I might need to get out a little more. Not out of the house. I have sunburn and splotches of suntan in inexplicably random spots to prove that I get out of the house plenty. I need to get out of my way. Out of my life. Out of my (cliché alert!) comfort zone. My potentials mostly take the form of sitting here, on this spot, waiting. Waiting for what I do not know. I like this comfortable chair, the air conditioner, the terrabytes of FLAC music into which I daily dip, and the virtually endless supply of enormously oversized underwear that fills my drawers (hah). Some say I should travel, but why? And where? I think travel mostly exists in the mind, not in the movement of the body from one place to another. Or do I? Lately I think life is about the body: this inferior vessel which I stopped inspecting at the cessation of adolescence. How does it look to others? What conclusions are drawn when I step into a room? Where does the dismission go? I have a story. At a funeral for a friend I noticed a hot babe walk into the church and, later, into the catering hall for the reception. I had never seen her and I heaped some posthumous scorn on my dead friend for not introducing me to his attractive young female friend. G. was an older man when he died and most of the people at his funeral were older men who I either knew or knew of. So this hottie had me puzzled. Who was she? I knew G. for 10 years and somehow I never knew there was a hot babe in his coterie. I was checking her out but not too earnestly since her boyfriend was a monstrous dude who could crush me like a bug. She and I almost made eye contact when she turned to leave. At the instant she turned to leave my jaw dropped, gaped, involuntarily opened wide enough for a Parc Lincoln pigeon to fly in as my eyes opened even wider. That woman, I realized, used to be Henry. Henry and I were acquaintances. Henry was about my age when I heard from G. and the others in his circle that he had gone all the way with sex change. I had never known a person who changed their gender and when I later thought about my baffled, stupid stare it made me see that a person’s gender changes everything you think about them when they step into a room or into your life. Everything. I later heard Henry (under her new name) on the radio. She sounded husky. As a man I remember Henry’s voice as thin. As a woman that same human being’s voice sounded gruff. I do not think it was the same voice. As a woman Henry’s voice really was deeper then when she was a man. Why do I remember this now? I may need to get out more but I do not need to get out that much. I thought about Henry today when I imagined myself stepping into dangerous places. Confrontational places. Places where people stare. Places where people See You. These places are, probably, everywhere, but I continue to imagine myself invisible.