"Old Glass Cunt," he sneered, and saw a
cunt full of colored glass splinters under the Northern
Lights.
He washed his penis and buttoned up his pants.
Something was watching his every thought and move-
ment with cold, sneering hate, the shifting of his testes,
the contractions of his rectum. He was in a room filled
with green light. There was a stained wood double bed,
a black wardrobe with full length mirror. Carl could not
see his face. Someone was sitting in a black hotel chair.
He was wearing a stiff bosomed white shirt and a dirty
paper tie. The face swollen, skull-less, eyes like burning
pus.
"Something wrong?" said the nurse indifferently. She
was holding a glass of water out to him. She watched
him drink with aloof contempt. She turned and picked
up the jar with obvious distaste.
The nurse turned to him: "Are you waiting for some-
thing special?" she snapped. Carl had never been
spoken to like that in his adult life. "Why no...." "You
can go then," she turned back to the jar. With a little
exclamation of disgust she wiped a gob of semen off her
hand. Carl crossed the room and stood at the door.
"Do I have another appointment?'
She looked at him in disapproving surprise: "You'll
be notified of course." She stood in the doorway of the
cubicle and watched him walk through the outer office
and open the door. He turned and attempted a jaunty
wave. The nurse did not move or change her expression.
As he walked down the stairs the broken, false grin
burned his face with shame. A homosexual tourist
looked at him and raised a knowing eyebrow. "Some-
thing wrong?"
Carl ran into a park and found an empty bench be-
side a bronze faun with cymbals.
"Let your hair down, chicken. You'll feel better." The
tourist was leaning over him, his camera swinging in
Carl's face like a great dangling tit.
"Fuck off you!"
Carl saw something ignoble and hideous reflected
back in the queen's spayed animal brown eyes.
"Oh! I wouldn't be calling any names if I were you,
chicken. You're hooked too. I saw you coming out of
The Institute."
'What do you mean by that?" Carl demanded.
"Oh nothing. Nothing at all."
'%"Well, Carl," the doctor began smiling and keeping
his eyes on a level with Carl's mouth. "I have some
good news for you." He picked up a slip of blue paper
off the desk and went through an elaborate pantomime
of focusing his eyes on it. |