Late 1960s at the back o’ Sandy Bell’s one evening with Ron, Tom, James and Rod (Changed Ron’s name here to Pete … for onamotopoeiac affect!) Pete asked them to look at his dick in the loo!
So, there we were, five o’ us, pints in hands, an’ a’ o’ a sudden Pete blurts oot that he’s got spots a’ower the end o’ his dong … wait, there’s worse, could we tak a keek at it? Well, blow me down wi’ a feather! The last thing on mah mind! Pete said, “I’m really worried, would you believe I’ve been losing sleep over it?” Having a peep at Pete’s penis was just to reassure him, you understand. So the medics – I’ll call them Rod, James and Tom here to protect their identities – trooped off to the toilet to verify the existence of the plooks on the point of Pete’s penis; I couldn’t bring myself to follow, feeling that Pete’s pecker was in good hands … so to speak.
A few minutes later, they returned, Tom looking a wee bit paler, James very serious and Rod trying to maintain his tall stature. Pete had a wry smile playing on his craggy features. I couldn’t help feeling that the pitted skin of his face had perhaps transferred to the wife’s best freen’, or more likely there was some congenital crossover there, between phizzog and phallus. In my memory I have liked to think over the decades that the would-be docs looked shaken and pale as they returned but in truth they were probably just desperate to get back to their pints.
Anyway, Pete’s medic mates agreed that Pete’s tool had more than just spots; they were nasty, lurid and pussy pustules; each budding doc wasn’t backward with advice on what Pete should do about his festering phallus; among the genital gems were dipping it in hot salt water and vinegar, rubbing on zinc oxide, smearing on some calamine lotion to dry things up, applying a poultice of porridge, putting on various herbal concocktions (sic), and James, who went on to specialise in spines, bravely risked life and limb by suggesting amputation, just for a bit of levity, of course – one could never be sure how Pete’s unstable personality was going to take raw humour, especially if directed at his diseased dong. James also added with a wry smile, Guinness might be good for it … I mean for you! Those of you from a certain era will remember that Guinness ad, “Guinness is good for you.” I believe it’s actually been proved true, something to do with flavonoids and Vitamin B. Anyway, back to Pete … if he’d invited his medic mates to look at his tainted tool, surely he’d have to accept advice baith serious and daft.
If you’d known Pete, you would have realised that his mood could turn on a halfpenny, could change in a blink … it was a risky enough business having a conversation with him about ordinary life, never mind trying to be polite and helpful about his woman’s best friend. He could be very eccentric in a violent way … anyway, it was all good jokey stuff. Of course, at age 22 or whatever, no-one really knew anything but it was fun pretending; for sure for Pete there was a lot more going on than the worry about pimples on his percy. The consensus was he should go soon to a real doctor, one who had more experience in diagnosing defects of the donger … I wondered sceptically if this amateur diagnosis couldn’t have been achieved by Pete without showing his thing to his friends. I can still see his smile afterwards as if he’d pulled off a great … er, trick, and I wonder why or how he could make light of possibly a serious condition. I must say I also wondered what he had been doing with his member, but I kept that to myself.
In later years I wondered if he died from the penile problem, he’s been no longer with us for many decades now. I suppose such a cause of cause was a distant possibility but I never heard any more about that. It probably proves what I firmly believe is when you take some niggle or worry to your doctor or even just fellow medics, it starts the process of fixing things, although I have a nagging feeling in Pete’s case he wanted people to see his appendage for some reason.