Oh Fortuna

"Oh, Fortuna, blind, heedless goddess, I am strapped to your wheel," Ignatius belched. "Do not crush me beneath your spokes. Raise me on high, divinity."

"What you mumbling about in there, boy?" his mother asked through the closed door.

"I am praying," Ignatius answered angrily.

"Patrolman Mancuso's coming today to see me about the accident. You better say a little Hail Mary for me, honey."

"Oh, my God," Ignatius muttered.

"I think it's wonderful you praying, babe. I been wondering what you do locked up in there all the time."

"Please go away!" Ignatius screamed. "You're shattering my religious ecstasy."

Bouncing up and down on his side vigorously, Ignatius sensed a belch rising in this throat, but when he expectantly opened his mouth he emitted only a small burp.

Still, the bouncing had some physiological effect. Ignatius touched the small erection that was pointing downward into the sheet, held it, and lay still trying to decide what to do. In this position, with the red flannel nightshirt around his chest and his massive stomach sagging into the mattress, he thought somewhat sadly that after eighteen years with his hobby it had become merely a mechanical physical act stripped of the flights of fancy and invention that he had once been able to bring to it.

At one time he had almost developed it into an art form, practicing the hobby with the skill and fervor of an artist and philosopher, a scholar and gentleman. There were still hidden in his room several accessories which he had once used, a rubber glove, a piece of fabric from a silk umbrella, a jar of Noxema. Putting them away again after it was all over had eventually grown too depressing.

Ignatius manipulated and concentrated. At last a vision appeared, the familiar figure of the large and devoted collie that had been his pet when he was in high school. "Woof!" Ignatius almost heard Rex say once again. "Woof! Woof! Arf!" Rex looked so lifelike. One ear drooped. He panted. The apparition jumped over a fence and chased a stick that somehow landed in the middle of Ignatius's quilt. As the tan and white fur grew closer, Ignatius's eyes dilated, crossed, and closed, and he lay wanly back among his four pillows, hoping that he had some Kleenex in his room."--Excerpted from "Confederacy of Dunces"