“You have 100 orgasms left, and then you’re done,” said Ethan's doctor Kozen Simian. He sat beneath an M.C. Escher painting where the stairs all tummbled over each other then dispersed into different directions, and Ethan thought to himself, well, thatÊ»s my world now. His entire existence had been deconstructed and recombined in a single diagnosis.
“A hundred women?” Ethan asked with dismay.
“No. I didn’t say that," said Dr. Kozen. "I said a hundred orgasms. However you spread them out, is up to you,” he said.
“A hundred per would be ideal. From a procreative standpoint,” Ethan stated, making an attempt at humor and grace.
“That’s your prerogative, and it's very ambitious, albeit unrealistic. If I were you, I would spend every last one fostering and strengthening a substantial relationship. It can happen sooner, or it could happen later. But, at some point, you’re going to need it. I'm really sorry to have to tell you this.”
This was bad news. One hundred climaxes before idiopathic fibrosis would make its way down Ethan's corpora cavernosa, making erections and ejaculations impossible. A hundred rounds. “What about nocturnal penile tumescence? Or, nocturnal emissions?” Ethan asked.
“We have medications to stifle those mechanisms. Dulling desire.”
"An anti-viagra," Ethan snarked.
"Not quite, but that would be the ancillary benefit if it," Dr. Kozen said. His hands were clasped on his lap. "There may be side-effects."
“Like what?" Ethan asked.
“Well, an incredible sense of," Dr. Kozen made his left hand into a fist, covered it with his other hand and squeezed. "Density.”
* * *
Ethan Thompson's social life for a man in his thirties, was quite ordinary. He had a few friends with whom he had kept close since college. He exercised regularly, rarely drank and was a non-smoker. He had a close and loving family back in St Louis. He had burned his way through a number of long term relationships, and although they ended for reasons beyond his comprehension, they ended amicably.
On weekends, he conducted mentorship workshops for upstart entrepreneurs, advising them on their business plans, and teaching them methods for assessing demand for their endeavors.
During the week, he hid in his office where he worked as a data analyst at a research company, and spent much of his days at a desk mired in the intricacies of automotive fuel inefficiencies for a small company developing a new kind of conduit for electronic vehicles. He had been analyzing the competition, pitting them against each other scenario after scenario. This was fulfilling to him, although, in the end, these endless spreadsheets would be mulled over by marketing executives as irrelevant peripherals.
That week, after Ethan left Dr. Kozen's office, everything changed. He left horrified, and walked carefully as if every step sent a crystalizing burst of blood into his pelvic region.
When he told his Val, his girlfriend of six months, about his new condition, she shrunk away, withdrawing her hands from his. He watched them retract along the woodgrain surface and disappear under her side of the table.
"Well, then that has got me thinking," she said.
"Really?"
"Yes. Intimacy is an important part of a relationship. And, well. This isn't really working out. And to hear that you only have about a hundred — what would you call it — rounds? Well, I think that maybe we should rethink things."
"I see," said Ethan.
"I know it seems cold, and cruel. And selfish," she reached out again and rested her hand on his wrist. "But we've only been casually dating. And it can't end well for us. Not with this added complication. I feel like such a horrible person. But I really have ben thinking about it. This new circumstance is just forcing me to reveal my hand. And not in a selfish way. You should use the remainder of your… times doing what your doctor told you — fostering a lasting relationship. And I would hate to keep taking something from you that is limited, when you could be with someone else. Someone you know would be worth it. Someone in for the long haul. Please understand, this is really difficult for me. "
After she left, he popped the pill with a beer and did, as promised, feel a creeping sense of density.
That night, he dreamt of a having sex with three women on a catamaran. Two blonds, and a brunette. The brunette held a hammer the entire time, threatening to use it at any given moment.
* * *
"I feel heavy," Ethan told his co-workers over lunch one day. "It's as if I were made of steel and if you were to hammer my hand with your fork, the tines would bend. Now, I know that's not true. I'm describing a feeling." The social embarrassment of full disclosure stopped him there. "Allergy meds," he shrugged. "Side effects," He elaborated.
"Well, I hope you feel better," said one.
"Change your meds," Said the other.
Over time, he withdrew from all circles of life. He averted his eyes when ever anyone drew near, as if mere eye contact would betray his condition, illuminating a cloud of angst around him.
He googled. Visited the forums of charlotans for cures and treatments, looking for methods of staving off the inevitable, and ways of coping.
Within a few weeks he concocted a few ill-conceived homespun remedies, methods and self care techniques meant to repulse him and curtail arousal at any stage. He created and bottles a biological odor that would thrust him into state of disgust whenever necessary. He kept his eyes to the sidewalk and wore dimming glasses to prevent him from seeing the more alluring details of people. He later had them modified to warp the shapes of them as well. He ate poorly. Became sedentary. Went to work in a fog and returned home in a haze. People avoided him, which was all the better.
At work, he had trudged himself knee deep in statistics involving the production grid of a new kind of genetically modified meat substitute while tracking weather systems in the North West. Donut charts abound. Although this provided him with his only illusion of normalcy, in the end this data would be mulled over by executives who were only expecting a line chart that started low on the left and climbed it's way to the top right corner of wall-mounted flat screen monitor.
He began to make mistakes. In light of his recent development, information from two different planes began colliding into each other, and tabulations weren't presented correctly. Ethan's report for Le Beef concluded that rainfall in 2014 hinged on whether or not an ignition lock cylinder was properly coated. His colleagues shared a laugh. Ethan retreated to his office.
Then one day he met a woman. He was having an off day at awfulness, sitting in a courtyard, having lunch alone. She had reached into her purse, and, losing her grip, flung her iPhone out at his feet. He picked it up and handed it to her. She thanked him. Seeing something sad, she made a joke. This made her beautiful. She had ten bracelets on one wrist and none on the other. A tiny birthmark kissed her cheek. Huge chunky jewelry was doing its best to keep her weighed down among the corporeal. She sat down next to him. She said she was a grant writer and had secured a big one for an upstart animal welfare group. She was excited and jittery. Ethan told her he was a statistician. That the odds of them having the same name were infinitesimal. She asked him his name, and he answered Ethan. Her name was Myra. "Bad joke," he shrugged. She laughed nervously, raised an eyebrow, then asked about his glasses. He said they were gag glasses, and slowly took them off. Her molten figure swirled through the lenses as the glasses wept her out whole. Her features solidified. He asked for her number and wrote it down wistfully on his soft taco tortilla.
That very night, he called her.
"Hullo!" Ethan said.
"Hey!" she sounded surprised. "Well, I'm glad that tortilla didn't fall apart," she laughed.
"You knew it was me?"
"Well, I recognized your voice. It's only been a few hours."
She was right. He felt he should have waited a few days — should have remembered that a three day wait period increased receptivity by 20 percent as presented by a recent social model used by the new APEX software. And also, a greeting such as "There she is" was met with more openness on social media sites as opposed to something like "Hullo!" Luckily, he was still within the margins — having called too early made things unpredictable again and leveled the playing field. So he began by making some small talk. "Fifty-three percent of automobile owners under the age of 30 would be making modifications to their cars in the next two years," he said.
Then he asked her out.
"So, how's the weekend shaping up?" he asked. "Any plans? Wanna do something?"
"Oh, I'm sorry. I have family coming in over the weekend. I'll be running around a lot. I really want to though. How about… Ummm."
"Well, how about next Wednesday?" Ethan interjected.
"Ouch. I have a work project due on Thursday morning. I'll be really behind from my family being here. So I feel I may be playing catch up, and working late."
"I understand," he said, taking in a deep breath. "Well… How's about that following Friday?"
"Ooooh my gosh, I'm sorry. I leave on a short trip. Damn it! Please don't get the wrong idea. I'm not just making up excuses."
"Strike three," Ethan said.
"I know. I'm sorry. Look, how about Tuesday evening?"
"I can't. Darn! I'm working that night." He said. There was a new shipment of peas coming in for one of my clients. Peas were used as a protein source and made for a more fibrous texture when pressed into faux chicken patties for La Beef, and the crop figures would be in with them on this year's yield from Oklahoma. A new resource. He'd use this for another prediction model he was working on in conjunction with a co-worker. Two birds with one stone, and all that. He wasn't about to call in sick for that. "I'm free two weeks from now. Thursday?"
"Can't. Visiting my mother."
"When do you get back?"
"That Friday. But there's a fundraiser I'm helping to organize. Saturday?"
"I have a few appointments. Sunday?"
"I promised a friend I would babysit for her. Monday?"
This went on for a while — the two carrying on an act of nonlinear estimation before reverting to the basest of nonparametrics. Then:
"September 21, Saturday night," she said triumphantly. "I have a good feeling about this date."
"Works for me. I'm free that night," Ethan answered, relieved. Excited. Although September 21 was ten months away.
"It's a date," she said. "Can't wait to see you!"
"I can't wait to see you too!"
And he hung up.
That evening, he dreamt of sex with a smart phone, a tongue slipping in and out of the screen.
* * *
At times, Ethan felt like he was collecting data as a lower life form — a crab on the bottom of the ocean, an earthworm in the soil, a snail in the moss, a mollusk on a rock — projecting his human consciousness and contorting it into unfathomable postures and swirling it around in sensory disarray. His mind was an octopus making it's way through a twisty straw. He felt these contortions as a result of the cross fire between his condition and medication. He felt subhuman.
Dr. Kozen was right about the density being unbearable. It was as if Ethan had acquired his own event horizon. As if crossing the street would warp the street around him, cars folding into his body.
This prompted him to halt his medication, if only for a day. He got up and made sure his arms were still there. His legs. He got dressed and went to a bar and began looking at people. He eyed their details, neck lines, archs, curves, wrists. A woman looked at him with concern. She tapped counter in front of him and asked me if he was alright.
"What does the data show?" Ethan asked, densely.
She laughed awkwardly and walked away.
That night, he had nightmares of strange shadows groping at him in an alleyway. He gave into it and fell into a pit of blackness.
* * *
Time drifted. Clouds slid over a mountain. Contrails of tiny planes formed like cuts over the sky. The sun rose and set behind a vertical bar graph.
One morning, Ethan took a shower and felt as if he were about to shed his skin and fall out of it limbless and lidless, coiled up and liquified into a gelatinous mucoid. This had become his morning routine — the shedding of skin, becoming a gelatinous mucoid.
Then one day a potential cure arrived. An emerald pill shaped like a pyramid came sailing at him cradled in a palm.
"Experimental," said Dr. Kozen. "You can appreciate that, can't you? In your line of work? You'd become a part of valuable study." He smiled weakly.
The M.C. Escher knock-off had been replaced by a framed poster of Vladimir Malevich's supremacist painting, Black Circle. It was merely a black circle sitting slightly off center on a white plane. There was something anonymous about it, yet defiant in it's placement. It was either empty, or full. Universal, or remote. The more Ethan stared at it, the more it refused to be categorized. It upset him.
He plucked the pyramid-shaped pill from the doctor's hand and held it between his thumb and his index finger. “Wouldn’t it be easier to swallow if it were an ovoid capsule?”He asked him.
“Well that's the pill. Specific delivery mechanism,” he said.
Ethan popped the pill and within minutes the fog and darkness lifted.
“Wow. What a great feeling, let me tell you,” said Ethan.
“There’s only one side effect,” Dr. Kozen said.
“Oh no,” Ethan said. “What is it?”
“You…" he rubbed his left temple with his thumb, "you, may develop an attraction to the occasional odd thing. An inanimate object, for example. ”
“Like yakelope?” Ethan asked.
"Pardon?" asked Dr. Kozen.
“It's a hybrid between a yak and an antelope.”
"I know that they are, but…"
The word shimmered with eroticism. "Yak—Uh—Lope."
That night, he dreamed he was along in a room full of naked women, each with the head of a yakelop. He took a step forward to touch one of them, and they all laid down at his feet.
* * *
Ethan had achieved a small amount of success in his company. Research had shown that people who needed their medication the most were more likely than others to actually forget to take them. It had been a year-long study, and in its fruition, a new product and service was created. 1) beeping medication vials and 2) automated phone calls and text messages. Another study helped to tailor those messages to sound non-judgmental and caring. He was very pleased.
This lead to his own personal development. After some of his own research, Ethan signed up at invisiblemate.com, an online, crowd-sourced service that sent text messages masquerading as messages from your significant other in order to deceive your doting loved ones who worried too much about your overlong tenure at bachelorhood. You create the shell of your significant other, and those hired to do so, would breath life into it.
Ethan registered and created an account. On the dashboard, he named his invisible mate, Yakelope, and then uploaded his own profile image of a yakelope in a field. He selected "kinky", from a list of personality traits and submitted his request. After a few minutes, Ethan got his first greeting text.
HER: "Hi! It's Yakelope. How's my sexy guy?"
ETHAN: "Good. How's your tail?"
HER:"Oh, it's a little cold."
ETHAN: "Oh is it? How's your coat?"
HER: "I'm not wearing it. And you want to know something else?"
ETHAN: "That's impossible. Stop right there."
HER: "What's up?"
ETHAN: "Look. I know that you are actually a composite of separate freelance writers who get paid for each text but remember I need you to come at me from the perspective of a kinky yakelope. This is a performance I'm requesting. I'm sure as writers you'll appreciate the creative aspect of it."
HER: "Oh my poor hooves. They need massaging."
ETHAN: "Yes. Yes. Go on..."
* * *
At times Ethan felt himself slipping away from himself. He would be standing in a fixed position, and another version of him would take a step forward and walk away. Then another Ethan would step outside of himself and soon there would be ten Ethans all queued up, walking off. He had become like a slow release pill version of himself, dissolving into the ether.
So he stopped taking the pyramid pills and resumed his life. Time passed again. Rain fell on a sidewalk. The moon slid beneath the skyline as if descending down an escalator.
Then september 21 arrived.
Ethan called her.
"There she is."
"Hello?"
"Myra? Mara? How do you say it?" I asked.
"Oh, it's you! Hi!"
"You remember me?"
"Of course."
"Myra? Was it?"
"Myra. Like the wine, shiraz. We talked about this the first time. Ten months ago."
"Ah, very nice. So… Uh… are you still free tonight?
"You know, I've been wondering if you'd call. I mean, would've called sooner. Just because our date was set for today doesn't mean we couldn't have called each other."
"I suppose I was just following what I thought was protocol. Also, things have just been crazy for me."
"Oh don't worry about it. It's been crazy for me as well. I've been working as a part of an animal activist group. We're working to change the way animals here are treated. To spread awareness. It's such a beautiful country, but there's this dark side to it. Bullfighting, for example."
"Where did you say you were?"
"Spain!"
* * *
Ethan would look back at this time as one of the strangest and loneliest periods of his life, although he would never fully conquer that lonelines. He would look back and feel grateful that he had gotten through it, although, in most ways, he had not.
That night, Ethan took a walk along the beach. The moon hung low. The ocean was as smooth as teflon. Tourists strolled along the rocks. Children were still playing near the water, as if they were playing with the ripples of moonlight.
He watched a three-legged dog run by joyfully untethered along the shore before disappearing into shadow. Someone called for him, and the dog loped out of a dark pocket and into the arms of its owner.
This gave Ethan hope.
