — but there’s something about being around the diseased and the dying that makes everything feel better.

It’s only when you come out, surrounded by all the normal people, things get difficult.

*

My therapist tells me I’m in denial, and need to dig deeper. I get blind drunk before meeting him, the next time, and the whole thing is less than a roaring success. I’ve got too much time to think, but at least at home I can drink.

The time after that, I ask him if he has a big cock.

‘How would you like me to answer that question?’ he says, nonplussed.

There’s grime under his fingernails, and his hands are clammy when we shake. Experience, and I have a lot, tells me that he’s well hung. Virility as poor personal hygiene, or so goes my theory; the juices flowing, the loins proactive, and a concomitant distension of dick.

‘Do you want to see mine?’ I answer, parting my legs.

I dared to look yesterday, but I knew what to expect, having been briefed by the doctors. Even so, it was a bit of a shock.

I’m not going to lie.

‘How would you like me to answer that question?’ he says again, now leaning forward in his chair.

I sense intrigue, despite the clinical facade. Faced with a freak, who can blame him? Show me a man who doesn’t want to see one less fortunate than he, and I’ll show you a lying cunt.

*

The doctors said bathing would be good for me, to face the truth, but baths bring back bad memories.

People say, ‘If I had a pound for every time…’ Well, if I had a pound for every time I laid in the bath, and wanked it out — but people say a lot of things, don’t they.

Impotence, it’s a powerful word.

Still, a bottle in the hand is better than eight inches in the bush, so, charged up, I decide to venture out. To the dive bars in Soho.

The scene of the crime.

I used to feel the cold in between my legs; now, there is only numbness, the kind you imagine chickens to sense, the moment after they lose their heads.

I seriously consider pushing a man in front of a train at Shepherd’s Bush. Smoking a roll-up with a skin so soggy it looks like a bus ticket, he’s bow-legged with ample swagger — more than enough for just one man.

‘That used to be me,’ I think — my current predicament notwithstanding — just one man.

*

I nail two quadruple whiskeys in a boozer off Beak Street, before staggering to see Sandy at Scott’s.

‘Anything for you, mister?’ asks a girl in a doorway; Polish, tranny, a silver onesie barely concealing ‘her’ one.

Inside is quiet, still. Ideal, I think, taking a booth at the back. I spot Sandy and signal for her to come over. She knows me.

When I say she knows me, I mean, she’s been told my name and vocation several times, my address too.

But she insists on calling me ‘John’.

‘How’s it ’angin’, Johnny boy?’ she says, irony personified. Sandy’s already down to a two-piece, standing over me, corned-beef thighs spread either side of mine.

‘I’m trying to think less with this,’ I say, pointing to my crotch, ‘and more with that’ — fingering my temple; my own little bit of irony, again, lost on Sandy.

Her breasts — fake, swollen, like two tumours — envelop my face as she mounts me, then, swivelling, posits her posterior in my eyeline. There’s what looks like a popped pimple on her right cheek, which, at second glance, I realise is actually a bruise. The thong comes down and she opens up to me, not forgetting my penchant for perineum.

The song changes as she backs up, her arse against my chest, legs apart, and begins to drop.

‘I don’t have enough money for another,’ I flinch. ‘I mean…erm…I’ll be charged double, now the song’s changed…’

‘This one’s on me, Johnny boy,’ she interrupts, continuing her descent towards the artist formerly known as Prick.

The song, the whiskey, the opiates — all of it a noxious mix that renders me useless, as she grinds her damp groin in mine.

No reaction, as she goes through the motions. But surely, Sandy, you of all people can spot the difference? My penis — my beautiful cock — was always there waiting for you, stretching from crotch to pocket.

Again, no reaction.

Then the song changes a second time, and I feel drunk — little else. I stand up, a stand of sorts, and follow her to pay, before realising my wallet’s gone. I had it in the last place. How else did I pay for those whiskeys?

Now, though, my trousers are empty.

No standing on ceremony. I’m dragged through the back, all platitudes and innocence, like a bad actor playing drunk — only, I am drunk, and the bad acting isn’t helping.

The punches come from everywhere, like the bouncer’s an octopus — an octopus from Kosovo, by the looks of it. The last, a boot to the belly, sends me into some bins, a crackhead and some students looking to score, watching on, bored.

‘Don’t come back,’ the bouncer warns, going back inside.

‘Yeah don’t come back,’ says Sandy, floating head in a doorway. ‘Dickless twat!’

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gavin James Bower is the author of Dazed & Aroused. He is interviewed in 3:AM here.

First published in 3:AM Magazine: Wednesday, February 2nd, 2011.