Cock and Bull by Will Self

recognised the baseball cap he sometimes wore, his narrow shoulders, and the distinctive leather blouson jacket, with its rounded collar and fake epaulettes. She was sorry he didn’t stop into the shop to say hello, she wouldn’t have pressured him to buy anything, she just would have liked it if he could have borne to be a little chummy. She watched his slight form until it was almost out of sight, and saw him cut through the alley between two houses that ran down to the overgrown railway track where the mutant waste mob had their camp.
    At about a quarter to six, Carol parked the yellow Ford Fiesta in the side street behind Melrose Mansions. It was a hire car and it smelt strongly of rubber floor mat.
    She went up to the flat and changed yet again. And although she had intended this to be an automatic, brusque performance, she still became lodged in frontof the mirror, admiring her own naked form. When she could see her penis she seemed to fall into a kind of reverie, a waking dream. It was in direct contrast to how she felt when she was clothed. For now she acted with more decisiveness and sense of purpose than she had ever known before, but to what end she had no idea. Out of this mire thrust Carol’s touchstone—and touch it she did, often and with increasing deliberation. It was about three inches long now when flaccid, but it was a good ’n’ thick dick. And when erect it more than doubled in length, although it did not increase significantly in girth.
    What now impressed Carol most about her penis was not its size or turgid potential—but its versatility. It was like New Zealand Lamb. When it was flaccid Carol could bend it effortlessly this way and that. As long as she didn’t wrench at it, or allow her pointed nails to dig into it, she could twist it into a bewildering variety of shapes: a zeppelin, a ball, a manta ray, a nose, a horn. She even tucked it away completely between her clenched thighs, and stood looking at herself, rendered 100% womanly once again. But this made her shiver, and she happily let it spring back out again. When the penis was semi-erect she found that she could even fuck herself a little, turn her penis back on itself so that she was able to tuck its head inside of her vagina. But this was a children’s game only, it was no kind of serious pleasure.
    Like a middle-aged pop chanteuse, Carol punctuated her performance with her umpteenth costume change. This one was to be final. Carol knew she would take herbow and whatever encores were offered in this next outfit. And, as she dressed herself for the evening Carol allowed herself to become aware of the sharp contrast between the deliberation and efficiency of her actions and the vagueness and ambiguity of her ultimate intentions. Please, no psychobabble claptrap. There was no false bottom of self-deception set into the ground of Carol’s consciousness. It was just that she quite simply couldn’t see where all this was leading to. It was as if she were the lens of a camera; sharp foreground focus made necessarily for a muddied background, and vice versa. I always think life is a little like that, don’t you? Rare is the individual who can retain the wider picture whilst concentrating on the detail. Very rare. So rare in fact that it can only be a stupid and ungrateful world, manipulated by covert conspiracies, that could possibly blacken or tarnish the reputation of such a man. And it would have to be a man, would it? You’d agree, wooden d’jew?
    By the time Dan got back from work the focus was pulled to the middle distance and dinner was on.
    ‘What’s for dinner?’ he said, clunking his trendy aluminium attaché case down on the floor.
    ‘Oh, hello darling,’ said Carol. She affected not to notice that he had come in, and hurried over from the stove to give him a fulsome kiss on his turned-down lips.
    Dan noticed immediately that she was dressed up and wearing perfume. She had on a full-length apron, one of those ones that