I didn’t forget. For a long time I examined the skin of my inner thighs compulsively, but I never again found a similar blemish.
Phallic symbolism? Call it what you like, but it really happened, and seems to me to be an (if not the) obvious source for the dream that followed, some months later.
In the dream I’d had a small, fleshy growth on my inner thigh for some time without doing anything about it. I was vaguely aware that it was growing larger, but when I finally examined it closely I was shocked to see an excrescence as long and thick as one of my fingers. I felt squeamish about handling it, and knew at once that I would not be able to rid myself of it by squeezing it. The excrescence was enormously, seemingly abnormally, sensitive to the slightest pressure. And even after I’d dressed myself I was morbidly aware of it chafing between my thighs. I had the horrible feeling it was growing larger and didn’t dare look at it again, fearful that it had been my own examination of the thing which had made it suddenly so much worse. Terrified, I wondered what it was. It was too much to hope that such a thing could vanish as suddenly as it appeared; I’d have to see a doctor about getting it removed.
With a tremendous sense of relief that there was something I could do, I woke, and for a few moments, swimming hazily in the aftermath of sleep, I could think of nothing but calling my doctor, wondering how soon he’d be able to see me, and how simple or difficult the subsequent operation would prove to be.
Then I woke a little more and realized I’d been dreaming. The relief was that much greater: there was no peculiar growth on my inner thigh; the whole thing had been a dream. To prove it to myself I passed my hand across, over, down and up my bare thighs beneath the sheet. Bare, smooth flesh made me smile until I felt it.
So much bigger, fatter, grosser than it had been in the dream—full of pus, I thought in helpless horror—and attached to me, undeniably growing out of my body, sprouting not from one of my legs as in the dream, but in reality from my trunk, rooted in my pubis and dangling—this was no mere phallic symbol but the thing itself.
Nauseous with shock, I struggled to cling to the idea that this, too, was a dream and in a moment I would wake.
But I was as wide-awake then as I am now. I am what I have always been, and I have always had this thing, this normal, fleshy excrescence. I’ve been told that my memories of a different sort of body are delusions. I can’t argue with the records, pictures, doctors, facts, authorities, you—but neither can I argue with my feelings. I don’t want this fat, swelling thing. It’s not me. I’ve tried and tried to get rid of it, but now they’ve tied my hands. Please, won’t you help me? Please, just squeeze it for me.
This is one of only two stories I’ve ever written based on a dream. It’s all true, except the ending.
Aye, and Gomorrah…
SAMUEL R. DELANY
Samuel R. Delany’s stories are available in Aye, and Gomorrah: And Other Stories, and Atlantis: Three Tales. His novels include Nova, Dhalgren, Hogg, The Mad Man, the Stonewall Award–winning Dark Reflections, and, most recently, Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders. His essay collections include The Jewel-Hinged Jaw, Starboard Wine, Longer Views: Extended Essays, Shorter Views: Queer Thoughts and the Language of the Paraliterary, and Times Square Red, Times Square Blue. Delany was a judge for the 1910 National Book Awards and was the subject of the 2007 documentary The Polymath.
AND CAME DOWN IN Paris:
Where we raced along the Rue de Médicis with Bo and Lou and Muse inside the fence, Kelly and me outside, making faces through the bars, making noise, making the Luxembourg Gardens roar at two in the morning. Then climbed out, and down to the square in front of St. Sulpice where Bo tried to knock me into the fountain.
At which point Kelly noticed what was going on around us, got an ashcan cover, and ran into the pissoir, banging the walls. Five guys scooted out; even a big pissoir only holds four.
A very blond young man put his hand on my arm and smiled. “Don’t you think, Spacer, that you…people should leave?”
I looked at his hand on my blue uniform. “Est-ce que tu es un frelk?”
His eyebrows rose, then he shook his head. “Une frelk,” he corrected. “No. I am not. Sadly for me. You look as though you may once have been a man. But now…” He smiled. “You have nothing for me now. The police.” He nodded across the street where I noticed the gendarmerie for the first time. “They don’t bother us. You are strangers, though…”
But Muse was already yelling, “Hey, come on! Let’s get out of here, huh?” And left.
And went up again.
And came down in Houston:
“God damn!” Muse said. “Gemini Flight Control—you mean this is where it all started? Let’s get out of here, please!”
So took a bus out through Pasadena, then the monoline to Galveston, and were going to take it down the Gulf, but Lou found a couple with a pickup truck—
“Glad to give you a ride, Spacers. You people up there on them planets and things, doing all that good work for the government.”
—who were going south, them and the baby, so we rode in the back for two hundred and fifty miles of sun and wind.
“You think they’re frelks?” Lou asked, elbowing me. “I bet they’re frelks. They’re just waiting for us give ’em the come-on.”
“Cut it out. They’re a nice, stupid pair of country kids.”
“That don’t mean they ain’t frelks!”
“You don’t trust anybody, do you?”
“No.”
And finally a bus again that rattled us through Brownsville and across the border into Matamoros where we staggered down the steps into the dust and the scorched evening with a lot of Mexicans and chickens and Texas Gulf shrimp fishermen—who smelled worst—and we shouted the loudest. Forty-three whores—I counted—had turned out for the shrimp fishermen, and by the time we had broken two of the windows in the bus station they were all laughing. The shrimp fishermen said they wouldn’t buy us no food but would get us drunk if we wanted, ’cause that was the custom with shrimp fishermen. But we yelled, broke another window; then, while I was lying on my back on the telegraph office steps, singing, a woman with dark lips bent over and put her hands on my cheeks. “You are very sweet.” Her rough hair fell forward. “But the men, they are standing around and watching you. And that is taking up time. Sadly, their time is our money. Spacer, do you not think you…people should leave?”
I grabbed her wrist. “¡Usted!” I whispered. “¿Usted es una frelka?”
“Frelko in español.” She smiled and patted the sunburst that hung from my belt buckle. “Sorry. But you have nothing that… would be useful to me. It is too bad, for you look like you were once a woman, no? And I like women, too…”