Touch Him Where It Hurts

For Daniel.

"It's slow-growing and they caught it early. It's not going to kill me. It's not a big deal."

Oh, but it is a big deal. I can tell. You can't be married to a man for twenty-eight years and not know a thing like that. He'd like to think the important parts of him are his mind and his heart - how could that stupid little sponge of a gland be so important?

Well, it is. For years we've felt the effects of the cancer that's been growing there slowly without our knowing it. I used to worry he was losing interest in my aging body. He so often couldn't stay hard till we were done, and I couldn't get him up again, even with my mouth. He was so frustrated.

Well, now we know. And we know it can be fixed, or at least he's not going to die. But that gland - whatever's left of it after the treatment - isn't going to deliver those erections that came so easily to him back when we were clandestine workplace lovers groping each other in the supply room, and then young parents stealing a weary fuck after the kids were asleep, and even empty-nesters, feeling no urgency about sex but taking for granted that our organs were well matched - my pussy still lubricating and his cock stiffening when we touched each other. When we were in our mid-fifties, we could just reach out in the night, and sex was there for the taking.

Now we'll have to plan for it if we want it. He'll blush when the pretty cashier down at Walgreens rings up his Viagra or Cialis, and maybe we'll get one of those pumps. Whatever we do, sex is going to require planning. It's going to seem like a pain. Some couples our age might just let it go.

And so it seems important that I reach out for him tonight, our first night after the phone call from the urologist, the first of our new life together. I know down deep that it really is a big fucking deal, even if neither of us will say it aloud.

He turns to me for a goodnight kiss, and instead of just kissing him I take his cock in my hand. That's not enough to make it stir, but it's all right. I've given the signal, and he has to respond.

I can feel the hesitation in him. He doubts his body. I can't let his doubt ever be about me - my love for his mind, heart, body, even that damaged little gland that's making this so damned hard to do. I slide down his body and take his cock in my mouth. He sighs, and I feel him stir. I look into his face. He's watching me in the dim light; after all these years he still likes to see my lips close around the head of him and go down, down till he's all inside me. His cock is getting hard - not half as hard or as big as it used to be, but this is the only cock in my life, I don't want another, and it's enough.

I nibble his balls and tease the tender skin beneath. Down below there is dangerous territory, a place I've never gone. But that's where the biopsy needle went in, where the pain was - and hiding inside there is that gland that's changing our lives.

Years ago, I attended a lecture by some physician. I can't remember his name, what the lecture was about, or why I was there. I remember just one thing, a story he told about how, long ago, he'd been one of a little clutch of medical students accompanying a much revered physician on his hospital rounds. They came to the bedside of a diabetic woman who was there to have one of her feet amputated - circulatory problems had made the flesh of that foot necrotic.

The old doctor greeted the woman and explained to the students what was going on with her - her condition and the treatment. And before they moved on, he said to her, "May I examine your foot?"

She gave him permission to do this, and he took her foot in his hands - very gently, because her condition was painful - and examined it briefly, manipulating it a bit. Then he said goodbye to her, and the little group moved on.

The physician giving the lecture told us that, after they were out of earshot, he asked the old doctor why he'd examined the woman's foot. After all, he knew exactly what was going on with her, there was nothing more to learn, and wasn't it all the more pointless since the foot was going to be amputated?

The doctor turned to the little group of students and said to them all, "You must always touch the patient where it hurts."

With his cock in my mouth again, I touch his anus and press lightly with a fingertip. I know it's sore, and I have to be careful. But he stirs again and sighs, and I know I've given him pleasure.

I kiss his balls again, lift his legs up, and kiss him there. I can't see his face, but I feel his arousal, and it stirs in me, too. I wet him with my tongue, draw damp circles around his anus, and kiss him tenderly. After a little while I return to his cock, leaving my finger in his crack, massaging him there, pressing in gently, till he comes in my mouth.

I hold him in my mouth, feeling his erection fade - so quickly! Our love will never again be quite what it was - not the physical part of it, anyway. I can't make him whole, any more than the doctors can.

But this is a thing a wife can do. I can touch him where it hurts.