text: “Do you know what a homunculus is?” “No, never heard of it” “It’s this image of a little guy they use in neuroscience to show how many sensory nerves you have in each part of the body. The more nerves in a part of the body, the bigger that part is drawn.” “Yea?” “Yea. So he has massive hands and a huge d...” I dismissed his description with a feigned grimace and vaguely gay gesture of the hand. I’m not gay, and have used the ‘d-word’ many times before, but there is something oddly unsettling about an old man using it so casually. “Do you know why he has a huge d....” “Yes! I get it!” The old man shot a sideways squinted glance probingly at me. “Are you gay?” “No, I’m not gay.” Obviously, the ambiguous nature of the hand gesture from a moment ago was more apparent than I had realised. I need to be more careful with that. “You just seem a little uncomfortable with references to...er, the male organ of love.” The last part, enclosed safely in air quotes, was whispered breathily to me. “I’m not gay.” “It’s ok if you are.” “Just tell me about the homunculus...” The old man considered me with an expression that was equal parts curiosity and suspicion, but he was too tempted by the conversational bait he had cast. His frozen expression softened and, eyes alit, he took off from where he had left the lesson before. “He’s a weird looking guy, alright. Big ears, lips and...” He glanced up at me, searching my face for permission that was not there. “...and feet. But do you know what’s the weirdest thing about this guy?” “Yea?” “No eyes...he has no eyes.” I considered this image and felt a cold shudder ripple through me. It seemed out of proportion, more like I was anticipating some future coldness - something of which the details were obscure but the feeling of was disturbingly vivid. “Why does he have no eyes?” “Because there are so many nerves in the eye, if they put that in, all you’d see are two giant eyeballs and nothing else.” “Wow.” “Right? Interesting right? Those damn eyeballs are so big we pay little attention to the other five senses. And we completely ignore the subtler senses inside of us.” “You mean, like our soul...?” The word slipped clumsily out between my teeth, and felt as though I had somehow mispronounced it or said it with a heavy accent in the way a foreigner would. The word itself was not mispronounced, of course, but it felt like its meaning was. Is that even possible? Can one mispronounce the ​meaning behind the word? “Don’t be stupid. I mean like...like your liver.” “What?” “Well, all your internal organs. Don’t you wonder about everything that goes on inside there while you’re walking around doing your thing?” “I don’t think I’ve ever really thought of that.” “You should. It’s freaking amazing in there man.” The old man’s sense of wonder at my innards was, despite my current state, infectious. He must have sensed this as he continued with even more vigour. “Take your liver. It’s just the most incredible piece of nature...do you have any idea how many chemical reactions happen in your liver to keep you alive?” “No idea.” “Neither do I, but it’s a lot. The heart gets all the credit. Centre-of-the-soul, symbol-of-love and all that. And it knows it, too, beating arrogantly in your chest like it owns the place. It’s a brutish, ill-mannered organ, the heart. It’s like the politician of the body. All noise and no class. Or like the pretty-boy jock of high-school. You know what I mean? The guy with no brains who gets all the girls..” The derisive reference to the pretty-boy-jock sent a sudden wave of shrapnel through my mind. In a moment, I winced externally, but internally that moment separated into an infinite array of time capsules, playing out sequentially and mercilessly within my mind’s eye. My girlfriend (now ex, apparently) confessing that she has feelings for a work colleague - the pretty boy. As tall as he is good-looking as he is dumb. The previous girlfriend, less direct but no less devastating. A thousand loveless glances and snubbed embraces communicate unworthiness more slowly but more deeply. Passages from books and essays espousing the virtue and vindictiveness of love, taking the heart and mind back and forth until both come resting somewhere in the middle, more out of exhaustion than clarity. And finally, the father, defeated by the same question. If he couldn’t find his way, what hope did I, a much lesser man, have? Suddenly,I realised where the earlier shudder had come from. The old man must have noticed my little wince as his spoken thoughts trailed off into silence. His expression, now sympathetic, was focused squarely on me. “You ok there man?” “Yea... yea I’m fine.” I stood perfectly still as the house of feelings within me became taller and more precarious. I knew if I moved or shifted my glance, it would all come crashing down at once. That was certainly not something I wanted to happen in the middle of the day on a busy sidewalk. The old man must have known this too as he accepted my obvious lie and continued. “Yea, the liver is amazing. Silently doing all that work without ever resting.” “Why are you so obsessed with the liver?” As if on cue, the old man promptly lifted all the dirty layers of his clothing to reveal a large pale belly marked with a long scar on its right side. “I got a replacement when my old one broke. I’m a new man!” He grinned ecstatically at his own display, looking proudly at the scar and back at me many times. I noticed that the grin revealed a few teeth that would benefit from replacement too. For the first time during our encounter, I assessed the full extent of the old man’s situation. The dirty layers and teeth. Mounds of clothing and blankets, presumably donated by kind passersby. The mattress of cardboard that was his bed. And the little styrofoam cup that had caught my attention and received my deposit of spare change just a few moments ago. “How’d you end up on the street like this?” The old man winced as I did before, and I regretted the enquiry the moment I uttered it. I had not given him the same courtesy of allowing him to hide his pain. Instead, it remained edged on his face in a way that I would never forget. For the first time, his gaze, drifting down, could not hold my own. As his being deflated before me, I could see the time capsules playing out in his mind, even if their content would remain forever hidden from me. “That...is a long story.” Feeling the dull ache of guilt and helplessness, I made another, more generous contribution to the styrofoam cup. “Well, good luck to you sir.” “And to you, young man.” With both of our houses intact, I walked away, not feeling any better, but at least not feeling any worse.