Desire and other bits and pieces

My sister's an econut. So I go straight from the old aged home to Susan. We have sex. Afterwards I feel horrible. Empty. Where've you been, asks my wife, when I get home. I make up some story about needing some air so I stopped to walk around Centennial Park. At home there are piles of dishes. The boys need to tidy up their room. Its an impenetrable mess. And so is the rest of the unit.

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Doctor we're concerned about our sons reading.

Well Mr and Mrs Levy, there's a lot that can be done these days,

No no we're not concerned about his letter recognition

Dyslexia? Don't worry, we've made considerable advances since the 1970s. There's great new techniques....some of our business leaders were dyslexic and I have a colleague who

You don't understand doctor, that's not the problem.
Oh, then what's...

Its his reading. He doesn't play sport. He doesn't have friends. He doesn't help in the house. He doesn't get out of his pyjamas in the morning. He doesn't do his teeth. He doesn't talk to us – unless you call the occasional grunt talking. He doesn't get out of the car. he doesn't walk up the stairs. What he does is sit on the couch, or on a chair, and read. And read. And read. He reads before he goes to sleep. And he reads before he goes to school. He tries to read at meal times. And while doing his homework his eyes steal across to the nearest newspaper headline or cereal box or anything else that has letters. We've tried hiding his books. It doesn't help. We've tried not taking him to the library. It doesn't help. He just rereads whatever is in the house. He reads the introductory pages in the phone book. he stands looking over our shoulder reading emails.

For other short stories see

http://manofestoyomi.blogspot.com/2009/06/someone-short-story-from-yeoville-1994.html



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Desire (written around 1990)

She was sitting, studying, and he kept on walking round and round the shelves nearby so that he could stare at her. After a while she noticed him, and when he pretended he was gazing at the contents of a shelf, he was aware that she was looking at him, not without interest. She was thin, but with a very full bust. Her face was only moderately attractive, but her body reawakened all the reservoirs of his lust, and he kept on looking, the reaction her form evoked from him hijacking his entire being and eclipsing all other matters. From then on, as always happened when a cycle of infatuation began, he noticed her everywhere. They would pass in the corridor, he saw her chatting in the cafetaria, or bumped into her in the law building. It was not that he stopped noticing other girls, but there was a silent communion established with her, an inarticulate tension which made him need to clamp down on something inside him when he felt her presence.