There are some physical characteristics that run in
families. Aquiline noses, blonde hair, blue eyes. My family got haemorrhoids.
We never actually discussed this unfortunate genetic
inheritance, of course, but there was always a tell-tale stampede for the
padded chairs whenever the wider family got together.
When I first came into my birthright – what I like to think
of as the family pile – I hadn’t even heard of haemorrhoids and I had
absolutely no idea why my rear end felt like somebody was impaling me with a
red-hot spike. I mentioned it to Vanessa, who suggested I saw a doctor.
Ridiculous.
We eventually settled on her going to the chemist,
describing the symptoms, and seeing if they had anything that helped. She came
back with two tubes of cream. One said it was for haemorrhoids but on no
account should it be used on a rash and the other said it was for a rash but on
no account should it be used on haemorrhoids. Brilliant. So now I needed to
know which I had.
I decided to take a look, which was not easy. I eventually
found that by squatting over a shaving mirror and shining my angle-poise desk
light in a low arc, I got a reasonable look. At first, I gave myself a
God-awful fright since I forgot that my shaving mirror is heavily magnified on
one side. But once I have turned it over to the side with normal-magnification,
I was fine.
The only trouble was, this was the first time I had ever had
a really good stare at my rear-end. It looked pretty red and raw but I had
nothing to compare it with. This might be how it always looked. What the hell
did a normal rear-end look like.
It was some days later still that I had my brainwave. Internet
porn. There must be loads of naked rear-ends on there that I could carefully
analyse in the comfort of my own home. There were and I did. For the record, it
was a rash and it cleared up a couple of weeks with the correct cream. But, to
this day, I swear I am the only person in the world who has put ‘Butt F**king’
into Google purely for medical reasons.
