The Weight of the Flesh

A decrepit building stands tall and proud on Columbia Street. The building once served as a gathering place for the intellectual lot, but now it is merely a room to shelter the lonely ones. A group of men gather by the fireplace inside the common hall when suddenly, a strange figure captures their attention. We hear her timid footsteps as she crosses the hall and walks toward the platform. She approaches the pool of light created on the stage, her frail figure thus draped in yellow. And it is at this moment that we, awestruck and bewildered, realize that the girl is naked. This realization is then followed by a myriad of gasps and whistles. We have not seen a healthy woman, let alone a girl of her age, in what seems like an eternity, and naturally, many of us are aroused by the sight. So entranced by the girl's figure we are, however, that we fail to move our limbs, and deep within our consciousness we also fear that with the slightest touch, we would all achieve a premature climax. Therefore, we let the silence wash over our bodies and await to see what the girl precedes to do next. We remain quiet lest we disturb the girl's state of mind, and through the haze of our cigarette smoke, we direct our gaze toward where she stands. But nothing can prepare us for what now occurs: whereas we expected her to address the joys of flesh through simple movements of the hand, she opens her mouth and begins to speak instead. We were right after all, a miracle is indeed happening! The girl's voice sends vibrations through the gulf that separated us before. Her words - stripped of any sense of superiority - bring us closer together, each syllable a link in an invisible chain that connects our weary bodies. But soon, the meaning behind her words and the weight they carried become of little consequence, and it is her reassuring tone that triggers within us the primeval need for love and affection. We have forgotten all about the flesh, for her voice serves as a platform from which our souls can launch into uncharted planes. We raise from our seats and stand in line, bewitched by the beauty that manifests itself in the form of this timid creature. Tears then form and dampen our bottom eyelids. As her lips continue to part, she raises her arm in a quick and unexpected motion, pointing to what lies outside the room in which we have all gathered. This averts our gaze first toward the glass wall that stretches behind the girl from floor to ceiling, and through the glass our gaze travels, only to rest on the street that lies beyond. It then flies over the crowd of people that populate the sidewalks and the procession of vehicles that whiz by, fixing itself on the buildings on the opposite side of the street. We see how the buildings watch us with a thousand square shaped eyes, and how within each eye, there hangs in balance a life indifferent to our existence. Then, our restless gaze surmounts the tall towers that rise to the sky in silent protest, and moves toward the dancing lights that cover the distant summits. And we begin to wonder what awaits us there, and whether those lights are in fact lights, or signals from other sentient beings, a call to arms or a call for aid. In the process of seeing the world outside, we forget the person whose sudden jerk of arm brought us this moment of wonder. We forget the tears that formed in our eyes and have long since dried in their tracts. We are cogs in a beautiful machinery, a machinery that chugs along with every step that a passerby takes, every horn of a moving car, every trill of a drunken bout. Lost in our solitary thoughts, we are startled by a sudden change of frequency in the air. Everything that we saw moments ago dissipates from our minds as if it never came to be. Once again, our attention is dedicated to the naked girl that stands on the platform. Yet this time we sense a change in her behavior; her lips are no longer forming words. All her focus now rests upon her own body, and to reach the state of ecstasy one often achieves in such occasions, she closes her eyes and begins to caress her skin. Not long after, her lips open just enough for moans of delight to escape and unite our flesh, and then we too start to pleasure ourselves. The air is now filled with a different kind of tranquility, one that speaks of a common thread shared amongst our souls. Minutes and hours go by in the same peaceful state. The sound of rain slanting against the glass wall mingles with the moans of the girl, a reminder that we have lost ourselves and our identities, that we measure the worth of our soul with each quick motion of the hand, that we have forgotten what came before and care little for what comes after, that we are prisoners trapped inside the claws of present. Yet the present is treating us kindly, and it attends to our needs without asking anything in return, and with each passing second, we are one step nearer to reaching a moment of collective satisfaction. In this point in time we cannot help but think that the girl, who showed us only minuets ago the wonders of the world beyond, holds in her eyes and in her being a secret that we fail to grasp, and somehow this secret is slipping away through the chinks in the walls, only to linger alone amidst the crowds on the sidewalk, trampled seconds later beneath their heavy feet. But it matters not, for we solely desire the tender joys provided by the flesh, and so long as the girl moans and groans and caresses her skin, we too will stay hollow, happy, and satisfied.