I'm tall tonight--over two meters, I'd guess, though that's not extraordinary in our world. Many people here, though not all, evolved from dinosaurs not mammals. I still have two legs, but with clawed birdlike feet. And a tail. No clothes, but scales. Proud of my elegant coloring: jade green on my back, paling to white on my flanks and belly, to rose on my breast and neck.

A saurian friend of mine has been upset about something lately. He's been getting moody, impulsive, even violent. I fear I may have to fight him to protect our more fragile human friends. By custom, this should be a fistfight, which means no use of your hindclaws. You can slash with your foreclaws, because these cuts rarely go deep, but it's considered cheating to leave the spurs or spikes on your knuckles--because of their position, a solid punch can leave deep puncture wounds prone to infection. Traditionally, duelers file them down to blunter cones before a fight--still capable of painful cuts, but nothing deep.

So I look around for a useful scraper, and finally pull the white spiral seashell off the head of my friend Dawn's giant statue of a bug. I'll fix the statue later. I use the shell's ridges to scrape down the spurs on the back of my knuckles. I'm thorough about it. File and file, pare down past the usual cones to bumps, and file on, trying to flatten even the white nubs.

Reluctant to fight my friend. I trance out, scraping nervously, trying to think of a way to restrain him peaceably.

Ow! Come back to my body to find my knuckles are sore and bleeding. I'm so upset I went too far--I've scraped down my spurs entirely, and now I'm grinding away at my knucklebones.

I'm so worried about fighting fair, now I'm trying to file my fingers off!

NOTES

• Scaly person, sculpture = I just sculpted a Wyvern, a sea-dragon-woman I keep meeting in dreams
• Fear my friend'll flip out = I just saw Relax, It's Only Sex. In it, a gay writer's friends fear he's crazy after he bashes a gay-basher. Who, after all, was ready to kill him for fun.
• Shell from Dawn's bug-sculpture = guilt. She gave me a half-done statue of a bug, and I stuck a shell on its head. Felt guilty for messing with her design, though Dawn herself liked it. My guilt persists. You just don't alter others' art!
• White knuckles = Alcoholics Anonymous slang. A "white-knuckle drunk" stays sober only through constant vigilance eating as much time and energy as drinking! Though alcohol-free, it's not real sobriety.
• Snappish friend = In therapy I'm facing my memories of being bashed in school; it's made me snappish.
• Filing my spurs till they bleed: I refused to fight my bullies, partly due to the Gandhian pacifism I believed in, and partly due to a horror of being like them. I still repress my anger, fear my impulses... fear masculinity. Grind it all away!
• ACTION = Quit self-examining! Scraping away my violence has gone too far--has become violence itself, violence TOWARD myself. Enough. Let be.