ER (Stories Never to be Told)

I never really meant to hurt anyone, honestly. I was just a simple man, or maybe I should rather say; even though it was very complicated inside my head, I kept it to myself and lived a quiet life with my disability.

A disability! A disability was the easiest way I could think of it. You know, now it seems so easy to say I have a disability, but then, it was different. I have learnt to see it as if I was born with one of my limbs missing. The funny thing is that, I may have even preferred that to being … disabled down there.

Growing up, I lived through the times and saw people being made fun of because “they weeded on Tuesdays”. In our culture, Tuesdays were reserved as a day of rest for the gods and river spirits, so the saying was a cynical mockery of those whose penises do not live up to expectation. I also joined in the laughter, when Agya Koo Nkrumah was teased about forever swinging low and never rising to manly heights. Little did I know that I was in the same limp noodle soup.

In my early secondary school days, my roommates began suspecting that there was something amiss with my mister. This was because the tower of my waist did not “erect” even when we were watching the hottest porn.
My friends would moan with lust, and with groans, tug at their penises and scrotums. Some would even messily ejaculate if the porn actors were particularly intense in their fuckery, and I often had to dodge spewing splatters of adolescence. But apart from that disgust, I felt nothing else no matter how hard I wanted to.

But I didn’t think it was a cause for alarm, until one day, Sibi started:
“Hey Punch, are you sure you’re alright down there? Kof, Runner, Casti, Rumour and I can’t even stop wanking but I’ve never even seen you get a wet dream.” All of them turned to look at me and agreed, bringing the slow smile on my face to a full stop.

And so my woes began. I was only sixteen. I would go to the bathroom and pull on my penis, but no! Not even a throb, not even a pulse; it remained limp and was called into service only when I had to urinate. I bought aphrodisiacs, both the African and pharmaceutical, enough to sedate an elephant, but still, nothing happened. Incensed, I went to the hospital, only to be told I was clinically impotent and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

At first, I wanted to kill myself. Better not to live than to be dead, I thought … the beautiful girls I’d dreamt of seducing when I become “someone”… that became a fantasy twice-removed. I’d think of the friends who questioned my ability even before I became aware that I was not all there. But mostly, I thought of Agya Koo Nkrumah and how he had taken the soft way out; of how he turned to poison, out of frustration, and killed himself. I wondered what ran through his mind as he took his last sips…to find peace because he couldn’t find pleasure?

Then I went back to school to look for the one friend I could confide in, Kof. I was lucky I did not tell him upfront. I just asked him what he thought of impotence. He just blurted “My paddy, if someone say sontin like that for yua head top, is better you kill am o. That be de worst tin wey fii happen to a man. I tink I go kill masef if I get that problem”.

All the self-castigating words I used to lash myself with, rushed back into my miserable heart, flooded by fear and low self-esteem. That night, I silently cried myself to a lonesome sleep, because I realised there was really no one to talk to in that school.

I went home and spoke to my father about it. He sent me to another hospital to check. They told him it was a hopeless situation since they could find no cause for my situation. So he too advised me not to tell anyone, and transfered me to another school.

At my new school, a mixed school, I was a day student living alone in a hostel. I could touch my huge but lifeless penis in several different ways; soft touches, firm strokes, stinging flicks … all I got were bruises. I wept every time, until it dawned on me that I had to be “hard in my mind” at least; to be comfortable, and to steer clear of women. And so I did and took to studying medicine, thinking I could eventually stumble on something.

I completed my tertiary education at home, and went to the United States to work on specializing in urology. It was there that I found out I could get pleasure by being a bottom for another man. When I tried it, my anal tear was so bad and so memorably painful, that I decided I would discard sexual activities entirely. A friend told me it was because I did not play around my ring enough before the penetration, and the brute who had his way with me was so stupid he did not use lube. But nothing could change my mind.
I became a urologist and came back to Ghana to work in one of the biggest hospitals. It was then that my woes truly started.
Women were throwing themselves at me. Even though I tried to be polite, some of them pushed so hard that it became a bother. One of such women was Afi. After a night out, she insisted on going home with me. I had served her drinks of her choice and drank with her, but then at the least excuse, she took off all her clothes. Of course, I quickly went in “to get something” (a last appeal to pills and concoctions hastily gulped and thickly smeared) but as soon as I came out, she pounced on me like a rabid bitch. (I’m sorry your Lordship, I will mind my words) I don’t know how my penis ended up in her mouth, but there it was. And unfortunately, so it remained: try as she might, the stupid thing would not wake up for all her beautiful sexy smiles around the useless flesh in her mouth.

It was then that it dawned on her, like a bleak sunrise on a rainy day: “Doc, you’re impotent. There is absolutely no life in this junk you have for a penis”. She laughed and clapped and chuckled and sneered. I knew she was going to tell everyone. Once again, I would be mocked, scorned and jeered.

It was a hasty decision but hot thoughts quickly run to cold steel. I went in to the kitchen as if blunted by shame but I came out with a sharp knife and used it for what my mister wouldn’t do: I stabbed and stabbed while I sobbed and sobbed. When she whimpered and moaned and finally sighed, I could pretend to myself for a short while that I had finally satisfied a woman. It was a cold comfort that rapidly turned to dread. I was still limp but here was a body stiffening with rigor mortis.

I waited till midnight and took what was left of her to another town and dumped it in a quarry pit somewhere there. But what I did not know was that she had come out with two friends who had got tired and left earlier.
When days turned into a week without them hearing from her, the friends, two women, Akweley and Koyi, came to confront me at home. During the scene in my living room, they saw some keyholder which they claimed was hers, and I knew they’d make a big deal out of it. So I asked Koyi to go to my bedroom and check if she was there, and locked her in. For the medically trained man that I was, with a surfeit of undepleted energy, it was easy to corner Akweley and snap her neck. For Koyi she gave up early and I was able to hold her from behind, almost lovingly as I forcibly slipped poison pills into her mouth. Later, I discarded their bodies at separate places.

It was as if by magic, that all of them were found in one day. Afi was decomposing. I was in my house when a man showed up. He said his girlfriend was Koyi and she had told him she was suspicious of me, and he knew she was coming to me. Well, I couldn’t risk leaving a trace, for fear of being arrested for murder and even worse ….the whole world knowing of my situation. An irate man is nowhere the same as a desperate frightened woman, but I was only impotent, not weak. So after a fierce fight, he also lay lifeless under me. It was when I was going to dispose of his body that I was spotted by a police night patrol …

I know I’m in the wrong, but I just wanted to live as a human being, not as a dead-end thing which cannot procreate. Many have expired through my cruelty, but the world is a cruel place and has shown no mercy to me and others like me.
I’d rather be a cripple with my manhood intact. I wish I were an imbecile, with my penis functional… I wish I were mad, with my manhood intact! I just wish I were not born, because my manhood, my spiritual livelihood, is useless.

I will accept the court’s sentence, no matter what it may be. I wish for a death sentence, because I can’t stand the taunts of the world where my erectile dysfunction is concerned. I’d rather not live than be a living dead. Judas hangs out below my navel and he betrayed me without a kiss, and forced me to turn Harold, killing off every one who wanted to usurp my dignity.
Amoafowaa Sefa Cecilia © May, 2021. Edited and shaped by Koku Dotse.