Ildi worked as a successful middle manager at an international shipping company and was an accomplished lover too, so Géza had a tepidly uneventful, frankly happy love life, so passable that there was never need for talks, squabbles, or fights. Ildi was rarely tired. She liked new things but always added little twists to traditional life, sneaking in all sorts of cute thrills between coffees. To put it plainly, Géza had a distinctly average sex life, whose significance only showed when it suddenly disappeared.

Géza – mildly ashamed – felt a faint joy when Ildi, setting out on a three-week business trip, got into her small, red Audi TT Coupe and made for the M1/M7 link. He felt the time had come for freedom and trying new things. But soon he was struck by the shock of Ildi’s absence; after a mere few hours, he was overcome by a convulsive yearning whose stunning intensity drove him to act.

Years earlier, after an argument, he had cheated on Ildi with a prostitute

and didn’t particularly enjoy himself. During the act he was focused exclusively on ensuring that no part of his body, beyond his condom-wrapped penis, come in contact with any part of the woman and catch something. So it was a tricky session with miserable gratification, and – if that weren’t enough – a few days later the possibility that he may have gotten AIDS sent Géza into terrible panic that didn’t let him sleep until he had himself examined.

To this day he remembers the ache of the needle jabbed into his finger and the ninety, seemingly decades-long minutes until he got the result (negative, naturally), and during which he and four strangers (two men, two women) eyeballed one another in the waiting room, eavesdropped on each other’s names, searched for them on Facebook, and guessed at who did what in what circumstances to end up there.

From then on, Géza ruled out using call girls to quash his pressing desires, though in his free hours he often scrolled online escort directories, checking the profiles of mostly skinny, poorly looking women.

After a few days spent masturbating, ignorant of man and god alike,

he grew bored of the dry pleasure,

and so bought a ridiculously lifelike but plastic-smelling female nether regions, made of soft, skin-like TPR rubber. As described, it was flexible, and stretchy, with “passages” in the appropriate locations. (It came with a vibrating egg to heighten the sheer pleasure, which Géza used only once, because it buzzed too loudly and distracted him from the thought of Ildi’s writhing.)

He had found a new love. At first he penetrated gingerly but soon realised there was no need to be ashamed, everything was so human, and so, penetrating both openings in alteration, eventually he felt a climax in his lower body more powerful than ever before, even than what he’d felt with the wonderfully lithe Ildi. At times he whispered to the nether regions, at others he roughly raped it, often forgetting to use the lubricant.

FULL VERSION AVAILABLE IN THE PRINT EDITION