Tracy Orleans.

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Deadbeat zombie stares aligned with the window one at a time. Their arms suspended and drugged; but their minds lunatic and jittery. Within the chamber of his chalky hand, he took the cup and knocked his head back to swallow the miniscule shot of zyprexasomazoloft. Sticking his taffy tongue out for criminal confirmation, the nurse dismissed him with a wretched screech: "Next."

As his head swam with willowy ghosts, he was escorted by a brawn arm back to his room. The bed was left neatly-made and barren. A cotton wasteland. Two days ago, Anthony managed to stifle himself in his sleep. Well, that was what happened when you take Soma so you can't wake the fuck up and save him, motherfuckers. His wall was littered with glossy, self-developed photos from his pre-asylum years; city scapes, ponds, lakes, family themes, stained jeans, club riots, sexy tyrants, road trips, lover's lips-- a collage of life in the outside world.

Tomorrow he'd be revisiting it. His bags had been packed for days. He sulked on the floor in skinny-boned debris next to a zippered duffel heap, and bowed his head to plot.

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<center>see if we can do this in one <s>toke</s> take.</center>

Name: Tracy Ethan Orleans.

Lives in: With his mom (there's a thousand conspiracies in his mind surrounding her: that she is singlehandedly responsible for his homosexuality; brainwashed by Lucifer who wants revenge on mankind, and thus wants to breed more gay men so there can be no more reproduction) and obese dad in Washington, however, he plans to move back to the city (Seattle), once he gets "better."

Age: Twenty-four.

Occupation: Comic book/essay/short story writer/solo recording artist (alone in his garage/studio with lots of synth, mild guitars and throbbing bass) See: "Why Political Tyrants Usually Only Have One Testicle and if They Say They Don't, They're Probably Lying" and "10 Ways Anne Frank Could've Plucked her Eyebrows Despite the Living Conditions She was In." Oh yeah, and he's also sexy for a living.

Best friend: The illustrator of their political comic book (that pokes ironic fun of the counterculture they're both involved in, and modern/historic conflicts in history) Mr. Morrissey Bloom.

Sexual preference: Chronic masturbator. Asexual. Or blatantly gay. Whichever you prefer.

Guilty pleasures: Tried to lose his mother's new dog, Puddles, owns a parrot named Fred-the-Fascist. He also writes dirty short stories and stashes them under his pillow to read later when lonely. He's sexually estranged.

OOC: Images of Courtney Taylor-Taylor.

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<font color="#EE0000" size="1">[ April 06, 2005 09:03 PM: Message edited by: softcore jukebox ]</font>

I had a clever staring contest with the dog. One-on-one. Neither of us were backing down. I slowly glided down to my haunches. He didn't budge. Kissing the kitchen floor with my knees, my hands spread over the sour-smelling linoleum. I watched his vicious lip raise, and I gave him my best Clint Eastwood. My stare was hard. Squinted. You could hear the tumbleweeds swirling across the prairie. If I had a cowboy hat on, I would've pinched its brim and tilted it over my intimidating brow. The sweat was starting to itch at my pores. No, not yet, you dreaded beads.

I must prevail.

Suddenly, Mom came in. She was holding a huge bowl of tapioca pudding. Instead of raisins she used to put almonds in it. And she calls me insane.

"Tracy."

Yes, mother? You gave me a girl's name. I pondered this silently, of course. I dare not speak when I am confronted with this demon.

You wonder why I'm a fag.

"Get up off the floor, you're going to rip your new pants."

Mom! These are too big. I like them tight on my ass. If you're going to buy me pants at Walmart, it might as well be the Mary Kate and Ashley line.

My mother. Angela Orleans, you sweet-faced, slightly-pudgy, closet-anorexic, vericose, voluptuous vegetable. Your hair is beginning to gray. A gypsy could read the lines in your face!

"You don't like Puddles?"

Puddles. That's the name of this rottweiling beast. Puddles. Puddles sounds so innocent. But I can read his snarl so literately: the jagged, dirty ivory of his teeth. He wants to eat me alive, tear me to shreds, and then he wants to bury my bones in the backyard next to the little mini pool that my friend Terry used to piss in when we were five, and when I swam into a warm spot, I always cried.

I growled at Puddles, quirking my brow, before I jumped up casually, jolting up my pants.

"He's okay."

Angela turned to the counter to crinkle aluminum foil (ode to aluminum foil: why do you crinkle so? Your texture, your shine, your lines, you keep food from going stay, you insulate, you preserve, you save, you can put your pizza on the aluminum foil and put it in the oven and it doesn't burn your fingers when you take it out, oh oh-whoa-oh) over the bowl. This is when I made my move. The dog whimpered sharply when the side of my foot collided with his ribs. She tossed me a sharp stare.

"Puddles is a beast, Mom. You need to choose. It's either me or him." I said this with grating teeth. She looked at me as though I was ridiculous.

"Who's your real son, Mom?"

"Tracy...."

"Me or Puddles? Huh? I believe---" I pointed my forefinger towards the ceiling. "It was I that sat in your soggy womb for nine months and sucked down the toxins of your twinkies and cigarette smoke." Mom, do I exasperate you? Hip-thrust. Yeeeoooowww.

Then I sprinted from the room in a storming rage, thudding up the staircase, leaving her completely clueless as to why her twenty-four-year-old fruitcake son was so fucked up. What had she done wrong?

Well, mother. It all started when you made me garden with you and watch General Hospital instead of going to Miss Miller's first grade playdough classroom.

Yes. That's it.

I went in my room to Norman Bates. That's my code name for masturbates. I don't know where the inspiration came from, but I can assure you, it wasn't Puddles.

<font color="#f22735" size="1">[ August 03, 2005 05:44 AM: Message edited by: methadrone ]</font>

"Mr. and Mrs. Orleans, I understand your concerns and I strongly agree that brief hospitalization is the best choice for helping your son cope with his mental condition." Andrew Nolan, Belleview's head of the 2nd level psychiatric ward had a waning hairline, and a serious no-nonsense mustache that swallowed the column of his upper lip. Mr. and Mrs. Orleans' hands tightened instinctively in their circulation-choking union. Angela Orleans blotted the side of her eye with a scrunched Kleenex, whilst Robert tried to remain ascetic; placating his wife that seemed to be growing more pudgy as the days (years) bore on. Last week, Tracy pointed out that her cheeks seemed too ruddy and jolly and she burst into menopausal waterworks.

"Our tests show..." He paused to swivel in his seat, creaking a lazy route to the file drawer. Sifting, he soon scooped out a manila envelope. "That he's very intelligent. I'm sure you both have already known this since an early age. His I.Q. far surpasses--" Angela hastily interjected.

"It's his intelligence that always kept him a social outcast. He has a dark sense of humor that nobody else could ever understand. Not even me. When he was a little boy..."

"While we're on that subject.." Ha. Now, it was Andrew's turn to interrupt. "What kind of child was he? Did he ever hurt small animals? Were there any signs of corrupted morals at an early age?"

Smiling in euphoric nostalgia, Angela gingerly shook her head. "No, no, he's never been violent, even when he covered the walls in crayons, he always drew pictures with lots of sunshine."

"But they were always weird," Robert added, content now that he managed to wedge a word in, a splinter in Angela's side or not.

"How so?"

"He'd draw us. Then he'd draw himself--bigger than us. Now, he must've been maybe five or six. He'd almost take up the whole sheet. He'd draw six or seven other people on their knees around him, and he named them all. We used to take him to Sunday school so they always had biblical names. He never had that many friends though, maybe one at a time."

"Oh, he used to scare all the little boys that he was friends with. He'd tell them Santa was a myth, lord knows how he found out...or he'd tell them about death or ..." Angela shook her head. She swore it was the television that she let babysit him when she was cooking dinner for that hour a night. She regretted it now.

"I see. And your son states that he has no sexual preference. He claims that he's ..." Andrew Nolan's gaze skeptically scrolled over the fine print on the bottom of the file, adjusting his glasses. "Asexual, and thusly 'cannot be a sexual anomaly.' He said that."

"That's not true. He's homosexual. He's been living with a lawyer in Seattle ---an older man for months. He just moved back last week. I'm sure they broke up, he never said much more than that. He told me he was gay when he was twelve, and had a conspiracy that..."

"He was genetically grown to be a pansy." Robert was trying hard not to laugh. His son's sardonic, gnarled sense of humor was definitely from his side of the family.

"And he also think sthat I named him Tracy because I wanted a girl. He thinks that...that I raised him to be gay, and that it'd been my intention all along." A willowing laugh rippled at the daft thought with a nervous lurch of her vocal cords.

Andrew Nolan nodded, thumbing through the various records.

"We're going to put him on some new medication. Five milligrams of Zyprexa to quell his episodes, Soma to aid his insomnia, a thirty milligram dose of Concerta to keep his attention span intact. He seems to retreat into his own world often, which would explain his introverted behavior..."

"He's a writer," exclaimed Angela, as she shredded her tissue, still softly sniffling behind a forced smile. "Aren't they all supposed to be that way? Secluded and creative?"

"Yes, and no. It seems that he goes on social binges, he'll go out and party for days, experiment with drugs, and then he'll retreat like a hermit."

It was hard for them to swallow the fact that their quirky son was legally being declared "insane" in the state of Washington.

"How did he take the news when you told him you were considering Belleview?"

Robert's chin lolled downwards to his collarbone, leaving his wife to reply. She cut back to three days ago in her memory bank.

The skinny boy had never been intimidated by "family meetings."

And even this time as they broke the news he remained unfazed, perched on the edge of the kitchen counter, slicing Granny Smith apple skin with the blade of a blunt knife. Cradling meticulously dismantled, juicy fractions, he feasted with a casual stare trained on their expectant faces.

"Well ..." His gaunt shoulders rose and fell with a shrug, his touch instinctively skimming across the assortment of necklaces that lynched his throat. The static enigma's voice was plunged nonchalant and low-key. "If Winona Ryder's not there, I'm bailing."

She blinked, her hypnotic daze officially thrown overboard. "He took it well."

<font color="#060101" size="1">[ May 25, 2004 09:51 AM: Message edited by: electroshock ]</font>

<center>Tightie-Whities Will Make You a Better Man

Tracy Orleans.</center>


Boxers. It's the casual, dominant masculine choice. It supplies that cool, breezy feeling on humid days, not to mention it promotes a higher sperm count. Boxers are freedom; fighting terrorism, liberalizing oppressed societies, cracking the sky with gaudy fireworks to celebrate Independence Day. They're sheer laziness. They don't divulge any pathetic tan lines (or lack thereof) or embarrassing patches of hair that you swore you mowed last Sunday pre-Superbowl party so that you could show off your newly-molded pecs to your beer bong buddies. They're the safe and easy way out -- piloting towards the future where all retro hot pants, cool clothes and culture are left behind. American men are already bred the same it seems: sweatpants, testosterone, and that little flab of swelling obesity that is immaculately hidden by the elastic band of your Walmart Bugs Bunny-printed shorts. Boxers are insecurity.

When American men swim they wear trunks, but when European men wade over the shores of Venice, they'er sporting boastingly tight Speedos that are cut high on the thighs. Their tans are soon to be on the verge of perfect; their body hair stored behind nylon. Hell, Speedo can even make the most dinky of shrinkage-burdened bachelors appear large. The bulge is here! Feast your eyes on this, hot mamas! They preen the beach like David Hasselhoff post-rocking down the Berlin Wall.

This is why tightie-whities make you a better man. A man that wears these not only shows that he has more confidence than the Cheeto-fingered average American, but also it's obvious that he grooms himself better, as well. A man in tightie-whities goes beyond the dimensions of F.U.B.U. and Tommy Hilfiger. It's Calvin Klein and about as real as Kate Moss getting caught red-handed in a golden stall in Paris with a finger down her throat.

My individual studies (having slept with various resources, of course) have led me to believe that amongst the variety of men I've known, those that wear Hanes (your way, baby) are more successful. Think beyond runway models and world leaders. Do you think lawyers wear boxers or even boxer-briefs? No. They have to pace like a caged lion, they have to feel the tension. When a brain surgeon named Dr. Doolittle is hovering over a little fawn-eyed ballerina with her life dependent on the surgery, do you honestly envisage him in a pair of fluorescent Joe Boxers with a smiley face crinkled over his ass? No! Men that wear tightie whities want to go somewhere in life. They're the masochists of the business world. They like to strain against their pinstripes and feel relief when they can finally trot into the shower and relax. After all, they have better things to do during the weekends than sit around and watch T.V. Hello?

Men in boxers take the easy way out. They're self-conscious yet dirty. Lazy and athletic. Tightie-whities automatically earn you the reputation of a sexy man. You're lean, you're cool, your legs are hairy, but they have distinct feminine curve to the calves. So what if you're fat or you're trying to firmly tack your masculinity, boxer-wearers? Lose some weight, open your eyes through a metrosexual kaleidoscope (if Ben Affleck can, so can you) -- tightie-whities are the new penis counterculture. Wake up, hear the music, jog, do push-ups and strut down that Jersey shore, baby. Because once you got tightie-whities you never go back and your payroll will increase, and your wife will stare agape at your new six-pack. Rock it, America. Welcome to the penis revolution.

"Jesus fucking Christ! Tracy! Jesus CHRIST!" The man flung himself across the apartment, dropping his suitcase in a mussed splatter of overturned documents and loose change.

"What the FUCK are you doing?!" Howling, Jeremy's hands seized the other's lean naked shoulders, forcing his scrawny, anaesthetised legs into a wavering, awkward stance. Languidly, even with the stubby joint unfurling pungent strands from his smug lip-gash and a pair of icicle, spectacle-sharded eyes scorching him with irate laser beams (or rather, that was how the loon saw it) he told him the truth.

His voice was slow as molasses, arrogantly-spiced, tongue lapsing lazily against the roof of his candied mouth. One brow heightened, the other remained dormant, his lidded eyes spinning ceilingwards.

"I..."

Elevating the weaponry, a fat black sharpie, he puppetteered a stone-stoic shrug. "Was just writing. He said you ran out of paper."

Jeremy's wall was now fringed with sloppy italic cursive, it stretched from one to the other, his babble leaving little spaces. He scrawled political opinions, fashion advice, jokes, sharp one liners, memorized famous quotes, and prose on a flawless white canvas right beside the kitchen bar. The man paused to stare at it, his face plunging into an open palm.

"What?" Inquired Tracy, a limp hand carving over his hip, which was just barely stifled in the elastic of his cotton white underwear.

"I was just writing, mah-hann. You missed this pigeon outside, it just kept ..running into the window, over....and over again... it was so fuckin' ...funny. But, did you ever wonder why birds do that? They just want to get inside so bad, it's like they're sick of the outside world. I guess all the noise gets to them--but the pigeon, I think was just like: 'man, you'd look good with a mohawk.' Would I look good with a mohawk?"

Jeremy tore his hand away, and casted a wounded expression on the youthful nutcase with the nice body and the pretty face. Even that wasn't worth it.

"Tracy?"

"Wha', tightbuns?"

"It's time to break up."

Jeremy made a sore attempt at relaxation; the Valium had yet to take effect. Laced with emotion sickness tremors and wracking his brains to try and constitute his reasoning for kicking Tracy out, he hovered over his leather-bound journal that he'd caught Tracy reading several times before with a cup of coffee and an elevated eyebrow. The commodious Seattle apartment was draped in lunar shadows. It was so quiet he could hear the mechanical tick of the vintage grandfather clock in the corner of his wood-furnished study. Tracy wasn't here to prop himself up like a muse on his desk, pull his glasses off, and say the most frivolous things to reel in his attention span and divert it from working. It was coincidental that tonight was the first night in weeks that he was stress-free, no work, no trivial matters or phone calls to make out: stolen liberty.

I kicked Tracy out today, and I don't know why. I've known he was strange since the night I met him, when I was still a virgin to all those pills he popped and somehow was too distraught and perfect to ever get addicted to. I felt so lucky to be hand-in-hand with a younger man who seemed to know more about culture than I could ever comprehend. He'd keep me up all night with his strange philosophies. Leave it up to him to explain that humans will someday be hydrogen-based, and it would make sense. Tracy sometimes goes to a distant world, he talks to other people that aren't in the room. He's always been quirky, but lately, it's gotten real bad. He has a computer, a laptop I bought him, but he'd rather write on my walls. He cut up a pair of my pants last week with a pair of scissors and said it was a fashionable shade for the window, because the sun was too bright. I know he's a struggling writer, I know. His political essays are witty, and I know he'll find someone to write that comic book with him, but are all writers also complete lunatics? Tracy is so far-gone. He's always been expressionless during sex, completely uninterested. There were times when he'd just sit there and start to talk about the war in Iraq while I was above him. But every now and again we'd have these miraculous moments where we'd come together and come down so happily, drugged or sober. He brought me back to life, he brought me back to youth, but after awhile, you can't have fun and games anymore, you need something serious. The thing about Tracy is that he's always dancing with himself. He doesn't walk by me, he dances by, like a boneless snake. Sometimes, I'll walk in the door and he's dancing, or I'm sleeping and I wake up and he's dancing. Sometimes, it's with music, sometimes it's without music, and sometimes it's with his music. Today I told him to dance the fuck out of my apartment. He didn't appear hurt, or even slightly fazed. He stood up, packed his bags, and danced....out. He danced out after he gave me a peck on my forehead, gave a little hip swivel and clocked me on the ass. I don't even know how he got home. I don't even know if he had the money on him to afford a taxi back to his Mom and Dad's, or to Chris'. But, he took the computer. And I already miss his face. Maybe I'll call him soon when things cool down, when we both merge back to normalcy. I bet he's dancing right now, playing someone's muse.

It's pathetic when no one understands you, when they sit around and say: 'you're sick, you're sick, you're sick, there's something wrong with your head, son, you need to untangle yourself from that madness.' They want you to conform, to think like they do, they want to bring you down, they want to claw away your creativity, and raise your level of insecurities to make themselves feel better. All my life, I've been surrounded by people that have doubted me, that have wanted to/have abandoned me because I'm different, because I think differently, because I can't help the way I act. I act on impulse sometimes, I sometimes zone out, I become a different person, and I remember nothing. I might talk to other people that other people can't hear, and I know my therapist tells me that they're not real and just figments of my imagination, but so what? If the figments of my own imagination treat me better than anyone else, what can be the harm in it? This world will never treat me like an equal. Even Morrissey is annoyed by me and looks at me like I'm the gum on the bottom of his shoe, when all I ever wanted to do was be with him and take care of him, and have him take care of me. I thought he was different, I thought he was my best friend. Hell, I thought he was even a bit crazy too, because he never rolled his eyes at my antics or my raving words. He used to treat me like an equal. But, now I know that I was never an equal to Morrissey. Like Jeremy and my mom and dad, he sees me as just some crazy prick that's fun to be around sometimes, he hates me. He doesn't care. He'll never care. He's too naive to care. He'll never understand my world. No one probably will.

So this is my decision to put Political Cartoons on a temporary hiatus until I find a new artist. I won't make friends with the next artist, because I already learned my lesson. I'm just going to write and let he/she put images to my work and I'm going to sell it. The people that read my work will never have to know the man behind it like my parents and Morrissey are forced to.

I'm packing up and I'm sad. I might call Jeremy. Even though the poor sap doesn't know what the fuck I'm on about half the time, at least he doesn't pretend to know, or pretend to care like Morrissey has been doing all this time. I shouldn't be allowed to pick friends, I always pick the wrong ones and fall head-over-heels for them. This is for the way you made me feel for you, Morrissey. That sweet love thang.

<center>"Baby, you make me want to cut out paper hearts."</center>


Vanilla fumes swirled from his Djarum, giving him a smoggy smoke barrier, as he sprawled out on dewed blades of grass. Spring brought a pretty lush feel, although the humidity choked him. His faded green tanktop was frayed at the seams and ribbed with scissors, one denim-swimming knee jabbing towards the noir sky. He could hear the orchestras of locusts legs creaking near, but not near enough. One arm was slung over the verdant canvas, the other was vicing his clove, he sucked down smoke to shawl his troubled lungs with a pondering stare panning towards the sky. His fingers frolicked alongside his obviously pierced left nipple that made a debut through a cut in his shirt; circling, skidding, and stilling eventually. After that long fight, Morrissey was on his mind. Today they patched it all, with a kiss, a Southern Comfort-laced elevator scene, and finally, with a taxicab hat, a vinyl smile, underwear and a black tie over his bare chest, they had each other. It was meshed with whispered choruses of sighs and 'I love you's' and now that he thought about it, it was the sweetest thing he'd ever experienced. He smiled, seemingly at absolutely nothing, but deep inside it was just fractions of Morrissey embedded in him. When one finally had someone that understood them, they felt complete.

<font color="#060101" size="1">[ May 17, 2004 01:27 AM: Message edited by: electroshock ]</font>

... "He has his own apartment, and he's always here, I just don't get it, Robert." Angela's fingers embroidered in concern as she swayed from foot to foot in the kitchen. Tracy mentioned her vericose veins earlier, and now her son was officially a nuisance. Robert Orleans just offered a bland shrug, pawing through his newspaper, scrolling his eyes over the funnies.

Tracy sat in the den, deadset on the television screen. He hadn't moved in about three hours, and he was frozen stiff in the same position. He took the classic Al Bundy pose, except his hand was shoved down the hem of Morrissey's pants. At one point, he lolled his scalp to the side (his mother was worried about his hair; at some point he decided it would be a good idea to shave it all off save for the long, long strip in the middle which was a wilted mohawk that he claimed he was too stylistic to put up) as the Saturday morning animation flickered highlights on his face. The curtains were shut and the room was dank and drenched in shadow.

"You know ...." He stapled a long pause to the end of his cliffhanger, to glisten his lips with his tongue. Poor Morrissey probably had no idea what was coming. "I always liked Robert Smith better than Morrissey."

Tracy then turned back to face the television screen, forging an exterior bravado of interest when in reality, he was caught in his own little world.

I was standing in a McDonald's parking lot today and I was stricken with a very peculiar thought. A straw was stuck in my mouth and I was sucking on ice-milk (at least that's what it tasted like) and products that claimed to be dairy, but weren't really dairy at all. It tasted like chocolate, but pure chocolate tastes much better than a diluted milkshake. I stared at that big, big golden arch, and the sign that boasts that they've sold over a billion burgers. Now, we already know that America is fat, and that Bill Gates has more money than McDonald's has sold clammy cheeseburgers, but I used to prefer barbeque. That was, before I became a vegetarian. Morrissey is a crazy vegetarian and it rubbed off on me. Oh yeah, he broke up with me by the way, I forgot to mention that. But, now all I can really eat is salad and saltine crackers. I like saltine crackers, I think they're terribly underrated, and I really fucking dig Cheez-Its too. Well, any way, when I was standing in that parkinglot, I stopped to check out my shoes. They're new Doc Martens, and they look so fucking hot. My pants were all tight, and I could feel them against my crotch, but I also liked the shapes and smiles in the clouds. I thought about my mom and how I haven't called her in awhile, and I forgot to give her my new phone number, so she's probably really sick worrying about me. I also thought about Quentin and how he sells his body out in New York, like some lame, bohemian, art school student stereotype that I will just never understand. Man, that kid is cooler than that. Then, I realized, when I threw my milkshake on the ground that I didn't give a shit about our ozone layer or the environment, any longer. No one else gives a shit, so why should I? I should mention that there was a trashcan within five feet of me, but I didn't care. I breezed right by it, called it a 'sucker' and gave a salute to God. Because we all know that God is Frank Sinatra, and that I'm the Antichrist in tight jeans, baby.

<font color="#EE0000" size="1">[ June 11, 2005 06:01 PM: Message edited by: illegal tender ]</font>

<center>"If Morrissey says don't eat meat, then I'll eat meat, because I hate Morrissey." -- Robert Smith.</center>

<center>CAGE MATCH: ROBERT SMITH VS. STEVEN PATRICK MORRISSEY</center>


That was about how far he'd gotten, before the phone jolted him from his twisted fantasy world that revolved around socket-frayed haircuts and curious pompadours. Tracy couldn't make it easy on himself and just stand up, he had to half-drip from his seat, until he was straddling the chair with his stomach, pawing for the vintage cherry-red phone whimpering on its cradle. By the time he knocked it off the hook and pressed it to his ear, a dial-tone sang a flatlining lullabye to him. The sides of his mouth drooped in a frown, and murmurs ran raw.

He didn't like computers because breakthrough gonzo journalists (even though this was hardly 1963) didn't have access to Windows XP and porn clotting their hard-drives, so he didn't mind clattering away and trashing paper whenever he made a mistake. His fingers attacked the keys again in a prancing symphony. A self-rolled cigarette jutted from the the groove of his thick mouth. He was completely naked save his argyle socks and the black scarf (with chalky stripes) twirled around his throat. The phone was still gasping off-the-hook, but once he was in a zone, it was hard to break him.

He turned to acknowledge the body strewn on his bed. It was Morrissey, of course. No, not Morrissey of the Smiths--- just this young boy, about twenty-years-old, who collected comic books, and liked peanut butter ice-cream. He was glowing in his slumber, because Tracy managed to deftly wedge a pillow in his place in the knot of his pale, scrawny arms.

"Finished---on the verge of it, in fact, my sloe-eyed little drysheet teddybear." Tracy was being affectionate. "I'd close the window because the air is damp, but the moon's giving off a supergroovy vibe tonight. Y'know?"

Morrissey didn't reply.

Tracy shrugged. "Figured as much. You're not a garrulous sleeper. I'm almost done---almost. At the part where ...."

A stream of light flooded in the white room, and the nurse shoved her nose through the crevice, examining the two sleeping bodies. The room was shadowed, and the moon came in strong and white through the blinds. She watched Tracy stir nude beneath the sheets (it was so hard for them to keep him dressed --he didn't like white sweatshirts and drawstring pants) and tossed him a wry smile when she felt his eyes burn on her. She hated this shift. They always looked so peaceful when they slept.

Tracy turned over onto his stomach, the tension-wrought muscles in his winged shoulderblades bannering out.

The air smelled like sick.

<font color="#EE0000" size="1">[ June 11, 2005 06:00 PM: Message edited by: illegal tender ]</font>