THE SEEDPOD TAPESTRY

The artist, a thin, wiry, fortyish man in paint-spattered grey tee shirt and jeans, with a neatly trimmed, slightly greying beard and startling light blue eyes, dropped to one knee in front of the younger man, holding a odd, gun-like implement in his right hand connected by a thick cord to a bulky black box on an adjacent wooden table. A green ready light glowed among the controls on the box. Soft rock throbbed low in the background.

Trying not to look at the laser cutter, a high-tech implement whose function Norton had demonstrated by slicing through a piece of thick hemp rope as if were nothing, Michael stared straight ahead at a vivid abstract painting hanging unframed on the wall across the studio. But all his attention was focused on his closely shaved genitals. His nearly nine-inch cock stood out rigid, foreskin pulled back all the way from the dark pink flaring acorn.

Following Norton's instructions, he had twisted and pulled his heavy testicles down and back until they hung moderately loose between his legs despite his hard-on, and had to freeze several times during this exercise to keep from ejaculating. A slight current of air from somewhere now caressed his slightly sweaty scrotum and he seemed to feel the sac crawling. His penis was leaking pre-cum and making little trembly jerks.

"Shift your feet apart a little more," Norton instructed, his tone and manner casual and reassuring. "Good. And try to relax. There isn't really anything to this."

Michael took another deep breath, trying for calm, but his whole body tensed as Norton's slender hand closed on his balls. He kept his gaze determinedly straight ahead.

"Relax," Norton said again, pressing the testicles together and twisting them around. "You'll hardly feel it."

The twisting pulled the skin of Michael's straining penis even tighter.

"You'd better hurry," he gasped. "I'm . . . I'm gonna cum."

"Just keep in mind that they have to come off clean or I can't use them," the artist said, repeating a warning he'd already made several times.

Michael nodded, trying to imagine his crotch filled with crushed ice.

As a post-graduate art student and aspiring sculptor, he'd come to Norton well aware of the story that when the artist decided to do his now-famous, or infamous, Seedpod Tapestry, he'd cut off his own balls to start it. But to his surprise and consternation, he'd ejaculated in the process. So to avoid compromising the Tapestry as a work of art, he'd dumped the testicles down his garbage disposal. The comments in the art journals had veered from scandalized through snidely contemptuous to amused.

"Here we go," Norton said calmly.

He'd told Michael he preferred taking the balls off without using a pain killer because it seemed more appropriate. "But I won't insist." Michael had asked about the other contributors and when he'd learned that most of them had foregone anaesthetic until afterward, he'd said he would too. He hadn't admitted that the prospect of going without anaesthetic was more of a turn-on. Now, at the last second, he was regretting that decision.

He heard a muted hum and felt something brush his scrotum close against his penis, followed instantly by a quick, burning pain. He cried out involuntarily but managed to keep from jerking his body away. Then there was the sting of a needle and the pain started to fade. He swayed on his feet and Norton stood to steady him with a hand on his bare shoulder. A whiff of burnt meat hung in the air.

"That's it. It's done." With gentle pressure from the same hand, the artist guided Michael to a canvas director's chair just behind and to the side, then held up his left hand, thumb and forefinger gripping the neatly cauterized and almost bloodless cut end of Michael's scrotum, in which the bulky testicles dangled as they had between his legs moments before. "And they're perfect."

Finally allowing himself to stare at his severed balls, Michael swallowed hard and nodded. A warm glow, almost like an orgasm, had kindled in his crotch and was spreading into his belly, up his back and down his legs. He was suddenly anxious.

"I didn't cum?"

"No, you didn't.

Norton was turning the testicles this way and that to look at them from all angles, making the heavy nuts swing a little in the thin sac.

"Perfect," he repeated.

Michael found himself grinning without really intending to. The pain-killer, or whatever it was, was making him feel silly. "Thank you." He pulled up his softening penis by the head and checked out the seared place on the underside where his balls had been. His emotions wavered between dismay and something like glee. Trying to get his thoughts into some sort of focus, all he could think of to say was, "Wow, that laser thing did a really neat job."

Norton just chuckled.

When he'd first run across Norton's ad seeking donors in one of the journals, Michael had been intrigued and his outsized cock had gotten hard as a rock. But he'd told himself no way! Cut off his balls just for a piece of shock art?

But he hadn't been able to stop thinking about it. Attached to him, his balls were a dime a dozen. But Edouard Norton was a big name, and even the unfinished Tapestry had already gotten a lot of publicity, and not just in art circles. As part of the Tapestry, his testicles would be immortalized.

But he hadn't read anything about the Tapestry for some time and he'd assumed it was either finished or abandoned. Then, a week ago, he'd spotted another ad posted on the art school bulletin board. After a day of emotional turmoil, he'd called the number, and here he was.

He'd shaved carefully and scrubbed everything pink, as specified. And Norton's only visible reaction when Michael took off his pants was a scowl. After all that.

But he'd told Michael to pump up his cock just enough to get it hard but not let it shoot. Then, still scowling, he'd felt Michael's balls, rolling them together in his hand. Michael had expected to be told to put his pants back on and go home.

But Norton had suddenly smiled and said, "Yes, these will do nicely."

He had also examined Michael's erect cock, feeling it up and down with his fingers, testing its resistance to being pulled down, and commenting obscurely that it was good that it wasn't circumcised, something Michael had always been a little embarrassed about . . . along with the fact that it was so big.

Norton took the balls over to a table and plopped them into a glass container with some kind of clear liquid in it.

"These will complete the composition," he commented. He turned back to fix Michael with a steady ice-blue gaze. "Except for one item." His gaze dropped to Michael's crotch.

"I thought you said mine will be the last pair?" Michael stared back at him for a moment, then twisted in the chair to look at the incomplete Tapestry on the wall behind him.

It was a striking piece of work, about 24 inches wide by 30 inches long, composed of pairs of testicles cut off sac and all, sewed to the backing by the cut end of each scrotum and set so closely together that the mounting, which he supposed was heavy cloth, was completely obscured. Whatever preservation process Norton had used made them look freshly cut. They were arranged carefully by skin color, dark brown on the outside, shading through olive to pale pink in the center. There was space for one pair of pink balls–-his–-next to a vertical oblong empty space in the middle.

And Michael suddenly realized what that missing item was. His penis, which had softened to turgid, twitched and began to stiffen again despite the numbing effect of the anaesthetic.

Michael squirmed. "A cock?"

The artist nodded and smiled a little. "Mine's not suitable. It's barely five inches hard erect, and crooked. But even if it were perfect, it would be too egotistic to use it."

Michael's throat had gone dry again. He looked down at his penis, now almost fully erect.

Norton reached out and prodded the crisp magenta cockhead lightly with one forefinger. "This is a meat cock, not a blood cock, isn't it? It looked almost as big when you first took your pants off, before it got really hard."

Michael made a rueful noise. "Yeah. Which means it's hard to keep it from showing though anything I wear. I can't find any briefs it won't get out of."

Norton's smile widened. "We can take care of that."

Michael nodded numbly.

"It's just right to complete the composition," Norton pressed on, his tone persuasive. "It's big but well shaped. And uncircumcised, natural."

Michael swallowed hard.

"I realize it's a bit much to ask a man as young as you-–22, didn't you say?–-to sacrifice his penis for art's sake.

"But then, you were willing to give up your testicles for just that. I know you didn't do it for the $500 I'm paying. I intentionally kept the price down to make sure of that."

Michael grinned weakly. His thoughts were in a whirl but his cock was now hard as a rock and standing straight up. "Oh, I dunno, I figured they were actually worth about 50 cents."

Norton shrugged. He tapped Michael's erection again. "As long as we're going to be realistic, you could buy a sausage this size for a couple of bucks."

"Or less," Michael conceded. He suppressed a giggle.

"And except for the fact that you can do various mildly amusing tricks with it, that's really all it is."

"But just a minute ago, you said it was just right for the Tapestry."

"And so it is. So I'll give you another $1,000 if I can get it off without making it ejaculate. Along with a lifetime supply of testosterone gel if you want it."

This is not real, Michael was thinking. And even more unreal, he suddenly realized, was that he was actually considering the offer, urged along by the growing urgency in his crotch, which the pain-killer only seemed to intensify. He stared down at it as if mesmerized. Pre-cum was leaking from the piss slit again.

"How, uh, how much of it would you need?" Michael was stalling. He knew the answer.

"Why, the whole penis, of course."

"Can you do that? Erect like this?" Michael's face got hot as he said it. Why did the prospect of giving it up turn him on so much? It was crazy.

"With the laser cutter, it'll be easy enough. It will hurt, but with the shot I've already given you, not nearly as much." Norton's tone was matter of fact but still persuasive. "You've just seen what a clean job it did with the balls. And erect is how it should come off. I'll have to inject some silicone in it when I preserve it, but it needs to be filled out to start with. I'm just sorry I can't let you indulge in one last orgasm." He said it like it was no big deal.

"Uh, that's good."

"Then it's settled?"

Michael shook his head, meaning that he was still agonizing over the idea, not rejecting it outright.

But Norton misinterpreted the gesture. His face fell a bit. He glanced toward the uncompleted Tapestry, and Michael turned to look at it again.

The thing had to contain well over 200 pairs of testicles, painstakingly collected over how long and with how many discarded because their donors ejaculated when they were cut? Over 200 guys had given up their nuts for it. And here he was balking at contributing one lousy cock after he'd already contributed the last pair of nuts.

This made him think of something.

"Since you already knew you wanted both my balls and my cock, why didn't you just make me an offer for the whole works right off."

"To be honest, I was sure you'd refuse."

And he probably would have, Michael knew. But now that he'd gotten through the physical ordeal of the castration okay and his emotions had settled out a little, the idea of giving up his cock as well was beginning to feel like a completion of what he'd started. And it would become the centerpiece of the Tapestry.

"Look," said Norton, "I have an idea. Maybe it will just insult you, but on the other hand, it's just kooky enough that you might get a kick out of it.

"You probably know that I've already, uh, disposed of my own testicles."

Michael shrugged slightly.

"And I've already admitted that the penis isn't much. But it might make an interesting conversation piece. Suppose I throw it in as a bonus. I'll preserve it for you."

The offer took Michael completely by surprise. He stared at Norton for a moment, then let out a whoop of laughter.

"Done!"

Norton grinned from ear to ear. "Perfect! And you get to choose, hard or soft . . .uh, I think."

"Let's see how it comes out."

"Fair enough."

The artist unbuttoned his jeans and started to get out of them. His cock came out half-hard and was fully erect by the time he got his pants all the way off. Now it was his turn to blush. "Well, so much for soft."

He fingered the small, inconspicuous scar on the underside where his scrotum had been.

"Anyway, I'm sure you know why I dumped my balls instead of using them in the Tapestry."

"You came when you cut them off."

"Right." He stroked the underside of his cock with his fingertip a couple of times then dropped his hand. "And it may still be a problem even with the balls safely removed."

"You can still cum, without balls?"

Norton looked surprised. "Sure. You just have to use the testosterone stuff. I figured you knew that."

"Yeah, I . . . sort of. But since I'm just getting it as a conversation piece," Michael said, "it doesn't really matter."

"Yes, it does. Since I'm asking you to give up your last ejaculation, I have to do the same thing."

"Hey, it's not that big a deal."

Norton's smile returned. "Agreed. Let's do it."

"The sooner the better."

Norton picked up the laser cutter from the table where he'd left it and Michael stood up. He pushed his rigid erection forward and down with his thumb on the base, feeling the ridges under the thin velvety skin. The head was slick with the pre-cum and some of it had run down the underside of the cockshaft. The odd mixture of numbness and arousal was fascinating. The notion came to him out of nowhere that it would be fun to stick big, long pins through it, just because he could, and he suppressed another giggle. He gave it a final flick, letting it spring back against his flat belly, then clasped his wrists behind his back again.

"Spread your legs. I want to get as much of it as I can."

"Yessir."

Norton grasped the cock around the head, pulled it down and positioned the business end of the cutter in the angle where the shaft joined Michael's slender body. Michael tensed, but didn't look away. This time, he was going to watch.

"Take a deep breath," the artist said.

Michael complied, keeping the cock thrust forward.

The laser hummed and a thin beam of violet light lanced into the base of the cockshaft. It hurt more than Michael had expected but the pain was dull and bearable. Norton pulled the cock down, angling carefully back into Michael's crotch. And suddenly, Michael had to resist humping the cutter. He couldn't believe it, but it felt like he was on the verge of orgasm.

"Jesus," he gasped. "I think I'm about to shoot."

Norton tensed visibly and finished excising the penis in one swift motion. Michael's urge to cum momentarily subsided. But then Norton held the cock up, dangling from the head. At the sight of it, fireworks went off between Michael's legs. He gasped and grabbed automatically for his cock, which, of course, was no longer there, had to settle for clenching his fists and abdominal muscles and groaning. The orgasm didn't want to resolve without the cock and went on and on. Thick white semen tinged with red pulsed from the severed urethra and ran down Michael's legs.

Norton stared, his bearded face registering shocked surprise.

"That's not possible," he muttered. "Shit." He looked up at the Tapestry and then back at the cock in his hand.

"It didn't shoot before it came off," Michael appealed desperately through clenched teeth.

"Shit, shit," Norton cursed again, his composure breached.

"Look, there's no semen on the head. I'm sure if you checked the urethra, you wouldn't find any in it."

Norton rubbed the cockhead with his thumb. "Hard to tell with the pre-cum."

"You got it clean," Michael insisted. "The orgasm didn't start until I saw it loose in your hand. That's what set me off."

"You swear to that?"

"YES, sir. Absolutely."

"I wouldn't have thought it possible."

"That's what happened."

Norton stared at the severed cock in his hand, and turned it slowly back and forth. "It's so perfect. God, it would be a shame to dump it!"

Michael began to be hopeful. The protracted orgasm had finally faded away and he felt a twinge of loss, but it was greatly overshadowed by anxiety over the possibility that he'd given up his cock for nothing. He glanced down at the slightly bloody cauterized wound in his crotch and back at his penis in Norton's hand.

"Can I hold it again for a moment?"

Norton shrugged. "Sure."

The cockshaft was still warm and firm in Michael's grasp. He slipped the skin up and down a little, trying to lighten the moment. "To think of all the time I spent doing this."

Norton smiled in spite of himself. "Yeah, me too."

Michael handed it back. "It really did come off clean," he pleaded.

Norton scratched his bearded chin absently with one thumb. He turned the cock over, scowling, and looked at the cut end, looked back up at the Tapestry. He gave Michael's face a searching look, finally nodded.

"All right. If it wasn't so perfect . . . But I'll take your word on it."

Michael smiled in relief. "Thank you."

Norton laid Michael's penis carefully on the table. "So," he said, looking down at his own erection, "now for the real anti-climax." The corner of his mouth quirked at his own pun.

"I'll do it without anaesthetic if you want me to."

"No point," said Michael.

"Thanks."

Norton gave himself an injection in the crotch and put one foot up on the edge of the wooden table. "This is going to be a bit tricky."

"You want me to do it?"

"No, doing it myself will be simpler than showing you how to use the cutter." He waited a minute or so, then started pinching and digging his carelessly clipped fingernails into the cockshaft, finally digging a square-cut thumbnail deep into the piss slit. He winced a little, but decided, "I think that's got it."

He pulled the penis down by the head and positioned the cutter, then shot a puckish grin up at Michael. "You know, this is kinda fun."

The cutter hummed, he angled it back in his crotch and began cutting, taking his time, pulling the penis down and away as he cut. As with Michael, there was a smell of burnt meat but little blood.

"Wow, something's happening." Even as he said this, the partly detached penis jerked in his hand and emitted a little spurt of semen. He hesitated, set his jaw, and continued removing it.

"Damnedest thing." He straightened up, held up his severed member and eyed it disapprovingly. "This one definitely did spurt before it came off, no question. I'm really sorry about that."

But Michael was far from displeased. "Hey, don't be sorry. This is really something. Who'd have thought that both of us would be so turned on by getting our cocks cut off?"

"Maybe I should have sold tickets."

Michael just grinned.

"So you still want it?

"Definitely. But just put it on ice, don't preserve it."

Norton looked a question.

Michael reddened as he explained. "If you don't mind, I'm gonna nuke it and eat it . . . on a bun with mustard."

Norton's eyes went wide. His face split in a huge grin and he let out a howl of laughter. "That puts me in my place, boy."

-------------------------------------------

A storm of controversy erupted when the Museum of Modern Art announced that it would exhibit the completed Tapestry, with threats from politicians to cut the museum's funding. But there were a couple of big name critics who praised it and the museum had survived such battles before. So the Tapestry was put on display anyway, behind glass and with tight security, drawing long lines at the museum ticket office. A numbered chart beside it identified every donor, 233 of them, by name and age. Michael's balls were No. 233 but his cock was No. 1.

The donor list, which Norton released to all the donors when the Tapestry was put on display, instantly created a unique fraternity, many of whose members lost no time in getting acquainted with each other. Michael and the others, admitted by a side door to the museum whenever they wished, visited the exhibition again and again, standing in small groups behind the ropes with the other gawkers and pointing out each others' contributions, enjoying the discomfort this caused the regular patrons. There were complaints, but Norton refused to allow the museum to limit the donors' visits and comments, which he regarded as integral to the artwork. Michael particularly enjoyed pointing out that that was his cock up there, permanently and proudly erect for all the world to admire. After all, how many other young men got to show off in public like that?