"Oh. He, my friend, had--or still has--a detrimental addiction to masturbation." I tried to suppress a smile. "At least, that's how the doctor had worded it. We found him in his bedroom, screaming his head off about how he can't feel his hand."
"Jesus. I pardon the grimace," he shook his head facing the tiled floors.
"It's really just a sprain. A very severe sprain, but still a sprain," I stared at my left hand, palm up and palm down. "Maybe it was dislocation. Couldn't tell ya."
"You'd think twenty years of stroking, you'd get sick of yourself enough not to break anything." He just kept shaking his head, as if it easily could've been him. "At least it wasn't his dick."
"The worst he's done to his dick was burn it with dry friction. Skin raw and all. Or neglect it for more than several hours. Until now, that is."
We both shook our heads in silence for a while, facing down on the tiled floors. He was thinking about the cast around the injured arm. And then he was thinking about a cast around his own dick. I knew because I momentarily thought about the cast around my friend's arm. But immediately, I was distracted by the thought of compulsion and misfortune grabbing my dick and having to get a cast around it. You don't listen to a story about a dick without your dick digging into the agony of empathy.
This is compassionate camaraderie in retrospect, ignited by the horror of wearing the other person's shoes.
