For a sex worker, she was cheap; but for a prostitute she was harder on the wallet. Ducksie preferred prostitute. An honest label for an honest trade.

When he woke up in the morning he tried his best not to piss. He could usually make it until about 10am, when carrying his bladder felt like carrying a baby calf inside a cellophane bag.

“If you need to piss, do it now! I’ve got a ten-thirty, remember?”

“Yeah I remember!”

“The sound of your piss doesn’t do it for this one!”

He walked slowly up the stairs. He knew she wouldn’t let him in before he was done, and he knew he’d wait as long as it takes.

When he got there, he locked the door and got ready for his ordeal. If anything, this was worse than what came after.

The worst part was unzipping his trousers, because unzipping his trousers meant he had to position his hand in the general vicinity of where his penis used to be. And even though he took great pains not to press any part of his hand into his groin, he still felt like he felt it: that feeling of nothing.

That feeling of nothing was sparser and more expansive than ever. He didn’t know if it was because of the ten-thirty or because of the date: 4th of May 1996. But that date meant more to him than any paying customer fucking his wife, even though the date and the fucking were inextricably linked.

He kept the bike, that’s the thing. If it was his leg and not his dick, he would have had to get rid. But you can still ride a Harley without a dick. And even if you don’t feel like a man, you can still look like one.

He sat down on the john and spread his legs out. Some habits are hard to let go of. The aim was slightly off, but that felt almost normal by now.

The piss was endless. Whenever it started slowing down and fading away, it eventually started again. It reminded him of the other thing.

He heard her throwing her weight around downstairs; a sure sign she was pissed at him. “A man has to piss!” he said to himself, pulling his trousers up quickly. He pulled the chain before he fastened his belt. They had both designed this routine telepathically. Once he flushed she was free to open the door. The second flush was so he wouldn’t hear who it was. And the third flush was so he wouldn’t guess who it was.

He didn’t need to guess this time. He made the mistake of washing his hands. If he had more time he’d rip that sink up and put it somewhere else. Somewhere without a window.

It was hard to make out through the frosted glass, but that didn’t make it impossible. Nothing is impossible when you’ve lost your penis. And your best friend’s hog parked up on the road is anything but impossible.

He used to paint intricate scenes of Norse Gods and mythical dragons on his riding gear. At one time he was the resident artist. They all came round to his with requests. If he remembered rightly, he asked for Ragnarok on his back. Every time he rode pillion with him after that, Ducksie studied the intricacies of his own brushwork on the back of his leather jacket, twisting and turning around Odin as he burned in a mausoleum of his forefathers, and Loki standing up in the middle of the new ocean, letting the force of the waves crack his skull open. He was never certain about the details, but that never seemed to be a problem.

He wasn’t sure if he knew he knew, and to be honest he didn’t know if that turned an unfortunate reality into a betrayal. After all, he was in on it too. It’s not like Lady did it without him.

She did the fucking and he did the sitting. It had been like that since the dawn of time, even before the 4th of May 1991. That morning when his Fat Boy collided with that yellow 18-wheeler and almost killed him. He was in a coma for weeks. And when he woke up the doctor told him he lost his junk in the accident. That it was impossible to know exactly how. But it probably got jammed between something on his hog. Probably something up front. When they cut him out of the wreck, the fork was on the other side of the road, along with his body.

By the time the third flush was fading out the footsteps were fading out on top of the stairs and Ducksie got the white shower chair out, unfolded it and placed it inside the cubicle. Then he got in, closed the gap by straightening the glass panels out and sat on the chair. He took his glasses out from his denim jacket top pocket and put them on. He always did okay with reading, when he felt like reading. It was Faulkner: As I Lay Dying. He turned to page twenty-two. This one came on slow.

The death had already come. He enjoyed the movements of the dead more than the living. They reminded him of his own.

After the third flush there’s no going back. He made the mistake of the fourth once, and Lady came out of their bedroom and smashed the bathroom door open, her tights ripped down one leg and her bra wrapped around her waist.

“What the fuck are you doing? Flushing the toilet again?!?”

Ducksie stood up and opened the shower cubicle doors.

“You know he can’t perform if he knows you’re in here!”

He paid her the difference in the end. He sold his Pink Floyd records and gave her half. He used the other half to buy a new secondhand leather jacket. He painted The Dark Side of the Moon all over the back.

Now he just listened. He found that listening took away some of the hatred he felt each time he heard her do it.

It wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t his idea.

His best friend liked kissing her. She sounded like she did too, although she said she didn’t. But she moaned when he did it. And he saw him there in their bedroom, kissing her neck as she drifted back, feeling something men can never feel.

They were broke after the accident, that’s the thing. Not that he did much working beforehand. But he lost his criminal mojo. He found it hard to belong to something without his manhood, even crime.

Page twenty-three. The southern drawl of Mississippi was all over the page. It spilled like soup onto his fingers.

The kissing was secondary now. He could hear it in her sound. Pleasure sounds hideous after you give yours away.

He told her they needed the money. But of course, that was just an excuse. Money is always an excuse. You can blame money for everything. The armed robbery he did in ‘89. The damp on their walls. Their hope for something more.

He’s undressing her now. He still undresses her sometimes. It just can’t go all the way. He undresses her slowly, like a small child unwrapping their one-and-only Christmas present. When the Scotch tape is wrapped so tight you need scissors to get inside, but you’re too young to use scissors to get inside.

And he relishes in this act of unsatisfied pleasure. The pleasure of not having. And he believes that she does too, at least in spite of everything. She lays there flat on the bed and lets him do the rest. She closes her eyes and sometimes she is silent and sometimes she makes tiny little noises, like a bicycle chain that needs lubricating. And this is all he has: tiny little noises. No lift. No rise. No fall. That is why he said it.

“You know. You don’t have to suffer because of me.”

‘What do you mean?’

“You don’t have to give up on being a woman.”

“Give up on being a woman?”

But she knew what he meant. He knew she knew what he meant. She just didn’t want to be the one to say it. He could say it, and she could do it instead.

It moved from heavy kissing to heavy fucking in the turn of a page. He knew he liked it quick and rough, and usually from behind. Lady wasn’t an animal. She wasn’t a hog. She was a woman with a body that always needed something. All the fucking didn’t get her there. He knew it didn’t. But it got her on the way, which gave her hope of finding it in the end.

At least, that was the narrative.

A story can help you lose everything.

He stood up and folded the glass panels open and stepped out of the shower. He knew it was over. Lady deserved better. He stepped up to the window and cracked it open. It gave him a gap just big enough to see a thin hairline crack of the sharpened street, running right through the cloudy cushioned world of frosty glass. And he saw Odin burning since 1987, and Loki waiting for Ragnarok.