Sophie's Trophies

By DC

It’s not such a bad room, really. Better than I expected. No old-mushroom smells or damp, peeling wallpaper. It’s such a problem, damp, in these old terraced houses. Especially down here in the basement where, locked in an awkward embrace with her big old kitchen table, I lay waiting for Sophie. It’s a good, solid, butcher’s block of a table and the straps binding us together are reassuringly tight. My legs are bound to its legs, my arms to its sides. I am naked, calm, almost serene.

And the room is clean. Not sterile, perhaps. But clean. Warm, too. Thoughtful of her, that. Same with the whisky and valium an hour ago. Unasked for, yet given freely.

"Don’ wan’ no las’ minute nerves, Mr Brown!"

Even in a crowd, you’d pick out Sophie as a nurse. A big, brown, warm-hearted woman in her late thirties, almost as wide as she is tall. Kind, sad eyes with brown pupils and yellow whites. Flat feet, heavy shoes, thick muscular calves and an arse as wide as a barn door. Breasts like soft brown pillows. Threads of grey in her wire-wool hair. Hints of Jamaica in her accent. Lashings of it in her manner.

In a few minutes, warm-hearted, sad-eyed Sophie will open my scrotum with a scalpel. Her fat brown fingers will probe for my cords, extract my testicles. Laser sharp, diamond-bright steel will skin and trim, slice and cut. Whisky-sharp and valium-bright steel, more like. I can feel them working together, making me weightless, as if I’m expanding slowly with helium. Good job I’m tied down. Castration! The word has long filled me with delicious dread. Now it makes me shudder in helpless anticipation.

"Jus’ a pre-caution, Mr Brown. Don’ wanya lashin’ out wid ya hands. Don’ wanya losin’ dis li’l ting as well!"

With that, Sophie had picked up my soft white penis, tucked it under the wide bandage wrapped around my hips and unleashed a huge Caribbean laugh. It hadn’t been a malicious laugh. Nerves, perhaps. Or was it simply that she couldn’t believe her luck? Couldn’t believe that I had just given her a thousand pounds in twenties to cure me of my castration fantasy. Not counting the two hundred for my ‘consultation’ last week - a brief chat on this same table while Sophie had ‘examined’ my balls, pinching each in turn between her finger and thumb, so hard thatl I’d cried out in pain and had to stop her. Then she had showed me her pictures.

Four sets, all of men being unmanned. Just a fraction of the total, she’d claimed. Gays usually. But straights sometimes. One of them had even brought his wife along to administer the final snips. Look at the smile on her face, Sophie had commanded. It was the sly, knowing smile of a woman who knew exactly what she was doing. Lovely couple, though. Gary and Julie. They’d come all the way from Carlisle in that bad snow in January. Hardly believe it, could you?

Yes I could believe it. The couple from Carlisle looked normal enough. Both in their late forties, both a bit overweight. Julie had obviously had her hair done for the occasion. Yes, I could believe they’d driven 250 miles through the snow. I would have crawled the same distance over broken glass to get here. Perhaps it was her client’s desperation and gratitude that Sophie found amusing. Who wouldn’t laugh at the thought of being paid a month’s salary in cash for a twenty minute medical procedure?

And they - we - didn’t just pay Sophie to relieve us of our testicles, we thanked her. We even smiled for her camera, like this couple. Of course Sophie found it funny. Any woman would. Julie was grinning from ear to ear. What woman wouldn’t find it amusing? Being driven 250 miles through the snow to cut her husband’s balls off was practically surreal.

But mellow with whisky and valium I hadn’t minded Sophie’s laughter. In fact, I had responded to her touch and the bandage around my waist had suddenly tightened. But the sight of my thin white penis twitching feebly in its death-throes had only made her laugh more. Finally, shoulders heaving, Sophie had spluttered an excuse and rushed upstairs.

The other girls had laughed too, when I’d asked them.

"But it says on the card that you’re a nurse!"

Abuse had always followed. Violence, once. Finally, in a small side-street in Streatham, I had found an older woman who hadn’t laughed or sworn or told me I was mad. She hadn’t even asked me why. Instead, she’d gently told me what I already knew.

"You need a real nurse for that. Real nurses don’t advertise in phone booths."

Her compassion had seemed genuine enough. But it hadn’t stopped her charging me a hundred pounds for Sophie’s number.

I smile a dreamy, tranquilized smile as I think of. Sophie upstairs, making her preparations, getting herself under control. I don’t mind. I’ve been waiting years for someone like Sophie. Another few minutes isn’t going to make any difference. And I’d rather her hands were steady when she does the deed.

I lift my head and check down below. My shaven groin is painted in violet antiseptic. My penis looks soft and small in its belt of bandage; a frightened little mouse hoping it won’t be noticed. Sensing its fate, my scrotum has shrivelled into a tight, tiny walnut.

Such an ugly word, scrotum. Such an ugly thing. Mine has always had mind of its own, tightening and slackening without warning, as if controlled by hidden strings working independently of my will. Soon the strings will be cut. Soon it will be slack and empty.

I crane my neck to my left and check the tray under the light. Two small clear bottles, can’t read the labels without my glasses, but anaesthetic hopefully. A wad of cotton wool. A small camera in a clear plastic bag. Must remember to smile. A kidney-shaped stainless steel dish, empty. Disposable syringes and needles, all in separate wrappers. Two sets of surgical scissors and clamps; large sealed packets, small sealed packets. Which one holds the scalpel? I can’t be sure from this angle, the light is too bright and my neck is aching. Well, Sophie certainly seems well organised. Plenty of back-up. Two of everything. Except the dish.

I know what that’s for. A moment’s panic, before the valium regains control. What did I expect? Sophie’s a nurse and nurses have to be practical. She can hardly cut off my testicles and put them in her pocket. I can feel the fear receding, my goose-bumps subsiding. Just a blip. Got to expect a few blips. Thank God for whisky and valium.

There’s one small doubt that won’t go away. Why does Sophie insist on keeping them? What will she do with them? Throw them away? Feed them to her dog? Keep them in a jar and pass them around in the pub?

"Hey girls, look what I got!"

Just what any hen-night needs to spark off the shrieking and cackling.

"Sophie’s done another one! Let’s have a look! Come on, hand them round!

I quail inwardly as images of their hungry, gloating eyes flood my thoughts. Sophie’s trophies! I should have asked why she wants to keep them, what’s going to happen to them. I should have asked before I let her fill me with whisky and valium. Before I let her strap me to this butcher’s block of a table. But if it was trophies Sophie was after, why had she refused to cut off my scrotum?

" No, that’s sta-yin’, Mr Brown. Too com-plic-ated, takin’ that. Too much swellin’."

"No, call me Martin, please. But I want you to take it. It’s ugly."

And suddenly, the brown and yellow eyes had flattened and cooled and the full lips had pouted. Sophie’s face had set into that long-suffering mask of truculence that black women do so well. Attitude. Show me some respec’, man.

"La-ter, maybe. I’ll see. It’ll shrink to nothin’ any-way."

" How much later?"

A long pause, a deep professional sigh reserved for difficult patients.

"Six mon’s maybe."

" That a promise?"

"I’ll see. Don’ wo-rry, Mr Brown. Re-lax. Finish ya whi-sky."

* * *

Sophie will come. When she’s good and ready, she’ll come down the stairs, look at me with her sad brown eyes and calmly and efficiently unman me. I can wait. At least, it’s quiet here, below street level. Not much traffic. I can hear the convector heater in the corner ticking as it cools down.

Somewhere upstairs, water is still running. Washing her hands, that’s what she’ll be doing. Scrubbing up, surgeons call it. Seven minutes, I think I heard somewhere. Sophie knows what she’s doing. Over the years she’s done plenty. She only got the camera last Christmas. Done four since then. In this very room. And that’s only the unofficial ones.

And of course, she’s assisted at dozens of castrations in hospital. Cancer victims usually. ‘Bi-lats’, she calls them. Short for bi-lateral orchiectomy. Strange name for having your balls cut off. But then, so is an operating ‘theatre’ for a place where people are cut open. A theatre? The word must date back to the times when operations took place in full view of medical students; languid young men making notes, fainting, farting and joking.

How mortifying it would be to be unmanned by a man! To be watched by men who would wince and smirk and wink at each other when the moment came.

Wait! The sound of running water has stopped. There are noises in the room above me, muffled, but unmistakably those of Sophie. I hear a door opening, feel the warm air in the basement stir. Now I hear the rustle of stiff, unfamiliar clothing; the squeaks and creaks of ancient stairs; the sound of flat heavy feet in flat heavy shoes padding towards me. I mustn’t look, mustn’t get aroused, mustn’t start Sophie laughing again. I study the ceiling, willing my flaccid penis to go down. I know she’s close, I can sense her bow-wave, smell the clean sharp tang of antiseptic soap.

Now at last Sophie’s hands have come into view, tightly clad in straining latex. She’s leaning over me, studying my face over half-moon reading glasses with her kind, sad eyes. But I can tell from the creases around them that underneath her surgical mask she is smiling. Oh, she’s changed into a green surgical apron and her nurse’s uniform. A nice touch that. Very thoughtful of her.

"Well now Mr Brown. You ready?"

My penis shrivels, becomes a tiny waterspout. My scrotum tightens and frantically seeks safety in my body. My bowels fill with ice-cold trembling jelly.

"S’okay, honey. Jus’ nod ya head."

I try to swallow but my mouth seems full of dry sand. Then slowly but firmly I nod my head and surrender to distant star-bursts of sweet pain as Sophie collects her trophies.

* * *

Copyright © DC 2002