I want a New Drug, One that won't Spill, One that don't Cost Too Much, or Come in a Pill
“Kekulé dreams the Great Serpent holding its own tail in its mouth, the dreaming Serpent which surrounds the World. But the meanness, the cynicism with which this dream is to be used. The Serpent that announces, 'The World is a closed thing, cyclical, resonant, eternally-returning,' is to be delivered into a system whose only aim is to violate the Cycle. Taking and not giving back, demanding that 'productivity' and 'earnings' keep on increasing with time, the System removing from the rest of the World these vast quantities of energy to keep its own tiny desperate fraction showing a profit …”
Pynchon, Thomas. (1973). Gravity's Rainbow. Viking Press.
__________
Ignoring the angry voice of Mrs. Johnson on the other side of Kaitlyn Johnson's bedroom door, Jacob immediately and adamantly refused to do the homework of a middle school girl. He might be stuck wearing her shirt, overalls, and … god knows what else but, shuddered Jacob, he wasn't really thirteen-year old Kaitlyn Johnson: baby sister of the girl he had a crush on. And he'd be damned if he'd sit here and patiently do Kaitlyn's homework just because his “mom” had commanded it be so.
“I'm getting out of here,” he muttered, awkwardly adjusting the training bra that clung uselessly to his flabby but mostly flat, masculine chest.
The window!
It was the only way, as Mrs. Johnson would obviously be guarding the hall and stairs. Kaitlyn was precocious handful – which is a euphemistic way of saying she regularly disobeyed parental edicts, school regulations, town ordinances, and (if it suited her) acts of congress. Kaitlyn was the closest thing Jacob knew to a Force of Nature condensed into adolescent female form. Amusing (and annoying) as that normally was, right now it was particularly bothersome as Jacob had become (for all practical purposes) Kaitlyn. And whatever guards and sentinels had been set in place to thwart her, now equally applied to him.
Which left (hopefully) the window. Was it possible that a person could climb out the window and safely shinny down a drain pipe to safety on terra firma below, just as heroes routinely do in movies, television shows, and comic books?
The alternative, it seemed, was spending the night doing Kaitlyn's homework, then eating dinner with her family, and ultimately putting on her pajamas and sleeping in her bed. Then what? Go to middle school the next morning as a thirteen-year old girl?
Jacob sighed in disgust and looked down again at what he perceived as his normal, male body – completely clad in the attire of Kaitlyn.
“Everything else sees me as her,” he said.
That settled it.
The worse thing the window had to offer was a slip and a fall and … what? … maybe a broken leg?
“I'll take my chances!”
What do you do now?
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