David Roy

Living Life Behind A Pane of Glass

1.
Edmund Ankur sat in the corner of his bedroom, his royal purple comforter draped over his shoulders, keeping him warm. He lived in the basement, surrounded by untouched concrete which never took any heat, and chilled him to the bone.
It may have been uncomfortable, but it was his own space. It was part of the deal he worked out with his parents. If he forfeited his bedroom on the first floor so it could be converted into a study, he could move into the basement and live there as he saw fit, no longer having to pay bills or rent.
He picked up a can of Mountain Dew and took a few gulps of it, proud of himself that it was only minutes before midnight, and he had only consumed four of the sodas since dinner had ended.
Usually he would drink eight.
There wasn't a single light on in the basement; the only illumination came from the glow of a computer monitor, which made his chubby pale face visible to the mouse in the corner. They were more interested in the half eaten sandwiches and cracker crumbs which covered the computer desk and floor.
They were there and the mice knew it, tucked and hidden under tattered papers covered in video game cheat codes and assorted bits of information about things most people found stupid and trivial, like rules to games filled with dragons and elves and other nuggets of subcultures most people would rather forget existed.
Edmund chuckled a little bit and tossed the empty soda can over his shoulder. He heard it lightly land on his bare mattress. He didn't really care. His meaty right hand engulfed a computer mouse. It was hard to see the plastic device under his fingers which looked like greasy hotdogs. The hand would slide the mouse across the cover of an old issue of Entrepreneur Magazine and on occasion, a hot-dog finger would shift and click, and Edmund would chuckle to himself.
With his other hand, Edmund picked up a pair of tweezers and started to slide the points around his chin, looking for the tiniest bit of stubble he could pull out. He would find the beginnings of a hair and tweeze it out. He'd hold it up to the glow of the monitor to examine his handiwork, and then would blow the tiny hair to join the filth on his desk. Occasionally he would pull two or three and smile to himself with accomplishment.
Above him the floorboards started to squeak rhythmically. Edmund frowned and peered towards the ceiling. Thirty-three years old was far too old for him to be listening to his parents have sex. He set down the tweezers and picked up a pair of headphones. He slid them over his dark oily hair, clicked around momentarily with his right hand on the mouse and drowned out the creaking of the floorboards with the wonders of Godspeed You! Black Emperor.
Edmund returned back to what he was looking at and smiled again as he clicked on the orange NEXT link which would lead him further into the lives and confessions of hundreds of strangers.

Confession 438317131
                   Chris is so hot sometimes that I lick the drain after he takes a shower.

Confession 758432913
                   I think deep down I believe that I'll be able to trick God into believing that I'm actually a good person when the time comes.

Confession 147946561
                   I had sex with a college guy. He's three years older than me. I know it happens all the time. I didn't see him for about a month because of Christmas Vacation. Then he came back and I spent the night at his house and the other night we talked and fooled around and watched movies. The next night I saw him at a party and he wouldn't talk to me. I called him and he said 'so how'd you figure out where to find me last night?' and I said, 'I didn't know you were going to be there! I was invited there by 'Joe'. And he said 'okay.'' but yeah anyway, what does that mean? Does he think I'm stalking him? I don't know why I go back to him, he's nothing special. He's really good looking but he's an ass, and he has kind of a small dick.

Confession 235492782
                    I ate the last cookie.

Edmund snorted and grinned.
"I think I have some cookies around here," he said quietly to himself. He set down the tweezers and rummaged through piles of papers and junk food wrappers. Finally he remembered, and his eyes lit up.
He pulled open a drawer sitting to his left and dug though the piles of semen encrusted tissues. Beneath them he felt a foil wrapper, and pulled out an opened package of Nutter Butter cookies.
Edmund tore the package with his teeth, his right hand never leaving the computer mouse, and he fished one of the peanut shaped cookies out of the package and shoved the entire thing into his mouth.
Crumbs fell from his opened lips onto his round belly, and one of the larger crumbs fell into his bellybutton. Amused, he tried digging it out with his finger.
He found that it was turning him on a bit.
Edmund Ankur idly contemplated masturbation as his right hand clicked on another link that read NEXT.

Confession 693268286
                    Last night I had sex with a girl I met on the internet. She was fat, ugly, and disgusting. I did it to feel better about myself, and now that I have done it, I will never talk to her again.

2.
I sat on the edge of her bed in my underwear. The window was open and the room was cold, goose bumps covered my body. My clothes sat lonely, draped over a desk chair. They looked as out of place as I felt. Who knew business casual didn't go with pastel pink walls?
She, Sarah, FoxxyGal227, was in the adjoining bathroom humming to herself some Top 40 nonsense, getting ready. Her pink dress lay in a heap next to the bathroom door along with her underwear. What a pile it was.
I met Sarah in a chat room about three weeks ago and we started talking about the things we liked and the things we did in our lives. It was easy to see that we had nothing in common. She liked poetry that rhymed and pop music.
The night I first met her online she told me she frequented the dance clubs around the city with her friends.
I, on the other hand, was more concerned about my job at the Belluomini & Wright architecture firm than my life as a social being in the big city. I had been there for three years busting my ass. In another year I could very well move up from bitch-work to having my own project.
The shelves in her room were lined with stuffed animals and dolls. Rather unusual, considering she was twenty five. 
My studio apartment didn't have shelves. If it did, they certainly wouldn't have any dolls on them.
In the bathroom, the toilet flushed and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck raise.
I shouldn't be here, I thought to myself.
I knew I was right, but that didn't matter. I was going to do what I came to do. The door opened and She, Sarah, FoxxyGal227 walked out of the bathroom completely naked except for the grin on her face. She was anything but Foxxy, and the only thing I could figure the 227 of her screen name stood for was her weight.
She was big, round, rotund, whichever word best fits your imagination. I looked over her body, traced the soft edges and followed the lines into the folds of her flesh. It looked like one of those pictures my friends would E-mail me as a joke back in college.
Yet this was no joke.
This was very real.
"I'm so glad you decided to stay the night," she said to me softly.
That was the only reason I was here. Her voice was genuine and innocent, and if I needed anything in my life it was a little innocence. Underneath her sagging chest was a heart of gold. That was why I was here, because this certainly doesn't have anything to do with love.
"Make yourself comfortable, I want you to enjoy your visit," she said, trying so hard to sound sexy but sadly failing miserably at it. She blushed a little and slowly walked over to the edge of the bed where I was sitting.
She leaned in and kissed me.
So much for getting ready, I thought to myself.
Her mouth tasted like slim-jims, and her warm tongue slithered around in my mouth as if it was looking for something to devour. I was repulsed, but I took her face in my hands and kissed back.
"Can you get the light?" I whispered quietly when she pulled back. I read the tiniest bit of shock and insult as her eyebrows twitched and I instantly felt like a bastard.
I shouldn't be here, I said to myself again.
I was going to do what I came to do.
She stood back over me, and started to crawl onto the bed. I crawled back from the edge positioning myself right in the middle. The pink floral quilt under me was comfortable and warm. At least I had that.
Sarah rested her body on top of mine, and slid her hands towards my waist, tugging down the elastic waist band of my boxers. It was dark but I could still see her nervous smile and her big blue eyes.
Underneath it all, she's not that bad looking, I thought to myself, and I shimmied and kicked my boxers off the end of the bed. She didn't feel too heavy for me, which saved me the trouble of having to ask her to move.
She leaned in and kissed me again, and I closed my eyes and thought about my best friend's mom, and the things I wished she and I had done together all those days I had come over early waiting for Mark to come back from soccer practice.
The imagery seemed to help, and I pantomimed those actions on Sarah's body and she seemed receptive enough to it all. With my eyes still closed, and kissing her pudgy neck I felt her reach towards a shelf above the bed and grab condom from the shelf.
"Are you ready?" she whispered nervously in my ear as she kissed it.
I focused on an image of Mark's mom in her blue and yellow sun dress. The same one she wore on a 4th of July years ago.
"Yes, I'm ready," I whispered back, and I smiled warmly at her in spite of everything.
An hour or so later, when it was all over, we crawled under the sheets of her bed to fall asleep. I turned my back to her, and she snuggled up behind me, laying one of her arms over my naked hip.
"I love you," she whispered, and I felt awkward. She hardly even knew me.
I wondered if she would still feel the same the next morning when she saw that I was gone and realized that I was never going to see her again.

3.
Confession 756746073
                    I slept with my best friend's wife, not just one drunken encounter, but several times over the course of about three months, feel kind of bad about it seeing that I slept with the last serious female he was involved with prior to getting married as well. Meh.

Confession 465770529
                    I like fucking pregnant women. If they're having a boy it ain't fun, but if they have a girl then it's two pussies for the price of one.

Confession 414432683
                 I heard there's a town in the north east (l think) where a bunch of lesbians live. I'm a straight hetero woman, but I think I want to go there and have my mind blown by a butch female and not tell anybody and then come home and continue to have sex with men.

Edmund Ankur slid the headphones from his greasy head and tossed it into the pile of filth on his desk. The floorboards above his head stopped creaking, and for that he was grateful.
He listened to the quiet sounds of the basement, like how the furnace quietly hummed as the blower pushed air throughout the house. He closed his eyes and listened some more, and finally his right hand left the computer mouse and started to massage the muscles of his neck.
"Why can't I ever meet people like this?" he said to himself quietly. "All these people are getting laid, what the hell is my problem?" he asked.
His right hand returned to the computer mouse, which was dark gray and sticky with the dirt and grime of constant usage. Edmund flipped it over in his hand and popped out the ball underneath.
Idly, he used the pair of tweezers to pick out the gunk that stuck to the rollers and wheels. Once he pulled it out, Edmund held it up to the glow of the monitor, then under his nose to smell.
"What is it?" he asked the silent room, and dropped the gray crud onto the floor.
After a minute of picking around inside the mouse, he put the ball back in and slid the mouse around the only clear part of the desk, testing it out.
"That's better," Edmund said proud of his work. He stretched out and returned to the website that had been consuming his interest. It was 1:00. He could read the confessions for the next hour or so before he had to get to bed.
Six hours of sleep would be more than adequate to prepare him for another day of work, he thought. 
Edmund got to his feet and brushed the crumbs off his tee shirt onto the floor, and walked towards the stairs on the other end of the basement. He shoved his hand down the front of his sweat pants, adjusting himself with a slightly satisfied grin.
"I'll take care of you when I get back," he said with a little laugh and started upstairs to raid the kitchen.
The first floor was pitch black and Edmund shuffled quietly towards the refrigerator, careful not to wake his parents as he crept past their door. He passed the kitchen table with the metal folding chairs his parents had found at the flea market.
Once he reached the fridge, he pulled open the almond colored handle and peered inside. There was a pizza box from the night before, which he grabbed. He picked up two cans of soda and set them on top of the pizza box. Nothing was better than cold pizza and Mountain Dew, he thought.
He crept down the stairs, with the pizza box balanced on one hand, the other on the railing to make sure he didn't lose his balance and drop it all. His weight forced the boards in the stairs to creak, with each sound Edmund closed his eyes and prayed that his parents didn't hear him.
Finally at the bottom he walked briskly back to his computer desk, and set the pizza box down on his bed, just to the left of his desk. Edmund popped open one of the sodas and put it to his lips.
"Time to take care of business," he said.
He pulled a cool slice of sausage pizza from the box and raised it to his mouth as his right hand began to maneuver the mouse, and click for another set of internet confessions.

Confession 923463804
                    I'm a 21 year old virgin, and sick of it

"Try being thirty-three, buddy," Edmund grumbled with a mouth full of pizza. A small chunk of sausage rolled from his mouth onto his lap. He ignored it. He'd get it later.

Confession 894124438
                   I worry that I might be becoming an alcoholic. I don't drink when I first wake up in the mornings/anything, but I drink practically every evening @ the end of the day. it helps me forget about all my problems, I'm even buzzed right now as I type this. Does that make me an alcoholic?

Confession 529164931
                    I hate my flat mate's girlfriend. She's a lazy cow who sits around the flat all day doing nothing. She doesn't work, she just watches TV. My flat mate supports her on his meager earnings. I hate her guts and I wish she'd fuck back off to Thailand

With the slice of pizza finished, Edmund put his full attention back towards the computer screen.
"Ahhh. Here's a good one," he said to himself as his left hand fumbled with the drawstring to his pants.

Confession 719365882
                   My boyfriend went out last night to hang with some of his friends, so I decided to hang out with some people from one of my classes. We all got really drunk, and we all ended up back at my classmate's place. He took me into his bedroom and we fucked like crazy. In the middle of it my boyfriend called, and I talked to him while this guy was eating me out
                     It was the hottest thing ever.
                    I want to do it again.

4.
I woke up that morning feeling electric. Chris was still asleep so I crawled out of his bed and picked my panties up off the floor. I'm surprised they were still in one piece.
I got dressed quickly, put on my coat and slipped out the door. My watch said it was 11:30, which was just enough time to meet Matt in the food court for lunch.
I crossed the quad feeling good. I could still smell Chris on me. He was on my hands, in my hair, he was everywhere. It was hard not to think of the night before, drunken sex with a guy I hardly knew, and of course the phone call.
"Hey babe, just calling to see how your night was going," he'd said in that voice of his. Matt was so adorable with his wire frame glasses and his messy emo-boy hair. He and his friends were probably sitting around playing Euchre in the living room and watching movies.
Meanwhile, I was in some guy's bed getting the fuck of my life.
"I'm good baby, not a whole lot going on here. I went out with a few friends from class, we're just taking it." I started to stutter and stammer. Chris's blond head was buried between my thighs making it hard to concentrate. "Easy," I said quietly, with my cell phone pressed to my ear and one hand over my mouth to keep me quiet until I had to speak.
"Well, that's good. I just wanted to make sure you weren't mad that I went out or anything like that," Matt said. 
"Oh! No," I cried a little too enthusiastically, "It's perfectly okay. Everybody has to go out and do their own thing," I said and giggled. Chris's head poked up and he gave me a wicked wink.
"But look," I said wanting desperately to get off the phone with my boyfriend. "I gotta get going, they're putting a movie on and it's going to be starting any minute," I lied.
"Cool, well hey, if you want we can meet up at the cafeteria tomorrow around 11:45 and get a quick bite to eat before I have to run to class," he said.
"Okay, sounds good!" I said, ready to throw the phone across the room.
"I love you," he said.
"I love you too," I said quickly. I ended the call and tossed the phone onto the floor.
I reached the food court right on time, and there was Matt in his khaki pants and his blue sweater that always looked so cute on him. He was wearing his wire frame glasses, and his hair wasn't as messy as usual.
"Hi baby!" I said throwing my arms around my neck. I could still smell Chris all over me.
"Hello doll," he said with a grin. He put his arm around my waist and we walked into the cafeteria together.
"Did you have a good time last night?" he asked. I laughed a little.
"Yeah, it was a whole lot of fun," I said.
In my stomach I started to feel a little bit guilty for what I had done. Poor Matt had no idea, and he didn't do anything to deserve me cheating on him like I did.
We ate tacos, and then he had to leave for class. He gave me a hug and a kiss, and told me he loved me. I went back to my room to take a shower.

5.
Edmund pulled open one of the desk drawers and tossed the soggy tissue inside. He would worry about cleaning the rest up later.
With his left hand he slid the sweat pants back up where they belonged, and he let out a sigh.
"That's better," he said.
Edmund reached over to the pizza box and pulled out another slice. There was now only one left. He shoved it into his mouth, pizza sauce smearing onto his face.
Still engrossed in the website, he clicked the link to the next page. He simply couldn't stop reading about the secret lives of these people. He was obsessed. He wondered if he knew any of these people and imagined what it would be like to be in their shoes.
Not everything on there was happy, or exciting, or arousing. There were some miserable messages left for people to read.

Confession 827794012
                    I'm either going crazy, or I've got one of the most difficult lives in this world. I feel so overwhelmed.

There were messages which were petty and pointless, hardly worth the time to type, let alone read.

Confession 17207749
                   Two weeks ago I used a friend's library card to borrow a book and I haven't returned it yet so he incurred a fine. I feel really bad.

Then there were of course the juicy and interesting ones, the ones that kept Edmund and his pathetic hazel eyes scanning the black text on the white screen and his right hand clicking the NEXT button.
"How do these people do these sorts of things?" he asked the dark room.
Edmund dug around in the mess on the top of his desk and pulled out a small hand mirror. He had stolen it from his mother's purse a few weeks ago. He had no use for the tiny piece of glass with the blue plastic handle, but it made him feel better to hold it.
Edmund held the mirror next to the computer screen and looked at himself in it. He looked at his receding hairline and his chubby cheeks which had started to sag a bit. He looked at his eyes which looked lonely, worn and tired.
"I fucking hate myself," he said to the mirror while looking at his yellowed teeth.
Edmund set the mirror down on top of the computer monitor, took a swig from his soda and went back to the web page.

Confession 808319124
                    I like taking naked pictures of myself and sending them to people, even though I'm 15 and it's illegal. My mom caught me last year and I got in huge trouble, but I've started doing it again anyway.

Confession 282719568
                    I want to get married and have a family, but my boyfriend is too childish and not ready. Sometimes I think I should leave him for someone who is ready, but I never leave.

Confession 694191097
                   I want to watch the Cubs/D'backs game on the TV, but my asshole of a roommate is out there watching his retarded shows. I hate Asians too.

Confession 995132928
           I eat my boogers

Edmund looked at the screen and moved the mouse over to the NEXT button, but didn't click the mouse. Towards the top of the screen he saw the link which read, Confess, and so he clicked on that instead.
For nearly ten minutes Edmund sat over the keyboard, slowly typing and erased the words that he put there. Sometimes it just didn't seem right, so he would play with it until it was perfect.
After the ten minutes, Edmund Ankur submitted his confession and turned off the monitor to his computer. He took the pizza box from his bed and set it on the floor, and crawled under the covers.

Confession 486441968
                    I am a fat lonely bastard who sits and reads these confessions for hours at a time. In all honesty I have nothing real to confess myself because I do not do anything.
                    I'm a thirty-three year old virgin. I'm fat. I'm dirty.
                    I spend hours reading this site and jerking off to it, and wishing that my life was as interesting as the people who post on here.
                    I am completely worthless and I want to change.
                    I just don't know how.
                    EA

Euphemism Campus Box 5555 Illinois State University Normal, IL 61790