Typewriter

I write this not knowing why or to what end -- only that I am obligated by my rehabilitation to do so. I am here of my own accord, realizing fully the extent to which I am mad, and desiring to regain control of my mind, I booked my stay here -- Le Lapine Insanite -- for rapid recovery.

Dr. Remy Cartien recommended -- when I first arrived -- that I keep a journal of all my thoughts and experience in order that we may go over them once a week to monitor my recovery more closely. A kind of confessional. That?s what he told me.

"Martin," that's what he calls me, "keep this pad and paper with you at all times: by your bed, at the dinner table, in bed, while dressing, even on the toilet. Anytime a recollection or thought comes to you, jot it down in here." He reched over his desk and handed me the thick tablet and stubby yellow pencil.

The pages of the tablet were blank -- every one of them, and reminded me vaguely of the women's wash room. Clean and stainless, not written on like the walls of the men's room. The pencil had small teeth marks embedded in it, and smelled strongly of pipe tobacco -- the kind Dr. Cartien smokes.

"Thank you," I said, "and this jotting down of thoughts will help me with my condition?" Dr. Cartien rose from the black leather chair behind his desk -- the white coat stayed open around his ample belly -- and came around to sit on the edge of it. He tilted his head sideways and smiled.

"You have very pretty eyes, Martin," he said. It didn't surprise me. my mother had always said that very thing to me.

"Yes. I know. But the tablet and pencil. They will help me with my recovery?" I held myself on the edge of the wooden cane chair in front of Dr. Cartien, and allowed myself a glance up at him.

He was old. Perhaps fifty. His silver-framed glasses rode half way down on his nose, and his grey hair fell in thin wisps across his narrow cheeks and ears. A slight stubble of grayish beard dotted his face and rode down his neck to just above his unbuttoned collar and loose tie. He had thick, hairy arms and short legs. Wide shoulders finished off his appearance. He looked to me as if he spent a great deal of his youth playing rugby, and a great deal of his adult life thinking about it. He smiled and I looked back at my feet, clutching the tablet and pencil, wishing to be well again.

"Certainly they will help you, Monsieur," he said, "simply write all your thoughts and visions and dreams in that tablet each time you have them." I looked up at him again. "Very pretty eyes." He smiled and pulled at his zipper with his right hand.

"Tell me why you're here, Martin." Dr. Cartien moved in front of his desk and leaned against it, sitting on the edge. He looked down at me and smiled.

"To write," I replied, "and also because I am mad."

"Perhaps, if you wish, I can arrange for you to use the typewriter. You may find that easier than the tablet, of course, the tablet is indispensable for portability, but still. . ." he trailed off and shifted his weight.

Using a typewriter. The thought of it drove me wild. To be able to caress concave keys of a perfect machine, to hear the clack click of my mind spilled onto paper, to see the black, slight impressions of letters and numbers glaring harsh on clean white paper.

"That would be wonderful, Dr. Cartien." I moved forward in my seat, uncontrollable at the thought of typing. Of finally getting a chance to write. I stood up in front of Dr. Cartien and clasped my hands. "I would do anything to be able to use that typewriter. Is there a waiting list? Work I could do for it?"

"I'm sure we'll be able to work out something," he said, staring at my eyes.

I share a room with an Englishman named Maxwell. I could hear him breathing deeply. In and out, in and out, so I knew he was asleep. I hadn't written anything yet, so I was sitting up in bed, leaning against my pillow with the yellow tablet in my lap.

I had found out earlier that day that it was impossible for me to hold the tablet in one hand and write with the other, so I had bunched up the sheets on my thighs to support the tablet. In this manner I could lean over and write. The air was cold on the parts of my skin exposed, but it wasn't for very long, and it made the writing easier.

I was bent over the tablet writing when there was a soft knock on the door and it opened a crack. Dr. Cartien peeked his face in smiling.

"Martin," he whispered, "I brought that typewriter for you to use. May I come in?" I put down my pencil and motioned him in.

"Please pay no attention to the mess, Dr. Cartien, unfortunately I am in the habit of throwing my clothes on the floor at night." I motioned to where my shirt, pants and underwear lay in a heap at the end of my bed. "I can't see them while I'm asleep, so I don't bother trying to tuck them out of sight." He walked around the end of Maxwell's bed and sat near the window on the edge of mine. He placed the typewriter on the bedside table.

"What are you doing," he asked, and moved closer to see what was on my lap. I showed him what I had written on the tablet so far. He read the half page carefully, nodding here and there, and set the tablet on the table next to the typewriter. I watched him place the bulky pad next to the sleek shine of a blue electric machine. "Are you cold?" he asked, referring to my half-nakedness and the bunch of blankets on my lap.

"Only slightly," I said, pulling my gaze reluctantly from the typewriter, "but this makes the writing easier. I can't hold the tablet in one hand and write with the other. It's illegible." I started to pull the blankets back up around me, but he put his hand on mine.

"Don't bother, I'll adjust the thermostat, and then, when it's a bit warmer, you can try the typewriter." He got up from the edge of the bed, went to the thermostat by the door, and turned it a few degrees to the right. The hiss of the radiators added to the hiss of Maxwell?s breathing in the bed next to mine, and I started to feel warmer. Dr. Cartien came back and sat on the edge of the bed, his feet on the floor, his right hand near my pillow.

"That's better Martin?" I nodded my consent, and glanced at the typewriter on the table.

"Is that for me?" I gloried to myself about the thought of using the typewriter instead of the tablet for my journals. I could almost imagine my fingers caressing the smooth surface.

"Would you care to try it now?" He motioned as if to get the machine for me and set it on the bed.

"Oh no, sir, not tonight. Maxwell," I nodded to my slumbering roommate, "I wouldn't care much to wake him." Dr. Cartien settled back on the edge of my bed a little closer to his hand which was now under neath the pillow I sat on.

I could see the tiny beads of sweat on his stubbled face by the light of the streetlights from outside. They congealed on his forehead, then trickle down his cheeks and drip onto his housecoat. Occasionally, one would disappear into the darkness underneath his wrap. I could feel the sweat on my forehead, too. He had made it very warm in the room.

"I really like your eyes, Martin. Ever since you first came here, I noticed them. Blue, like my daughter's, only older. Wiser." He leaned closer to me and placed his head in my lap. I could see the machine on the table over his left shoulder. My penis stiffened underneath the blankets and pressed against his ear. He sat up quickly.

"I've never let anyone use the typewriter, Martin, but I let you. You. It's your eyes," he touched my chest with his right hand and let it drop down to where my waist met the edge of the blankets on my lap, "your penis, Martin." I moved the blankets off of my lap, lifting them from off my stiff penis, ignoring the feel of cold air on it's tip, my testicles. The machine lying just a foot and a half a way.

If I stretched perhaps I could have touched it. His words echoed through my head: "I've never let anyone. . . but I let you. . . it's your eyes." He leaned over and rested his head on my lap again. I could hear his breathing quicken, could feel my penis pressing against his ear. I was sweating. It was too hot, but I could feel the keys and hear the click clack clock tap tap of writing and feel the vibrations against the table. The black on white of pure ideas. Ideas I hoped would cure me.

"You may put my penis in your mouth, if you want to, Dr. Cartien." I laid back heavily and rested my head against the wall. Dr. Cartien pulled the blankets the rest of the way off and kissed my thigh just above my knee. I could feel the scrape of his stubble and the wet of his tongue. He slid his right hand up my right thigh and gently grazed my penis with the inside of his wrist as he circled his fingers over my waist and back down to his tongue on my left thigh. He licked them and repeated the cycle, each time getting closer to my penis, and each time placing another kiss a little above the previous one. Moving towards my penis.

I listened to the steady rhythm of breathing in the bed next to mine. I stared up at the ceiling and the strange shadows made by the blinds as the light from below streamed through. I thought of the typewriter on the table, just out of reach.

"Put me in your mouth, Dr. Cartien," I said like I thought it should sound, "Suck me off. Let me come." I breathed pensively, waiting for the clammy touch of his mouth, and the damp feeling of his lips around the base of my penis. He slid his right hand up my thigh and wrapped it around the base of my penis, squeezing in time with his breathing, his lips stayed hovering, parted above the head of my penis.

I felt his left hand move from where it had been idle underneath my pillow to the small of my back, then to the crease of my ass. He pushed his middle finger into the crack, letting it slide along the sweat there and up to my anus. As he pushed against my hole, he jerked his right hand up and down and up and down as fast as he could until his finger was all the way inside of my anus and sliding to the tempo of his right hand jerking me off.

"Martin," he said, still hovering above my penis, "do you like the typewriter?" He looked at me now, his hand still squeezing my penis in time with its own pulsating jerks and rises.

"Yes, very much," I said. A wave of delight at the thought of nights alone with it washed over me, and I exhaled loudly, "Why do you ask now?" He took his hands off me and sat back on the bed, glaring at me, sweat beading on his forehead, his breathing shallow and rapid.

"I had to pull a lot of strings to get that machine for you," he said, "a lot." He stood up and took his shirt off revealing a rolling stomach and hairy chest. He unzipped his pants and let his penis come into the open. It was hard and rising up and down jerkily. He took his pants off and stood there, naked in the reflection of street lamps below. "I need compensation, Martin, for my trouble." He wrapped his right hand around his penis, gave one slow stroke, then looked at the table next to my bed.

I followed his gaze to the typewriter. The machine. The beautiful and glorious machine. I thought about writing without it, struggling to grip the pencil in sweaty, pensive fingers, balancing the cumbersome pad on my lap, or my arm, or my blankets while trying to express my thoughts, cure myself. I needed that typewriter.

He stroked his penis once. Slowly. Then I was on it.

I wrapped my hands around the base and thrust it into my mouth. All I could think of was that typewriter, waiting to be keyed and pressed. The thin sheet of perfect, white paper waiting to be impressed with letters, words, sentences, paragraphs, whole books, whole libraries could be written on that single machine. My lips flew back and forth, my spit dripping down my chin and mingling with the sweat from his belly, catching in the tangle of pubic hair beneath my hands. I felt the sweat dripping from forehead onto my arms, running down my back. I could hear him moaning louder and louder as I moved my mouth?sucking and toungeing the tip then the base then tip again of his penis.

My mouth ached and sweat was stinging my eyes, but I could feel the typewriter beneath my fingers, the curve of metal and plastic, the click of language flowing free and unencumbered by physical imperfections of slow wrists and slippery hands.

The more I thought of the machine, the harder and faster I sucked on his too-slippery penis. He moaned loud, now, and I could hear Maxwell stirring out of sleep next to us. My eyes were closed to envision the typewriter, but I could hear the snort and grumble of surprise as he sat up in bed and saw me sucking Dr. Cartien?s penis. How I must have looked -- bobbing back and forth, sweating, moaning. I pulled one last time, Dr. Cartien grabbed the back of my head and pulled it towards him, holding my mouth around his cock. I felt his cum drip down my throat.

I swallowed, some of it leaked out and dribbled down my chin. I could still feel the typewriter's keys as I pumped his penis for the last few drops of salty-sweet semen. I licked the last bit up like I thought he would want me to, and fell back against my pillow: sweaty, tired, staring at the silhouette of the machine on the table. I could feel Dr. Cartien bending down and wrapping his lips around me, could hear the complaints of Maxwell as he rolled over and covered his head with his pillow, but I had the typewriter. It was mine. I would be well.