The Missing Sex Scene: The Invisible Man-Part One

This has nothing to do with the H. G. Wells novel, the Ralph Ellison novel, or any movies or anything else. I think of the Invisible Man as just a character that we all own, like the Boogeyman or the Sasquatch. Here, he's in love and lust. I'm going in short parts for this one. This is part one. Just love in this one, sadly. Part two tomorrow. Part three Saturday.

Damen followed Elise through her garage door to her house, snuck around behind her without touching anything but her ridiculously large purse and backed into an empty space between the floor lamp (bronze antique) and the couch (overstuffed ultrasuede). He didn't cast a shadow. Elise looked around before proceeding to a hook that she kept her keys on, checking herself in a mirror that didn't reflect his gaze. Elise always looked around like this. Damen figured she'd had a cat or cockroaches at one time or another. There was nothing now.

Damen didn't like to think of himself as invisible, though this was clearly what he was. He didn't want to think of himself as a ghost of something that once existed because he didn't believe in ghosts, and had been only like this for as long as he could remember. A pointless, Cartesian argument had made a home in his mind since he was younger, and he'd given up on it lately. He existed. That much he was sure of, though he, in his own words, looked exactly like nothing. It was easier to think like this, he looked like nothing, than to enter into that confusion again, try to figure out why, what he was good for, or if he was meant for anything, well, higher. There was only Elise now, this woman headed, as she headed every night, for a long bath, and his transparent heart, whose only proof of existence he had was that he could feel it with her, expanding into the transparent pressure of his transparent chest.

Elise put her purse down in the dining room, on one of her chairs (traditional wood) and walked, as she did each night, to the master bathroom up the stairs and two doors down. Her purse (quilted leather) was filled, Damen knew, with the usual things of a woman her age, the Blackberry and the bulging wallet and Wet Naps, but also a small plush rabbit, which had been soft at one time, but now had stringy fur and large, worn holes. He'd held it one night while she slept. This thing all substance and no soul. His negation.

The white noise of the running water crept down the stairs. She would close the door as she took the bath, though there was no one to keep out but him. He swung his weight around the banister and quietly, slowly, ascended the stairs. In his fantasies of her, of which Damen had so many, she always said, "Run to me!"