He stood there naked as the day the midwife torn him, kicking and screaming, from his mother's womb. The unexceptional man made a vow to never, never again be subjected to condescension. "Here I stand..." he cut off the remark, disgusted on how the thought would inevitably conclude. "Here I stand." His edit made the remark definitive and consequently more ambiguous. A lecture filled with his peers, set abuzz, gaped incomprehensibly at the spectacle. There stood the aspiring agon, having already exhausted all possible veneers, no longer able to conceal anything. "Here I stand."
The voice of authority, the one who held his academic future in her hands, pointed out the obvious contradiction.
"If you let it all hang out, does that not destroy the realm of the public? Does that not destroy the veil of mystery necessary for the function of play in civilization? Does this not lead to disenchantment?"
"Was Eden disenchanted?" he rebuted.
"They ate the apple to escape boredom," a female student blurted out. "That was beyond disenchantment."
"The temptation was never external. It gave completion to free will. Yes, Eden was disenchanted, lame, and boring," another shouted.
He looked down at his member dangling passionlessly, as if the object of clinical observation. He scanned the room to check out their eyes. He saw insecurity; some were secretly measuring and comparing. He saw curiousity and repressed lust; there was intrigue. He saw revulsion; the uninitiated suffering an insoluble clash between impulse and proper morality. He saw his professor's eyes; they were bored.
The spectacle did not impress nor shock her. She had seen it countless times before in a bedroom or a restroom or an elevator or in a kitchen. She had seen more impressive displays, as well as inferior ones. She knew who his intended audience was, as well as his readily transparent motive. She wasn't buying it.
"Put your clothes, Mr. Stevens, unless you can provide a compelling reason why you should not."
"In the agora..." he stared dispassionately into her eyes as his right hand readied itself to demonstrate his point. He performed the task, as he done countless times in private, in the public realm, in his own agora.
Some cheered. Most were aghast. A few were outraged. A couple walked out. But she sat there unfazed, unchanged, and unimpressed, as he neared climax. She stood up, calm and collected as ever before, to provide her critique.
"The true agon does not bring attention to himself. The agonistic act is done through both act and deed, prefigured by thought. Pull your pants back on and clean up after your mess."
The unexceptional man stood there and broke into tears.
