Fullerton came.
	The device he gripped in his hand, so alien to his touch now, a deflated reminder of something that was no longer  his own, drizzled a thin strip of rubbery sperm down his knuckles. He had thought of the wrinkles under her lumpen  abdominals and the dusting of prickled hair on her taint. His eyes closed, he denied himself the sight of his body  illuminated by the pixel-grow of a computer monitor beaming with a miasma of the soft, perfectly round assholes of  drawn boys. From balls to brain, the tickles of orgasm, however faint, however vague, dispersed inside him and  settled into disenchantment once again.
	Exhaling with a heady "Fuck.", Fullerton opened his eyes and exposed himself to a spoiled slab of flesh and,  having lifted a Kleenex from a box nestled into a dark corner on his desk, proceeded to clean what he'd soiled.
	How long had it been since she left? To be honest, Fullerton couldn't say. A year? Two years? Three months? As  anyone in solitude knows, the passage of time skews irrevocably in the mind. A year becomes two, 3 weeks becomes a month, an hour becomes a battle. He had bagged the only girl he could get and now she was gone. That much was clear, and no amount of puffy femboy nipples could fully erase his desire for her. Melanie, a dirty blonde with 43 years on her.
	Fullerton wasn't a fag. No, he constantly refuted this to himself. Yes, he posited, a lesser man in his position  might've taken on the guise of a fag, embellishing it to the point of parody out of some desperate urge to strip the bonds of his own heterosexual nature and immerse himself in total authenticity. No, he thought, he wasn't this  man. He was caught between the rejection of women out of fear and the aggressive supersession of the female  dynamic for the more idealized and familiar androgynous kind, though he only half-consciously acknowledged this.  An androgynous boy, or a shemale, takes the place of a woman and performs all roles in the romantic and domestic  theater with total subservience; it's their fantasy, he thought. The cock is just auxilliary, it's meant to be  ignored.
	What is a woman, anyway, he thought. What could possibly be found in a breast or a pink cunt that hadn't been  squandered by the head attached? There was nothing and there had been nothing even going back 20 or 30 years, beyond Fullerton's lifetime. The Baby Boomers had dealt all men a bum hand, nothing could bring back the saccharine days of marital servitude. Back when a man could go to war and come back home with a smile on his face and a broad at his arm.
	"Go fuck yourself!" she screamed with cherubic tears. It was one of those monumentally sincere interjections that really hits when they say it, you know--those people. Your heart winds up and your legs go shakey and, all of the sudden, you start to question the whole basis of your reality, and you know nothing's going to be right ever again. A ragged car door slams, an engine squeals itself into gear, and her eyes, red and tears dashing through the worn wrinkles on her face, retreat from the gravel driveway with a thousand rocks at the wheels. Fucking cunt.
	Drifting into melancholy now, Fullerton's head hits sparks of relative brilliance, as it always goes. It was an honest mistake, more honest than mistake, really. The gyno's office smelled like a cave made out of congealed hand soap, the fluorescent tubes on the ceiling stung his nubile hermit's eyes. Flavors of infinite worry and ennui percolated in his mind as he stared into the empty chair behind the desk. He glanced over at her for a reassuring look on her eyes. They were flaccid things, screaming boredom more than anything else. She glanced to him, with eyes of faint reassurance with a tweak of the eyebrow that seemed to suggest imminent disappointment. Her lips parted and the soft flesh on her cheeks strained laugh lines. It was one of those empathetic, patronizing smiles mothers give to their kids when they lose prized possessions; "Don't worry, honey, we can always get another one". Fullerton took it to heart but later, and much more obviously, he reflected it only pissed him off. Her fingers clasped limply at her thighs over undersized, faded denim. After careful consideration, Fullerton deftly slipped his hand over hers and interlocked in an embrace that seemed only forced and compulsory rather than romantic to him, cheapening the value of the memory in future recollection. He thought about giving her a kiss but, honestly, he didn't have the courage for it.
	By the time the gyno had arrived, he was overcome with an ominous grief. Sitting behind his desk, skimming through his own notes in masturbatory showmanship with family photos and diplomas in a hurricane of self-importance surrounding him, the gyno could've easily been Fullerton's age but with his James Deen portrait, the gyno had him beat. This wasn't jealousy; no, he certainly didn't think she'd dream up her own little rape fantasies involving this guy, nor that she'd inexplicably latch onto him and start an affair. Fullerton knew, however vaguely, that Melanie couldn't feasibly betray him like that, she would never be in a position to leave him--let's put it that way. No, this was pure annoyance, and general inadequacy.
	"So, we have the results here." he started, pert graceful lips expanding and contracting, his eyes perking sheepishly between every syllable. "Melanie, you went through a tubal ligation procedure," glancing at the edge of his notes, "4 years ago?"
	"Yes, that's correct." she said. Her eyes were cursory, unfeeling.
	"Well, uh, I'm glad to say the operation is still a success." playful/professional.
	Fullerton's face jumped with sudden disgust and outrage before finally boiling down to a volte of false understanding and denial. His head buzzed about with anger. Words leapt in and out of his psyche, stripping bare his proprietary desires. If he were to open his mouth, the sounds that'd erupt from his windpipe would be some jumbled, inept cacophony. So he sat, stonefaced, embarrassed as Melanie and the gyno looked on, their eyes pressing for life.
	"W-well, uh, we, uh, wanted to have a child of our own someday." the words were less than a jumble but more than enough to set Melanie's eyes darting towards him. "Let's not fucking talk about this, right now, right here." they said. Fullerton shriveled.
	The gyno wound his head over to her.
	"What he means is he was really looking forward to being a father but, with what I did with my procedure, I can't." Dreary glances bounce off the gyno and land on Fullerton, all soft and rosy. "I want to give you that, honey, but I just can't. You have to understand."
	He didn't understand. Not now, not then. It was her own goddamn fault for tearing up her insides. Rage like electric shock bolted up in his body, doomed to ebb out.
	"It's not my place to give relationship advice," the gyno dredged up a fated nugget. "But you've got to learn to accept these things. Every couple has their foibles that they've got to accept and work through them together. Once you get over this hump, you two'll be stronger than ever." Fullerton stared dully into his mouth, into those Hollywood pearls, waiting for the comedown, careful not to blow a single burst of spiteful air into his face.
	"I threw around the idea of adoption once or twice but we never got around to really talking about it. I don't think you were into the whole idea, though." she chirped with that tinge of vindication.
	Fullerton sighed through his nose and crossed his arms. He concurred with a muted "No."