But I Think Everybody Should

Beside Mama, In My Own Folding Chair, With My Feet Sticking Out In Front Of Me, I Thought About My Own Innards. Just A Few Months Before I'd Had No Idea Whether My Reproductive Equipment Worked. There Was No Evidence. But That Week I Had Become A Full-fledged Bleeder And Was Still Absorbed By This First Change In Myself That I Had Ever Noticed. The Click And Buzz Of My Synapses Kept Making The Same Connection. If You Can Change, You Can Also End. Death Had Always Been A Theory To Me. Now I Knew. The Terror Hurt Good And I Nursed It And Played It Like A Loose Tooth.

[i] Am Reading No Ordinary Joes. Should Have Had A Medical Checkup Before I Started It. Colton Makes Us Fall In Love With These Guys, Then Puts Our Hearts In Harm's Way. It's Lovely And Ghastly And Extremely Powerful. His Best Yet.

Freedom Within Any Kind Of Social Structure - The Whole Issue Of Exactly What The Human Animal Is - Is An Ongoing Preoccupation Of Mine. And I Certainly Don't Think I've Come To The End Of That Exploration, And With Any Luck, I Never Will. But I'm Very Curious About Exactly What Kind Of Beast We Are. We're So Complicated.

Basically, We Are Pack Animals. We May Be Evolving Toward Hive Animals. The Nature Of The Pack Is That If All The Eyes Of The Pack Are On You, You Are Either The Leader, Or You Are Lunch. So It's A Basically Hazardous Situation To Have The Eyes Of The Pack Upon You. And I Think That's Really Visceral. I Think That's Bred In The Bone. That's Species - Deep.

Perhaps The Strongest Evidence That Women Have As Broad And Deep A Capacity For Physical Aggression As Men Is Anecdotal. And As With Men, This Capacity Has Expressed Itself In Acts From The Brave To The Brutal, The Selfless To The Senseless.