Spare

I needed to see a doctor, ASAP. But I couldn’t ask the Palace to find me one. Some courtier would get wind of my condition and leak it to the press and the next thing I knew my todger would be all over the front pages. I also couldn’t just call a doctor on my own, at random. Under normal circumstances that would be impossible, but now it was doubly so. Hi, Prince Harry here—listen, I seem to be having a spot of bother with my nether regions and I was just wondering if I could pop around and…

I asked another mate to find me, very discreetly, a dermatologist who specialized in certain appendages…and certain personages. Tall order.

But the mate came back and said his father knew just the bloke. He gave me a name and address and I jumped into a car with my bodyguards. We sped to a nondescript building on Harley Street, where lots of doctors were housed. One bodyguard snuck me through a back door, into an office. I saw the doctor, seated behind a big wooden desk, making notes, presumably about the previous patient. Without looking up from his notes he said, Yes, yes, do come in.

I walked in, watched him writing for what seemed an inordinately long time. The poor chap who went before me, I thought, must have had a lot going on.

Still not looking up, the doctor ordered me to step behind the curtain, take off my clothes, he’d be with me in a moment.

I went behind, stripped, hopped onto the examination table. Five minutes passed.

At last the curtain pulled back and there was the doctor.

He looked at me, blinked once, and said: Oh. I see. It’s you.

Yes. I thought you’d been warned, but I get the sense you hadn’t.

Right. So, you’re here. Riiight. OK. It’s you. Hm. Remind me of the problem?

I showed him my todger, softened by Elizabeth Arden.

He couldn’t see anything.

Nothing to see, I explained. It was an invisible scourge. For whatever reason, my particular case of frostnip manifested as greatly heightened sensation…

How did this happen? he wanted to know.

North Pole, I told him. I went to the North Pole and now my South Pole is on the fritz.

His face said: Curiouser and curiouser.

I described the cascading dysfunctions. Everything’s difficult, Doctor. Sitting. Walking. Sex, I added, was out of the question. Worse, my todger constantly felt like it was having sex. Or ready to. I was sort of losing it, I told him. I’d made the mistake of googling this injury, and I’d read horror stories about partial penectomies, a phrase you never want to come across when googling your symptoms.

The doctor assured me it was unlikely I’d need one of those.

Unlikely?

He said he was going to try to rule out other things. He gave me a full examination, which was more than invasive. No stone unturned, so to speak.

The likeliest cure, he announced at last, would be time.

What do you mean? Time?

Time, he said, heals.

Really, Doc? That hasn’t been my experience.

44.

It was hard seeing Chels at Willy’s wedding. There were loads of feelings still there, feelings I’d suppressed, feelings I hadn’t suspected. I also felt a certain way about the hungry-looking men trailing after her, circling her, nagging her to dance.

Jealousy got the better of me that night, and I told her so, which made me feel worse. And a bit pathetic.

I needed to move on, meet someone new. Time, as the doctor predicted, would fix my todger. When would it work its magic on my heart?

Mates tried to help. They mentioned names, arranged meetings, dates.

Nothing ever panned out. So I was barely listening when they mentioned another name in the summer of 2011. They told me a bit about her—brilliant, beautiful, cool—and mentioned her relationship status. She’d just recently become single, they said. And she won’t be single long, Spike!

She’s free, man. You’re free.

Am I?

And you’re well matched! No doubt you two will hit it off.

I rolled my eyes. When does that prediction ever pan out?

But then, wonder of wonders, it did. We did. We sat at the bar, chatted and laughed, while the friends with us melted away, along with the walls and the drinks and the barman. I suggested the whole group go back to Clarence House for a nightcap.

We sat around talking, listened to music. Lively group. Merry group. When the party broke up, when everybody cleared out, I gave Florence a lift home. That was her name. Florence. Though everyone called her Flea.

She lived in Notting Hill, she said. Quiet street. When we pulled up outside her flat she invited me up for a cup of tea. Sure, I said.