She started to cry—a brave little tear, one that nearly drowned my soul.
Huh?
What was that?
A tear that nearly drowned my soul?
That was poetry! Real fucking poetry coming from me, Raymond Gunt! A total raging poet, like in some crap basement club surrounded by starving unfuckables speaking in tongues. Me! A fountain of poetic shit!
Oi!
So …
I made a vow then and there to do anything it took to make Sarah mine.
To the west, out the window, what might possibly have been the airborne remains of Seoul created the most delightful sunset imaginable.
Life is good.
36
Now …
I like to think of myself as a kind person. And what is so wrong with being kind? I go through my days trying to do nothing but dispense sweetness and light. Shine, shine, shine! That Raymond Gunt’s a giving soul! And yet what do I get for my kindness?
There I was, on the bus, off to hook up with the network yacht—easy-peasy—when some troll from catering whisked Sarah away from me to discuss provisioning. Neal came and sat beside me and, as the bus took off, we started discussing the philosophy of love.
“You know, Ray, a real man is not one who can bed ten thousand women but he who can bed one woman ten thousand times.”
“Neal, if you’re going to mouth inane platitudes like that, I request that you move your endildoed arse to some other seat.”
“I just thought it would sound good, like a man on the telly promoting fancy biscuits because … because … because …”
Because just then, the slightly aged but quite amply endowed blonde in front of us removed a shawl to reveal a profoundly unignorable cocoa-coloured skin tag projecting from her shoulder. It was perhaps an inch long, somewhat meaty, with small but distinct little horns on it, shaped like New Zealand’s North Island.
“Ray, are you seeing what I’m seeing?”
“Yes, Neal. Yes, I am.”
“It’s like a nipple gone horribly, horribly wrong.”
“Christ, Neal, the last thing I need in my life right now is to have nipples de-eroticized. And yet I can’t stop looking.”
“But, Ray, its colour, its texture …”
Neal was correct: the skin tag indeed resembled a teat of sorts, not entirely Caucasian—perhaps Vietnamese or octoroon? A tiny chocolate filament sprouted from Auckland and glinted in the end-of-day magic light.
“Ray, it’s like a biological toggle switch.”
“Neal, could you stop making your inner dialogue an outer dialogue?”
“Why don’t you flip the toggle switch, Ray?”
“What?”
“Go on, Ray, give it a tickle.”
“Neal, are you fucking mad?”
“I’ll bet you it’s one of her erotic fantasies, having a stud muffin like yourself flip her switch a few times in the glow of a Polynesian sunset. I’m a good judge of these things, Ray. I swear, you’d be helping her fulfill her deepest needs.”
“Neal, there is no conceivable way that tiny squib is in any way erotic.” Staring at the skin tag was rather like being caught in a Spam spiral, except instead of ruining my appetite it was ruining my sex drive. And frankly, it was also deeply creeping me out. It was as if the skin tag had achieved sentience and was staring back at me, plotting my demise.
“Ray, tell you what: if you flip the toggle, I’ll give you my piece of red plastic.”
“Why don’t you just do it yourself, Neal?”
“Because I think you’re the one who needs some sexual healing, Ray, after your epic fuckfest with LACEY. Touching the skin tag will stabilize you.”
The skin tag continued to stare at me, cunningly, coldly—trawling through my mind for points of weakness with which to attack me.
Neal continued. “Between you and this sadly disfigured lady in front of us, it’s a yawning vortex of sexual neediness.”
“Okay. You have a point. But promise me this isn’t some sick voyeuristic thing you get off on?”
“I promise.”
“No tricks, either—I flip the switch a few times, and that plastic is mine, no catches or further conditions. And I’m still wearing the Cure T-shirt, so you really do want to stay in my good books.”
“On my word.”
An acrochordon, also known as a skin tag or fibroepithelial polyp, is a small benign tumour that develops primarily in areas where the skin forms creases, such as the neck, armpit and groin. Acrochorda are harmless and typically painless, and do not grow or change over time. Tags are typically the size of a grain of rice.
The surface of an acrochordon may be smooth or irregular and is often raised from the surface of the skin on a fleshy stalk called a peduncle.