Well, here I was, staring up at the hospital ward ceiling, having established that I was still on this mortal coil, wondering whether I would still be able to get it up. Not right now, but later, when I'd recovered. A full month without sexual activity, the surgeon had instructed. But then, what the hell, I reflected. I still can look good in a business suit. What will anybody know about stuff going on (or not going on) under my pants? I only have Helen to consider. And Helen, well, she's Helen.
I looked away from the ceiling towards the window, became aware at last that Helen was in the room, and wondered right then about whether darling Helen would even be interested in my getting it up again. Her libido hadn't shown any real signs of improving in recent months, even though her stunning body had always managed to excite me sufficiently to be able to plunder her carnal treasures without having to embark upon guilty visions of imaginary partners.
Then again, there were moments when Helen sometimes wanted it badly. She had her brief personal needs - they just weren't precisely the same as mine, nor as frequent.
I closed my eyes again; I didn't feel like discussing with Helen how I felt right at that moment of my life, and how our already sporadic sex life might or might not evolve henceforth. Right now, thanks to aspirin or similar, the pain was just about supportable and I was drowsy. I looked over at Helen, smiled as though I recognised her, and drifted off into half-anesthetic sleep.
The next day, the extraction of the tube that had been left inside my dick and up into my bladder after the laser intervention, was probably the most painful event of my long life, and at the end I felt I really knew what giving birth meant. Until it started, with two pretty young nurses sitting on each side of my hospital bed, I had no idea just how much it was going to hurt.
As the prettier of the nurses took off the sticking plaster which had been holding the tube at the point of entry into my cock-eye, and began to tug on the tube (did they draw lots, I wondered?) she hardly gave me time to take in her words: "This may be a bit painful, but it'll be quickly over." Seeing my face contort in pure agony, the other nurse, surely a childbirth specialist, cried out, "Breathe quickly, in and out, pant, pant!"
So I panted and prayed. Try to imagine, if you will, that someone rips out both your testicles, your penis and the major part of your guts in about fifteen seconds flat. That's how it felt.
Then it was over; I was tubeless again, and looking at my poor shrunken, pubic hairless dick, almost lost between my thighs and leaking blood. It seemed very sorry for itself and certainly very doubtful about its future. The whole episode prompted me to reflect on the condition of my sexagenarian body.
Fuck, I thought. I don't have a fat belly like so many other middle-aged men; my skin's pretty tight after all. Okay, I admitted to myself: I no longer have those solid, rippling, sportsman's muscles of yesteryear. I wasn't the young woman's idea of a dream lover any more, but I was okay. Finally, I thought, what they see's what they get. And I'll settle for what I can get after this. That's profound philosophy, I reflected, as I reached for a glass of water to wash down the painkillers offered to me by one of the nurses.
Chapter 4 follows soon...