CHAPTER 21
It was hot. That sounds really trite, and utterly obvious, but it was almost beyond belief. Almost as soon as we left the air-conditioning, it was as if someone had sprayed me with water in the most embarrassing places possible.

And it stank, not of sewage, but of car and lorry and odd buzzy moped things, and we were still miles from the city itself.

I was in some sort of conscious state after the flight, but it wasn’t very coherent, and I was grateful that Eric was handling everything. There had been no baggage or passport problems, and I realised that as an audax rider he was used to stupidly long periods without sleep. I had worked shifts most of my life, but they were limited in length and separated by periods when I actually got to bed. We bundled ourselves onto a shuttle bus, and I remember a train, and then there was an odd elevated version of the inter-terminal shuttle at Gatwick, and finally, finally, there was an hotel and a room.

It was called the Park Plaza, which disappointed me, as I had been expecting something more exotic, more syllables for a start. The noise around us was dreadful, and I looked at Eric as we dragged our bags from the station.

“How did you pick this one, love?”

“Looked up the internet and spent weeks reading reviews”

He grinned. “A bit like finding your surgeon, just without Raj and Sally’s help. To be honest, there is one of the lads in the lab, he comes out here a lot, and he uses this one for a rest before flying home”

“A rest?”

Eric looked slightly abashed. “He spends his time down south, at the beaches. I suspect he has…interests down there. Look, the plan is simple. We stay here until…until you have to leave me, and then, once you are able to move around, we head south. I know I haven’t told you much about the itinerary…”

“Eric, I haven’t asked, very, very deliberately, aye? You have obviously spent so much time and effort planning this, I just thought, for once…magical mystery tour, aye? One thing; who suggested this hospital, this surgeon?”

He smiled. “Raj and Sally both have a number of patients who have, you know, and while some have been done in the UK, several were done out here. I also cheated a bit, and looked through our records for, well, fuck-ups. Women left incontinent, for example.”

In my half-dead state, I was finding all sorts of odd things in what he said, and I started to laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“Just…some blokes pay women good money to do that to them, aye?”

The penny dropped, and we hand in hand and laughing together as we entered the hotel.

Quiet. Coolth. Cleanliness, and a smiling Thai woman waiting to book us in. Her English was clear, and her smile was a delight, and I had a flashback memory of some holiday programme or other where Thailand was referred to as ‘The Land of Smiles’. There was a lift, and a room, which was spotless and just about devoid of character, but it was cool, and quiet, and I flopped gratefully onto the bed as my eyes headed to the back of my head.

“No, no sleeping. Not till bedtime tonight!”

“But….”

“Trust me, you will feel like shit if you do. Fancy a swim to wake up?”

“Where’s the beach?”

“Rooftop pool, love. Bring your sunblock!”

So we did. I lay in the cool of the water, eyes closed against the sun, a cold drink to hand, as the noise of the traffic rose around us, and once more had a flashback, of a walk through the bird reserve at Barnes in the middle of London. Four huge reservoirs converted into reedbeds and ponds, grass and trees, ducks and wading birds feeding tranquilly against a skyline of concrete and the sounds of police sirens and Heathrow-bound aircraft.

The main difference was that the water was cleaner and chlorinated. We spent the rest of the day lounging and lazing round or in the pool, as Eric nattered away to keep me awake.

“So, after you are released, we catch a train…I had thought of the resorts, but, well, Thailand has a sort of tradition…”

“Your colleague is into ladyboys, aye?”

He blushed. “Yeah, took me a while to explain the difference to him, you that is, and, you know, and I didn’t want to take you somewhere, where, well, there would be any possible problems.”

He took my hand again as we lay on the loungers. “Annie, I know what your self-confidence is like, I know how the black dog still nips at you in the night, so just take my word for it when I say that I love you, and adore you, and fancy you, and want to make this trip as special as I can. OK?”

Our kiss was interrupted in the nicest way, as yet another smiling Thai girl asked if we wanted more long, cold, fruity goodness, and offered us a basket of fruit to choose from. I was thinking that it was a lifestyle I could grow used to very quickly. That night, we ate in the hotel, and I was oddly surprised at how familiar it was. After all, Thai food was something we devoured regularly, and the only difference here was that it tasted even nicer. We had beers with it, and somehow, I don’t know how, I managed to stay awake long enough to crawl into the huge bed and cuddle up to my fiancé. The next day…

Breakfast in bed. In a room in a tropical hotel. With a man naked beside me. I had another flashback, of what my father would have said, and done, if presented with that image. Everything was closing in on the final step in my change of life, and as I tried to decide whether he could have been brought round with the rest of the family, I realised Eric was talking.

“Sorry, love? Miles away, aye?”

“Just the latter part of the trip, love. You were so out of it last night I gave up on rational conversation while you became intimate with your pad thai. The place I have booked is in Malaysia, not far from the border. There is a luxury train there, and after our break we head down to KL for the flight back”

“KL? Oh, Kuala Lumpur? So where are we staying?”

“An island called Penang. Lots of good stuff to see there, and there are beaches…”

“Eric, I will not be swimming, that should be obvious!

“Yeah, but you can watch me…just promise me one thing?”

“Aye?”

“Be careful not to get sand in the new bits, OK?”

Sod.

“Now, let’s get dressed love, we have a car arriving in about an hour. He wants to have a good look around you, let the dog see the bone”

“Johnson, your metaphors are going to get you slapped at some point”

“Yeah, but you love me really!”

Yes, I did. No doubt at all.

The hospital was clean, and remarkable modern, and I realised that despite everything I had heard and read I was still expecting a tropical place to be primitive. That was clearly wrong. The surgeon had a string of syllables for a name, which made up for the hotel, and came across as absolutely charming. No white coat, no gratuitous bits of medical equipment hanging off him, he exuded calm.

“Annie, I will need to examine where I am going to be working. Will that be all right? With Eric in the room?”

I smiled at Doctor Syllables. “Never apart from him if I can help it, aye?”

I found myself in a gynaecologist’s stirrups, skirt and knickers off, as he prodded and poked and at one point produced a small ruler as he pulled my penis out to what there was of its length. I felt my balls try to crawl up inside me, and smiled at the thought that they finally had it coming.

“Annie, that is very good. There are a number of different procedures that can be offered, one or two of which use sections of your colon to create the desired depth. You are lucky, in that you have sufficient material already here to provide all that I shall need”

As I dressed again, he simply smiled and said “Nothing to eat or drink apart from water after two o’clock this afternoon, please. I will see you tomorrow, but I shall wear a different outfit, yes?”

I was dazed, but not so much that I didn’t pig out for lunch, which we took in a small restaurant on the way out to what I think was a royal palace, which Eric told me was one of the top places to visit. We walked in, hand in hand, and immediately a small local man approached us.

“You Merican? You Inglis? Grand Palace shut for people not Thai, I give you tour, show you nice places!”

Eric looked at me and winked.

“Llanfair?”

I caught on immediately. “Pwllgwyngyll!”

“Goger?”

“Ychwyrndrobwll? Llantysilio!”

Eric nodded, before bringing it to a close with “Gogogoch” smiled at the little tout, and walked on with me. He began to shout, as we left.

“You Dutch? You Israeli? I fuck your mother cunt, you asshole!”

As we left the shouting turd behind, Eric whispered to me “Got warned about those, they tell you it’s shut and then you end up going round a string of rip-off stores, and if you aren’t careful you end up dumped miles away and have to find your own way home. And besides, I got the hotel to check for me before we went to the hospital. Only open to Thais, bollocks!”

And the day got steadily better, as I ambled around the old and odd buildings, snapping away, hand in hand with the man I loved, the man who had stepped in and quietly arranged everything I had ever wanted; everything besides him, of course. It was as I had said to Doctor S: never apart from him if I could help it.

Far too few hours later, and the doctor was smiling down at me.

“Annie, please start counting backwards from ten…”