Mammary Planet
The nurse said, “You need to schedule another blood test next week.”
I shrugged. “OK.”
“And to test hormone levels,” she continued, “you’ll have to abstain from all sexual activity.”
“All sexual activity? For a week?”
“Mm-hm.”
“Including masturbation?”
“Mm-hm.”
I shrugged. A week without masturbation sounded easy enough. We scheduled the blood test, I went home and put away my one-hand magazines. (This was before the Internet.)
A day came and went without inconvenience, then another. But on the third day something odd happened. I was walking down Telegraph Avenue, and I noticed that every woman on the street had unusually large breasts. Not just some of the women; all of them. This strange change in half the human population of Berkeley persisted all day, and I realized that it wasn’t them, it was me.
My perceptions were distorted, due to hormonal imbalance. Every woman’s breasts weren’t really bigger than before; they just seemed that way to me. I was hormone-addled, and seeing things oddly. I knew this, but knowledge did not decrease the perceptual distortion.
This effect increased on the fourth day. Every woman, everywhere, had an amazingly ample bosom. I knew that was an illusion, but it was a very convincing illusion. I tried not to look, or seem to notice; but my judgment was probably as impaired as my perception. I hope that the women of Berkeley ignored my astonishment, or forgave me.
By the fifth and sixth days, I was adrift in an impossible parallel world of fantastic mammary antigravitation. As before, knowledge of illusion did not dispel illusion. I knew that I was hallucinating, but still I saw the mirage as plain as day. I was amazed by how florid the hallucination was, yet also how clear and specific. Nothing else looked any different.
On the seventh day I went to the clinic and gave a blood sample. Then I went home and got out the one-hand magazines.
The very next day, every woman’s breasts had returned to their normal size.
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