The Brotherhood of Swords functioned very well during the six months following our extraordinary discovery. Until the day that one of the Brothers, like me a poet, called for the convening of a General Assembly of the Brotherhood to relate a matter he considered of the utmost importance. His wife, noticing the nonoccurrence of emissio seminis during copulation, had concluded that there could be various reasons for it, which in summary would be: either he was saving up the sperm for another woman, or else he was feigning pleasure when in reality he was acting mechanically like a soulless robot. The woman even suspected that our colleague had an implant in his penis to keep it always rigid, an allegation that he easily proved to be groundless. In short, the poet’s wife had stopped feeling pleasure from copulating. In reality she wanted the viscosity of sperm inside her vagina or on her skin; to her that white, sticky secretion was a powerful symbol of life. Sex, as Whitman would put it, after all included seminal fluid. The woman didn’t say so, but surely the exhausting of him, the male, represented the strengthening of her, the female. Without those ingredients she couldn’t feel pleasure, and, this is the worst part, if she felt no pleasure neither did our Brother, for we of the Brotherhood of Swords want (need) our women to come too. That’s our motto (I won’t cite it in Latin in order not to appear pedantic; I’ve already used Latin once): Come by Making Come.
At the end of our Brother’s explanation the assembly fell silent. The majority of the members of the Brotherhood were present. We had just heard disquieting words. I, for example, no longer ejaculated. Ever since I had succeeded in dominating the Great Secret of the Brotherhood, the MOSE, I no longer produced a single drop of semen, even though all my orgasms were much more pleasurable. And what if my wife, whom I loved so, asked me, as she could at any moment, to ejaculate on her alabaster breasts? I asked one of the doctors in the Brotherhood—there were several doctors among us—if I could go back to ejaculating. Medicine knows nothing about sex, that’s the regrettable truth, and my colleague replied that it would be very difficult, in light of the fact that I, like all the others, had created a strong dependency on that physical and spiritual conditioning; he had already tried, using every scientific resource to which he had access, to counteract that process, without success. All of us, upon hearing that frightful reply, became extremely dismayed. Immediately, other Brothers said they had encountered the same problem, that their wives were beginning to see as unnatural, or even frightening, that inexhaustible ardor. I think I’ve turned into a monster, said the poet who had raised the problem for our collective consideration.
And that is how the Brotherhood of Swords came to an end. Before disbanding we all swore a blood oath never to reveal to the world the secret of the Multiple Orgasm Sans Ejaculation, which we would take to our graves. We go on having a woman waiting for us, but in constant rotation, before she can discover that we are different, strange, able to come with infinite energy without shedding semen. We cannot fall in love, for our relationships are ephemeral. Yes, I too have turned into a monster, and my sole desire in life is to go back to being a monkey.
winning the game
WHEN I’M NOT READING SOME BOOK I get from the public library I watch one of those TV programs that show the life of the rich, their mansions, the cars, the horses, the yachts, the jewels, the paintings, the rare furniture, the silverware, the wine cellar, the servants. It’s impressive how well served the rich are. I don’t miss a single one of those programs, even though they’re not of much use to me; none of those rich people live in my country. But I enjoyed hearing a millionaire interviewed during dinner say that he acquired a yacht worth hundreds of millions because he wanted to have a yacht bigger than some other rich guy. “It was the only way to put an end to my envy of him,” he confessed, smiling, taking a swallow of the drink in his glass. The dinner companions around him laughed a lot when he said that. The rich can have everything, even envy of each other, and in them it’s humorous; for that matter, everything is amusing. I’m poor, and envy in the poor is looked upon badly, because envy causes repression in the poor. Along with envy comes hatred of the rich; the poor don’t know how to retaliate without a spirit of vengeance. But I don’t feel rage against any rich person; my envy is like the guy with the bigger yacht: like him, I just want to win the game.
I’ve discovered how to win the game between a poor guy, like me, and a rich one. Not by becoming rich myself, I’d never manage that. “Getting rich,” one of them said on a program, “is a genetic proclivity that not everyone has.” This millionaire had made his fortune starting out from zero. My father was poor, and I inherited nothing when he died, not even the gene that motivates you to make money.
The only possession I have is my life, and the only way of winning the game is by killing a rich man and coming away alive. It’s something like buying the bigger yacht. I know this seems like odd reasoning, but one way to win the game is by making up at least part of the rules, something the rich do. The rich man I kill has to be an heir; an heir is a person like me, often without the predisposition to get rich, but who was born rich and blithely enjoys the fortune that fell from the sky into his lap. Actually, to relish life to the fullest, it’s preferable that just the father, and not the heir, be born with the gene.
I would prefer killing one of those foreign rich guys that I see on television. A man. Their wives, or their daughters, are even more ostentatiously rich, but a woman, however many jewels she has on her fingers and around her wrist and neck, isn’t the bigger yacht. Nor would I be interested in one of those women who obtained their fortune by working, certainly carriers of the gene, clones who appear on television in suits. No, it would have to be a man. But since the ideal rich men live in other countries, I have to look for a rich man right here, one who inherited the money and goods that he enjoys.
The difficulty in achieving this goal doesn’t worry me in the least. I painstakingly draw up my plans and when I lie down I’m asleep within minutes and don’t wake up during the night. Not only do I have peace of mind but a well-functioning prostate, unlike my father, who used to get up every three hours to urinate. I’m in no hurry; I must choose with great care, somebody at least at the level of the rich guy who bought the big yacht. The majority of the people who appear in the magazines published here in my country can be called rich and famous, but killing one of them would be easy and wouldn’t make me win the game.
Every rich person likes to show off his wealth. The nouveau riche flaunt it more, but I don’t want to kill one of them, I want a rich man who inherited his fortune. These, belonging to the later generations, are more discreet, normally displaying their wealth through travel. They love shopping in Paris, London, New York. They also like to go to distant and exotic places that have good hotels with genteel help, and the more sports-minded can’t pass up an annual ski trip, which is understandable because after all they do live in a tropical country. They display their wealth among themselves (there’s nothing to be gained from playing with the poor), at millionaires’ dinners where the winner can confess it was because of envy that he bought what he bought, and the others merrily drink to his health.