The Last Dick on Earth
[The season is over. This is off-season dreck. When Winter comes and the Kachinas go back to their mountain homes, we here at Mr. Mildew Omnimedia engage in long dreck, speculative fiction, and fantasy. As I’ve said many times before, what I’m about to serve is like black licorice. Not everybody likes black licorice.]
I have a time machine. I don’t use it very often, but I can if I want to. It looks like a dumb waiter, and is just as hard to climb into. You might not understand this, unless you know something about quantum mechanics, but if you go down in the dumb waiter/time machine you go back in time and if you go up in the dumb waiter/time machine you visit the future.
Pee Wee’s great-grandson sometimes sends me newspapers from the future. I know, you’re amazed that they have newspapers in the future. Well, we still have people who can tap out morse code on a telegraph key, don’t we? Maybe that was a bad example. Let me try again. People still race homing pigeons, don’t they? Well, the newspaper publishers of the future are like the guys who race pigeons today, with the one difference being that because they are in the future their stained tee shirts are made out of kale.
While reading the Guangzhou-Statesmen (don’t ask, the politics of the future are very complicated), I saw an advertisement for a “live show” that included, among other acts, the “last dick on earth”.
Now, I’m not very interested in looking at dicks, but the last dick on earth? It seemed kind of weird. I was intrigued, so I filled my flask with whiskey (just in case there is no whiskey in the future… I’m sure there is, but why take a chance?), then climbed into the time machine (don’t ask, the machinations of my body are complicated) and set the dial to 2317.
I won’t bore you with the details of the future. As I have noted on other similar trips, the future is depressingly similar to today. For example, I went to a diner called, get this, the “Galaxy Diner,” and ordered a reuben sandwich. It wasn’t terrible, but if you asked me for my opinion about it, I would have to say that it sucked. So there it is, even in the future it is hard to get a good reuben sandwich.
I made my way to the theater, which was named the “Rialto.”
There was a sign on the outside of the building. I thought it might be some kind of historical marker, so I read it. The sign explained that the building was made of recycled cheddar cheese. In the case of a flood, packets of bacteria encased in the walls would be released into the water and the building would consume itself. I tell you this so that you can profit from my experience. My advice is to invest in cheddar cheese.
Inside the Rialto was a small black box theater. It was the same kind of venue you would find in any underfunded state-university theater program. It might have been able to seat 300 people.
Having gotten to the theater purposefully early, I took my seat near one of the few people that was already there. The person, who was wearing what can only be described as a brightly colored monk’s robe, seemed immersed in some internal stimuli being projected on the inside of their eyelids. When I tapped the person on the shoulder, they opened their eyes and looked at me.
“Pardon me,” I said, “I’m not from around here. I’m from Alabama.”
There wasn’t a flicker of recognition, so I suspected my lie worked. It filled me with the hopeful possibility that there is no Alabama in the future.
“I’m writing a feature article for the Guangzhou-Statesmen,” I said.
“I thought you were a reporter,” the person replied, “I could smell the whiskey.”
Some things never change!
“If you don’t mind,” I said, “I would like to ask you a few questions.”
“Go ahead,” they said.
“Well, I don’t really understand what a ‘live show’ is. What happens at a live show?”
“Well,” the person said, looking at me earnestly, “Most people only see archived images. Very few have seen most of the things we will see tonight in ‘reality’, so the ‘live show’ is a chance to see these things ‘for real’ although there is seldom any difference between the ‘live show’ and just seeing such things on the tubes.”
“The tubes?”
“The internet tubes. You know, alt-reality.”
“Ahhhh,” I said, trying to mimic the wide-eyed emotional flatness of the future, “and what of this ‘last dick on earth?’ How did it come to be that we will see the last dick on earth?”
“That’s an interesting case,” said the speaker, now turning in their seat to address me more directly, “It turns out that since bio-selection was fully realized, the number of people choosing to have penises from birth has decreased every year since the mid 2270’s. It wasn’t until the last decade that someone figured out that out of the four million people on earth there were only a couple hundred who had penises. The number kept shrinking until five year’s ago when twelve people with penises died, leaving John Thomas, the person we will see tonight, as the last penis on earth.”
“You mean,” I said, “That all the guys I’ve seen walking around here don’t have dicks?”
“No,” was the reply. “None of the women, either.”
The last comment must have annoyed my conversational partner in some way because they rolled their eyes up into their head and clearly started running on internal stimuli again.
I settled back into my theater seat.
The theater progressively filled as the advertised start time approached. Some of the people wore the monk robe garments, others wore spandex wetsuits, and there were a couple of people in jeans, tee shirts, and gray hoodies. Then there was me. I must say that the people of the future have impeccable manners. Not a single person stared at me or did a double take despite the fact that my jacket, tie, and bowler hat must have looked outlandish to them.
It must be said that since the conclusion of my conversation with futureperson, I looked at the people in the theater differently. I couldn’t help wondering about their genitals. No dicks? It didn’t make sense. What did they have? Were there vaginas? Did everyone just have some kind of vent? And then, given these questions, I realized that the people weren’t easily sorted into my antiquated gender silos. Some folks had breasts, others clearly did not. There were lots and lots of different shapes and styles, roughly a third looked to me to be dickless men, I think. I’m really not sure, and before the show started I was so bored by the question that I started thinking about what would happen if I took a piss on one of the cheddar cheese walls.
Right on time, the house went dark. A spotlight came on. The show began.
A well muscled person with long blond hair came out wearing what can only be described as “blue electricity.” There was polite applause. After some introductory remarks about the importance of “reality”, and without much more fanfare, the master of ceremonies said, “A chicken!”
Through a lift in the middle of the stage came a box with a chicken on it. The chicken looked around. It didn’t even flap its wings. The audience whispered to themselves. They seemed excited. The MC again said, “A chicken,” and everyone applauded.
Then it was on to the next item. Each successive item was introduced to whispers and concluded by a repetition of the name. “An explosion,” “A gun”, “French Toast”, “Elf on a Shelf”, etc., etc. It was like a bad auction outside a foreclosed house in rural Maine. By item thirty-five I was out of whiskey and sorry I had made the trip. The enthusiasm of the audience, on the other hand, didn’t wane in any way. As each item was revealed they whispered excitedly. Each conclusion was followed by polite applause.
Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, blue energy said, “Now, audience members, the grand finale. Allow me to introduce John Thomas and the last dick on earth.”
Through the lift in the floor rose a man wearing a bathrobe. He looked to be about 70. He was thin, with the straight mouth and blank stare of a midwestern preacher. He stood for a while without saying a word and blinked at the audience beneath the glare of a spotlight centered on his groin.
The audience seemed less excited than they were for “the boxspring.”
Finally, he broke the silence by saying to the audience, “Do you want to see my dick?”
Nobody said a word.
The MC announced that, “He has to ask that by law, or else we could get shut down.” Then, turning to John Thomas, the MC said, “Yes, they want to see your dick.”
John Thomas opened his robe. There it was. His dick. I have to say, it was smaller and thinner than mine. It was completely ordinary in every way.
The MC began to speak, which I knew, by virtue of the fifty-three previous items, would end the dick viewing. I decided to interrupt the proceedings.
“Why don’t you jerk off?” I yelled, “I bet they would like to see that!”
There was an audible gasp. The entire audience turned to look at me. To my right and left the people recoiled in horror.
A spotlight swung to illuminate me. The people became somewhat obscured in the bright light, but I could still see blue energy, gap-mouthed and staring right at me.
“I have a dick too,” I said. “Do you want to see it?”
Maybe it was the whiskey talking, but I was more than ready to drop trou right there.
“No, thank you,” said the MC, “One is plenty. More than enough, really. Isn’t it folks?”
There was sustained applause.
The spotlight swung off me. The MC thanked the audience. John Thomas went down in his lift. Music began to play. The house lights went up. The people near me exited quickly without even a glance in my direction.
“You should get your money back,” I said to nobody in particular. “That wasn’t even much of a dick.”
Nobody seemed to care.