Sagebrush sweeps up to the Ruby Range. I work in my cramped trailer office, up on cinderblock. The ranch accountant, I pass as human, but my earliest memory's being a horse. Years on two feet, but I'm still more of an equine soul than a man. A hand strides in. Jokes "It's time to sell my ass." Despite Nevada's prostitution rep, it's a pun-- he has a glum mule he hopes to foist on uranium miners. Repeats it, man-drawl edging into mock. Did he spot how some mares look hotter to me than our few cowgirls? Do they all gossip, laugh at furvert me? Maybe I should just give up my human guise for stallionity again. But I bet the men'll treat me as a feral to be shot, or a thing: ranch property. And I know myself. As a horse, I'd start to run from those fair mares, and pine for some two-leg girl. Oh, that brain! those thumbs! I'd leap fences to sniff after her. Aside from language trouble, there's my overness in size. And sighs. Always I long for whoever's wrong for my current form--man, equine, whatever I happen. Love-sabotage! I'm ready for Sage. And really sick of Pine.

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Ruby Range: not totally sure it was this one, but one of the north-south ranges of Central Nevada.
• Human jokes about furry sex:
  1. in my Shakespeare seminar, my classmates reading A Midsummer Night's Dream just couldn't get over Bottom and Titania. Endless ass jokes.
  2. I showed my girlfriend Cheryl an experiment painted comic, Utopia; she enjoyed the furry aspect and grasped the pages about borrowing animal traits to improve humans; those pages just puzzled many of my classmates. Human supremacists! Other species got nothin' to teach wonderful us...
• Hide my real self: In our art design class tomorrow, it's my turn for critique; I'm showing a comic book, Polygon Dreams; its stories are VERY personal--full of dreams, furries, nudity & sex. Even my fine-art classmates found my dream-art odd; these design students are commercial artists.
• ACTION: if my classmates mock the furry sexual aspects of Polygon Dreams tomorrow, don't take it to heart!
• Sage versus pine: my dreams like puns. Sage: wise, wild, austere. Pine: pining, longing, feeling sorry for myself.
• ACTION: Quit this make-sure-love-is-unrequited game. It's frustrating for you and can't be fun for them.

Off to my "Experimental Art" class--but it really isn't! The teacher's into industrial design and the students are commercial artists and product designers--except one. I draw dream comics. As they sing on Sesame Street, "One of these things is not like the others, one of these things doesn't belong..."

Not just a tough crowd to show painfully personal art. Showing it's a challenge. How can I let a whole class read a single comic in 10-15 minutes? I only finished it late last night, and printed one color copy. Even if I had time, I can't afford to print many. Color's pricy.

Solution: I lay out black cloth on a line of waist-high worktables, then a slightly winding path of scattered leaves--the 32 pages of Polygon Dreams: cover, intro, Try Angles, Pentalemma, City of Bees, Freedom Through Boxes with new intro (and in color for first time), Spirography my spiral bio, then my conclusions about shapes, and for a back cover, The Unigon.

Polygon Dreams cover

Try Angles

Pentalemma page 12

City of Bees page 3

Freedom through Boxes page 6

Spirography (author bio)

The Unigon back cover

Oh, they are experimental design--they explore how the shape of comix panels--triangle, pentagon, hexagon, square, spiral, and circle, respectively--affect the storytelling. And the audience. My teacher privately asked me to risk showing some comics to shake up his conventional students a bit. I don't mind the challenge--spurred me to finish the piece!

But... while it's a healthy stretch for them, does this critique shortchange me? Can they really assess such material intelligently? No. They struggle even to absorb such a massive ambitious project. Read? Skim? Just look at the pictures? I suggest "Read the intro and one short piece, then just look at the layouts."

My classmates cluster around City of Bees and Spirography, the boldest geometric pieces; Vic the teacher's favorite is Boxes, for its restrained palette and simple grid. It figures--Vic loves boxes and repetition. It's my unloved stepchild, for just those reasons--I find boxes dull. True, those airless constraints wrung deep confessions out of me. But any deeper than the lush fantasies of Pentalemma or the acerbic dream-oracle in City of Bees?

Just as my dream last night warned, the most negative comment is sexual: "the nudity and miniskirts in Pentalemma objectify women"... from a man. I ask if he actually READ it. No, just glanced! So he doesn't even know that woman in the dream was ME. Subject not object. I wonder if he's really bothered not by the skin but the fur; "women are mere animals"?

Oh, don't speculate. Let it go. Let him go. Them go.

The dream warned I do this--look for love & appreciation outside my own kind. I'm not just outside the mainstream; I'm not very human. Do I really expect kindred spirits among commercial designers? Or in this college at all? Get real!

NEXT YEAR

Cheryl & I broke up soon after. I was attracted to her strong animal energy--sohhh not human! But she needed a boyfriend glued to her at the hip; I need lots of quiet time alone. Too... feral. Hard to break lifelong outsider habits.

TEN YEARS LATER

Even then I suspected it was more than habit--it was hardwired autism. Now I know. A mutant gene gave me Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome; not all with EDS are Aspies, but all three siblings in my family have both EDS and Aspie perceptions.

It's genetic. I need DAYS of solitude. Oversocializing sickens me, literally. Much of what I thought was 'habit' or 'self-image' was genetic difference--and not gonna change.

I can either snap & snarl at the weird genetic cards I was dealt, or accept the vast gulf with grace. I dream I'm not human because, in many vital ways, I'm not. And never was.

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