It'd been two weeks since Albert's Christmas with his parents. Two weeks since he met the Christian woman with the lumpy body and the sweet smile. Two weeks since the woman in the sports bra, perfume, sweat, etc sat next to him in the middle seat of the train from New Jersey, and he was struck by the feeling that all of his thoughts were being watched.
And ever since that shift two weeks ago, all of Albert's attempts at self-pleasure had been thwarted by that sense of surveillance.
Since he began the rite of masturbation in the sixth grade, Albert had never skipped a single day. And now that he hadn't finished for a full two weeks, he was going through serious withdrawals.
He was on edge, restless, and hyper-sensitive. What previously went unnoticed now irritated him. Taxis honking felt like loose screws rattling in his brain. At work, it was the sounds of others laughing and happily conversing that got him. At home, it was the sounds of parties and dinners from his neighbors and on the streets outside.
Something had ripped Albert from the far-from ideal but reasonably functional cocoon he had been existing in. The cocoon where he was protected from any desires other than weed and porn, and protected from any emotions other than the occasional frustration or loneliness. But now he walked the streets of Manhattan protection-less, and his insides were soft and hyper-sensitive.
Normally he walked to work with blinders on, saving his lustful gaze for the privacy of his bedroom and the neutrality of his screen. But his blinders had been torn from him. Now he glanced at every woman who walked by him, his agitation testing the limits of his meekness. Each one of these glances only heightened his shame and his sense of alone in-a-box-seat spectator distance between him and everyone else. He longed for them with the firm conviction that they were disgusted by him. But underneath that, slowly swelling, was an increasingly alarming drive: I need to do something. I need to do something. As his mind desperately calculated how to finally consummate his desires.
With blinders off, he also exchanged uneasy looks with groups of men. These exchanges were charged with fear, with the feeling that these men might attack him out of the blue. The feeling that he was wrong, in some way, some primordial wrongness he couldn't articulate, and they would attack him for it.
It was all too much for him. He didn't want to face all this. He wasn't happy in the cocoon, but he was never tortured so harshly! He could've spent at least five to ten more years there before breaking down, he'd figured. Albert had nothing against porn. Nothing against his own lifestyle. It was just this stupid, unshakeable, exogenous idea that someone was surveilling his thoughts that was ruining everything.
After a grueling commute, Albert finally made it to the Pagii office. He made it past the receptionist, the HR team, the college interns, and finally reached the libidoless refuge of the lumpy middle aged men that comprised the Pagii Analytics Dashboard Infra team.
Albert came in to work that day with a plan. His manager, Ashutosh, who sat to his left, was in a meeting. The desk to his right was permanently unoccupied. His back was to the wall and his screen faced the wall too. He glanced around for security cameras-- a weak pantomime of caution-- and then executed his plan, pairing his earbuds with his laptop and opening up PornHub. He loaded one of his favorite ASMR videos, then resized the video to fit in the bottom right corner of his laptop screen. Then, he covered his external monitor with his code editor, opened to some dense project he hadn't touched in weeks, and closed his eyes, trying to meditate on the sounds of the ASMR porn moans.
The morning sun shone brightly on him through the Pagii office window. He had never touched porn at work before. But something in him had snapped. He felt now, more than ever, that he needed it.
Albert opened his eyes right as his manager came into view. He jumped to minimize the video but left the audio on.
"Oh, yeah, just like that, just like that--"
"Morning, Albert," his manager greeted him, tapping his shoulder.
"Haaa, ughhhhh---"
"Uhm. Yeah." Albert said, reflexively agreeing.
---
After another grueling day at work Albert made it back to his apartment and sat on the couch agitated. He shook his leg vigorously. It was like tiny sparklers were going off in his body but instead of light they sparkled shit. His hand reached for his edibles. But then he stopped himself. What was the point? What was the point of the edibles if he couldn't even masturbate? It would just strengthen the terrible sensations he already felt.
Unsure of what to do with himself, he grabbed the TV remote, turned it on, flipped through some channels, then felt repulsed and turned it off. How did anyone watch TV? Why would anyone watch CNN when they could watch a Big ass Latina-- he was cut off mid thought by the feeling of being of watched again. Embarrassed, he stowed the thought away, where it lurked underground, waiting for the next opportunity to rear it's horned head.
Albert was not grateful often. But one of the few things he was truly grateful for, was that he was born in the 21st century and not the 1500s.
In the 21st century, Albert, who was at the very bottom of any kind of social hierarchy, had access to luxuries that far surpassed that of, let's say, 16th century Aztec Emperor Montezuma the II.
And so as Albert popped mini donuts into his mouth, and poured hot chocolate over them, and as an endless stream of women seduced him through an incredible, magical, device we call the computer, he often wondered if the ghost of Montezuma the II, still floating around the Earth, looked at him, looked at Albert Melvinson, with jealousy.
But Albert wasn't grateful anymore. He'd lost his internet harem. All he had now was the television.
Albert switched the TV back on, flipped to CNN, and tried to be normal.
There was a civil war in Bulgurstan, apparently. Something about a coup. Albert tried to pay attention but the video felt dreamlike to him. Dissociating, he felt the words of the Latina news anchor swirl around him in a soup with the rest of his mind. Where was Bulgurstan? The news anchor's breasts were front and center. Behind her was an image of dying Bulgurstanians with the caption "500,000 dead". Her blouse was tight and turquoise. Albert began to wonder if she'd stand up at some point. If maybe the producer might show on screen a huge graph forecasting the Bulgurstan death toll, and she'd get up and stand next to the graph to point out key features. She'd be turned to the side, maybe even fully turned around, with her back to the camera, and-- his thoughts cut out. He was being watched again.
What did he even want with this news anchor? He didn't care about her body. It felt like his mind was just playing out some dull script. Face, breasts, back, check. Face, breasts, back, check. He turned off the screen and rubbed his eyes with his hands.
Sick of television but with no other recourse, he grabbed three edibles with an unusual force and chewed violently, fruit punch flavored gelatin setting like epoxy in his molars.
Albert had only taken more than one hundred milligrams of THC once in his life. That time, he took one hundred and fifty milligrams, which made him so anxious and paranoid that he never did it again. But now, he'd just taken three hundred.
Why? Why did he do that? Albert began to feel anxious in anticipation of the greater anxiety that was sure to come.
First, the agitation took the reigns for a bit. In a kind of possessed flow, Albert opened his laptop and began looking for things to do.
*What did people do besides work and have sex? Hobbies? What were some hobbies? He knew his coworker Molly wrote. Should he write? How did people write? What were they writing down? He hadn't written anything since high school.*
Eight minutes later, Albert had purchased four antique 19th century Spencerian Calligraphy workbooks for a total of $400.
He couldn't wait the six days for their arrival and so he began scribbling loops on binder paper, and nearly tore the paper with the force of his nib. B B B B B B. He thought of the news anchor again-- no! He continued scribbling for what felt like hours. He went through pages and pages of binder paper, tearing them up with increasing intensity, convinced that this is what he had to be doing.
Finally, the doorbell rang.
The ring sent a shock of anxiety through Albert's heart. No one had rung his doorbell since he had moved into his apartment six months ago. Was it the police? Had they intercepted his edible shipment? Doomsday scenarios spun in his head.
Albert stood up from his chair feeling immensely disoriented, and, catastrophically high, crawled to the door in a state of immense fear, careful to not make any sounds so as to signal to the ringer that someone was home.
Once he reached the front door, he decided he would try and get a peek at the ringer through the letter-slot.
He took a big gulp, and slowly opened the letter slot, trying to make out who it was. It was a woman. The first thing he noticed was her sagging breasts. She was holding a stack of books and envelopes. He closed the letter slot and thought about who it could be. She didn't look like an FBI agent.
"AAARRRR!" the truly startled Albert, having not made a loud sound in years, gave out a terrible cry. The lady had pushed an envelope through the slot and it had hit his head.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!" the woman screamed, startled by the alarming proximity and strange angle of the yell on the other side of the door.
Albert, struggling to breathe, overwhelmed by the scream of the woman and the sound of dropped objects, laid himself down with his back on the floor, eyes wide open, as the world spun around him. He heard the woman on the other side of the door muttering fearfully, "Jesus, oh Jesus, oh Jesus" picking up objects.
After what felt like hours, Albert calmed down enough to sit up. He looked at the envelope that had fallen through the letter slot. Printed on it was "Radiance Ministries".