By the time I had my epiphany, it had been going on for twelve years. I was wanking in my bedroom, smoking a cigarette with my lefty, staring out the window watching my dogs wrestle in the backyard. I smiled at the sight of Stan nibbling Leila’s face before kissing it as if to apologize. When I came on the window and came to, I felt fucking dirty. It was almost unconscious; so routine that if I didn’t do it, my day was incomplete. Yet there I was, dripping a tad watching my pup tackle his lazy sister, who’d just plop on her back and take the blows from her brother’s loving tongue. Bulldogs are classic.
The poorly timed finish nearly coaxed me to vomit, but I kept my senses about it. It’s not as if I sexualized my pets, it was a simple mindless error that could easily never happen again if I put my mind to it. And it never did.
But when I decided I would stop for good, that I’d done enough jerking for a thousand lumberjacks, that’s when shit hit the fan.
During the night, it was as if good ole Mr. Right had a mind of its own. I was jarred awake by clenched ass cheeks, spasming legs, coconut cream, and my jammy pants pulled knee low.
So, as any sensible person would, I wore gloves to bed. And woke up with this itching, burning carpet mark left on my willy. I had to rub hydrocortisone cream all up and down my member, but that just led to stroking and moping, falling back into my old ways.
Since the gloves left my foreskin screaming with pain, I upgraded to mittens.
Mother fuck. I woke up to the best orgasm of my life featuring fluffy wintertime mittens mid-summer. That didn’t make me want to stop! So I tossed them in the garbage with a disheartened departure and headed back to bed.
Hopeless and irritated, I took a great measure and cuffed my hands. And awoke to my righty broken free. Damn it! I locked them back up in my BDSM kit and stayed awake for the rest of the night.
Cuffing my hands behind my back didn’t work either.
Finally, after the gloves, mittens, and cuffs, I decided to try therapy. But that was about as short-lived as an elementary school relationship. I walked through the door and, seeing all of the faces in the waiting room, told the receptionist, “Wrong building,” and hurried to my car where I cried for the better part of an hour and slammed my tired hand on the steering wheel.
So I studied myself.
In the hours I forced my eyes open, it felt dreamlike.
I stayed awake for a full twenty-four hours and found that if I didn’t sleep at all, my right hand wouldn’t creep down my trousers. But as soon as those twenty-four hours were up, I was out like a light.
Running on only three hours of sleep and awoken by a smack on my thigh, I groggily decided that there was one thing left to do.
Cut my hand off at the wrist.
I bled profusely as I sawed through the skin and bone, the muscles, the tendons that had been controlling me like a puppet, an unorthodox Ratatouille. I chewed a sweater, eyes tearing, pain ripping through my throat as I screamed into the fleece. It was an immeasurable, indescribable, immortal pain.
Sniveling, I stumbled to the porch, heading to my car as blood seeped through my bandage, hoping hard I would make it through the night.
Thanks to a kind neighbor of mine, dear Linda, I was saved. I still haven’t fully processed the horror of nearly dying, but I know I’ll live better than ever before now.
I awoke in a hospital, grateful that upon running on plenty of sleep, my train of thought had returned to its track.
Now that the wound was dressed, I hadn’t woken up with a sloppy surprise, which seemed to be a miracle.
As soon as I laid eyes on the hideous stump, I was stirred awake from the weirdness I had just lived through and executed.
Linda sat beside me. Our dialogue was brief, but significant.
“Oh. You’re awake.” Her gentle, wrinkled face beamed up into a smile.
“What happened?” There were missing splices of film.
“I found you bleeding out on the porch.” She giggled. “But the first thing I noticed was that your fly was down.” The joke lightened the tension and she patted my nub.
She shared breakfast with me and we watched a cooking show. I was grateful for the company.
Once she left, I was able to get some more rest.
Only to awake at my left hand working my shaft.
I was tempted to repeat the prior process, but knew that again, it would only create a plethora of problems in trying to fix one.
And there are worse problems to have.