Do We Not Bleed?. Daniel Taylor

telling you.”

      “Message received.”

      It’s not pleasant to be widely considered a pain in the ass. I mean, everybody rubs somebody the wrong way, but to have it be a consensus—“This guy’s life is best summed up as ‘a pain in the ass’”—is sort of hard to take. I know Uncle Lester thought of me that way, and more than one officer in the army, and Zillah came to that conclusion, and now it’s the semi-official position of the Minneapolis Police Department: Citizen Jon Mote—Pain in the Ass.

      About the only people who have held a different view are my mom and dad—God bless their departed souls—and my Not Quite Up to Speed sister Judy. And Judy would no doubt add Jesus to my list of defenders. “Jesus, lover of my soul” we used to sing. But who believes in either Jesus or souls these days?

      Frankenstein (Mary Shelley’s, not Boris Karloff’s) was a fairly sweet guy until they rejected him one too many times (evil, evil society say the Romantics, past and present). Then he decided to be exactly what everyone said he was—a monster.

      I don’t have the energy for that myself. Evil on a big scale is tiring, and after a while, perhaps a bit boring too. I think I’ll just settle for being a small pain in the ass, eating of my bitter heart. I like it because it is bitter. And because it is my heart.

      eight

      “That . . . that’s right, Jon. Mzzz Petti . . . Pettigrew says that Ralph and I should go on a . . . I should say . . . a date.”

      That was a few weeks ago.

      Oh my goodness, I thought at the time. The Normalizing drum is beating again. It isn’t good enough that Judy and Ralph like each other, are even fond of each other, sometimes go out of their way to sit next to each other (and oftentimes don’t), and even, when spirits are high, occasionally hold hands. Now it’s been decided that Normal means they need to go out on a Date. Which of course is only the camel’s nose under the tent.

      And the rest of the camel has a name—sex. It’s the hot new question in the world of Specials. Sex is an old question in the rest of the world, but it’s new with Specials because for so long the answer to it was obvious—no, none, nada, nein, nyet, not a good thing (for all involved). But now the goal for many is Normal, and if there’s one thing that’s pretty Normal among Normals, it’s sex.