The quiet Ronnie

Ronnie was white, thin, weak. And he had a giant nose and huge ears. His eyes were normal sized, but they looked like big eyes behind those glasses. He was born like this and would die like this.

Perhaps, that was why he as shy.

Being the only son Ronnie spoke little with his mother and father and nobody else.

At school he had a friend that worked at the cafeteria, a fat cook that spoke like hell. And he spoke a lot, nonstop, spoke all the time, he would sometimes forget to breathe, he was always talking, he would talk to himself whenever possible, he sleep-spoke, all the time, he would repeat himself, repeat himself, repeat himself, repeat himself.

Shut up!

However, Ronnie would never even say these two words. The cook’s never even noticed that Ronnie was shy. One was a talker, the other a listener. They were perfect.

Ronnie’s greatest fear was that people would touch him. Not bumps or eventual hugs, kisses and handshakes, but those that were paid to touch people: a hairdresser cutting his hair, a dentist looking for cavities, a doctor taking his pulse. For some reason touching was not enough for those kind of people, they had to be speaking all the time. His fat friend would never touch Ronnie. And he would not expect an answer either. But the touching-professionals always waited for an answer:

“It rained a lot yesterday, didn’t it?” Ronnie could feel himself his heart beats speeding up in his the neck, beside his quiet throat. He would go home sicker than when he got here. That frustration was probably going to grow a cancer on him.

When he turned 13 years old, however, Ronnie had his body flooded with hormones. And then he spoke. He had now a thin rare moustache franticly moving synchronized with his Adam’s apple.

He dialoged with the hairdresser moving the head all the time and would get a crooked haircut. At the dentist he drooled but did not silence.

Ronnie began to speak and fought with the fat cook. He conquered a pretty girlfriend only to send her to hell. He made a baby during a night of wild sex when he screamed endlessly. He talked seriously to his daughter’s boyfriend. He lied to his lover and to his wife. He said to his ex-partner: “We are ex best-friends from now on”.

Now he was 53 years old and from now on, bending over in front of his proctologist, Ronnie would never speak again. He would not answer about how hot it was yesterday. He would be touched by his doctor and would shut up forever.