Chapter 3: Alfred’s Unfortunate Secret

May burst into loud laughter, and June giggled too.

“It’s so small! Like a child.” More giggles.

I felt mortified, knowing those women I could not see were looking at my small penis. With my hands tied and my trousers bunched around my knees, all I could do was squirm a little. The size of it had always been a painful concern for me. I remembered behind a child in the changing room, hiding from other boys’ nasty taunts. I remembered the lonely nights I spent thinking nobody would ever want me. I remembered my fear when someone at work stood beside me at the urinal, the absurd fear that they would look, and talk, and everyone around would know.

“How long is it? It looks so small. Get the, uh, the things.”

“Right,” Phryne said.

There was a soft wheezing sound and I felt something soft, cold on my pubic area: shaving cream. Incautious hands spread it all over my pubes and scrotum. Then came the razor, one of the cheap plastic ones with a small blade that could only nick me a little. But with my sight obscured it was frightening none the less. Strange hands moved and stretched my parts here and there while I was being shaved, and I could only guess at the girls’ gaze on my groin. By now, while still upset, I had grown calmer, withdrawn. Even when they cut away my nightshirt, I barely noticed.

“It’s smaller than the razor handle,” June observed. “Just like a child,” she confirmed once my groin was smooth.

I felt something hard against my short soft shaft. It pressed against the skin of my groin and roughskinned hands pressed my penis along its side. It was a ruler.

“It’s 3 centimeter long flaccid,” Phryne said. “Barely an inch.”

Didn’t I know it.

“Let’s see it hard now,” June commanded. “Come on, Alfred. It can’t take that much blood to inflate your little worm.”

“I can’t.”

When she talked again her mouth was closer.

“Just think of Sophie. If that can’t make you hard I guess you don’t really love her.”

But her words had a strange effect on me, one Sophie would hopefully forgive. It was not of her I thought but of June’s breasts under that fateful T-shirt, and following that train of thought, of May’s heavy bosom, and of Phryne’s brown cleavage in the gala dress she had worn at some social function one boring night. In my mind I handled my tormentor’s breasts with vengeful lust, and I wondered at their shape, at the color and size of their areolas, at how soft or firm they would feel under my hands.

And my penis, my small horrible penis, my secret ridicule, stiffened and rose. I felt it heave and jut out of my groin. Though I could not see it, I knew how incongruous it looked, an absurdly small pink shaft jutting straight up, smooth and narrow. It grew bigger and yet still small, and my foreskin retracted to reveal a small, pale, wet glans. Shame and arousal made my heart jump with every bit. Phryne’s roughskinned hands grabbed and measured it again.

“Seven centimeters. A bit under three inches.”

“Just like Sophie said.”

So Sophie had talked to the Quartet? No! I could weep. She knew how sensitive I was about that. By the time we met I could not imagine any woman looking at my small organ and not laughing and rejecting me, so I had resigned myself to die a virgin. I refused her advances at work for weeks ; instead I stole glances at her perfect body, her legs below the skirt, which she always crossed when she sat at her desk, her round breasts underneath her tight shirt, every little strip of porcelain skin she showed. All the while I thought of running my hands and my mouth all over her. She did not take no for an answer, though. She insisted until we went on a couple chaste, tantalizing dates. On the third one, back at my place, I knew what she wanted but I could not give it to her. I kept drinking and talking, stalling for time. Eventually it was her who kissed me and pulled my pants down and saw my shame. I could not believe my luck when she looked up and smiled gently at me.

And then she’d gone and tell the Quartet.

“Do you know what she told us?” June asked cruelly.