 Andrew T. Mc Carter says, "I have always appreciated more the most brief, concise form of any genre: I prefer the novella to the novel, the lyric to the epic, the shortest of stories, the one-act play." His work, as you will see uses language concisely and creates imagery that is, quite frankly, brilliant. Mind Caviar is proud to present the following work. Visit Andrew T. McCarter's Entries & Exits: an online notebook.
Onanisms An eleven year old boy masturbates into the toilet, then flushes. All too soon he is haunted by the thought that his seed, after slaloming the plumbing all the way to open ocean, may impregnate a pouty-lipped fish, which will give birth to a hybrid-- a hybrid perhaps not quite as clear-cut as a mer-man or -maid, but a hybrid nonetheless-- and that it will find its way to the front door of his house, demand that he take paternal responsibility. He is certain that he is not yet ready for such a responsibility, and worst of all, his mother and father will then know precisely what he had done in the bathroom. + + + A pubescent boy masturbating to the unclad natives depicted in a happened-upon copy of National Geographic is an old story. What of the boy who innocently discovers in his parents' study a book containing a photo of naked women, a large group of naked women-- some plump and voluptuous, some slender and lithe-- all of them standing outside, naked as the day they were born, beneath a sky like a coarse gray cloth far from covering them? So mesmerized by the variety of beautiful breasts, so consumed by the dark mounds of hair contrasting with the white skin of their bellies and thighs, the boy fails to see the men standing on either side of this group of naked women, men standing at attention and holding machine guns, men in uniform, with armbands displaying swastikas. + + + I should have known; a boy alone, lustful and home from school, I smuggled the lingerie catalogue from mother's bedroom to mine. I tore away my favorite page, pinned it with my fingertips to the desktop below my sunlit window. With a #2 pencil and my lightest touch, I tried to erase the lace panty like an error from the model's body. This was my first taste of the madness that comes with lust. Of course I wore a hole, and so lifted the page to peep through to the outside world. Copyright © 2001 Andrew T. McCarter. All rights reserved. |