Ugly Norman: A Love Story

Ugly Norman therewatches. He is being quite gentle unto himself. Pulling open, as must, he feels a rather primal instinct. There is within him a simple view of life. "Anything, anything," he mumbles. There is nothing that surprises him, yet the novelty is thereupon the screen, perfect in its inspiration. He feels a tightness, a release. The left of course knows what the right does.

Ugly Norman was once in love. However, it was rather bewildering. It seemed strange and even unpleasant at times. There were a thousand ropes tied to a thousand different things: complex, and strained.

Now Ugly Norman is much a happy fellow. Tension: release. Very simple, really. Sometimes Ugly Norman's mind is like his face: there is a certain disproportion, a certain ill-fit mentality and emotion. Ugly Norman at other times feels like a sensual blob.

Ugly Norman is often arrested for indecent exposure. But no one really expects it to go farther than that.

When Ugly Norman is doing, he sometimes wants something strange to do (caught up in the biology of the moment); and when he is done, he wants nothing to do with it (the happy indifference).

But love? Ugly Norman dislikes the tugging at his stomach. It is an unpleasant sensation. And that dizzy emotional elation. It has hardly to do with the needs of the body.

Ugly Norman is a prime specimen. He dislikes intensity, unless it be the necessary intensity of biology. He dislikes passion, feels disturbed by the romantic.

Ugly Norman likes exotic places (hence the various arrests). He wonders what astronauts do through the months, and wonders if even one astronaut has; but has no way of knowing, so doesn't think on it long. Of course, there's the ecstasy of sleep.

Ugly Norman sometimes wakes at dawn filled with passions of his previous dream. He is glad that these feelings don't follow him long into his morning routine.

Ugly Norman watches, in his most biological moments, the particular primitive motion and movement. Mechanical, and organic at once. Soon, he shall dislike even this, for sundry hours and times, to return to the liking when the weekly clock rounds its rounds.

Ugly Norman considers marrying an illegal immigrant who wants papers, but will be a wife true as well. But alas, if there isn't love in the marriage to start, it will certainly creep in somewhere, and there he will be: with that uneasy want in his stomach and heart, that clamminess.

Ugly Norman demands complete control of his own emotion. The hand, the hand . . .

End