It was true; he was still a man. Living beneath the degrading weight of his affliction, he had forgotten it. Looking at his marriage and his inadequacy in it, he had forgotten it. Looking at his life and the barrenness of that life’s achievements, he had forgotten it. The diminishing effect that the size of his body had had on the size of his thoughts had made him forget it. It had not been just introspection. All he’d had to do was look into a mirror to know that it was so. And yet it was not so. A man’s self-estimation was, in the end, a matter of relativity. Here he lay in a bed in which he
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