Nude Men

press her head against my ear to hear the loud purring, which is so soothing to me. I raise her a little higher and press the side of her stomach against my ear. I hold her this way a long time, drinking in the murmur, absorbing the affection. She smells good too, which is why, when I finally step out of the bathroom, the contrast in smell hits me more forcefully than ever. The smell comes from my disgusting apartment. I usually don’t notice its filthiness, out of habit, but right now I do. The odor is floating around the room, probably coming from the rotting, moldy, shriveled-up, empty half melon on a tray on the floor near the TV. There is nothing, in terms of rotting food, that gives as strong a smell as melon. I look at the floor and see that there are also shrunken avocado skins, remainders of frozen dinners, piles of dirty plates, empty yogurt containers, and Kleenexes: used, dirty tissues sprinkled over everything. But nothing quite matches the rotting melon.
    My apartment has always been this way. About once a year, I decide to clean everything. It takes me at least a week, and the neatness lasts two weeks at the most. But on the whole I love adding to the messiness. I revel in it. When I want to get to my radiator to turn the heat on or off, I have to walk over piles of magazines, and when I do, I sometimes hear something break under my feet. I don’t even bother to look under the magazine to see what it was. Probably a cassette box. Or maybe something more valuable.
    I am like this in other aspects of my life as well. Like with my body. I trash my body. I don’t do one grain of exercise. Ever. When I go to the supermarket, I walk through the aisles, picking up everything that will make me feel the sickest, make me the ugliest, and kill me the quickest, like bacon, Oreos, eggs, butter, ice cream, potato chips; I rack my brain to come up with even more evil things to buy. And after I have finished gorging myself on the poison, I look under my nails, and I see the brown of the chocolate, the orange of the barbecue-flavored potato chips, and their salt, and their grease, and I think: Good, now I really feel like a bum.
    Recently I have tried to figure out why I am this way, and I have come up with an answer that seems logical. The answer is that being this way allows me to have the following thoughts: No wonder my life sucks: I am like a bum. No wonder my social life sucks and I barely know anyone. It’s because my apartment is too gross for me to invite anyone over. No wonder not too many people like me: I have a white, skinny, unhealthy, flabby body that turns people off. Not only that, but the food I eat is so lacking in nutrition that I never have any energy to do anything, and I’m always blacking out and feeling as though I’m going to faint. Half dead.
    The few times I tried to shape up in every way, I became more depressed than ever, because there was no reason anymore for my life to be horrible, and yet it was.
    I get undressed and look at myself in the mirror. I’m not the type of man who can look at himself naked in a mirror, be startled, and say, “I haven’t looked at myself in so long that my reflection is a shock to me. I hadn’t realized that I had grown so old, or fat, or thin, or whatever.”
    I know very well what I look like, but now I’m looking at myself through her eyes, the eyes of the painter of nude men. I look like a worm. Like a louse. Like a... What are those worms that crawl on dead bodies? A... maggot. Yeah, that’s what I look like. Jeremy the maggot. I have a pale, weak, flabby, thin hut at the same time chubby body. I’m frightened about posing.
    I tell myself to see fat. See fat in the mirror. I see it. Enormous stomach, butt, and thighs, crawling with stretch marks. See fat. You are not fat.
    I am of average height, average weight. My eyes are the color of shit. My hair is the color of shit. You know, the average. My face is the most average face in the world. You forget it the moment you see it.
    Can work be done in four days on this maggot body of mine? We are Tuesday today. Can an improvement be made by Saturday, 6:00 p.m.? A tan. I could get a tan. I could build muscles. I could go on a diet. I could take steroids. I could... That’s all I could do. No, there’s one more thing. I go to my bedroom.
    I have a little ivory elephant, which I keep on my night table in a gray felt pouch. If there’s ever something I want very badly, I take out the little white