The Methuselah Syndrome

The Methuselah Syndrome

by

Kortpeel

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"Really Edwin, it's long past the time these came off."

Emmeline was holding my scrotum at the time she said that. We were having a lazy Sunday morning in bed. It was a rare event. The children were away for the weekend staying with friends.

"Don't start on that again, Emm. They stay right where they are."

"You know it'd be for you own good." Emmeline was a health enthusiast. She subscribed to every health measure that was even half way plausible. She was fanatical about diet, exercise and anti-pollution. Ever since the idea that removal of the testicles was a sensible health measure for men had become fairly wide-spread, if not actually popular, she'd been on to me to have it done.

To begin with I'd enjoyed it and got turned on by Emmeline wanting to have me castrated but I certainly didn't want it for real. Trouble was that Emmeline did. She was sold on the idea.

It was recent microbiological research that had given new credence to an old idea of castration being a health benefit. The researchers had known that human cells are able to reproduce themselves only a certain number of times. Gradually they cease to reproduce and that's what causes physical deterioration in old age. Different cells fail at different rates. The order in which they fail varies from person to person and the sequence of failure is pre-programmed at conception. If the cells of vital organs happen to go first the result is a shortened life span. The researchers discovered that the presence of testosterone in the blood brought forward the age at which cells failed to reproduce themselves. That was why women and eunuchs generally have a longer life span than men. Removal of the testosterone increases the number of times the cells can reproduce and the earlier it is removed the greater the gain in longevity.

Both Emmeline and I knew that but it was only Emmeline who wanted that knowledge to lead to action.

"That's rot Emm. If they were meant to come off they'd drop off by themselves, like leaves off a tree."

"According to what I've read on it, nature's put them on the outside so it is easy to take them off," Emmeline countered. "They really are meant to come off."

"It's something to do with their temperature."

"No it isn't. It's evolution. When we were evolving, the men didn't live long enough to evolve to the stage where they would drop off naturally. Else they probably would. But we do have the sense to help nature along."

At that point I was thoroughly enjoying the gentle scrotal massage she was giving me. I wanted it to continue so that's why I didn't tell her she was talking utter nonsense. All evolution did was to ensure that people lived long enough to participate in the reproduction contest. Instead I said, "You'd miss the sex if I didn't have them."

"That's true Ed, I would. But I do love you so and I want you around, fit and well, forever." Emmeline really did think long term like that. She was convinced she would live to a ripe old age. With her genes and her life style it was quite likely she would.

My wife was 28. She'd worked hard to get back into shape after our second and presumably last child was born. She'd really succeeded too. To complement her lovely slender figure she had dark brown hair and golden hazel eyes. I'd say she was pretty going on beautiful.

Emmeline was getting into her stride. "What I imagine is a beautiful, gentle, loving companionship that will see us both through into our old age. Together." She looked at me. "I don't want to be a lonely old widow bravely making the best of a bad lot. I want you there with me, sixty years from now."

That would make me 92 and Emmeline 88. Few in my family made it to their seventies. Most of my people died of heart problems at any age from their forties.

Emmeline's thinking was about as long term as a human life span would allow. It was all those health magazines she read that were making her think like that. Not that I'd thought about it much but I reckoned that if I made it to threescore years and ten I'd have had a fair life span. I wanted to enjoy those years and sex featured prominently in my ideas of enjoyment.

Like right now with Emmeline stroking my scrotum. It was such a simple pleasure but so delightful. It wasn't something I would forego to have a few more years of senile decrepitude at the end of my life.

I took Emmeline in my arms and we got into a nice kiss and cuddle, followed by some gentle touching and stroking. Emmeline was becoming aroused. I moved to get on top, ready for intercourse when she pulled away. "No, Ed."

I was astonished as much as I was disappointed.

Emmeline sensed this and explained. "I won't be getting this after you've been fixed. I've got to start getting used to it."

"Well, you don't have to start now, for goodness' sake!"

"The sooner the better. And a case of blue balls would help you to make up your mind too."

I was getting angry and struggling not to lose my temper. "Dammit Emm, you are talking the most utter rubbish with all this .. this life span crap. Now forget it and let's make love."

"No Ed, I'm serious. It will be the best for both of us in the long run."

"Emm, I want sex. We can make love together or I'm going to just fuck you. What's it to be?"

"Don't you dare. I certainly won't let you have it by force if that's what you-"

I was too aroused sexually and too angry with her stupid nonsense to take any more of her crap. I got on top of her. She was trying to resist me. I prised her legs apart and went in. She was still moist from the foreplay. She was struggling to resist me but I'm much stronger than her.

"You bastard Ed. I'll make you pay for this."

"Just fucking shut up."

My initial intention had been to come after a few quick strokes but somehow there was a whole new dimension to this taking by force thing. I wanted it to last so I held back from ejaculating and was enjoying brutal thrusting. God but it felt good! There was a whole ego trip in this. It was probably how Viking invaders felt in the old days when they raided settlements and raped the women.

This was so much better than pussyfooting with all that foreplay shit: being considerate and thinking of her needs. You want a fuck? Then just fuck.

Emmeline ceased to struggle and just took it. She had no choice. After a while she started whimpering which only heightened my sense of machismo and made me thrust even harder.

"Oh Ed you bastard! You fucking bastard!" Emmeline never used language like that.

She must be really angry with me I was thinking. Then she started to come.

"Oh God Ed! Yes. Give it me to me. Yes. Yes! Oh fuck me you bastard." She was shouting. She'd never come like that before. We'd never been into the 'I love it when you talk dirty' thing but here was Emmeline, my prim, proper and oh so serious minded wife, being the most wanton slut.

Her climax sent a great long shudder through and made her vagina contract on me. I lost control and dumped my load into her in a series of long, glorious ejaculations.

Afterwards I was lying back on the bed trying to recover. Emmeline was kissing me and stroking my chest and working on me in a kind of after-play.

"Eddie darling that was wonderful. I love you so much," she was saying, along with a lot more to the same effect.

Actually I was confused. As marital sex goes that had been the best for both of us. I was trying to figure out why. I'd been rough with her. I'd forced myself on her with no thought whatsoever for her feelings. It was practically rape. I'd gone against all the advice I'd ever read in the manuals and the "Aunt Mary's" help columns. She was entitled to be angry, hurt, resentful. All of that, but she'd loved it. I didn't understand at all.

For the rest of that day she behaved like a woman who was well satisfied. She acted lovingly and there was even a kind of deference in her behaviour toward me that I'd never seen before. I didn't know why but Emmeline seemed happy enough and that was fine with me.

Our marriage went onto a new level of happiness after that. We seemed to be closer and more loving to each other than ever. I think it would have continued like that but then her great grandfather died at 97.

He passed away peacefully on the golf course. He'd made a cracker of a drive at the 13th hole, followed through perfectly with his swing and keeled over all in one smooth movement. Before the ball stopped on the green, not three feet from the hole, Emmeline's great grandfather was teeing off with his ancestors on the great golf course in the sky.

"Damned shame," his partner was heard to mutter. "He'd have made a birdie with his next stroke." The thirteenth being a par three.

For most of us, the old man had had a long innings and a beautiful death but not for his family. His grieving widow read the eulogy and pointed out that if he hadn't smoked twenty cigarettes a day he'd still be here now. Since she herself was partial to gin and tonic she refrained from mentioning the half bottle of brandy that her late husband had indulged in every day. What she didn't say but what all the blood family knew was that the old fellow had lost his balls in a motor cycle accident in 1929. By then he'd had four children all of who were in their seventies and going strong at his funeral.

He'd gone liquid a few days before the great Wall Street crash, not from any prescience but simply to buy the motor cycle and a bigger house for his family. With his bike wrecked and no prospect of more children he simply put his money back into the market after the crash and left it there until after World War II. By then his investments had given him a ride to wealth. I once heard him say "It's so damned easy to get rich I don't know why everyone doesn't do it" He'd spent the last fifty years doing exactly what he wanted to do: playing golf, smoking and drinking. I wondered how it would have all worked out if he hadn't lost his balls.

Unfortunately the same thought had occurred to Emmeline. "He had a lovely life, didn't he?" she remarked on the drive home.

I was thinking of his money when I agreed with her.

"Please forgive me, darling, " she said. "I've been so selfish."

"Selfish?"

"I enjoy making love to you so much. I stopped wanting to get you fixed."

"I don't wanna be fixed."

"I know you don't but it'll be all right after you are. I promise."

"Emmeline, I really don't -"

"No listen to me, Ed. Seriously for once. Please."

I shut up. I'd long ago found that when Emmeline was in this earnest mood it was better to let her have her say. She needed to say it and it avoided unpleasantness.

The thing was Emily had a vision of old age much like her great grandfather's had been. She'd seen how the old fellow had enjoyed life. She had seen him and her great grandmother doing things together, working together and how happy they'd been doing it. From that point of view a long life was the greatest blessing any mortal being could have.

"And it's getting fixed that makes it all possible," she pointed out. "Really Ed, we must have it done. Please."

"We won't be able to make love any more," I countered. I have to admit, the way Emmeline saw it, it was attractive. But at one hell of a cost.

"We will, Ed. There's a lot more to love than just sex. I know it's not as dramatic or intense but it is just as real and it's a lot longer lasting."

"No Emm. Really I don't think -"

"See it like this. You don't need testosterone any more. What you have down there, they've done their job. They turned you into a man and they gave us our two children."

"True but why -"

"Now they're killing you."

"Eh?"

"You know. That thing about cell reproduction. They're shortening your life, even as we speak. They're harmful to you. Or rather the testosterone is."

Emmeline paused for my reply. When I said nothing she went on "Without then we'll move onto a new phase in our lives. You can see we're ready for it. Sex isn't as important to us now. Not as much as it used to be."

"We don't have it as often," I agreed. It occurred to me that part of the reason was that our two youngsters were around so much of the time. We couldn't do it on the hearthrug in the afternoons any more. I was sure that was where both of them were conceived.

Emmeline's mother came to stay with us not long after that. Her husband was away giving a presentation to a seminar and Emm thought it would be nice to have her stay with us. Beatrice did have her advantages. She was happy to baby-sit and we enjoyed the rare treat of a restaurant supper and the theatre one night and a movie the next. We even got in a few drinks after the movie.

Maybe the drinks softened me up. Emm went to check on the kids when we got back and I was alone with Beatrice. She seized her opportunity. "Emmeline tells me that you are reluctant to move on to the next stage of your life together."

"Eh?"

"You want to hang on to your testicles."

I'd heard of interfering mothers in law but this must be the ultimate.

She read my mind and smiled. "Sorry Ed, I know this is perfectly inexcusable of me. But there is something to this that is worth saying."

Beatrice was attractive when she smiled like that, and at least she was being honest. I couldn't help but smile back. "What is that Beatrice?"

"Don't tell a soul but Jim was fixed at your age. Neither of us have ever regretted it."

I hadn't known that but it occurred to me that this must be something of a tradition in Emm's family. One step on from circumcision."

"It's true, I did miss the sex. Emmeline will too but she knows it will be for the best. It is really a very small sacrifice. She will manage perfectly well without it.

"And there are so many advantages, " Beatrice continued. "Ever since he was cut off I've never worried about Jim."

For some reason I had a vague sense of déjà vu that I couldn't get a handle on. "You haven't worried about Jim?"

"Oh no. He never looked at another woman after that. He did have a bit of a roving eye before, you know."

Good for him, I thought.

"Emmeline tells me that you aren't like that. Well not so much as her father was but you are a normal man."

"Beatrice, can we go back a bit. This is something I do need to know."

"Yes?"

"When you say you did miss the sex, could you give me a little more insight into what that actually means. How it was for you?" That may have sounded like the most impertinent question a chap could ask his mother in law but Beatrice had started it and she was being intensely personal to me.

Beatrice didn't mind the question one bit. "Well, as you know, sex in marriage is a physical expression of the love between a man and a wife. It is pleasant and I used to enjoy it, er most of the time. In its own way, marital sex for me was almost a re-affirmation of the marriage vows."

Beatrice paused. I wondered where the hell she was going with this. She certainly wasn't the least bit embarrassed talking about it and that was surprising me.

"Afterwards, for a while, I missed the physical penetration, actually having Jim inside me. Even more I missed the love making aspect of sex. The sense of pleasing my husband and him pleasing me. The togetherness of it."

Beatrice was reminiscing. "Then I found that it didn't bother me all that much. What I really liked was just having Jim around, being himself, doing Jim things. Making jokes. Having ideas, some good some silly … Life is really about the small everyday things you know. If you've get that right the rest looks after itself."

I nodded. Beatrice went on. "There were a few times when I really did want a man. I had this overwhelming urge to have a man inside me again." Beatrice gave me a shy, embarrassed smile. "Fingers will only take you so far. So twice I was naughty. Afterwards I had this terrible feeling of letting down Jim and me. It hadn't been anything like the relief I'd expected, even though physically it was good."

"You felt guilty about it?" I asked her.

"Not so much guilty. I'd had Jim's blessing for it in advance. He'd expected me to get frustrated, as he put it and even advised me to have a little adventure. So I did."

"But it didn't work?"

"Well, it helped, I suppose, at a physical level. But I had this sense that I hadn't lived up to the standards I'd set myself. You see it was like part of the deal we'd made in return for Jim having a long life. Lack of sex was the price to pay and I wasn't paying it. So I felt dreadful afterwards, even though Jim wasn't bothered."

"And you did it twice?" I asked her.

"And that was all a long time ago, Eddie. If you can be as good a husband to Emmeline as Jim has been to me, I couldn't ask for anything more."

"You bragging about your marriage again Mom?" Emmeline entered the room. She'd changed and had a nightdress on under her dressing gown. She came over and gave me a warm hug. "My man's just as good as yours."

"I'm sure he is. Just keep him around," Beatrice said.

"You haven't been telling him to get castrated?" Emmeline sounded quite upset that her mother should talk to me about such a thing.

"Nothing like that at all," I hastened to say. "She was just saying that it's the small everyday things that really count in life. And if those things are right your life is ok."

"Yeah. I think that's true," Emm said after a moment's thought. "Anyway, I've decided not to keep on at Ed to be castrated. It's his decision. Whatever he decides I'll support him in it."

"Very wise of you darling," Beatrice said.

That would have been the end of it but there is always the outside world having its impact on our lives. One of the big pharmaceutical companies came up with Longeviton. It worked on that cell division principal. At the end of each chromosome there is a 'tail' called a telomere. Each time the cell divides the telomere gets shorter. When there is no telomere left that is the end of that cell and whatever its job had been in a living body no longer gets done. The consequence of that is decline and death.

Longeviton was based on an enzyme called telomerase, which in some cases can repair the telomere. Provided the telomere is intact the cell can potentially reproduce itself for ever and immortality is theoretically possible. Nothing in biology is ever straightforward and other factors limit immortality. One of them unfortunately being the presence of testosterone.

Longeviton longevity treatment was beginning to take off. It wasn't even all that expensive. It had the backing of orthodox medicine and women all over the world were taking it. It had some beneficial effect on men but nowhere near as much as on women. The pre-requisite for it to work on men was the absence of testosterone in the blood and few men, at this early stage, were reconciled to that.

Emmeline had kept her word about not going on at me to be castrated. There were hints however. One day she casually mentioned that her father was on Longeviton.

"Ok, Emm. Would you really like me to go for it?

"All the way?"

"Yeah."

"Oh Ed, darling. There's nothing I'd like more." She put her arms around me and kissed me."

It occurred to me that the prospect of my early demise a decade or two hence had really been a concern for Emm. We talked about it. Emm got quite irritated when I asked her how she would cope without sex,

"What do you think I am? Of course I can go without sex." Then she thought a bit and added, "I know for a fact that Mom and Aunt Jane had no problem."

I didn't know about Aunt Jane but for sure Beatrice hadn't told her daughter the whole truth. I was amused by her disingenuity.

Emmeline misunderstood my smile. "You don't believe me do you? I promise you that not having sex any more won't be a problem. Not as long as I've got you with me."

We talked about the actual mechanics of the procedure. "Why not let Mom do it?" Emmeline asked. She's a trained nurse and in any case she's done it before."

"She has? Who?"

I was astonished to learn that she'd first castrated, years ago, her own husband. More recently she done her sister Jane's husband and a few other guys, husbands of friends of Jane's who'd decided to go in for Longeviton. There were things about Emm's family that I'd never dreamt of. Fancy my own mother in law being a castratrix!

"I know Mom would love to do it for us." Emmeline said, delighted at the prospect. There followed, over the next few days, a series of phone calls, excited visits and mother and daughter to and fro-ing, all of which resulted in The Arrangements.

"We're going to do it next Friday," Emmeline told me. "It'll be Mom and me, Aunt Jane's going to help and we'd like Sarah to be present. Is that's ok with you?"

Sarah was Aunt Jane's youngest. She was about 22 at the time and very attractive with a cheerful, bubbly personality. She was doing a degree in medicine.

"Why Sarah?"

"Mom and Aunt Jane thought it would be good experience for her. It would too. Please say you don't mind."

"I don't know." I had a moment of insight at how the guys at Tyburn must have felt in the old days when they were about to be publicly hanged. I didn't like the idea of my castration being family entertainment. "Tell you what Emmeline, I want everyone whose going to be there to be in the nude. If I'm going to be a spectacle then everyone else can contribute as well."

Emmeline looked really taken aback. I don't think the idea appealed to her at all. She'd probably already chosen an outfit for the occasion. However she didn't argue with me. She got on the phone to Mom. Half an hour later she came back to me with a smile. "Ok. Everyone thinks that’s nice idea."

Between then and the Friday, D for deballing day, there seemed to be a great deal of female excitement. It was a sort of special family female occasion like weddings still are and like childbirth once was. What was basically a simple procedure seemed to become enormously and unnecessarily complicated with a whole load of peripheral arrangements. It occurred to me that her husband's castration would make Emmeline a member of an exclusive club, along with her mother, Aunt Jane and sundry other women. Emmeline would be permitted to join in whatever conversations they had on the subject and share confidences.

For my part I kept a low profile and let the women get on with the arrangements. We were over at Emm's parents place a day or so before the Friday and I was alone with her dad. I asked him about the Longeviton treatment.

"It's a course of intravenous injections, " Jim told me. "One a week for three weeks, another three at two week intervals and then you go for a check up every six months. At the check up they decide what you need and give it to you."

That part of it didn't seem too terrible. "They usually give me a shot at the check up but I understand that the younger you are the less likely you are to need it. Feeling nervous about Friday are you?"

"Bloody right I am."

He nodded. "Yeah. I was too. It's funny though. Give it a couple of weeks and it's all no big deal. You actually can't imagine how nervous you were before."

That was reassuring. Jim certainly seemed happy enough with his life. I'd always known, but never really believed, there was more to life than sex. Well, I certainly hoped so.

The night before D-day I was so nervous I was actually sick. I think, at that point, given the choice I'd have taken my chance at a landing on Omaha Beach rather than my particular date with destiny. Emmeline was all comfort and reassurance. I told her that her Dad had said it was no big deal afterwards.

She hugged me. "It'll all be ok, I promise."

"Emm, there is one promise I want you to make to me."

"What's that?"

"About sex."

"I promise you Ed, I'll never be unfaithful to you."

"No. That's not it."

Emmeline looked puzzled. "I don't understand."

"I want you to promise to be honest with me about how you're feeling. You know - if you're frustrated, or burning for sex … That kind of thing."

Emmeline understood and took me seriously. "I promise I'll be as truthful as my ability to communicate will allow. I'll explain to you in as much detail as I can." She looked at me and added mischievously "In fact I'll probably bore the pants off you, talking about my feelings."

"What it is, Emm. If it gets too bad we can come to an arrangement. It's doing it behind my back I couldn't stand."

She put a finger to my lips. "Shh. This is all because we love each other so much. There'll never be anything like that. I promise you." She kissed me.

In our town, and probably many others, there's a discreet private clinic that looks like a large old house and which doesn't even have a sign outside. It's been there a long time but inside it is superbly equipped and maintained and as up to date as money and technology will allow. It was founded and maintained by old money that often needs such a facility. Unwanted pregnancies are dealt with there, occasionally wounds are treated and certainly the police never know about it. Routine operations happen there and the treatment is the best that money can buy. So is the silence about what happens within its walls.

Emmeline drove me there and we arrived at 6 am. I was still not properly awake. We went in and a nurse gave me a polystyrene cup containing some liquid. "Drink this, please."

They showed us to a room and the nurse asked Emmeline to get me undressed, shaved, and into bed. This she did. The drink must have contained a sedative because I was dozy, not very aware of what was happening and compliant. Vaguely I realised that my wife was shaving my pubic hair and just thought how pleasant that was.

Time passed. I drifted in and out of sleep. I saw Beatrice and Sally and they were all very pleasant but I was only semi-conscious and could barely greet them. I was aware of some women putting me on the gurney and wheeling me along corridors to the operating room.

There were several women there, all nude. Emmeline was one of them and she was holding my hand. I thought I recognised Beatrice and that one looked like Aunt Jane, Gee! But didn’t she have a magnificent bush down there. Sally was there too with no bush at all. They all had lovely tits though. I had a vague notion that paradise would be like this: nude women everywhere.

They were doing something to me down there. I felt pricks in my pubic area. I knew I had a massive erection and was too drugged to be embarrassed about it. They were all looking at my prick and Beatrice was doing something to me. So was Emmeline. It was all so nice. Wonderful. Such a pity I couldn't concentrate more …

"He's waking up."

I was in bed in my private room at the clinic. There was Emmeline and all the others who'd been there. I was disappointed that they all had their clothes on.

Emmeline was all loving. "How do you feel?"

"Like I've had my balls cut off."

"Is there any pain or nausea?" Beatrice asked.

"No. I'm ok. How did it all go? Straightforward? No complications?"

"It all went by the book, exactly as planned." Beatrice was sounding rather pleased with herself. "Didn't it Sally?"

"By the book," agreed Sally.

I must have gone back to sleep after that. When I woke up again it was dark and only Emmeline was there. She'd been keeping a bedside vigil for her man. I thought that was so sweet of her.

I had to pee and took the opportunity to check my wounds. My balls and scrotum were completely gone. There was just a line of fine stitches behind my prick. "Why did they cut off my scrotum too?" I asked Emmeline.

"You don't need it any more and it's just as easy to take it off as to leave it." Emmeline paused for a moment. "There was some discussion about that. Sally and Aunt Jane thought we should put in prosthetic testicles but Beatrice said that was hanging on to the old ways. By taking it all off it kind of symbolised moving forward into a new phase of life."

"Oh." I didn't say anything but I'd have preferred it if they'd asked me what I thought. Not that it mattered much. Perhaps Beatrice was right. Certainly I was now into a new phase of my life.

"Come on Emm. Let's go and start the rest of our lives."

She helped me to dress and drove me home.

Emmeline was extremely loving and solicitous after the procedure. For the first week I was still able to get it up and we had sex. Gradually I got weaker erections and eventually none at all, although with considerable effort I could still ejaculate. Nothing else changed that I could detect. I was still me, my mind worked the same way as it always had except sex just wasn't that interesting any more. After two months I was back at the clinic to start the Longeviton treatment.

Emmeline came with me. She'd been on it for a while now and was due for a six monthly check. They took blood samples and the Lab Technician, a motherly soul, showed me how they did the test for testosterone level. Then she did another test to determine how much of Longeviton "A" I would need. "Longeviton "A" is the starter." She told me. .It's to repair your telomeres and make sure the DNA is ok. There's no point in repairing telomeres on bad DNA."

She was busy with some hi-tech looking apparatus, as she spoke. It turned out that most of my DNA was fine enough to need only a minimum dose of Longeviton "A" and this she injected into a vein on the inside of the elbow on my left arm. That was simple enough. I learnt that there are other things in Longeviton including something to minimise testosterone withdrawal symptoms, stop osteoporosis and prevent me from getting eunuch's hips.

The lab technician explained all that as she worked. She seemed very matter-of-fact and accepting about my eunuch status. I was still self conscious and embarrassed about it but this woman dealt with it every day and took it in her stride

After a few months so did I. It seemed perfectly natural to be a eunuch. It felt normal and it even struck me that guys of my age who hadn't been castrated were the abnormal ones. It was just so ridiculous that mature grown men should spend so much time and energy on something so superficial and trivial as recreational sex. It was as if they hadn't grown up and were still in an adolescent phase.

It occurred to me that Emmeline had been right when she'd said that nature had placed testicles on the outside because they're meant to be removed.

A side effect of Longeviton is an excellent immune system that lets you shrug off infections like a youngster. Also I was naturally fitter and more energetic. Emmeline and I took the children on camping trips and adventure trails. We all had great times. We even went on family trips with her parents and relatives.

All that togetherness was exactly what Emmeline had had in mind when she talked about a loving, non-sexual companionship. Although I could no longer get an erection and intercourse was out of the question I did attend to Emmeline's sexuality, mainly by massage and masturbation. She enjoyed it and, as she said, it helped bind us together.

However it was Beatrice who pointed out that it might not be a bad thing to encourage Emmeline to have a little sexual adventure. A year or so later on one of our family holidays, Beatrice and I were alone together at the poolside bar. Emmeline, her father and the children were all having great fun in the pool.

"I can see she's getting frustrated," Beatrice said. "It's purely a physical thing. She just needs a penis inside her again. Nothing actually to worry about."

"How can you tell?"

"Small remarks she makes. And she's looking at guys. She'll never say anything but there is a need there."

I'd expected as much. That night in bed I reminded her about her promise to keep me in the picture if she was getting frustrated.

"Has Mom been talking to you?"

If she knew Beatrice had mentioned it Emmeline would get upset. "I've been watching you carefully and expecting it." I told her. "It's ok. You can talk to me."

"I feel dreadful about it," Emmeline said. "But it does rather stick in the mind, no matter how hard I try to forget it. I think it's this resort with all those men in swimsuits around."

"You don't need to feel bad about it. It is perfectly natural. You're a healthy young woman with natural needs."

Emmeline took my hand. "But I love you so much. I promised you this wouldn't happen. I'll be all right when we get back home."

"Emm, you won't. This might be a good time and place to er … It would be a lot easier here than at home."

"To go with someone?"

"Yeah."

"Oh Ed I couldn't do that. I promised you I wouldn't."

"You promised me you'd tell me how you felt and you didn't. Emm you don't have to suffer. I don't want you to. Tomorrow go and find a guy with testicles and make him and you happy."

Emmeline actually started to cry. She came out with a whole lot of guilt about letting me and her marriage down, much the same as Beatrice had tried to explain to me earlier. "But it will only be sex, Ed. I won't get involved or anything."

"I understand, " I told her. It occurred to me how a good woman takes her marriage so seriously. Trouble is they tend also to equate the sex act with lovemaking. As I saw it Emmeline needed a good fucking, purely as a physical thing that had nothing to do with love. It was tiresome and a little risky but it was better for her to have it and have done with it than keep on longing for it.

Next day I left my wife to her own devices and gave her some room. Her parents and I took the children to an amusement park in the morning and we spent the afternoon around the pool. Emmeline joined us at about half past three. She looked at me and nodded. She seemed fine.

I learnt afterwards she'd picked up two young studs and fucked them both until they couldn't fuck any more. That had met her need for sex very well but she still felt bad that she'd had the need for it. I made her talk her way through it. Beatrice had suggested that this would be the best way to deal with any guilt after-affects.

"I've not lived up to my standards," Emmeline confessed. "I made you have your testicles off so we could be together. In return I wanted to be a faithful loving wife and never have sex again. But I did want it again. I needed it so badly I went off with those two guys and I'm so ashamed."

There was a lot more in that vein. Emmeline had said she'd probably bore the pants off me about how she felt and now she was certainly doing so. However she needed to talk about it and I let her.

As therapy goes it worked. She was fine after that and just a little bit ashamed of herself but now she'd talked it out she was ok. Our marriage went back to its loving, happy companionship.

If Beatrice's experience is anything to go by there'll only be one more such episode for Emmeline. That's fine by me and I'm glad there's some poor sod out there with testicles to do the job. For my part I know I'm better off without them.

End

Note: - You can't get Longeviton treatment. A government nervous of having to cope with an ageing population of baby boomers, all of whom are voters, has classified the discovery and confined its benefits to a small group of government insiders and a few very wealthy people.

However, experience has shown that once a discovery is made it cannot be suppressed for long. We can look forward to a healthier and fitter old age, an increase in the age for retirement and a lot of guys going in for castration. There will probably become a social obligation on young guys who haven't had the treatment to meet the needs of the wives of men who have.

Our world is about to change radically, yet again.