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{cystoscopy} peter tieryas liu When my doctor told me I needed a cystoscopy, my biggest fear wasn’t them sticking a tube in my urethra, or even the possibility of prostate cancer- it was them discovering I had a green-colored dick. Literally. * I’d been dating my girlfriend, Sarah Chao, for almost a year now, and we still hadn’t made love. I was dying to get with her, but I was terrified how she’d react if she saw. * Why was I pissing so often at night? Thirty-year old Esau Zhou, unable to sleep without relieving himself four times a night. * I assumed the greenness was a genetic anomaly. But my grandpa said it was a curse from the days my great-great-grandfather cheated on his wife with a beautiful fox spirit. His jilted wife went to a Taoist monk and had him cursed with discoloration. Their legacy was a verdant knoll of pubic hair. * Sarah and I’s relationship could best be described as an explosive stereoscopic micro-collision set to big and small bangs in varying diatribes we referred to as ‘vocal creative debates.’ Sometimes, I suspected the lack of sex led to a relational deterioration that could only be mended by- well, sex. * She ran red lights all the time, nearly killed us on a thousand occasions. Our fights always had their inception in automobiles and usually ended in the bathroom where her academic papers were splayed on the floor, wet with urine, tangled with her hair. * Her research revolved around Dark Age equipment and torture chambers, her attempts at linking a society’s form of punishment to its moral compass. I met her because she thought I was wearing a yellow shirt and her blind date was supposed to be wearing something yellow. She said, “I’m really weirded out by blind dates so you gotta say something really interesting or I’ll walk away.” I replied, “A poodle next door dances on his hind legs to David Bowie and my old roommate got famous for shitting shit that looks like Thomas Jefferson.” She stared at me and laughed incredulously. “Wanna grab lunch?” * On our third date, she told me about a Buddhist custom where a person could purchase any animal in captivity, then release it into nature, a loan symbolizing a withdrawal on karma. We bought four live fish and launched them into Marina Del Rey. Unfortunately, a flotilla of jellyfish arrived and stung them to death. * Seventh date, she suggested we spend a night plastering fliers on cars describing the ordeal of lab animals. She brought a flask of whiskey to keep us warm. By the thirteenth block, we were drunk. I kissed her and she wanted to go back to my place. * I pretended to be super sensitive, even with her nipple in my mouth. “We shouldn’t rush until the time’s right... Can we wait?” * Next morning, police came by with a ticket for polluting public property. * Her father was a police officer who died from prostate cancer, pissing blood and needles for the last year of his life. This made her extra sensitive to my repeated bathroom excursions. * Prostate came from the Greek word, prostates, which meant ‘protector.’ Was I trying to protect her, or myself, with my secret? * I was trying to make a living cutting hair, but I was biased towards ancient Asian hairstyles that’d gone out of chic about three centuries ago. * Antiquarian, my last salon manager called me when he fired me. I thought of it as ‘imperial.’ * I loved the way the curves on Sarah’s body meandered, oblong hips, a sharp ridge of a belly, bold shoulders followed by meek forearms and a bony wrist. * Could you fall in love with a toe nail? An eyebrow? * How about the way someone said a word? Hers was vegetable, pronounced, vej-eh-teh-ble, rather than vej-teh-ble.. * Failure could sometimes be more of a glue than success. * I locked the bathroom when I used it, gently turned away her advances, never went beyond the preliminaries of romance. She was amused by my ‘cute shyness.’ * The cuteness dissolved after four months. She wanted to know, “Are you one of those guys who has a token girlfriend just to hide his real sexual inclination?” “I love women,” I assured her. “I just believe in romance, I feel people should wait till marriage for sex.” * She appeared genuinely shocked by my answer. * It was bullshit, but she bought it. I bought myself time. * Now in the doctor’s lobby, I was selling time reading a magazine about a kamikaze pilot whose tragedy was he could never die despite strenuous efforts to do so. * I picked up an article about dreams that said people born blind dreamt of smells and touches. There was a little bit about how most people dreamt in monochrome or were missing a few hues. I woke up the night before in pitch black, the only semblance of existence being a sharp beam of red light. Had the world imploded into a single point, a mass vapidity of deadness? No, it was the switch for my TV. * The female nurse asked me to strip. I hesitated. “Don’t worry,” she said. “You have nothing to be embarrassed about.” * The reality was an IV of horror dripping subconsciously through her veins when she saw, the alien façade offending her. * It happened every time. My prom date, my two ex’s, a girl I met at the movies, the latter shrieking at the eerie green and never returning my calls. * The nurse never addressed my penis directly, eyes turned slightly away. Injected lidocaine, a brownish gel, into my urethra. It felt like piss flowing backwards. * The doctor came in with sunglasses on. He had perfect blond hair and chipmunk teeth. He took out the cystoscope, a metal rod that looked like the biggest microscope in the world. Handled me like I was a flat tire on a jalopy. Spread my legs and punctured inwards. * A gasp. Penetration by lens. Metal down my dick. Prodding my bladder like it was play dough. * “You’re fine. Perfect condition. Nothing’s wrong. Bye-bye.” Left without another word. * I felt like a cheap hooker, disgusted for exposing myself to a stranger who didn’t give a shit while lying to Sarah. Called and told her we needed to talk. * Two bottles of wine, and I was still hesitating. Sarah asked, “What’s wrong?” I thought of ding-dong ditching different units in our apartment, her obsession with old Nintendo games, our secret raids into our Jacuzzi even though it closed at midnight. She had a thousand timbre’s in her laughter and said one early morning, “Even if we fight a lot, I still love you.” * I was shaking nervously as I lowered my pants, held my breath. She seemed surprised but there was nothing especially poignant in her reaction. “Everything okay?” she asked. “Don’t you notice anything odd?” I asked back. “You just dropped your pants.” “Anything else?” “If this is your way of coming onto me, it’s pretty weird.” “The color!” I exclaimed. She stared, confused. “Sarah,” I said, impatient. “It’s green.” She stared, puzzled. “It is?” “Can’t you tell?” “You know I’m color-blind, right?” * “What?” * She explained how she couldn’t seen greens and yellows her entire life. “I told you on our first date, remember? Though I did kind of whisper it cause it scared off my ex-boyfriend… What’s it mean if your dick is green?” * I held her in my arms, shook my head, laughed giddily. “It means you’re the girl of my dreams. Literally. Let’s fuck.” |
