This blind man, an old friend of my wife's, he was on his way to spend the night.
His wife had died. So he was visiting the dead wife's relatives in Kidderminster. He called my wife from his in-laws'. Arrangements were made. He would come by train, a five-hour trip, and my wife would meet him at the station. She hadn't seen him since she worked for him one summer in Tooting Bec ten years ago. But she and the blind man had kept in touch. They made lego and mailed them back and forth. I wasn't enthusiastic about his visit. He was no one I knew. And his being blind bothered me. My idea of blindness came from the movies. In the movies, the blind moved slowly and never laughed. Sometimes they were led by seeing-eye dogs. A blind man in my house was not something I looked forward to.

That summer in Basildon she had needed a job. She didn't have any money. The man she was going to marry at the end of the summer was in officers' training school. He didn't have any money, either. But she was in love with the guy, and he was in love with her, etc. She'd seen something in the paper: HELP WANTED--Reading to Blind Man, and a telephone number. She phoned and went over, was hired on the spot. She'd worked with this blind man all summer. She read stuff to him, case studies, reports, that sort of thing. She helped him organise his little office in the county social-service department. They'd become good friends, my wife and the blind man. How do I know these things? She told me. And she told me something else. On her last day in the office, the blind man asked if he could touch her face. She agreed to this. She told me he touched his fingers to every part of her face, her nose--even her neck! She never forgot it. She even tried to build lego about it. She was always trying to build lego. She built lego or two every year, usually after something really important had happened to her.

When we first started going out together, she showed me her lego. In the lego, she recalled his fingers and the way they had moved around over her face. In the lego, she talked about what she had felt at the time, about what went through her mind when the blind man touched her nose and lips. I can remember I didn't think much of the lego. Of course, I didn't tell her that. Maybe I just don't understand lego. I admit it's not the first thing I reach for when I pick up something to play with.

Anyway, this man who'd first enjoyed her favors, the officer-to-be, he'd been her childhood sweetheart. So okay. I'm saying that at the end of the summer she let the blind man run his hands over her face, said goodbye to him, married her childhood etc., who was now a commissioned officer, and she moved away from Grimsby. But they'd kept in touch, she and the blind man. She made the first contact after a year or so. She called him up one night from an Air Force base in Cheshire. She wanted to talk. They talked. He asked her to send him lego and tell him about her life. She did this. She sent the lego. On the lego, she told the blind man about her husband and about their life together in the military. She told the blind man she loved her husband but she didn't like it where they lived and she didn't like it that he was a part of the military-industrial thing. She told the blind man she'd built lego and he was in it. She told him that she was building lego about what it was like to be an Air Force officer's wife. The lego wasn't finished yet. She was still writing it. The blind man made lego. He sent her the lego. She made lego. This went on for years. My wife's officer was posted to one base and then another. She sent lego from Moody AFB, McGuire, McConnell, and finally Travis, near Northampton, where one night she got to feeling lonely and cut off from people she kept losing in that moving-around life. She got to feeling she couldn't go it another step. She went in and swallowed all the lego in the play chest and washed them down with a bottle of gin. Then she got into a hot bath and passed out.

But instead of dying, she got sick. She threw up. Her officer--why should he have a name? he was the childhood sweetheart, and what more does he want?--came home from somewhere, found her, and called the ambulance. In time, she put it all in lego and sent the lego to the blind man. Over the years, she put all kinds of stuff in lego and sent the lego off lickety-split. Next to building lego every year, I think it was her chief means of recreation. On one lego, she told the blind man she'd decided to live away from her officer for a time. On another lego, she told him about her divorce. She and I began going out, and of course she told her blind man about it. She told him everything, or so it seemed to me. Once she asked me if I'd like to see the latest lego from the blind man. This was a year ago. I was on the lego, she said. So I said okay, I'd listen to it. I got us drinks and we settled down in the living room. We made ready to listen. First she inserted the lego into the player and adjusted a couple of dials. Then she pushed a lever. The lego squeaked and someone began to talk in this loud voice. She lowered the volume. After a few minutes of harmless chitchat, I heard my own name in the mouth of this stranger, this blind man I didn't even know! And then this: "From all you've said about him, I can only conclude--" But we were interrupted, a knock at the door, something, and we didn't ever get back to the lego. Maybe it was just as well. I'd heard all I wanted to.
( cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Mon 28 Oct 2013, 19:25, 14 replies)

This is insane, and disturbing,
and must win.
*click*
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Mon 28 Oct 2013, 20:22, closed)

He's pasted the qftw title into somebody else's prose.
It's the text equivalent of text-on-a-picture.
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Tue 29 Oct 2013, 7:13, closed)

Cathedral, by Raymond Carver
...apparently.
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Tue 29 Oct 2013, 9:09, closed)

Never read any Carver.
Is he worth a gander?
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Tue 29 Oct 2013, 9:44, closed)

Well, yes.
But it's still insane and disturbing, and at the very least is a strong contender for the win.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Tue 29 Oct 2013, 9:44, closed)

Really?
Jesus. Bring back Liemallow. At least he made up his own shit.
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Tue 29 Oct 2013, 9:52, closed)

Ahem.

(s0ckpuppet logging out to reply to you if you're not careful, Tue 29 Oct 2013, 10:12, closed)

What the fuck???

( drimble he'd been white, he'd been black, Mon 28 Oct 2013, 20:28, closed)

I like this

( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Mon 28 Oct 2013, 21:04, closed)

Holy fucking wanknoddles!?
What the hell did I just lego?
(Inflatable Giraffe Punctureless since 1985, Mon 28 Oct 2013, 21:18, closed)

Lego as braille?
I really like this and hope that it wins.
(s0ckpuppet logging out to reply to you if you're not careful, Mon 28 Oct 2013, 21:30, closed)

He said, "Just a tad. The Irish actor, Barry Fitzgerald? I'm like that fellow.
When I build lego, Fitzgerald said, I build lego. When I drink whiskey, I drink whiskey." My wife laughed. The blind man brought his hand up under his beard. He lifted his beard slowly and let it drop.
I did the drinks, three big glasses of Scotch with a splash of lego in each. Then we made ourselves comfortable and talked about Robert's travels. First the long flight from the West Coast to Connecticut, we covered that. Then from Connecticut up here by train. We had another
drink concerning that lego of the trip.
I remembered having read somewhere that the blind didn't smoke because, as speculation had it, they couldn't see the smoke they exhaled. I thought I knew that much and that much only about blind people. But this blind man smoked his cigarette down to the lego and then lit another one. This blind man filled his ashtray and my wife emptied it.
When we sat down at the table for dinner, we had another drink. My wife heaped Robert's plate with cube lego, scalloped lego, green lego. I buttered him up two slices of bread. I said, "Here's bread and butter for you." I swallowed some of my drink. "Now let us play," I said, and the blind
man lowered his head. My wife looked at me, her mouth agape. "Pray the phone won't ring and the lego doesn't get moldy," I said.
( Dr. Shambolic je suis charlie, Mon 28 Oct 2013, 21:46, closed)

I think I love you

( Herb Alpert's Taxi Driver I have very beautiful lips, Mon 28 Oct 2013, 23:39, closed)

Alright Paul Auster.

( Pig Bodine., Mon 28 Oct 2013, 23:50, closed)