He did not find it comical nor “tongue-in-cheek” to list as an essential medical reason for gaining entry to the U.S. that he “hadn’t been laid in years because my girlfriend is over there and I’m over here.” He took it quite seriously indeed. And that’s why he made no qualms about writing it in as an “extraordinary circumstance.” An absolutely urgent and essential need for being allowed entry into the U.S., which, at this point had kept its borders closed for the past three years. All in the government’s continued attempt to “maintain public health safety” despite the fact that their particular public had been the unhealthiest of all when the arrival of the virus first landed. It couldn’t have come at a more ill-timed moment for Giancarlo, who had just bid his girlfriend, Simone, adieu at the airport when news of border closures over the next week started flooding the screens. She would make it up in the air just in time, or maybe the phrasing was “too late.” For he would have shot down the plane with a hastily procured bazooka if he had known what was to follow. If he had known these border closures would not be temporary. 

Like any Italian man, Giancarlo was someone with a strong sexual appetite. Hot blood was coursing through his veins at all hours of the day, made hotter whenever he saw a woman on the street that caught his eye. But the girl who had kept his eye was Simone, an American studying abroad in Rome. He fell for her hard, fast and irrevocably that day near Piazza Navona. Never knowing that such a great obstacle would emerge to make their relationship a distressing difficulty rather than the euphoric union it had once been. When they first met. Before she announced she had to go back to the U.S. At least for a while to “put her affairs in order.” The semester was over and she had to finish out her school tenure back in San Francisco. Giancarlo resisted every inclination to ask if she might marry him so that he could join her there. But he didn’t want to 1) scare the shit out of her with his intensity and 2) make her suspicious that he was one of those “foreigners” who wanted to finagle U.S. citizenship. He couldn’t have given less of a shit about America or being part of it, but now that the person he loved was, he wanted to be as well. 

Watching her leave that day, only to get news of the tight, “temporary” restrictions being put in place to protect the “precious” red, white and blue, Giancarlo felt as though an invisible machete was tearing him down the center. He feared for what it would mean, yet he never could have imagined the extent of how bad the limitations of traveling between countries would grow. Perhaps only Penelope could understand the pain Giancarlo had endured these past three years—for Odysseus certainly felt no pain at all whilst away, getting his dick wet at every open opportunity. Giancarlo, in fact, wished that he could be that way as well. Just proceed to plunge into the nearest woman and relieve himself of this agony, but he knew he couldn’t. Not without feeling the lifelong sense of guilt that would come with it. Of wondering if she might not have broken up with him if only he had remained loyal. Because Simone surely would cut bait with him if he engaged in any form of infidelity at all. Her power over him was also such that he wouldn’t be able to keep the secret from her. Especially if he did it multiple times. Forget about it. He would sing like a canary regarding his indiscretion. 

It was quite unfair, as Simone was not as sexually awakened. Didn’t feel the need, the urge or the craving the way Giancarlo could. Bursting through his loins every single second of every day. Simone had been mercurial and evasive whenever Giancarlo wanted to have sex, but she always obliged him. As though it was her “duty.” One would have thought this would make Giancarlo recoil from her, instead seeking a more overtly willing orifice, but in contrast, it seemed to compel him to want to please her all the more. To spend his entire life trying to showcase the majesty of sex to her. But with all this lost time, he had also lost momentum. And he needed to get it back—immediatamente. If he didn’t, he was genuinely afraid for what might happen to his body. Terrified it might quite literally explode at the seams after going blue (you know, because blue balls). Sure, he masturbated. Too much, probably. But it couldn’t offer the same release. Nothing could compare to the feel of being inside—a certain interior was far better than the external means he had resorted to so as to relieve himself of all this pent-up sexual energy. 

So when the U.S. announced it would be gradually opening to those with a valid medical reason to enter, Giancarlo jumped at the chance, so keen to get in that he didn’t realize the form he sent back would become the laughing stock of the government as the paper made the rounds. A lot of men did sympathize with his plight though—they simply didn’t fucking understand why Giancarlo couldn’t cheat like a normal person. Others speculated Simone was a whore playing cat and mouse with him—that there was no way she wasn’t having sex with any and every man she could wrap her legs around. Giancarlo was just a telephonic diversion to her, they conjectured. And, in truth, their collective desire to know what would happen between the two if they actually did let Giancarlo in for his “medical emergency” was enough to galvanize them to approve the rather ridiculous reason he cited for needing to enter.

He didn’t tell her about his good news. Wanted it to be the titillation of her lifetime when he showed up at her doorstep in the Mission. As it would turn out, however, Giancarlo would be the only one getting a shock.

Simone had been working on a plan, it seemed. And when Giancarlo arrived, pleased to find the door unlocked to heighten his element of surprise, she was in the throes of the final process: detaching her vagina from her body so that she could send it over to him. Well, have it fly over to meet halfway. That was the plan. When she (in her disrobed state) turned to see him, she did not act surprised at all. Nor did she seem to have any regrets about her needless genital mutilation, now that Giancarlo was there in the flesh to “consummate.” Instead, she instructed him calmly, “Cut your dick off now.” 

He could feel a visible pang in his groin at that thought. “No! I could never.” 

Before he knew it, she was lunging at him, ripping his pants off and going straight for the phallus that she would give wings. Their parts could now copulate anytime Giancarlo wanted—for this entire experiment was for his sake, not hers. In this sense, one could tell that she really did love him in return, wanting so badly to please him in this avant-garde manner. Knowing how much sex meant to him. After the initial pain of the slice, Giancarlo could still feel it as though it were there: his phantom limb. But no, it was laying out on the kitchen table next to Simone’s vag as she proceeded to work some more “magic” on the parts by sewing a pair of wings to each one. Giancarlo never really knew until this moment just how much Simone meant it when she told him she wanted to become a “mad scientist” when college was over.  

Giancarlo felt like he should cry, express some form of emotion over all that he had endured to come here so he could cum in the conventional, proper sense—only to be castrated. Maimed. She could have just married him and this all would have been fine. No need for red tape or lop-offs of any kind. But Simone didn’t want to get married, she said. Claimed it was the quickest way to ruin a relationship. Giancarlo countered that, no, the quickest way was to cut your boyfriend’s penis off. She shrugged and tossed their “equipment” into the air to test their flight skills. “Beautiful!” she exclaimed.

He didn’t fight the need to fuck Simone’s disembodied vag. He had journeyed this far, so why not journey right off the deep end?