RED RAW

He could barely meet her eyes. He was so, so timid then. Terribly timid. Often he'd shed weight in shame, it was really that bad. Such a strange, strange sense of self disgust. Often a run, only a run, a wild silly run, would do the trick. He would, afterwards, feel sort of clean again. So strange. Run run run. But never enough, to ever escape. Are you, Boris wanted to know, aware of the relationship between the word timid and the word intimidate? It was a horribly excruciating time, he said. Do you know what it means to be lonely? I mean lonely. I knew menus better than men, and yet I had nothing to pay. Eventually I forgot how to speak. Women looked at me like an untamed dog. And I never knew that that could be an advantage of sorts, not until it was too late. I was simply hungry, that was all. Clueless, and hungry.