Chapter 5

At home, you noticed that the redness on your wife’s skin, which you had noticed that morning, was not going away. You told her about it. For a moment, a sad little crease appeared on the bridge of her nose. She ran to the mirror and gasped.

“I need to see a doctor!” she said.

“You will,” you answered, wrapping your arms around her waist. “But first ... you promised me something yesterday. It’s time I got what I was promised.”

“Yuri! I’m sorry, but I can’t do it like this. I need to know what’s wrong with me! I won’t be able to relax! Let’s make love after the doctor!”

You let your wife go in disappointment. Yes, with her in that mood, sex was better postponed. Later you learned that she had an ordinary allergy, cured by a single antihistamine pill. When Annette refused sex again that evening, citing how unwell she felt -- apologizing profusely all the while -- you began to suspect the problem had not been the allergy. Skin, after all, is not just a sack for the internal organs. It is what the world touches us through. Its tentacle. And a skin disease is simply a way of shielding oneself from touch...

You began winding yourself up. It hurt that your wife was brushing you off. You had met her halfway, apologized to some janitor, and she?! The more you wound yourself up with resentment, the more often Omar’s words came back to you: “Local Sluts.” But why? You did not know. At some point, you simply took your phone and found that channel on Telegram.

You immediately scrolled past the last two posts with young women; the account behind them was not the one you needed. Then came Omar. A post from Omar. It contained several videos and the text:

“At Christmas, local sluts love it in the ass, have you noticed too?”

What an animal, this Omar. You opened the first video. In it, a girl in pink panties, bare-breasted, posed before three men while a fourth filmed.

The videos were of poor quality; it was easy to guess Omar’s outdated phone model. Yes, they were having quite a time. Suddenly you felt that you envied the old man. You had tied yourself to one woman, and that woman was far from always willing to give you the emotions that a girl of easy virtue could give. Unfair! Then again, what is justice? Justice did not appear in the Universe by itself. Man invented it. Perhaps it exists only as an invention...

The videos were short. Omar clearly had no burning desire to film the whole time and took part in what was happening too, only occasionally stepping away to record footage for the public channel. You looked at the likes: 1,235! Wow. It seemed this page was Omar’s little window into human recognition. Surely, he posted such videos there so that in his worthless life there would be at least some form of social recognition. Here, Omar was loved.