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Every Friday I’m going to post a new chapter of my novel, featuring the adventures of Dr Sean Ferguson. I’d be really glad if you read the stuff and let me know what you think.


This first story is as long as a short novel – it’s got 54 chapters (so we’ll be e-talking to each other for a year) and I hope it’ll make you laugh (as well as keep you interested).


Here we go, the story is called….


JUST A LITTLE PRICK WITH A NEEDLE


A NOVEL

BY

DR ROBERT BUCKMAN



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Tuesday

CHAPTER ONE: TOO MUCH SEX CAN KILL YOU

AN ANALYSIS BY DR SEAN FERGUSON

(WEDNESDAY MAY 28TH 5.45 a.m.)

Apparently, too much sex can kill you, even if you are a healthy teenager. This news came as a major surprise to me because I grew up, as did most English schoolboys, with the belief that in real life there was no such thing as too much sex. It was simply a matter of knowing the threshold for even the slightest harm, and staying well below that limit. Which, for our entire generation, was never a problem. By an extremely wide margin unfortunately.

So I was very surprised when last year, a few weeks after I’d arrived in Houston, I happened to read a report from Nuremberg about the sudden death at the age of nineteen of Mike, a father of twelve children, after a prolonged sex session with three females named Fara, Tiffy and Soda.

This was an important and very troubling item of news, and it raised many questions. For a start, what was the actual cause of Mike’s death? Could it have been the fact that one of his girlfriends was called Soda? Was it the shame?

Or was it the fact that he was nineteen years old and had twelve children and was worried about child support? Or was it the fact that, according to the report, he weighed 630 pounds?

Of course, his body weight in itself could have been a major predisposing factor for all kinds of heart and lung problems, but there is another aspect that has some bearing on Mike’s case: Mike was a sea lion. As it turned out, Mike was the first sea lion ever to die of too much sex.

Yet Mike’s fundamental sea lion-ness raises other questions.

I found myself wondering what it means to be nineteen years old if you are a sea lion. Are sea lion years like dog years, i.e. you just multiply by seven to get the human equivalent? In which case Mike the sea lion would have been the same biological age as a human who was 133 years old.

And if you are 133 years old and a sea lion, is a body weight of 630 pounds a lot? Would that categorize you as slightly overweight? Or might you be in the category of the morbidly obese – meaning that the excess weight posed a serious health problem? I mean if the average senescent sea lion is nicely skinny (for a sea lion) and weighs, let’s say, a mere 510 pounds, then wasn’t anyone at the Nuremberg zoo concerned when Mike first tipped the scales at 540 pounds, and the following month weighed in at 570 pounds and so on? Wasn’t anybody worried? I assume that sea lions don’t have a waist line or anything that makes them self-conscious about getting a bit tubby, but even so, why didn’t somebody do something?

On the other hand, was Mike’s weight really above the average for an elderly sea lion or was it actually below the mean? Does the average father-of-twelve sea lion usually weigh around 900 pounds? In which case, was Mike anorexic? If that was the case, then maybe it was the sex itself that did for him - even if he didn't have a cigarette afterwards. Which in itself would have been quite difficult, what with the water and everything, and trying to hold a ciggy in your flippers.

In the end, I just couldn’t get rid of the mental image of Mike, at the age of 133 and weighing 630 pounds, having sex for three hours and then dying suddenly ‘of nothing serious’.

I asked myself: what is wrong with this picture? And immediately I answered my own question: there is nothing wrong with this picture at all. This is precisely the manner in which many of us would like to meet our maker, pop our clogs, slip off the plate, drop off the twig or however you want to phrase it.

But, I asked in a supplementary question to my own answer to my own question: was it, even so, a fair and equitable use of resources?

Was it good for the planet? For the species? For the visitors at the zoo? For Fara or Tiffy?

All of these major and complex philosophical issues just kept on going round and round in my mind for the whole of my drive to work that morning. It was only while I was parking the car in the hospital parkade that I concluded that yes, dying of sex over the age of 133 and over the weight of 630 pounds was actually a pretty desirable exit. Even if your last partner was called Soda.

I’m only telling this story because it’s an example of how my mind gets so easily and totally clogged up with trivia and oddities. Mental flotsam and jetsam seem to become lodged inside it, just like those tiny grains of sand that get inside an oyster’s shell and gradually get bigger and bigger until eventually each one turns into a colourful plastic imitation of a pearl, and a real bargain at $4. So I’m told by street vendors anyway.

In any case, on that Wednesday morning, four weeks after I’d started my job as an E.R. physician at St Helen’s I found my mind occupied in cogitating the implications of Mike’s sudden death. It was of little reassurance for me to remind myself that (a) I am not 133 years old, I’m only 28 (b) I am not obese and (c) I am not a sea-lion. Oh, and also (d) I am English – although in Houston (as in any part of Texas) that’s rarely a source of reassurance at the best of times.

Anyway, having my mind involuntarily clogged with thoughts of the lethal potential of sex actually turned out - by extraordinary coincidence - to be an entirely appropriate start to a most peculiar day. As was pointed out in court subsequently.


11 comments:

  1. Can't wait for chapter two!
    -Chloe

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  2. a page turner already (obviously in the virtual sense)- does everything a chapter 1 should do. like the hero in the book i too now cannot remove the image of Mike with a ciggy in his flipper!

    M

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  3. You had me at "too much sex".

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  4. I think i had too much sex once, i can't remember really, i certainly don't get any now. A lady sea lion would do quite nicely right now but i wouldn't let her sit on my face. I think that is where he went wrong. cb

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  5. Sorry, I can't get past picturing the actual, real life author, actually telling the tale. It might sell, though, to those who haven't met the author.

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  6. This from Terry Jones, lately of Monty Python’s Flying Circus

    -----Original Message-----
    From: Terry Jones
    Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2010 13:17:04
    Subject: Re: TOO MUCH SEX CAN KILL YOU - THE BLOG & THE LINK

    Dear Rob


    I love the first chapter of Just A Little Prick With A Needle. Great stuff! Funny!
    Can't wait for next Friday.

    love
    Terry

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  7. Easy, funny read, Rob. Off to a great start. Warped enough for even my mind. The disturbing thing is that I can hear your voice as I read- how did you do that??

    Ron

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  8. This from "Stano" - Love the digressions but will you be getting back to the story soon or this a po-mo initiative to reinvnet the novel for the 21st century..all sideways motion stretching to infinity?

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  9. This from an anonymous po-mo friend:

    My po-mo friend: No firm links, playful curves, entertaining, can't wait to read more.

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  10. Well I think sex can't kill u no matter wat any body say u can not die from sex its stupid so u can't!

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