#112: Postmodern Sleeping Arrangements

“Say, what are you doing for Halloween?” asked Trent when I answered the phone. Stella had some academic thing all night, he explained, and he needed me to take Simon Trick-or-Treating while he stayed home and dispensed candy. “I can’t very well have Simon collect a bag of goodies while our house is the only dark one on the street—the other parents in the neighborhood would ostracize us for a year.”

#58: Megahero-Free Zone

“Look, Mama,” said Avie, proudly. “Clarissa’s wearing a dress.”
     “What’s the occasion, Sissy?” asked Mama.
     “You mean besides having Thanksgiving dinner with our Mama?” I replied. Avie and I were helping Mama take the turkey out of oven in her tiny new apartment near Eight Mile Road. “I can be traditional when I want to.”
     “You didn’t have to get dressed up for me,” said Mama. “But you do look nice in a dress for a change. I don’t think I’ve seen you in one since high school.”
     “Clarissa went by the house to pick up her old clarinet,” said Avie. “Daddy told her she was dressing too much like a boy lately and that she should grab some of her old dresses out of the attic, too, while she was at it. Only, they don’t fit her anymore. So he gave her money to buy new reeds and a new frock.”
     “Avie can’t keep anything secret,” I said. I stuck my tongue out at my half-sister.

#57: The Revelation from Missouri

I should probably mention that in my student days, especially when I wore my civilian clothes over my Ms. Megaton Man uniform, I was never anything to look at. I dressed down in the cooler months, September through May in Detroit. I wore jeans that were neither excessively baggy nor excessively tight; a baseball jersey, extra-large T-shirt, sweater, or school sweatshirt, depending on the weather; and a hoody, windbreaker, or baseball jacket over that. In really cold weather, I had a winter coat—kind of a weatherproof parka with a fake-fur hood. Oh, and I got an old army jacket just for kicks. I seldom wore makeup during the day, and I never wore my wavy, burgundy hair any special way other than sometimes pulled back in a ponytail. It wasn’t that I was necessarily going for the lesbian look—I never went in for plaid shirts and work boots, the de rigueur uniform of the brush-cut bull dyke; I just never wanted to attract sexual attention to myself when I was hoofing between my classes at the Arbor State Extension and Warren Woodward University campus. In a harsh city like Detroit, it seemed an eminently practical decision.

#56: Ms. Megaton Is Skank

“Then what did you do?” asked Avie. She sat at my tiny kitchen table, wolfing down cheese curls like they were goin out of style.
     “I took off his clothes, and then I knelt down…” I said.
     “Were you naked?” My half-sister wanted ever detail.
     “I had on my panties,” I said. “I was having my period, I told you.”
     “Was he lying on the bed?” asked Avie.
     “No; that’s a good point, Avie,” I said. “Gene was standing; I asked him to stand. He was uncomfortable about it, maybe because of the way the ceiling angles; he was nearly hitting his head. You know what he said?”
     “What?”

#55: Sex Drive in the Motor City

I need to backtrack here and explain a few things.
     You see, I had always thought the Ann Street house where I lived during my early college years was a commune. But it was no more a real commune than its basement rec room—which Daddy had built and where Yarn Man and I had holed up for a few lost weeks—was a real hippie crash pad. There was nothing at all about the lifestyle Trent, Stella, Pammy and I were living at the time that was truly communal, least of all in any utopian, sixties sense. We were all simply housemates who shared a living space. We each rented our own bedrooms and shared certain other spaces in the house. We didn’t buy food together or even eat together all that often; we didn’t have a set list of chores or obligations. We just cooperated and respected one another, and otherwise took care of our own messes. Otherwise, we all remained very suburban and middle-class in our outlook.

#51: B-50, the Hybrid Man

I ran down the hall where I’d seen my cape disappear and burst through some swinging doors into a large laboratory, darkened except for some blinking lights on equipment I couldn’t make out. With the infra-red vision of my visor, I immediately spotted my cape and buttons; they lay lifeless on the floor just a few feet into the lab. For a moment, I feared my cape was dead.
     I picked them up and shook the dust off. I slung my cape around my shoulders and snapped buttons back onto my uniform at the clavicles. The buttons responded by flashing magenta lights, and my cape fluttered.
     “Good; you weren’t killed,” I said. “But something shut you down as soon as you entered this place. What…?”

#50: Telling Tall Tales Along the Ann Arbor Trail

After locking up her office, the Phantom Jungle Girl and I raced downstairs to the waiting Y+Thems van. Rubber Brother was in the passenger seat; with an elongated arm, he opened the sliding side door for us to hop in back. Domina was behind the wheel; she was the only Youthful Permutation. The others—Soren, Kiddo, and Tempy—were never part of our plan, Jasper wanting to keep the operation light and mobile.
     But much to my surprise, my sister Avie and Kozmik Kat were waiting for us in the back seat.

#47: Dana Dorman, Two Doors Down

Ever since she’d arrived from Megatropolis with a vanload of Youthful Permutations, I’d gotten the vibe that Dana Dorman—the megaheroine known as Domina—had the hots for me. I suppose I’d gotten that vibe from the several times she’d overtly hit on me; her rather crude suggestions in front of the others were frankly embarrassing, and revealed how ill-equipped and lacking in social skills some megaheroes can be. I’d had to make it clear to her over and over that she simply wasn’t my type—she was way too aggressive. But I tried not to be rude to her; after all, she was living in the communal residence of the Holistic-Humanist Congregation of Cass City, just two doors down West Forest from where I lived, with the other Y+Thems exiled in Detroit—along with my younger half-sister, Avie.