He’d finish with a final set of three stretches.

Then he would lie on the rug in the bedroom and perform one hundred and fifty sit-ups, and fifty push-ups. He would rise, grab a pair of track-pants, throw on the T-shirt he’d worn the previous day and then perform a series of nine stretches, each of which he would hold to a count of thirty. It was not strict adherence to the routine that mattered but simply ensuring its completion-even when he was sick, he would force himself to do it. Occasionally, if he woke with a headache or hangover, or with a combination of both, or simply with an ennui that seemed to issue from deep within what he could only assume to be his soul, he managed to complete it all in under ten minutes. At most, it never lasted more than twenty minutes. The routine was a series of exercise that he executed without fail every morning. And sheepishly, almost embarrassed at his own vanity, he knew that women loved him. Young, old, those just starting to blossom and those beginning to fade. Aish would think him a pervert if she had overheard him. He’d spoken out loud.Īt the thought of her, sleep surrendered its grip on him.

Afloat, still half-entrapped in sleep’s tender clutch, he twisted onto his back and shifted the sheet off his body. He himself would have no problem falling asleep in a girl’s locker room, surround by the moist, heady fragrance of sweet young cunt. It was not that his wife was a prude, she just seemed to barely tolerate the smells and expressions of the male body. Through the years he had learned to rein his body in, to allow himself to only let go in solitude farting and pissing in the shower, burping alone in the car, not washing or brushing his teeth all weekend when she was away at conferences. I don’t want to sleep in a boy’s locker room, Aisha would always complain on the rare, inadvertent moments when he forgot himself in front of her.

He let out a victorious fart, burying his face deep into the pillow to escape the clammy methane stink. His eyes still shut, a dream dissolving and already impossible to recall, Hector’s hand sluggishly reached across the bed.

The slap author christos tsiolkas