-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Tuck Two Aspirin And... -*- Copyright 2006 by Ellen Hayes. Any resemblance between the writings in this work, and any actual persons or places, living or dead, are purely coincidental, except when used for satirical purposes. This work contains adult situations, adult language, adult concepts, and possibly sex. If you are legally not allowed to read materials containing such things, then you will be breaking the law by reading this. I am not responsible. Continuing to read this document, or storing it or reproducing it in any format means that you explicitly affirm that you are legally allowed to possess and read such materials in your city, county/parish, state, and country. All rights reserved. See the bottom for distribution rights. Tuck Two Aspirin And... *** 19:21 25 Oct "So," Jill said. "So," I sighed. "Unless we want to have everyone up here, I-" "They're not gonna fit," Mike pointed out uselessly. "Yeah," Jill chimed in before I could say anything, "I mean, I know it's a hassle and all, but maybe we could move downstairs? Like in the basement like last time?" "Yeah c'mon," Mike nodded and he started pointing out stuff she could do. Since this was what I was going to say anyway, I couldn't really argue. But I wanted to, REALLY bad. *** 19:46 25 Oct "And you're not gonna be playing loud music, right?" Mom confirmed. "No, Mom," I sighed. "It's not that kind of a party." "Alright." She gave me the eye. "So who's coming over?" "I don't know!" I complained. "I just sit around and wait to see who shows up!" "Eugene," Mom started. "Mom, this wasn't my idea, it was YOUR idea, remember? Sabrina was gonna handle all this, except YOU said I couldn't go over there and you ALSO said they could all come over here. _I_ don't know what's going on or what everyone's got planned..." I ran out of words before I ran out of indignation. "Maybe this was a bad idea," Mom finally figured out. I had a momentary desire to slap her in the head and yell 'Duh!' but I had a much stronger desire to live through the night. "No, it'll be okay," Jill said unexpectedly. "We'll be fine, and it's not like it's a major event or anything. You've got enough beds and stuff, sheets and stuff, down there, so we can all sleep, and then, uh, the bathroom down there, we don't have to come up and bother anyone." That was a laugh... "Um, Tuck?" Jill asked, really nicely. I felt immediately suspicious. "Remember last time, you baked cookies?" "Awwwww..." I groaned. *I KNEW it was gonna hurt!* As I was contemplating how wretched my life had become now that I had lots of friends, the thought of freshly baked chocolate overdose tollhouse appeared in my brain, and would not leave. "I don't think we have all the ingredients," Mom said thoughtfully. "Or enough. But I could go get them." We all kind of looked at each other in anticipatory silence. "Hey," Mike called from the kitchen. "Got any ice cream?" *** 20:03 25 Oct I was REALLY hoping Mom would get back soon; when your taste buds are anticipating cookies and ice cream, cough syrup is a horrible shock even if you know it's coming. As I gagged and tried to stay standing up, the doorbell flashed. "I SAID eight o'clock," I gasped out, but I lost the medicine cup and it bounced on the rug. "Damnit!" I hoped this wasn't an omen of some kind. I grabbed on to my bed and concentrated on how cold it was in here, in hopes that the concept would keep me from losing all the meds I'd just ingested. *Not quite,* I realized with shame and digust. *** 20:06 25 Oct "Tuck! Why do you have the bloody window open?!" Mike complained bitterly. I sighed. "Get back in here!" "Shut the door before you let all the heat out!" I yelled back over my shoulder, to gain some time to think. I COULD go out the window, and it would take him longer to do it than it would me. On the other hand, he'd get all upset, and so would the other girls, whoever had gotten here. It would also hurt like hell, even with the armor on. I sighed again, and said over my shoulder, "The meds don't want to stay down. I'm trying cryo to keep from puking 'em up, okay?" "Oh." "What?!" Jill apparently didn't like the idea. "Miiiike," I moaned. I didn't want to try explaining this. *** 20:12 25 Oct "Feel better?" Mike asked as I came down. "Yah. Who's-" The doorbell rang. "I'll get it, you get Jill and whoever to help Mom." It felt amazingly hot in here, but that'd pass once I got used to it again. The armor wasn't THAT hot. I looked through the peephole and it was Julia. I put a smile on my face and opened the door and said, "Hi!" "Hey, Vvv-Tuck," Julia smiled as she held out her arms, which were laden with grocery bags, as if she wanted to hug me. I backed off and pointed to my stitches, or where they would be if she had comic-type X-ray vision. "Oh, right," she nodded as her arms dropped, as I remembered that I was wearing armor and probably could have taken a moderate hug. "Who's here?" "Dunno. Jill and Mike, so far, and someone else," I said as I took a handful of bags from her. "We're in the basement again; Mike said my room was too small for everyone." "Uh, I think he-" "I'm kidding!" I sighed. "Anyway, Mom went out to get cookie supplies, and I've been volunteered into baking again." "You are? That's GREAT!" And she actually made it sound like she thought I was the great thing, instead of the hot cookies that would be coming eventually. "You feeling better? You look better, anyway..." As we made it into the kitchen - I was moving rather slowly, but Julia didn't seem to mind - I saw Kelly come in with more groceries. "Oh, hey," I said, and put a smile on my face. "Hey," she said. "Where do I put this?" "Hey Kelly," Julia said. "Where DO we put all this?" she asked me. I had to think. "Julia, your stuff on the dining room table; Kelly, put it on the counters in here until Mom tells you otherwise." Mike came in with a load of his own and coincidentally demonstrated for Kelly where to put hers. "Like that," I said. This might give me enough time to think... *** 20:18 25 Oct "Mom?" "Yeah?" she asked, looking over her shoulder at me for a second before she went back to running the bar code wand over what she'd gotten. Dad had gone a little apeshit over inventory control, years back, when he found out what homeowner's insurance would do to you, but we were used to this piece of insanity by now. "I think," I started, "that I need to be in here to bake and supervise, right? Some ot the time anyway, right?" "Yeah?" "I'm not well, so I can't be going up and down stairs a lot." She stopped and looked at me. "So," I explained what I'd thought, "either, we, my friends, all hang out in the kitchen and dining room while I'm baking. Or you bake and supervise. Or, no cookies." "What?!" Mike complained. "Shutup!" I snapped at him. "Mom, I know we were gonna go in the basement and be quiet, but I hadn't thought ab- that I'd be baking, you know?" "Yeah," she sighed tiredly. "We can stay in here," Mike said. "And shut the door from the dining room into the living room, to keep the noise down." "Do you really think you can keep the noise down?" Mom asked skeptically. "And what about the humidifier?" "I think I can do without it for a while," I told her, "and if not we'll use a bubbler and the O2, or something." "We can make 'em be quiet," Mike said confidently, and Mom gave him a look like 'Yeah right, you and what army'. "Just until the baking's done," I said. "Or you could do it?" I didn't much care which, as long as I didn't have to go up and down the stairs a bunch of times. She thought, and Mike and I wisely stayed silent. Eventually, after Julia had come in and been silently shushed, Mom said, "I've got an even better idea." I winced, because her better ideas usually sucked. "I'm going upstairs, and shutting the door. Don't let anyone but you and Mike upstairs... tell Bill when he gets back that I'm upstairs. You and them stay down here and just try to keep it down to a dull roar, okay? And intercom us when the cookies are ready," she smiled. "Okay!" "Sure!" "No problem!" Me and Mike and Julia all said at the same time. I wondered just what kind of 'muscle relaxants' Mom was on, and how I could get her to take them until I left for college. "Give Mom a hug," she ordered, and I did, presenting the undamaged side just in case she forgot. *** 20:21 25 Oct "I dunno what kind of drugs she's on," I said to Mike before the doorbell rang again. "Keep mixing," I ordered Julia. "Whatever is your wish O Divine Mistress," Julia intoned in retaliation. "Bite my ass," I countered, lamely but quickly. Then I had a momentary fear that she'd try it. *** 20:24 25 Oct "So how long do I have to mix this?" Sabrina asked. "Until it's done? Give it another couple of minutes," I told her. "Hey, uh, Tuck," Kathy said. "You've got milk for everyone, right?" Sabrina made a face as I nodded. "Milk and cookies?" she said to Kathy. "Aren't you being a little overly cute?" "We also have a couple different types of ice cream," I informed them. "Nothing like hot cookies on cold ice cream..." Boy, that sounded good. "How long is this gonna take?" Kathy complained. "This sounds too good to be real." Sabrina chuckled as I said, "No matter how long it actually takes it'll seem like hours. So an hour or two, on that scale." Kathy huffed and glared at me. "Maybe half an hour for the first batch, okay? But I can't speed it up." "I can," Kathy said. "Gimme the bowl," she ordered Sabrina, who gave it up without hesitation. Kathy attacked the dough furiously. "That'll save maybe two minutes," I informed her. "That's two minutes," she countered, and grinned with her teeth exposed. "Ooookay... I'm not arguing." She might mix me. *** 20:56 25 Oct "Oh, it's horrible," Mom said through a mouthful. "You'd better not eat any." I detected a deliberate falsehood for personal gain. "Mom! Shame!" "It's fantastic," she assured everyone before she stuck another spoonful in her mouth. "Gimme!" Kathy ordered as she snatched the serving spoon, but even as everyone started to protest - a LOT - she started dealing cookies into bowls and then dishing ice cream over them. "And in five minutes someone needs to switch batches in and out of the oven," I informed everyone. It was a lot easier being a master chef than one of the cooks, I was finding. No wonder Mom wanted everyone to learn cooking. *** 21:48 25 Oct Everyone except Kathy had temporarily sated themselves, Mom and Dad had gone upstairs, and I was getting increasingly nervous for some reason. "Tuck, can I talk to you for a second?" Sabrina asked, and motioned towards the hallway. "Nnnh." This wasn't going to be good, whatever it was. I followed her out, though, and waited. "I don't feel comfortable with Kelly around," she said very quietly. "Not for a sleepover." "Why not?" She closed her eyes, then opened them and looked to the heavens for guidance. Or the ceiling. "Because, she's a lesbian, she-" "What?" "She said- she ANNOUNCED it at lunch last week. I KNOW we told you this!" "Oh yeah, okay... sorry. Things have been a little confused lately." *She couldn't be making this up, could she? But how would she know-* "So, I don't feel comfortable sitting around in my underwear wondering if she's looking at me..." When she didn't finish, I tried, "Like that?" "Yeah." "You didn't have problems with me. And you let Mike stay, last time we..." *Oh shit.* I realized that there was a 'last time' to talk about in relation to having the girls sleep over at my house; this vaguely implied there would also be 'next times'. *Aw MAN-* "Yeah, but... with you it was different, and I wasn't sure it would work at first... and Debbie said she could take you home if it didn't work out. And Mike... he was different too." "Why? Aside from him being Chinese, of course," I joked. She ignored the joke. "I don't KNOW! It just IS!" "What is?" Pam asked. I turned, and she'd come into the hallway for some reason. "Sabrina's nervous about Kelly being here, because of the lesbian question," I said. They'd ganged up on me enough times; I thought I'd return the favor. "Why?" Pam asked. *** 21:51 25 Oct "Why?" Kathy asked. Sabrina looked even more anguished. "I don't fucking KNOW, okay? It just does!" "Kelly, do you want to be in here for this discussion?" I asked her. I hadn't intended Pam to bring it up as a general point for open debate in front of everyone. Though why I should have expected anything different I don't know. I guess I was still sick and stupid. But I wasn't stupid enough to miss what it might feel like to Kelly. "You're welcome here, in my house," I added, and then thought that if she wanted to split, or the girls didn't want her here, it would cause major problems tonight. I'd feel bad anyway. "No, let her stay- I mean," Amanda corrected, "she ought to stay, so we can talk to her. It..." She looked thoughtful for a second. "It doesn't really bother ME. I think?" "Look, it's not that I think she's a bad person," Sabrina argued. "It just makes me uncomfortable, to have her here when, when we're like sleeping and stuff." "Why?" Kathy asked again. Sabrina looked immensely frustrated. "I don't KNOW!" I had to admit, I felt a little bit shamefully good at seeing someone else get this sort of treatment from the rest of them. It felt like I'd been on the target end of these discussions FAR too often. *** 21:56 25 Oct "But you already did it once, over here the last time," Pam reminded her. "But I didn't know she was a lesbian then!" "She did," I said, and looked at Kelly. Then everyone looked at her, and I felt bad, like I'd started it. Kelly shrugged and tried to hide a bit behind her hair. "I, I mean, I wasn't like looking at you or anything... I mean, I know..." She sighed. "I know none of you are interested... in me." "That way," Pam said with a gentle smile, and took and squeezed Kelly's hand. "We do like you." I put my own hand up and rubbed her back a little. "I'm not saying I don't like her!" Sabrina protested. "Kelly, it's not that, really! I KNOW you wouldn't like molest me or anything..." She got that immensely frustrated look again. "You know it here," Mike tapped on the side of his head, "but it doesn't quite get down to here?" he asked as he pointed at his sternum. She thought about it, her face losing about half its frustration. Kelly opened her mouth like she was going to say something but I shook my head at her. "Sort of," Sabrina said, sounding aggravated. "What about the rest of you?" she asked, looking around at the rest of them. Then everyone was kind of looking around at everyone. "I like girls," Mike mentioned, and Julia threw a small pillow at him. "Shut up, we know about YOU," Jill said with a grin. "I dunno," she said more seriously to everyone. "I mean... okay, so, you're really a lesbian, you really like girls," she said, leaning forward and talking past me to Kelly. "This isn't just a I-want-to-be-different-this-week sort of thing, you really MEAN it, right?" "Yeah?" Kelly said, like Jill was being stupid and Kelly didn't know why. "Okay, so..." Jill looked down for a few moments. "I don't think it bothers me. I mean, like Sabrina said, it's not like you're going to molest us..." She shrugged. "I don't think Tuck would let that happen," Sabrina said as she glanced at me. "Uh, no," I said, a bit startled. "On any side," I added, just in case. "So, why-" Jill changed her mind. "Pam? Kathy?" Kathy shook her head while Pam thought about it, then Kathy said, "Wait," and thought about it as Pam shook her head kind of hesitantly. "Kelly," Kathy asked, "what do YOU do, in a roomful of women?" "Huh?" "The first time Va-Tuh-Valerie stayed over at Sabrina's, we were teasing her, walking around in our underwear and stuff. That was partially because we were sure Debbie could control you," she said to me, "and a lot more because we had an idea that you weren't going to be an ass about things." "Oh," I said before I shut my mouth, like that's what I had intended to do when I opened it. "And you weren't, and it was kind of unfair to you and we stopped," she added. "Okay, so," she turned back to Kelly, "we're not going to torture you by walking around in our underwear, but-" "Oh I know!" Pam burst out. "We know how guys are supposed to act around girls, and so we know how to work with that. But, we DON'T know how to act around girls that like girls. What the rules are, how to show you're not interested without being mean or something, things like that. Remember we were telling you about flirting, early on?" Pam asked me. "You what?" Mike interjected. "How to flirt and stuff, like how to turn a guy down so he wouldn't get mad, that sort of thing," Pam explained rapidly. Mike looked at me in amazement, and I shrugged and nodded. "It didn't work that well." "Short lesson," Kathy slipped in. "So anyway, we- I at least," Pam said to Kelly, "I don't know how to tell what you're doing, what you're thinking. Guys look a certain way when they're thinking that way, and-" "No they don't!" Mike protested. "That's-" "No they do," Julia argued. *** 22:08 25 Oct "What's going on down there?" Mom asked me. I guess the noise had caught her attention when she was shifting cookie sheets. I sighed, then said, "Um..." *If she came out at school, I guess it's a public thing and I don't have to hide it,* I reasoned, but it was still hard to tell her. "Kelly came out at school last week, as a lesbian, an-" "That's her?" Mom asked like she'd heard about it. I was shocked until I realized that she'd been dealing more with this, via Debbie, than I had. Then I was annoyed. "Yeah, that's her." "I'm a little surprised," Mom said when I took too long to think, "that they're not objecting to her staying." "Well, that's what the argument is about," I said, relieved that it was going to be this easy to explain. "Well, not an argument; more like a debate. They're getting into guy psychology and body language, cultural memes..." Mom was nodding like she knew all about this sort of thing. "Don't you dare go down there and join the discussion!" I spazzed. "I'd have to kill myself out of shame!" "Eugene, don't be so melodramatic," Mom frowned. "I'd stage a fake death in public as a protest," I modified. "Please, Mom, DON'T. They need to settle it out without some authority telling them how it's gonna be. I mean, Sabrina SAID she was uncomfortable, and she was willing to talk about it, so-" "She did?" I nodded and continued, "So, I mean, if you get involved it might get covered up; they'd stop talking about it." Mom frowned again, but didn't say anything like I was being silly, so I hoped she believed me. "What's the consensus?" she asked instead. "Well, there sort of isn't one, which is why the discussion is going on, but at least half of them aren't worried about it, and we're all involving Kelly in it, not talking behind her back or anything. I gotta get back down there," I said when I realized the nature of the vector I was sensing. "Eugene," Mom said in a Serious tone, and I sighed to myself. "She is welcome here, in our house," she said carefully. "Okay," I nodded. "I told her that." Mom was being a bit more liberal than I had figured, formally announcing it like that (at least to me), but I wasn't going to argue if I could escape. *** 22:11 25 Oct I'd made it halfway down the stairs before I remembered that I was going to get more cookies - full mouths weren't yelling mouths, I figured, and the extra chocolate in everyone's system could only help - and so I had to turn around and go right back up, which for some reason hurt a lot more than going all the way down would have. I said, "Cookies," to Mom and grabbed a box, then another box - there were a lot of people downstairs - and didn't stand around to chat this time. Thankfully, I made it this time, and got downstairs in time to hear Julia say, "... but it was just, you know, not serious, 'cause we were doing it more, more TO everyone else than with each other." "Doing what?" Julia huffed and rapidly recapitulated, "There was a girl in theater camp one year and we played like we were in love or something but we weren't." I lost both boxes of cookies while I parsed that. "Okay. Go on," I said as I sat down where Jill was patting a cushion, because it was obvious I'd gotten in the way of what she was saying. "So, I mean... I was pretty sure _I_ wasn't serious, because..." She shrugged, and snagged a handful of cookies and put them in her lap. "I dunno, I just knew I wasn't, and I made sure SHE knew I wasn't, and she was saying the same things back to me. When we were alone, of course," she grinned. Amanda asked, "So why'd you do it?" Julia shrugged again. "Mostly to bug the boys, I guess." Mike raised his hand as he announced, "I am definitely bugged." There was a ripple of mild laughter around the girls. *** 22:16 25 Oct Sabrina shook her head. "I don't think so... I mean, I can't tell if someone doesn't show any signs of it, but I never noticed any." "Maybe you didn't want to," Kathy said. "What?" Sabrina challenged. "Well, you don't want to think some things, so you don't think 'em," Kathy said like it was obvious. "What about when that guy wa- Alex Hartley, was cheating on you, freshman year?" "That was-" "We TOLD you he was and you wouldn't believe us!" Amanda crowed. "You didn't give me anything REAL!" Sabrina protested. *** 22:18 25 Oct "Debbie and Lisa?" Pam asked, like only the dumbest person could have missed that. "No, come on," Sabrina said as she recoiled. "You're just-" "They are," Kathy stated, as Jill nodded hesitantly. Then everyone looked at me, like they weren't sure if _I_ had known this. "Uh..." I didn't know what to say; I could tell them what had happened, but I didn't think Debbie wanted it known. Then again, these girls - most of them - already knew it, apparently. But some didn't. "Did you know about it?" Jill asked, frowning. "Uh, yeah. Can we not talk about her?" "Are you-" Amanda burst out. Then fired again, "Are you and Mike, did-" "NO!" Everyone sort of chuckled about that, which made me annoyed. "Despite appearances," Mike said before I could get something out, "we are not remotely interested in each other in a dating or sexual sort of way. Tuck, chill yourself," he told me. "Why do you have to think that?" I got out, as a derivation of the mildest things running through my brain. "Just because we're friends?" "'Cause we got Debbie and Lisa as examples," Kathy said. "But how do you KNOW?" Sabrina challenged Kathy. "You keep saying like it's a done thing-" "They told Val!" Kathy reminded everyone. Sabrina turned and glared at me. "Uh, yeah... Can we like NOT talk about her?" I tried a second time. "No, I need to know this," Sabrina told me. "But you didn't tell anyone, right? 'Cause this is the first I heard about it, and Kathy, you said it like you knew-" *** 22:21 25 Oct "So, I mean, I wondered about it... Who else has wondered about it at least once?" Kathy asked the group. Pause, in which nobody did anything. Then Kelly raised her hand, which made everyone laugh, which broke the surface tension I guess, because hands went up. "I had to think about it, once Tuck went," Mike said. "And it was 'no'." "Gee Mike, I didn't know you cared," I leered. "I don't, that's the point," he leered back. "What about you?" Sabrina asked Kathy. "That's why I said yes," Kathy said patiently, like Sabrina was being stupid, which I thought she was. Or deliberately as dense as possible. "So how do you know you aren't?" Kelly asked. "'Cause, I didn't find doing her anything other than intellectually interesting, and when she was doing me I noticed about halfway through that I was fantasizing about M- some guy I knew doing it instead of her." Kathy was unusually dark pink at the moment, and I wished I had a camera so I could immortalize one of the rare times Kathy Got Embarrassed. "Was it bad?" Kelly asked. "No..." Kathy was obviously torn in at least two directions. "It wasn't bad, but I'd rather have been doing it with someone else. A MALE," she emphasized. "'Cause I wanted to get FUCKED, by a DICK." She ignored the chortles. "Chest hair, all of it. I know, Debbie could've come up with something like a strap-on," she shook her head like she was weirded at the lengths some people would go to, "but I didn't want a girl penetrating me either. It was okay, and I mean I'm not... I don't really regret doing it, but I tried it and I don't really like it." She shrugged, then looked at Kelly. "I mean, I'm not saying it's bad or anything... just, I didn't like it. As much..." "Okay," Kelly nodded. "Just, you didn't like it," Pam summarized, and Kathy nodded agreement. *** 22:28 25 Oct "I'll tell you why not, and there's two things, two parts to it," Mike said. "One, I- I dunno what the rest of you think of Tuck, male or female or other. b-" "Hey!" I protested. "It's true, you sort of break the binary categorization," Mike told me. I had to admit this, but I'd rather have hit him with something. "To me, you are male," he said. "I, having thought about it... I'm like the mirror image of Kathy," he said with a slight smile, "I can imagine it, but I don't really find it interesting or, uh, positive." "So what's the second reason?" Julia jumped in before he could get to it. "Tuck and I are so close, for so long, it's disgustingly like incest to think about," he said. There were a lot of expressions of protest or disgust or something, including from me, but I realized he was right. "Just like with your sister," Mike said to me, and I nodded. "She turned- Well, she went through puberty before you all did, and so we could see her doing it when we were here, and the idea of anything with her was gross too." "Gakk," I faked gagging. "Doing 'it'?" Julia asked. "Going through puberty. She got, um, secondary sexual characteristics," Mike quoted from somewhere, "before almost any of the girls in our grade at school did." "She's older than you," Kathy pointed out, like we hadn't noticed. *** 22:31 25 Oct "'Kay," Kathy said, "this is really complicated, so don't interrupt, okay?" We all nodded, and she thought some more. "Okay," she said eventually, "first off. She's obviously nervous, like she's had a crush on me for a while, and it's kind of hard telling anyone 'Hey sorry but not you' without really hurting their feelings. So that... Then, there's the fact that it's even worse than that, because she felt so, so... so strongly about it, that she came up and just asked me about it, which means this is even a bigger crush than normal. Then, if she felt comfortable enough to ask me something that, that... that, uh, socially unacceptable? No offense, Kelly," she said, "but you know how, what being queer does to you socially. Or-" "Like she never gets invited to parties 'n things like that?" Julia shot out, and everyone laughed a little. "Fuck off you wretched woman," Kathy threw back almost as fast. "USED to be, anyway. And this was junior high. Shut up. So, she's asking ME, and maybe she's crazy enough to risk it, just asking me, and if she's that in love with me, am I gonna have to worry about her stalking me? S'not funny, Val, it can happen with girls too," she admonished me. "I know, I know," I said, trying to stop from smiling. "Okay, the other side of that is, does she already think I'M lesbian? And if she does, does everyone ELSE think that for some reason? Like someone's lying about me, or this girl started a story, or some other girl started a story, or maybe I just do something wrong and sort of non-verbally tell everyone myself and I don't know what I'm doing?" "I don't think so," Jill said, and we looked at Kelly, who sort of shook her head in confirmation. "Not really, I guess," Kelly said. "I mean, _I_ don't know, but it's like, I wouldn't think you were, just by looking at you or anything." Kathy nodded at that. "Good. Okay, so, ALL of this is going through my mind all at once, and then there's also the part that, you know, Pam said it earlier, we kind of discuss how to gracefully get rid of GUYS we're not interested in, but how do you do it with a GIRL? 'Cause I really don't want to hurt her, but I also am completely not interested in dating a girl, and I'm not interested in her specifically either for completely separate reasons-" "Like what?" Amanda interrupted. "Oh, just," Kathy thought, "like, she's kind of thin and flabby, like she's dieting a lot or something instead of exercising, and she's listening to music I don't really like, and she's not really into the same things I am, stuff like that. I mean it's not like she's a bad person or anything, that I know of, it's just that we're not really... we don't have anything in common. So I don't even want to do the 'lets be friends' thing either," she said, wiggling her eyebrows at us. Pause. "So what DID you do?" I was the one to ask. "I just," Kathy said, and then sighed. "This is probably the wrong thing to do. I just told her that I was not at all interested in girls, said 'Thanks for being interested though' and sort of smiled, and then told her I wouldn't tell anyone who it was, and then I left as QUICK as I could. And I never mentioned it again, but she hardly ever talked to me after that anyway." "You just told US," I said. "Not WHO, though," Kathy smirked back at me. "For all YOU know, Val, it was your sister." I thought about it, because she was technically right, but then dismissed it, because my sister would NEVER have done something that might possibly have caused her to slip even slightly in popularity among the general population. *** 22:39 25 Oct "So, how bad is it?" Pam asked Sabrina. Sabrina sighed, and pointed her eyes someplace as she looked inwards, while the rest of us kept quiet and let her think. Finally, she came back, and sighed, and said, "It's about the same way I felt about Val that first sleepover. So I can get over it, I guess." "Great," I said, and looked at Kelly to see her reaction. She'd fallen asleep on the couch. The laughter woke her up, though, which was funnier. *** 22:44 25 Oct I caught the cellar door opening on the monitor, and looked up about the time Mom whistled to get my attention. There were protests as I got up, because Mom did not whistle quietly. I wiped my eyes as I went to the stairs and up. "Eugene," Mom said as we met halfway, "we're going to lock the house down at eleven." I checked my watch as she continued, "Tell everyone, if they need anything..." She stopped as I nodded a lot. "Okay. Don't stay up TOO late," she emphasized with an ironic smile. "Of course not," I lied politely and we both smiled at the joke. Then she turned serious and asked, "How's your breathing?" "Uh, okay..." I did a quick test, and it was okay. "S'alright." "Check your O2 sat before bed, don't forget to hook up to the monitor, and don't forget your drugs at midnight." "I will, I won't, and I won't." I HAD done this before. "And I won't stay up too late, and speaking of which, you look really tired; maybe you should go to bed?" She made a face at me, said, "Okay, have fun," and shut the door. *** 23:04 25 Oct Once everyone settled back down, Amanda looked around and asked, "So, like, what do we talk about now?" Sabrina said, "Boys," at the same time Mike said disgustedly, "Not boys!" Kathy glanced at me, and I was impelled to say, "That's me!" I think she wanted to say it too but didn't want to hurt my feelings. "So what HAS been going on with you?" Kathy asked me as she reclined theatrically. Julia snorted and did the same thing but made it look better; the two of them batted eyelashes at each other. "I GAVE you a summary," Mike told her. "Mike!" "I thought it'd keep 'em from pestering you," he explained to me. "Mike said that if you didn't want to talk about anything he'd-" Amanda stopped in the middle and pointed at Mike, who was brandishing one of the good water pistols. "Yeah." "Tuck's having a general relapse of asthma," Mike explained. "So, if he gets too upset his airway closes up and he starts to choke to death. So, we don't discuss things he really-really-doesn't want to talk about, because him having an asthma attack has been shown to disrupt social gatherings." Especially the bad ones where I had to go to an ER. "Okay, so," Jill started. "You broke up with Travis," Kathy said. Apparently the waving of my arms and Mike's told her this was a bad topic. "You've been sick?" "That's boring." EXCEEDINGLY boring. "What ACTUALLY happened at the ER?" Kathy asked. "Debbie didn't talk about it, and she seemed... unusually disturbed." Mike and I looked at each other, and I considered how much of this I wanted them to know. And how much I didn't know yet, which was a fair amount because I didn't remember anything after being stuck in the medevac, and how much I wanted to know. I knew Debbie had been involved, somehow... *** 23:09 25 Oct "SHE SAID WHAT?!" I found myself screeching, over everyone else's mild amazement. Everyone shut up and looked at me, then at Mike. "She said," Mike said before he took a deep breath, "that you- that she was married to you, so-" "WHY?!" "I'm explaining that you fuckwit, shut up!" I tried. "Marriage means legal authority to-" "YOU have that!" He was supposed to carry it in his wallet all the time. "But he would've had to read it, and this fucker WOULD have argued about it, and I was just starting to think about it when she- when Debbie started yelling at him." "What was she yelling?" Julia asked before I could yell at him some more. Mike looked off into memoryscape. "That... they were married, she didn't want some quack dealing with Tuck, that I had authority, she wanted ME to treat Tuck, lawsuit was mentioned..." "Lawsuit?" Pam asked. "Yeah, she-" "Failure to obey orders of someone who is LEGALLY allowed to determine treatment," Kathy explained, "like a parent for a child, is very very sue-able. It... I mean, it's insane, but it's even come down to whether a child'll get something to save his life if the parents don't want it. It's an Issue," she capitalized, "a big issue." "Damn," Amanda commented as she shook her head. "Religious stuff sometimes," Sabrina added. "Can be nearly anything," I said. "Big meta-issue about the right of a parent to determine how a child will be raised and cared for, versus the State's right to interfere." Kathy nodded. "Which interfaces with privacy, how much the State can interfere in the lives of its subjects, self-determination, freedom..." "You didn't get this in government class," Julia decided. "No. Mom's a crazed-lunatic activist," I said as I pointed up in the general direction of the crazed-lunatic activist. "I hear about this stuff a lot more than I want." *** 23:19 25 Oct "One of the things I was a little worried about," Kathy said, frowning. "Was if your parents wanted to- I mean, your dad. If he wanted to put you into a psych hospital, or one of those places that 'cure' homosexuality," and 'cure' was equivalent to 'torture for' when she said it. "There wouldn't be anything we could do." There were protests about that, including from Kelly. I waited until they calmed down some, as Kathy was explaining that yes, it was true, and yes, it was evil, and I said to Kelly, "If anything like that ever happens, call us, okay? We can't do anything LEGALLY, but..." and trailed off so I wouldn't actually say anything out loud. Mike caught her eye and nodded, serious-faced. "I mean it," I added, and grabbed her hand and held it. "My dad wouldn't do anything like that," she said, sort of loud but not quite as firm as I'd have hoped. "I was scared my parents would," I mentioned with a sigh. "What?" Mike asked before anyone else did. "YOUR parents?" "Mom's NOT as liberal at home as she is outside, Mike," I reminded him. "Your dad," Mike said, "would NOT allow you to go into a place like that. They might torture you to reveal some things. Secrets. He'd shoot you first." "Oh. Yeah, he'd shoot me first," I realized with a sigh of relief, as about half the stress in my body dribbled out. Well, maybe a third. "That's a GOOD thing?" Pam boggled. "Compared to being tortured in a psychiatric gulag? Fuck yeah!" I'd read about some of the Soviet stuff; I had no doubt that the Religious Reich could and would do the same thing here if they could get away with it. Which, with parents determining children's medical and psychiatric care, plus the usual lies put out by any marketing department, they could on occasion. And you didn't necessarily know what was going on inside, by what the salesdroids claimed. But Mike was right; I knew too much, and Dad would shoot me before he allowed me to be taken into a place like that. *Wow, what a relief...* I felt mildly drunk. *** 23:28 25 Oct "Okay, ENOUGH," Kathy ordered, and Pam and I shut up. "Pam, you think it's better than what Val's saying; Val, you think it's worse. ENOUGH," she repeated sternly. Pause. "So do they have to kiss and make up?" Julia smirked. Pam made a kissy-face at me and I blew her a kiss back. "Give ME one!" Jill ordered as she pulled on me, which was why I'd been wearing body armor all night; I knew this was going to happen eventually. I let her pull me and kissed her rather chastely on the lips before she let go. It hurt, but not with that searing pain that said I'd been punctured, nor with the crack and dull glow that would've been bones breaking (or re-breaking). "So what the hell happened to you last night?" Kathy asked me. "Wh- Oh. I don't-" "Not that, at the park," she said, and her face got strange. "Were you... were you even in your body?" she asked before I could guess what she was asking. I would've guessed wrong. "Uh... Well, yeah of course, but, um, no," I admitted, a little surprised at my answer. "I don't even remember it, really; just before and after." Amanda shrieked, "WHAT?!" apparently tired of not knowing what we were talking about. "Val broke up with Travis Thursday," Kathy summarized. I caught Mike wincing as my heart cramped. "Friday, she- A bunch of us went to this weird place for dinner, and Val couldn't take the crowd, so she left, then the- What happened in the parking lot?" "The vampires?" *** 23:36 25 Oct "Okay, shutup, shutup," Kathy demanded. "Okay, so we went to this park, and... I didn't realize how bad you were hurting, Val; I'm sorry," she said to me. "Oh. S'okay," I said, not sure how I felt. "Anyway, I said- I smarted off, she goes off in a huff, Mike follows her for a while, Jill said not to bother them," Jill nodded confirmation, "then we got bored, and Pam said turn on some music," Pam nodded, "and then we were sort of dancing, well Pam was, and Valerie came back, and then..." "Then what?" Sabrina prompted. Kathy shook her head, and she looked a little... worried, I guess. Or confused, or something. "She just," Pam said, "she just came over, and it was like she was dancing before she got to us." "You were crying most of the time," Kathy informed me. "While you were dancing. I asked Mike if we should do something, and he said no." "If you needed to stop you'd've stopped," Mike told me. "And... you weren't stopping." "It made me feel..." Kathy shook her head, and looked at Pam, then Kelly. "It was pretty weird," Kelly said. "Really emotive," Pam said unexpectedly, and everyone looked at her. "You all said I was crazy when I said dance could do anything emotionally that poetry or acting could do," she said defensively, "but you should've seen her. I wish I'd had a camera..." "Still wouldn't have done it; you needed video for this," Kathy told someone. "S'why I didn't take any." "Yeah," Kelly nodded. "I mean, I knew... I knew you'd broken up with someone, I just didn't know who. And you were mad, kind of, and really really heartbroken, I guess?" She looked around like she wasn't sure that was the right word; Jill and Kathy and Pam nodded agreement. "I wanted to cry, sometimes," Jill said. "Just watching you." "What was I DOING?" Everyone looked at everyone else who'd been there. "Well, dancing," Mike stated the obvious. "But..." "Emotive expression through movement," Pam said like it was obvious. "You FELT what she was feeling. I mean we did, when she was doing it." I mentioned, "I wasn't feeling anything..." "You weren't conscious-" "Satori," Mike said like he'd just been enlightened. "Or Zen or Tao's no-mind. YOU, the conscious you, wasn't there; the rest of you was, and..." "What?" Sabrina asked. *** 23:44 25 Oct "It's beautiful any time it happens," Mike stated. "I see it..." He looked around suspiciously. "This does not leave this room, right?" Everyone nodded, even me. "Tuck, and his dad, when they're programming hard. It's beautiful. Their faces." "What?" "Kathy at aerobics class," he added. "What? What aerob-" "Mike switched from his gym to my aerobics class, in the mornings," Kathy told me impatiently, and she waved Mike on. "Sometimes, you're beautiful," Mike said directly to Kathy. Kathy's face went entirely self-conscious teenage girl at that, completely the opposite of what Mike was talking about, and I laughed. I had to. "Shut up, Tuck, she is-" "Not right now she's not!" I chortled. Mike grabbed a fistful of my hair and gave me the eye until I got myself under control. "Okay, okay..." I couldn't stop smiling until I looked at Kathy, who was looking grim at me. "When she's moving," Mike said, changing the mood back to spooky, "she's... It's no-mind, it's flow, and she's good, and it's beautiful," he said. "Uh," Kathy said, and I laughed along with everyone else. "Well, what the hell do you say to something like that?" she complained to everyone. "Thank you!" came from several people. "Thank you Mike," Kathy repeated mock-dutifully. "No, it's not something you can thank me for," Mike said as he shook his head. "Ignore it." "What?" *** 23:49 25 Oct "So why can't I say she's beautiful?" Julia said. "A painting can be beautiful; that doesn't mean I want to have sex with it." I had to laugh at that, but I wasn't the only one. *** 23:53 25 Oct "I don't know," Kelly said. "It... I mean, it was like it was terrible, too. I mean, I can see what everyone said, but..." She shook her head as she looked at the memory. "It was awful, kind of." "Beautiful pain?" Pam said, like she was trying the concept out. She shook her head moments later. "But that's kind of what it was," she argued with herself. "It hurt- it made ME hurt, a little- And reminded me of bad things that had happened to me, when I felt like that," she said definitely. "Which is sort of beauty-" Julia interrupted with, "Art. Art is emotional, it causes you to feel emotions. That's why Mapplethorpe is art, because-" "No it is not!" Sabrina complained while Pam nodded. "It's just shock schleck." *** 00:01 26 Oct "Hey, wait!" Mike said loudly, and everyone stopped. "Tuck, meds," he said at me. "Aw, damnit!" "This'll take a few minutes," he announced to everyone else. Julia got up and asked, "S'there a bathroom in..." *** 00:11 26 Oct My meds had apparently been the signal for everyone to change and do other pre-bed things, or go to the bathroom, or whatever. I was looking forward to sleeping... it had been a hard day. Month. Year. Julia asked, "Val, aren't you changing..." I shook my head. "Why not?" I pulled up my shirt and showed them the armor. "Got this on." "What the hell?" Amanda gaped. "Body armor?" Sabrina asked just before she would have gotten out of line-of-sight. I looked at her and she'd stopped and reversed. "Just in case it got rowdy, I'd be protected," I said. "Don't you trust us?" Julia asked. "Anyone can forget for a few seconds," Mike said unexpectedly. "And so instead of scaring the shit out of everyone as we try and find out if Tuck's been hurt or not, he's wearing the armor so even if someone forgets and punches him in the side or something," which he did to Jill to demonstrate a friendly sort of punch. "He won't die," he said as he dodged Jill. Jill stopped instantly, looking guilty. "See?" I said. "This way, it's okay if you forget." "Like that time when you banged your head and bled everywhere?" Kathy reminded me. "You WHAT?! He what?" Mike demanded, first of me and then of Kathy. I sat down and wished like hell I'd never let them come over here tonight, just for a few seconds. "Yeah," Kathy answered herself. "Makes sense." *** 00:17 26 Oct "So why did you think I was wearing a nightgown that other night?" I asked Sabrina, as she reappeared in a white tank top and something like shorts. "Is that a nightgown?" I asked her as I pointed at her. *** 00:19 26 Oct "I did not!" I protested as Sabrina held the feminine pose. "You did," she insisted as she dropped the covers. "It was REALLY weird," she emphasized. "I've been trying REALLY hard not to screw up and say 'Valerie' here, and I could even sort of keep it straight, but not that time." "Why not?" I complained. I hadn't been wearing a nightgown; I was sure of that. And I hadn't looked that posedly feminine either. *** 00:23 26 Oct "Some of it's just the association of 'feminine' with 'helpless'," Julia stated. Then demonstrated. "Oh, I'm so stupid and weak," she cooed at Mike, "would you do this for me? I'll be all pretty and happy for you if you do!" I laughed, but it sort of wasn't funny. "Yeah, good for you if you can do it," Kathy said sourly. "I haven't been able to do that for years." "Too tall," Julia nodded. "Too tall, too athletic..." "You look too competent," Mike said. "I had to look competent!" Kathy protested. "I dunno," Julia said, apparently changing her mind, or thinking about it. "No, trust me," Kathy said, so butch that I suspected she COULDN'T do it any more. "Men look at me and think, if I'm doing that, that I'm playing a game. They assume I'm competent by default. It'd be like if Mike tried it." "Oh, could you help me?" Mike cooed at Kathy, copying what Julia had done. *** 00:29 26 Oct "'Cause it's unmanly to be incompetent," Mike said. "Except at girly things." "So what?" "So, I don't want to be SPAYED," Mike emphasized. "That's what it is, you just are not a man any more." "Oh come-" "No, really," I nodded. "There's stuff I can do with you girls, that I wouldn't dare do..." "Like what?" Sabrina challenged. "Girls get to cry when they're upset," Mike said. "Guys who cry when they're upset aren't really men." "That is such bullshit!" *** 00:32 26 Oct "'And E.T. was Old Yeller from outer space,'" I quoted. *** 00:35 26 Oct "And girls aren't supposed to get angry," Sabrina snarled. "We can cry and do things like that, but GOD help you if you get angry like a man over some kind of SHIT..." Kathy nodded. "If I go into a place when I'm annoyed, people call me 'sir'. I do NOT look like a guy..." I checked, and she didn't. "It's just not allowable," Julia stated like it was reasonable. *** 00:37 26 Oct "You're not- Look, other people's expectations are a TOOL," Julia said, and I got it suddenly. It sort of hurt, because it felt like my brain expanded a few centimeters. "Like a handle... that you can use to manipulate them?" I gasped out. Julia looked at me, and nodded slowly as a smile grew across her face. "Yeah, that's it exactly, Val." "How do I do it?" Kathy asked. Julia looked at her, for a while, and then said, "I don't know." "Damnit." "What do I do?" We all looked at Kelly. I realized she'd been pretty quiet for a while, though she hadn't been asleep again. "I mean, I don't want to play those games..." "OTHER people WILL BE playing those games," Julia explained patiently, as I nodded. "Whether you are or not. You can break 'em," she nodded towards Kathy, "or fuck 'em up, or even trick 'em," she nodded at me, "but they're still there." "In most people, not all," Mike cautioned. "It's the way to bet, most of the time," Julia countered. "I hate it," Jill said. "Yeah, but you- I mean, why did you dye your hair?" Kathy asked her. "You get asked out more," Amanda put in. "You said that." "Yeah, but people assume I'm dumber..." She trailed off as lots of people nodded at her. "Then you start sitting next to me in CLASS," I said, "and then at SOCIAL gatherings..." "Shut the..." She raised a hand to whack me then stopped herself. Then blinked and hit my arm. "Ow!" "THAT wasn't broke," she said with a satisfied nod. "Bitch!" "Ahht!" Julia interrupted, and when I glanced at her she had a finger raised at me. "Remember..." And I did. "Ow! She HIT meee!" I whined in as high a pitch as I could get. "And, and I'm too weak to hit her back! She HURT me!" "You bitch!" Jill complained, laughing. *** 00:42 26 Oct "I don't know... I mean, I know what- I guess I know what some of the stereotype of a dyke is," Kelly said, "but I don't know if I want to be that." "Then either play it girly, or..." Julia sort of lost her thought. "Why not? I mean, why not play it girly, like she said," Amanda asked Kelly. "It's not that hard, to-" "Yes it is," Jill said. "Val said..." I said, "It's a whole 'nother set of skills, like being in a foreign country like Japan. New manners, new words, new skills- makeup isn't that easy to do-" "Most girls don't do it that well," Mike said, like he'd been paying attention to girls' makeup. "Like you know!" Sabrina scoffed. "He's right, though," Kathy said. "You and Debbie do it much better than average." I said, "Gee, maybe you should go into business-" Sabrina threw a small pillow at me. I caught it, and sat on it to save it for later. *** 00:47 26 Oct "I have an announcement to make!" Mike announced as he stood up, his arms in the air. "I am a guy!" "And THANK you for sharing that," Kathy oozed, so much like a television therapist that I started laughing. Even Sheila wasn't that bad. "And I DO look, at girls, women, ladies, babes, chicks..." He ran out of synonyms. "And?" Kathy asked. "And I have some idea. I mean, I don't have the motor skills like you do, but I have some idea," he nodded. "Oh, you do?" *** 00:50 26 Oct "Mike. Mike?" I had to warn him. When he looked up, I told him, "That way lies madness. Remember?" "Shut up," he said as he re-concentrated on painting Kathy's face. "At least I know how to stay still," Kathy said when Mike hadn't done anything for several seconds. "Unlike Val the first few times." "Oh, fuck off," I sighed. *** 01:04 26 Oct "Cool," I said, looking at the 'bruise' Julia had done on Amanda's face with eyeshadow and some other things. "Does it hurt?" "Only when I laugh," Amanda grinned before she laughed. Then she stopped for a second and said, "Ow!" before bursting out in giggles again. *** 01:12 26 Oct "You looked even better at the dance," Kathy said. "But..." Kelly looked frustrated. "Hey, look," Julia said gently. "Even if you don't want to do it all the time, it's good to know sometimes," Pam said, and Julia nodded between them. "But it's so artificial," Kelly said. "I mean, women don't look like that! It's not natural!" She apparently wasn't expecting the laughter she got. "But it's the culture," Julia said with a smile. "Like clothing," Mike said. "Certain cultures have certain clothing and they just DO, there's not necessarily a sane reason for it. Neckties, certain shoes-" "Oh!" Sabrina gasped in shock. "You should talk-" "I know! I know!" Mike shot fast, before he drowned in protests. "But guys have bullshit like that too, and NONE of it is necessary." *** 01:15 26 Oct "I mean, I kind of like wearing a bra," Kelly said. "Val?" Pam asked. "What about you?" "I need one for the breast forms," I reminded her. "What about when you're not wearing 'em?" she asked. "Like now." "I'm not wearing one now!" "Have you tried one? One that fit, I mean, without the forms in it." "No?" *Oh shit, I shouldn't've said that...* *** 01:17 26 Oct "And you were going to wear that at school?" Amanda asked. "No! Don't-" "She was talking about the ARMOR, stupid gaijin nitwit," Mike corrected me. "Oh. Yeah? Otherwise I'd have to wait until my ribs healed completely, which'd be... another six or eight weeks, something like that. At that point I might as well not go back..." "Why ARE you going back?" Julia asked. "A lot of people have been talking about things like homeschooling... someone was handing out leaflets on it, or pamphlets or something. It's a lot easier than I thought it was," she said thoughtfully. "My friends are there. I can't leave them, you, in that hellhole..." "Have you talked about it?" Jill asked. "Would your parents let you-" 'No', her face said. 'And I hate them.' "Yeah, so, I'm not going to leave you there to get beat up or killed or worse." "Worse?" Sabrina asked, then shook her head. "Never MIND, I don't want to think about it!" "Put the bra on," Kathy reminded me, and I sighed and put the other strap on my shoulder, then gingerly started to try and bend my arms back to do the hooks. "I'll get it," Jill said, and she turned me - gently, this time - and connected the hooks a lot faster than I could have. "Pull the cups down, Val," Amanda said like I was being dumb and she didn't appreciate it. "What?" Before I could figure that out, Jill turned me around again and started to pull the bottoms of the bra cups over my nipples, which hurt enough to make me hiss. "Did I hurt your ribs?" she worried. "No... nipples," I explained. "Gently." "Ow, shit, I remember that," she said, and did something with her fingers in a V over one and then the other as she used her other hand to pull the fabric down. "Like that!" I moved a little, and twisted as much as I could, but I couldn't tell any difference. "I dunno... It doesn't feel any different." "Maybe when you get more active again," Amanda said. "Jocks," Mike reminded me. "Yeah..." Then Mike had to explain what that meant. "Hey, Jill, could you take it off again?" "What, don't tell me you're EMBARRASSED!" she grinned. "I don't want to forget and leave it on until my mom sees it." She frowned then didn't then frowned again. "I thought she knew? I mean, Mike said you got busted?" "Yeah, but why throw a torch in the gunpowder? Why take a chance that she'll see it and blow up again?" I changed metaphors. "What happened with that?" Amanda asked. "Aw, man..." I remembered something, and said, "Isn't this one of those things I don't have to talk about because it's emotionally upsetting?" Everyone looked at me like they knew I was trying something lame to get out of talking about it. Which, I was. "We'll get it out of you eventually," Kathy finally said. "You know that." "Yeah, but not now..." I was getting kind of exhausted, actually. I just hadn't realized it before. "Hey, isn't this a SLEEP over? When is everyone going to sleep?" "As soon as we've had another batch of cookies," Kathy said as she got up. *** 01:38 26 Oct She hadn't been kidding, either way; we all had a few more cookies, and then things just kind of slowed to a halt. "I kind of like the idea of sleeping," Julia mentioned sleepily. "Oh, Jill does too," I said, because I thought she was asleep on my arm. "Huh?" mumbled Jill sleepily. "Let's set everything up like we didn't earlier," Mike said as he stood up. Nobody else did. I at least had the excuse I didn't want to disturb Jill, though. "Come on... beds are nicer than sleeping upright," he said, and stuck a hand out to Sabrina. She grumbled but took it and got up. *** 01:58 26 Oct Kelly was sleeping next to me, and Jill was next to her. I needed the edge of a bed to hook up to the monitors again, and I had to set an alarm for oh-four-hundred for the next dose of meds, and then oh-six- hundred for the one after that. That went under the pillow, in hopes I wouldn't scare everyone else into a panic. "So, what was that about the lesbian orgy?" Mike asked out loud. Kathy just reached over with one arm and whacked him, as Kelly went, "What?" "False alarm," I told her. "Go'sleep." *** Guys must stay strong and tear-free through tragedies, but are permitted to cry over the death of a pet (and E.T. was essentially Old Yeller from outer space). - Mark Canter Distribution: No part of this work may be distributed as an original work by another person or group. Permission is given to redistribute this by electronic means, as long as the entirety of the work (from the BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE header to the END PGP SIGNATURE footer) is distributed, and credit is given to the original author, me. And no fee may be charged. Archiving is permitted provided no fee is charged for access. All rights reserved. + @>--,--'----- Ellen Hayes o===[-------- __ vicki .sig + -=[1990]=- \/ virus 12.2 + http://www.barkingduck.net/ehayes PGP key: EFC9 5D55 (1996) + -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: 2.6.2 iQCVAwUBRPzi7nYDebnvyV1VAQGLLAQArB1gWPxRtFAROKKmqcVf54/Jkhuq3//l YRFo6AVwg3rJZiGOrhKcYmof3ioPwwMa+jRxq5H3Q0PaHEc6yQpDKHrqgizSEZvV cXZuoW2/U2P1C0o1vWsz7uqgD7i/XljuU1jSIqMcN0juPmp3fnxLYQhVRz0nbl1Q t0/rFiMRJdk= =AEtT -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----