Rehab

A man alone.

Really alone, apathetic, almost dead inside, even though he is not that old.

To his own great surprise, he addresses a woman in front of a restaurant. She is also alone, but still struggling. There is still life in her. Who is he? Who is she?

What past has made him this way? And her? Like frightened snails, they circle each other, shooting into their shells at any sign of trouble.

Will they come out? She does. Discovering she loves women.

He does, too, at last, but it takes more How an illegitimate child can fall from a heaven of pure bliss into an abyss of shame and humiliation. Not once, but twice. Two consecutive blows are too much for a fatherless adolescent to handle.

It takes forty years before he dares to touch a woman again.