Ned (6)

6.

He made rapid progress in his new career and, more importantly, was soon experiencing the inspirational feeling of a fertile, erect penis again.

   The reason for the unexpected upsurge was not total dedication to the written word, but a twenty five year old Scandinavian named Kirsten. She was tall, blonde, and on a one-year psychology programme at the University of M-. Robert met her at the writers’ group he’d started attending every Wednesday evening. Kirsten was doing research for her thesis, Creativity, Suffering, and the Nature of the English Condition, and had managed to persuade the writers’ group leader, Alan Hardacre, to let her sit in and observe his students reading the fruits of their inspiration.

   ‘Kirsten is from Denmark’ Hardacre announced to the class – his flock – hoping, no doubt, to introduce a somewhat exotic air to the usually turgid proceedings. Kirsten smiled, mouthed a cacuminal ‘Hello’ and contemplated sitting to Hardacre’s left. Instead she was mercilessly ushered into a corner by the redoubtable creative writing tutor.

   It would be fair to say that, at the precise moment that Kirsten sat down, Robert experienced the mother of all hard-ons. His penis enlarged itself to such an abnormal extent that he contemplated putting a stop to Ethel O’Brien’s incomprehensible monologue and asking Hardacre to call for an ambulance. His member seemed to have swelled up beyond all reasonable proportion and he was at once brought to mind – a curiously English symbol of the events taking place in his underpants – of the prisoner Gulliver rising up before the hordes of Lilliputians. He tried all of the usual ruses to dispense himself of the wretched protuberance (I know what you’re thinking, dear reader – twelve months without one and now he wants to get rid of it! Is there no pleasing the man!) brought to mind images of Hitler, Margaret Thatcher, and - God forbid - Helen’s mother, but still it retained itself. It was as if the delectable Kirsten’s very presence in the room was enough to send every blood cell rampaging towards his groin (Robert had, of course, averted his gaze from the perpetrator of the affliction). It was only when Tony Harrap, a spotty undergraduate who, for some unfathomable reason, exerted a literary stranglehold on everyone in the group (except for Robert), was reading one of his insufferable poems (guinea pigs as a metaphor for love) and the room was bathed in a silent, secret rapture, that Robert was able to sneak out of the door and make his way to the toilets where his todger eventually subsided.

   He went straight home where, locked in the bathroom, he examined himself thoroughly. There didn’t seem to be any damage. He thought that the unforeseen abnormality might have been a single glorious last stand before the permanent cessation of all life and feeling, in the same way that people at death’s door make a sudden, convincing rally before total expiration. But no. Its colour, texture, and shape were the same. Later that night, reassured that his apparatus was once again in full working order he placed his book on the bedside table, slid over to Helen’s side of the bed, and began to engage in the once familiar routine of foreplay, intercourse, and colour co-ordinated tissues.

   It proved to be a wasted effort.

   During the days that followed it seemed apparent that Robert would have to wait until the next writers group meeting to see if Kirsten’s presence would initiate a similar experience. Sure enough, the following week, as she walked through the door, he began to feel the excruciating pain of another gargantuan erection. From that moment on he saw himself and the Nordic beauty as two halves of the same whole, waiting to be re-united.