"Shofar Dick"

God's Dick Joke, Part 2

(Part One here)

Part 2:

“Well, that’s good news,” the urologist said regarding my photos of my bent penis.

I wanted to kill him.

“What’s your idea of bad news?” I asked, yanking my phone from his hand.

Taking a photo of my bent manhood for my insurance company had been much more complicated than I imagined.

My wife Orli had offered to help.

 “I can hold it,” she said.

“Hold what?”

“The protractor.”

“Oh.”

“Or, you know, whatever,” she said.

“I can hold it myself,” I grumbled.

“Hold what?”

“I can hold everything,” I said, taking my laptop, phone, protractor and penis into the bathroom and closing the door behind me.

Orli and I have been married 30 years, but I still don’t have any idea why she loves me. It’s a mystery. It’s obviously not my money:

Why she desires me sexually is an even bigger mystery, and I don’t just mean because of my currently bent kickstand; even in showroom condition, I didn’t understand the attraction. I’m sure she has her reasons – she’s pretty fucked up in her own right – but I’m wary of giving her any more cause to despise me, so I decided to do the whole thing myself.

It wasn’t easy.

I locked the bathroom door, placed my Macbook on the sink counter, and watched pornography I have never in my life been in less of a mood for (I sometimes imagine that God, sickened by my life of onanism, will send me to Hell where he will make me watch porn for eternity, only without any sexual desire whatsoever; try watching porn after orgasm, you’ll understand the torture I am describing).

But that was the easy part. Once the desired state was achieved, I had to somehow hold myself with one hand, maintain that state with nmy second hand, hold the protractor with my third hand and try to take a photo with my iPhone with my fourth hand. Various horrendously failed attempts followed. If I somehow managed to get all the required subjects in frame, the photo came out blurry, or it turned out the camera was facing the wrong direction, or everything in frame when I took the photo but when I looked at it I had somehow managed take a photo of the tub instead. The few times the photo came out well, I had either dropped the protractor out of frame or lost interest, so to speak, and had to start all over again.

“Hon,” I finally called from the bathroom. “Do we have any tape?”

“Tape?”

“Yeah.”

“What kind of tape?” she called back. “Like duct tape?”

“No, fuck, not… like scotch tape.”

“Scotch tape?”

Orli is British.

“You mean cello tape?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Does it have to be clear?”

“Why would it have to be clear???”

“How should I know?” she called back. “You said it can’t be duct tape!”

“I can’t use duct tape!” I shouted, “I just need regular tape!”

There was a pause.

“Double-sided?” she called.

“For God’s sake, Hon, just bring me the fucking tape.”

A few minutes later, with the help of various office supplies, I managed to take the photo my insurance overlords demanded, but I couldn’t help thinking of God laughing, looking down at me in my bathroom, pants around my ankles, porn playing in the background with a protractor taped to my penis. He’d probably called Abraham, Isaac and Jacob over to join in the mockery:

Above: My forefathers.

“What the fuck is he doing???” laughs Abraham.

“Look at his dick!” says Jacob.

“He’s got a shofar dick!” says Isaac, slapping God on his back, and they all bust up again. “You gave him a shofar dick!”

A shofar is a ram’s horn. Ram’s horns are bent. This is a shofar:

This is also a shofar:

I assure you the metaphor doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that rabbis put shofars in their mouths, but it doesn’t help.

The urologist handed me back my phone and explained that I met the requirements for insurance to cover the costs of the treatment.

“That’s good news,” he said.

The treatment, he explained, is a series of eight injections, right in the shofar, combined with multiple daily sessions strapping my ram’s horn in a medieval torture device in order to rather forcefully unbend it.

Above: My forefathers.

“That’s bad news,” I said.

If it weren’t for the pain the condition caused, I would have foregone any treatment that involved the words “penile” and “injections.” Plural. I’m vain, but I’m not that vain. But the pain the condition caused was considerable, and the urologist said it could get worse – it could progress, so to speak, from Shofar A to Shofar B. And so with few options, I found myself a couple of weeks later laying on his exam table as he prepared the injection.

Here’s another thing I imagine about Hell: I imagine that when we get there, they strap some sort of Pain Monitor to us, like a FitBit but for agony, which keeps track of the pains one undergoes there. When a certain “pain number” is reached, the number God condemns you to, you’re done. You climb off the rack, or pull out the Pear of Anguish, or walk out of the Lake of Fire, go back to your room, pack your bags and head up to heaven. If that’s correct, and I’m pretty sure that it is, then regardless of whatever sins I commit for the rest of my life, what transpired in that urologist’s office that day, pain-wise, gets me a Direct Pass to Heaven. I could commit fucking genocide and go to heaven.

The urologist, at least, was pleased with how the procedure had gone.

“No sex for two weeks,” he said as he pulled off his gloves.

I assured him that wouldn’t be a problem. He’d just stuck needles in my genitals, for one thing and frankly, the image of intercourse with a shofar-shaped penis recalled not so much making love as it did hooking a largemouth bass.

“And let me know if you have any complications,” he added, giving God more ideas and thereby ensuring that I would.

I hobbled my way home, where my beloved wife propped me up in bed and brought me some Advil.

“Two?” she asked.

“Seven.”

By the time the evening came around, I was able to walk a bit, and so we decided to take the edge off by heading over to the corner bar and getting a quick much-needed drink. Everything was going well until, as we left the bar, a terrible pain began shooting through my loins - God’s big closer, his best joke yet - a pain so bad I nearly collapsed to the sidewalk as we tried to get back home. Once inside our apartment, I closed myself in the bathroom, and checked to see what was going on.

“Are you okay?” Orli asked from outside the bathroom door. “Hon, are you okay?”

“No,” I managed.

“What happened?”

I opened the door.

“I need to go to the hospital,” I said, teeth clenched in agony. “Now.”

“What is it?” she asked. “What happened?”

And as I spoke the following words, reader, I could hear God and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, as if they were in the room right behind me, laughing their motherfucking asses off:

“My dick exploded,” I said.

Above: My forefathers.

And I collapsed to the floor.

To be, unfortunately, continued.

Yours in the fetal position,

S.

illustrations by Orli Auslander