CHAPTER ONE
I was sat atop a huge Harley Davidson motorcycle, the wind in my long flowing hair as I zipped along the hot tarmac at ninety five miles an hour, hugging the centre line. To the left was the pure blue Pacific Ocean. A platinum blonde woman sat behind me, wearing cut off denim shorts and a bikini and wrapped her long slender arms around my waist as we tore along the LA coastal road at speed. I was happy, free, fulfilled. Suddenly a huge juggernought came into sight and the driver was furiously flashing his lights and honking the horn. To my horror the truck jack- knifed and skidded sideways, sliding along the asphalt. We were doomed, a savage collision at speed was the only possible conclusion. The blonde screamed a death shriek as the huge Harley smashed into the truck and a massive explosion brought me to a shocking sweaty consciousness.
I was delirious. Delirious with pain and boredom. I shifted uneasily in my bed and peered through the blind to see out of the window. Nothing but grey sky. Grey sky and the pain returning again. Somewhere a lawnmower was whirring. I couldn’t believe I was still in Staines.
Imagine if you can the most excruciating, stomach churning pain you have ever had in your life. Then times that by 100. Now try and imagine that pain being tightly confined to your scrotum. I was in recovery from an operation after being diagnosed with Acute testicular hernia by an accident ward doctor. This had followed months of intermittent scrotal and abdominal pain. The procedure, a Bilateral orchidopexy, was an operation to anchor my nuts to the inside of my scrotum, so that they couldn’t twist. Not the kind of thing you would choose to have done.
The operation itself was torture enough. The general mood of the hospital didn’t exactly inspire confidence. The ward had been filled with five old aged men and fairly reeked of stale piss and disinfectant. Nobody had looked too pleased to be there. The other patients had seemed to be trying to put on a brave face, maybe just for me. There were at least two prostate cases and a cancer patient. By the way they walked you could tell this was the testicle ward. Awkward waddling sideways movements that seemed to cause a grimace with each pace. This was what I had to look forward to. At twenty two, I had stuck out like a sore thumb. The average age must have been at least sixty.
Before long I was anaesthetised and wheeled into an operating theatre, my fate sealed. The next thing I knew I was awake with a yawning chasm of numbness between my legs. I Immediately lifted the sheet to inspect the damage. It seemed that I was wearing a quite bulky kind of surgical jock-strap with my bruised, shrunken cock poking out of a hole in the middle. The numbness had started to wear off and I couldn’t see what they had done to me but I knew one thing. It fucking hurt. It felt as though, whilst I was under the anaesthetic, the surgeon and his assistant had spread my legs apart and taken turns to kick me in the nuts with nailed shoes. I felt physically sick to the pit of my stomach. The swelling and bandaging protruded from underneath the thin surgical sheet which, to the uneducated observer, looked like a stonking great hard on. This was slightly embarrassing to me as a female visitor with two small children entered the ward. She couldn’t help but notice the abnormal sized bulge that sat between my legs as she passed by quickly, scowling at me and clutching her children tighter than ever. As good a definition of the word embarrassment as will be found in any dictionary.
Soon after, I had arrived home tired and irritable and crawled into my own bed to await salvation. Completely cut off from human existence (My girlfriend of eight months conveniently staying with friends whilst I convalesced) I was fending for myself in my weakened condition. I had kept my disorder secret out of embarrassment and had passed off my discomfort as a Hernia. Not a complete lie. I did have a Hernia, I just hadn’t been specific. It’s not terribly easy to explain to a girlfriend that you frequently suffer severe pain in the nuts. It doesn’t go down well. So now, apart from occasional well wisher phone calls and a Get well soon Rick card, I was completely alone.
Solitary convalescence is a depressing thing and I was beginning to get cabin fever. With every passing hour the walls seemed to move in a little tighter. Too many thoughts ran though my head. Was I going crazy? Every minute I stayed there I got weaker. Every minute my problems seemed to grow. When you are in almost constant pain, sleep is an impossibility. It felt as though mutant midgets were constantly stabbing me in the scrotum with barbed needles and they were cruel and unrelenting.
The only position I could maintain was flat on my back with legs in a locked Y shape. This however made my legs go numb at regular intervals, which caused even more discomfort as I fidgeted to revive the circulation. Eventually I drifted off to sleep. Just. But soon was awake again.
I needed to piss, probably more than I had ever needed to at anytime before. A slow uncomfortable trickle came at first, then the stream became stronger and more powerful. It smarted a bit and it was an inconsistent stream in both pressure and direction, shooting out at acute angles. At several points I was standing sideways on to the toilet, only for the fucker to change direction on me once again and send me shuffling back round the bowl. I was getting an ever decreasing percentage of liquid in the toilet. Mostly it cascaded onto the floor. After that I was reduced to pissing in the bath. It was the only receptacle in the house wide enough to do the job without unacceptable spillage. Staggering back to bed, I only emerged periodically to relieve bladder congestion.
By the fifth day I was feeling quite itchy down below. The strap and bandages needed to come off and I was also quite anxious to inspect the damage. The scene was very sobering. At first I wondered if I had been in an explosion. A three and a half inch scar ran across my swollen scrotum. Long stitches protruded like spines from my sack. It looked like a dead stickleback had been grafted on to my ball-bags. I recoiled in horror. How could any women bring herself to go near this disaster area ever again? I felt disgusted, violated, mutilated. My scrotum looked like it had been replaced with a small cactus plant and my shrunken penis looked like a maggot climbing a barbed wire fence.
By this time I was living in constant fear of getting an erection. It’s not until you have to consciously avoid it that you discover just how many sexual thoughts the average man has during a day. With each dirty thought my scrotum contracted and the midgets were back again, stabbing for all they were worth. I nearly had to turn the TV off during one program as I suddenly started imagining being alone with the two female actresses in a Jacuzzi. Arrgghh!! All I can say is thank god for the news. It definitely brought things under control and the pain gradually subsided. As soon as I was able to walk I returned to work.
However work wasn’t going to help me get over depression. It only made things worse. I felt like I was drowning in a sea of mediocrity. Never achieving anything except nothing. Wasting my life. Surely there was more out there. More to life than hum drum nine to five existence? It was time to make a startling re-appraisal of my life, and more specifically my job. Work was another source of depression for me. A contributory factor to my general mood of self pity. I should probably explain that I work for an American owned company as an IT support engineer. This is a loose term and can incorporate all kinds of responsibilities, however for me the word Support should have been substituted for Dogs-body. I was required to almost anything from fixing broken machines to moving furniture. Basically about four jobs in one role, all for less than the going rate for one of them. It wasn't that I necessarily hated my job, more that my job hated me (or I hated myself? I couldn't really be bothered to figure it out).
I was being chewed up by stress. All day long I fielded moronic questions from fuck-wits who steadfastly refused to use what little brains an angry god had granted them. At the end of most days I would stagger home in a numb jabbering, dazed funk. Completely shell shocked from dealing with mindless tedium all day. I felt like a lone knight defending the battered ramparts of my own sanity, feverishly beating back my evil assailants who were swarming all around, hell-bent on stealing in and stealing my mind. Basically I was burned out.
Picture, if you can, a dreary April morning, anxious people busily preparing themselves for the whirlwind visit of CEO Mark Simon, announced twenty four hours previous. It was akin to the chaotic frenzy an Imperial starship would undergo in anticipation of an inspection by the Emperor in Star-Wars. People rushed about frantically like storm troopers, everyone smartly dressed for the event. It was probably the only occasion I had seen many of them not wearing jeans, in a last ditch attempt to look professional and not get made redundant. Things were not going well for our company or for the telecommunications industry in general. Insecurity and paranoia reigned.
A little after eleven o’clock we were directed to move upstairs and take our places in the large board room. As I arrived all the chairs had already been taken by the more senior managers and low grade executive types who sat anxiously, so I took a standing position at the back of the room. It was hot and stuffy with all these people sharing each others oxygen. After what seemed like an eternity, a violent bout of shushing seemed to spread round the room and the light chatter that had previously bubbled stopped dead in its tracks. From my position at the back of the room I could just about see the door, which opened and closed without me noticing anyone enter. However the strange object of fear and anxiety that had been our tormentor for the last twenty four hours came into view as he took his place at the front of his expectant audience. The reason I hadn’t seen him enter was now clear. He was a fucking dwarf. Mark Simon, was only four feet eleven inches tall! Short but thin, with balding grey hair, he struck me as kind of comedic cross between Joseph Goebels and Paul Daniels. Without the charisma.
After the usual corporate pleasantries he began a starkly depressing and to some extent mildly inflammatory speech, before leaving the room to muted applause. The gist of his accumulated wisdom (he was a reputed Harvard business school graduate) was that the whole of Europe was about to be plunged into depression but that we fortunate few who were graced to work for an outstanding American company with sound economic principles, would survive this financial holocaust. In other words You backwards, stinking Euro-trash peasants should be grateful for the intervention of charming and fragrant Americans. The standard American stance on any issue since the sinking of the Lusitania.
The impression he had left with his fortunate British employees was one of overwhelming arrogance. Only an
American could behave with such blind enthusiasm and over-confidence in such a situation. Amongst his now
less than totally unswerving UK workers he was know to be known as the Poison Dwarf.
A little over an hour after the meeting, the mood one of intense relief, I was called into the large plush office shared by two executives to fix an email problem for one of them. However as I toiled to reconnect him to his communication Life-line it became apparent to me that work was the furthest thing from his mind. As I worked
he spent at least ten minutes on the phone to a colleague bragging about a sexual conquest the night before and
complaining about the air-conditioning that made him Sweat like a rapist and live in fear of Smelling like a
Badgers arse.
On a quiet period during work I found myself penning my own fantasy resignation letter. I say fantasy because I would never have the guts to hand it in and quit. But it served as a minor catharsis for me to at least mentally note and voice my feelings. I smiled broadly as it fired off the printer and I stood reading it, against the light.
“Dear M,
Thanks so much for meeting me this morning. I know your time is precious so just a quick note to clarify
my position. Sadly (and I think you know what’s coming), I’ve decided not to take up your offer of more money
and a new Peugeot. Actually, I’d rather like to spit on your offer of more money and a new Peugeot. You’ve got
balls; I’ll give you that. But what’s the point of having big balls if you’ve only got a weenie bat (Janet told the
whole office). What sort of idiot do you think I am to even consider accepting your trifling gesture, this pittance,
this worst of kind of tokenism? Anyway, take this as written notice. I’m off; outta here, following my yellow brick
road (in a Mercedes Convertible) to pastures new and greener. I’m going to a bigger company (don’t ask me where
I don’t need a reference) who are paying me even more money and who are kindly providing me with a whopper of an expenses account. Job satisfaction? Who needs it? Haven’t you read The Bonfire of the Vanities? They’re
giving me a clothes allowance, a season ticket at Anfield and free corporate gym membership. Salubrious stuff I’m
sure you'll agree. And so, at last, I must bid you a fond adieu. I’ll miss your long-winded internal memos intensely
although I’ll never forgive you for sending me so few of them. Finally, I would certainly recommend a deodorant
to you but I don’t care enough. I wish you all the best for the future.
Kind Regards
Rick Noonan.”
My personal life was another factor in my mounting depression. Things hadn’t been great between Rachel and I for some time. We’d gradually grown apart, started to get on each others nerves. We probably always got on each others nerves but now there was nothing left to make up for it. The love was fading and the sex had long gone off the boil. We’d even gone to relationship counselling. I say we, she suggested it, I meekly went along with the Idea. However it only ever seemed to be a workshop for her emotions. I suspected that she was thinking of dumping me.
I needed a holiday. Not just to rest and regroup but to try to figure out the next step. What to do next, how to change my stinking, tedious, uninspiring life for the better. Surely there was something else more interesting out
there for me, a more inspired destiny. I reasoned that the only sure-fire way to find out was to go on a solid gold
two week fuck-around, get totally immersed in something other than work and relationships, and see where the blind alley would lead. It might just work. I was struggling with a career, failing at relationships and becoming estranged from the world at large. It couldn’t hurt to try and take a perspective on things from another angle. These were weird times indeed. Fascist pigs in government, celebrity chefs on TV. The kind of times that make you want to jump on a motorcycle and keep on riding. There was far too much frustration and suppressed rage inside me. I needed a holiday. More than ever before. I was convinced of that much. Now all I had to do was convince my friends.
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