Published 'The Weirdmonger's Tales' (Wyrd Press) 1994
Those that are as near to human as near-humans can possibly be did not know that their planet was called Mars by real humans on a planet close by called Earth but which they, the near-humans, called something else. Neither humans nor near-humans of course knew about each other, but certain chosen gods knew of both.
Mars was transformed (by a series of carefully positioned dark mirrors, hanging from literally nothing in those miracles of prestidigitation learned from divine boudoirs, which, with their corrupt perpetuation of false reflections, trip-switched other more fanciful geometric impossibilities) from its true nature as a fruitful slaughterhouse of red rivers [that intertwined the still sensual crawling flesh of mountainous seething land] into what the real humans could only see as a huge and long-corroded boulder of becrusted carbuncles.
One real human on Earth would have none of it. He did not believe the hard evidence of the scientists' telescopes. But that did not prove anything, for he did not believe in the all-seeing gods, either.
His name was Tryout Cogan, brother of the late lamented Alma.
The nature and condition of Mars was not Tryout's only obsession (if his preoccupations could indeed be called such), since he often mused on the real non-existence of Jupiter, on the relationship (that Astrologers had evidently ignored for their own nefarious purposes) of Venus and Neptune both of "whom" had overcome great difficulties of logistics to further their romance and, thirdly but not last, on the planet BEYOND Pluto he believed was in fact Uranus which had been correctly named but falsely positioned between Neptune and Saturn by Hershchel for HIS own nefarious purposes (about which Tryout would never be persuaded to elaborate).
However, being myself one of the gods in whom he chose not to believe, I did not feel able to do Tryout any favours by placing my divine support behind ALL his small-minded theories. I am merely penning this for my own amusement, little dreaming that it will ever be read by other than my fellow gods in moments of ennui and deshabille. So, by describing Tryout's theory on Mars, I do not necessarily champion it.
In short, Tryout Cogan believed that the so-called near-humans on Mars possessed no gender.
Like the planet itself, they needed transforming badly. With characterless bodies, merely human-like by virtue of having the correct number of limbs, feet, hands, heads and boring mind, they could not even hope, he felt, to lead truly fulfilled lives. True, they spent idle, luxurious, heady days bathing by the red rivers under the hot gaze of the complacent sun, the fleshy surface of the planet tingling beneath them with the arcane rhythms of its eternal sexual foreplay, as its own moving parts indeed moved gently and tentacularly against gravity as well as each other.
Mars was the geography of masturbation made flesh.
But, those who lived off its back like life-size pink dolls with human appendages, could not participate in such physical joy, despite their comparative nudity (comparative inasmuch as their skin was more akin to a body stocking than anything else) - no nodules, no lumps, no endings, no nothing, or so thought Tryout.
He'd make a bomb selling gender to them.
He'd take the cleverest dick of a surgeon from Earth, take him in a spaceship and... Maybe he didn't even need the surgeon, Tryout continued in the random way his daydreams usually rambled. They would not believe him, for a start, since most real humans knew Mars was nothing but a dead carbuncle of a planet.
Then, Tryout had his brainwave. His sister Alma would have been proud of him. He'd teach the Martians how to adapt each end of their alimentary canal. Surely, there must be a way to bring erotic excitement to such orifices, despite the shortcomings of the rest of their bodies.
It would not be exactly merchandising gender, which had been his original business concept, but the next best thing. It would also avoid the necessity of sorting the Martian population into males and females...
Well, needless to say, so I won't.
Tryout Cogan soon went on to other easier projects, like building new churches all over America to house the many different religions that now flourished there. It proved to be a huge money-spinner, for he only really built one - the rest were mere reflections which untrammelled faith underpinned to such a degree even the rest of the population believed they existed and worshipped their own brand of gods, in shivering groups, beneath the empty roofs.
It is time to come clean, if that is not a contradiction in terms. I can no longer pass this off as a bedtime tale for young gods, let alone old ones. I've come to live with Tryout, for anything's better than immortality. In a peculiar way, I feel he's actually responsible for my very existence as a god, I suppose. Indeed, he says he can make me into a star like Anne Shelton or Joan Regan or Connie Francis or, even, his sister Alma used to be ... as long as I can get the right clothes to hide what I've got underneath, for us gods are usually not too well-endowed. But I draw a line at falsies...
I didn't want to go on Wogan, anyway. Or is the damn programme called Cogan? God Knows!
