Reg did not feel himself this morning. He hung his heavy head in his rough cupped hands. His long fingers cradled the corners of his mouth and his eyes remained fixated on nothing. He began to ruminate about his dream that came to vivid form about twice a week. After waking he would feel an immediate sense of shame. The prolonged seconds between sleep and waking, between in and out, Reg saw as trying to force oneself out of an overgrown forest with bound ankles. The components of his body worked against each other and his head trailed behind, whimpering. He dreamt of being caught up in a crowd of naked people, although no one touched him, he could feel the essence of wandering hands. Reg was clothed and his neck wrapped in dark cloth. The sky was a pulsating purple which gave him the feeling that he ought to surrender. All the naked people stood facing one other person; it seemed like lunch time within a naked commune. Reg would get on his knees to escape the mass of thick peach to find himself dumbfounded before a brick wall. His older self would descend from steps that would disintegrate behind as he walked. The old man, himself, would swear at him with his two fingers and the purple sky would tremble with laughter. Reg wondered whether his imagination was really fragments of his leftover dreams, in a world where we can be thinkers and inventors. Like a moth to a flame, he tortured himself in whether he was truly mad or not, constantly tittering toward a light whose power was both the reason for attraction and resistance. He thought of his life twenty-three years ago and a teary smile spread across his face. Moments like these made him feel human and served as a reminder that he has not been fully whitewashed from the exhaustion of all life’s experiences. He was thirty; it was nineteen-sixty-one in downtown Manhattan. He arrived at the
station and sat down to re-arrange his things. He had noticed her hands first, and then her shoes. Her hands were as dainty as a little girl. She wore worn-out brogues with an even further worn out snake skin embellishment. Although he hadn’t said anything, he felt like a screaming idiot running around the station saying her name, whatever name that was. Her bag was netted like a grocery bag, he felt himself stare. Their eyes met. Reg introduced himself and she followed. ‘Just call me Tengra’. With this accepted, they progressed in conversation where it was decided Tengra would help Reg find his apartment. Tengra was a freelance journalist, although Reg questioned this as she didn’t seem familiar with Manhattan. Once they had entered his apartment Tengra seemed the most comfortable she had done all day. Tengra mentioned of no other place to go or in fact much at all. She seemed fixated on this spontaneous meet with Reg, an exceedingly tall man. Almost four months into living together, they had not slept together. Her hands seemed as if they would break in his clench of passion. Until one night when Tengra had come back from a writing class, she was full of words, her skin was polished with sweat and her baby hands made contorted shapes;
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