Behind Sylvia stood the two other paramedics, young Indian women with a majestic patience about them. Adrian was on the other side of the bar and across from them, noticing the boy’s escape from the depressive solipsism of sickness. The crowd that surrounded him, in all its loud hedonistic glory, did not obscure such a climax. Though he could not recall the events in his personal history, to which his diary entry had alluded, he knew that they had somehow led to this point. Suffering had polished him, bringing him to this noble pinnacle where he could see such a transformation.
But a recollection kept peeping from his unconscious, as a fragment that seemed displaced and devoid of background knowledge. A man kept flashing through his imagination, who at first, he could not distinguish as male or female. He had a kind of ominous beauty too perfect to be trustworthy, and slightly impish like a clown. He was cleanly shaven, he had reddish lips, his eyebrows were a little too neat and trimmed, his nose was disproportionately small, and he was naked with bloodied hands. Whenever Adrian envisioned him he felt fleetingly nauseous, alternating with his joy over the boy’s recovery. He wanted to stab this horrid vision in the chest, while he suppressed his own panic. Though the stranger was physically womanish he lacked a woman’s warmth, giving his androgyny a hideous barrenness.
To dampen his anxiety, he gulped down more of his whiskey, and enjoyed losing a sense of control.
The Specters of Tradition: Volume 1: Daniel Schroder 