"It only gets better from here on," Alex repeats over and over to himself as he crouches in the alley. As his heart slows and he becomes aware of his surroundings once more he realises that he has lost the two men who were chasing him. He wishes he could believe what he's telling himself with such desperation, words tripping over each other in a steady flow, a statement becoming a plea becoming something almost like a prayer. Bitterness rises as he thinks of how easy it must be to be straight, to have access to the results of all those millenia of normalising pressures. He imagines hundreds of generations of lies being told to people like him, the compacted layers of deceit stinking like the trash in the alley -- lies about what is natural, about what is permissible, ultimately about what is possible. As the light from the setting sun fades he finally decides to leave this small town and go to the city. "Desire is the art of the possible," he thinks to himself w