Лорен Хендерсон: The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Erotica

She speculated further: “Failure to mount your cloned penis on the wall might even give rise to suspicions as to the quality of the original penis. Too small? Too thin? Whatever! Maybe deficient men will buy more magnificent penises not cloned from themselves – provided by third-world companies without the scruples of Bodies’r’Us. On the other hand, the display of a less than splendid penis on the dining room wall might be a form of inverted boastfulness: ‘It may not look much, but if only you knew what I can do with it, and for how long!’ You do want your Beloved back, don’t you, dear? If you let me make a film about your quest, I’m sure Bodies’r’Us will be very easy on the terms for a full Beloved. My film wouldn’t be intrusive, just a few remote-control mini-cameras concealed in your apartment.”

I was so excited I would have agreed to almost anything.

Bodies’r’Us must have exploited some of that research by those maverick scientists I mentioned. Instead of cloning 100 per cent new body complete with brand new penis, they integrated – as they put it – the already cloned penis into the ensemble of all the rest of Oliver’s cloned anatomy. The cloned penis which I already knew was precious to me – it stood for continuity. I could hardly discard it, but it would be downright silly to maintain that autonomous penis unused, expensively keeping a blood pump working at the same time as the full Oliver maintained a blood supply to another cloned penis by natural means. It was only sensible that the original cloned penis should be coupled to the rest of the clone.

And so my Beloved came back to me.

Along with some cameras and microphones for my apartment.

In years gone by, scientists predicted that a duplicated brain shouldn’t retain any of the memories of the brain that it was cloned from. According to past scientific wisdom, the new brain should only exhibit the same capacities and personality traits and tendencies as the original brain – for instance, the tendency to fall in love with somebody looking much like me, or the ability to learn languages easily.

Now we know that a cloned brain actually inherits many of the typical dreams of its source brain. This is because dreams are deeply archetypal. The original brain and the cloned brain are genetically identical, so by morphic resonance the cloned brain acquires much of the dream experience of the original from out of the collective storehouse from which dreams emerge, and into which they return.

Thus my cloned Beloved couldn’t remember any actual incidents of our waking life together, but he knew who I was in a dreamy way. And because dreams contain speech, he could speak, although in rather a dreamlike manner.

“You are an almond tree,” he told me, shortly after Bodies’r’Us delivered him to the apartment. Was that because of the colour of my eyes? If so, this must be an endearment.

Yet to my horror I very quickly found that my Beloved was impotent with me! No matter what I did, or how I displayed myself, his penis remained limp – that very penis which had previously responded so enthusiastically! This shocked and chagrined me – and I regretted the cameras and microphones Natalie had installed.

We have all heard how the arm of the executed German mass-murderer, Sigmund Hammerfest, was grafted on to an amputee, Rolf Heinz, who’d lost his arm in a car crash, and how the murderer’s arm subsequently made Herr Heinz homicidal. While Herr Heinz was making love to his wife one night, the arm broke Frau Heinz’s neck. The organs and limbs of the body possess a kind of memory, as I’ve said.

Could it be that, rejoined to its body, the penis conveyed memories of its multiple infidelities to my Beloved’s body? And the body, now powering the penis, developed guilt, which disabled the penis? Thus the memory of the penis was contaminating the true wishes of its owner.

Yet what really were the true wishes of my Beloved? Could it be that the penis had truly loved me, but that Oliver himself as a complete person hadn’t been quite so devoted? Could it be that formerly the penis had been ordering my Beloved to love me and nobody else? That it was the desire of the penis, rather than true love, which had made Oliver want to fuck me? Yet I had permitted the penis to respond to anybody; in a sense I had trained it to do so. Consequently, now I was no longer a unique focus of desire. My Beloved might call me an almond tree like some medieval Arabian poet, but those were just pretty words! This was very confusing.

Why, oh why, had I cloned all of Oliver at such cost when the penis had been my real lover all along! I had prostituted the penis, the only part of him that truly loved me. Now Oliver was inhibiting the penis from performing, and I might be discovering all too late that my Beloved’s flowery sentiments were hypocritical!

I accused my Beloved.

His replies were hard to understand – unlike the formerly clear, if non-verbal, responses of the stiff penis to me.

“You didn’t truly love me,” I cried.

“Balloons bring roses,” said Oliver. “Scent escapes from bursting balloons.” Did this mean that love dies?

“It was your penis that loved me, not you!”

“The rubies of your nipples are so hard they could cut glass.” Was he complaining about my nipples? In the old days of our passion, had they hurt his chest?

I was shouting at him in angry disappointment when a knock came at the door.

Andorra stood outside, Coochie on a leash.

The blood froze in my veins. Here was the moment I had been fearing.

“May we come in?” Andorra asked with a big, insincere smile. The dog wagged his tail, excited, probably foreseeing who knows what kind of filthy development.

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!