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Get Published on Female First
Professor Alvin Hollows peered into the mirror at the black hairs that hung from his broad nostrils like flies' legs. His eyebrows were unkempt hedges that tendrilled skyward and flax bushes seemed to have sprouted from his ears.
'Manoeuvring nail scissors around the reversed duplication of one's own image is rather trying,' he reflected, straining to see better through his bi-focals by tilting his head.
An hour later, laying down the scissors with a sigh of relief, Alvin returned to his study and the easier task of preparing a series of lectures on Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
Next day, his alarm sounded at 2am. He muttered something, pulled the sheets around his neck and promptly went back to sleep. At 2.55 he leapt out of bed in a panic.
He stripped off his pyjamas and flung on a shirt and jacket. 'Just like the TV presenters,' he thought, 'rather more casual under the desk where nobody can see what you're wearing. Or not wearing.'
With two minutes to spare he was seated at the computer, ready to take his first Skype video call with respected colleague Sabina Watkins.
Professor Sabina Watkins was a leading American authority on Wittgenstein's life and philosophy, an esteemed academic with whom Alvin had been exchanging scholarly emails for several years.
'Now why on earth does she suddenly want to start video calling me?' Alvin said to himself once more, smoothing his hair, then licking a finger and wiping around his eyes.
A video call! He glanced around his study.
A pair of long johns was flung over a filing cabinet in full view and his hernia belt was lying across a chair. A tube of haemorrhoid ointment was perched brazenly on a pile of books.
Alvin leapt up, gathered the offending items and threw them into the next room.
"Just as well she can't see under the desk," he chuckled, as he hurriedly sat down again.
At 3am precisely, Sabina Watkin's call flashed onto the screen.
"Hullo, how nice to see you at last!" Her face seemed very close to his own.
"Ahem, likewise," said Alvin, leaning back and running a hand over his balding head. "Indeed!" he added, noticing Sabina's features were stunningly sensuous with black hair that curved under the jaw line, high cheek bones and smouldering dark eyes.
"You're just as handsome as I'd imagined!" she said, in a voice that seemed to caress his ears and made his hand itch to reach into the drawer for his heart pills.
"Really, Sabrina? Ah, Sabina, I mean," stammered Alvin, going red.
"' The human body is the best picture of the human soul,'" quoted Sabina, slurring her words slightly.
"' Philosophical Investigations,' 1953," said Alvin, quickly. "Page 178, if my memory serves me correctly."
"Page 178! The very page I have open on my desk. A remarkable coincidence...or is it more than that? I have long sensed that you and I have a special spiritual connection. This calls for a celebration!"
Smiling, Sabina filled a glass from a half-empty whisky bottle on her desk and raised it towards the screen. "Here's to Ludwig Wittgenstein! And to the fellowship of kindred souls!"
Alvin opened a drawer, pulled out a bottle of vodka and a glass, which he filled and clinked against the screen.
"To Ludwig! To like-minded spirits all over the world!" he cried, and quaffed it in one hit.
The two drank and chatted together for some time, then fell into companionable silence, hiccupping, smiling and nodding inanely at each other.
"Where was we?" asked Sabina, after a while.
"As I recall," Alvin said, "we was quoting the great Ludwig Wittgenstein, the most greatest philosophicer of all the remarkable philosophicers of all ever."
"Oh yeah," Sabina replied, fluttering her eyelashes. " The human body..."
"... is the best picture..." Alvin said, grinning.
" ...of the human soul," Sabina finished, giggling and clapping her hands. "So the more of what we see of each other, you and me, the better we understand the, ah, hidden deeps of our spiritual communion!"
She threw back her head, laughed heartily, and removed the flimsy garment that had been covering her breasts, letting it fall to the desk.
Alvin gulped and cast his eyes downwards, spotting for the first time his own image at the bottom right of the screen.
He saw himself smile like he was surprised he remembered how.
Then he stood up to bow and smiled at her with all of himself.
Tagged in Bruce Costello