No, no, no! I thought with all the power of my mind. However, I heard my voice answer politely: “Yes, of course, feel at home.” Oh the hypocrisy of etiquette. I could have bitten off my tongue. But there was no escaping from destiny.
Oliver remained expressionless as he met the gaze of Andorra, then of the dog. Andorra was observing Oliver inquisitively, as if to perceive a penis improbably hidden between his eyes. The gay dog was salivating, detecting the smell of a friendly penis that it knew… in the biblical sense. Coochie pushed close to Oliver and insolently sniffed his genitals through the trousers. Was the trace of an erection swelling in there? Oliver’s forehead was knit. Did Coochie awake in him those dreams that I feared? Under no circumstances should I leave Oliver, and above all my penis, alone together with these two sexual jackals. As yet we were only in my hallway, which was quite large.
The doorbell rang and I turned to open the door once more. Etiquette!
Outside stood two mature women.
“We’re from the Church for the Protection of Genital Organs,” announced one of the ladies. “We’d like to interview you for our religious magazine.”
This church had sprung up recently. Advances in plastic surgery were making it possible to have one’s genitals exotically customized. Surely this insulted the sexual organs God designed for Adam and Eve and for all of us! Biblical believers had long since abandoned defending the sanctity of marriage as a lost cause, consequently they poured their piety into defending the sanctity of copulation as God intended, using the exact organs He provided, not pudenda reshaped into orchids or trumpets, or giant clitorises or bifurcated dicks.
As I later discovered, Bodies’r’Us – who approved of exact copies, not baroque variations – had given some money to the Church of PGO and encouraged them to interview me to make an interesting scene in the movie. Drawing the attention of the Church of PGO was a big mistake, as subsequent events proved. But meanwhile I got rid of the two women as quickly as possible, although not fast enough. When I turned back to my guests, they were not there any more. Andorra and Coochie had vanished along with my Beloved and his/my penis!
Obviously they had gone into the lounge, but why then had they closed the door? Worry clutched at me. I gripped the door handle to follow them only to discover that the door was locked! With a shiver I imagined the spectators of the movie seeing my face turn pale at this point as the most horrible of scenes formed in my mind, of my beloved Oliver buggering the Labrador, who in turn was buggering Andorra who, between moans, was sipping champagne from one of the crystal glasses my grandmother had left me in her will.
Was the artistic, romantic movie of reunion with the Oliver of my penis destined to turn into the usual bestiality porn reality show, the commonplace of television? I banged loudly on the door, but the only response was what sounded like a suffocated whine. Nobody came to let me into my own lounge.
“Oliver!” I shouted. “Andorra!” For answer, just another whine.
This was too much. I fainted.
When I recovered, I was lying on the couch in the lounge. Andorra and Oliver were watching me with worried expressions. Coochie was sitting looking sleepy.
“How long have I been unconscious?”
“A few minutes,” replied Andorra, whether this was true or not. “We heard a thump and found you behind the door. You ought to have the handle seen to. I don’t think it works properly.”
Was she sincere?
“Why did you close the door at all?”
“To be discreet. You had visitors.” Oh, etiquette again. If I believed her.
I turned to Oliver. “What happened in here before you found me passed out?”
“What is passed or past is the turd of the fall, come springtime.”
In other words, No use crying over spilt milk? By which he might mean spilled semen. Did turd allude to a dog’s anus? To my mind those two items are always closely linked. Oliver was no help at all. I’d been getting along better with his, or rather my penis.
Ignoring the gaze of my Beloved, I looked lower, so as to distinguish within his pants my more beloved penis, probably the only part of Oliver which ever really loved me. That wasn’t difficult – an evident protuberance seemed likely to perforate his pants at any moment. Obviously Oliver’s penis was completely erect, the way I remembered it, the way I had long loved it. Hidden as it was by trousers I couldn’t actually see it, and this seemed unjust. Forgetting about the presence of Andorra and the hidden cameras, instinctively I reached out a hand sweetly to caress my beloved penis, which I hadn’t seen – nor felt – in its full, majestic, generous erection for far too long. In the very moment when my hand grazed it, the penis imploded like the Hindenburg airship, deflating at once and evading my contact. Suddenly everything became atrociously clear beyond any doubt!
The penis itself could not know so quickly that it was me who touched it, because the trousers were a barrier to its sensitive nerve endings. Therefore, the order to deflate must have come directly from the brain of Oliver. I became furious and shouted: “You treacherous fuckface prickhead, get out of my home! Get out, but leave my penis here!”
Seizing Oliver, I propelled him with all my strength out of the lounge, through the hall, to the front door. He didn’t resist but let himself be thrown out, although of course he took my/his penis with him. Those two damn churchwomen were still loitering outside, index fingers scribbling on smartscreens nestling in their palms. Were they inventing a non-existent interview? Aurora and Coochie hurried past me without a word or a woof, and I slammed the door behind them. Then I allowed myself the wisest feminine recourse in emergency circumstances: I began to cry.
Oliver took up residence in Andorra’s flat. Some days later a man with the face of a mummified pig presented himself at my door.
“I’m the lawyer of the penis,” he introduced himself.
I discovered that the Church for the Protection of Genital Organs had arrogated to itself the right to represent the interests of Oliver’s penis. From Pigface I heard talk about the rights of genital organs to self-determination and about some Treaty of Independence from the Bearer of the Organ. Oh the mysteries of jurisprudence! The ways that lawyers get rich!
Pigface explained to me that Oliver’s penis had gained the status of an individual by virtue of having lived independently for a sufficient time before finding itself again attached to a human bearer. The Church for the Protection of Genital Organs was entitled to represent the penis because it was the first to claim that right, without the penis raising any objection.
“But the penis wouldn’t be able to understand any of this!”
“Exactly. So it needed legal representation.”
Later I learned how the judge at the court in question had become obsessed with making controversial landmark judgments in the hope of being retired soon with a knighthood or some other honour. The Church of PGO had been well aware of this.
In Andorra’s flat there were no hidden cameras. Andorra had refused the TV company permission to install any cameras in her home – probably so as not to expose to the world her affair with the dog. For the TV company and for Bodies’r’Us this was unacceptable. On the other hand, the impotence Oliver’s penis displayed towards me when it was attached to Oliver hardly made his return to my own home a very exciting prospect for Natalie and the other people involved in the production of the movie. The public doesn’t much care for erotic dramas with impotent characters. Therefore, the lawyers for Natalie and Bodies’r’Us were petitioning to have Oliver and his penis separated again, so that the penis could go back to performing in the role that had made it so famous, the penis without a man.