Gina came out of Thresher's, plastic bag clinking by her side (Budvar for herself, Kahlua for her sister), and saw it almost immediately: a jet of water, clear and powerful, spraying out into the street from a disused shop entrance. Why would someone hose down the pavement? And why - she was getting closer now - was there a canvas holdall in the middle of the pavement, the water falling just short of it? The shoppers on Kilburn High Road on a Saturday morning were a notoriously tough crowd to impress, let alone to shock. But even the most hard-bitten people approaching Gina looked incredulous. And as she reached the shopfront she saw why.

It wasn't a hosepipe. It was a penis. A man was standing in the recess, his dick in his hand, hosing out a stream of surprisingly colourless piss. So far, so Kilburn. But this was a big, good- looking man, probably a bodybuilder, about thirty, not the usual sad old drunk. He was planted solidly, soberly, his feet slightly widened for balance, one hand hanging by his side, the other holding in a silver-ringed clasp a very large, thick, rosy penis with an equally large silver ring set into its tip. It looked swollen and full enough to continue pissing indefinitely.

That was the thing. It looked - well, frankly, it looked more than good. That was why everyone was so taken aback. That image - the juicy, blush-pink cock in the proportionately wide-fingered hand, whose silver rings echoed the Prince Albert in the tip - could have been a Robert Mapplethorpe photograph. Even for a girl who had never had a watersports fantasy in her life, it was strangely erotic. Gina wanted to stop and stare but she was too much of a coward even to break stride. Just as she passed - there was a build-up of human traffic, as everyone was skirting the canvas bag on the side without the piss, and some people were walking in the road - the gusher stopped. The guy tapped his dick, shook it and put it back in his tracksuit bottoms. Strolling over to the holdall, he slung it over his shoulder and headed off along the street.

"Fucking unbelievable!" muttered a young man next to Gina. "Just when you think you've seen it all, eh?"

"Filthy cunt," agreed a woman.

There was a general murmur of agreement. Gina kept walking, skirting the stretch of erupted pavingstones outside Ryan's Diner with the familiarity of long habit. She didn't even see them; she was too occupied with formulating the story for her sister.

"And the worst thing was," she would say, uncapping a beer, "that it was a fucking gorgeous dick. Quite possibly the best dick, not to mention Prince Albert, that I'll ever see. On some psycho exhibitionist weeing onto the pavement outside Penny Wise. Is that sad or what?"

The thought was so depressing that she crossed the road without looking and nearly got knocked down by a 98 bus.

copyright 1999