by Zack Love
“What do you mean it wasn’t an accident?”
“I don’t want to get into it. Now it’s your turn. What happened to you?”
“All right…Well, tonight I came across a black cat, and a few hours later, I literally hit the Jackpot.”
“What do you mean?”
“The black cat brought me so much luck that I had to smack it off my penis.”
“What?”
Heeb really didn’t want to explain the whole thing yet again – even to someone who might be able to commiserate. “Look, if you want details you’re going to have to reciprocate.”
“I said I don’t want to get into it.”
“OK.”
They picked up their respective magazines and started trying to read again.
Heeb’s neighbor broke the silence again.
“All right, I got held up by a prostitute at blow point.”
“Huh?” Heeb looked up in genuine confusion.
“While she was blowing me – and it was the best blowjob I had ever had until – by the way, what’s your name? Since I’m telling you all of this…”
“Sammy.”
“I’m Evan. Good to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you, Evan. Sorry it’s not under better circumstances.”
“Yeah. Tell me about it. So as I was saying, it was the best blowjob I had ever had until she turned it into a hard bite. And her accomplice had a gun. She told me that my whole dick would be bitten off if I didn’t give up my wallet. It took me a while to find my wallet, with her teeth on my Johnson like that, and I guess I just passed out from the pain and the shock of the whole thing. Next thing I know I’m in an ambulance. Apparently, someone saw me on the street and called an ambulance. They took everything in my wallet except for my health insurance card and some ID photos.”
“Good thing they didn’t take your health insurance card,” Heeb said lightly but sympathetically.
“Tell me about it.”
Sammy suddenly began to feel a little better about his situation. His disaster hadn’t been caused by a prostitute, and he hadn’t passed out from the whole thing. By comparison, he actually felt morally better – even “cooler” and tougher – than his more handsome neighbor, who suddenly seemed to be less of a man for his willingness to pay for sex and for his faint-heartedness in dealing with the attendant risks.
“Now don’t get me wrong – I don’t ever use prostitutes,” Evan began again, as if to clean up the reputation he had just tarnished. “I mean, I’m opposed to the idea of paying for sex. That’s actually why she bit me…It’s definitely a strategy that she and her partner have used before, and I know for a fact that if I had just been a normal, paying customer I wouldn’t be here right now.”
Heeb thought that this was a desperate attempt to sugarcoat a base and pathetic scenario, but he was nonetheless relieved to have found a support group of sorts for men who have suffered penis injuries under bizarre circumstances. And, he reminded himself, the premise of any support group is unconditional support and acceptance of the other members in the group.
“Well if it makes you feel any better, I’m going to need some serious psychiatric therapy before I can ever date a woman with pets – particularly cats.”
“So what happened exactly? Now it’s your turn. Give me the details.”
“All right,” Heeb began, reluctantly. “My girlfriend – my ex-girlfriend – I should say, had twelve cats in her – ”
Heeb stopped because a doctor had entered their room. Doctor Clayton was a tall, forty-four-year-old African-American with round spectacles that accentuated his generally distinguished appearance. Evan also looked up at the physician. It had been a busy night at the hospital, and Doctor Clayton hadn’t yet had a chance to read the respective reports for the two patients in the room.
He started to look down at each of their reports, but then realized – from his cursory glance at the two men – that both patients seemed to be suffering from an improbably similar injury. The doctor looked back up at Evan and then Sammy; each man was sitting on his respective bed without any pants and with bandages on his groin area. He raised an eyebrow for a moment as he tried to ballpark the statistical odds of two men, roughly the same age, sustaining groin injuries, at roughly the same time on the same night, in New York City.
He concluded that, in all likelihood, the two were either gay lovers, or that they had been at the same strange swinger party where various forms of rough sex had left both men injured. Since this data was potentially relevant to his diagnosis, and since he doubted that it had been fully disclosed to the hospital staff that had prepared the reports, he decided just to ask the two directly, in the most professional manner he could.
“Did…Did the two of you come here…together?” he asked, with the perfectly suggestive yet non-judgmental tone.
“No!” both patients vehemently replied, in near unison.
“OK. I just needed to check that because it could affect the diagnosis.”
“No, not together,” Evan added for emphasis.
“Definitely not,” concurred Heeb.
“OK. OK. No problem. Now just give me a second to read through your charts here, and then I’ll examine you…”
Doctor Clayton compared the two charts for a moment and then looked up again.
“Are you Evan Cheson?” he said, looking at Heeb.
“No, that’s Evan.”
“OK. Apparently you’ve been here for about twenty minutes longer, so I’ll start with you.”
*****
Evan tried to read but couldn’t stop thinking about the bad news that Doctor Clayton had just given him. He would have minimal scarring, but he would need to be tested for syphilis, hepatitis B, and HIV after twelve weeks, to ensure that any absence of symptoms was not the result of an incubating infection. He would need to stay in the hospital for at least three days. Doctor Clayton advised him not to engage in any sexual activity for at least two months, to ensure complete healing, and thereafter always to use condoms during any kind of sexual activity.
Evan wondered how similar all of these assessments and instructions were to whatever bad news the doctor was discreetly delivering to Sammy, several feet away. Evan correctly assumed that Sammy would be staying in that same dreary, light blue room with him for a few days. Both had injuries that needed to be closely monitored and regularly irrigated by health professionals to prevent the onset of any bacterial infections.
Heeb’s injuries were worse. He was checked for rabies, and put on a regimen of special antibiotics to combat Pasturella, a particularly nasty bacterium that lives in cat mouths and can dangerously infect the bloodstream. There was a good chance that he would have three scars from Jackpot’s claws and two from his teeth. The doctor couldn’t yet tell how large the cicatrix would be, but added that diligent and patient care of Sammy’s wounds would minimize their appearance. Sammy could probably be released after five or six days with a good supply of painkillers, and he would have to come back for periodic checkups and cleanings. Doctor Clayton warned him not to engage in any sexual activity before the healing process was complete, and – erring on the side of caution – advised waiting at least three months.
In a discreet, professional whisper, Doctor Clayton had managed to convey all of the necessary information to each patient without the other overhearing any details. But each patient knew that he would tell everything to the other at some point after the doctor left. They both knew that they wouldn’t be able to sit there pretending to read their magazines and suppressing their curiosities for days on end. All of the truth would have to come out eventually, just as it had before the doctor’s arrival.
The doctor finished his consultation with Sammy, made some notes on his clipboard, and then left the room.
A heavy silence followed. The psychological trauma of their respective injuries was almost greater than any physical pain. Upon hearing from Doctor Clayton that there would be some scarring, each patient imagin
ed the total mortification to be suffered over the rest of his life, as he had to explain to each subsequent woman how his penis had become scarred.
Evan and Sammy each tried to digest the full extent of the bad news, while thinking about whether and how to share it.
Finally, their silence was broken when Evan spoke.
“Mine is really bad.”
Heeb didn’t reply. He looked as if he was in a bit of a daze, staring blankly in front of him. He feared that with his freakish injury, he may have permanently lost any hope of attaining even the lowest levels of Kojakness.
“Is yours bad?” Evan prodded him.
Heeb remained silent, but nodded his head in answer to Evan’s question.
“This is by far the worst night of my life,” Evan continued. “I’ve never felt like such a loser before.”
Heeb remained silent.
Evan wasn’t quite sure what, if anything, would make Heeb talk, but Evan felt the need to talk.
“The funny thing is that I’m really not a loser. I mean, there’s nothing more loserish than having to point that out to someone, but – in all honesty – I’m not as much of a loser as you might think from tonight.”
“What do you mean?” Heeb said, suddenly roused.
“You just happened to catch me in a particularly down period in my dating life. But it’s not typical for me.”
“Oh I see. And this is typical for me,” Heeb replied. “But now you’re so down that you feel like you’ve dropped to my level of loserness.”
“No, I think you’re probably a pretty cool guy,” Evan replied.
“Come on. Let’s be real,” Heeb snapped back. “You’re just talking with me now because you feel like we’re stuck in the same room, with the same injuries, at the same low point in our lives, right?”
“Well it’s certainly not because I’d like to take you home with me tonight.”
“With the way things look for you down there, I don’t think you’ll be taking anyone home for a while,” Heeb rejoined.
“Like you’re one to talk!”
“I know. I know,” Heeb said, retreating into a moment of silence. “I’m pathetic,” Heeb continued. “And no matter how much you try to insist that you’re equally pathetic right now, I’m not going to believe you. Even though you were with a prostitute and that’s pretty pathetic in my book.”
“Hey, I said I didn’t pay her! It was just a challenge. I just wanted to see if I could talk her into a freebie.”
“Yeah, well we see how persuasive you were.”
“At least it wasn’t a cat!”
“All right. Enough. I’m going back to my magazine.” Heeb was now feeling more peeved than pathetic, but the only way to give any expression to this indignation was to protest Evan’s presence by picking up the Scientific American on his bed, which Heeb did rather dramatically, making as much paper ruffling noise as possible.
“Fine. Then I’ll go back to mine!” Evan responded childishly, picking up his Entertainment Weekly with equal vehemence.
But Heeb couldn’t stop thinking about his plight and how limited his protest options were, and he soon went back to feeling more pathetic than peeved. Nevertheless, his pride resisted the idea of making amends after Evan’s cat comment, particularly since Heeb was convinced that Evan saw himself as belonging to a cooler category of males. Heeb wasn’t about to make any gestures that might reinforce such haughty notions. But he quietly hoped that Evan would apologize so that their relationship might evolve into the highly supportive male friendship that they both so needed now.
Evan sensed Heeb’s insecurity and, under ordinary circumstances, he might have dismissed such sentiments as proof that Heeb was, in fact, in a lower category of cool. But these were no ordinary circumstances, and Evan very much wanted the same kind of supportive relationship that Heeb needed.
“All right, I’m sorry about the cat comment,” he finally said. “You were still attacked by a pussy, like me. And I’m not gonna lie to you. I probably wouldn’t be talking to you if we weren’t both here right now. But we are both here right now.”
Heeb was still silently pretending to read his Scientific American.
“And maybe I need to learn from all of this…Expand my social horizons a little. Question some of my knee-jerk judgments about people…Maybe my people skills need some work… I certainly didn’t deal with that prostitute well.”
Heeb was still silent.
“Hey come on. Lighten up, man. I said I’m sorry. We’re not just gonna sit here in silence for the next few days, are we?”
Evan’s repentant self-flagellation finally satisfied Heeb’s pride. Heeb put down his Scientific American, and moved his head in Evan’s direction without making full eye contact with him.
“I’m going to have five scars on my dick forever,” Heeb said sullenly.
Then, like a toddler who’s been smarting from a bad fall but holding back his tears until a sufficiently private moment presents itself, Heeb suddenly began to cry.
Evan wanted to get off his bed, walk over to Heeb, and comfort him, but the doctor told him to stay put as much as possible for the first twenty-four hours.
“Hey now…It’s gonna be all right. I promise,” Evan started. “We’ll both get over this. I promise…”
“All right?!” Heeb replied, between sobs. “I don’t see anything all right about this…Penis…Penis pain for weeks to come…No…No sex for three months….S-S-Scars for the rest of my life…Where’s the all right part?”
“Well, the penis pain could have been for months instead of weeks. And you might have lost the whole thing completely. Then you’d have no penis and no sex for the rest of your life.”
“Yeah. Things could always be worse. My ambulance could have gotten into an accident that left me a quadriplegic. So you want me to rejoice about that now?”
“I’m just trying to help you look at the bright side.”
“You’re not doing a very good job.”
“Look, we have the same challenge. Let’s just be glad we’re in this together…It’d be a lot harder if there were no one I could talk to about the whole thing.”
“But are you going to have scars too?”
“Probably.”
Heeb wiped away his tears and began to feel genuinely reassured by the possibility that he and Evan were going to be a team that together confronts the same bizarre set of issues.
“What about the scars? How will we ever be attractive to women again?”
“I’m not so worried about that for some reason.”
“Probably because your scarring won’t be so bad.”
“I won’t know for a few months. But even if it’s bad, I think that by the time any woman is looking at your dick, you’ve already won her over.”
“You really think that?” asked Heeb, desperately clinging to the hope that Evan might be right about this.
“Yeah. Besides, most women prefer to do it in the dark. It’s sexier. And they often have their own imperfections that they want hidden…So chances are it’ll be too dark for anyone to notice – especially with a condom on…And I’m never doing anything again without a condom.”
“But what if she prefers to do it in the light?”
“Well, you’ll insist on doing it in the dark. You’ll make up some tender, psychological reason why you need to do it in the dark. You’ll promise to please her in just that way she loves, and eventually she’ll be cool about it doing it in the dark. And after a few months, you’ll feel comfortable enough to show her your scars, if she gets too curious on you. At that point, she’s not going to leave you. Trust me. And if she does, then you wouldn’t want to keep her anyway.”
Heeb was reassured by Evan’s surprisingly rational analysis of the situation. “Have you been through this kind of thing before?” Sammy asked.
“Definitely not.”
“So why do you seem so calm about the whole thing?”
“Probably because the reality has
n’t hit me yet.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I think.”
“Reality sure takes a long time to hit you, Evan.”
*****
The two exchanged detailed reports of their respective medical conditions, and then drifted to other topics. They spent several hours exchanging life stories, when suddenly, in the middle of Heeb’s summary of his early childhood, Evan burst into tears.
“What’s wrong?” Heeb said, confused by the timing of Evan’s crying.
The reality finally hit Evan too.
“You…You got me thinking about childhood,” Evan began, wiping away some tears, “And how we each get a fresh…A fresh start…And what if…What if I have HIV now? What have I done?” he burst into fresh tears again. No longer the cocksure man confronting bad news, Evan now looked like a little boy who had accidentally broken his favorite toy.
“It’ll be all right, Evan.”
“We don’t know that!” Evan said, pessimistically between tears.
“Don’t deal with bad news until you have to,” Heeb counseled.
“But what if there’s bad news? How will I deal with HIV?”
“Magic Johnson does.”
“I’m not Magic Johnson,” Evan said, with a detached sobriety that accompanied the end of his teary outpouring.
“I’m just saying that it’s not a death sentence any more…I mean, you’ve gotta see the cup as half full.”
“It’s looking very half empty from here, Sammy.”
“We’ll get through this, Evan…I know we will…”
“And even if I come out clean, what am I going to tell my future wife if she asks me some day whether I’ve ever been with a prostitute?”
“I think you can honestly tell her that you never paid for sex,” Heeb suggested, putting the best spin he could think of on Evan’s story.
“But I was technically with a prostitute…That’s lower than low!”
And with that, Evan burst into a new volley of tears. His male pride couldn’t bear such a humiliating blemish on his sexual record.