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

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 held 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.