The world’s most beautiful bellybutton

At night a hundred images of pretty women hovered in his mind, their bodies like a hundred dewy roses: women he had seen on the streets, in a store, turning a corner, boarding a train paraded through his secret self as his life swayed and stretched in the night, seeking somewhere to put itself. A downy nape of neck, a milky way of freckles on a brown chest… Was it Love or Lust that visited him as he turned in bed, was it coy Bethlehem or brazen Babylon looking down on him? He asked Magic to unlock his loneliness and let him collide with a smooth open body. One day he met a girl who told him she had the world’s most beautiful bellybutton. Her bellybutton she said was like the inside of a tiny seashell, did he want to see it? What he wanted was to be alone with this information, to guard these words spoken by the lips of a real girl that would have been enough to keep his fantasies churning for days, but she pulled him into a grove and showed him her tiny swirl and more besides, showed him her deep budding mysteries, took his breath, took his dignity, took his self-disgust, and laid his secret life to waste.