Prairie Dogs, Pronghorns & Penis Sheaths
by Biff Spork
Chapter 1
Raccoon Liberation
The koteka, horim, or penis gourd is a penis sheath traditionally worn by native male inhabitants of some (mainly highland) ethnic groups in New Guinea to cover their penis. They are normally made from a dried-out gourd, although unrelated species such as pitcher-plant are also used. They are held in place by a small loop of fiber attached to the base of the koteka and placed around the scrotum. A secondary loop placed around the chest or abdomen is attached to the main body of the koteka.
The summer morning that it all began, I awoke to the racketing drone of a neighbor shredding his lawn, kid shrieks from the Slip'n Slide down the block, and the lazy buzz of a huge blue bottle fly who had imprisoned himself in the space between the top window and the pushed-up bottom window. It was otherwise quiet in my upstairs bedroom, though if body parts made music, my boner would have been a trombone sonata. I pushed the slide up and down a few times, but lingering unconsciousness beckoned. I decided to postpone the bone and tucked it into a cozy fold of sheet as I rolled over and sank into my natural narcoleptic state.
Later I ambled over to the window and released the blue bottle. Sensibly for once, he immediately flew out into the already simmering morning. "Okay, okay, okay," I said to the spider lurking in the corner of the window, "if he gets stuck there again I'll know he's suicidal and he's all yours." I stretched and felt excellent if somewhat at loose ends.
An aging battery signaled the need for a new smart-phone, but when I'd alerted the old folks downstairs to this, their response had been a discussion of austerity, self-reliance, and personal initiative, summed up in the phrase, 'find some work'. Employment options are limited for thirteen-year-old boys. I'd canvassed the neighborhood for yard-work, but the primeval householders in our part of town all depended on their homegrown offspring. Either that or they seemed unperturbed when their lawns were dappled with dandelions and their hedges shaggy and misshapen. I understood this since I wasn't a proponent of prim and proper. Degenerate and indolent was more my style. If dandelions grew on people, my head would be a meadow of yellow blooms, and if I were ever to get a hedge, I certainly wouldn't trim it.
Under the fridge door magnets in the kitchen, the day's messages were blunt: "Deal with the garbage — It's YOUR problem" read the first, in my father's scrawl. The second, in my mother's hand, read, "Dear Bumper, please do the dishes — NOW."
I had sincerely intended to do the dishes the previous evening, but interesting things kept popping up on my phone. Don't ever Google 'penis sheath' if you have anything else to do. Hands up everyone who knows what an 'elator' is. I learned that bit of information, though I couldn't imagine needing one in the near future. I had more problems with erections that swelled my trousers in inappropriate situations like the principal's office or my grandma's funeral, although, to paraphrase a famous American, when it comes to erections, I never met one I didn't like.
Of course, boners at the wrong time are inevitable when you get a dozen a day. I'm not exaggerating. I'd counted them. Twelve per day was my average. One day I had eighteen. I mean unexpected boners — boners that just swelled up for no reason, boners that arose when I couldn't respond to them properly. My penis, though perhaps a tad on the small side, was definitely of the lively, exuberant variety.
On the other hand, that particular Google search led me to discover kotekas, and a koteka looked like it might generate some interesting fantasies. If I lived in the jungles of Papua New Guinea, I could go around wearing a koteka all day. Boners could come and go freely and no-one would be the wiser. I resolved to keep my eyes open during gourd season for one that might fit and be appropriately decorative. Of course, in our guilt-ridden culture, I could only wear it in my bedroom, but I had a lot of fun in my bedroom. It occurred to me that it might be possible to integrate koteka technology with the Jolly Jerk-Off, an invention I was developing.
The Jolly Jerk-Off, or JJO, as I referred to it, was a device that took the energy generated by walking, and through a simple construction of levers and struts, converted it into an up and down stroking motion of a soft, fleshy sleeve on the erect penis. Thus, simply by walking down the street, one could bring oneself to orgasm, leaving one's hands free to point out interesting features of the landscape to one's companions. It would also work for cyclists. So far I had not been able to construct a working model, but the problems were merely technical; the concept was sound.
Though the kitchen notes were brusque, even combative, I didn't take offense. I wasn't sure that I loved my parents, but I liked them a lot. I understood that they considered it a part of their role to require me to perform demeaning tasks, as a way of preparing me for the workaday world, and though they were often slow to understand their responsibilities with regard to my needs, I was pretty sure they liked me too. As for the dirty dishes, I did them immediately after breakfasting on avocado toast and a big glass of coconut milk kefir. I had an ongoing passion for avocado toast. There were times I loved my tongue even more than my penis.
When I left the house, I saw the green, organic-waste garbage bin on its side in the driveway with our compost-worthy trash wantonly scattered nearby. The live-capture trap I had set up beside the bin was empty, though the bait I had firmly attached within was missing. This had happened once before, and it increased my respect for our local raccoon's IQ. How he managed to get the bait out of the live trap without getting caught baffled me, but I had a backup plan.
I had rigged up my Go-Pro action camera with a motion sensor, to capture a video of how the raccoon extracted the bait from the trap and escaped. After I righted the bin, picked up the garbage and re-set the trap, I took the camera up to my room and plugged it into my laptop. The video was dark except for the dim light shed by the closest street lamp, but I could clearly see the raccoon strolling up our driveway toward the garbage bins. He toppled one and nosed through its contents. Then he went to the trap and entered it. I could see the gate drop behind him when he snatched the bait. As I watched eagerly to see how he made his escape, the screen abruptly went black. In the next sequence, the raccoon trotted jauntily out to the road, then disappeared. The discarded trap lay on its side, as I had found it.
I felt betrayed. My father's solution to this problem had involved some poisoned bait. I had suggested that the raccoon had as much right to live as anyone, and it was precisely his kind of thinking that had led us to the sixth major extinction we were experiencing. I reminded him that the earth was dying because his generation had not been responsible stewards of the planet. When he calmed down, I said I would personally undertake to leave selected portions of our garbage out where the raccoon could find them, if he would buy a less easily tipped bin with a more secure lid. He said the neighbors would complain if I was leaving trash around, and it was easier and cheaper to poison the raccoon.
I explained to him that the raccoon was recycling some of our garbage naturally, thereby lessening the amount we would send to the landfill, but he was immune to reason. I didn't understand why he was so possessive about our garbage. It was stuff we were throwing away. Why get upset if something else wanted it? I had finally persuaded him to let me use a live-capture trap, so I could release the raccoon into the wilds somewhere distant from our house. Our raccoon, however, was not cooperating.
I consoled myself by reflecting that the raccoon, though intelligent, had no way of knowing that I was trying to save him from an agonizing death by poison, but I needed to know how he had evaded capture. Somehow the camera had failed to record his escape, though it continued to show the empty driveway. While I was pondering this, I left the video looping, and as it played over and over, I suddenly noticed something moving in the shadows, something so black it seemed a part of the darkness. I ran the video again and slowed the playback. There was definitely something else in our driveway moving surreptitiously in the shadow cast by the fence.
I played the video from the beginning and peered into the shadows carefully. I had been so focused on the raccoon's activities I had not noticed the black presence creeping up the driveway. When the raccoon tipped the bin, the shadowy something scuttled across the driveway and out of camera range. I could tell by the way that dark something moved that it was not an animal. It was a small person. The raccoon entered the trap, and a moment later, the screen went dark.
The scenario unfolded in my mind: someone shrouded in black had crept up the drive. When the raccoon tipped the bin, the black-clad person crossed the drive to reach the camera. As soon as the raccoon entered the trap, the trespasser covered the lens of the camera. Then he released the raccoon from the trap, removed the covering from the camera and stole away. That explained the lengthy, apparently motionless sequence at the end of the video, after the raccoon had disappeared. Although it was almost impossible to see the black-cloaked person creeping away in the shadows, the motion sensor had picked up enough movement to trigger the camera.
I determined to focus the camera more closely on the trap and to attach it to the side of the house higher up, out of reach, to get a better look at what was going on. By the time I got the ladder out and attached the camera to the side of the house, the afternoon was well advanced. It was far too late to look for work. I retired to my room to do some research relating to the Jolly Jerk-Off.
I had constructed an experimental model of the JJO's stroking sleeve from an empty toilet-roll tube and some foam rubber. My erect penis fit snugly inside, but I was concerned that the porous plastic foam would absorb the fluids that would inevitably be released. It would become crusty and smelly after a few uses. It needed some kind of waterproof layer that could be easily cleaned after a successful squirt-fest. Though I cut up several plastic bags and used them to line the sleeve, I was not satisfied with the resultant sensations, and I was growing ever more impatient to see some results.
After pondering available resources, I rummaged around in the drawer of the night table on my father's side of the marital bed. A few minutes later I unrolled a condom over my penis. Unfortunately, it was much too large and loose but, ever open to creative innovation, I found that when I stretched the opening wide enough to encompass my entire scrotum, it was tight enough not to slip off during the joyous convulsions I anticipated. In addition, my balls enjoyed the sensation of being enclosed in the silky latex. With my thus-covered penis inserted within the tube, I manually mimicked the up and down movements I expected the ultimate JJO mechanism to produce. Scarcely a minute later, I was rewarded with a robust emission that remained entrapped inside the prophylactic. I left it on, and after a brief rest, I was able to produce another few squirts, enjoying the lubricant effect of the fluid from the first ejaculation.
Even when my penis had gone soft, the rubber still didn't fall off. I liked the feeling of that elastic ring squeezing around where my scrotum came out of my crotch. It was exactly right, not so tight that circulation was impeded, but snug enough so it wouldn't fall off without a firm pull. I decided to leave it on during the evening, in case I wished to use it for a third squirt before bed. I heard the parents arrive downstairs, tucked myself into some briefs, pulled on jeans and a T-shirt, and descended to join them for supper.
Despite my father's gibes about the failure of the live trap and my mother's strategy for getting me to eat more by references to starving children in North Korea and other less-well-endowed parts of the globe, I enjoyed the meal, because there was a counterpoint of sensation below the table, a kind of warm slipperiness that was exciting because it felt good and was so wrong, so dirty and disgusting.
I decided not to tell the parents how the raccoon had evaded capture until I had confirmed my suspicions. They had a regrettable tendency to become over-excited about trifles, and I often felt the necessity of shielding them from some of life's harsher realities.
By the time supper was over, I was stiff and ready to go again. However, my parents were behaving well, so I spent the evening with them watching television and exchanging banter during commercials, as if we were a typical nuclear family. My parents seemed to think I was a normal boy, not realizing I was on the verge of catapulting us into the one percent, when I unleashed the JJO on the waiting world. Little did they imagine how their golden years would be cushioned by the millions earned from sales of the JJO.
When I finally retired, I didn't bother with the prototype JJO tube and rubbed a third one out by hand in the condom, still lubricated by the slimy residue of the earlier squirts. There must have been at least a teaspoon of semen in the rubber, when I took it off in the shower to wash it for future use. Puberty had definitely arrived. I surfed the internet until nightfall, then darkened my room and began my vigil by the window, where I could observe the driveway below.
I struggled to keep my eyes open. Sleep overcame me, but I jerked awake when I heard the sound of a bin falling on its side. The raccoon busied himself with the garbage. Then I saw a black shadow pull silently into the driveway. The light was better out near the road, and I could see that the black presence now creeping up the drive had arrived on what appeared to be a small go-cart. The raccoon entered the trap, and the person darted toward where the camera had been the previous night. Not finding it, he surveyed the area, then looked upwards. Only the whites of his eyes were visible in his black-clothed face. We exchanged a glance. Everything stopped. He held my gaze, and in accusing tones he said, "You moved the camera." It was a kid's voice.
" Yeah," I said. "But nobody will ever see the video but me." Another moment of silence stretched between us. Then I asked, "Are you gonna let the raccoon go every night?"
" Are you gonna trap him every night?" he asked in return. Though it was almost silent, I heard a giggle that he didn't quite manage to suppress.
" Yeah," I said, choking my own giggle.
" Okay," he laughed. "I'll see you tomorrow night." He ran across the driveway, released the raccoon, and followed him down the drive to his vehicle. A few seconds later he sped noiselessly away, raising one arm in a farewell salute. The time on my phone read one forty-five am.
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