WILL SELF

Each issue, Esquire commissions an unsparing inspection of Will Self’s body. This month: the groin

The award-winning writer’s monthly anatomical check-up reaches the groin

It’s groin day here at my little Brutalist, ex-council flat in south London. No, really, it is. Indeed, if you’ll forgive the neologism, it’s so very groiny chez Self this morning, that I believe this date should henceforth — and in perpetuity — be known as “Groin Day”. Actually, the very flat is itself something of a groin, tucked as it is into the right angle of the building, and I’m wondering if it isn’t this that’s summoned up such a lot of groin issues.

A couple of weeks ago, I was in Paris, wandering along the Boulevard des Italiens, and staring about me in that benighted way an Englishman always does in La Ville Lumière, when I walked smack-bollocking-bang into one of those bollards which are randomly distributed about the Parisian pavements, the kind featuring a steely ball atop a steely stalk. Luckily, the ball missed my scrotum, but it did slam straight into my groin. Pain? I should cocoa, and of an intensity to match Melania’s orgasm when Donald does that thing with his twittery fingers.

Bruises bloomed within hours and over the next few days my groin went black, then purple, then faded to a jaundiced yellow. So far, so predictable. But the day before yesterday, cursorily examining the area — which is a confusing part of the male body, isn’t it, what with the swell of thigh and pubis and the obscuring cloud of wiry hair — I discovered a lump about the size of a small chicken’s egg. What the fuck!!! Was it related to the Paris incident? Or perhaps some monstrous bubo, engendered by sweat and friction, as throughout the night I’d tossed… and tossed some more? I felt the lump gently. It was tender but didn’t hurt as much as I expected.

I thought about cancer which, in my experience, every middle-aged man thinks about every seven seconds.