HARD SELL
Peter Westbrook takes Viagra. He hopes
Dolores does not find out that he also supplies it
1 DON'T fully remember what led up to it, but I seem to have become a drugs supplier, one of those 'pushers' that everybody deplores so much, the sort David Blunkett wants to throw into jail.
In my case I made an arrangement over the telephone and then drove to a pub where Kevin and I had arranged to meet. His van swished into the forecourt even before I could get out of the car. I carried the package over to him. 'Sorry it's so much,' I said. I showed him the receipt. 'Doesn't matter,' he said. 'Here's a cheque. Is 70 quid all right? I'll buy you a drink for the rest.'
He slung my package under the back seat of his van, failed to lock it, and we strode to the bar door, picking our way between the rose bushes and the pub bantams scratching in the beds. We actually had a couple of drinks, a few laughs with old chums, and there — it was done. I had become a supplier of a prescribed drug, though whether Viagra is class A, B or C I have no idea.
Life is getting desperate down here. Kevin wouldn't have been in the game of eliciting drugs if his GP, a female who thinks shandy is a dangerous narcotic, hadn't refused to give him Viagra in the first place, but instead insisted he first gave up smoking and drinking. He is a wine merchant. And I would never have become a supplier if I hadn't, almost a year ago, after three years of widowed singlehood, met Dolores and started trying to do things that most men of my age generally only tell shabby jokes about. That was embarrassing enough, but she made me go to my doctor. 'I can't."0K, it's that or I'm going.' I made an appointment. My GP didn't bat an eye but passed me on to a urologist at the local Bupa hospital.
There are many humiliations in my life but the worst so far has been sitting in the consultant's surgery while he and Dolores discussed the shape of my penis. 'Well, it gets to about four-fifths hard,' I say. 'Huh, three-quarters,' said Dolores. The consultant was reassuring. 'It's all about blood supply,' he said. 'It's quite common in people with your type of diabetes.' He put a contraption with an ear-piece into my groin. Something went `thwurp-thwurp'. 'That shows there's some blood getting through,' he said. 'Did you smoke much?' he asked.
'Only for England,' I said. 'Well, we'll start you off on the 50 milligram. If that doesn't do the trick, have half another one.
I have since gravitated to the 100mg pills. I tell people I'm on Viagra-assist, as though I'm on Jobseeker's Allowance. They smile, pleased that I'm exercising something more than my drinking arm. I suppose I must have mentioned it to Kevin one night after the pub poker game (another illegal activity). 'I'm getting the same sort of pressure from Beatrice,' he said. His eyes went misty and he coughed on his Gaulois. 'When you think I got thrown out of school for screw ing the headmaster's daughter. . '
'I don't suppose you've got any to spare?' he asked later on. 'My GP wouldn't give me any. She wants me to sign on at the Well Man clinic.' Sony, I said. Dolores may be South American but she can count up to eight and knows they come in packets of four. But a few weeks later, when Dolores was somewhere in Mexico, I let him have one, remembering how the consultant emphasised bow safe Viagra was except for the occasional headache or, in my case, a nasal sniffle. 'How soon?' asked Kevin. 'It varies,' I said. 'Usually about half an hour or so. And, sorry, but they're £8 a time.'
And that was really it until last week, after telephoning my usual order through. I went down to the Bupa hospital and, instead of picking up a box of eight of the little blue wonders, I found I had to pay for 16 at £8.88 each — £142. £142?
I remember, as a bit of a forward youth, shuffling into the barber's, trying to whisper about a packet of three, as clippers snipped at the white necks of small-town Englanders, and reflected mirrored eyes following me all the way out the door over the Brylcreem-embossed rubber matting. Was it ninepence — 9d, if you don't mind — a time in those days? Now it's £8.88. I happened to bump into Kevin again. 'I don't suppose you have any... ?Actually, Kevin, I do...
'It's just that they give you that bit of reassurance, don't they?' he said as we parted after our transaction. I haven't seen him since. My only problem was explaining to Dolores why a cheque for £70 from Kevin fell out of my wallet the other day. It was a bit like being caught with a packet of three.
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