“You’re name’s Myanus. Surely, you’re on speaking terms with embarrassment already.”
“That’s as maybe, Prime Minister, but the past is another country and the future is a new frontier. I’m thinking of my standing in the history books, and when people look up Myanus I don’t want them seeing your penis.”
“Well how the Hell do you think I feel?!” Bactrian fumes.
“Think of it this way,” the doctor confides. “When the Churchills, Chamberlains and Thatchers of this world disappear into the murk of political history, your name will be alive, playing across the lips of post-operative transsexuals the world over, as they tell their confused parents that it was ‘Bactrian’s syndrome’ and the breasts are just a side-effect. You’ve been immortalised. God’s smiling on you, son!”
Bactrian reels from the doctor’s last utterance: a truly vicious blow to a man who’s spent his life trying to disassociate his name from the third sex. When he finally speaks, the words arrive with a menace that requires no exclamation marks:
“I will not go down in history as the Prime Minister with no penis. I’ll be a stiff before I’m stiffy-less. I’d rather be six foot under than six inches shorter.”
“I think that’s an overgenerous estimate,” Myanus chips in cheerily, unable to resist this last opportunity to put the boot in. “Well, you’re going to die then,” he adds. “I’ll bid you goodbye then, Prime Minister. Looks like we won’t be seeing each other again… Except, of course, when I have your knob in a specimen jar marked: Bactrian’s syndrome.” And he points to the afflicted area for emphasis.
“So be it then!” says Bactrian, with a resolve as rock solid as his member.
Bactrian is a proud man. He is not a pop star. There are no credibility points for androgyny in politics, only embarrassing tabloid rumours and unspoken admiration from certain sections of the backbench.
“P.M. Dies of Galloping Gonad Gangrene!” is a future headline haunting him, for amputation, as they say, is not an option.
He stumbles into the cold night. Cue the wind and rain. Someone turn up the emotive music. This scene needs some pathos.
And as Bactrian sings the half-forgotten words of some appropriately angst-ridden guitar anthem, he thinks back to better days, before his organ required a quarantine certificate to travel abroad.
Tramps protest outside the huge, bottle-shaped Boozeshop off licence, complaining that the separate cider-basement for the homeless is a form of apartheid. There’s a Leopard Van looming and something tells me we’re about to get carnivorous, so I turn my collar up and hurry back to the architectural salvage project we call our house.
It’s not my home. It’s a monument to my wife’s disappointment and anger. And she stalks the rooms with a chianti flagon dangling from her cardigan sleeve, rewriting the happier moments of our shared history as examples of my cruelty and neglect. I don’t know why I stay. I guess, when you can’t see land, you don’t know which way to swim.
Rachel’s inside so outside’s safe. But soon I’m locked in an argument with my tosser neighbour, Reynolds.
Reynolds maintains that my rosebush is a tree, it overshadows his patio, and that I need to trim it. I say I don’t care what it is but I’ll happily trim it if he’ll just shut up and go away. But he doesn’t. So I tell him I don’t understand why he wants it trimmed anyway, since it gives him ample cover to stand outside, look up at our bathroom window and jerk his limp dick off. I tell him I’ve seen him do it. And I have.
Maybe his wife’s seen him at it, and this is all part of some double-bluff display for her benefit. She can’t be too bright to have married the white-trash goober in the first place. I feel resentful. Once again, dullards I don’t give a damn for drag me into their pointless, self-created dramas. They make problems then parcel them up for distribution. So I offer to hit him with a half brick and he goes away. For the moment.
I’m sick ofpetty, suburban bullshit. I want change. I want adventure. I want it now.
Bactrian barrel-rolls through the door, pissed as Christmas, with flared, flake-encrusted nostrils and eyes wide as the Grand Canyon. He points his heaving bulk toward the nearest female and announces:
“I have an erection and I demand someone attend to it!” and gesticulates toward his alcohol-soaked mound to clarify. Bodyguards glare through the window. No one seems surprised.
The proprietor eyes him up and slowly down. She’s a small, elegant woman, hair greying at the temples, with strong Eastern European features. We’ll call her Therese. Therese has seen a lot in thirty years in the restaurant trade. What she sees of Bactrian doesn’t impress.
“I’m sorry, Sir,” she says acerbically, “But we don’t service perverts here.”
“But,” says Bactrian, “the sign says Brothel.”
“No, it doesn’t,” she replies. “If you will kindly take your drunken self outside to read it, you will notice that it says The Broth Hole. We are a specialist soup restaurant.”
“So no girls, then?” he persists.
“As I said, Sir, we don’t service perverts.”
“But I’m not a pervert,” he protests.
“Sir, your current demeanour suggests that you are.”
“But I’m not,” he says indignantly.
“That’s as maybe, Sir,” she growls, “but we don’t serve drunken arsewits either. Now, may I suggest you take your sorry organ out of here and find a place more suited to your needs. I believe the Tommy Tank Palace has a two for one offer for the over-fifties.”
Bactrian is flustered, frantic. His time on Earth is ticking away.
“Please,” he implores, “I don’t have much time! I’m going to die!”
“I’ve heard that one before,” Therese sneers, “I’ve been through three wars and four husbands. Listen to me: the only fluid exchanged here is soup. Have you got that? Can your little mind contain the thought?”
“Pleeeaase! I’m going to die!” he whines. “Very soon! And I’m so lonely! And it’s such a simple request! A single issue! It’s such a small thing!”
“I’ll bet!” she answers.
“All I want is a little light relief before the reaper calls to collect me. Is it such a big thing? I have funds; plenty of funds!” And he pulls out a substantial wad of God-fearing taxpayer’s money as supporting evidence.
Therese assesses the bundle. A businesswoman, born and bred, she studies the empty restaurant, sighs and snatches the cash.
“You’ll do me…sorry, it? It’s the smart move all round!” says Bactrian brightly.
Therese shakes her head with a condescending smile. She reaches behind the till for a well-thumbed mail order catalogue.
“Take this,” she says sternly. “The storeroom’s through there. Don’t leave a mess. Don’t make any noise. If either I or my customers get even the slightest indication of what you are doing in there, I will call the police. You got that?”
Bactrian nods as graciously as a man about to entertain himself with a catalogue can and bolts through the door, leaving Therese with the impression she’s seen him somewhere before.
The storeroom’s a cosy, pine-planked rectangle, littered with tomato crates and debris from recent renovation. He finds space beneath a long shelf and builds himself a nest of cardboard boxes, enjoying the illicit thrill. Safely ensconced, he locates the firm-control underwear section and sets to work.
It‘s a difficult business and I’ll spare you the exact details. Suffice to say, the concretion numbs sensation and it takes great effort. His elbow slams hard against the wall at regular intervals. The loose planking vibrates and the objects upon the shelf judder closer and closer toward the edge. There’s a clock on the shelf, a monumentally distasteful ornamented lump of heavy mahogany, embellished with crudely carved flowers and varnished, apparently, with hardened treacle. Perched ignominiously upon its top stands the cast metal figure of Justice, trademark sword and scales in hand, fortunately blindfolded to Bactrian’s flagrant self-gratification (Hardly the best advert for human sensuality there’s ever been). As he pounds himself closer to a satisfactory conclusion, Justice draws closer to the edge of the shelf. And, as he reaches his crescendo, she arrives at thin air, plummeting in swift rotations toward the Prime Minister’s skull. She hits hard and heavy; lethally. And Bactrian is dead.