Modern Living I

 

An occasional series

The seven year old said, why is the man showing people his penis?

She’d been drawn to the window in a teachable moment, to see a nearby balcony. It had been gradual in the lead up to a fully naked man standing in full view in broad daylight. Some of the others had seen penis. What his penis looked like was dismissed as irrelevant. He had fast become a digestive tract attached to a penis, there was no other indication of a higher life form.

He’s tanning, we heavily sanitized.

But I’m a child, she said. 

It looked like more of the same, until the fleshlight developed frizzy hair of an actual person of indeterminate gender. Fellatio on his balcony before all the kids had gone to bed. Sexual positions so awkward, surely this was a financial arrangement. 

I’m confident none on our side of the street reciprocated with displays of vagina. A dick pic – always unwelcome and pathetic - had evolved into live action on a tiny balcony on a narrow street heavily lit up with street lights, security lights and moody internal lighting. 

Sad. It was barren. It throbbed with coercion and peaked with humiliation.

The only relief was to scream outrage across the street, at which point he immediately stopped midthrust and walked backwards to hide. The hair, skin, blood and bone was left spread eagled on a tv console that had been raised with a remote control. It never looked comfortable for the other human, but it was the perfect height for him.

Skin hunger, or just a man, taking advantage of the absence of men to thrust what he thought was the most compelling part of himself in our face? He makes no attempt to communicate. Do we need a man to tell him to wake up to himself and pull the blinds, even if that makes the whole enterprise a little dull without an audience.

I don’t think so. I think he’ll get the message.