The Stud

Author : Desmond Hussey, Staff Writer

I hear the electronic lock on my door buzz open, waking me from my brief nap. I crack one weary eye and spot a nervous, but pleasant looking woman, 30ish, standing timidly by the entrance to my sanctum sanctorum.

“Come in,” I say. “Welcome to my châteaux.” This wins me a shy smile, but she remains at the threshold.

I get groggily to my feet and, scratching my bare belly and rubbing sleep from my eyes, I saunter over to the small buffet table perennially arranged with a cornucopia of food and drink.

“Hungry?” I offer, attempting a modicum of old school decorum.

“No.”

“Mind if I – ?”

“No.”

I check her out over mouthfuls of grapes. She’s not bad looking, especially when she smiles; long legs, strong hips, bright, kind eyes, curves in all the right places.

She’ll make a good mother one day.

I watch her trying to take it all in while attempting to appear brave, stalwart. This is her first time and it shows. For me this routine is old hat.

I pop the last grape into my mouth as I cross to her and for a moment I’m certain she’s going to change her mind, scream and bolt. It happens.

But she stays and even lets me put my hands on her shoulders. She shivers beneath her loose shift.

“Don’t you wish we could get outta here,” I whisper seductively into her ear. “Just the two of us. We can run off into the mountains somewhere. Make babies. Repopulate the world.”

“You say that to all the girls.”

I do, but I don’t say so. Instead, I grin and tilt her head up to look at me. “No, just you.”

She smiles.

We pretend to believe my lie as I draw her to my bed, both painfully aware that her husband, or boyfriend or lover waits for her outside, livid with guilt-fueled jealousy.

But I can’t help what I am – a stud. One of only twelve in the world, or so I’m told. I’ll never know for certain since we’re kept apart from each other – for safety’s sake.

Sex. Coition. Coupling. Pairing. Fornication. Consummation. Intercourse. Nooky. Relations. Mating. Sexual congress. Copulation. Carnal knowledge. There aren’t enough words to describe what I do. All day. Everyday.

I wish I could say it was the life, but it ain’t true. You’d think being one of the only fertile men on the planet would earn you a little respect and dignity, but I’m treated like an animal – a very precious and well tended animal, but at the end of the day I’m just meat.

No one really knows how it happened, but by the end of the 21st Century the male sperm count had dropped by 99%. They say it was a conspiracy, an attempt at population control that went horribly wrong, possibly GMO foods, but whatever it was, in the end only a few men remained fertile.

Some say I’m one of the lucky ones – treated like a king; desired by all women and envied by all men – but one person’s Heaven can be another’s Hell.

Procreation. That’s what I’m really here for. They come to me – old, young, thin, fat, beautiful, ugly, any woman strong enough for childbirth. They come to me filled with longing and faith. In their eyes I’m a savior, but I know that I’m simply a grunting, sweaty idol bringing dim hope to desperate women and a dying race.

I am simply a function. And I have a busy schedule to keep.

Now, where were we?