The Treatment and the Cure Read Online Free PDF Page B

such as the pile of girlie magazines. They weren’t part of the image. The police and reporters would snigger and think you were one of those men who can’t get a girlfriend. They wouldn’t understand how you had
chosen
to live without girls and all that stuff. Had chosen the harsh road of destiny. They’d just think you were inadequate.
    You began to feel that sweaty, nervous arousal that always came on you when you’d been thinking too long and too hard. All day you’d been preoccupied with the gun and the plans and now your mind was starting to race and whirl, like an epileptic’s brain when a fit is coming. Masturbation was the best thing then, because it made you calm afterwards and stopped the racing and whirling in your head.
    You sat pondering the problem of Mrs Cassidy’s bra again. Mrs Cassidy was the landlady. A big, talkative woman with floppy breasts that swung and wobbled inside her blouse. She hung her washing, including underwear, on the clothesline near the door of your room. You wanted to steal her bra and masturbate with it. It would be tricky. You’d have to do it under cover of darkness. You could keep the bra until just before dawn and then return it to the line. It made you terribly excited, thinking what you could do with Mrs Cassidy’s bra. You could ejaculate into the cups. The sperm would dry and probably be unnoticeable against the white of the fabric. Mrs Cassidy might then wear it, actually wear your dried sperm against her nipples! You got a big horn just imagining it.
    You opened the door and looked out into the yard to where the bra dangled almost within reach. Your heart hammered loudly. Then, as always, you got scared at the last moment. Perhaps the bra had been set as a trap. Everyone in the house thought you peculiar. They might have a system for keeping you under surveillance, watching the clothesline day and night. No, you weren’t going to fall for it.
    Mrs Cassidy cleaned your room every day. You would rather she didn’t, but she just barged in with her own key when you were at work. For that reason, you kept the girlie magazines locked in the wardrobe. She, too, would misunderstand about them. Once, though, you’d deliberately left them out where she’d see them, excited by the thought of what her thoughts might be. Seeing the magazines, she might visualise you masturbating, naked and sweating on the bed. Many times since then you’d masturbated over your own mental picture of her mental picture of yourself.
    All that was safe, or as safe as anything sexual could be. As long as you never actually showed sexual feelings to anyone you could feel in control of the situation. Even leaving the magazines for Mrs Cassidy to see was fairly safe. Even if she did have the thoughts you imagined her having, she’d blame her own dirty mind and you wouldn’t be implicated. In your dealings with Mrs Cassidy, and everyone else, you came across as a polite, aloof young man with important things on his mind. Sometimes Mrs Cassidy and her male lodgers sat drinking beer in the kitchen, laughing and joking for hours. They’d invited you to join them at the beginning. Of course you never did. You were too shrewd to be caught like that. They never asked you again.
    At work, too, you kept apart. The noise of the machinery in the factory was maddening, but at least it prevented conversation. At smoko and lunchtime, when the other men sat outside against the wall and talked about cars and football and sex, you always went down the street and sat in a quiet spot by yourself where you could think your own thoughts. That was the great thing, to be able to think, and you couldn’t do it with people around. Sometimes you felt as if you had hardly any body at all, just thoughts. There were even moments when you’d suddenly become aware of your body … a hand … a foot … and been astounded that you were an actual person with flesh and hair.
    Now you hadn’t been to work for several days. There