The Loser's route from work to his squalid apartment cuts through a park and he sees young women running. He's on a bicycle and too polite and aware of his ugliness to stare at them, yet his eye can't help being caught by their thighs.
Thigh. Such a lovely word to the Loser. It even rhymes with "sigh."
He's struck by how robust those of a college age woman are. Powerful cylinders of muscle flashing as they propel firm torsos, ponytails waving behind. It stirs him. At times he has to take a moment to tell himself how ridiculous it would be for him to even consider something other than a workplace relationship with women that age, he being an aging, failed cripple, and the rising sap is blocked.
Each spring, he needs to tell himself this with decreasing frequency.
