He couldn’t remember the last time he had sustained an erection for longer than forty-five seconds. And honestly, not much of anything can be achieved within that time frame, save for some gruntingly ephemeral self-satisfaction. He couldn’t say what, precisely, had brought it on. At what exact age there occurred a certain shift in his, let’s say, sexual prowess. Maybe it was with the pendulum’s shift toward the kind of middle-age known as “after thirty-five” that had brought on this cruel phenomenon. The one that was leaving him less and less in Angela’s favor. Angela, several years younger and increasingly wondering what it was she was doing with someone who had transcended into an old man as if overnight, complete with gray hair and protruding gut.

Even his mentality seemed to shift to that of a codger’s. He didn’t want to go out unless he already happened to be returning from work, yet staying in certainly didn’t prove to be that scintillating for Angela, who had long ago stopped bothering to try getting her own rocks off while letting him on top of her to perform what amounted to his occasional stress release. He worked hard (in contrast to his penis), after all, and there were so few non self-destructive releases in this life. Granted, he wasn’t opposed to engaging in those–often stopping for a post-workday glass of undiluted pastis, followed by a “casual” meandering into the alley nearby to inject some heroin. Mind you, the half-impotence problem was happening long before he started turning to some light smack for a bit of recreational medicine. It wasn’t as if this was going to make his flaccidity much worse. Just a bit of junk to remedy thoughts about his own. 

Yet every time he returned home to Angela sitting up in bed flipping through a book with some passive aggressive title, like Immodest Acts, he felt a pang of guilt attack him. As though he should be doing everything in his power to at least try to remain somewhat virile. How was that going to happen with his newfound dependencies? So after exchanging their usual strained small talk followed by equally strained silence, he decided he was going to do something about it. Being constantly strapped for cash, however (again, heroin), he had to take a more low-budget approach to finding some of those magic blue pills that might make his wang work again. 

About ten pages deep into Google’s search engine, he found a website called dickiepillz.com. Naturally, the HTML was at best on par with Angelfire, and written entirely in some Asian script that Reynold didn’t feel like bothering to translate. The bottom line was the price and number of pills. $19.95 for a pack of twenty. What could possibly beat that? He looked down at his groin, realizing he’d just made some sort of pun. With that, he made the necessary clicks to purchase, reckoning he might also be risking his credit card getting hacked on a site as dubious as this. But fuck it, he was drunk enough on the courage lent to him by pastis and loose enough on the lack of care lent to him by heroin. It was all going to be fine. Better than fine. Soon, his dick would be operational again. 

***

Weeks passed, of course, and there was no sign of them. Another sadistic joke being played on him by the gods… in cahoots with the post office. In the meantime, several failed attempts to pleasure Angela in any way made him even warier of waiting for much longer. He needed some sort of penile aid, and quickly. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be surprised if he walked in on Angela one evening blithely getting railed by some much younger chap she had picked up on the way home. He wouldn’t be able to really blame her for such an egregious cuckolding. What had he done for her lately?, as Janet would demand. When they first met, it was all different, to be sure. They were the cliche of all “honeymoon period” couples, barely able to keep their hands off of one another, to wait long enough to get out of public in order to “consummate,” as some sixteenth century types might call it. In fact, it was in the sixteenth century that a woman could take her husband to court if he was impotent. The only way divorce was deemed legal in the eyes of the French and British. Perhaps Angela had been born in the wrong epoch. Or maybe she simply shouldn’t have married him. How could she resist though? He was so charming in those days, so eager and willing to woo. 

Just look at him now, crouched over in an alley with a telltale needle tossed aside nearby. How was he going to keep his “instrument” up long enough as he had planned to? For every night, it was the same determined avowal: I’m going to stay hard for enough time to give her an orgasm. Or at least a flutter of one. And every night, it was the same failure. The same sad, pathetic mounting that resulted in neither one’s pleasure. Yet still, they both went through with it, as though hoping each time that, somehow, the result would be different. The very definition of insanity, it is said. 

Persisting in giving up all hope that his cheap dick pills (likely to cause a heart attack anyway) would ever arrive, he retreated further into the underworld after work. Paying prostitutes to suck him off so he could venomously cum on them afterward, imagining with every splooge that it was Angela. That he was finally paying her back for that supercut of eye-rolling and dissatisfied looks. It was now the only way he could seem to get off at all anymore. The only problem was, every ejaculation felt like a betrayal, adding to the self-flagellating pain that sex had become for him. In fact, he had rather come to despise the entire act. Thinking about how absurd the concept was as he shot up (after shooting his wad on yet another whore) for what would be his life’s coda, he can see Angela now, somehow. As though he’s telepathically connected to her. At this very moment, as he lay dying, she’s getting the mail. Containing within it the dick pills he has been waiting for these past several months.