by KKBattousai
Aliens stole my testicles. I know when they did it too. It was last month, when I woke up on my couch, feeling completely rested. Which was unusual because I was positive I’d fallen asleep in bed, I never sleepwalk, and I never wake up feeling rested. But there I was, and there they weren’t.
It is not, by the way, like they took the whole package. It’s more like they opened it up, removed my testes, and replaced them with olives or something. I mean everything felt the same, but it was just that I was, all of a sudden, the non-horniest guy I knew.
Things were, as far as I could tell, pretty normal otherwise. The vast majority of my hormones seemed to be at normal levels-it’s not like my voice changed or I was growing breasts or anything. I was just suddenly, remarkably, not horny. There was no morning wood to take care of, no frantic rush to squeeze in a quick jerk before work. It was a distinctly odd experience that first day, confusing to say the least. I mean, I was twenty-five, and fully didn’t expect anything like that to happen until, well, ever.
On the plus side, however, I actually had time to make myself a bagel, toasted and with cream cheese, and consume it and a cup of coffee before walking-a change from the usual dash-out the door for work. The drive to work was, similarly, more calm and less frantic than usual. For once my dick wasn’t trying to peek over the dashboard and my head wasn’t relentlessly swiveling, trying to find the cutest intern or the shortest skirt. As a result, I didn’t slam on the brakes as much-not at all, as a matter of fact-and actually saw and avoided the pedestrians who apparently try to commit suicide by dashing in front of people’s cars. I was, in short, a paradoxically safe Los Angeles driver.
When I got to work that day, I surprised myself by not trying to peer through the secretary’s stylish but incredibly sheer white blouse, and surprised myself further by not turning up the air conditioning to enhance the view. The secretary, Michelle, looked up at me and I realized, for possibly the first time ever, that she had the most beautiful green eyes I’d ever seen. It was, in fact, very possible that this was the first time that I had really looked at her face.
“You have a meeting at ten, Mr. Turner,” she said.
“Of course I do,” I said. I usually swore at the mere thought of client briefings, but today it seemed like there could’ve been worse things in life. “Thanks for reminding me.”
“No problem, Mr. Turner,” Michelle said, smiling at me. I can’t be sure, but I think it was the first time she ever did that. I figured that I’d leave the air conditioning at reasonable levels from now on-she had a beautiful smile.
I nodded at her and proceeded into my office, dropped my briefcase by my chair, and looked out the glass wall. The city looked almost dazzling-or at least as dazzling as L.A. could possibly hope to look. Looking out over downtown, I saw that the people walking the streets actually looked like people-marked by hats, briefcases, and coats-and not the ants and rats they usually resembled. Watching the hustle and bustle, I could actually imagine them as people with hopes and dreams and things of that sort.
I checked my e-mail-the usual mishmash of interoffice memos and company announcements-and thought about the way I had been living my life. After a few moments of contemplation, I found it lacking and, in a way, almost degrading. Finishing my last e-mail, I closed the program and opened up my computer’s file manager. I selected half a dozen directories with extreme prejudice, deleted them, then emptied the recycle bin, making doubly sure that I’d never see those particular teens having sex with livestock ever again. This felt so purifying, in an I’m-quitting-cold-turkey kind of way, that I picked up the phone and dialed a number. It rang for a couple minutes before a sleepy voice answered.
“Hey Pete,” I said to my brother, “I have a deal for you.”
Twenty minutes later, Pete was the honorary owner of my entire porn collection. It ended up costing him three hundred dollars, but I had the entire Debbie Does The West Coast box set and I knew he wouldn’t be able to pass it up. My brother, you see, is quite a pervert.
Eventually, ten o’clock rolled around and I went to the meeting. There was, of course, nothing new, so it was over quickly and I returned to my office, more than ready to get to work. And I must say, there’s nothing like not having a libido to up your productivity. The relations between numbers and formulas-I had to extrapolate potential Q4 earnings from market data gathered by other departments-never seemed so clear. All the variables and potential sales complications marched in an orderly fashion directly into my brain, which was a stark contrast to their usual slow procession through a foggy mush of half-formed sexual imagination. I don’t think I ever worked so quickly or efficiently since the last time I masturbated (which was, of course, before the aliens abducted my testicles).
I finished the entire Q4 forecast by 2:45 PM, with all my numbers double- and triple-checked, all the T’s crossed and I’s dotted. I walked into my boss’s office fifteen minutes later-we have a slow but busy printer-and placed the report on her desk.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“The fourth quarter projections.”
She looked down at the report, then opened it up and flipped through it. She stopped to look at a couple of the full-color pie charts, then stared at me as if a tail had grown out of my head. After a long moment of this, I surreptitiously rubbed my forehead and found that it was, indeed, still tailless.
“Well?” I said.
“Well, what?” She seemed confused and a bit irritated.
“Is there anything else I should do?” It seemed a reasonable question; she hardly ever talked to me except to give me more work.
“No, not right now,” she said. She looked back down at the report, as if she doubted its existence. “Just take the rest of the day off.” Still looking somewhat quizzically at the report, she flicked me out of the office with a wave of a hand, her sign that my presence was no longer necessary or desired.
“Thank you, ma’am,” I said as I left her office.
* * *
Before leaving the office, I dropped by payroll to pick up my paycheck, then drove to the bank to deposit it against the proverbial rainy day. The removal of a man’s balls, I decided, turns him into his parents.
Enforcing this vicious revelation was the fact that I stopped off at the grocery store to pick up toilet paper and bread. I did not, I think I’m proud to say, check out the girls on the cover of either Cosmopolitan or Maxim, the magazine for men. I didn’t even leer at the high-school-aged checkout girl. I was, for the first time ever, a regular gentleman.
I did, however, end up by force of habit at Tommy’s Pub o’ Beer. The bartender, Bob, was his usual silent self, which was fine with me. I looked around at all the beer posters, the Budweiser models, and felt absolutely nothing. I admired the aesthetic beauty of these women, which was all fine and good, but it was their aesthetic beauty I was admiring for goodness sake!
I don’t know if I truly wanted to be turned on by all those beautiful women but I do know that I was unnerved by the fact that I wasn’t. I ordered a draft Heineken and just sat there for a while, thinking. A couple of glasses later, just when I thought I had gained some perspective on the matter, a woman sat down next to me.
I glanced over and-just for the hell of it-gave her the old one-second lookover. She was a brunette, fairly well-off, judging by the cut of her red business suit and skirt, and her makeup was impeccably applied. Very classy. Her figure…was also aesthetically pleasing.
That’s it, I decided, my life as a man is over-aliens have stolen my balls.
She ignored me during my appraisal, which she was well aware of, and ordered a Long Island iced tea. She was pointedly not looking at me, of course, as women are wont to do, even when we’re checking them out (unless, of course, we check them out for too long, in which case they pretend to be insulted). It has long since been my theory that women are trained, from birth, to cause men maximum discomfort. And of course, ignoring the desperately lonely-and more likely than not horny-man next to them qualifies. Imagine my delight, then, when I realized that I couldn’t care less if she noticed me or not. I smiled to myself and took a long sip of my beer.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
I looked up from my beer and smiled.
“I find it amusing,” I said, “that despite the fact that you’re an attractive woman, I don’t care that you’re not paying attention to me.” I didn’t say this to be mean or anything, it just kind of slipped out. I think it was the beer.
“Ah, but I am paying attention to you,” she said.
She had me there.
“Evidently so,” I said. “But why?” Why now that I’m missing my equipment, that is.
She shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said. “You seem…different.”
“Different, good?” I asked. “Or different, gay?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “Are you gay?”
That was a good question. I looked over at a couple of guys shooting pool and didn’t find them attractive. Not even aesthetically pleasing.
“Guess not,” I said. “What about you?”
She choked on this and ended up coughing for a bit.
“You’re not very good at this, are you?” she asked.
“At what?”
“Picking up women,” she said.
“Oh.” I thought about it. “I’m not trying to. Actually, I don’t think I’m going to be doing that at all anymore.” Unfortunately, this seemed pretty damn true at the moment. I picked at a scratch on the bar. All of a sudden my throat felt too tight.
“And why is that?” she asked, turning to face me. She straightened her back, and this had the predictable effect of emphasizing her breasts. She did it on purpose too.
“I don’t know,” I said, reaching into my pocket and pulling out some money. I slapped it down on the bar loudly enough for Bob to notice. “It’s all those damn aliens’ fault.”
* * *
I had my porn collection boxed and ready to go by six. Pete said he’d be over by seven, so I popped a tape in the VCR, for old time’s sake. It was called Hot High School Lovin’ and it used to be one of my top-ten favorites. This time around, though, all I could notice was the awful cinematography and how badly written the script was. In short, porn just wasn’t fun anymore. I had, by this point, gotten over the little breakdown I’d had at the bar, so this revelation didn’t bother me all that much, and if anything made me feel better about selling it all.
In retrospect, the whole self-gratification thing was getting just a little bit ridiculous anyway. Late night undercover runs to the porn shops, blowing money on strippers, spending money to have hookers blow me-it just wasn’t worth it anymore. I mean, look at that retarded little brother of mine, willing to drive for two hours from UCLA, in rush hour, just to come over and pick up a few lousy boxes of magazines and videos, and used ones at that. He’d probably hurt his back carrying it all and still think that he came out ahead. Looking at it like that, losing my libido almost seemed worthwhile.
Soon after I rewound the video and tossed it in a box, I heard muffled conversation at my door, accompanied by a knock. I opened the door and there was my brother with some blonde girl I had never met before.
“Hey Ted,” my brother said. “I’d like you to meet my girlfriend, Jenna.”
“Hi Jenna, nice to meet you.” Then, to Peter: “Come here a sec.”
I grabbed him by the arm and pulled him into the bedroom. “What the hell are you thinking? You brought your girlfriend here? To pick up the porn?”
“Why not?” he asked. “I needed somebody with a car, and the only other person who was available was mom.” He smiled. “And besides, Jenna likes that stuff.”
“You watch it together.” This was sick.
“Yeah, it’s…inspirational.”
“That’s messed up,” I said, shaking my head. “Just grab your stuff-I didn’t mean it like that, you pervert!-and go.”
They did essentially that, with Jenna and I helping him carry the stuff down to her car. He paid me the money, in cash, and they drove off to a night of utter depravity. I, for my part, returned to an empty apartment, trying to figure out what I wanted to do for the night, my traditional choice being entombed in Jenna’s trunk. For lack of anything better to do, I watched some television and read a bit.
By the time I looked up at the clock, it was already eleven. Physical gratification being fairly high on my list of priorities, testicles or not, I decided that I needed something to eat. I toyed momentarily with the thought of ordering pizza, but that didn’t seem to do justice to the $300 burning a hole in my pocket (and believe me, I was glad that something was). Shrugging off the inherent embarrassment of going to a restaurant alone-it takes a lot to embarrass somebody who can rent Ass Ramming Christian Schoolgirls with a straight face-I decided to drive down to Pasadena for bad, overpriced Italian food at Café Luna.
By the time I got down there, though, it was just about midnight, which meant that they were doing booming business, and that it would be an agonizingly long wait before I got a table. I was just about to turn and leave when I heard somebody call my name. I looked around, convinced I was hearing things. After scanning half of the restaurant, I finally saw Michelle waving to me, her green eyes glittering in the candlelight.
“Meeting someone?” she asked when I got over to her table.
“Unfortunately not,” I said. “And you?”
“I come here when I’m lonely,” she said, as if it were an answer that made sense.
“They have cute waiters,” she added.
“Ah,” I said, nodding sagely. “Would you mind if I joined you in your debauchery?”
She smiled that ultimately aesthetically pleasing smile of hers. “Of course not. Please do.”
We flagged down a waiter and I ordered a simple pasta dish that we were assured would arrive at the same time as Michelle’s. In the meantime, we discussed work and fashions, sports, and life in general.
“So why are you so happy?” she asked me as we discussed this last topic.
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s just that you’re smiling.”
“I smile.”
“Not at work you don’t,” she said. “You’re probably the hardest working junior exec in the office. Straight into the office, out for lunch, then right back in. It doesn’t seem as if you ever have any fun.”
“Oh, well…” It wasn’t like I could tell her what I used to do, all those long, uninterrupted hours in my office. “I just find my work very enjoyable, that’s all.” There, that was close enough to the truth.
“I suppose,” she said. “Though it never seemed like you enjoyed it. You were always so serious, even at the end of the day. I would have sworn that you were miserable.”
Which was, I suppose, possible. There really is nothing to ruin your work day like having to worry about your boss finding pornography-illegal pornography at that-on your computer. That, combined with the less than healthy sexual tension that accompanies it and, well, I guess I owe the aliens one.
“Well,” I told Michelle. “Those days are over. Trust me.” Then a thought occurred to me. “Hey, I actually get breaks, don’t I?”
“Beats me,” she said. “It seems like people at your level have nothing but breaks. You’re the only one that’s not walking around harassing me all the time.”
“All that attention,” I said. “And you dine alone. How does that happen?”
She grew quiet and stared at the candle for a moment.
“That’s just the way I am,” she said, finally. “I don’t want ‘the attention,’ as you put it.” There was some venom to this last comment.
Great, I thought to myself, feeling as if I had stepped, naked, into a mine field. What the hell was I supposed to say now?
“Not all guys are like that,” I ventured.
“Yes they are,” she said.
“You say that, yet here you are checking out the waiters.”
“They’re waiters,” she said simply. “They wait. Like they’re supposed to.”
It was, let me assure you, an awkward silence that followed. The only thing that saved the moment, perhaps the evening, was the arrival of our food. I noticed, with some amusement, the way Michelle’s eyes followed our waiter as he left the table. Her eyes met mine and she smiled, though it wasn’t the same magnificent smile she wore this morning.
“Besides,” she said. “They’re nice to look at.”
“Aesthetically pleasing,” I said.
“Yes,” she said, her smile widening. “Aesthetically pleasing.”
The rest of the meal passed in a cease-fire of a silence. She looked up at me a few times during the meal, like she was going to ask me something. But she didn’t, so I pretended that I didn’t notice.
The meal ended in silence, though we both ordered gratuitous gourmet coffees-a café mocha for her, an espresso for me-to keep the conversation, the possibilities, alive.
“So,” she said. “What are you doing after this?”
I knew what I would have normally done after dinner, but those days were behind me.
“Nothing in particular,” I said. “Why?”
“It’s nothing, but I’m something of an insomniac. I mean, I understand if you want to go home and sleep, but-“
“It’s fine, Michelle. I’m something of an insomniac myself. We’ll go do something, all right?”
She nodded.
We ended up renting videos from a place a few blocks from my apartment. It was pretty much a porn place, which was why it was open so late, and why I knew of it, but they still had the ubiquitous blockbusters necessary for them to pretend they were a real video store. And it was from this veneer of respectability that we rented. It ended up being more a formality than anything else, as we both fell asleep on my sofa bed-I had to throw a blanket over it to hide some of the more incriminating stains-less than half an hour into the movie. She fell asleep before I did, as it’s fairly difficult to fall asleep when a girl is clinging to you like a frightened kitten, nails threatening to rip a hole in your shirt and the flesh beneath it.
We both overslept the next day, and both of us called in sick, roughly twenty minutes apart from each other.
We grew, in the days and weeks that followed, what some may colloquially refer to as “chummy.” I started taking my newly discovered breaks and, more often than not, spent them at Michelle’s desk, talking and drinking a cup of coffee (the good stuff from the break room, not the sludge in the reception area). Sure enough, as she had said, there were a few other execs at or near my level that would walk in from their respective offices, but they’d see the two of us together and turn a quick one-eighty. This happened so much it soon became a shared joke between us-circle jerks, we’d call them-though I must say I tended to find it more amusing than she did.
Every so often, usually a day or two after pay day, we’d go out to lunch, or back to my place where she’d cook me dinner, and it would be very cozy. Platonic, but cozy. And that’s one of the things that was curious about our relationship-it never became sexual. I obviously had no urges in that direction, but despite the explicitly labeled dates we went on-complete with flowers, my picking up the tab, and everything-she never asked or moved in for so much as a good night kiss. A good night hug, yes, but never anything more.
And it’s not like it was a platonic friendship that I was reading wrong, either. I mean we were sleeping together and everything. Of course “sleeping together” really meant sharing the same bed-just like that first night-and “and everything” refers to nothing in particular, but the intimacy, suffice it to say, was definitely there. Even without sex, there was a certain comfort level-though she still threatened to rip my heart out in her sleep-in the arrangements. It was kind of offsetting though.
“Don’t you find me attractive?” I asked her playfully one night.
She looked at me with that probing, appraising look that only comes with double-X chromosomes.
“Aesthetically pleasing,” she said with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes.
“Fair enough,” I said lightly. I recognize my cues. “Though I think I deserve better than that.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
With that, she climbed into bed, and though she seemed happy enough as she fell asleep, I woke up with five small holes in my shirt.
As time passed, however, and she became more and more familiar with sleeping with me-which is to say, next to me-her clinging to me became less frantic and more natural, to the point that it was barely more than an arm flung casually over me-with no nails involved at all.
* * *
Our relationship, needless to say, caused something of a scandal at the office. An unofficial inquiry was launched, though it consisted primarily of my colleagues asking me how she was. My replies to these questions were in the vein of a casually delivered “You’re a fucking idiot.” They thought I was just kidding and I let them think this-it was a comfortable arrangement.
“Oh come on,” some guy from advertising said one day. “You’re probably the first one to screw her while sober and you’re not going to tell us about it?”
“What,” I asked, taking a step towards him, “do you mean by that?”
He stepped back against the wall and looked to one of his co-workers for help.
“He wasn’t at the New Year’s party,” the guy said.
No I wasn’t. I was home watching porn stars screw in the new year on the Spice channel.
“Enlighten me,” I said.
“Well,” the advertising guy said. “She got drunk at the New Year’s party and things got, well, sloppy.”
“Sloppy?”
“Yeah, you know, like sloppy seconds? Thirds? Fourths? Fifths….” I walked away, not wanting to hear the rest of the count. I marched into my office, slamming the door behind me. I sat down at my computer, almost longing for the days when all my problems resided on its hard drive.
* * *
I stopped off at Tommy’s after work that day, instead of riding home with Michelle as per usual. I didn’t want to get drunk, I just wanted a beer and some time to think. It’s not that I was angry with Michelle; she was taken advantage of and that was that. Was I jealous? Perhaps, but I always thought that was a genital-related emotion, and I didn’t have those anymore.
And, besides, why would I be jealous? Michelle and I have a great relationship. I’m sure she’d let me sleep with her if I-oh, there we go. You don’t need to be a quack to figure out that the guy who probably can’t have sex would be jealous of the ones who can-and did. With his-meaning my-quasi-girlfriend no less.
This whole line of thought depressed me. I mean, yes, I found Michelle aesthetically pleasing, but it obviously wasn’t a sexual thing. Was it? Sure I could imagine having sex with her-no guy can watch as much pornography as I did and not be able to imagine sex-but that was all academic as I had no urge to act upon it. And without those urges, there weren’t any grounds for jealousy, are there?
I was deeply entrenched in these thoughts when a voice asked me, “Aliens still got you down?”
I looked out of the depths of my beer mug and saw the same classy, but merely aesthetically appealing, woman that was in here last time. She was wearing a lavender suit this time, and this one was cut in a way to give subtle clues as to what lay underneath. Subtlety being something that would have been beneath me pre-abduction, I figured that under normal circumstances I would’ve wanted to make many kinds of dirty love to her.
“No, not really,” I said with a laugh, as she ordered another Long Island iced tea. “Just trying to figure something out, that’s all.”
“Something I could help you with?” I couldn’t decide if she was being flirtatious or not.
“No, probably not,” I said, still thinking. It would have taken too long to explain, and, besides, she wasn’t Michelle. Then again, maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing after all….
“Wait a second,” I said. “Maybe you can. You’ve had sex before, right?”
She sprayed out a mouthful of liquor.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” I said. “And that’s nice and all, but I don’t give a rat’s ass. Now, why is that?” I thought about it for a second.
She was fairly attractive and everything, but she simply didn’t do it for me. I mean, she might have actually been better looking than Michelle, but I certainly didn’t love her-oh, there we go.
“You know what,” I said. “I think I got it, thanks!”
With that, I paid for both our drinks, then dashed outside and hurried home, leaving her, bewildered, confused, and blushing, staring after me.
* * *
“Men live vicariously through their porn, you know!” These were the first words that greeted me as I walked through the door.
“Michelle, dear, what are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about this,” she said, flinging a CD at me.
It hit me in the chest and fell to the floor with a dull thud. I picked it up and, upon closer inspection, it turned out to be a DVD, one of the old World’s Largest Gangbangs, subtitled You Can’t Satisfy Everybody…Or Can You? It was back when the record was only 212 or so people, though I didn’t think that this detail would help me any.
“This must be my brother’s,” I said. Which, technically, it was. Well Peter, I thought, let’s see you and your girlfriend act this one out.
“Where’d you find it?” I asked her.
“In your CD case,” she said. “Is this the kind of thing that turns you on?”
“Of course not.” Which was, of course, the truth.
“The hell it’s not,” she said. “All guys live through their porn. This is the kind of crap you enjoy, isn’t it?”
“Not all guys live through their porn,” I said, regrouping and retaliating. “What about bestiality? What’s the deal with that? Do guys want to have sex with farm animals? Do we want to be the animals? Do we want to eat out of troughs? Wallow in our own filth? What’s the relationship there?”
“Those,” she said with a sniff, “are compensatory. And are only for men with really small penises.” Okay now, that one stung.
“Look Michelle,” I said finally. “I do not get off on stuff like that.” Not anymore.
“Prove it.”
“Fine. How?”
“You’re going to watch this whole thing with your pants off. If you get hard even once, it’s over.”
I’d just like to point out that if this was the old me, a relationship that went on this long without sex would have probably been long since over anyway. As it was, however, I agreed to the conditions. What can I say, I found the right girl for me.
So we sat down, put the disc in, and watched the whole thing. Which sucked. The camera angles were uninspired to say the least, and no matter what some might say, this was most assuredly not art. Nor is sex a spectator sport. Among its other drawbacks, it’s boring as shit to watch for extended periods of time-even worse than baseball. And that’s why most sex scenes are fifteen minutes long, tops.
But, despite this, we watched the whole fucking thing. All eight hours of it. I almost fell asleep once, but she woke me up, convinced I was trying to cheat. And she was staring at my dick the entire time. Which, under other circumstances, might have been flattering, but it just made me incredibly self-conscious. To summarize, eight hours and ten minutes later-she at least let me use the bathroom and get a drink of water-the movie finished and I was redeemed.
“Wow,” she said, pulling me into a hug. “I guess you were telling the truth after all.”
“Of course, darling, the only thing that turns me on is you.” And, much to my surprise and embarrassment, I proved it, poking her in the hip.
At risk of skipping over the good parts, let it suffice to say that we made love. Due to the abduction, which hadn’t reversed itself despite appearances, it was more about her than it was me, and as a result she enjoyed herself immensely. She snuggled up against me afterwards, smiling and keeping her nails entirely to herself. As I lay there drifting off into sleep, I couldn’t help but marvel at how wonderful life could be, even when one doesn’t have any balls.