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.
The penis without its Oliver had already become a star. A poll revealed that as an anonymous part of a normal person it wouldn’t be so interesting to people.
The Church for the Protection of Genital Organs likewise wanted the penis to be separated from Oliver, yet not so that it could perform in porn movies or couple with me again, which they viewed as unnatural. Instead, they wanted it to retire to a zen monastery. Oh, the moral obsessions of churches!
Thus there was conflict between the movie producers, with whom I had signed an agreement on behalf of the cloned Oliver, and the lawyers for the penis and the Church of PGO.
“We won’t allow you to go on sexually exploiting that poor penis,” Pigface told me at a deposition hearing.
“It’s a sexual organ. It was born to be sexually exploited,” I retorted.
“He’s an individual with full rights, including the right of freely choosing the modality of his sexuality.”
“It’s a penis. If it becomes hard that means it wants to fuck.”
“Not at all! Diseases exist, such as priapism. Erection can be the symptom of a pathology.”
I decided to change my strategy. “It’s a piece of meat without a brain. It’s not compos mentis.”
“Another reason to protect his dignity. We will never allow that poor penis to be forced into any more intercourse for which he didn’t give written consent.”
“How can a penis write anything?”
“If h
eld properly, it can produce a DNA signature.”
“Without a prostate it can’t ejaculate, so where’s the ink?”
“We can prepare all necessary documents before the separation.”
Suits and countersuits were heard, and the lawyers were all very happy until at last no legal problems prohibited the penis being separated from Oliver. Final judgment was that since the penis was cloned before the body, it was the one who owned the other, and not the contrary. The penis owned the man, namely the cloned Oliver; Oliver did not own the penis. If it’s legitimate for a man to cut off his own penis, provided that he isn’t attempting suicide, logically the penis could decide to cut off its own man. The lawyer for the penis, as his legal representative, had full power to act in this regard – and to steal the penis of my Beloved, I was thinking in anger and frustration.
The judge duly retired and became a lord.
However, we live in a strange and unpredictable world.
Under its various Patriot Acts, the USA had permitted itself to intervene in any part of the world in defence of its homeland security and its supplies of oil and cheap obesity fast food, full of oil and sugar and additives. To signal to the world its rise as a rival superpower, China enacted the Salvation of Culture Law, by which the Chinese gave themselves the right to intervene anywhere to protect the interests of art. This was something that the American government found hard to understand, so they did not threaten the Chinese with thermonuclear war.
If the USA was the Global Cop, China would be the Global Curator. A popular US slogan was “Kick Ass America!” So Beijing declared “Save Art China!” And why not, China being the oldest civilization on Earth? When Venice began to sink rapidly, swift intervention by Chinese technology had rescued the Italian city, preserving it in a dome to the applause of most nations. From then on, China could take great liberties in the defence of art.
Art included performance art, and one of the many ways of preserving art was Gor-Gon, a polymerizing nanotechnology inspired by Gunther Von Hagen’s corpse plastination factory in the north-eastern Chinese port city of Dalian. In just a few seconds, a jab of Gor-Gon administered by injection or by a dart fired from a gun could transform any living being into plastinated artwork, petrifying for ever (though by no means as stiffly as stone) the target animal or person at that moment.
The penis had been quite a performer, and the legal case was by now notorious worldwide, as was the prospect of cloned penis and cloned person parting company. So Chinese art agents targeted Oliver. Already Chinese art agents had overenthusiastically targeted several famous opera singers and actors for a Hall of Fame. Since the salvation of Venice, the Chinese could do pretty much as they pleased, but plastinating artists suddenly while they were on stage caused demands for ticket refunds, arguments about civil rights, and also poorer performances by many divas and stars who didn’t wish to be plastinated, which was all very regrettable and counterproductive. So this was made illegal. But according to Chinese law, plastinating a clone was just as acceptable as plastinating a criminal for export to medical schools . . .
I’m so lucky. At the moment of petrification, the penis of my former Beloved was fully erect – he had to be slid out of Andorra by the Chinese agents who invaded her flat. So now I live in China, inside a big transparent cube. I couple with the penis attached to Oliver whenever I want. Plastination keeps the penis stiff, yet soft and comfortable to use. Of course, plastinated Oliver never says a thing, nor moves, although I arrange him artistically just as I please.
Outside the cube every day, crowds of visiting art lovers and connoisseurs admire us and shoot holographic movies, so that we never feel alone. Inside the cube, the air is always fresh and rich in happy-making hormones. The Chinese takeaway meals supplied to me free are so varied and delicious. Life is beautiful! Or maybe life is simply too complex to understand.
Nothing But This
Kristina Lloyd
I call him the Boy although he isn’t. He’s skinny enough, it’s true – as skinny as the kids who do backflips in the square – and there’s not a single hair on his flat brown chest. But his age is in his eyes, eyes as green as a cat’s, and when I look right at him, though we’re meant to be ignoring him, I see eyes that might be a thousand years old.
He’s been following us for half an hour, weaving among the crowds, his flip-flops slap-slapping in the dust of the souk. “Hey, mister! Hey, lady!” he keeps calling. “You wanna buy carpet? Teapot? Saffron? You wanna buy incense? Come, come! Come to meet my uncle.”
His urge to “come, come” sounds grubby and erotic and the refrain pulses in my head like some dark drumbeat, weird enough for me to wonder if it’s going to bring on one of my migraines.
“Lady, you wanna buy handbag? Real leather! The best! Hey, mister, nice wallet for you! Look this way! You are my guest. Come!” The Boy averts his eyes, head down and spinning, and the whole song and dance routine seems a pastiche of the real hustlers, an empty act he can turn off at will. No wonder he can’t look at us: we’d see right through him.
“I feel like David bloody Niven,” mutters Tom.
Tom’s posh as fuck, so self-assured and confident you don’t even notice it. He’s relaxed and ironic. A bit on the prim side, it has to be said, but I adore every hot salty inch of him. I like to draw him, standing, sitting, lying, sprawling, my futile bid to capture him in charcoal and pencils. In evening class, I learned to draw not just the object but the space around it. I learned to see absence. “What’s not there is as important as what is,” said our tutor, although personally I’d contest that with Tom. I’m quite a fan of what’s there. Naked, he’s pale and softly muscled with strong swimmer’s shoulders and thighs like hams. Sometimes I sketch his cock, big and randy or just lolling on his thigh, framed in dark curls, and when I show him the end result he’ll invariably wince. “Oh God,” he drawls, looking away and sounding slightly camp. “You’re so vulgar.” But he can’t help smiling and I know deep down he likes it.
“Pssst! ”
It’s the Boy. I can’t see him, only hear him. The medina is crammed with noise, its maze of tiny streets choked with the scents of paraffin, leather, spit-roast meats, sour sweat, baked earth and strong rough tobacco. Here and there, the souk opens out, exposing its squinting stallholders to a livid blue sky. But for now we’re in the thick of it, two clueless pink-skins in an ancient labyrinth, lost among beggars, hawkers, shoppers, mopeds, donkey carts and big wire cages squawking with heaps of angry hens. The Boy’s hiss slices through the chaos, clean as a whistle, but I can’t spot him anywhere.
I’m disappointed. I’m supposed to be relieved because the official line is, he’s been annoying us from the off, prancing around like some mad imp of consumerism, urging us to buy this, buy that, buy the other. The thing is, we do want to buy a carpet, a nice Berber runner for the hallway, but he’s probably on commission and, besides, we’d rather do it in peace.
My disappointment tempers the arousal I’m half ashamed to acknowledge. At first, I couldn’t be sure it was sexual although I suspected it was. Heck, it usually is with me. And then I knew damn well it was when my groin flickered its need and I grew aware of my inner thighs, filmy with sweat, sliding wetly as I walked, my sarong flapping around my ankles. But it’s a weird kind of sexual. It’s not as if I fancy him, this slip of a lad with the calm, creepy eyes, but I’m drawn to him in a way I can’t identify. He keeps dropping back from us to sidle among the crowd or prowl at a distance, elegant and stealthy, stalking us like prey. My money’s in a belt. I must have checked it a dozen times. I don’t think he’s a thief though.
I don’t know what he is. All I know is he’s sparked off in me some intrigue, some furtive hunger that makes me not quite trust myself. We keep walking, Tom and I, and within the humid fabric of my knickers, I’m as sticky and swollen as a Barbary fig.
“Pssst!”
His call sounds so close I actually look over my shoulder, expecting him right there, but no s
ign. It’s as if he’s invisible, some mythical djinni up to no good or a golem from the old Jewish quarter, laughing to himself as I pat my money belt once again.
“Seem to have shaken him off, the little shit,” Tom says mildly as he unscrews his water bottle.
I realize Tom’s not hearing what I hear, making me question my senses. The heat in this place stupefies me and I haven’t been sleeping well either. At night, after an evening of jugglers, magicians, fire-eaters and snake-charmers, the bedsheets tangle themselves around my legs, cobras for the pipe-player, and my mind whirls with madness and enchantments. To soothe me, I think of the stillness beyond the town: snow-capped mountains, endless deserts and a black velvet night sprayed with silver stars. But I sleep fitfully, slipping in and out of dreamscapes, grotesque and lewd, and I wake each morning sloppy with desire. When I sink onto Tom’s cock, drowsy and heavy, I feel fucked already, post-coitally limp, as if I’ve been possessed by an incubus, a gleeful demon who screwed me senseless as I slept. My limbs seem to liquefy as I ride Tom, awash with vagueness, remembering feral creatures, how they pawed at my flesh, and priapic monsters with gas-mask faces, rutting in steamy swamps.
I don’t imagine we’ll buy a carpet today. I’m not really in the mood. Feeling a tad psychotic, to tell the truth. But I hide it well. I’m probably just premenstrual.
A few minutes later and the Boy’s with us again. I don’t see him but I smell him, a pungent sexual whiff as we pass stalls selling metalware, shards of sunlight glancing off pewter, copper and brass. Then, in the shadows behind, I see two green beads peering out from the gloom, points of luminescence, freakishly bright. My heart pumps faster. Among so many brown-eyed folk, those eyes are hauntingly strange, non-human almost. He doesn’t belong to these people, I think. An outsider, perhaps; a man who leaps across gullies high in the Atlas mountains, surviving on thin air.
“Oh, God, there’s that smell again,” complains Tom.
A few yards ahead, the Boy darts beneath a tatty awning. He’s wearing filthy, calf-length shorts and his legs, I notice, are dark with hair. He’s a youth, I think, and then some. Old enough, I’m quite sure, to go snuffling under my sarong.
The Mammoth Book of the Best New Erotica Page 55