Thick calloused hands delved easily into pliant cotton fabric and flesh. It had lost some of the resilience of youth but still remained soft and it would do in this moment. Her breath was warm and inviting and her voice hadn't achieved the coarseness yet of the many cigarettes she smoked. She held him tightly and he did pity her as she gasped in pain at his incredible girth. He pitied her enough to slow down a little but not so much. "Oh, Harold! Oh!" she exclaimed in agony or pleasure. He couldn't tell. He was wheezing and grunting and slobbering all over her breasts as he thrust rudely into her. "Oh, baby! That's it! Oh, you're hurting me!" The old iron springs creaked inconspicuously and the rickety headboard knocked clumsily against the wall.
In the adjacent room, the theatrics made him want to throw up but the shame of his own ignorance made him burst into tears. He huddled against the windowsill and covered his mouth to muffle the sobs as the lusty caterwaul from next door reached a fever pitch. Jesus Christ! It was two o'clock in the afternoon! All the neighbors will hear! It was the same routine. She would exclaim loudly that each man that walked through the door was "so big it hurt" and "oh, baby, that was the best I ever had." Walter hadn't known any better and had interrupted her once. He didn't want anyone to hurt his mother. That's when it happened. His face still flushed with a phantom sting as if she had struck him again every time he recalled it. Tears burst from his tear ducts as he matched the sting with the words "should've had the abortion."
Even now, in his late thirties, when he hears the familiar sounds of rutting through his paper thin apartment flop walls after a long day at work, sometimes he curls up against the window in the dark and cries as silently as he can.