curled up, insulated in a comforter with the rest of the sheets tossed about, sweating everything out of my body until I wake up sick with thirst, I start the day.  I like to say that my immune system is so efficient that I never find out exactly what "sickness" I've contracted.  But damn, I am feeling this one.  

later in the night, I'm downhill toward the fields for football, avoiding Jona for once.  We play for a long time, and I become more sick.  An hour and a half later, I step into the Strom for basketball -- two more hours.

At last, after swallows of water at the fountain, fingers shaking along with my legs, torso in such pain that I need to stoop a little bit, I flip the lever so the water will pour out.  Cold at first, then warmish.  It has a hold on me, I feeling like a shell of a human being.  Shampoo, conditioner, the little steps of hygiene.  By now, the warmish water feels cold to my shivering, goosebumped skin.  I look down at my little phallus, surrounded as he is by hair, but experience no impulses.  The same impulses that drive middle-aged men onto "Predator" are absent from me in this moment.  Not entirely physical, this is somewhat of an intellectual transcendence, so I tell myself.  But yes, it truly is.  Sex?  ....and?