"Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke. That's their natural and first weapon. She will need her sisterhood." ~ Gloria Marie Steinem

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After have been summarily banished to the living with a Aces for far too long. Where I am forced to wait for the war council to conclude convoke of crazy. But I can still hear the Irish whispering her evil plots and plans into May's innocent soul. With a healthy helping of her old world pearls of wisdom, that quite frankly I find rather unhelpful. Pretty sure at this point, even the Celestial kitchen demons who war with her on the regular are scratching their horns in confusion. As they too try to figure out just what the hell the unholy Irish Antichrist is up to this time?

"I was just telling Aces that the more I get to know you, May Belle? The more I realized that my preconceived notions regarding you were wrong. Not bad, not good ...just wrong."

This is coming from the woman who is always right in her righteousness? Who has never ever been wrong in her whole entire life ...just ask her? Aces seems even more stunned by this revelation of wrongness than I am. If the rapid blinking of his old war-weary eyes is anything to go by?

"I couldn't quite put my finger on it at first, until I saw the two of your together outside. Then it hit me ...you're still a little girl in the eyes of a lot of people May Belle. Your blindness aside, it's your diminutive size. Combined with your overall style of dressing, and your little girls bobby-sox haircut." Irish rocks her crazy crown to the side, trying to feel her way through this new found wrongness thing she has recently revealed.

"Now whether your appearance is your choice or your mothers? And in combination with that sweet little voice of yours? It all practically screams 'I'm a little girl take care of me'. Which makes people not take you seriously as a young lady. One who knows her own mind, and can make her own decisions regarding her own life."

"When I realized that I held these preconceived notions about you? I also realized that it's because you've been playing that game for quite some time, haven't you?" Irish inquires almost innocently.

"Allowing people to be nice to you at their own expense is far easier than trying to convince them that you're your own girl, with her own hopes and dreams. Rather than to constantly have to fight with the life they expect you to have, whether they like it or not. And if I had to make an educated guess, that probably worked well for you, right up until you met that one?"

"Darren doesn't look at things the same way the rest of us do. Probably because he is more off-kilter than most." Irish scowls in consternation at this proclamation. "He comes from a very strange little place in the world. Where the people he knows are very very different than the ones we are used to around here. So he sees the things that the rest of us take for granted. But he also tends to miss all the subtle nuances, that the rest of us all know without thinking about. I'd bet my bottom dollar, he saw right through to you and called you right out."

"Am I wrong, May Belle?" She eyes May, waiting for even more of this so-called wrongness to reveal its ugly head.

"No, you're not wrong, Miss Irish. But you're not quite right either." May slowly shakes her head and sighs. "Not to be disagreeable, but I don't really think you have an idea what it's like to be treated as retarded. To be placed into a special class full of mentally challenged kids and be treated like your handicapped, based on nothing other than the fact that you can't see the sky."

"As far as dreams go?" May smiles demurely. "Most people can't even believe I have actual dreams. So how could I possibly have dreams of my own?"

"Now as far as demanding equality?" She shakes her head sadly. "I spent years trying to do just that. Without understanding the consequences of being the nail that stands up, as you said."

"And you know what all that got me?" May inquires coldly. "Sent away to a blind boarding school, because I was quote-unquote 'constantly being difficult'."

"So when I was mainstreamed again, I made demands to participate in my classes to learn things? I was labeled a spoiled little rich bitch. Sorry for the language Irish, but those were their words, not mine. I was told that the sole reason I was even at a 'normal school', instead of down at the special school? Was only because my parents are supposed wealthy in comparison to other people?"

"So to answer your implication? Yes, I've cultivated certain, shall we say, outward qualities? Adopted ones that perhaps don't exactly reflect who I really am on the inside. But can you really blame me for using what skills I possess to survive school?"

"No, I cannot." Irish agrees, a little too easily for my tastes.

"You see, one of the things I learned in blind boarding school was how not to be a victim. One way is to go around blindly yelling, I am not a victim! The other way not to be a victim is to use everything you have at your disposal to your advantage." May smiles contritely, pleased to reveal her own secret identity to the Antichrist.

"I'll let you a secret that I learned years ago, that has served me well." May starts to share a secret with the devil herself. "People only want to see smiling blind people like Steve Wonder. Then they find smiling blind people comforting, instead of troubling."

"That smiling belies some inner happiness. As if we possess some secret serenity, or some great big secret karmic blind truth?" May frowns down at her twisting fingers. "Like God took away our sight and gave us some special insight, like second sight?"

"But what most people often forget is that Stevie's smile was like his name, all part of his stage act. When in fact, his real name was not Stevie Wonder, but Stevland Hardaway Morris. Little Stevie Wonder was a character he invented for himself. It also bears pointing out, he was the same man who wrote Tears of the Clown. If you understand the reference and the relevance?"

"Somewhat so, but do tell it your way." Irish nods along with her new insight.

"Now if there's a smile on my face, it's only there trying to fool the public..." May sings sorrowfully to get her point across.

"...but when it comes down to fooling you, now honey that's quite a different subject." Irish finishes equally as morose. "Yes, I can see where that kind of cultivation, would tend to come in very handy at times."

"Well, I will give you kids one thing." Irish smirks wryly. "You are certainly leading far far more interesting lives than anyone has given you credit for."

"Now may I ask you a direct question, Miss Irish?" May's smile evaporates.

"Of course, you can." The Irish Antichrist waits in anticipation for the next fight.

"What exactly do you and Aces intend to do, in regards to our so-called interesting life?" May smirks slightly.

"Why, help you keep getting away with the charade of course." Irish bursts out laughing like the evil demonic entity I know her to be. "But you, my clever little lady, have got to start figuring out how not to need my help going forward. If not for my sake, then for your own."

"But tell me something for my own curiosity, May Belle." Irish pauses thoughtfully. "This thing between you and Darren...how did this startup exactly? Because Pat told me that when she asked the boy why he was having lunch with you? He claimed that you were the only one he knew at school? But the more I thought about that, the more that didn't make any sense to me, until now. So out with it, what do I not know that I need to know about all this with you two?"

"We met at the Annex during the summer, where Darren was working as a lifeguard." May deflects the true truth, with an omission.

"But there's more to that isn't there?" Irish keys in the missing omission. "Because as far as I can tell he doesn't make friends, least not around here anyhow?"

"Someone said something to me he didn't like. Darren said something to them that they didn't like. So they left...and after Darren and I talked?"

"So he acted the savage and they ran away. But instead of chasing them down, he stuck around to make sure you got to where you needed to be?" Irish quickly puts to and two together.

"Something like that." May deflects away from the actual altercation in question.

"I learned something recently, that I think you might benefit from going forward, May Belle." Irish instructs her on the care and feeding of savages. "When you bring a savage home to civilized folks. You don't warn the savage to behave himself...you warn the civilized folks to behave. Because according to Aces anyway, savages know savage ways of solving problems that civilized folks have long forgotten. So I am counting on you miss Moxie, to warn the civilized folks the next time there is a problem to solve."

"Oh Irish, he's not that bad for a wild thing." May starts to snicker wickedly.

"You keep telling yourself that enough, May Belle, that might even turn out to be true ...someday?" Irish snorts in clear disagreement. "But thankfully for both of us, today is not that day."

"Are you aware he never lies." May muses.

"Please child," Irish snorts derisively in the local custom. "Show me a man who doesn't lie, and I'll show you one without a tongue."

"It's true," May smirks right back. "Oh, I'm not saying that he doesn't omit things when it's more convenient to do so. But I'm talking about lying lying. That he does not do...ever. Have you ever caught him in a lie about anything, ever?"

"As a matter of fact...." Irish starts to say something contrary but suddenly stops short.

"Yes, back when he was a boy before his father died. The normal kid's stuff, the proverbial hand in the cookie jar, sort of things. But he changed a lot after his father died. We all did, and not for the better, I think." Irish eyes her sky gods askance at the mere thought of changing for the betterment of her hellish kind.

"But enough of all that nonsense for now, we have a war to win." Irish stands tall and starts to order around her new acolyte of insanity. "So now I need you to show me exactly how this little mayfly recorder of yours works. So that when the time comes to fight dirty, I can use that little man's words against him. Then ram that sanctimonious little sheet righteously right down their throats."

I relax a little at this final declaration of death on those that would dare to war with the devil. To be honest, this recently "wrong" nicer version of the Irish Antichrist was really starting to wyrd me out more than just a little. Now that her righteous rage of rightness on all things great and small has returned with a vengeance. I find some small modicum of comfort in the familiar hellish glare blazing in her baleful green banshee eyes. Something along the lines of the devil you know is much better than the nice one you don't trust? And the one thing I know only too well about the Irish Antichrist is that she just loves to be right in a fight. Just ask her, and she will tell you all about how righteously right she is about everything ever.

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