Sprokkelmaand: Sigh

Poppers

Internet

An ignored warning from the bank falls into my hands, still in its unopened envelope, precisely while opening the book about the drunken poets of Allah.

The envelope is dated 1998. Five years ago. Whenever such letters arrived, Ibrahim hid them somewhere, and even now such papers still surface. When we moved we found them in the freezer, in old shoes, and on the terrace in a bucket.

Out of necessity I have lived off the internet all this time. If I wanted to look something up I simply did it online instead of going to the bookcase and confidently pulling out that one volume from the row where the chiselled sentence stands, as every lover of books ought to be able to do.

Tempted by technology I have abandoned the book page. I keep my gaze fixed for hours on the flat screen. It is remarkable what you can do with such a little computer. We have supplemented the chat with the telephone, the little Prince and I, but even then communication depends on electronics.

During chat there is no risk of smells, stains, infection or knocking over heirlooms. Unless you wish to create such incidents virtually because you find it exciting. Physical proximity does not enter into it, with very reassuring consequences, however intense the interaction may be.

The other person, in physical proximity, always retains something slightly frightening, and it is not always pleasant to know each other physically present. Every fear or hesitation is virtually abolished by the web. When chatting you remain safely at home. You can have a drink. You do not have to drive home afterwards. You need not worry about your clothes. It costs nothing. It is not infidelity.

On the other hand, you do need to be able to exert a certain amount of seduction. At daddy’s age, that’s no longer so self-evident. You, my little prince, only have to let it be known that you’re sixteen, still a virgin, and looking for phone sex, and a school of horny patriarchs will swerve towards the Other, because you’re usually in the Other section.

I sit in Brussels, in the Flemish-Brabant section, unfortunately far from you but essentially close, at least in spirit, through the fatherly trust I place in you and the secrets we have confided to each other. It is thanks to you, I maintain, that I managed to wrest myself free from the embrace of the paralysis-devil and stand again on my two legs.

I can once again sit for hours in typing posture and am again able to let my fingers rattle across the keyboard, with a heart full of love and recovered innocence. Imagine that I had remained paralysed, even if only on one side, and could no longer chat with you. Or that I would have to hammer the keys one by one with a reversed toothbrush between my teeth.

When I lay there I knew only that the contact with you at the end had become so intense that, like Faust at the dramatic ending, I would wish that this one moment might last forever. It is the moment when the devil comes to fetch the careless clerk. It is a gripping feeling that almost hurts, that physical feeling of being in love and filled with bliss, with which nothing can compete. It is a wound of love.

The Midday Devil

“In dimidio dierum meorum,” says Hezekiah, “In the middle of my days I go toward the gates of hell” (Isaiah 38:10).

Last night a man from Uccle came by car. He wanted the whole house to be darkened so that he would remain unrecognizable, and he would bring poppers. He wanted to give a blowjob and have his nipples pinched. His wish list didn’t go beyond what the chat showed.

The fact that this man did not put penetration on the menu and even explicitly excluded it gave me enough confidence to let him enter the house at night. In a dark house at that, and everything completely anonymous and unrecognizable. It is somewhat frightening. I think: “He wouldn’t do that.”

He writes that he is leaving the computer keyboard, taking the car and coming to me. I have given my address because lying on chat I consider beneath me. It wastes time. Honesty lasts the longest, but truth is shorter than a lie. No illusion has yet been found that summarizes truth more concisely than truth itself.

Anyway I turn off the lights and close the blinds. In their closed state the horizontal slats allow a vertical row of colored light points to seep through from the street lighting, passing cars and the neon advertisements of a few cafés, and from the brightly lit night shop across the canal, in thin pencil-like beams that shine remarkably bright through the perforations.

The holes through which the cord runs form a grid of light dots and along the sides some color also shines onto my white walls. It is a magical light effect that arises by itself, simply by switching everything off inside and observing what still enters. After a while it is enough light not to bump into things or knock over the sparse furniture.

I let the water run into the bathtub. I do not yet have condoms because I am only at the beginning of my third sexual revolution. Fortunately we will do nothing unsafe tonight if everything proceeds as agreed. In Ibrahim’s time I never needed condoms. Now that I know how he lied I might perhaps ask questions, but for sixteen years I assumed he was even more faithful than I was.

Here I sit with a beating heart in the darkness of my new dwelling, listening to the water flowing into the bathtub, waiting for the bath guest. I want to wash his hair. I want to put him into the bath and wash his hair, and after that we will see.

Waiting for the Bridegroom

It takes a long time.

Psalm 51:7 — Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean. Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.

The bath is full and meanwhile I have switched on the television, which casts a blue glow onto the white ceiling, when the bell rings. I switch off the television. I carefully press the button of the door opener. I leave the landing door slightly ajar. It takes an eternity before he comes upstairs.

He comes in. “You may undress,” I say in French.

I check the temperature of the bath with my elbow. It seems pleasantly warm. “The bath is ready.” He lets himself slide naked into the warm water in the darkness. The wet skin glistens in the dim light. I may wash him. I am fully aware of the solemnity of the purification.

Purification is and remains the first gate through which one must pass on the road toward enlightenment and perhaps, who knows, even union. My beloved knows that, but most mortals certainly do not. That is unfortunate for them, but we cannot save everyone, and in our life we can only put a few boys in the bath. The number of times can be counted on one hand. I do not wish to give the impression that I lead a dissolute life.

It is no longer adultery and therefore neither unchaste nor unfaithful. I am alone. No one’s interests are harmed. I have regained my freedom and beauty and am free to associate with this strange man whose name I do not know and whose hair I wash, unrecognizable and interchangeable, someone who could be anyone. I lather his neck and shoulders with soapless soaps while all sorts of questions bombard me.

How old is he? I estimate him to be around forty based on the few impressions I get of him in the dim light. He has hard, erect nipples, and he takes particular pleasure in me squeezing them. I make him stand up to wash his base, and he responds obediently.

While washing in the relative darkness, I learn a lot by touch. A smooth little body. His buttocks are delicately tender, smooth, and silky. His hole is tight, with distinct sphincters, a normal prostate, hookable, as we call it in technical terms, but don’t pay attention to it. His testicles are small and hang in a charming little pouch.

He’s uncircumcised. I turn him over to examine the relationship between his foreskin and glans more closely. He enjoys this. I clean him thoroughly with the shower head set to thin streams, because there’s an option button. Finally, he’s allowed to sit back down, and I rinse a bit more.

There’s not much time to relax, as we’re pretty excited tonight. I dry him off while he’s standing, paying tender attention to his ears, nipples, ass, and genitals, and I let him get out of the bath. There’s no way we can just lie down on the broken single bed.

I’ve spread a cotton bedspread on the oriental carpet in the still-empty living room. We take a seat and grope. I revisit the areola, which, during the examination, proved particularly receptive to tactile attention. He then gives me a blowjob, intimately and with an unrelenting lust, which feels wonderful. He then produces a small bottle containing a liquid that, when snorted, sends a glow of fire through your veins.

If you didn’t know, my beloved, this stuff is called poppers. It comes in the form of small bottles with screw caps. Inside, there’s a volatile liquid you can snort, which creates an amazing sensation that lasts for several tens of seconds.

It’s as if a large bell is ringing just above your head. I fall backward as he pleasures my cock in slow motion. Primal pleasure wells up in curling waves, though the orgasm is still far away. Your sense of time is numbed by the knockout, and it’s as if only this is happening, without end or beginning, without ceasing.

My heart races, and I don’t know whether to pull back or surrender and beg for more. He takes another good sniff of the wondrous substance himself. I feel compelled to attack his nipples with lips, tongue, and teeth, to eat his cleansed navel, to play with his smooth cock, coated in natural, fruit-flavored gel from the supermarket tube.

A shimmer of sifted light on the skin. It glides without friction and gleams in the striated light. We roll over each other in slow motion, and I find myself in ever-new positions, flowing into one another without force or display of power. I place a full hand under his balls and, smooth as an eel, guide a fingertip along the dam line to his ass.

He narrows his eyes and slides back. His cock tastes of soap and gel. I sniff the wondrous little bottle again, and for a moment I fear I’m passing out. He seizes the opportunity to take his bait, and one shiver of pleasure after another ripples across the skin of my entire body.

He sobs and moans, asking for stimulation. He lets go of my cock while I’m playing with him. He cums, and I’m not finished yet. I thrust forcefully, and he takes me back into his mouth. He’s wet with his own fluids on his belly. I pull back and finish with a few hand movements. We pant for a moment.

“Would you like another bath?” I ask in French. “No, it was nice, and I have to get going again.” It’s a huge relief. He gets dressed without washing and disappears. I run a bath for myself. In the warm water, I gradually regain my composure. I have a slight headache from the poppers. It’s becoming a matter of soul-searching. In any case, it was good sex, a one-off and not to be repeated, outside the shackles of marriage, under the seal of anonymity, yet not unchaste, since the physical pleasure was purely pure, without traces of money or violence, devoid of obligations other than those of hospitality and tenderness, in the absence of any coercion.

Two Ice Creams

XXX

Radio silence
New

As Dante wished to have seen above the gate of hell: “Abandon all hope, you who enter here.”

I am still lustful, although I have a headache.

Perhaps a little too much self-indulgence and a little too many poppers, besides everything else I do in my sinfulness. A tube of gel and a bottle: if two excited men meet it can become a remarkable combination that leads to explosive sexual feelings, especially if the substance ends up in the wrong hands.

The effectiveness of the substance has long been known in medicine as a remedy for heart patients suffering from angina. So it cannot be entirely bad if it can dilate the clogged coronary arteries of such patients. The substance is popular in homosexual circles if one may judge by the number of men who mention it.

Not that I would recommend acquiring it. I do not know whether someone who has never used it misses anything. Everyone must decide that for themselves. I survived it. It is difficult to determine whether drugs helped or harmed in that regard. In any case my thoughts, as always, return to you, my dear little Prince. Speaking of addiction.

Yes, how can I explain what happened there? The reason for our contact, as always, was my offer on the chatbox to give boys a bath. You know I can’t promise you I won’t see other men until you’re eighteen. “My daddy can do anything.” That’s what you said.

You gave me permission, for which I’m grateful. I can only tell you that I’m proceeding very carefully, taking no risks, and reserving certain favors just for you. Furthermore, I’m thinking carefully about what you had to say.

Those minutes or hours on the phone, while we thoroughly enjoyed each other and gave each other pleasure, in a drunken dream of love that was stronger than the tenacious reality that geographically separates us. How close I felt to you, united with you in the same symbolic space, of words on a screen, of a voice from the cell phone, and thus escaping the stifling reality, the everyday in its crushing lightness. Here with you, in the armpit of your shoulder, lies a habitable niche, a welcoming crinkle in the vast emptiness, a virtual haven in the infinite messiness of the universe. Of course, you already have sexual desires. That’s tied to the age of puberty, over sixteen.

The sexual torment continues throughout life. It’s somewhat less so in older women, I think, thanks to the divine grace of menopause, which in itself would be an incentive to choose the female sex. That’s ultimately what you want. But let’s not keep talking about that.

While the hot water runs from the taps, I could explain how things are, or I could listen, to see how your day at school went. Your school of the priests, the kind of education I attended when I was your unacceptable age.

Adolescence

Just like you confronted with the great certainty and the infinity of uniformity that descends upon you in slices.

Everything has an end except the sausage, which has two. The deep-fried sausage that never runs out. From the outset you are suffocated, as a growing homosexual, by the untouchable heterosexual ideology of male and female, a relationship model that covers our country wall-to-wall like fitted carpet, except for a few streets in Brussels and Antwerp.

If you want to escape the “gender terror” you can go there, and otherwise you can only become a priest. Yes, the monastery: there even a giraffe would develop strange feelings, so perhaps better not.

Meanwhile you can only count the days to see whether you soon turn eighteen so that you can take your own life into your hands and make your own decisions.

You can also become a woman to solve the problem of identity, still a girl, and that is actually what you want. You think about that a lot, my dear child, about that choice. I must learn to write “my dear daughter.”

The father can accept it. Making your own decisions is ultimately what everyone wants who possesses a spiritual life worthy of the name. Even at sixteen. Autonomy, self-determination: that is the supreme goal of humanity, besides merging with God of course, perhaps under the tangible form of one of His most beautiful creatures, washed and scrubbed, united with Him after seeing the light.

Not that we were floating on cloud nine. I’m starting to miss you terribly again. Our last conversation, which I just couldn’t forget, revolved around the question of what I would like you to wear. The printout got stuck on that question. As luck would have it, I then saw a clip on television that stuck in my mind.

The piece of music, and I choose my words carefully, was by the Cheeky Girls. The underage Eastern European singers wore silver shorts, of the cut that used to be called hotpants, back when I was young, long before your time, somewhere in the seventies, when you weren’t born yet.

That’s the kind of shorts I would like you to wear if you were a girl. The kind of shorts that should be banned for sixteen-year-old girls, even if they want to play at being boys, or vice versa. The kind of girl that drives me crazy, that’s essentially what you are. A cunt of a girl who deserves a spanking, but on the contrary gets everything she wants, and yet is never satisfied, but that, when it comes down to it, applies to all of us.

You are, to put it that way, the kind of girl who sits down elaborately and then unnecessarily crosses her legs once more, because by now it’s clear who holds the girl power here, and who pays the price for it.

Unattainable, anyway. Of course, you also still have that mother of yours roaming around in your world. That can certainly serve as an anchor of reality. That young, attractive shrew, whom you keep hidden from me. She who looks after you and takes care of you, puts you in the bath and listens to your little problems.

She sees you every day and I have to miss you every day, my absent little prince, my cruel beloved. I must leave you alone, but I do so only with the greatest effort, now that life has been returned to me, and I seem to be endowed with new strength. The purification did not erase the longing, nor the past. In my solitude, I have time for remorse and self-questioning.

I have indeed fallen short, but my life would truly be a failure only if it came to the point where there was no other left to reflect my yearning for a you. That longing for the cruel other who holds solace for all pain within themselves, the waiting for the bridegroom, that yearning for union, the incurable smarting of love’s wound.

There can be no union without relief, and there is no salvation except after imprisonment, and there is no dawning day without preceding nocturnal darkness. That is the night of reason, the darkness of absence in which we wander.

Where can we still find comfort, if not in the original mystical literature, in St. John of the Cross, and in Teresa of Avila, those great minds who preceded us in suffering and despair. Or take the Persian poets. They too show the way to the Creator, the Savior, and the Bridegroom. Or the Fleming Jan Ruusbroec with his simplicity.

Not to mention the music.

Baroque Music

The mystical authors speak from a direct experience of God.

“Tröstet uns und macht uns frei,” sing again, evening after evening, the boy and the tenor in the Christmas Oratorio of Johann Sebastian Bach. Comfort us and set us free, O Lord, so all humanity has sung for so many centuries. The remarkable thing is that it works, at least with Bach.

The music dries the rising tears because it is sung so beautifully, as the boy and the tenor, the flute and the organ circle around each other and revolve in a play that is mathematically arranged so that every imaginable aspect of the dream comes forward one by one.

In the light of the eternal beauty of immeasurable creation the grief over suffered loss can be borne. It is not the first and perhaps not the last time that we must gather the shards, straighten ourselves again and make a new start. It happens again and again and continues without end. Each time it succeeds again in some way.

There will always be music to comfort us and free us from madness until the day when all nonsense ceases and then I hope that I may rest in the Bosom of the Lord. Und macht uns frei.

The highest thing I can still achieve in the meantime is that you develop your spiritual life into a state of intellectual and emotional self-determination.

Only a free person can truly love. The whole of life gains meaning because we question ourselves, rub ourselves against the rough bark of others, and bruised and wounded discover how difficult it is to remain upright and to be kind and attentive to everyone.

“My existence must be a blessing for myself and for others,” I learned from my upbringing. A poet adds: “Everything of value is defenseless.”

However tired and exhausted you may be, you must keep trying to stand firmly in your shoes. It is love for the other that gives the soul the wondrous strength to rise from the ashes of humiliation.

Look around you and see what is vulnerable there and what we must do to cherish and preserve it. It is caring love that makes us fully human.

Many years ago I did not know that when I wandered depressed between home and school. There are many things you reveal to no one because they are better hidden. The gloomy adolescent I once was, filled with anthracite-colored thoughts. Where has that confused boy gone now?

The pimpled youth who worried about the bitterness of a perfectly meaningless and useless existence—at least that is how I saw it then. A youth consisting of a chain of dimly lit November days.

The desolate suffering of the relentless illness that formed the center of the household. Now I see that I was absorbed in caring for my paralyzed mother. Today I no longer dare call that useless or meaningless, because now I see that there was a bond of care, and how valuable that is, even if one fails within it.

Then there was only disgust. It never occurred to me that a higher meaning is attached to caring love. You did it because it had to be done. I would rather not think about it anymore. Although something always remains.

My mother died when I was eighteen after being paralyzed for so long, and by that passing she freed me from all my shackles. So it seemed then. That feeling of liberation has never disappeared. It gives me an inexhaustible source of energy to know that I have already experienced the worst.

After it ended with Ibrahim, my mother comforted me indirectly with the following thought, in the words of my overseas correspondence friend Linda:

“Love can die like all other living things. Love actually needs much care not to die, because it is something fragile. Ibrahim did nothing to keep that love alive, because his illness prevented him.”

Write-off

I do not have much left from you, my cherished, distant and heartless little prince.
The little that remains consists of a photograph and a few e-mails. You can lead a horse to water, but you cannot force it to drink. According to the great authors, mystical contemplation can only arise through Divine Grace. I should perhaps write to you every day; maybe that is the solution, to supply material for the book I have begun, and to pass the time until we are together.

The beginning is already taking shape a little. I let the story start inside the nuclear magnetic resonance scanner, and then it continues by means of flashback, chat, and so on. It excites me greatly, and it requires a great deal of self-persuasion each time to begin again. These have already been difficult days, entirely without you. I have had to contend with anxiety and depression, and the slightest additional problem becomes an insurmountable mountain.

Thus the computer broke down in a way that had already happened once before. Last time it worked out, but I was certain that this time I would not succeed in putting it right. And indeed it would not work at all. I did something that turned out badly, and afterwards I thought it might never be put right again, although in the end it was not that serious, but by then two hours had passed.

Evening falls with the taste of ashes in my mouth and still it refuses to work. The torment is not over yet. I also discover that the hard disk is a complete mess, but that is another matter. Today I tried again and now, given sufficient time, I succeeded in feeding the computer with the right clicks, and I felt reassured by this small success in the struggle against the daily tidings of misfortune.

These are mainly financial in nature as well. I have once again had to deal with an additional little setback of two thousand euros. It remains tight and will remain so for quite a while, since in any case I still have several years of payments to make to the estate of Ibrahim. I can become furious that I am left holding the bag after everything I did for that wretch.

It remains a nagging sore point that refuses to disappear, and it always ends with the conclusion that I am better off without him. The bleeding has been stopped and now the healing process must do its work, although it takes a long time. Such thoughts return when I no longer hear or see you, my beloved.

I have suffered terribly from it, although I intend to say nothing of it if I were to reach you today or tomorrow. The worst is the uncertainty. I do not know whether I will meet you again or not, and if so, when. Tonight, tomorrow? Next week? If I knew, I could make plans. Or I could prepare myself for it.

Now I cannot. I am constantly doubting whether anything will still come of us, or whether it ends here. In this way I am tossed back and forth between hope and despair, and that is an exhausting process. You have become its cause, without wishing it, without knowing it, and without any guilt on your part, that I am no longer master of my own state of mind.

I am already preparing myself inwardly for the tenth of March, when it will be two months since you turned sixteen. To be ready in time. After a dozen days without hearing anything from you, while there will then still remain twenty-two months before you reach eighteen.

Time itself wobbles. I can no longer bear it. I want to write once, even if only once, to your e-mail address. I do not dare to call because of your mother. I no longer encounter you on the chat and it is a long waiting and a great absence, immeasurable as life itself, wide as the universe and deep as the sea.

You probably have good reasons for this silence, which I respect if it is your choice. Nor can I deploy any means to change the situation. Every evening I go to look on the chat, but you have not been there since Thursday, 20 February 2003.

There are of course hundreds of other boys, including a number of outrageously insolent fellows, but none who can console me in my sorrow, no one who fills your absence. You have long dominated my mental life and you still do. Even though you do not know it. You do not realize what you have set in motion, and that is just as well, for it is not your fault.

I am the one to be condemned, because I make you, unasked, the witness of my history. I hurl the foaming waves of my boiling emotions uninvited upon the virginal shore of your untouchedness. Damn.

Warm regards

The sixteen-year-old prince has returned to my life.

It began with a telephone call at four in the morning three days ago. I woke from my first sleep and immediately saw on the screen of the mobile phone that it was he. I was instantly wide awake. It was unmistakably his voice and his accent, and it was truly him, after about four weeks without news.

He was apparently very tired and not very talkative, and drunk on Elixir d’Anvers. During the past few days I had had plenty of time to prepare the moment when we would speak to each other again, and now it had come, and it was as though the right record had already been placed on the turntable. For I had resolved not to complain about the absence.

It is of course always good to say briefly that you missed him, but then you must immediately switch to the idea that it is above all pleasant to see him again, so as not to frighten him off with your desires for attachment and emotional bonds. Yes, because that repels. That is the experience of the father.

I reread a rare e-mail from the early period and realized that you do not want attachment and always react a little startled to any suggestion that I am totally and hopelessly in love with you, and that I have long since attached and committed myself more than decently. The idea in itself probably sits badly with you.

I must hide it better. It will always be the case that one person becomes more attached than the other, and that creates fear in the one who does not yet want to commit, because it seems that his possibilities of choice for the future become limited. It is a mechanism I have often seen at work.

Everyone likes to have control over his own life, and at a young age it is especially important that as many choices as possible remain open for later, with the result that one often remains suspended in what is never realized, in order always to leave room for what might still come. In that way it seldom becomes urgent to accomplish anything, and nothing is ever finished.

Hormones

This sparks a discussion about hormones, specifically female hormones that Prinsje apparently wants to take.

Prinsje wants to know what the treatment will do to him. It’s quite possible, of course, that it will affect his erections, as I don’t hesitate to tell him. He might become impotent. His breasts will swell and grow. He likes that because he’d love nothing more than to wear bras. Anal orgasms might still be possible, if they even exist. The literature is uncertain, but Prinsje is formal.

He seems able to live with that. I only hope that he is not psychotic. Narcissistic he certainly is, for his discourse always returns to himself. The central question for him is whether he is beautiful and attractive, and what he can do to increase or preserve that attractiveness against the dreadful workings of the passing years.

For the moment his discourse nevertheless remains coherent, and the fantasies continue to circle around sexuality, or rather around what with a learned word is called gender identity: being male or female. Forget the words. There is not much variation to be observed in the story, and so it might well be that it is deeply rooted.

He wants to become a girl. Everything revolves only around fantasy, Prince Sixteen believes. And it is also about fantasies, I add, because I must agree. What else do we have in life but imagination, to furnish the emptiness, to cover the floors with meaning, and to decorate the walls of our prison with significance?

The mere fact that someone suddenly becomes the dearest person opens the coded creation into a story that seizes and carries you along to great heights of confusion and pleasure. Even so, you are not necessarily on the same track simply because there are phenomena of love. Prince Sixteen remains within a rather limited register.

The fact that his voice hasn’t yet become too deep fills him with a sense of proud urgency. If he has to take hormones, he’d better do it quickly, before the surging hormonal storm in his teenage body spoils his timbre. Who will give him those hormones is the question, however, for in our country those substances are not freely available, and that is just as well, because a strange power lies hidden in them.

I do not say everything I think. “If I want to take hormonal substances, I should simply be able to,” that is the simplicity of reasoning at his age. He therefore bluntly asks whether I, as a general practitioner, cannot solve the problem.

That startles me somewhat. I immediately realize that on the basis of a few chat encounters and telephone conversations I can hardly begin sending prescriptions for hormones through the post into the void.

I have never met the boy. What would his mother think of it? If it is his destiny that he must become a girl, then I am willing to provide explanations, but I do not wish to grope blindly in the dark. I owe it to my professional honour at least to compile a file and to examine the patient personally.

I tell him this, and he is not pleased. He becomes a little angry because I put spokes in the wheels. “You do not want me to become a girl at all,” is more or less his closing remark, after which he falls into sulky silence. I must write something back.

“You do not have to become a girl for my sake, because I like you as you are. I do not want to encourage the process, but neither do I want to hinder it. I will always care for you, whether you are one thing or the other.”

Apparently it counts for nothing, for he continues to sulk. In some way I find it necessary to exercise great self-control. It would be quite something if at three in the night, under the influence of endless chat sessions and possessed by a burning desire, I were to decide to administer hormones at a distance without being able to assess the result with my own eyes.

It is precisely out of respect for his vulnerable condition that I do not take the lead in such an important decision concerning his body and his future. I place experience and wisdom of life in the balance against his impatience. I must not simply go along with a scenario whose outcome I cannot foresee. There is also my tedious professional responsibility, which I take seriously, although I should not speak so much about myself.

It ends in an argument, but so be it. I cannot give him hormones without seeing and examining him; that is my position. I do not care if between the lines it can also be read that I would first of all like to meet him in person. He probably remains angry, and at his age that can weigh heavily.

Even though I have now found him again with great joy after having missed him terribly for weeks, I still cannot give in to his wish if I want to respect the minimum standards of medical practice. It is incompatible with them that I should distribute prescriptions via the internet. That is my final word.

Note: a fragment from this novel has deliberately been omitted (xxx), because it is not intended for sensitive souls.

To be continued…