Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions - By Neil Gaiman Page 0,86

a gangrenous green nor a leprous white, but looked perfectly normal, except for the slightly swollen tip and the clear discharge that lubricated the hole. He realized that his white underpants had been stained across the crotch by the leak.

Simon felt angry with himself and angrier with God for having given him a (say it) (dose of the clap) obviously meant for someone else.

He masturbated that night for the first time in four days.

He fantasized a schoolgirl in blue cotton panties who changed into a policewoman, then two policewomen, then three.

It didn’t hurt at all until he climaxed; then he felt as if someone were pushing a switchblade through the inside of his cock. As if he were ejaculating a pincushion.

He began to cry then in the darkness, but whether from the pain, or from some other reason, less easy to identify, even Simon was unsure.

That was the last time he masturbated.

The clinic was located in a dour Victorian hospital in central London. A young man in a white coat looked at Simon’s card, and took his doctor’s note, and told him to take a seat.

Simon sat down on an orange plastic chair covered with brown cigarette burns.

He stared at the floor for a few minutes. Then, having exhausted that form of entertainment, he stared at the walls, and finally, having no other option, at the other people.

They were all male, thank God—women were on the next floor up—and there were more than a dozen of them.

The most comfortable were the macho building-site types, here for their seventeenth or seventieth time, looking rather pleased with themselves, as if whatever they had caught were proof of their virility. There were a few city gents in ties and suits. One of them looked relaxed; he carried a mobile telephone. Another, hiding behind a Daily Telegraph, was blushing, embarrassed to be there; there were little men with wispy mustaches and tatty raincoats—newspaper sellers, perhaps, or retired teachers; a rotund Malaysian gentleman who chain-smoked filterless cigarettes, lighting each cigarette from the butt of the one before, so the flame never went out, but was transmitted from one dying cigarette to the next. In one corner sat a scared gay couple. Neither of them looked more than eighteen. This was obviously their first appointment as well, the way they kept glancing around. They were holding hands, white-knuckled and discreetly. They were terrified.

Simon felt comforted. He felt less alone.

“Mister Powers, please,” said the man at the desk. Simon stood up, conscious that all eyes were upon him, that he’d been identified and named in front of all these people. A cheerful, red-haired doctor in a white coat was waiting.

“Follow me,” he said.

They walked down some corridors, through a door (on which DR. J. BENHAM was written in felt pen on a white sheet of paper scotch-taped to the frosted glass), into a doctor’s office.

“I’m Doctor Benham,” said the doctor. He didn’t offer to shake hands. “You have a note from your doctor?”

“I gave it to the man at the desk.”

“Oh.” Dr. Benham opened a file on the desk in front of him. There was a computer printout label on the side. It said:

REG’D 2 JLY 90. MALE. 90/00666.L

POWERS, SIMON, MR.

BORN 12 OCT 63. SINGLE.

Benham read the note, looked at Simon’s penis, and handed him a sheet of blue paper from the file. It had the same label, stuck to the top.

“Take a seat in the corridor,” he told him. “A nurse will collect you.”

Simon waited in the corridor.

“They’re very fragile,” said the sunburnt man sitting next to him, by accent a South African or perhaps Zimbabwean. Colonial accent, at any rate.

“I’m sorry?”

“Very fragile. Venereal diseases. Think about it. You can catch a cold or flu simply by being in the same room as someone who’s got it. Venereal diseases need warmth and moisture, and intimate contact.”

Not mine, thought Simon, but he didn’t say anything.

“You know what I’m dreading?” said the South African.

Simon shook his head.

“Telling my wife,” said the man, and he fell silent.

A nurse came and took Simon away. She was young and pretty, and he followed her into a cubicle. She took the blue slip of paper from him.

“Take off your jacket and roll up your right sleeve.”

“My jacket?”

She sighed. “For the blood test.”

“Oh.”

The blood test was almost pleasant, compared to what came next.

“Take down your trousers,” she told him. She had a marked Australian accent. His penis had shrunk, tightly pulled in on itself; it looked gray and wrinkled. He found himself wanting