http://www.eunuchworld.org/view.php?storyid=1053

by Unknown

The Metamorphosis of B

PART 1: THE PROBLEM Driving alone through Ohio, I made a pit stop at the local Stop 'n Rob store. As I walked to the drink cooler for a Coke, I dropped my wallet and quickly knelt to scoop it up, pinching my right testicle as my clothing shifted. My nuts, extremely tender after being ravaged by a misguided softball years ago, had given me such grief many times before, but this time the ache was almost unbearable. After an involuntary grunt, I stood there bent at the waist for a few minutes, immobilized by the pain. The clerk, a personable young woman who reminded me of Rosie O'Donnell, soon noticed my difficulty and hurried down the aisle toward me. "Sir? Sir, are you all right? Sir, is it your heart?"

Despite my pain, I found her manner endearing, even amusing. "No, Ma'am, my heart is fine. I'll be all right in just a few minutes." She stopped by me with her hand on my shoulder, insisting I tell her what was wrong. Another customer called from the next aisle, "What's the matter?"

"I think it's his heart! I think he's having a heart attack!" Her errant attention was beginning to embarrass me. In a hushed tone, I leaned toward her and said, "No, Ma'am, it isn't my heart - it's a problem with my . . ." and here I whispered, ". . . private parts." Turning to the other customer, she exclaimed loudly, "It's a hernia! He has a hernia!"

"NO! Sssshhh!" I said quickly, "It's one of my . . ." (here I scoped her face to gauge whether she could handle this information) ". . . um, testicles." With one hand still on my shoulder, she brought the other up to cover her mouth, her eyes dangling from their sockets. "Oh, no! Oh, sir, I'm so sorry! Oh, no!" For a moment I thought I was in better shape than SHE was. "Sir, do you want to sit down? Come back behind the counter and sit down." I followed her to the counter and asked where the restroom was. "Oh, I'm sorry, we don't have a public restroom. But you can have some privacy in the storeroom, if that will help."

I closed the storeroom door behind me and lowered my pants and underwear to give my poor right nut a little TLC. Suddenly, the door opened wide and in walked the clerk. "Here's some ice in a baggie." She looked at my brief little dick with puckered foreskin sticking out, my right hand underneath nursing my scrotum, and seemed undisturbed. "Hold this next to your balls," she offered the baggie, "It will make them feel better." Though initially shocked, I deeply appreciated her aid and concern, and I was thankful she didn't ridicule my small size and vulnerable condition.

"Thanks," I said, accepting the baggie, "But this hurts so badly I think I may need to see a doctor." She left the room for a few seconds, then reentered holding the local phone book. What a girl. I looked up "Physician - Urology," and noted an office located on the highway ahead. Pulling my briefs and pants up, I smiled at her, "You are a real gem."

"Oh, think nothing of it," she said, "I have five brothers, and we play softball all the time. This is nothing new for me." She followed me to the door with a hand on my shoulder. "Besides, next September I start med school." I glanced back at her as I left with a new appreciation. Hmm, cute, intelligent, understanding. My last sight of her fat, sexy ass quickly gorged my penis to its full 3-1/2 inches. She's already seen it, I pondered, maybe she'll appreciate a man with a small wand but a lot of magic. I felt my hypersensitive dickhead twinge delightfully within its protective covering. Great, I thought, I'll stop at this store again on my way home.

I entered the urologist's office with a noticeable limp. The receptionist, a very slim, delicate young man with soft cloudlike limbs, radiated a wide, lippy smile, which drooped into a look of woe as I related my tale. "You're lucky, Mr. B., the doctor has seen the last patient and was just about to leave for the day, but come with me and," with a wink, "we'll get you taken care of." I followed him down the hall to a restroom. "Bring your urine sample back to the desk, please." Familiar with the drill, I followed the posted instructions to retract my foreskin and brown the tip of my glans with a betadine patch before peeing into the cup. Proudly, I walked back to the desk holding my macho cup of warm, yellow liquid. "Ah, thanks!" said the young man, as if I had surprised him with a thoughtful gift.

Led into an examining room, I carefully sat and contemplated the pain, which now had transposed from a heavy ache to a sharp, throbbing pang. The sliding door opened with a rumble and in stepped a fiftyish woman, dressed in a white coat, with a short, graying hairdo, savvy eyes windowed by large glasses, her expression set, unchanging, in a frame of habitual concern. She wielded her clipboard with such dominance and control that the entire room came to attention. My initial disappointment at confronting a female urologist was fanned away like smoke by the pain in my pants. Confident that I had made the right decision in coming here, I mentally gave myself over to her.

"So you're undergoing some testalgia today, Mr. B? Some pain in your . . .," she glanced at the report on the clipboard, ". . . your right testicle? Hmm, instigated by a sports injury suffered at the age of twenty?" Her voice, firm as a well worked muscle, matched her matronly demeanor.

"Yes, Ma'am. My regular urologist usually gives me a block, a shot of anesthetic into the chords, when this happens, but I think I'm going to need a bigger shot than usual. The pain has never been this severe before."

She tilted her head back as if to better support the next question. With eyes at half-moon phase, she asked, "Tell me, are you married, Mr. B.?"

"Uh, no. Why?"

She simply nodded. "Good."

PART 2: THE EXAMINATION

"Well, let's take a look at you. Disrobe and lie down here." With this remark, she turned from me and began to unroll a fresh sheet of paper over the examining table. She isn't, I thought, going to leave the room? I hesitated, and then, with that natural reluctance to question a physician's directions, I unbuckled my belt. Pulling my feet out of my clunky athletic shoes, I slid my bare legs out of my pants. Pausing with my thumbs hooked into the waistband of my briefs, I glanced at her again. She had stepped to the counter, snapping her right hand into a latex glove. Hey, act your age, I told myself, she IS a doctor, after all. I peeled my briefs off and walked to the table, dressed only in polo shirt and white socks. Normally, exposing my small penis like this to an unfamiliar woman would have mortified me, but after being perused by a convenience store clerk, this was nothing.

As I prepared to lie down, she turned and spoke. "No, Mr. B., I need you to completely disrobe for my examination. Please remove your shirt and socks." Her voice rolled at me like a steel ball down a ramp. Shocked by her command, I mentally protested, but I knew the reins of this ordeal were definitely NOT in my hands. Rolling the shirt up, and the socks down, I tossed them to the chair and turned to climb onto the table. "Wait, Mr. B., first I need to check your prostate."

"My regular doctor periodically checks that, Ma'am." I had found my voice but disappointed myself with its apologetic tone.

"My examination has to be complete before I can knowledgeably treat you." Wow, she captured that pawn decisively. "Bend over and rest your chest on the table." I obeyed. The bubbling sound of K-Y jelly being squeezed from a tube was followed by a cold finger on my anus. "Just a little pressure now," she said as her finger slid into my rectum. After a light initial tracing over the outline of my prostate, accompanied by that enjoyable tingle, she went on to knead my gland like a stubborn bread dough. Then, incredibly, I felt a second finger trespass into my anus, stretching the soft tissue like the prick of fangs. The tingle turned to torment. For a full two minutes she roughly dug her fingers into the delicate tissue, while I winced in pain, tears forming at the corners of my eyes. Naked, vulnerable, I was ashamed to admit I couldn't take it. I bit my protest off and swallowed hard, desperately waiting for the end of the intrusion.

Suddenly she yanked her fingers out, my stinging hole recoiling from the jolt, and ripped the glove off into a pail. I glanced around for something with which to clean up my slippery ass. "Just a moment, Mr. B., I felt something there I want to take a closer look at." My mind flew through its limited file on rectum contents. What else could be in there that needed examination? I remained bent over the table, my bare buttocks sticking out in a crude invitation to abuse. Glancing around my shoulder, I saw the doctor approach with something that reminded me of a caulking gun, without the caulk. "Just relax now, I'm going to take a look using this speculum," she said, as I felt an object much larger than two fingers shoved up my ass. "Take a deep breath, now." She had to be JOKING. "Aaaaahhh!" With my pelvis against the table, and cold steel bracing my rectum, I had nowhere to go as she spread the jaws of the device, ripping my tender anus open wider than it ought to go.

Again she took her sweet time, as my poor sphincter convulsed to close against the instrument, with no success. I felt my anus slowly lose its muscle tone, until I was no longer able to contract it. She's ruining me, I thought, I'll never be able to hold anything in again. "Hmm, just a small hemorrhoid," she muttered, "Nothing to worry about there." When she finally closed the speculum and extracted it, my anus felt flabby and useless. Tossing a box of tissue onto the table, she said, "Clean yourself up and lie down." As she washed her hands, I stood there like a small child, wiping my bare bottom of what seemed to be a gallon of that goo. I consumed most of the box of tissue trying to dig that drying, sticky stuff out of my slack rectum and from the mat of tangled hair around my aching, floppy asshole. Being hirsute is sometimes a curse.

"Your prostate has a couple of lumps in it - has your doctor recommended you have it removed?"

Oh, my God! "No," I muttered. "My PSA has always come back normal. I didn't think I had any problem."

"Well, you need to seriously consider having it out, which I would consent to do for you. After all," she counted off on her fingers, "Hyperplasia, urinary difficulties, chronic prostatitis, CANCER!" She speared me with those eyes, "The prostate is the weakest, most defective part of the male." With this, she pointed her finger at me. "Barring any other cause of mortality, you WILL die from it someday!"

My head spinning, imagining the claws of some fatal entity yanking at my lower innards, I worked my naked butt onto the table, my little dick, limp from the prostate pain, bouncing like Jell-O. She approached and focused her blithe attention on my genitals. I felt rough fingernails pinching and tugging on my foreskin, followed by a derisive "Hmm!" Then she grasped my scrotum and stretched it out, rolling the thin skin with her fingers. Finally, she cupped my right testicle in one hand, manipulating it between thumb and fingers as if it were a worry stone. With each movement, she aggravated the pain. "Ow!" I yelped. Ignoring me, she attacked the left testicle, successfully goading some pain from it, too.

"Mr. B., you definitely have a serious condition here. I'm surprised your regular physician has allowed this to go on for so long. Rest here and my nurse will be in shortly to prepare you." FINALLY! I lay there with a painful anus, painful foreskin, painful prostate, and TWO painful balls, anticipating some relief at last.

PART 3: THE PREPARATION

Again the door rumbled, and in glided an attractive woman in her twenties, dressed in white coat, pants and shoes, long hair corralled above her neck with bobby pins. I suddenly recalled my nudity and froze in suspense, yet she did not seem the least bit surprised or bothered. "Hi, Mr. B., I'm here to prep you." She was not so much hurried as efficient, moving around the room quickly, dropping her words behind her. After prowling a cabinet, she came to me with a handful of disposable razors. Seeing my eyes fly up in question marks, she tilted her head and explained, "The doctor INSISTS on cleanliness." Her intimidation drained my pitiful penis of what little ginger it had left, as she stood over me, tearing the plastic cover from one of the razors. "My goodness, you're a HAIRY one, aren't you?" My face flushed, and I struggled to blink a strange water from my eyes.

Suddenly, she put her left hand just above my navel, stretched the skin upwards, and with her right hand quickly stroked the razor down towards my crotch, searing the hair from a one inch strip, leaving behind naked, tender skin. My stomach muscles jerked with their own will. Again and again, she ripped away the hair in strips from my belly. She was so bold in her actions I couldn't even think to dissent. The dry shaving burned and reddened my flesh, yet I lay there immobilized, allowing her to have her way. When my belly was bare, she pinched my foreskin between thumb and forefinger and pulled my short little dick down taut as a guy wire, scraping the razor down over my pubic hair, flinging the severed balls of fluff aside. Pulling my dick upwards she pushed the razor against my scrotum, smoothing it with short, quick strokes.

I felt her pat the inside of my thigh then as she said, "Spread your legs, hon." Obediently, I bent my legs like a frog as she readied a fresh razor. I felt the blade rip the hair from my crotch, from the crease between thigh and scrotum, on down my thigh to the knee. She started in on my hips and did not pause until the front of my body was red, raw and bare from navel to knee, flecks of blood oozing from several nicks. "OK, turn over now, hon." For a moment I considered escape, forgetting the pain in a rush of adrenaline, grabbing my clothes and getting out of there, but she focused on me and repeated loudly, "Turn OVER!" Strangely compelled to do as she said, I turned over and she attended to my ass, rudely mowing the hair from my buttocks, stopping only when she had removed all the hair she could reach from the small of my back to the backs of my knees.

"You're going to have to open up a little for me to finish, Mr. B. Put your knees under your chest and let's have your little heinie in the air for me now." Face slick with sweat yet mouth dry as a Baptist convention, I pushed my helpless rear into the air and felt her rough razor invade my crack. She did not relent, stroking away the hair around my butthole with complete disregard. I felt her nick my protruding, tattered anus a couple of times, the sting taking my breath. "There!" she said at last, as if she had just tidied up a dresser drawer. Front and back, from navel to knee, I felt raw, truly naked, with the eerie feel of air against my flesh.

I turned over on my back again, a disbelieving grief ground into my face. She paused, eyeing my body, as a faint grin breezed across her lips. "You know," she said thoughtfully, "The doctor may want to use the heart monitor." Wielding a fresh razor, she took my arm at the elbow. "Raise your arms back over your head." With that, she began to rape my chest, starting at the top, swiping dangerously close to my nipples. Her eyes grew wide, almost maniacal, I thought, as my thick chest hair, this gritty symbol of my masculinity, rolled away in clumps, the pale skin of my chest slowly emerging into view. By now, my flight instinct was totally destroyed. I weakly surrendered, trembling like an captured animal. With a final flourish, she pinched each nipple and pulled outwards, allowing no close hair to escape.

"OK, all finished with that," she said, turning toward the cabinet. I looked down, astonished at my smooth, baby-like body, feeling a nudity and an exposure I had not known before. Emotionally, I was paralyzed I could no longer resist anything. She returned with a small coil of tubing and a liquid-filled plastic bag. "Have you ever had a bladder irrigation before, Mr. B.?" I could do nothing but meekly shake my head. "Just lie back and try to relax. If you tense up, this might be uncomfortable."

She smeared some lubricant onto the rounded end of the tube, and encircled my penis with her left hand. After retracting the foreskin to reveal the pee slit, she placed the end of the tube there and said, "Take a deep breath for me, now." I felt the tube invade my dick, slowly, further and further, tickling, burning, stretching as it worked its way up farther than I thought possible, somewhere behind my balls. Just as the pain was becoming unbearable, she said, "OK, I'm going to go past your prostate now - push out like you're trying to pee." I tried, but I just couldn't relax. She forced the tube into my bladder, squeezing it through my prostate in a flash of pain. I grunted, and she patted my bare belly, saying, "It's OK, that's the worst part."

My entire body trembled at this violation, dreading the presence of the tube and equally dreading its removal. The alien object stuck in the most private part of my body brought on a dizzying nausea. My bladder muscle, reeling in pain with involuntary spasms, repeatedly tried to close itself off against the overwhelming invasion, but the impotent little sphincter was wedged open unmercifully. I felt hot and sick.

The nurse then took the rather large bag of liquid, snapped a cap off it, and attached it to the other end of the tube. Slowly she squeezed the bag, driving the liquid through the tube. I felt the indescribable sensation of air entering my bladder, as the liquid snaked its way toward my dick. When the cold liquid entered me, I could feel my bladder thrash in protest. She continued to squeeze, filling my bladder with a burning irritation. Soon I felt that urgent need to pee, yet she continued to pump the fluid through my penis, ballooning my bladder until I groaned in pain. When the bag emptied, she took a small plastic clamp and fixed it across my dick, mashing the poor organ, with the tube inside, flat. The end of my penis began to turn red. "You'll have to hold this in for just a minute, hon, I'm sorry."

Never in my life did I ever have to pee that badly. I felt my bladder thrust out like a cat under a blanket. "Please," I begged, "Please take it out! Take it out!" I cried like a little boy, but she simply handed me a tissue, indifferent to my pain. I swear I could feel my bladder tearing, giving away within me. Just as the exquisite pain began to heave my stomach up my throat, she said, "OK, time to evacuate your bladder." After removing the clamp, leaving a crease in my dick, she slowly and steadily pulled the tube from my bladder, past my prostate, out through my dick, with a hurt as if some tendril of my guts were being pulled out. She helped me sit up, and I got to my feet drunk with pain, holding onto the table with both hands. She held a steel container to my crotch and flipped my dick over the lip with her finger. Tears streaming from my eyes, I tried to start but couldn't. She pinched a fold of skin on the top of my dick and jiggled it back and forth, saying, "Just relax, just relax."

Finally, a trickle began, then a slow, steady stream, gurgling with bubbles of air, scorching as it meandered through my stretched urethra. As badly as I was hurting, however, I couldn't pee any faster. "Just take your time," she said, as she watched the weak stream issue from my little dick. I stood there for five minutes, filling the container with a slow trickle, bladder sore and burning, snatching my breath in small gulps. Even when I was sure I was empty, my bladder still hurt. "It will settle down in a little while," she said, "Lie back down - the doctor will treat you in a few minutes." She left the room, and I collapsed, exhausted.

PART 4: THE TREATMENT

With a start I realized the doctor and nurse had entered the room and were preparing for my treatment. Surely I hadn't fallen asleep? "Mr. B., you have one serious problem that I must remedy before I can treat your testicles. Another inborn defect of the male body, I'm afraid. Unless this is done, you run a continual risk of cancer, bladder infections and other complications. With a new instrument we now import from Malaysia, where it was invented, we can perform this simple procedure with no risk of anesthesia, sepsis or blood loss. May we proceed?" I shrugged and nodded, thinking this some minor obstacle to be gotten over before my pain could be treated. By this time my bladder had settled down to a faint soreness, while my right testicle was still throbbing.

"Sterilize the field, please, nurse." "Yes, doctor." I felt my foreskin being peeled back and something cool being swabbed all over my dick. Then I felt the head of my dick being pushed through something hard until it was enclosed up to the neck. I looked down to find the doctor had pushed the bell-shaped end of some sort of white plastic device over my dickhead. This was a bit uncomfortable because, being uncircumcised, my dickhead was extremely sensitive. I figured this wouldn't take much longer and rested my head back on the table. The doctor pulled my foreskin over the outside of the plastic bell. All of a sudden I felt something pinching my foreskin all the way around. The feeling grew stronger and stronger until the pinching was almost unbearable. I rose up to see some sort of band had been locked around my dick at the base of my foreskin. "Hey, that hurts!" I yelped.

The nurse put her hand on my shoulder and pushed me back down onto the table. "I know, Mr. B. Don't worry, the discomfort will subside in a couple of minutes." I took a breath and waited. Sure enough, after a few minutes I became accustomed to the pinching and it didn't seem so worrisome. The doctor asked for some kind of instrument as she grasped my penis again. Suddenly, I felt a severe burning sensation at the end of my dick. I looked down and was terrified to see my foreskin had turned a dark purple, and the doctor was scissoring it off just above the band! "No! No! No!" I cried, "Don't do that!"

The doctor paused and muttered something to the nurse. "Don't do that! I don't want to lose my foreskin!" I insisted. There was a sharp stick in my left thigh, and I saw the nurse pull a needle away, swabbing the area with a cotton swab. "Just a little something to calm you down, Mr. B.," the doctor said, "What I'm doing here is for your own good. If this had been done when you were an infant, you wouldn't have it to go through now." I felt my mind lighten until my thoughts could no longer coalesce. Dumbly, I watched as the doctor resumed her snipping, all the way around my dick, until the wrinkled little sliver of skin, in which I had taken so much pride all my life, was dropped into a steel dish.

"All right, prepuce amputation complete," the doctor said. Turning to me, she continued, "This should be done to all men. They would have fewer problems. You'll thank me for this." I could not will myself to protest. The drug had blanked out the past and blocked the future. My eternity was this table. She addressed me again as the nurse cleaned the wound and applied an ointment. "This procedure removes almost all of the mucous membrane on the inner side of your foreskin, Mr. B. You won't have to put up with that bothersome sensitivity and foul odor any more. The appliance will remain in place for about a week, sealing off the remnant of your prepuce. There is a small opening at the tip through which you can micturate. When the tissue distal to the band necrotizes, or dies, it will fall off with the clamp and you will have a nice, even circumcision."

My head reeled. Oh, my God, I'm mutilated. I'm circumcised. I always used to make fun of those circumcised jocks in school and in the army, with their pale, callused, bare-headed dicks. They didn't know what they were missing. Now it's happened to me. Oh, no. No. She turned back to the nurse. "All right, nurse, let's perform the second procedure."

I knew what was happening, but I couldn't summon words or actions to prevent it. I felt two needles in my crotch on either side of my dick. Well, I thought, she's finally doing the anesthetic block. Why did it take so much time and trouble to get to this? "Do you feel anything here, Mr. B.?" I looked down. The doctor was roughly palpitating my right testicle, yet there was no pain! "Oh, thank you," I said with a smile, grateful that this ordeal was finally over. The doctor then said something that sounded like "scalpel," and I felt a mild sting somewhere under my dick, on the scrotum. I looked down again and saw a two inch vertical gash being opened. My dick had been pushed to the side, out of the way, weighted down by the clamp device. The doctor spoke to me as she completed the cut and the nurse dabbed at the bleeding. "This procedure will not only permanently remedy your testalgia, it will cause your prostate to severely atrophy, effectively addressing the problems I spoke of earlier. Help me clear these adhesions, nurse."

There is, perhaps, no horror greater than that which cannot be fully acknowledged. Consider the unbearable nightmare, during which one cannot escape, cannot scream, cannot wake up. So I stared through my drug as a ugly object was drawn from the wound in my scrotum. My testicle! - tethered by a glistening stalk that I cannot remember clearly. But I remember the tether being pulled taut, being clamped, being tied off, being snipped below the suture. I raged mutely, watching the free end snap back, disappear into the scrotum, freed forever from the testicle. I watched as the same was done to my left nut. Into the dish went my manhood, just so much rubbish to be disposed of. Oh, this drug . . . this drug.

"After you adjust to your bilateral orchiectomy, Mr. B., you will find your new life much preferable to the old." What? What did she mean? Orchiectomy? I must have said it out loud, without knowing, because the nurse leaned over me and said, "Castration." Yes, that's what happened. I have been castrated. Why can't I fight this? Just want to sleep. Sleep awhile.

PART 5: THE AFTERMATH

My friend, have I not told you all of the story? Well, we shall trim these dangling ends a bit. I woke up on that table, and the nurse helped me back into my clothes. Positioning my dick in my briefs with that device dangling from the end seemed a well-practiced maneuver for her. I did not see the doctor again. Perhaps she had already gone. As I left, the young receptionist rose from his chair like a divine apparition and poured his smile (it can only be described as "sweet") over me again.

I spent the night at a motel nearby. With my wits fully recovered, I filled the tub and soaked, unnerved by the bland feeling of warm water against my denuded skin. For a while I sat there, thinking sadly of convenience stores and softball and med school. Eventually, I stoked up the courage to look at my mutilated genitals - my dick, with that comical plastic hat on it, and my empty scrotum, with a row of stitches up the front. At last, I heaved with sorrow. The tears dripped audibly into the bath water. I wanted to wake up. I could not wake up.

I kept Vaseline on the stitches until they dissolved a week later. Shortly afterward, as the doctor had said, the skin of my penis separated from the clamp, and I was able to pull it off of my cramped dickhead. I had dreaded the idea of bringing anything into direct contact with my exposed dickhead, but I was surprised to find it much less sensitive than before. Apparently, the lack of a shielding foreskin allowed it to dry out and toughen up. The swelling subsided in a couple of weeks, and I stripped to study myself in the mirror. My penis, with its sheath sliced away, disgusted me. I would be ashamed to let anyone see it, with its imposing head sticking out in plain sight like that. Beneath, my hollow scrotum mourned like a mortally wounded animal, drawn up into itself, its purpose gone.

During this time, my depression turned to anger. Hot flashes were making my life miserable, and I really needed testosterone replacement, yet I could not bring myself to allow my urologist to see what had been done to me. My frustration did, however, drive me eventually to see a lawyer. With great embarrassment, I related my story and asked him to sue the doctor. Bitter with vengeance, I wanted to destroy her. A trial date was set for six months.

Meanwhile, I could no longer approach a woman in my mutilated state, so I turned exclusively to self-satisfaction. My skinned member demanded baby oil now for masturbation, although coming without a foreskin lacked a certain pepper. Indeed, after a few months, my orgasm waned from powerful, copious squirts to a thin, sparse dribble, like my nose when I get a cold. The day came then when I coaxed a half-hard penis to a very bland orgasm and got only a couple of puny drops for my effort. At that point, I wondered why I was going to all this trouble. That was the last time I ever stroked off. On that day my orgasm walked the plank. My ship sails now without that drunkard.

Other changes soon appeared. I lost my lucrative traveling sales job, unable now even to reach my quota. The new job clerking at the coffee shop/bookstore is very satisfying, but the small paycheck couldn't cover the rent on my exclusive loft apartment. I now rent a small bed and bath, with a private entrance, in a nearby family home. It's sufficient.

Once one of the more aggressive and buff iron pumpers at my health club, I found I no longer had the mental drive or the physical strength to keep it up. I turned instead to aerobics and found some solace among the other people in that group. My old hunting buddies wondered why I did not want to participate when the season came around. I no longer desired to see a deer in the sights, to take him for the meat and the rack. Try as I might, I could no longer comprehend what I had once enjoyed about it. The day even came when I called the lawyer and told him to drop the lawsuit. I no longer wanted to hurt the doctor. I no longer had the heart to hurt anyone.

After several months, my muscles have dwindled. My body has assumed a more rounded, softer profile. I eat more, perhaps out of depression, and I have fattened up quite a lot. My body and facial hair may have thinned a bit. Imagination, perhaps. My scrotum usually remains cuddled up between my legs, out of sight, out of mind. My belly has swelled with fat until I can't even see my penis unless I'm looking in a mirror. That vestigial organ, no monster to begin with, has slackened to a total limpness, shrunk to match the last joint of my little finger. The exposed glans is a pathetic, wrinkled nub, pale and seemingly bloodless. I derive no sensations from it now. It is nothing more than a vessel through which to urinate. I give it no thought at any other time.

Once, after clumsily breaking a toe, I timidly admitted to the emergency room doctor that I had been castrated. He was kind and offered me hormone replacement, but I just couldn't see any use in it. He cautioned me that I was now prone to osteoporosis, giving me a prescription to counteract that and the hot flashes. I have been taking the medication for a while, and now my tender nipples protrude like thimbles. My breasts jiggle a lot now, too, but I don't mind.

I no longer call any of the single women I had known, and all of those relationships have long since fallen away. I can't remember why I had been so interested in them. Sexual relationships now seem pointless, a waste of good time that could be spent on more important things. My interests have turned to more gentle subjects. I still enjoy movies, but no longer the adult action-adventures I once sought out. Now I prefer family movies, documentaries, travelogues, even Disney. I have begun to read more, cultivating a fascination for religious writings. Some of my friends have noticed the difference in me, though they politely overlook the physical changes. I have become known as the philosopher of the group. My best friend jokingly calls me "the priest." Well, why not? If deprivation is the stuff of sainthood, do I not qualify?

Through all of this, one mystery remained. One taunting image, vagrant in the back of my mind, teetered on the edge of comprehension every day until, recently, the solution crept over me. At last I begin to understand. I know now why that young receptionist, that delicate living reverie, brimming with joy, smiled so sweetly at me.