“GOOD GOD JUDITH, what kinda filth are you foppin’ off on me???”Blushing in embarrassment, Judith lightly craned her chin towards Leverle, pinching his elbow near the arm of the chair as though the subtlety of the move would somehow override the bellowing of her counterpart.
“It’s the only other book I have,” she whispered, “And I only brought two because I was fixin’ to finish that one. So you just consider yourself lucky to have it and pipe down, or you can read what they’ve got here.”
Leverle Federton, Lev to kith and kin, surveyed the transparent coffee table like a hardened general whose men had been found wanting for courage. In the company of the Boston Medical Group’s brochure on male impotence and US Weekly, the scandalous exploits of the “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” spokesman were, sadly, a welcome respite. The phrase, “ Any port in the storm,” springs to mind. Reluctantly, Lev slumped back into his chair-shaped plastic Bastille and sulked.
After another five minutes of libidinous literature, Lev was near combustion. His surroundings certainly didn’t add to the atmosphere of the story, either. The irony of reading a romance novel in a urologist’s office was certainly not lost on him. Soon he was unable to quell the insurgent thoughts that had been amassing behind his clenched teeth.
“You know, I wouldn’t need a damn book if they didn’t sit my ass out in a waiting room for all eternity…”
“Honey, please…”
“And you know why they make you wait out here, don’t ya? They want to heighten yer anxiety, that’s why! Raise yer heart rate, peak yer blood pressure and tighten yer bowels in one fell swoop so….”
“Lev,”
“… they can fop off whatever silly sugar pills they’ve concocted in some back room to extort the wages of a working man…”
“Lev, dear….”
“…Charge ya ninety gawdamn dollars for their crazy pree-scriptions, like they’re selling snake oil that could reanimate Kennedy, God rest his soul, if they’d only kept the sumbitch on ice…”
“Leverle Monroe Federton, you just hush up THIS INSTANT!”
The room had frozen around them. At least 8 pairs of eyes had fixed on Lev, awaiting the impending nuclear meltdown. However, our hero was cowed. The woman hadn’t employed his full name since he’d toppled two dozen suppository boxes in the Walgreen’s while reeling at the phrase Ribbed for Her Pleasure a month ago. Judith was markedly displeased. Perhaps, Lev mused, discretion was the better form of valor. He ceased his squawking, and the nomadic eyes had returned to their respective reading materials.
In the mean-time, Judith’s index finger had apprehended a refugee from her Aqua-Net blasted hair-hive and nestled it back into place along with her composure. Be damned if the woman couldn’t conceal an Abrams tank if she thought someone would find it offensive Lev chuckled to himself. Judith’s frustration had frightened away his trepidation temporarily, but with equilibrium on the rise unquiet seeped back into his subconscious. Fear, it seems, is akin to adolescent hormones: it can only be distracted, never subdued.
“Well…” Lev stuttered in a tone that longed to salvage some dignity in the face of his surrender, “I’m just saying…” He continued, his mutterings trailing off under his breath as he lowered his gaze to the tawdry tale in his lap.
Lev is, notably, Alabama’s answer to the Six-Million Dollar Man. He has been the recipient of a full hip replacement, a balloon angioplasty for a collapsed aorta (he’d also considered a pig-valve transplant as an ironic allusion to the attribution of his ailments to his fondness for bacon…) and, to date, 24 and one quarter dental implants to spare him the shame of removable molars. Needless to say, he needs no coaxing into the doctor’s office for the treatment of any minor infraction of Henry Gray’s code of biological conduct. However, this trip was an entirely different animal to tranquilize. The urologist was the undiscovered country. It also bears stating that many of man’s more profound anxieties center on the prospect of the malfunction of his nether regions. In point of fact, Freud’s constructed volumes on the matter… As such Lev was, quite literally, adrift in a vast sea of anxiety.
Firstly, there was the pain; and it was considerable. At this point he felt as though someone were attempting to repeatedly pass a pipe cleaner through his urethra. This was further exacerbated by a persistent testicular throbbing and rather acute lower back pain. All were symptoms of a prostate infection, prostatitis according to the available online dysfunction databases (a point discovered by Judith, whom the cough suppressant ads would have referred to as doctor mom).
Second, there was the locale. Surrounding Lev was a cavalcade of medical oddities: one muttering German who purported to the desk nurse that he completes nightly urination in roughly seven separate attempts, a red-haired Scotsman whose ability to stay erect had collapsed with the soviet block, a wild-eyed teen who believes his phallic swelling to be the result of a less-than gentile inspection by space aliens, a disheveled vet who could feasibly be the only seventy-two year-old concerned with herpes this side of the San Andreas fault, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree. The office itself was filled with a heady aroma derived from lubricants, bleach and cotton swabs. For Lev, this was strangely reminiscent of a gypsy bandwagon he’d encountered during the greater Tuscaloosa entertainment crisis of 1929. There was an assortment of jars in the gypsy rattletrap containing reclaimed fetuses, and the shock to his naive mind made a lasting impression.
Ultimately, however, it was Lev’s absolute aversion to the methods of diagnosing his malady that was the main cause of his persistent trepidation. Lev was not a fan of anal penetration… He’d been administered to by his mother during instances of childhood illness with what was, at the time, a modern medical standby: the rectal thermometer. As the concept of lubricating the device had never occurred to Lev’s sainted mother, the incursions were always very uncomfortable. At one point, he’d become so tense during a diagnostic that he’d managed to break the cylinder of the thermometer, causing a roiling amalgam of blood and mercury to ascend into his colon. This, coupled with the tissue damage (resulting in turbulent bouts with evacuation and subsequent cleanup), the removal of broken glass and the mythical quest to recover the wayward mercurial material from his bowels left him irrevocably averse to future anal exploration.
His anxieties mounting to a fever pitch, Lev had begun to entertain the thought of self-sterilization with his trusty Zippo when he heard his name resound above the riotous din of apprehension.
“Mista Levy Earl Federton???”Mispronunciation aside, his name came as the sound of shattering glass immerging through the murky fog of a dream. He looked up from the dime-store trash novel to see a bulbous nurse that bore a striking resemblance to a pear perched atop two drinking straws standing at the office door bemusedly gazing at him. Lev’s entire being was petrified, minus the area that he came here to fix, and thus he sat frozen in his chair for several seconds before a gentle pat from Judith prompted him out of it. Stepping towards the door, Lev was suddenly burdened with the notion that if he hadn’t had trouble urinating before coming into this office, he would certainly have difficulties after leaving it.
1 comment:
Oooo that was some good stuff-Funny. Characterization is right on dude. I very much dig it!
-Gotham
...also not a fan (usually) of anal penetration
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