Illustration: Thomas McCarthy

He was number one of ten thousand and had been tormented by unspeakable lusts all his life. His cock was like a black hole in his trousers. All of his thoughts got sucked down into it.

Given the chance he’d have been a fulltime fucker, leaping from body to grasping body, composing verses on the hop. If the world had been logical from his point of view, he would have had at least fifty different champion lovers to satisfy himself with.

However, no one would consent to touch him, or let him touch them, no matter how he harried or plied. He was too ugly, and bachelorhood stinks.

Incapable of rising early enough to find paid work, he didn’t even have the money for the cheapest sex-workers in the city, the ones that did their business lying on the mud and broken glass underneath bridges, like troll’s doormats.

Lust is thirsty. If it cannot drink sweat and spittle, stout and whiskey will have to do. Our leading poet spent the few shillings he cadged from foreign students or begged from priests on drink, which was the only thing he needed more than sex, being a partial cure for it.

When he got really drunk he could sometimes pass out without having to masturbate first.

Eventually his frustration became so severe that fancying people was no longer enough for him. He started finding things attractive as well. He felt the immanent sexual longing of dumb objects pulsating all around him. Things shot sub-atomic rays of sex at him from every direction. As soon as he saw something, he wanted to roger it.

Twigs, hospitals, barges, north-facing slopes- he was tuning into the vibrating sexual frequencies of all of them. He was the world’s first objectophile, a neologism he feared latinising, as that might make it an official sin. Our leading poet believed unquestioningly in the Authority of God and the Classics, and of their earthly representatives. He still had to take a running jump into the nearest canal to cool himself off if he came anywhere near of a banjo. Not only the thing itself, but the damned tweaking of it too!

Our leading poet plucked up the courage to speak to his friend, the cardinal, about his objectophilia. The cardinal had heard strange cases like it before, from other lonely and dependent artists. The cardinal was a patron and a confidante of artists. He was sympathetic to their diseases, and sought ways to religiously cure them. For example by getting them a clerking position in Dublin Castle, or a ticket to Australia.

But this was the most serious case he had ever encountered. Our leading poet’s whole being was throbbing with lust. He kept stealing horny glances at the Cardinal’s extremely alluring silver clock.

The cardinal made our our leading poet kneel down before him and raise his sin seeking face to the Lord. He sprinkled our leading poet with incense and incantations, ululating a direct appeal to Holy God on his behalf.

Holy God was merciful. He granted our leading poet and all who would follow him the release, overwhelming, of everlasting impotence.