Madison knew that something wasn't quite right from the moment that she awoke. She showered and dressed just like she did every day, but something was missing. She fixed her hair and put on her makeup, then drank her morning coffee, black as always. Deep in thought, she chewed on her dry, almost tasteless toast and stared out blankly out the window into the brightening morning. She felt a hunger, a craving, and she just couldn't put her finger on it. Slowly, she began to understand just what was the matter. She wanted something. Yes, she wanted something. At first, she wasn't quite sure what it was that she wanted. She had to get to work and she really didn't have time to 'dick' around. She interrupted her introspection and checked her hair and makeup in the mirror.

Finally, she headed out the door determined to begin her day on time. The damned elevator seemed to stop on every motherless floor. One person after another jostled her as they crowded mercilessly into the already crowded elevator. Only a few bothered to mumble any sort of apology. Deep in thought, Madison just ignored them as best she could. Slowly, she began to understand just what it was that she wanted so badly, just what she was lacking. The insight cheered her up immeasurably.

Suddenly elated, she walked down the street, taking long, determined strides. Happy with the world, she waved cheerfully at people she knew and smiled graciously at people she didn't know. Now she knew exactly what she wanted and she made careful plans to get it as she strode down the street, careful not to step on any unlucky cracks.

Her friends might make fun of her appetites, but she knew just what she liked. Suddenly, an evil thought intruded on her consciousness. What if the sea of humanity through which she passed like a sloop reaching before a fair wind, also knew exactly what she wanted. Their easy smiles might betray their secret amusement rather than simply display their patina of good will. What if they all knew her dirty little secret? They must know that she really couldn't help herself. She stopped and studied her reflection in the glass of a storefront window. All sorts of hunting gear were on display. She took a tissue and wiped away a smudge of lipstick. Could people really tell what she wanted just by looking at her?

She grinned at her suddenly self-acknowledged mischievous nature. Did she really care so much what others thought? Quite simply, she wanted 'dick.' Where was a nice girl like Madison to get 'dick' on such a beautiful day?

She walked on and saw a pair of somewhat bedraggled young women with a mature male sandwiched between them. Madison rarely saw an adult male in public. In school, she had learned of a past time when large numbers of males - called "men" - prowled the streets at will, singly and in packs, day and night and made them generally unsafe for women and children. She imagined then that people frequently saw males in public. Since the Revolution, the Hunt had culled the male population and kept male numbers below ten percent. Now males were actually rare.

The duo's chic clothes and stylish coiffures were somewhat the worse for wear. The male was totally naked and totally depiliated. He was barefoot to reduce the usual gender dimorphism. His toes were even well pedicured, the sign of a well-run household. He had a dick, all right. A thin gold ring pierced the glans of his penis. A thin gold chain attached the ring to an identical ring that pierced his belly button and lifted his thick sex, revealing his bulging ball sac underneath. There was a time when a male could intimidate a score of healthy, conventionally sane women, simply by threatening to expose his male paraphernalia. Fortunately, that time was no longer. Now his exposed male parts advertised his vulnerability. Still, this was a scene one very rarely saw on a city boulevard in broad daylight. At night, on the other hand, it was not at all uncommon as revelers staggered loudly from nightspot to nightspot, a boy toy in tow. This trio's appearance and unsteady gait suggested that they were dragging home after a busy night on the town.

Madison wanted dick. She stopped in front of Laura's Market and stared through the spotless glass window. She saw the gleaming tall stainless steel commercial refrigerators that lined either side of the store's interior. On one wall, one might find the prime beef, lamb, pork, and poultry. Laura's only sold the best, of course.

On the other wall, one found jacques, the flesh of males called jacks, larger cuts, such as rounds, rumps, saddles, racks, shoulders, tenderloins, and barons and smaller cuts, such as roasts, steaks, back ribs, stew meat, hommeburger, and soup bones. Hams and pickled tongues were there too, along with livers, kidneys, and animuelles or "city oysters."

At Laura's Market, one always might find five or six male carcasses in back, hanging by one heel from a stainless steel hook in the store's walk-thru cooler, waiting patiently to be butchered. Depending on the angle, one might look into an empty, gutted, body cavity and see the pale ivory of the spinal bones gleaming against the dark red tenderloins. It was all really rather fascinating. The heads were often left on in the event they might be sold for roasting whole. Their eyes had always struck Madison. Their lifeless, staring eyes seemed to follow the shoppers around the store as they inspected the meat displayed for purchase, pinching a flank here and a rump there, checking for tenderness and fat content. Empty eyes looked out, as if guessing which of their fellows would end up on the butcher block sawed in halves and quarters and then cut into retail cuts, and which would be sold whole. Madison laughed at her sudden sappiness. These motherless jacks are raised for their meat. We kept them alive and feed for only one purpose, to end up as meat on somebody's dinner table. You're letting your fertile imagination and female sentimentality lead you into trouble - again, laughed Madison at her own silliness.

The hands and genitals were usually absent. The hands were only good for soups or stews but the testicles or city oysters were highly sought after and very expensive. However, very few people wanted dick. Laura's Market, a classy establishment, did not even sell dick.

While males seem to have a high regard for their dicks, few others share their sentiment. While dick is uniquely male, he is only one of several conveniences through which a person can derive erotic pleasure, if her tastes run in that direction. However, dick is a notoriously unreliable and messy apparatus, overly eager and too soon exhausted. Males are marked by a stunted "Y" chromosome and an inability to feel pain like people do. Betraying the male's primitive physiology, a dick combines sexual and - what is the polite term - excretory function. An excited dick will grow to prodigious size and, sooner or later will spew gobs of its icky, sticky stuff all over the place, carrying all sorts of diseases and staining fabric. As an adult, Madison had learned that some people actually wanted the stuff excreted into them, but every sex-worker whom Madison knew, had replaced his unreliable flesh with a more dependable and more sanitary apparatus.

Hunters often save dick as a treat for their dogs. Commercially, dick, noses and ears go into cheap sausage or pet food or is just discarded. Quality sausage labels boast that the product is "dick-free."

However, Madison's grandmother and mother felt differently. They used every part of the jack except the "oink." They taught Madison that waste was a lack of responsibility, like failing to put down a wounded jack humanely. On Hunt days, they would go around and collect dicks from those who had no interest in them and come home with half a dozen hanging from a string.

Preparing dick is messy and so much work. First, you must wash them very thoroughly and soak them in lemon juice. You tent the delicate skin on the underside of the barrel and slipped the thin point of your sharpest blade beneath the thin skin and run a slit up to the end of the foreskin. Using your finger and the dull side of knife, you strip away the skin until the glans and inner structures lay bloody and bare.

Once they are skinned, you rinsed them off again, and then dump them into boiling water where they scald for a few minutes - no more than five minutes. Meanwhile you heat up some olive oil in a fry pain and dice an onion. Once the onion is sizzling on the fire, you remove the flayed dicks from the boiling water and gingerly dump them into a colander in the sink. Then you rinse them with cold water until they are cool enough to touch safely and then dry them with a paper towel. You lay them out on your cutting board in a neat row, sharpen you best carving knife, and then make a series of precise ½ centimeter slices. Once the dicks are sliced, you add them to the sautéing onion and sprinkle with a few turns of freshly ground pepper and a dash of salt.

Soon the meat is hissing in the pan. Stirring the fry pan from time to time, you chop up a pair of ripe red tomatoes and add them together with a splash of balsamic vinegar and a generous pinch of cinnamon. At the end, you throw in a handful of golden raisins. So good, Madison thought, salivating profusely as she remembered the dish served over wedges of crispy toasts. But so much work! Some people simply bread the slices and deep-fry them. Tastes good too with lemon and ranch dressing, but so many calories! Madison sighed aloud. She wanted dick so bad. Jacques was very expensive. Dick was so cheap, if you could find it. For Madison, dick was a guilty pleasure from her chilhood.

As lunchtime approached, Madison told Nichole, her best friend at work about her unwanted craving.

Nichole laughed. "You're not pregnant, Madison, are you?" she asked with a twinkle in her eye. Everyone knows that pregnancy brings on a desperate craving for strange foods and strange food combinations. Very few people shared Madison's taste for dick. Almost all people found the idea itself repellant, like eating worms. Many of the few who had tried it, said dick was just too tough and chewy. Nichole suddenly felt herself choking as she imagined chewing a mouth full of saliva-soaked rubber bands.

"I'm not pregnant," answered Madison a bit indignant. "Not even a little pregnant. When I am pregnant, you'll be the first to know, after me."

Nichole shrugged a little apology.

"Sure, Nichole, if you cook dick too long, and it gets rubbery," Madison continued. "Cook anything too long and it gets tough and rubbery. When my mother or grandmother cooked dick, it was never tough and rubbery. I have their recipe. Like I told you, I just have a taste for dick."

"Well, I'll try anything once. Just promise me that it won't look like a white, fat, one-eyed worm."

On the way to Madison's house, Nichole stopped at the spa. She had an appointment with Billy, one of her favorite sex workers.

"You're going to your friend Madison's house to eat what?" Billy asked her to repeat herself. He was usually an attentive listener.

"Dick,' said Nichole very plainly, sitting up. She rolled over so that her knees her straddling Billy's head and she faced his feet. Resting her breasts against his belly, ashe took his dick gently in the palm of her hand. His skin was ever so dry and velvety. She could feel the hardness underneath. She nuzzled him and tasted only the clean fragrance of his soap. Surgically enhanced, she was in no danger of any unpleasant emissions. He had no pee-hole any more; his bladder contents had been diverted to his rectum. His scrotum concealed voice-activated controls that varied his size and hardness and could cause him to vibrate at one of three speeds. "I should eat you first," she offered wantonly, "as an appetizer."

"Gawd!" Billy said, trying to imagine actually eating a dick. "They say that dick is tough like rubber bands!" Quickly, he got back to business. He lifted his head and his tongue swept the sensitive crease between her thighs from the hood of her clitoris to her anus. Nichole lost all interest in conversation. She just loved his tongue play. Billy was so good at what he did. After all, he was a professional.

"You're right on time!" gushed Madison. "Dinner's just about ready."

"I brought a Merlot," smiled Nichole, glad for once to be on time. She hoped that Merlot went with dick.

"A red wines is just perfect for the spicy sauce," said Madison accepting the proffered bottle. "And Merlot's my favorite."

"Tell me, where did you finally buy the dick?"

"Well, I didn't have to buy it. I went down to the processing plant and asked in the office. They took me in back. You know, they were finishing up for the day. No jack is kept over night. The pens were already empty. The last jacks were being slaughtered. The girl even asked me if I wanted to watch. Of course, I said no. Yuck. Then we went back to where the carcasses were being dressed - not covered with clothes - you know, gutted and flayed. I picked out four nice fat dicks. They didn't even ask for money but I tipped the woman who helped me ten bucks. She rinsed them for me and put them in a plastic bag with ice."

Nichole savored the wine for a long moment before she swallowed. The moment of truth was inexorably approaching. She studied the triangular wedges of toast on her plate. She saw the chopped red tomatoes and the golden raisins. She saw the bits of sautéed onion and a heap of 'eight' shaped slices of dick - each comprised of two adherent rings cut from the fused cylindrical bodies of the two corpi cavernosi of the penis.

She lifted the toast and hesitated. The aroma was certainly delicious. Steeling her determination, she opened her lips and took her first bite. The rich perfume of the ripe tomatoes exploded on her palate. The soft, winy sourness of the balsamic vinegar balanced the sweetness of the plump raisins. The cinnamon transformed the quotidian pungency of the sautéed onions into something exotic. Nichole looked up and watched Madison eat with real gusto. She finally had her dick. Nichole's tongue lifted a slice of dick. "The sauce is delicious!" Nichole said, after she had swallowed. She frowned. Madison didn't seem to notice. She was eating and her eyes were closed, likely imaging those days with her mother and grandmother. The sauce was delicious. The dick was, well, like rubber bands - tough and chewy. Madison didn't even seem to notice. Maybe Madison's mother and grandmother did it better. Maybe Nichole would give it a try herself.