Nude Men

lap.
    “What are you doing?” I ask.
    “Telling you the rest of my story. So Humpty went to ask the advice of his brother, Lumpy Dumpty, who told him to have willpower, to resist the temptation of getting sat on, or he would hatch. ‘To hatch,’ said his brother, Lumpy, ‘is undesirable. It’s the unknown, it’s probably immoral, and it’s tremendously harmful psychologically and physically, if not downright fatal. It breaks you, it scars you for life, and that’s if you’re lucky enough to get glued back together again by the king’s horses and men, but if you’re not, then just forget it; you’re in pieces. Getting sat on is sinful. Above all it’s indecent. It shows the lack of any basic eggly decency.’ Do you like it so far?”
    “Yes,” I reply, though I’m wondering if she’s not indirectly trying to insult me through her story, since I am now being sat on by her.
    “Humpty Dumpty knew that his brother Lumpy was probably right. However, one day he circled the hen many times, trying to imagine her downy bird butt feathers covering his hard bald shell, and he got chills of pleasure thinking of it. The hen frisked her downy bird butt in his direction and made soft bird sounds. Finally, he could resist the temptation no longer.”
    Sara slides her hand into my shirt and caresses my skin softly and says, “Humpty slowly slid himself under the hen, feeling each feather, one by one, move over every millimeter of his hard bald shell as though he were submerging himself in a warm, delightful bath. The bird smell was intoxicating, and he knew it was dangerous, knew that once eggs are drugged by the bird smell, they have no more will or desire to escape before they hatch. But Humpty was not drugged yet. It takes a while. Every few minutes he would turn himself over, to have every side of his body exposed to her warm feathers, much the way one might turn over a piece of food in the frying pan so that it will be cooked on both sides. That’s what was happening to him, he realized: he was cooking. The longer he was sat on, the more the monster within him would grow, and soon it would come out.”
    Sara slides her hand out of my shirt and slowly starts unbuttoning my shirt buttons as she goes on: “Humpty gathered all his willpower, slid himself out from under the divine hen, and walked over to his meditation wall. He sat on the wall for days, and thought, and tried to make a decision. ‘To hatch or not to hatch? That is the question,’ he told himself. ‘To be sat on or not to be sat on? That is the other question.’ He did not think he could go through life without being sat on. Life simply would not be worth living. It felt so natural, so right, how could it be evil or immoral or harmful? After all, we all have a need. Some of us need to be sat on, and some of us need to get our fur aerated. Anyway, Humpty felt his soul shriveling under the strain of trying to resist something his body needed. He was becoming grim and bitter. Permanent wrinkles of unhappiness appeared on his hard bald shell of a face.” Sara caresses my face. “But he still sat on his wall, thinking. Finally, he started rolling on his side, back and forth, with indecision and restlessness, and he had his great fall off his meditation wall. And all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put him back together again. Do you like it?”
    “Yes, it was a very good story.”
    “It’s not over. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty back together again. So they carried his pieces to the castle and...”
    At that point Sara unbuttons my pants, slides her hand inside my underwear, and begins to stroke me, and I instantly stop hearing the rest of her story, as though I have become deaf or she started talking in another language. But her story is fascinating anyway, so I tell her, “Stop that. I can’t concentrate.”
    “Stop what?”
    “That.”
    “What I’m doing or what I’m saying?”
    I can’t answer her, because I’m not sure. I’m confused. That question requires quite a bit of thought and concentration, but I can’t think clearly enough, no matter how hard I try, so I say, “You know which.”
    “No, I have no idea.”
    I make a superhuman effort to focus my mind, and I finally think of the proper, correct answer. “What you’re doing.”
    “I can’t, or I won’t be able to concentrate on my story.”
    “Well, tell me a bit more. Tell me what