The television is starting to bore me.

Fifty-seven channels and nothing on. My favourite song by The Boss. Springsteen. Bruce. Bruce. - Bruce Forsythe – a popular British light comedian and game show host, probably on BBC America right now – might be worth a watch. - I could try porn. Though I'd have to pay. And so many sexy channels to choose from. XXX TV. Babes After Dark. Adult Entertainment Premium. Too exhausting. - I should really jerk off, though. I'll be too tired later. What do I fancy? Blondes or brunettes? Vanilla or kinky? Cheap and amateur or expensive and arty? 24 Hour Hooters. Will that do? $15 an hour. Christ. Can I be bothered to pay for something I can just imagine? Though I'm not sure I can be bothered to imagine it. - I fancy something cold. Like a popsicle. Or one of those chocolatey things – crispy on the outside, with chocolate ice cream in the middle. A Magnum, I think they're called. - Should I get a gun for self defence, keep it in the flat? Would I trust myself with something like that around? Might it be useful, though, if it ever came to that? - It can't be Amyloidosis. The heart's fine. Unless it's presenting atypically. It might be. That would mean, though... that would mean admitting Cameron was right. Cameron can't be right. It isn't logical. It doesn't follow. It can't be Amyloidosis. - I pick up my cell phone and hit the speed dial for Wilson. Number 1. 'This is James Wilson. Leave a message after the tone.'

'Bring some raspberry popsicles when you come home.'

I hang up. - I really should jerk off. I haven't for two days. How have I managed that? The Vicodin has helped. If I do manage to work up the energy to jerk off, it'll be worth it. - I'm not ashamed to say that I enjoy sensation. Not in the sense of scandal and spectacular show – though I always appreciate that, as well. I mean that I enjoy physical feeling. - I hope my General Hospital DVDs arrive tomorrow. It's already three days past the expected delivery date and I can't be bothered to write the Ebay guy another cutting email. I don't particularly want a refund, either. I want the damn DVDs. - I came home because I wanted to think. I'd sucked all of the inspiration from my office and my desk and my whiteboard and the night time view from the balcony between Wilson's office and mine. It's done no good. I'm thinking clearly – I can see the problem before me, glowing like a backlit X-ray. I just can't read it. - It's not just the acute, heart-pounding rush of a shot of hard drugs that I enjoy. Also the blissful, lazy state induced by the tenth Vicodin of the morning. Also the dizzy, hilarious nausea that hits after the tenth shot of Macallan. Also the crunching, adrenaline-soaked pain that comes from a good hard punch in the face. - My thoughts are moving too fast. - I take a Vicodin. - Dear Ebay Seller, Though I completely understand that the complex brain processes involved in shoving some DVDs into a brown parcel, slapping on an address label and tossing it in a post box might well be beyond you (as evidenced by the innumerable spelling and grammar mistakes in your Item Description), if you don't post my DVDs within the next two days I'll find you, break both your legs, wrap them around your neck, stuff you in a box and post you to Thailand with a 'This End Up' sticker pointing to your ass end. Yours sincerely, Gregory House. P.S. You suck big fat hairy cocks.

- The door rattles, and opens to reveal Wilson. I take another Vicodin. The rattle of the bottle is yellow, like its colour.

'Where are my popsicles?'

'What?'

'My popsicles? Didn't you get my message?'

He fishes his phone out of his work trousers and looks at the screen.

'You left it forty-five seconds ago.'

'Your phone must be malfunctioning.'

'Your brain must be malfunctioning.'

- It couldn't be Lupus. Foreman would've rung me to say a fever had spiked – with that unmistakable 'I'm right' note of triumph in his voice. The answer's there. I just know it is. It'll come to me in the next hour. - I take another Vicodin. -

I was a drug addict even before the infarction. Even before I truly knew what unbearable pain, and the burning urge to make it end, really meant. Come to think of it, even before the end of my childhood. There were curious and unemotional experiments I'd conduct on myself. At the age of six – how far could I fall without breaking a bone? Twenty feet from the tree in the backyard. Twenty-one feet and I broke my collar bone. At seven – how far back could I bend my own left arm before I started to cry with pain? An angle of sixty-two degrees. At eight – how much Night Nurse could I swallow before passing out or throwing up? Four-and-a-half bottles. -

'Did you at least bring beer?'

'I came straight from work. I brought my briefcase, my headache and the certain anticipation that you'd begin to demand things the minute I walked through the door.'

'Get the six-pack out of the fridge, then. We're watching The Kardashians.'

- At thirteen, I discovered the joys of my parents' bathroom cabinet. I'd already read as many medical texts as the local library had to offer. I knew the effects and side-effects of every medication on the market. Mum, I was unsurprised to learn, was on a low dose of Prozac and a high dose of Valium. I knew just how much to take to feel perfect. - There's a malar rash. Vaginosis. No fever. No fever no fever no fever. Why wouldn't there be fever? -

I first had an orgasm at nine. I discovered my Dad's secret video (one – he only had one. I searched the whole house. I only ever found the one) hidden in his bedside table in a case for The Bridges of Madison County. People were doing inventive things with their privates. I locked myself in my bedroom and conducted an experiment.

I found my prostate at fourteen-and-a-half.

I first paid for a prostitute at sixteen. On my Dad's Credit card. The charge showed up as THERAPEUTIC SERVICES. I opened the statement and burned it before it reached him. Mocked up another one on my Word Processor.

- Wilson sets the beer on the table and collapses onto the couch beside me. His jacket is gone – his tie and top button already undone. I reach for a bottle and open it with my teeth. I use the beer to wash down another Vicodin. -

I first smoked marijuana at seventeen. It was awful shit – cut with too much tobacco. It didn't do much for me. -

I first snorted cocaine and nineteen-and-a-half. I could get the same hit from five shots of good Espresso, for about the same price. -

I first smoked crack at twenty, though never again. -

Wilson reaches for the remote.

'An Affair to Remember's on.'

'Don't need to see it again. I can remember it.'

'You're a miserable bastard.'

'Anyhoo, we're watching the Kardashians. Lord knows what Kim's going to get up to this episode. She's one crazy girl.'

'It's trash, house.'

'It's entertainment, Wilson. And no one will make an eye-wateringly terrible remake of it starring Tom Hanks.'

'You never know.' -

I first took Vicodin at thirty-four. Five years before the infarction. I broke my collarbone again – it was weakened from the old fracture. They gave me a low dose for the pain. -

I remember it felt warm. -

Slowed my thoughts down to treacle. -

Now it takes seven doses to do that. -

I first shot myself up with morphine at thirty-five. I could see why Bela Lugosi liked it so much. -

Most of these pleasures I can live without, on a day-to-day basis. I wouldn't want to live, though, if I knew they were never available to me again. As occasional pleasures. - What the HELL does my patient have? Necrosis of the flesh of the thigh – that I can't explain. No exposure to environmental toxins. We've been to every damned place that woman's been in the last six months – nothing. - Nothing. - Nothing.

- The warm, fireside glow of Vicodin – that, I'll never get tired of. I've known it intimately for so long that I can bend it to my will like a necromancer – stoke it

and cool it

as the pain lessens

and intensifies,

or sometimes

just for the fun of it.

Blow on it ever so gently...

let it rage out of control

and then

douse it,

or

throw on three shots of single malt Scotch,

watch it rage out of control,

incinerate my grey matter – burn it to ashes.

I like, though, to overlay it with other sensations – other pills. The chemical reaction can be hit-and-miss, but it's impossible to find out without experimenting. Sensations can curdle like bad cream and leave me dry-heaving on the bathroom floor, or abandon me in a glassy-eyed daze for long, frightening hours. - Sometimes, though, they can harmonise – sing like a symphony. Envelop me in new and beautiful strains of experimental music.

- 'You cried at that film.'

'Sleepless in Seattle? Piss off. My eyes filled with excruciated tears at the hideousness of it.'

'Perhaps some day, years from now, after an unbearable estrangement, we'll meet again on the roof of the Empire State Building, you and I.'

'You can be Meg Ryan.' -

Sex is a pleasure, though not one of my favourites. It's more like a constant awareness of need – an ache less painful but more dreadful than the one in my leg. The drugs dull it to bearability. I can vaguely remember the sober sensation of complete, wide-awake sexual want, as sharp as the scratch of a hypodermic needle pressing into a vein, and the release never compensated for the wanting. Now, it only just does, but it's too quick, too temporary, not lingering or all-consuming enough to satisfy me. -

'Are you hungry?' I ask, not because I care, but because I'm hungry. I want him to make me something.

'Not really.'

We lapse into silence. I glance at him, his face illuminated by the tawdry glow of the television.

- Right now, it's stealing over me. The feeling of the Vicodin. Moving across me like careful fingers, pressing into all of my sore spots, warming my skin like a deep tissue massage, and then finally, peeling open my scalp and opening my skull as easily as the skin of an orange, exploring inside, pulling out segments, pithy and juicy, glistening and ripe.

- 'I am,' I say, suggestively. 'Hungry.'

'I'm not making you anything.'

- I've experimented, though, with every type of sexual pleasure invented, and even some that perhaps I've invented myself. There was a time when I used to pop kinks like curious, candy-striped pills, even if they held no appeal or attraction for me at first, second or third glance. How do you know, just by looking at a certain pill, whether it will or won't drop you into a deep bath of incredible sensation? You've got to swallow it to find out.

- Why would she be bleeding from her bowel? There's just nowhere that that puzzle piece fits. Bowel bleed. What would cause a bowel bleed?

- The beer is mixing with it – slicking over my skin like patchouli oil under the fingers of the Vicodin, playing like Steeley Dan in the background, whispering in my ear, 'Does that feel good?' Making my cock stir in my pants.

- Sado-masochism didn't do much for me. I'm a sadist and a masochist so routinely, so mundanely, outside of the bedroom that it didn't seem special enough to excite me. I tied up a prostitute and hit her with the flat of my hand and then a small black whip (she'd brought this with her), and then let her do the same to me. All the while I thought about monster trucks. -

'If you make me a pizza, I'll love you 'til all time is gone.' I turn up the volume on the television slightly.

'Make you a pizza? From scratch? It's a quarter past midnight. Order yourself a pizza.'

'I've got no cash in my wallet. You make good pizza. I haven't eaten since six.'

'Do you even have any tomatoes?' He looks at me. 'Have you ever had any tomatoes?'

- Autoerotic asphyxiation was a wonderful distraction, and something I could try on my own, for free. To teeter on the edge of unconsciousness, possibly of death, was a wonderfully heady feeling, though the thought of being discovered with my cock out, my face blue and a slice of lemon in my mouth is a less dignified death than I have planned. Not that I plan on a dignified death. I only tried it twice. -

'If you make me a pizza,' I say, 'I'll put in a good word for you with the new nurse. Blonde booby one.' I look at him sidelong. 'With the blonde boobies.'

'I'm not making you a pizza.'

- I've let a woman urinate on me, and I've done the same to her. -

'If you make me a pizza, I'll go to that Hitchcock double-bill with you next week.'

'You said you were going to come to that anyway.'

- I've let a woman defecate on me, and immediately afterwards realised that it wasn't such a good idea. -

'If you make me a pizza, I'll suck you off.'

'Ha!'

What a strange sound.

Equal parts hilarity, shock and exasperation. A sickly combination.

'How long has it been since your last blowjob? I bet I'd give good head. We could be gay for the evening.'

'Shut up, House.'

- I've never slept with a man.

I've thought, on occasion, about sounding out Wilson – testing the waters, seeing if he was warm enough to take a dip into.

I feel no discernible attraction to him, much of the time. Not chronically. There are moments of acute desire – when I'm horny, and he's playful, and I feel like pinning him down, wrestling him into submission, rolling with him on the floor in front of the monster trucks on telly.

Twisting his arm behind his back like a school bully, asking him, 'Uncle?' 'Uncle?'

I have a feeling this is a largely heterosexual impulse.

I could take it though, and twist it. Bend it to my will, like a necromancer. Stoke it and urge it downwards, coaxing it to burn right down to my cock.

'I'd make a good gay-sexual. You're already halfway there, with that hair.'

'Seriously, House. Shut up.' He pauses, and then says, in a low, petulant voice, 'You're gay.'

'Oh, fuck off and don't be so childish.' I fall silent for a minute. Then say, 'You're gay.'

Do you know, I think he would go along with it? Would he? Would he be mortified? Punch me? Would he be so surprised, or so anxious, or so polite, that he would let me try it out?

I wonder – dare I risk our friendship? Might he cut me off altogether? Would I survive, if he did this?

That's bullshit. Of course I dare risk our friendship. I risk it every day, in a thousand new ways. The ways in which I risk it are, by necessity, becoming braver, more dangerous. More perverse. It's what our friendship consists of, largely. The constant threat that it will shatter into a thousand pieces under one of my backhanded blows – that Wilson won't be able to scramble on his knees quickly enough to put it all back together. Without that, we've got basically... nothing.

'If you think about it hard enough, it's weird that we've never slept together.'

'How in any universe is that "weird"?'

'There's all this sexual tension that we daren't admit to. Probably means we're gay. If we slept together, it would probably mean we weren't.'

'I'm not even listening anymore.'

- If I send him out for popsicles now, there's an all night convenience store two blocks from here. I'm sure I've seen a freezer in there. They have to sell popsicles. -

'We probably wouldn't even enjoy it. It'd reinforce our heterosexuality.'

'Shut up, House.'

'Do you not feel the tension?'

'Shut up.'

- I masturbate over Professor Longhair's voice, sometimes. Doesn't mean I'm gay. Have you seen that guy's teeth? I wouldn't touch him with a ten foot pole. But his voice -

'It crackles in the air between us. The whole hospital's talking about it, I'm sure.'

I should by rights have dropped this by now. He is beginning to sense that I'm serious about it.

'Fuck off. Just fuck right off, House. Fuck. Off.'

The f-word. Wilson never uses the f-word. This is a slightly more dramatic reaction than I'd anticipated. He really doesn't want me to go there.

- Would a man be easier, or more difficult, to sleep with? Would the familiarity of his cock comfort me, or freak me out? - What would cause the bowel bleed? Clotting disorder? Clotting test was normal. We should run the test again. -

I touch the crook of Wilson's right arm with my fingertips.

He leaps up from the sofa as if burned, and within a second he's standing behind the TV. There are no other lights on in the room, and I can barely see him, back there in shadow, though he's only four feet away.

'What the...?' he asks, in a tight voice. 'What in the name of...?'

- If I badger him too much, he won't ever go out for popsicles - Madi Gras in New Orleans is in b-flat major, but if I transpose it into C-major I could sing it far more easily - I asked a hooker to cross-dress once. But in that cutesey way that straight men enjoy. She put on one of my old shirts and left it unbuttoned so that I could see her tits -

'Calm down,' I say, imagining his dark eyes wild and irate. 'I'm just messing with you. And I only touched your arm. I've touched your arm before.'

'Not after you talked about wanting to blow me.'

'I didn't say I wanted to. I said that I should.'

'That's crossing a line, House,' he says. 'Really. There's a line. That's crossing it.'

'Oh for Christ's sake,' I say, sinking deeper into the sofa cushions.

His shadow seems to slump a little. I hear him inhale deeply, and then he walks, slowly, to stand in front of me, blocking the TV.

'You're blocking the TV,' I say, craning my neck around to see the screen.

- Could I get him aroused? Could I even get him to come? How would I feel, if I managed it? Triumphant? Disgusted? Turned on? -

'I'm off now, then, House,' he says, looking down at me with something akin to sympathy. 'I can't deal with this. Not at this time of night.'

I reach out and grab his right arm in my fist.

'Wanna wrestle?' I ask.

Before he can respond, I pull him down violently onto the sofa, pinning him beneath me with my body weight, pressing down on his shoulders with the heels of my hands.

'Get off me, House,' he says. And his voice is full of ice. 'Now.'

-There was that one time I insulted Julie – just after he proposed. We were walking in some crappy park or other, somewhere with ducks – I called her a self-serving bitch, I think, and he jumped on me. I went flat on my back on the grass, and we rolled around there in front of everyone, Mums and toddlers, dogs and skateboarders, frantic and furious. I won. -

'I should've got you drunk first,' I say, idly.

'I'd never want to do this with you, House,' he says. 'Even drunk.'

'Now that's a big fat fib,' I say. I take hold of his arm quickly, before he can pull away, and use my good leg to lever him over, flipping him onto his front on the sofa cushions. I keep hold of his arm, bending it up behind him into the small of his back, holding his wrist there tight.

'God!' he says. 'House, that hurts! Let me up. I'm not laughing at this.'

'Uncle,' I say.

'Let me up.'

'Uncle.'

'I'm going to kill you. I'm going to do unspeakable things to you. I'm not joking. You insane bastard.'

'Uncle.'

- I've never masturbated thinking solely of him, but he's featured in my masturbation fantasies. Quiet, faceless, in the periphery – like a dream figure. Wilson but not Wilson. Not Wilson, but I know it's really Wilson. -

I let go of his arm quite suddenly.

'Open my trousers.'

'What?'

'Go on. Open them.'

- When you know someone as well as I know Wilson... have the kind of affection for them that builds itself out of familiarity, grudging respect, mutual experience and countless shared laughs at countless shared jokes... they take on a vague erotic quality that just won't wash off. They're important. A star in the motion picture of your crappy life. You form a celebrity crush on them, of sorts. It's inevitable. -

'No.' And suddenly he thrashes so hard that he throws me off balance. I topple off the sofa sideways and land hard on my side, on the floor.

- For instance. If I was to kiss Wilson, it might be erotic. Simply because it was Wilson. -

'Holy shit,' I say. 'Take a chill pill. I'm not going to rape you, you moron. I thought we were just playing.' I massage my aching leg. 'What do you take me for?'

'A lunatic. I don't want to play this game with you. I know you're not going to rape me, you... asshole. I also know that you're trying to freak me out, humiliate me and embarrass me, and I want you to stop. Now.'

- I would be kissing Wilson. -

'You're playing right into my hands.'

- Would Wilson be thinking, 'My God. My God, I'm kissing House?' -

'You're a child, House. You're five years old. You want everything that pops into your head, right now, without effort, without consequences.'

I heave myself back onto the sofa beside him.

'What's wrong with that?'

'Nothing, as far as you're concerned. But the people you care about – it's going to drive them crazy. You're driving me crazy.'

'It's how I get my kicks.'

- This is true. Lots of things interest me. Nothing much excites me, any more, though, apart from driving Wilson crazy. -

'You don't really want to sleep with me.'

'How do you know that?'

He leans forward to press his mouth to my own, and instinctively, I jerk away.

'See,' he says. I can't bear the smug look on his face.

'I wasn't ready,' I say. 'Try that again.'

'No.'

'Go on. Prove your point. Try it again.'

He doesn't budge.

'Fine then,' I say, and take his face in my hands, reaching for his mouth with mine. He leans back, but I lean forward further, and suck his mouth into a painful kiss. He keeps his head tilted backwards at an awkward angle, but I keep at it, sealing our lips together to create a cruel vacuum and sucking relentlessly until his tongue is hoovered from his mouth into my own.

Eventually, he tears his mouth away, with a sound like a wellington boot freeing itself from mud.

- What if it is a clotting disorder? What if the test was just wrong? -

'You bastard,' he says, swiping at his mouth with the back of one hand, then another. He's outraged, but isn't surprised. He saw that one coming.

I lever myself up onto my knees, with more of my weight on my good leg.

'Open my trousers,' I say again, watching at him wiping at his mouth. He won't look at me.

Until he turns, a fierce, defiant look in his eyes, and wrenches my zip down so fast it nearly makes me topple backwards with surprise, lifting his legs onto the couch beneath him, kneeling low, with his ass resting on his socked feet.

He looks at me, as if to say, 'Fine. Fine. Just see how you like it when I call your bluff.' Still, he seems apprehensive, and a little repulsed, as he looks at my open fly.

'Take it out, then,' I say.

Instead, he kneels up a little unzips his own fly and shoves his pants down to his knees. I have gone commando, but he is wearing tight white boxers.

'You want to see mine, first?' he asks. Any moment, he expects me to back out of this. He should know by now that goading only makes me more determined.

'Why don't we do it together? Cock, paper scissors?'

'You're a real riot.'

- I know Wilson's cock is shorter and thicker than mine. I know because I had a good long look, the first time I ever took a piss in a urinal beside him. 'I can stand back a little,' he'd said, 'if you'd like a better vantage point.' 'It's alright,' I'd said. 'Seen all I need to see. Didn't take long.' Then I'd zipped myself up before he could look at mine. -

Losing my patience slightly, I reach into my fly and casually pull out my cock.

I can see it. The tension in his face as he schools his features into nonchalance.

I hold onto my cock loosely, presenting it to him like a cat might present a dead mouse to his owner as a gift. He looks at it, long and hard. The deliberate lack of curiosity and mild thrill on his face tell me that he's curious and mildly thrilled.

'Touch it,' I say.

He just looks at it.

'Go on,' I say. 'Touch it.'

He reaches out tentatively, apprehensively. Like he's reaching for a chess piece to make a move he's uncertain about. Or perhaps like he's a child playing 'Doctors.'

- One of my most vivid memories from grade school – Jennifer Goldstein whispering to Jamie Robinson, 'Don't play Doctors with Greg. He's weird. He does weird things.' I can't even remember what weird things I did, playing Doctors with Jennifer. I really can't. -

He lets his hand drop back to his side.

'House, I'm not going to touch your cock.'

So I take his hand and move it to my cock, wrapping his fingers around it, like I'm showing him how to hold a golf club.

'Move your...' I take hold of his hand and pull it down to the tip of my uncircumcised head, so that pre-ejaculate sticks to his palm, slide it back up to the base, the motion slicker and more pleasurable.

It takes a little while, but...

And after two and a half minutes – I count them – the combination of sensations is perfect. The Vicodin, the beer, my cock in Wilson's warm hand. Right here, right now, I've found the perfect formula for the perfect pleasure.

'Ah!' I say, 'Ah – great.' Euphoric.

Ecstatic.

Coming.

- I can't think here. I need my whiteboard. I need my team. I'm going back to the hospital. -

- Maybe I'll pick up some popsicles on the way. - We won't do this ever again.

I've satisfied my curiosity, and Wilson was never curious in the first place.

But whilst it lasted.

Sensational.