FIFTEEN: LESSESS AND TESSESS

Lessess and Tessess will bless us with dresses. Lessess and Tessess will accessorize. Lessess and Tessess will jeeze us with shoeses, Lessess and Tessess will dazzle the eyes. They have the dress shop down the hall, they have the dress shop in the mall, they have the dress shop in Pome Town, they’ll find for you the perfect gown. They’ll fit your every curve and curl, they’ll fit for woman and for girl, they’ll fit you if you’re wide as school, they’ll fit you if you’re narrow as drool. They’ll fit you in the perfect dresses, their names are Lessess and also Tessess.

“We’ve got to burn the man out of you, and the best way is with style,” said Lessess.

“Weve got to burn the man out of you with experiences and smile,” said Tessess.

”We’ll make you into womanhood, we’ll find you the right bag,” said Lessess, short and hollow.

“Well make your outside beautiful, your inside ought to follow.”

They pull out their string measures, they pull out miles of cloth, they needle every inch of stitch, and cover up her swath. They show and lead her to the dressing room, they pull the curtain tight, they push on her so many gowns, to find the one that’s right.

Cyclops has to squeeze a little. Cyclops has to squeeze some more. Cyclops wears one set of clothes, she wears the whole dress store.

First she tries the wrong one. Then she tries the right. Forty eyes and forty mirrors enforce the sense of sight.

“I don’t like the way this looks at me or looks on me,” said Cyclops from her heart.

“I think you’re wrong as lawn and we are right as flight,” said Lessess acting smart.

“I don’t think this dress really selects me and reflects me,” said Cyclops with her mouth.

“I think it’s perfect as can be, as perfect as the sea” said Tessess North and South.

Cyclops is humming and hawing while Lessess and Tessess are oohing and awing. Cyclops is second guessing while Lessess and Tessess require only their own opinions. Cyclops is so unsure while the two dress goddesses show off their fabulous fashion confidence.

“You used to be a guy. How should you really know,” said Lessess or said Tessess, and this is enough to make Cyclops a little less so.

“If you say so, if you tell me, if you say so in this city. If you really do think it makes me look pretty,” said Cyclops in a dress of flower garden, in a dress of beg your pardon, in a dress of does it works, in a dress of a thousand quirks, in a dress of sunny weather, in a dress of false cow leather, in a dress of pleats and splashes, in a dress that bats your lashes, in a dress of length and windy, in a dress you might call cindy, in a dress of colors many, in a dress for a day that’s rainy, in a dress for a day any, in a dress for marge or annie.

She wears a dress from the big dress shop and watch the eyes turn, and watch the jaws drop, and watch the nostrils sniff, and watch the ears wiggle, and watch the arms reach, and watch the mouths eat a peach.

Cyclops does leave the dress shop after spending her surgery war pension, and look at her, you would never guess that she was a he, but she is sure walking in some shoes.

And what would Dingy Bahsome think of her in such a dress of color and of cloth?

FOURTEEN: LON LONSON AND SQUIRTS

Lon Lonson was the Mayor and his assistant went by Squirts. They were losing air in City Hall with stacks of permits piling up. Permits for a bigger this and a louder that. Permits for a better so and a less soft of more. Permits for beasts of steel, and how many how many for househows and whos. And so swinglash of more, and so many extra papers of permits of this so’s and able, and all they had to do was stamp them all, apparently that is all that was asked of them to do. To get the permits and stamp them approved.

The permits came from everywhorl, the mail and the snail and the ships and the drips and the walls and the calls and out of the woodwork just as usual, and they got all the permits and they stamped them all OK.

They stamped them and they stamped them and they stamped them all approved. They didn’t take the time to read them, they just stamped them all approved, and there was enough too much work for them anyway, so that is all that was certainly expected.

They ran out of ink but then a permit came with extra ink. They stamped their rubber stamps down to a nub and then a new permit came with an extra rubber stamp. Their four arms got tired of stamping and then a permit arrived packed with extra arms already pumping. The ink squirted up into their eyes and a new permit came with eye cleaning fluids and eye cleaning cloth so they could see to stamp, so they could do their daily City Hall duty.

They stamped so much that they stamped everything else in their life and in their day. They stamped their breakfast lunch and dinner and stamped their loved ones once at home. They stamped the journey to work and back, they stamped during happy hour and at some funerals too. They stamped and they stamped like they didn’t know what else to do.

When Cyclops came into City Hall to file a permit to change for official from he to she, they stamped her on the forehead just as ink as they could be.

“What can we do for you, She-Cyclops,” said Lon Lonson the Mayor with ink on his breath and a stamp at the end of each arm.

“I am now a woman and not a man and not a no-man or an also-ran or a sam I am or a knight of spam. I am not a he but now a she and I must file the proper paperwork, or so I hear, of this I fear,” said Cyclops with her eyes and face and amazing product hair.

Lon Lonson made a stamp or three. Squirts made the stamping two through four. They stamped the walls and windows, floor. They stamped their shirts and stamped the door. They stamped the papers as they came; that’s how they played the permit game.

“You just provide us with the permit and we will stamp it approved,” Lon Lonson, the Mayor, said.

“We will stamp it with our ink and stamps,” said Squirts, and he meant it because he sent it.

“We know how to stamp because we’ve been doing it all our lives. We can stamp out ants and we can stamp bee hives,” said Mayor stamper, the man with the ink.

“We do it best from morn to night, we stamp and then we take a bite,” said Squirts, even tho such stamping sometimes hurts.

Cyclops watched them stamp, but he didn’t have the form to fill out, he hadn’t a clue what he should do about the paperwork.

“Where do I get the form to fill out, where do I get it? Do I have to shout? Is it hereabout?” Cyclops said and his forty eyes blinked.

“How should we know,” said the mayor Lon Lonson, who came from Wisconsin. “All we know is how to approve them.”

And when he took a closer look at She-Cyclops he added,” and did you also file the proper paperwork for having as many as forty eyes, when two is the standard and requires no permit but forty is a little ostentatious, and may be subject to such laws as may be written concerning so many eyes, and you shouldn’t be surprised.”

It was at times like this that Cyclops really thought that, yes, the best of all possible you is in somebody else’s shoes. She got out while she could, before she had to fill out permits and hermits and squirmits all day.

THIRTEEN: STELLA AND BELLA

Stella and Bella, the stylists of dandy, can make war hair and bore hair and gore hair and tore hair and sore hair and roar hair and your hair and more hair and ignore hair and explore hair, and make it cotton candy. Stella and Bella, with scissors and with heat, can make bad hair and sad hair and fad hair and too glad hair and mad hair and rad hair and foo-dad hair and zoozad hair and make it very neat.

They clip and they nip and they tuck and they yuck and they cluck and unluck and they cost you a buck. They curl and unfurl and they purl and they yurl and they spurl and they squirrel and they call you a girl. They smell and they gell and they tell and they yell and they bell and they sell and they work fast as hell. They taste and they waste and they do it post haste and they of head lay waste, and they faste and they saste and they do it unmaced.

Ring the bell if you want to get a sell. Call the line if you want to look so fine. Drop the door if you are getting off the floor. Take a peak if it is hair style that you seek.

“Why why why shy fly try no guy, hello Cyclops,” said Stella.

“You you you you flew true goo sue screw and aren’t you, helloo Cyclops,” said Bella, greeting him over the flying heads and chairs and clipping sounds.

Cyclops tells them hi too and she doesn’t know the story for telling, she doesn’t have to say a soul, for Bella and Stella can guess it from the rat of her Cyclops girl hair, they can read the stories in the strands and the knots and the grease and the gusto and split ends and lack of conditioning in the Cyclops hair, once a guy’s and now a gal’s.

Bella comes ova to take a closa look. She has her scissors to help her look and she uses the handholds like spyglasses, she uses the clippers like a mustache. “I think we can help you, but you have to be satisfied.”

“Yes, the smile makes the hairdo too,” says Stella as she turns one more head from gravy into something victorious of gravity for a change.

“We can snip and we can clip and we can trip and we can dip and we can do, but some of it has to come from you,” says Bella as she wields the iron.

“We can curl and we can surl and we can girl and we can unfurl and we can talk as low as Burl, but it has to come from you too, from you and your hair, you have to stick together like glue,” says the Stella as she raises high the bottle of do or the bottle of die.

“You should be happy with who you are,” says Bella, “even if you’re not exactly who you are.”

And they team up twice in magic, and they pour out their hair talent and they make some bees of busyness and surround the head of Cyclops. They make the hairs all stand on end, with all that participation, with all that anticipation, with their clips and perspiration. They wave their magic wands of curl, they fire their guns of molten air, they take a cut and bring it back, they turn a mountain into hair.

When they are done with her, the new she-Cyclops has a hair of head like no other, she is stunning in the top of the drop department, her all forty eyes can’t stop from seeing herself in the forty mirrors that Bella and Stella have ready for just this occasion, and it is as amazing as war is deadly, and Cyclops, feeling so much more a she now, feels a little bit better to be herself and in this place to be now.

Wouldn’t Dingy Bahsome like hair so fine as mine, and that’s what Cyclops thinks, but this hair is mine all mine.

TWELVE: SCRUNCHYFACE THE ECONORAPTER

When Cyclops returned from surgery war it was revealed that he was now a she, and instead of one simple eye above her nose, she now had forty eyes scattered over all facets and curves of her head.

There was the home door, and that was the first door, and that was the first place, and that was the end of the race. That was the place of return and of rest and of arms and hands and welcome.

In the house of Cyclops there were doors and windows and there was a dark room and there were empty bags of potato chips, many of them in the darkness, in their wrinkles, and also a person, and also the only person there.

The only person was Scrunchyface. He hadn’t shaved for years, and you could barely see his ears.

Scrunchyface was listening in the talking TV turn-on room, but in the light of listening there was some light for seeing too, and in the light for seeing too he could see over the wrinkles of discarded potato chip bags that Cyclops was now very different.

In between the TV and the whiskers and the wrinkle of plastic bags, Scrunchyface could see things about Cyclops, he could see things about his roommate in between all the other distracts. Scrunchyface could see that Cyclops was a changed man. He could see that Cyclops was a no man. He could almost tell that Cyclops was a woman.

His hair was curly his dress was long his eyes were lashes her voice was song. Cyclops was no longer a his, he was a her. Scrunchyface’s mind, well-conditioned by decades of serious TV viewing, could take swell trips, could wander like a wonder, and it wondered if in fact, if it was true, that if there was now a hair forest where once was a swingeroo.

“You are a woman,” said Scrunchyface, so obvious and true.

“And also surprising is that you have forty eyesings,” he said with his face, scrunchy as ever, and never was it said that these words won’t stick to her like glue.

“I have been to surgery war,” said Cyclops. “I have seen the terror at the darkest deep base center of humankind, and maybe I lost some human, and maybe I lost some mind. I am changed, yes, but that is what happens when you serve in surgery war, you can’t help but scar, you must carry them far.”

"I've been changed a little too, just like you, but not quite so whew," said Scrunchyface, washed in the flush of the TV screen, and if you were there you would find it so true that of these two old friends, who was even looking or listening to who.

“Your clothes aren’t very stylish for a girl’s stylish clothes,” Scrunchyface said, and he had so much to compare her to, he had so much TV to make the pictures for him, of comparisons bright and dim. “Your hair still looks like a guy’s hair.”

Cyclops knew that, in fact, her military surgery issue gown was not exactly striking, but she also thought that her own natural complements would come out thru the sundress camouflage, but she realizes it isn’t so, but she thinks it isn’t so.

“How are things on TV, are they good enough for ye?” Cyclops thinks to ask, and asks to think, and he really means it too, but Scrunchyface sure is watching.

“Like I said, when you were a guy like a Fred,” said Scrunchyface with his whole man face, “I have been changed too. I have been changed by TV. I am no longer Scrunchyface the Philosorapter. I am now Scrunchyface the Econorapter.”

“That is good, as good as wood, as good as it could,” Cyclops says, because change is good, even if he doesn’t really believe so.

She leans slightly toward the TV as if in leaning she could see a Dingy, could see a Dingy who would remember he, who would remember she from the TV. But she doesn’t see one, and she doesn’t open her mouth.

Cyclops doesn’t even want to ask Scrunchyface about the exploits of Dingy Bahsome, even tho the Econorapter should really know his share, as much time as he has spent in front of the screen with bright and blare. Cyclops wants to know, she wants the inside to and fro, but she doesn’t want to ask that guy. It’s probably best to just creep out and get her hair done.

ELEVEN: RETURN FROM SURGERY WAR

The road to go home from surgery war is stitched with time, will burn you like lime. The road to go home from surgery war will practice forgetting, and all offs are betting. The road to go home from surgery war is hard as a boulder and makes you grow older. The road to go home from surgery war is long but is under and no short of thunder.

And as you walk home, you see all the billboards and mindsigns that remind you of your time, of that time to remember, that time to remember surgery war, because you have just experienced it, you have just experienced surgery war, and it has made a mark on you as clear as landscrape.

And so someone who has served in surgery war, someone like a Cyclops someone, that someone might just talk out loud about the surgery war experience. Such a someone must talk about it, whether there are any others to hear or to care.

“I served my company in surgery war, I served the sign of the red and blue, I saw the logo-draped coffins, and that made me cry like mother’s milk. I saw bodies mangled by steel and disease, I saw them mangled by surgeon’s skill, I saw augmentation, and reversal of features, and other wonders and shifting of shapes.”

The flash of straight lightning. The corners of crooked night. The lash of your memory forgetory. A strainage kitchen of landscape. That man of mountain walking back and forth like he wonders what you are doing in his cookhouse of geography. If he only had a map, so he could know how much further he had to go and how he was never going to make it.

When Cyclops came to a fork, which tine should Cyclops trust. When Cylcops comes to a trust, which fork should Cyclops tine. When Cyclops comes to a tine, which trust should Cyclops fork. If only there were signs, like a speckled turtle, or a lady frog walking with her cane.

“Maybe I should take all the good advice and turn back the clock and just return to wicker furniture making and TV expectating. Maybe I should be happy in a certain set of shows and not walk so much to other pain of who’s.”

Cyclops says this on such a road, and who wouldn’t, really, say it out loud when there was no reason to say it out loud, or louder. He can say it out loud as if Dingy Bahsome could hear it, but there is no way that she can hear it. He can talk to himself or to no others. Or is it better to sing it when it is such a song, such a song of go home, such a song of never being there.

Home could be where you roam

But mostly home is just plain home

I do not have a home

If I am only roaming

Unless my home is Rome

And I would be a Roman

And if a Cyclops does get home after the trauma and drama and slama and wrongma of surgery war, then how does a town of rhymers greet such a return of tall post-trauma post-treama post-dreama Cyclops. Are they there with minds and doors open, with flowers and howars and towers with wowers, or are they there with windows and sindows and flindows and grindows and other awfuls closed sad and shut and tut tut ta-rut. Cyclops doesn’t know a guess, Cyclops can’t for the life of him expect to know, he just has to go, he just has to go, and get set for the show, and prepare high and low.

FIRST INTERMISSION

The residents of Pome Town, along with all their agents, invite you to join them in a chorus or two of “The Song of the Importance of Individuality for the Creation of Collective Wealth.”

I am exactly who I am

And you are the same too

And he is she and she is he

And we are we, the whole damn crew

You are the only one of you

And I am just the same

That’s how we market everyone

So no one takes the blame

I am real good at being me

And you are good at you

Create a phrase for a billboard

Or better, make up two

Let us develop marketing

To sell your holy soul

And when the cameras turn to you

Enact your one true role

Here is the sales pitch that you are

I’m sure you know it well

Your body odor was replaced

With that sweet success smell

I am exactly who I am

And you are the same too

And he is she and she is he

And we are we, the whole damn crew

Intermission part B

Oops! Somebody left the door open and the writer got out

And now he’s up and talking to the noman and the woman and the going to and fro man and the got a seed to sowman and the snowman and the flowman. He’s talking to the one man and the twoman and the sixman and the got to pick up sticks man and the flicks man and the tricks man. He’s talking to the plowman and the wowman and the owman and the put out every eyeman and the tryman and the fryman. He’s talking to the youman and the booman and the Truman and the go to watch the zooman and the flewman and the glueman. He’s talking to the urksman and the turksman and the gurksman and the has to bling a blurks man and the worksman and the murksman. He’s talking the swooshman and the gooshman and the blooshman and the take a tip from rooshman and the tooshman and the slooshman.

And he’s telling them to give him a break, to try to stay awake, to not make so big earthquake. He’s telling them to wait and to not so cogitate. He’s telling them he’s sorry and he’s worry and a little twirly. He’s asking their forgiveness and their tivness and smortivness. After all, he says, this is pretty much like a first draft. After all, there’s not a lot of second thought. After all, this is just a lark, isn’t it, just some sturm and some drang and some flash in the pang, just something to do with some morning brain. So give him a break, give me a stake, take a heaven’s sake, sheesh!

NINE: THE ROAD TO SURGERY WAR

To find the road to surgery war, you follow the surgery war road signs. To find the signs to surgery war road, you follow the signs that point to the signs. To find the signs that point to the signs you follow the signs that point to the pointing. To find the signs that point to the pointing, the best way to find them is just ask the question, just ask someone, just ask someone, just ask someone or some two or too.

Cyclops asks a little bit, Cyclops asks a lot in fact. He asks the audience every time, should I go left, should I go right, should I go back or strain in forward, but the audience doesn’t care or comment, it just want to watch the smash up.

The road is the road to surgery war, the road is the road both straight and curving, the road has its whiskers and even its face, and when you forget it, there still is a trace.

The road has an ode that is all about road, and if you plant seeds there, you say you have sowed, and if it is bended, it might just be bowed, and if you must carry, you call it a load, and if one is pushing, you call it a goad, and if you are jumping you might be a toad, so take this here road, you follow the road.

Cyclops with his name for code, his feet for mode, his body for load, he takes to the road, and sings it its ode. He sings the road song, and he sings sight and wrong.

How many roads

Must I walk to walk this road

How many roads

Could there be

The answer my friend

Is far too many roads

The answer is far too many roads.

And the road was bad, and the road was many, and the road was twists, and the road was other old-fashioned dances, and the road was dinner, but there was no sustenance, and the road was quite itself, as far away as the furthest dream of middle night.

And he thought so much of Dingy Bahsome, and he thought of the she who was guiding him to flee, and he thought of the her who made him want so pure, and he thought of the image that made him want to go to surgery war.

She was light the light in the road night and he danced in his mind, and he danced with her picture, and they were brain partners and she took him by the Cyclops hand down this road.

It got darker and much worse, and then he heard the bombing, and then he heard the scalpels, and he wanted to go back, he wanted to just turn and turn around, he wanted to turn turn turn for he could smell the burn burn burn, the small the big the loud the stench the rumble the bumble the bee the scree of burning flesh, and cut and blood, and he wanted to walk backwards, but he told himself forwards, and it was Dingy Bahsome that kept him in the war direction, the thought of her, the bought of her, the shape of her, the inside ape of her, and he stayed his course, he kept to the road.

It was dark, it was mangy, it was dungy it was tony, but still he slogged his walk walk walk, and to keep himself aroused and impressed, he made a brain inside talk talk talk. And to keep his spirits, and to keep it up, and to keep his brain in tact, he made a dinner commencement speech. And the thing that he repeated, and the story that he told, was the advice he got from Scrunchyface, no matter if it was young or old. And this advice, which he said to himself on the road and in his brain, was as simple as a simple, was just words but just enough, and he said it to himself, and he said it over and over again like marching footsteps, “The best of all possible you is in somebody else’s shoes.”