Tuesday
The din of the cars outside was constant. He let his mind wander as it was a novelty when it did. The oft repeated phrase from Thoreau, echoed in his mind: “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”. That was his impression of his surroundings and it’s inhabitants.
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He was the only child of a single mother that, (he didn’t know this) had a I.Q. that placed him amongst less than a tenth of the world’s population. He was normal in every respect when considered outwardly. The kids at school thought little of him, but when they did they thought he was a nerd.
If his school mates had been able to conceptualize at a higher level they would have realized that they ignored him because he scared them. He was different than them in that their conceptions of reality, were to him, superlatives. The teachers at school, save a select few, were also intimidated by him. They knew, that, they of learning and intelligence, were dullards compared to him.
He never noticed any of this. His thoughts worked in ceaseless fashion around the metaphysics of life. Not in the noveau sense, but real questions pertaining to man’s responsibility to maintaining a structured moral code while balancing desires for self. His thoughts of heaven and hell came not from rote learning, but fragments of reading interspersed with life events. These abstractions would have stood a graduate student well in a thesis paper. But he knew none of this, nor cared.
In a nut shell he was destined for far more than his current situation predicated.
----
He placed his book down on the bed. His concentration would not come back, and he couldn’t figure out why. For the last week or so he had struggled reading his beloved books and still couldn’t assess the reasons for it.
Looking around the room he tried to find a focal point to fix his mind upon.
The walls were a broken down white that must be mandated for two room apartments everywhere. The fixtures were non-descript and of no help. The t.v. spewed it’s pablum from a tinny speaker encased in cheap plastic. The anchor man reading the news had a distasteful affect that made his eyes continue to roam.
There was nothing to focus upon. Soon his eyes rested upon her shoulder. The freckles on it stood out in contrast to the white of her skin. And they displayed a casual symmetry with her shoulder winding their way down towards her back and out of view.
Always the observer, he started to look more at the woman lying on the bed next to him.
From the shoulder he saw the shirt and it’s curled edges where the sleeves had been cut off. The upper portion of the cut sleeve rested comfortably and crumpled against her neck, revealing the shallow depression where the shoulder, chest and arm meet on the body. The freckles of the shoulder now gone from his thoughts he felt an awareness of the beauty of that depression. It was fragile and delicate and the skin had a purity in presentation that he hadn’t noticed before.
Also he noticed the fatty tissue that ascended from this region of her body. Traveling downwards for him to view, and then covered by the shirt.
For the first time in his life he looked at a breast with interest. Under the shirt that covered it, he noticed it’s rise from the chest area. Falling and rising in a natural succession. It was not a large breast. He could not quantify it’s size, nor did he wish to. It was to his mind a breast.
But it held his interest. And again, for the first time in his life, he felt arousal.
The body next to his stirred and rolled into him a little. Not as a lover does while sleeping, but companionship. Her foot touched his.
Amused at himself, he reached for the remote and turned the t.v. off. Next came the light and the room was dark.
Sleep was elusive. Already his mind had wandered away from the sights he had just viewed. But there was a dissonance to his thoughts compounded by the erection that had developed.
