"The Collection"

"Please," I said. "Don't take me away. I was brought up in a Shaker family, and am now an accompanist. I drive a Volkswagon and skim across life."

("The Collection" was published in the Yale Undergraduate Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.)

"Interests"

He has close-cut greenish-black hair like oil and feathers, and his toenails are uncut, so that when he cradles his legs round either side of my wide mountainous hips he leaves little indents that look like paw-marks or bird-talon tracks.

"Alexis"

Once things get old they have value, unless of course they're people. Old people are the immunoblots of America. "Ee-myoon-oh-BLOT", she'd shout, loud, louder, loudest.

"Fan"

Certain versions of me were used by early 19th-century prostitutes to contain hidden knives, which were released by pressure on a secret panel.

"Fire Witches"

My greatest fear has always been of fire. My house burning down. All my carefully collected personal space in flames.

"'Skirting the Edge': Costume, Masquerade, and the Plastic Body in Blade Runner"

"The 'Nature' of the Female Cyborg: Evidence of Will in the Mechanical Woman"

(A German translation of the above essay was published with permission in SCIENCE FICTION OKULAR, a Science Fiction fanzine for the SF Club NRW in Germany.)