unpublished story: Me and Martha

I was having this problem. Every night I would go to sleep, and I would wake up just a little while later having to pee. In my sleep I would fight it, resist what I knew, or rather felt I could not deny. And then I would get up and do it, wash my hands, and go back to bed beside Martha, my wife--wash them so that, touching her, I wouldn't contaminate her with what went on above the toilet, for sometimes after my piss, staring at my dun-colored penis, I would become aroused and let semen coat my hand. So I'd be deep in sleep, and there, again, would be a piss honking in my dream. It got to the point where I would scream on mere instinct, less from frustration than from such a brutal and indelible pain that I hope none of you ever must endure, including the most awful among you. In any case, it was a problem about which I couldn't complain, because to the rest of the world, which suffers from inanition and sadness and so doesn't count a rogue piss among its problems, my overeager spleen bore no resolution.

So one night I cut off my penis. That's right, I just cut it off. There I was in the kitchen, and I hadn't even had to pee, and there it was, too, flopping on the floor like a child in gym class, I mean the real gymnastics element, somersaults and so on. I'm doing whatever happens right after you cut off your penis, and here comes my wife, hollering and yammering about look, you cut that thing off. And so she tells me, I knew you would do this. I always thought you were close to this point, not quite a nadir but a simple act of closure. You were never meant to survive past a certain phase of adulthood, nor did you know how, nor did you want to. And if only I were as much of a lunatic as you are--as irresponsible, empty and poor in human emotion as you are--perhaps I could understand you, though I have to add that I understand why and wherefore you have done this, cut off this soft excess and let it go cold on the floor. But now you repudiate all I could have done for you, every move, silent but unoppressed, that I could have made to try but fail to heal you, even before I have done it, even before it was possible to do, and even before I wanted to do it. To conclude, I have never wanted anything for you but this.

So there I was, out on the floor, with my wife hollering and trying to save me, and then on the phone, probably with our therapist, saying that her husband, Brian, had cut off his penis, and what did this signify. You need to tell him what you want out of this relationship, our therapist said, because he is the kind of man to whom not much means a whole lot besides a day spent in the emergency room. So I lay there and assumed my punishment.