You Look Great

People ask me, "How are you?" My standard reply is, "Fine." And they say, "You look great!"

Sometimes I'd like to say...

“...It stinks. It's no fun....It's lousy. I get sores on my legs, and I don't even feel them....I mess my diapers and don't know I've done it....I worry that there'll be a leak, that I'll offend, that something humiliating will happen....

"I sometimes remember my legs in my dreams, remember walking, feel the experience, and almost believe that, by some miracle, I've—But then I wake up, dead from the waist down. Psychologically, that's hard to take....

“....I don't know if it was better to have had a decent amount of intimacy before or to lose your sexuality as a virgin, because then you'd never remember, never know what you were missing. But I smell women's perfume, I see the crease between their breasts, I see the tops of their stockings. It happens all the time, because around me they're not so guarded in their body movements; they know I'm out of the game. That's what happens to us....So I see breasts and even thighs all the time. And I remember, and it makes me crazy, and I have to get through it on what I suppose is Yankee grit or something....Yet I yearn to be around them, to smell them, to see them smile, to make them laugh....I'm the witty eunuch in the chair, the gelded stallion, so charming yet so unable to satisfy....So yes...the chair is no fun....”

from The Third Bullet by Stephen Hunter

But hey, I look great.