Intersection

         When you pass by a cripple on the sidewalk—a handicapped man with non-functioning or no legs at all; maybe no arms, no eyesight, deaf, dumb, anything lesser than you—why is it that the first thought in your head is “I’m glad it’s not me?” Do you feel no pity at all? Of course you do. But the pity and the remorse are secondary to your relief that you can walk, hear, see, speak. Though only you can hear the thoughts in your head, do you honestly believe your thoughts aren’t clear to me? Do you honestly think that you can hear me, but I can’t hear you? I know what you’re thinking before you do. I know every thought that has gone, is going, and will go through your head. Although I can’t see you, hear you, speak to you, I know you’re there. In my mind, I see you clearly.
         I assume you can hear the cars on the street, the voices of people walking by—just as you are now. You can hear voices tell you everything’s okay when it isn’t. You can hear people sing you a happy birthday, or wish you happy holidays, or tell you they love you. You can, I can’t. The only sound I hear is the voice in my head.
         I assume you can see the cars speed by, just as you can hear the screech of the engines pumping them onward. You can see me standing here alone, confident in my own abilities, and still have the nerve to think I need your help to accomplish the most minuscule task. You can see, and because of this you’ll always feel safe in the world. Your vision is what gives you your sense of control. Through it you obtain all you need to know about your environment. It's what allows you survival in a world built for survival of the fittest. It’s what feeds you the desire to aid a man like me. Sight is man’s most valuable, most relied-upon sense. So do my sightless eyes make me less of a man than you? Did blindness make me weak, powerless, apt to die in our Darwinist world?
I know you can speak. I bet you’ve already tried speaking to me, only to realize I couldn’t hear you and can’t say anything back. And I didn’t need to see you wave your hand in front of my face to check if I was blind; I felt the movement of air you wafted into my face.
         I know you're standing inches from me. I know you’re inspecting me over and over again so your mind can at last grasp the idea that I’m cut off from my surroundings, from you. And you’re asking yourself, “How does anyone get by in the world without being able to see, hear, or speak?” Let me add that you take these things for granted. What made you so worthy of the oh-so-common abilities you have? Why should you have them when I don’t? What makes you so worthy of anything so close to perfection?
         There are many people who live without one or two—or more—of the senses every other man has. Most of those people live content lives. How is it they can fair so well in a world which constantly works against them? How is it that a person can blatantly realize they aren’t perfect, and ever come to accept it? What happened to make them so unworthy of perfection?
What god did this to us?
No god at all.

         The morning air was thick with moisture. It smelled of fresh cut grass, newly laid soil and flowers, with a hint of pancake coming from the kitchen next door. Jay sat up in his bed and peered out a window. Across the street his neighbor’s wife was rising from her own bed. She walked to the bedroom door, shut it, and commenced undressing, all of which he could see with avid detail despite the thin white curtain drawn across the windowpane. In a minute she would be in the shower, the next window over to the right.
         He lifted up his covers and slid out of bed. As his feet hit the floor—the soft, velvety carpet—he imagined hearing her shower turn on, visualized water flowing out of the spout, onto and over his neighbor’s smooth skin. Every morning he awoke to the sight of her body’s elegant curves. Every time he saw them, he wanted to run to her and grab her around the waist—to touch her skin to his. Despite his ability to see her, hear her, smell the wandering scents which came from her house, he had yet to touch her, to taste her lips on his.
         Every weekday morning, Jay would wake and watch her while he prepared for the day ahead, and then would be off to work. She worked from home, so he knew where to go if his desire to see her could not be calmed—her office window. And he did check in on her. Often.

         Imagine you are blind. Imagine you are nearly deaf; whispers of air flowing in and out of your ear canals are the only auditory static you can hear. You spent your childhood years praying to God that your sense of touch would magnify, perhaps enough to make your lack of the other senses . . . what exactly? Less of a hassle? Less depressing?
         You were born without the ability to see.  You were young—barely out of your infancy—when your hearing went. What do you imagine in that head yours when you shut your eyes at night? Do you imagine people speaking in your dreams? Do you imagine yourself speaking? What about hearing? I don’t know how you would. You have no experience with those things, and therefore you have no idea what to imagine. Yet your mind won’t allow you to forget those senses exist. Voices and images formulate in your dreams. They feel as real as they would in waking life, but you’re never sure if your mind is simulating them accurately. At least you have a highly accurate, real sense of smell. Little good that does here, though. Everything from this point forward reeks of vehicle exhaust.
         I hope you get hit by a car.
         You don’t know what I’ve suffered through, what makes what I’m about to do justifiable. You don’t have the memories I have, memories of a young boy trapped in his own head:
         
         The boy sat up in his bed. Words still echoed in his mind from a dream he had been having. But these words were different. They weren’t bumps on a page or the curved, symbolic shapes of his mother’s fingers on the palm of his hand. They were . . . what were they? They were . . . sound, he thought. He knew it was sound, audible sound in his head. The words were spoken to him, and he had heard them! He could hear at last!
         He screamed out into the confines of his bedroom. The sound echoed off the white walls. It ignited the room like fire from the rays of sun that came in pleasantly through his open window, along with a soothing breeze. The sound waves carrying his voice flowed into his ears and reverberated. But he didn’t hear any of the sound they made. He couldn’t see the sun’s light coming through the window; all he felt was its warmth—the knowledge that it was there at all. He could feel the soothing wind rolling over him, but it was not enough to soothe his anger at his unchanged state. He was, and remained, as deaf—and as blind—as he had been the previous day, and the day before that, and the day before that. He couldn’t hear the utter silence that followed his scream. He couldn’t see how dreadfully blank and empty his white walls were, walls which surrounded him on all sides, aided by a blank white ceiling that hung low over his head.
         Soon his mother was at his side, placing her soft fingers in his hand, telling him everything was alright, he was safe, no monsters were coming to get him from his dreams. And he knew she was right about that last part at least; he was safe, safe in the confines of his own head, but trapped as well.

         And you stand here beside me, trying not to stare, even though you know I can’t see you glancing my way while we wait together on the corner of the sidewalk.

         Jay would watch his neighbor, but never go for her, even when they were already in conversation—ones that were shouted from one side of the street to the other while they picked up the daily paper from the ends of their driveways in the morning. He couldn’t get himself to do it. He couldn’t bring himself to break apart a marriage. But he wanted to, and his feelings didn’t seem likely to change. She was so damn beautiful. He knew from talking to her and hearing her speak that she was smart and funny. He knew that she would often smell of fruit-scented shampoo in the morning. The only things left to discover were the softness of her skin and the taste of satisfaction that can only be gained one way. He knew that she liked him. He didn’t know how much, or in what way, but he felt that, together, they could create a bond stronger than the one between husband and wife.

         Only once have I ever been in love. I can’t think of more than one woman who’s ever been in love with me, and it didn’t last. I can’t blame them. How could someone ever try to ask me on a date, or engage me in flirtatious conversation, or vice versa? Anyway, it was hard enough to be crippled without feeling the guilt of tying another person down. I couldn’t do that. My mother’s life was already too much time wasted taking care of the Poor Guy. Now she’s gone, and I can’t start that cycle over.
         There was only one relationship, and I couldn’t let it go on. The happiness would have faded. We two together would have made her life as miserable as mine.
         It’s alright, though, for her, for me.  Everything’s gonna be alright.

         Today was the day. Jay was going to talk to his neighbor. He was going to tell her how he felt, just to see how she felt. No matter how it turned out, at least the situation would have closure. He was going to do it and that was that. And that was final. His decision made, all he had to do was make it home from work. Three blocks ’till home. Three blocks until he’d be knocking on her door. Half an hour before her husband would be home.
         A symbol of a walking man lit up white across the street. He crossed and came to the end of the next block. He waited impatiently until the next walk light lit and guided him onward. At last he came to the final intersection from home and from her.
         He stood on the corner as car after car sped by. Other pedestrians around him swayed back and forth from heel to toe, tapped their fingers against their pants pockets, glanced again and again at their wrist watches; every one of them eager to officially end the work day. To his left stood a young man. The man was holding tight to a loop of leather rope that connected to a dog’s harness—a seeing-eye dog, the ones the blind use to guide them around the city. He tried talking to the man as he waited for the opposing traffic’s light to turn red and his walk light to turn white. The talk would simply pass time, make it go by faster so he could be on his way. But the man was completely unresponsive. Jay waved his hand in front of the man’s face. No reaction at all. Alright, no big deal; time goes by anyway.
         When he got his queue to walk, he jogged the whole way across the street then stopped to catch a quick breather at the far corner of the sidewalk before continuing on.
         Seconds later, the opposing traffic retrieved the green light, and cars sped across the intersection. The wind the moving cars produced hit the other man, making the dog’s hair flutter in the breeze. He hadn’t crossed the street when the walk light had been on.
“This is it,” the wind told the man, “now’s the time.”
         Alright, alright.
Thoughts of the girl he had once loved, and who had once been willing to love him, filled his mind. He bent down on one knee to pat his dog on its head. He put his face close to the dog’s muzzle, and gave it his last firm command. “Stay,” he said, and let go of his dog’s harness.
His word would barely have been understandable to another person. Without the ability to hear his own voice, and worsened because he never tried to speak, he had never learned to speak correctly. But the dog was familiar with the garbled sound, and obeyed. His master stood to his feet, faltered for one brief moment, then stepped out into the busy street.
         Jay, still on the opposite sidewalk catching his breath, saw the man make his move and instinctively ran into the street toward him. A car screeched to a halt, horn blazing. Other cars missed him by inches. He made it to the opposite side of the street. Still running, he held his arms out stiffly, successfully pushing the blind man back to the curb, sending him sprawling to the hard concrete of the sidewalk. But the force of the push sent Jay sprawling backwards, back into the traffic he had so nearly avoided. In that split second of time, he recalled a phrase from his high school days, from physics: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. He didn’t feel the car hit him, snapping his spine in two. His death came before his nervous system could transport the message of his pain to his living mind.
         Am I dead? the blind man thought. Is it over?