The Bright Sunny Day

He lies there shivering on the soft grass covering the hard ground on this bright sunny day. If he could concentrate on the world around him, he might find some humor in that incongruity, but the outside world does not exist for him. All that exists is his pain…and his need.

On this pleasant day of early afternoon sun, of mild temperature and soft breeze, his is a world of gnawing ache and uncontrolled trembling. He holds himself tightly trying to comfort himself like an old friend, as the sweat pours down his face, drips from his oily hair, pools in the hollow of his neck. His clothes are so drenched with his bodily secretions that they stick to him in odd ways, like insects trapped and dying on brown curls of flypaper.

His head throbs, pounding like a jack hammer, so much so that his only relief, his only solace is the pauses between throbs, when the pounding doesn’t feel like it will crush his brain and splatter it against the inside of his skull. The rest of his body is a mass of contradictions: it seems all he is aches in unison, a glorious orgy of pain and suffering, but he can feel the goose pimples dotting his arms and feels the cold numbness grabbing at his fingers, toes and cock.

The thought comes to him: if he lives through this day, will he ever have sex again, or is something fundamental to his manliness being broken? For the first time in hours he laughs, for the answer is a startling, “Who cares?” Sexual gratification is not his addiction, not today anyway.

That’s not what he wants. Damn him, that’s not what he needs, not why he aches in this self-made hell.

When he had started, they all told him this day would come. Somehow, he thought it would be easier. He lies there shivering on the soft grass covering the hard ground on this bright sunny day.


Copyright 2014 Barry Keller. All rights reserved.