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Maybe psychoanalysis is what I need. I have horrible dreams, dreams that don’t feel like dreams. Not all that long ago I woke up from a particularly alarming one, one that seemed as if it’d never end. In my dream, I was no longer a man, or so I really believed. I decided I had had enough and went to a doctor to get my penis removed, only to mourn its absence shortly afterward, hiding the fact of the procedure from my weightless dream friends. It was as if those I had met in my university days were amalgamated with my big city friends, doubling the potential humiliation should my regretful secret be revealed.

I was trying to figure out how to get my dear old penis back, speaking with a man over the phone, learning that they’d likely take someone else’s freshly chopped, still warm piece and Frankenstein it back onto my body. You see, by this time, my own dick would’ve been too cold and too far gone. It may have been the same nebulous caller who made the point that now I could no longer photograph my dick, not to mention that the infection around the surgical staples would become red and inflamed, and thus, unsightly. It was a horrific sight to look down and imagine, the handset still pressed to my ear. I was not pleased with the seeming certainty that I could have a penis back but it would not be my old one, and I was even less so pleased with the very real possibility that I could be trapped with someone else’s smaller, alien part.

There was a growing, burning discomfort between my legs: the sensation of having to pee, hours after one should’ve already relieved oneself. But I wasn’t pissing, I was holding it. This was because, and made all the more distressing by, the ongoing birthday party for one of my amalgamated dream friends, a hyper-feminine presenting young woman with coquettish, childlike inclinations. The celebration was building toward a movie night in the living room, the living room that had a simultaneous feeling of the first in a long line of bedrooms from my childhood. One, with the denim walls, that no longer exists. I have to pee so bad, but now, I’m actively avoiding it. How would I pee out of a dickless urethra? I couldn’t bear the sight of that.

The pleasantness of the evening only made me all the more acutely aware of the burden, the burden of constant tears that I could not determine whether were welling up inside me or pouring down my face. The disc for movie night could not be found anywhere and to keep myself distracted and agreeable to the maintenance of my charade, I searched the nearest bookshelf for the missing movie. I saved the day when I found it tucked away on a hidden stack behind the titles aligned neatly on display: a slim pink case with adorable baby blue bubble letters and cartoon characters, like those cute chimeric avatars that should really only be of interest to preteens. Everyone is slowly convening in the amalgamated dream living room. I swing around the dining table bench, angling it toward the TV, hoping that two particular women across the room sit on either side of me; I couldn’t really say who. I worry it’ll be two male partygoers nearby that take their places instead.

Before I can find out, I’m awake, immediately grabbing my crotch to make sure I haven’t lost anything for real. I have to pee really fucking badly.