My job is simple--to judge the caravans of supplicants who cross the wastes, to beg me for a franchise.

One morning, while I'm still in my bathrobe, a team shows up led by a lanky ponytailed girl. I've heard of her, of course. Her stats are spectacular, but no existing team will hire a woman. Baseball diamonds aren't a girl's best friend. So... she assembled her own team!

They're... unnerving. A home plate with eyes, walking around on legs like a diamond lozenge; a sort of octopus outfielder with five arms; a batman, and I don't mean a Caped Crusader; a fat man made of baseballs, each muscle-bulge with that distinctive seam; a catcher with no legs, indeed no body, just the gear, animated by some spook peering out the mask; and creepiest of all, her Uncle Bee, a dwarf with one arm missing and the other a thalidomide stump at the elbow; he has one huge Cyclops eye and sharp cannibal teeth. He extends his flipper and says "Hey, yow ya doin', Commish'? Wunnaful t'meetcha, wunnaful!" I think "What sharp little teeth he has! I wonder how he catches the ball?" then realize I've answered my own question.

I collapse into my official Baseball Commissioner seat, a rolling chair stuffed to look like a giant mitt.

Uncle Bee hops on my leg like a manic toddler, and gives me the pitch. "We're ready to play ball RIGHT NOW! We want Poughkeepsie! We'll call ourselves the Mutants!"

I said "Mmmm" And tug my robe shut nervously, thinking "His eye is so creepy. Why am I prejudiced?" But am I? Why's he sitting on my leg? If an ordinary guy did that, I'd slap him off...

"Poughkeepsie?" says the baseball girl. "Wait a minute... we agreed on Honolulu!"

"Bullshit" yells home plate. "Pocatello!"

"And I say," as the living bat advances on Uncle Bee with a flyswatter, "we're the Gimps."

"Any fool can see we're the Des Moines Deformed!" snaps the ghost in catcher's armor.

The octopus roars "The Corpus Christi Crips!" and starts choking the bat.

"That's 'Crippish-American', buddy!" growls the base, as it grabs one of Uncle Bee's antennae. Bee's got Baseball Girl down on the floor, as she hisses "Uncle Bee, you sting me and I'll rip your THING off!"

Meanwhile the bat-man's whacking the ball-man around the room as they yell over and over

"THE FRESNO FUCKUPS!"

"THE JERSEY JERKS!"

I finally lose my temper and yell louder than any of them. "HEY! Hey! All RIGHT! Enough! I've decided on your franchise petition. Now SIDDOWN!"

They pause, at least, in heaps on the floor, and sit. Mostly on each other, but they sit.

I raise my finger and scold them like children. "You can't play ball till you quit fighting!"

Uncle Bee, hovering near my knees, trying to peer up my bathrobe, says "Aw, you're just prejudiced against mutants like ALL you normal people!"

"Uncle BEE!" gasps the baseball girl. She's a sweet kid, I'm sorry to have to defer her dream like this. But my gaze comes back to Uncle Bee, still ogling my thighs. I growl "NORMAL, is it?"

I stand up, all the way up. I'm a tall woman, and taller when I'm mad. My hair crackles with energy and nearly brushes the ivory ceiling, as I spread my robe like wings and flash the little bastard. He pings in surprise back from a bee to a man, well, a monster at least. He's got a hard-on anyway and his flipper is flapping and his little shark teeth are snapping like he wants to bite a piece outa luscious me. Dream on!

"Get an eyeful, Cyclops!" I yell. "I'm the FIRST woman commissioner of baseball...tonight! Tomorrow, I'll probably wake up as a MAN! I don't even stay the same fucking SEX! I'm an anorexic with an IQ of 200, I'm allergic to every food humans EAT on this stupid planet, and my sexual orientation is to UNICORNS! Now... tell ME about... 'normal.'"

That did it. They meekly troop down the spiral stair. The last to go, of course, are Uncle Bee and his niece. His needle grin's already back. He says "We'll be..." but his niece interrupts "I'm so sorry! I thought ALL teams fought like--" Uncle Bee turns away but reaches back to part the hair on the back of his head to reveal a second huge eye, and he guffaws "... seein' MORE of each other!"

Down the stair I hear her protest "Uncle Bee..." but we both recognize an irresistable force. I just hope she's one too.

The worst part is, all that stuff I blurted out was TRUE.

Only... I lied to you, I didn't really flash the little monster. I had the urge, but I didn't quite dare to go that far in telling him off! Scared he might really try to stick that sharp little thing in me... or bite. But after he flashed his BACK eye at me, I wished I had blown up at him personally, not just drawn the line about teamwork. So I added my wish... hoping it'll affect me the next time we meet. Oh, there'll be a next time--that's the one line of his I believe.

But even more than I wish I'd squashed him a little harder, I wish... I wish I knew who I'll become, when they DO all learn to cooperate!

MORNING NOTES

• Tower of spiral horn =
  1. Lighthouse with spiral stair on Dr Who, which I saw before bed. Monsters crawled up the stairs...
  2. Wind Tower in Patricia McKillip's Harpist in the Wind--home of a brilliant but vulnerable being who needed an inviolable refuge up its spiral stair.
  3. The horn's spiral twist hints it's alicorn, narwhal ivory. It was thought to be from unicorns, and have healing powers.
• I'm female, bathrobe = On Babylon-5, Ivanova and Talia slept together, the first lesbian couple I've seen on American TV. Playing ball in the big leagues here probably means sex, dating, falling in love. (First base, second base, third base, SCORE!)
• Mutants, Cyclops: aliens on "Babylon-5". One ambassador looks molluscan, with a central eye and a thalidomide stalk-arm-flipper.
• Cyclops: in Greek myth he was a cannibal--and Uncle Bee's triangular teeth and the eye in the back of his head also resemble the people-eaters in Heinlein's "Have Space Suit--Will Travel." All the signs are, Uncle Bee is REAL trouble! Plus he enjoyed creeping me out--not quite sadism but close. On the other hand, I recently saw "Deep Space 9": Mog became the first Ferenghi (small, ugly, toothy people) to enter Starfleet Academy, even though his Uncle Quark tried to sabotage his exams. So maybe Uncle Bee's just Quark--a meddler & schemer, but no murderer. Just my Inner Sleazeball.

2000 NOTE

Years before Ellen De Generes ignited a fundamentalist firestorm, Babylon-5 showed this lesbian couple routinely, with no public outrage...

MORAL: fundies don't watch science fiction, so go ahead and say what you like--no one will notice.

We'll see if it's true of shamanic websites, too.

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