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New Body

Jack Cooley

��“How does it feel, Sir?”
��“Huh?ÉWhat?”
��“You’re a little groggy yet, Sir. The body. How does it feel?”
��“The body? I’m sorry, IÉby George! The body! IÉit feels grand! Why, it feels—”
��“That’s fine, Sir. Glad to hear it. Now if you’ll just—”
��“Doctor! How can I ever thank you! Why, it’s marvelous. It—”
��“Quite all right, Sir, no need to thank me. Of course we are all excited for you, but we are rather busy. On your way out, if you’ll just drop your patient record off at the front desk?”
��I felt so alive! I suppose I had forgotten what it was like to be young. My new body tingled with life! To have a new body at my age! A new lease on life, eh? Eighteen again! Damn!
��Lucky for me I’d had the money to arrange for my new body, a quite substantial sum even without the stiff premium charged for a Caucasian one—so much harder to come by I was told. I wonder how they acquired him, the youth, so willing to trade bodies? Well, it doesn’t matter, I’m sure it must be legal or the procedure wouldn’t be done.
��Sorry to see my old body go actually; we’d covered a lot of ground my old body and me. It’s natural, I suppose, to be sentimental about one’s own body. I made a handsome donation and sent white carnations to Our Lady of the Assumption.
��Over the next several weeks I checked out my new body. At first it was as wobbly as a newborn colt; but the post-op instructions said that was to be expected, and I soon got the hang of the thing. The previous owner, though, had let it get a little out of shape. Young people just don’t appreciate good bodies. Still, how out of shape can an eighteen-year-old body be? A few weeks of early morning laps around the park followed by a workout and swim at Myer’s Gym soon restored it to like-new condition.
��I gloried in my new body; it seemed never to tire, and taut muscles on the lithe young flesh stood out everywhere. To be young again! To have the wisdom of a sixty-five-year-old mind in an eighteen-year-old body! It was the dream of the ancients—brought true by modern technology!
��I was anxious to show off my new body. I dressed it in smart but casual fashion: Chinos, Bean’s Walkers, button-down Oxfords, sharp blazers, Seiko—and took care to be seen in all the promising social situations.
��“Who was the new tennis whiz?” everybody at the club wanted to know. I could trounce anyone: the combination of wisdom and youthful agility was too much for them. Also, I couldn’t help but notice the wives giving my lean, muscular body the eye. They were all bored of their husbands, and I was sure I could have whomever I chose—but I hadn’t yet developed full confidence in my new body.
��I met Tammy at the gym. At first I was content just to watch as she worked out in her pink aerobic pants and tee. Her skin was smooth and creamy, and she did wonderful things with her body. Soon though, I began timing my visits with hers, and it wasn’t long before I managed to introduce myself. After that, we worked out together—my brain clouded with her aroma. I had got rid of my Buick and bought a new carmine-red Lamborghini Espada GT, and she loved riding in it. She was eighteen too. She taught me hip hop and break dancing. She excited me, of course, and now that I had the working equipment to go with the desire—fairly robust equipment I might add—I was anxious to test drive it, so to speak. Ultimately, she turned me down, saying she preferred older men. I could appreciate the irony, but I was disappointed all the same.
��By that time I felt comfortable with my new body. Frances was thirty-four, and she didn’t mind my being eighteen one bit. She loved it in fact. The previous owner of my new body would have appreciated what Frances and I were doing for it. We had great fun until her husband caught us at the motel. He came storming through the door, ripping it and the frame right off the wall. When he saw that he had been cuckolded by a mere stripling, his rage turned sheepish and he shrunk from the room. That’s the power of youth! I gloried in it.
��Next was Sandy. Sandy was a lovely, bright-eyed thing of twenty-eight. Then Maxine, Jacqueline, Nicole, Juanita, Babette, Anastasia, Sandy again, Adrienne, Joanne, Claire, the incident with Roberta—who turned out to be Robert, Yolanda, Conchita, Virginia.É They all clamored for more. “How could an eighteen year old know so much,” they all said in amazement. They called me Don Juan, Apollo, Eros. Oh, it was grand! Youth! Where would it not take me?
��Then someone recognized my new body from Most Wanted for a murder during a convenience store robbery. Now, I’m in prison until my new body is sixty-five-years old.



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