Monologue

Music:

Schubert: "Fruglinstraum" from Wintereisse

Franck: Prelude, Fugue, et Variation  Op. 18  

Chopin: Piano Sonata No. 3, Mv. III

Haydn: "Little" Sonata in G minor, Mv. I

Butterworth: "Is My Team Ploughing" from Six Songs from a Shropshire Lad

Content Warning:

Sex/Rape References

Transcript

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Monologue

Most people don’t know this about me but I do actually have a penis. I do. I have a penis. And it is so active. It is so hardworking. It is so susceptible to change. It shrinks, it bulges, it gets bigger, it gets smaller, it softens, it hardens, it rises, it falls. It changes colour, temperature, texture. It seems to be one thing and then it reveals itself to be another. It is tired, sometimes. It gets tired. Other times, I am the one who’s tired while it isn’t at all tired. This is a common occurrence. 

Yesterday, for example, on the train. The train came to a standstill. It hadn’t quite reached the stop, my stop. It stopped before reaching the stop. There was someone on the tracks, you see. A man. So it had to stop. Because of the man. A man. A man with a penis, like me. A man with a penis…like mine. Like mine? Maybe. Maybe not. Penises can vary a lot. The train waited for the man to go away. 

After a while, the train began to move again. The train approached the stop, it came to a standstill in the station. I stood up. My penis stood up. These things can happen so easily. In life, things like this can happen so easily. An erection this is called. I had an erection. I didn’t have one and then, within a single minute- perhaps two minutes- I had one. It is good to have an erection. Sometimes. Not all the time. Sometimes. I think it was because of the woman. There  was a woman on the train. There are often women on trains. I am attracted to women, by the way, all sorts of women, women in their late teens, women in their early twenties, women in their middle twenties, women in their late twenties, women in their thirties, women in their early thirties, women in their late thirties, women in their forties, women in their late fifties, women in their early sixties, women in their early seventies, women in their late eighties, women in their middle eighties, women in their early eighties, women in their late seventies, women of eighty-one, women of eighty-two, women... On trains there are often women, women who fit into all these brackets. Where there are trains there are women, often. It is seldom that one is on a train and there are no women. Where there are trains there are also men. It is seldom that one is on a train and there are no men on it.

Women don’t have penises. So I’ve been told. They must be so sad, they must be so sad that they don’t have penises. Some trans women have penises. Some trans women used to have penises. Some trans women keep their penises because their penises cause them little to no discomfort. So I’ve been told. Some trans women, by which I mean women assigned male at birth who have reassigned their gender in childhood or adolescence or adulthood, experience no dysphoria associated with their penis. So they keep them. Some men wear women’s clothes because wearing women’s clothes makes their penises hard. The women’s clothes are one element, the penis is another element. In the lives of some men, these two elements go very well together and the one would be nothing without the other. Sex is an interesting subject. Sexual identity is an interesting subject. It is a subject which never fails to fascinate human beings. Most human beings. A subject which never ceases to fascinate human beings. Well, lots of human beings. Not all.   

I digress. Personally, I am happy with men’s clothes- the clothes I already have in my possession and make a habit of wearing every day. I am happy, also, with my penis, with having a penis. People don’t know about my penis. People don’t know a lot about my penis, or anything about my penis. My penis has not had much consequence in the world. A penis can have consequence in the world. It can impregnate, give pleasure. The penis doesn’t do the impregnating per se, but it makes impregnation possible. The penis doesn’t impregnate, it’s what shoots out of it that impregnates. But, in any fertilization scenario, there is no insemination without the penis. And so the penis can take credit for fertilization, for impregnation. Even though its sperm, it’s what shoots out of the penis, that actually does the heavy lifting, so to speak. The penis does work hard but it doesn’t work as hard as sperm. Gametes are on another level, when you compare them to genitalia. Gametes are smaller than genitalia. Even micro-genitalia are titanic in size compared to gametes, even compared to the female gamete, the egg, which is gargantuan compared to the sperm. A planet. If the ovum is a planet, the sperm is a moon. Zona pellucida. Cells. More cells. Zygote. Embryo. Cells.        

The penis can give pleasure but it can also have pleasure given to it by hands and holes and feet and mouths and ears and oven gloves and gardening gloves and socks and vices. Of course, it can rape as well. It can take without permission. It can take pleasure without permission. Maybe. Maybe not. Rape is certainly not pleasurable for the victim. Is it pleasurable for the perpetrator? Perhaps. I do not know for sure because I am not a rapist. Just because some men have a compulsion to rape, does that mean that rape is pleasurable for them, that the compulsion is not so much to rape as to experience pleasure but it just so happens that rape is the only avenue of that pleasure? Or is the compulsion to cause pain and injury and terror? Is it pleasurable for a man to cause pain and injury and terror? 

            I find myself moved to think about all these things when I have an erection. I am provoked to thought by erection, thoughts are provoked. All sorts of thoughts. It is thought-provoking to have an erection. And, of course, an erection is provoked by thoughts. It must be. A woman is a separate entity. That woman was a separate entity. She does not cause the erection. Thoughts cause the erection. Thoughts come with the erection, different thoughts, thoughts different from the thoughts which caused the erection. The woman is outside me. I see the woman and the fact that I can see her is a thought I think in my head. I can see you. I see you. You can’t see something, anything, a woman, a fulmar, a bishop, a lamppost, without thinking about it. To see it is to think about it. Thinking and seeing are the same, to a point. I see that she has breasts, nice breasts, and therefore I think the thought, in my head, what nice breasts. That woman has nice breasts. Congratulations on having such a nice pair of breasts. Men don’t have breasts.

So I’ve been told. They are so sad, so sad that they don’t have breasts, that breasts are so far away, so utterly outside their immediate experience. So utterly someone else’s. Some trans women have breasts. Some trans women do not have breasts. Some trans men do not have breasts. They used to have breasts but they don’t have breasts anymore. Some trans men do still have breasts. So I’ve been told. Some men who are not trans enjoy the idea of having women’s breasts. Of course, this particular subsection require a penis as well as breasts. They require them both, so that they can give expression to this desire.

This woman has nice breasts. Nice...breasts…?  

But what is “nice”? “Nice” is an idea we have, a thing we notice. An adjective of which we find some things in our world worthy and others unworthy. But what does it mean? What does it actually mean? To me, when it comes to breasts- other things too- it means, and I’m quoting a previous monologue here, “emphatic while avoiding grotesquerie”. It has to be real. It has to feel real. They have to feel real. The breasts have to feel real. Is it the breasts or the cleavage? The product or the advertisement? Is it what I can see: the clef, the visible section of each globe, the jiggling symmetry of the two globes…? Is it that which I see or is it the associations of that which I see that cause the erection. Signals. The signal is gleaned from looking, by looking, but it isn’t all that much to look at. Hm. Not sure about that. This woman’s breasts are nice. Certainly they are not grotesque.      

But some people, some real people, are grotesque. And some grotesque people are nice, they are nice people. They look grotesque but they are nice. And if they are really nice then there is a possibility that I will fall in love with them. Should I meet them, there is a possibility that I will fall in love with them. And, having fallen in love with them, I will show them that I love them by making love to them. And because they are nice, because they want to be nice, because their way of being nice is to show me their grotesque breasts, their grotesque bodies, it doesn’t matter that they are grotesque. Their grotesque breasts are quite capable of giving me an erection, same as nice breasts. It’s that she shows them, that she wanted to show them. It’s not about what they look like. Or maybe it’s because they look so bad and yet she still wanted to show them that is so nice. Maybe it matters what they look like. And because the woman with the nice breasts was not nice to me, it doesn’t matter that her breasts are nice. Because she is not nice. But before I knew she was not nice, her breasts gave me an erection. Because her breasts are nice. 

Of course, some men do not like women to be nice. Their penises may harden, same as mine, at seeing the nice breasts. Or their penises might remain flaccid until the woman with the nice breasts proves that, though she has nice breasts, she is not a very nice woman. 

And just because cruelty is what makes a man’s penis hard, that doesn’t mean that the man is a victim of cruelty. Or cruel. It may be, simply, that he enjoys a bit of cruelty and he enjoys showing that he enjoys it. It may be that he enjoys revealing this enjoyment to the woman with the nice breasts who may or may not be nice in actuality.   

Don’t even get me started on undergarments, women’s undergarments. Or voices. Women’s voices. 

I have an erection. I am on the train and I have an erection. I am standing very close to this woman. Her nice breasts gave me an erection. No. It was the fact that I saw her nice breasts and I thought about them that gave me an erection. I had to give me an erection, something in me had to give me an erection, something in me had to act. It acted because her breasts were there, her nice breasts, because she was there. She has turned around now and I still have an erection. I am still thinking about her breasts. I can’t see her breasts but I am still thinking about them and I am still hard. My penis, still, is hard. And there is more to think about. Because she has turned around there is more to think about. Stimuli. A response in me to the stimuli. People don’t think of themselves as stimuli. But to me, at that moment, that’s what she is. Stimuli. Her shoulders, her hair, her legs, her bum. This happened. It happened yesterday and it is happening now.

She is so close, so close to my penis, to my erect penis. She is inches from my erect penis and she is quite safe.

I know how to suffer. I have to suffer. Don’t think for a second that I do not suffer. Don’t pretend for a moment that I don’t wish to suffer, that I don’t know how to suffer. I have to suffer because I am involved. Because I have a penis I am involved. It speaks to me in the language of suffering, my penis. It tells me when to suffer, how to suffer. When the suffering becomes too strong, too intense, there is, of course, a quick-fix. My penis loves a quick-fix. I love a quick-fix. It doesn’t matter that I am incapable…that I am incapable…of…it doesn’t matter because I know how to suffer. If I suffer, visibly enough, if I make my suffering visible, it doesn’t matter that I am suffering, that the quick-fix affords only a minimum of relief. I like suffering. And if I suffer enough, then I’m alright. I’m not so strange if I suffer enough. If I suffer enough, if I suffer obviously enough, then it’s obvious that I need it, that I want it, that I don’t have it, that I’m not okay with wanting it and needing it and not having it. They’ll treat me better if I suffer enough because they’ll see that I want it, that I need it. They’ll see that I need and want it and they’ll see that I suffer from needing and wanting it and then they’ll see me. 

The doors open. The woman steps onto the platform. I follow. The platform is deserted. 

I am so stressed, so tense. I am so unrelaxed, so in need of relaxation. 

Time for a quick-fix. Yes, time for a quick-fix. Right here. No, not right here. Station bathroom. Then Wetherspoon’s. Then Clive’s. Then…that place on Foundry Road. What’s it called…Fire, Heaven. No. Fever, that’s it. Fever. Fever because…why is it called that? Fever…? Unwell. Unwell. The dancers are unwell. We are unwell. 

I’ll make my suffering known to them. They’ll treat me better if I suffer, if they see that I suffer. They know already that I suffer, that to live amongst women and see women and become aroused causes me to suffer. It all causes me to suffer. Without all that, there would be no suffering. They see that I suffer, they see that I want it, that I need it. That makes me feel seen. Of course, volume is the problem. Volume of men, volume of men with penises. I’m just one, one of many. If I suffer more than the others then they’ll see me, I’ll take up space. If I take up enough space, physical and mental space, then they’ll think about me. They’ll think about me and they’ll ponder me.

Yesterday and today, so similar, so…dogged by the same concerns. Where was I going? When I saw the woman, when my penis rose and hardened, when I thought of all sorts of things, when I felt the need for a quick-fix. Where was I going? 

Where am I going? 

I am so stressed, so tense. 

Time for a quick-fix.