Bernard's Problem

And now, as I a prepare to disrobe, I should return to an idea at which I hinted long ago; this malformation of my forelimbs, the twisted musculature of my forearms, had another significant effect on my development. As it was nearly impossible for me to grip anything tightly for more than a few seconds, as I was unable to sustain any task that required digital manipulation, I had always been frustrated in my attempts at self-pleasure and in consequence my penis, which is after all a muscle, suffered from arrested development. When the rest of the boys were putting their male organs through vigorous nightly workouts my penis lay there unmolested, pressing with timid, tremulous sensitivity into the sheets, seeking blindly someone to thrash and cuff it into a hot plash of surrender. I won’t go into the various ways I tried to pleasure myself. Some were quite ingenious. Fruits, bottles, lengths of hose, an electric motor from a belt sander, all of these and more were employed in my quest. I was occasionally successful, but the preparations were complex and I was in constant danger of discovery as all my methods involved the noisome and frantic thrusting of the hips into some stationary object. I walked through my days plagued by a double consciousness; on the one hand there was ordinary life with its breakfasts, lunches, classroom bells, homework, and so on. On the other, there was this constant sense of penile retardation. I fantasized about some insatiable whore who would put my member through intensive remediation with her quick hot hands. I cast jealous glances at the generous portions of hairy meat which my classmates spilled out before the urinals. Whereas their young, slack monsters twitched and spat at the gridded drain near the floor my alabaster nubbin, the size and tensility of a door stopper, fired its steam at a right angle to my body where it exploded against the ceramic; a shower of rebounding droplets tickled my hand (whose involvement was purely decorative) and wet my trousers.
I sometimes dreamed that my brainwaves could mash together a golem who would take me in her clayey clutches and grind me into orgasmic death. I pressed myself against telephone poles, the cool metal of hallway lockers, the rug on my bedroom floor. If longing, if absolute fixation, could bring some event into reality, then I would have been rescued by some quick-fingered angel, and, as life with its zest for a good joke will do, I was presented with what appeared to be this very deliverance. I was in the 10th grade. Standing outside a Taco Bell, waiting for mother to finish her meal – she’d developed an obsession with chalupas – when a sky-blue Buick Regal pulled up next to me, its engine chuffing, and a tinted window disclosed two middle-aged women in a haze of incense and alcohol fumes. They were still eating; the passenger was attempting to bring a stray shred of lettuce into her mouth. The driver asked me if I liked to “scrump” and when I began to stutter she laughed and told me to get into the car. My scalp prickled with terror and joy. I looked around, determined that my mother was still absorbed in her meal, and then dove into the leatherette backseat. I was given a wine cooler. Then the passenger, a big woman with long frosted ringlets, turned to look at me. She wiped her flat, purple mouth with the back of her hand and then, with a voluptuous sigh, thrust a stippled leg over the seat. In another moment she was on top of me.
“Do you like to scrump?” she said.
I could only nod my head. I am afraid my excitement got the best of me and I was finished almost before she started. This development prompted an explosion of ribald laughter inside that parked, smoky car. I feared that I would be put out. I begged for another chance and the woman, with a kindly, gap-toothed smile, shrugged and, after wiping herself with a Taco Bell napkin, remounted. The ladies – my date’s name was Roberta Brennan and her friend was Jolene Mattheson – declared themselves impressed at my stamina and said that very few men or boys could have managed to do that three times in less than ten minutes. I begged them to meet me again here at the Taco Bell or anywhere, I begged them to give me their phone numbers before they put me out of the car and Roberta finally relented with an indulgent smile, saying that she could meet me here in a week, same time. I came back for three months, rain or shine. I waited, but they that Buick Regal never returned. Even now when I see that model rolling down the street a hand squeezes my heart.