Date: Mon, 1 Aug 2005 13:22:10 EDT
From: Parsifal
Subject: Cancer ward

When I had recovered at last from a bout of emergency surgery at Memorial
Hospital, I resolved to serve there as a volunteer as a kind of obligation
for the excellent care I had received.  I underwent their training program
for volunteers and then was assigned to a floor for male patients, most of
them suffering from one or another kind of cancer.  Many were receiving
chemotherapy or radiation therapy and had to endure the pain of the disease
and the side effects of the treatments.

I would go to the hospital every Tuesday directly after work and a quick
supper.  My duties at first involved only distributing juices and other
beverages to the patients, and after a while I was shown how to give a back
rub of an alcohol solution followed by soothing lotion.

Weeks passed into months and I rather looked forward to this weekly
opportunity to bring comfort to some suffering men.  There was a steady
flow of new patients as the former ones were able to return home or in some
instances went on to hospice care.

It was in October, I think, after I had been a volunteer for almost a year
that I met a new patient, whom I shall call Bill.  He was a man in his
mid-70's, bald, a body made lean by disease, probably over 6 feet tall when
he was last able to stand up erect.  He had been an architect.  He told me
that he had been married but I gathered that the marriage had ended some
time ago.  I suspected that he had had children, but they were not in his
life now.

After some conversation, made difficult by his occasional waves of pain, I
offered to give him a back rub, which he welcomed.  I pulled back the top
sheet and rolled him on his belly, and noticed that apart from the Johnny,
he was bare below.  Despite his condition, his buttocks were boyishly full.

After the alcohol rub, I began with the lotion and soon he had dropped into
a kind of reverie, but still punctuated by occasional groans of pain.

As my hands moved down to his lower back, he raised his pelvis slightly, as
if urging me to continue down to those inviting buttocks.  I moved there
tentatively and softly asked him if he was alright with this.  He sighed a
contented "yes," and so I continued, kneading the skin and flesh.  He
seemed to enjoy this and so, still uncertain, I drew one finger up the
crease of his buttocks, pausing briefly at the anal sphincter. He shuddered
with pleasure, and so I repeated this, each time gently pressing the
orifice.

He began to twist his body as if to turn over, and I helped with this,
thinking that he wanted the massage to end.  But once on his back, he took
my hand and placed it on his penis.  His pubic hair had vanished with
chemotherapy, and his penis was a nicely formed circumcised member, flaccid
atop modest testicles.  But with my hand on it, it began to stir.

With fresh lotion on my hands, I began then to massage his groin, his
scrotum, and his ever-growing penis.  It soon reached full length, not huge
but beautiful.  His eyes closed as I continued to rub.  His breathing
became faster, and I noticed that the periodic shudders of pain had
completely disappeared.  When he seemed nearing the point of no return, I
moved off the penis and focused on his nipples, his belly, his thighs, and
then back to the penis.

And then I heard footsteps coming to the door from the hallway.  It had to
be the nurse, Ms. W., but I kept to my task without turning around.  A few
moments later I heard her steps retreating down the hall.

After about a half hour of playing with Bill's penis, his breathing
quickened, his hips lunged up and down, and the crown expanded and pulsed
as his whole body was gripped by orgasm.  There was little ejaculate, and
what little there was just trickled out, milky and translucent.

He lay there for a few minutes while his breathing returned to normal and
his eyes opened.

I told him that I hoped this had not harmed him in any way.

"Friend," he whispered, taking my hand, "this was more effective than all
the opium in Afghanistan."

I pulled the sheet up to his shoulders and within moments he had drifted
off to sleep.

I didn't see Nurse W. again until the following week.  She was at the
nurse's station when I checked in.  She gazed at me steadily for a long
moment, and then said, "You gave Bill his first good night's sleep in
months.  That was the best possible gift for him."

Pausing, she went on.  "He asked me to thank you.  He's gone home now.  His
son has come to stay with him for a while.  He probably doesn't have much
time left."

Two weeks later I learned that he had died.  I felt honored to have had the
chance to bring him some relief along the way and saddened by this loss.