The Tarses of Sodom

A fourth indelicate frivolity
By Mihangel

Segment 4

My chronicle of the next two terms must be pared down to essentials. In the background, the government's financial cuts were making themselves felt, but nothing was done about curbing excessive bonuses for the fat cats. The prime minister's unpopularity grew by the day.

As for us, we were extremely busy. Once the microfilms had arrived, collating the eight manuscripts and the printed text was time-consuming and tedious. But at least I had the field to myself, for nobody was allowed access to the book until my edition should appear. Prufrock rushed my Gammer dissertation through the press in double-quick time, and it came out in February in the series Christ's College Monographs on English Literature. While far from hitting the bestseller list, it sold modestly well for what it was, and as a first-time author it chuffed me to see my name in the window of Heffers' bookshop. And the freshers' play fell due. It was not a success -- can anything succeed if produced by committee? -- and I will say no more about it.

To the production of Sodom I gave as much thought as I could. I constructed a working script. One of the many difficulties was its diminutive length -- less than eight hundred lines or three quarters of Gammer, which itself was short enough. Incorporating plenty of stage business would help to expand it and dilute the monotony of the language. And it would have to be bulked out, as indeed the stage directions demanded, with music and dancing. Being well up in neither of those arts, I took advice.

I consulted Silvio Minestrone, a music student who, for an Italian, was remarkably well genned up on late seventeenth-century English composers. He suggested John Blow, Henry Purcell, William Croft and Jeremiah Clarke, and promised to dig out suitable instrumental pieces. I was looking hopefully at Edward.

"Who is that?" asked Silvio, following my gaze.

"Edward Finch. A composer. He was here at Christ's. Anything of his that's any use?"

"I do not think so. He wrote only sacred music. That might be thought blasphematical, yes?"

Yes, it might. Edward hung his head, mortified at having written nothing sufficiently profane.

I also consulted Emma, who was into dance, and she promised to organise a troupe of twelve dancers, six of each, who would double as demons and (the men) as striplings. She herself, having read the script, turned down the offer of Cuntigratia, preferring to do homely Fuckadilla. "I'm no queen," she said modestly. "I'm too vulgar."

That prompted me to raise my hang-up. I had no problem whatever using certain words with Rob, or with Hugo and Alex, or even, in a Rochester context, with Prufrock. But I did find it embarrassing to use them with Emma and her likes, in any context.

"I know what you mean," she said. "I find prick and fuck embarrassing with you. Why don't we say tarse and swive? Not in the play, of course -- that's sacrosanct. But cunt . . . well, I don't mind it. And what's the alternative? Vagina's too clinical, pussy's too twee. Let's stick to cunt." So we stuck to cunt, though we all switched to tarse and swive, which made me a little easier.

Rob had returned from vacation with four specimen dildos of outrageous size -- "simple enough to make," he said, "just a matter of whittling" -- and was now thinking about simulated phalluses. One day he staggered into B4 with a big box of . . . what?

"Sphygmomanometers."

"Come again?"

"Blood pressure monitors. You know that medical student . . . Mustafa something?"

"Oh yes. Mustafa Ziz."

"That's the man. I asked him where I could get a sphygmomanometer, and it turns out he works at Addenbrooke's, where they're replacing their manual ones with digital. These were destined for the skip. So I've got the lot. Fifty. Seems a crying shame. There's nothing wrong with them. They'd be welcomed in developing countries."

"But why the heck do you want fifty blood pressure monitors?"

"Aha! Let's try one out on you. Roll up your sleeve."

I'd never had my blood pressure taken, not that I remembered. Round my lower biceps Rob wrapped a fabric strip held in place by velcro, and pumped with a rubber bulb. The strip tightened on me. He looked at a dial connected to the strip by a tube, pressed a button, and looked again.

"190/140. You're on the point of death. Never mind."

"Never mind?" I shouted, indignant and alarmed. "You don't mind if I'm on the point of death?"

"Calm down, Sam, or your blood pressure really will get dangerous. I'm only joking."

Mollified, I subsided. As I did so I happened to notice Finch and Baines. They seemed to be listening intently. They were medical men, after all, and Finch, as a relative of Harvey, would be especially interested in blood. The technology might be beyond them, but the principle . . .

"Why've you got them, then, apart from scaring the daylights out of me?"

"Tarses, Sam. Inflatable tarses." Now it was Edward who seemed to be listening in.

"Oh." Light began to dawn. "Those strip things?"

"Yes. Cuffs, they're called. With inflatable bladders in. Worth trying."

Rob tried. The basic idea was fine. Take the dial off and plug the socket ("we don't need to know your tarse pressure"). Hold the cuff in the right place ("on a corset or something"). Inflate it by pumping with the bulb ("hide that in your pocket"). Deflate it by pressing the release button. The cuffs came in various lengths and widths, to fit any arms from infant to obese. But problems were rapidly apparent. However hard you pumped, the bladder part never got anywhere near the tubular and had a bloody big seam sticking out on either side. And the bladder part was short, suitable only for an mini-tarse, with a long fabric-and-velcro flap waving about at the end.

Rob spent hours fiddling and testing to destruction, but had to admit defeat. The bulb and valve were great. He just needed a more realistic tarse. So he tried condoms. He wanted something comically outsize when both soft and hard. But an empty condom, even the largest, is a feeble and flabby little thing, and when inflated to desirable dimensions it is prone to burst. And how to attach it to the tube from the bulb? A standard condom is 2 inches in diameter, a boy's condom is 1.7 inches, and the tube was less than half an inch. Jubilee clips tore the rubber. No taping or tying or gluing gave a sufficiently strong and airtight join. Many a condom of his, when inflated, blew clean off and zoomed across the room like a demented balloon.

Rob was almost in despair. But help was at hand. We were keeping in close touch with Hugo and Alex. I had sent them scripts, and both had jumped at the parts I offered. Because full-scale rehearsals were impossible before they came to Christ's in the autumn, we were meeting up with them at Bumley over Easter to put them in the picture. And almost at the end of term Hugo, whom we had told of Rob's woes, emailed that he thought he had found just the thing and it would be delivered to Bumley in time.

So we assembled, to be welcomed by Charlotte and (surely) by William. The others were full of the Hambledon play, now back in its normal March slot, which Alex had just produced. He had done Ben Jonson's Volpone, a comedy of greed and lust. Behind the unusual choice lay the usual reason -- shortage of unbroken voices. There were only two female parts, one of which Alex had bravely played himself. He was smallish, young-looking and very beautiful, and his voice, though now long broken, was light and could be highly seductive. "Hugo was Volpone," he said, "and I was Celia. So he had to try to ravish me." He giggled. "Only Lady Would-be was an unbroken voice. Oh, and Castrone the eunuch and Androgyno the hermaphrodite, but they're just bit parts."

It was a shame that Rob and I hadn't been able to see it.

Tarse We got down to business in the great hall. Hugo produced a carton. "I found this," he reported, "on the web, when I was looking for inflatable willies. I hope it's OK." It was garishly labelled 'Feel big in the kitchen with your Long Dong Novelty Apron.' Inside was a thigh-length apron crudely printed with pubic and chest hair. Below a corny joke about a frankfurter was a tarse of such prodigious size that it would have been wholly at home in ancient Greek comedy. Behind it, inside the apron, was a little plastic mouthpiece closed by a stopper, like you get on an air cushion.

"I haven't tried it out yet," he said. "Here goes!" He blew hard into the mouthpiece, inserted the stopper, and put the apron over his head. The tarse drooped down below his knees.

Rob inspected Hugo's monumental member without much enthusiasm. "Nice size," he admitted. "But it isn't stiff, is it? I don't call it an erection till it's at least horizontal. Preferably higher."

Hugo looked down at himself. "Oh dear," he sighed. "I did hope it would be stiffer than that."

"Well . . ." Rob tried to be more positive. "I might be able to help. Mind if I feel you up?"

He knelt down and fiddled with the base of the tarse, poking and flexing it. "That's good. The apron's plasticised fabric. Most of it can be cut off, anyway. All we need is a square around the base. And the tarse is simply plastic. It's made with a downward curve. So if we turn it upside down it should curve upwards more. Take it off, Hugo, and hold it the other way up, as tight as you can against your groin."

Hugo obeyed. The tarse still did not reach the horizontal. "If it's upside down," I asked, "why isn't it vertical now?"

"The bending moment," Rob replied patiently but, to me, enigmatically. "Force times distance. This tarse doesn't weigh much, so the force is quite small. But the distance is huge, so it droops. Look, the bottom of the base is being pushed in. If I sewed it to something soft like briefs it'd still be pushed in. We need something hard to attach it to." Alex giggled. "Not that sort of hard, you clot . . . I know! A cricket box. Like Hugo's fig leaf. Alex, have you got your box here?"

"Yes. It isn't a tie-on one, though. It's a jockstrap one." He meant a protector that slipped into a jockstrap like a joey into a kangaroo's pouch.

"Good. Could you fetch it, please? Better still, put it on?"

Alex went, and we heard drawers being slammed. Meanwhile Rob cut most of the apron away, leaving only a square of fabric around the base of the tarse. He searched in his bag. "Good thing I brought some sphygmomanometer parts. Let's see how they fit." He pushed the end of a tube into the air hole behind the tarse. "Oh, brilliant! Made to measure! I think this is going to work!" He pumped and released, and the tarse obediently rose and fell. Satisfied, he pulled out the tube, reinflated the tarse, and restoppered it.

There was a yelp from somewhere outside, and in came Alex, grinning like an ape and wearing nothing at all except a flesh-coloured jockstrap. The yelp must have come from Charlotte on seeing her son virtually naked. Rob knelt in front of him and held the fabric square against the box. With a firm seating behind it, the tarse now stood above the horizontal. "That's better," he said. "Now we want a wedge of some sort to get it higher still."

He contemplated the jockstrap, thinking. We could only watch, in awe at his powers of invention. He slid the box out of the pouch. It had a number of small holes in it for ventilation. "Good," he said. "Alex, could you rustle up a chunk of expanded polystyrene? You know, the stuff they use for packaging?"

Alex considered. "Mum's just got a new microwave. So the packaging's probably still around." He scampered out, there was another yelp, and back he came with a chunk of polystyrene.

"Just what the doctor ordered." Rob restored the box to the pouch, found a craft knife, and dextrously pared away at the chunk, with frequent fittings against the box and the fabric square. Finally he was done. He put the tube back in the hole and with two fingers held everything in place.

"There.The wedge gives enough room for the tube to curve down behind and come out at the bottom."

But the tarse was now dangling flaccid and flat. "Not very lifelike," he said. He pumped a little and the tarse, though still dangling, filled out. It was much more lifelike now, except for its size.

He pumped more and the tarse rose until it was pointing up at forty-five degrees, its tip level with Alex's tits. "Probably the best we can do. It'd be nice to have some balls, but they'd make life just too complicated. Right, the next thing's to sew it all together. Through the lot -- fabric, polystyrene, front of pouch, box, back of pouch. I should have a bodkin and thread in my kit. Jockstrap off, please."

Alex pulled it off with no embarrassment whatever and handed it over. "Just going to the loo," he said. Shamelessly he went out, naked as the day that he was born, and there was a louder yelp. Rob stitched. Alex came back.

"That'll have to do," said Rob after a while. "It's a bit of a botch-up, but it's only temporary. I'll dismantle it soon. You're going to need the box next term if you value your bollocks."

Alex put it on, and Rob fed the tube under the waistband so that the bulb sat just above it on the left-hand side. "Pump to inflate. Press that button below the bulb to deflate. Go on, try it."

Alex experimented. The tarse stood proudly high.

"Sam," asked Rob, "what'll the blokes be wearing? Trousers, I mean."

"Knee-breeches. Quite baggy."

"OK. But they must have a pocket for the bulb, with a hole in for the tube to go through. Baggier the better for that -- easier to pump without people seeing you pumping. And they must have a slit at the front for the tarse to come out of. Not buttoned up. Can't waste time fiddling with buttons when you need to whip your tarse out fast. And certainly no zip -- it might tear the tarse. We don't have any knee-breeches here, do we? Hmmm, what's the next-best thing to try with? Any chance of pyjama trousers, Alex? The old-fashioned sort with a cord and a piss-slit?"

Alex looked dubious. "Mine are elasticated," he said. "No slit. Anyway, I haven't worn them since . . ." He looked sideways at Hugo. "But I'll ask Mum." His tarse waved wildly as he left.

This time there was a positive shriek as Charlotte beheld her son not only rampant but suddenly and grotesquely grown. We heard murmurs of conversation and the thud of Alex running upstairs. He came back with a pair of old striped pyjama trousers and put them on. His tarse rose majestically from the slit. Rob tied threads around the legs above the knees to simulate breeches, though they were hardly baggy. There being no pockets, he left the bulb where it was. It quickly became obvious that, to be packed away inside the slit, the monstrous tarse had to be folded up. And it could not be folded if it contained any significant amount of air.

"So that's four states of tarse," Rob concluded. "In and flat, out and flat, out and soft, and out and hard. It's going to take a lot of practice to work slickly."

None the less, it was brilliant progress. Rob was a genius. But he was to be tested further.

"Pricket," Alex pointed out, "has to come. When Cunticula wanks him. How do I do that?"

Rob put his thinking cap on again, but not for long. "That's easy. Can we have a jug of water?" Alex's tarse being currently out of sight, there was no shriek. Rob searched his bag for another tube and unscrewed the bulb. When Alex returned, he inflated the tarse, taped the tube along its right side, its tip opposite the tarse tip, and tucked the other end under the waistband on the right.

"A bit clumsy, but the finished product'll be neater. Alex, as long as your tarse is out, you'll have to make sure the audience only ever sees your left side. Then they won't see this tube."

He filled the bulb with water and screwed it on. "This'll be in your other pocket. To come, just squeeze. Do it in the fireplace to save the carpet. We might use milk on the day."

Alex stepped into the huge fireplace. The fire was not lit and the inglecock was viewing him with interest. He squeezed, and a dribble of water dripped out. "Feeble!"

"Silly of me," Rob confessed. "I forgot that the tube's full of air. It needs priming." He recharged the bulb, replaced it, and carefully trickled water from the jug into the outer end of the tube. "We'll have a little bung to keep the water in, and Cunticula can pull it out when the time comes. When Pricket comes. Try again."

This time Alex achieved a seriously massive ejaculation which shot clean across the fireplace. The inglecock looked impressed. "Brilliant!" Alex declared. "The only trouble is, my hard-on's sagged. It's barely horizontal now."

"That's the weight of the new tube," Rob diagnosed. "Careful!" he added sharply.

But too late. Alex, trying to remedy the sag, was pumping his air bulb, and with a loud pop his tarse burst.

"Oh shit! Sorry." Sheepishly Alex took the jockstrap off and handed it over. The tarse had split at the end.

"Might be repairable," said Rob, "if I halve the length and manage to reseal it. Actually it wouldn't be a bad thing if you had a smaller one. You're only a boy, after all."

Alex pouted, as if his virility was under challenge; though in real life, as we could see with our own eyes, he had nothing to be ashamed of.

"In the play, Alex, in the play," Rob added soothingly. "You're only fourteen, and Swivia says you've got a neat one. Which surely means small and compact. And even at half-length you'll easily outstrip any real adult. Better still, a half-length tube won't sag nearly so much. Less weight to pull it down. Half-length too for the striplings, do you think?" he asked me.

"No," I said. "They don't need tarses, really. Anyway they're doubling with the dancers, who've got to be full-size. So has Virtuoso. After all, his tarse is bigger than his dildos. And he has to come as well. But I don't think it matters if he sags a bit."

"So how many jockstraps do we need?" Hugo asked. "And how many more aprons?"

I calculated. "Fifteen jockstraps and boxes. Fourteen more aprons. But we ought to have spares, oughtn't we? Things are bound to go wrong, like with Hugo's C-string."

"OK," said Hugo. "Let's play safe. I'll get five spares of each. So that's twenty jockstraps and nineteen more aprons. I'll send them on to you, Rob. This is all on me."

Next day I raised another matter which had been bothering me. Sodom was a satire on the lechery of Charles II's court. Anyone reading it at the time would instantly recognise the scenario and the real identity of the characters, most notably Charles himself. Not so now, three hundred-odd years on. The New York production of 1999 had therefore -- so the web told me -- introduced a modern slant by pointing to Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. But what we needed was a new epilogue, spoken by Bolloximian, to draw a parallel with present-day Britain. I had the germ of an idea, which I tried out on the others. They were enthusiastic. So I started in on a draft. It went through many stages before reaching its final form.

For the rest of our stay at Bumley we rehearsed the scenes where Pockenello and Pricket appear. It might be early days, but time would be short in the autumn.

The summer term sped by. Other preoccupations had to wait, for exams loomed. Only when they were over could initial rehearsals begin. So far so good, but there was still far to go. One of the projects held up was my edition of Sodom. Prufrock hoped to publish it before the performance in November, but as things stood that wasn't going to happen. I could make little progress at home over the long vacation, out of reach of the college and university libraries. I put the problem to Prufrock before he disappeared to Stratford for the season. His solution was typical. "Stay here, Sam, for as long as you need. I will arrange for you to use your room free of charge."

So I stayed. No need for a vacation job. My honorarium had barely been touched. And because the room was free to me it was free to Rob, who joined me. No undergraduates being up, and only a few postgraduates and Fellows, it was blissfully peaceful. We worked on nothing but Sodom -- non-stop sodomy, we called it -- me on the text, Rob on his production line for tarses and dildos.

Two parcels had long since arrived. One contained twenty jockstraps and boxes, the purchase of which, Hugo gleefully reported, had raised an eyebrow or two in the Hambledon School Shop. The other had nineteen Long Dong aprons to add to the one we already had.

"These are shoddy," Rob complained as he opened yet another carton. "Made in China, of course. Just imagine a factory-full of girls mass-producing these things for the decadent west. What the hell do they think of us? Not surprising they're shoddy."

He assembled new sets of tarses. He halved the length of Alex's, and with plastic solvent and thread he moulded the new end to resemble an uncircumcised foreskin. He whittled more dildos. By mid-August our extensive wardrobe of genitals was complete, and he donated the remaining sphygmomanometers to Médécins sans Frontières. By now they are doubtless doing yeoman service in Ouagadougou. Or somewhere.

One day about this time I was frustratedly trying to decipher the last of the manuscripts, which was in the awful handwriting of an eighteenth-century German who did not fully understand the English he was transcribing. I was growing more and more pissed off.

"Bugger it!" I cried. "Can't we take a holiday? Celebrate something? Drink quite a lot of malt?"

"Wouldn't say no," said Rob. "But celebrate what?"

Emphatically not the government, whose popularity had reached rock-bottom. In Cambridge, as everywhere else, David Cameron's name was mud.

"Ummm. Hey! What's the date? Don't exam results come out today?"

They did. We went down to the Senate House, on whose railings the lists were posted, and found we had both got Firsts. So we did take a holiday, and did drink quite a lot of celebratory malt.

"Rob," I said lazily that evening, looking at the tools of his trade that lay abandoned on the table. It had never crossed my mind to ask him the question before. "How did you get into this game? All your bright ideas, I mean. Being so good with your hands."

"Original sin, I suppose. I reckon it's something you're born with. But I only really discovered it when I was about eleven. At prep school." He cradled his glass, smiling reminiscently. "There was a new teacher. Quite young. A total pain in the arse. We called him Merv the Perv because he was always perving on us in the changing room. And when he was teaching he used to sit beside his desk -- not behind it -- leaning back, hands behind his head, legs out, displaying everything he'd got." Rob demonstrated. "Trousers thin and tight, no underpants, every detail of his cock showing through. We thought it was huge. And revolting. Like him.

"Then one day I had this idea. I got a mate to help who had a water pistol, and we skipped cricket to set things up. He sat in Merv's chair, leaning back, like Merv. Then I taped the pistol to the underside of Merv's desk. The range was pretty short, but it took a lot of experimenting to get the aim right, and discover the force needed to pull the trigger properly. I just had to hope Merv wouldn't move the chair. I'd been using plain water so far, but then I diluted some golden syrup to make it nice and runny and loaded the pistol with that. It was summer, you see, and there were loads of wasps around. I'd caught four in a matchbox, and I taped it under the desk too, upside down. All it needed then was a couple of strong threads, one from the trigger, the other from the drawer of the matchbox, leading to the front row where I always sat. And that was it . . . well, once my mate had changed his shorts which were dripping wet.

"And it worked perfectly. Merv didn't move the chair, thank God. He leant back as usual, and once he was happily babbling away I pulled the trigger thread, and the squirt landed on his cock. A nice big sticky patch. And he didn't even notice. So I pulled the matchbox thread and the wasps buzzed out and homed straight in on the patch. He did notice them." Rob's face was a picture of delight. "He tried to swat them. And one of them stung him. Maybe more than one. And he screeched and leapt a foot in the air and dashed out clutching his jewels. We were in hysterics, of course, and after a bit the headmaster looked in to see what the shindig was about, and he was seriously dischuffed that Merv had abandoned us.

"Well, later that day I spotted Merv and the headmaster searching the room, even under the desk. The headmaster was absolutely steaming, and Merv was pleading with him. I'd had plenty of time to remove the evidence, you see . . . And we never saw Merv again."

God, I loved Rob! Alongside his inventiveness, my geeky researches paled into insignificance.

Next day, back to our labours. Rob's thoughts now turned to stage design. Portable items like thrones, chairs and couches were easily organised. But with the small stage and the many changes of scene, he argued, traditional background scenery was not on. We agreed instead to project images onto the backdrop. Rob therefore found or took photographs of gardens and groves and palatial interiors, and photoshopped into them the more unusual items demanded by the stage directions. Prick-shaped trees were not difficult. For the woman standing on her head and pissing upright he emailed Emma, who got a chum to photograph her (from behind -- we did have rules of decency to obey) while she pissed naked. He then inverted her digitally. Having tried the images out in the theatre, we were more than satisfied.

In mid-September my dissertation was completed and handed over to Prufrock, now back from his orgy of bardolatry. Our malt having run out, I returned for a token period to my grumbling parents. And then the new term began.

It started with two remarkable events. As we were settling ourselves into B4 and saying hullo to Finch and Baines and Edward, Hugo and Alex burst in, heavily laden. They bore another noble gift from Pidley Hall, exactly the same as last year. That evening we cracked a couple of bottles. Hugo, it emerged, was a Highland man like me, while Alex went for TCP.

And next day the box office opened, both online and in person. Word had gone round, and the demand for Sodom was instant and overwhelming. They tried to give priority first to Christ's and then to Cambridge, but it was hopeless. Within a few hours the show was sold out. Tickets, they reported, became gold dust, and were snapped up on eBay at outrageous prices.

Sodom, though meant to be sandwiched between other commitments, threatened to take over. Much time was spent on tarse drill for the men. And drill it was. We did it in the privacy of B4, under the aloof eye of Finch and Baines and the enthusiastic eye of Edward. We stood or sat in a circle wearing our knee-breeches. In the middle was Rob, tyrannical as any sergeant major.

"Ready? Tarses out!" Fifteen right hands fumbled into fifteen slits to pull out fifteen flat tarses. Fifteen left hands pumped. "Bill! They'll see your hand pumping from a mile away. Keep it discreet!"

"Ready? Tarses up! . . . Brian, oh Brian! Better get some Viagra, hadn't you?"

And so on, an hour at a stretch, evenings on end.

There was swive drill for the relevant couples. "Zoe! Keep that skirt down! This is supposed to be clean family entertainment."

There was dildo drill for the ladies concerned. "Sophie, you're like a wet Wednesday in Wigan. Look as if you're enjoying it!"

There was wank drill, which involved only two couples. "Helen dear, you pulled out Alex's bung too soon. He's dripping. Actually, on second thoughts, that's no bad thing."

There was dulcimer drill -- really xylophone drill because nobody wanted to lend us dulcimers. Two of the dancers had small wooden pads taped to the ends of their inflated tarses, with which they hammered out catchy tunes. Everyone being paralytic with laughter, these drills took a long time. But the jew's harps simply could not be accommodated within our guidelines of clean family entertainment, and had to be dropped.

Accompanying all this was a material problem. The tarses, as Rob had remarked, were shoddy. Many, it turned out, leaked, whether gradually or dramatically. He spent hours mending them. He tried a tip-welder, but the plastic proved too thin. The only answer was to cement patches on. He felt, he complained, like a dogsbody in a bike shop, endlessly mending inner tubes. Even so, right to the bitter end, no tarse could be considered wholly reliable. A good thing we had spares.

At the same time Emma was guiding the dancers through their exotic and erotic movements. Full rehearsals finally pulled the whole thing together. It was hard work for all, but it paid off. Nobody could ever make Sodom subtle, but at least we made it slick.

Ten days before the show my edition was published. Unlike Gammer, it was an instant hit. Queues snaked out of Heffers' and far down Trinity Street. Police had to be called to quell the near-riots when stocks ran out, and a large reprint was rushed through the press. Prufrock was over the moon. So was the Master, because ninety-five per cent of the profits went to Christ's. Only five per cent came to me, but that was plenty good enough.

Emma surveyed the packed auditorium. Extra stewards had been enrolled to deter gatecrashers, but Edward had sneaked in, agog with excitement at the culmination of his loyal labours, and he was more than welcome. Finch and Baines, however, stayed away. This was not their scene.

By Heaven! she said approvingly. A noble audience here to day!
Well, Sirs, you're come to see this bawdy play,
And faith, it is debauchery complete,
The very name of it made you mad to see it;
I hope it will please you well. By Jove, I think
You all love bawdy things as whores love chink.
I do presume there are no women here -
'Tis too debauched for their fair sex, I fear,
And sure they'll not in petticoats appear.
And yet, I am informed, here's many a lass
Come for to ease the itching of her arse . . .

They loved the prologues. Now into the play proper . . . To the blast of a trumpet fanfare the drop went up to reveal the antechamber hung round with Aretine's postures. I was enthroned in state, my minions behind me, my legs apart, my colossal tarse dangling. It raised a colossal laugh.

Thus in the zenith of my lust I reign,
I eat to swive, and swive to eat again.
Let other monarchs who their sceptres bear,
To keep their subjects less in love than fear,
Be slaves to crowns -- my nation shall be free,
My pintle only shall my sceptre be.

I stood up. My tarse went stiff. I cradled it sceptre-like in the crook of my arm. The roof almost lifted.

So we progressed, and so we neared the end. Smoke billowed from dry ice. The demons howled their warning. I yelled my defiance,

Let heaven descend, and set the world on fire!

I flung my arm round Hugo, who was Pockenello, and leered Prufrockily at him. He leered back.

We to some darker cavern will retire.

Lovingly I grasped his tarse and lovingly he grasped mine.

There on thy buggered arse I will expire.

Even as I thundered out the scornful line I felt my tarse deflate. Hugo had squeezed it too hard. He had the presence of mind to press his own release button. Together, amid demoniac shrieks and ghastly groans and a flickering red glare, we went flaccid to hell.

The drop came down on us. The noise and the glare cut out. In front of the drop, Emma minced into a spotlight for her epilogue. While Hugo collapsed in silent hysterics, I raced into the wings. Rob was already holding out a spare tarse. Shoes off. Breeches off. Jockstrap off. The ladies might be ogling me, but what the hell. New jockstrap on. Breeches on. Feed bulb up into pocket. Pull tarse out through slit. Inflate. Shoes on. Sidle on-stage, into the unlit corner. Just in time. Emma had almost finished.

Naked, she was saying, we lie to entertain your tarses,
If you will but forsake men's beastly arses.
We welcome sodomites made up of sperm
And full of lust, vacation time and term.

Massive applause. Her spotlight faded. On the drop was projected a huge portrait of Rochester. Beside it was an image of the title page. My spotlight came on. The applause died down. I filled my lungs. The moment of truth had arrived for my modern take on Sodom's message.

Now Sirs -- and Ladies, though as we surmise
The only ladies here are in disguise --

Much laughter.

If to stale Tory principles you're wedded
With rigid views on who should not be bedded,

I pointed to the title page.

Before you use this book to wipe your arse
Pray heed the moral of its tragic farce.

Uproarious laughter.

Greedy excess offends. Restraint succeeds.
Allow to all according to their needs.

I gestured at the portrait.

Ape not our author, with his amours free
And slaughtered by the pox at thirty-three.
Ape not our rulers, who are apt to laugh
And turn a blind eye to the other half.

Slight puzzlement.

What, pray, on even the highest throne doth sit?
An arse . . . And arses are inclined to shit.

Hilarity.

How do they spray their selfish excrement?
By royal decree or act of parliament.
A king or a prime minister who aspires
To skew the law to match his own desires,
Whether for love of boys or love of bankers
And landed gentry and big-business wankers;

At that point I was visited by a sudden and ghastly qualm. Hugo's parents were in the audience. They were landed gentry. For all I knew they were big-business wankers too. I had simply failed to make the connection. Had I put my foot in the proverbial? Yet Hugo had heard my spiel many a time and had never turned a hair. Was he just being decent? All this takes far longer to read than it took to think. But I was so perturbed that I almost dried. Luckily the audience was laughing fit to bust, and by making a wanking motion I prolonged the laughter long enough to recover my poise.

Who transmits clap, or trebles student fees
And drowns the disadvantaged when he pees;

God, they were at it again, non-stop. To over-ride the din I had to shout the next couplet.

Who comes hard up a bum with hungry tarse,
Or comes hard down upon the working class;

I had to raise my voice still more.

Whether he buggers boys or the welfare state;
Both shall fall victim to the selfsame fate.

My replacement tarse deflated. Resignation, followed instantly by inspiration. I inserted an impromptu couplet.

Just as one leader lost his last erection,
So shall another lose his next election.

A deep breath for the final lines, which I bellowed.

The flames which frizzle Bolloximian
As surely beckon Bollox-Cameron.

They were on their feet, waving, whistling, yelling like football hooligans. I made a little bow and staggered off-stage, straight into Hugo who was waiting for the curtain call.

"Hugo!" I grabbed him and whispered fiercely in his ear. "Your parents . . . landed gentry . . . Have I swived it up?"

He looked at me curiously. "No! Christ, no! They'll be cheering as madly as everyone else" -- he jerked his head towards the pandemonium in front. "Mum and Dad always vote Labour. They've just given the Labour Party half a million quid. They believe in redistributing wealth. Hadn't you noticed?"

The dancers danced on for their bows, in pretty parade. The ladies skipped on, ultra-décolleté. The men marched on, tarses proudly erect. I followed, limp. And limp with relief.

"Phew!" Alex sank back on the sofa. The four of us had finally extricated ourselves from the mayhem and from Prufrock and the Master and the Spencers, who were delirious with delight. We had taken refuge in the calm of B4 and the balm of redistributed wealth. We had raised our glasses to Edward in the corner, without whom none of this would have happened, and his eyes had twinkled.

"I'm glad that's over," said Alex. "I know it's only farce. And your epilogue, Sam, was spot-on. But the whole thing leaves a nasty taste in the mouth." He took a sip of TCP to wash it away. "Rochester. Charles. Bolloximian. Cameron. Not one of them people you'd want to know."

He sighed deeply. "Much better the way those guys did it." He nodded at Finch and Baines. "Gentle. Enduring. Unostentatious. Like Sam and Rob. Like us."

He reached for Hugo's hand, but his eye stayed on the portraits. "They grow on you," he said. "Don't they?"

Yes, they did grow on you. And Alex was growing up. But weren't we all?

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We support Ukraine — Мы поддерживаем Украину — Ми підтримуємо Україну

We support Ukraine — Мы поддерживаем Украину — Ми підтримуємо Україну

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