The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore - Benjamin Hale [158]
longer had a moronically bowed simian spine, but had begun to develop a slight S-curve in the small of his back above the tailbone, just like a man. He stood with his forehead out and chin aimed downward, instead of with his face jutting out like that of an ape, who enters a room jaw first. He stood with his arms at his sides. He was still dripping from the shower. Except for the patches in his crotch and armpits, his body was hairless: just one smooth long tract of peachy naked flesh. Flesh that needs to be clothed in the cold. Flesh that needs to be clothed for decency. Flesh that is unclothed only behind locked doors in the dark, in the most private of private moments, in the most private of private places. Flesh that is desirable, flesh that is shameful, flesh that is frail. Flesh that yearns for flesh. This animal in the mirror: it may have been that he stood a mere three feet ten, it may have been that his feet monkeyishly resembled his hands, with two extra thumbs sprouting grotesquely from his insteps, it may have been that his legs were stumpy and that his hands, when at rest, dangled down past his knees—but this animal carried himself like a man, god damn it, his eyes had a certain glint indicative of a brain pregnant with complex symbolic intelligence. Faculties of reason, faculties of vanity, faculties of pride. Thou hast made him little less than an angel. Here Bruno Narcissus received in his hand the dubious gift of an erection just from looking at himself, contemplating his own body, how humanlike it was becoming, how very human. He turned in circles in the mirror, admiring his freshly shaven skin, creaking his head over his shoulder trying to get a look at his backside. Bruno, the hero of our story, decided to masturbate onto the mirror. Or rather, it was decided for him. Who can say what real choice he had in the matter? That is a question for philosophers, not the humble autobiographer. All I know for sure is that Bruno stood before his magnificent image in the mirror and stared long and deep into his own eyes, and as he did messages bounced back and forth between his mind and his reflection, photons leapt and wiggled from his eyes to the mirror and back into his eyes, shot into those two globs of light-perceiving jelly in his head, tunneled through his optic nerves and buried themselves smack in the squishy electric meat of his brain, became data to be exploded and decoded by this beautiful organ of consciousness set snug in his skull, which soaks up the world’s information and reshapes itself in response, which reaches out and reshapes the world. Bruno stands, legs apart, proudly, aggressively, not unlike the men’s restroom pictogram he was once reminded of by a certain clown-made pink balloon, hips out, in love with himself, in love with his own body, stroking and yanking savagely on a penis that he has just lubricated with a generous dollop of spit, lips curling back to a snarl, gnawing on his tongue, thinking of nothing more erotic than simply being a member of the human race, of humanity!—and now his chest is suddenly burning with white heat and oo oo oo ah ah ah ah HYEEAAGHHHH, HYEEAAGHHHH!———————he comes onto the mirror!—take that!—and that!—and the globules of milky syrupy goo go drooling triumphantly down the glass, as if the last remaining drops of his animal essence are contained in that splat of his jizzom, pure extract of primate, dripping away between me and my reflection.
My hair never grew back. What little I left of it soon also went away on its own. Since then, I have spent my life hairless. A cold, weak, naked creature of a day.
XXXII
Eventually the protesters went away. For the most part. Their protests in front of our house were no longer a daily occurrence, as they had been for months. A time finally came when we were left totally unharassed on most days. Although sometimes on weekends a few of them still showed up, the gathering of the faithful had whittled down to only a handful of indefatigable true believers—Revered Jeb, with his scarf and bow tie and brown houndstooth