Excerpt: The Bare Bones Book of Humour 

Regeneration
by Amit Majmudar

When he pounded his pillow out of frustration instead of his wife out of desire, she proposed he talk to his doctor. So in a sense it was her fault. She even picked up the prescription because she had to get milk and brownie mix anyway. 

‘Did the pharmacist look at you?’ 

‘Well, yes. She had to hand me the package.’ 

‘You know what I mean. Did you two exchange a look. Like she was thinking, girl, you’re going to have a fun weekend. They call it the weekend pill, you know.’ 

‘She was professional. So am I. Listen, Dinesh. I want the best for you. This is stressing you out, and it’s turning into a cycle.’ 

‘You think there’s nothing really wrong with me.’ 

‘No. It’s not right or wrong or a reflection on you or on us as a couple. You just have to break the cycle. That’s all. Here.’ 

In other words, she thought it was all in his head. Of course she did; she was a psychiatry nurse. But Dinesh had studied physiology and humanely beheaded mice for a living. He knew too much. He knew the role of nitrous oxide. He knew that erectile function depended on the vascular ‘stretchiness’ that diminished with age, the pipes getting calcium deposits just like the plumbing in a house. He knew the mechanism of action, the duration of action, the potential side effects and interactions, the half-life, and the molecular structure of the weekend pill. 

What he didn’t know was how it would shoot a searchlight out of his pelvis. How it would return to him the kind of bludgeon that had him thrusting into the couch when he was fourteen years old, face down flipping through issues of Fantastic Four. How he would carry the Roman standard of his spermatic legion deep into the Teutoburg Forest of his fantasies. How he found his id wandering over to the dumpy researcher with the long braid. Just back from maternity leave, she sweated the spices of her hot and dirty country. Repulsive once, now ripe. He noticed women of all shapes, sizes, races as he made his way across campus to his car. On the drive home, even the voices of NPR ladies sounded sensual, thrilling. What towered out of him could break that racism-fixated uptalk, that ‘objectively analytical’ tonal affectation. If given the chance, he could make that voice groan. 

He texted his wife. Could you open the door? I am carrying something. She met him at the door. He stepped inside, closed the door, and wordlessly took her from behind while she held on to the freestanding coat rack, just as he fantasised on the way home. He overpowered her three times before dinner. 

What he did next was not cheating. It was self-testing in the spirit of self-discovery. Also, competition. What was his body, in his early fifties, still capable of? The pill and he were one; he did not think of it as the pill fortifying his prowess but feeding the prowess that was already there. The pill watered the Tree of Life with blood, and the tree shot up strong, rooted deep in his pelvis. He paid for sex because he did not want to break some lonely woman’s marriage and leave her body stretched and bruised in so many delicious ways that no future partner would ever satisfy her. He used 401(k) money in spite of the withdrawal penalty because his wife never checked that account. With that money in cash, he cruised downtown, fearing no holdup, no carjacking. Too much quiet authority emanated from him now. Something about his posture and gait had changed. It was the confidence that came from carrying a weapon. 

If he asked the prostitutes whether he had bested their best, they would have said yes just to make him happy and get his money next time. So he watched the pupils: did they dilate? He watched for the sex flush, the pink wash from collarbones down, that could not be faked. He watched for fasciculations of the thigh muscles and loss of bladder control. All those were physiological indicators. But there was also the unquantifiable gaze of an admiring, satisfied woman. Always mixed, of course, with the surprise that a fiftysomething who looked like Dinesh could fuck like that. He made believers out of his whores, sometimes two at a time, and still poured himself into his wife when he got home. 

The bottle was getting low. He had been taking one every three days, weekend after weekend strung together all month. He messaged his physician while his sweat cooled. His wife, her abdominal muscles still twitching with the aftereffect of her climax, clung lovingly to his back, kissing the moles and freckles. She read his screen over his shoulder. ‘You don’t need those pills, honey.’ 

‘I like them. And so do you.’ 

‘It was all a cycle. You broke the cycle. You did it all by yourself.’

‘With the help of the pills.’ 

‘I switched them out with over the counter Claritin. It was a placebo. This, tonight—what we’ve shared every night this month… All you, honey. All you.’

The Bare Bones Book of Humour (ed. Ankit Raj Ojha) can be ordered here.  

Excerpted with permission from The Bare Bones Book of Humour edited by Ankit Raj Ojha published by Bare Bones Publishing 2026