The opulent concert hall was filled to standing room only. The house lights dimmed, the crowd became quiet, the velvet curtains opened, and there stood a Steinway concert grand piano. Ralph McCasslin, the celebrated artist, walked onto the stage and things were so quiet that not even the breathing of the enormous audience could be heard. He sat down to the glistening piano and his muscular, hairy hands attacked the keyboard with such power and accuracy that the hall was filled with glorious sound. Chopin, Debussy, Lizst, and Rachmaninoff combined couldn't write music too difficult for him to play. His fingers flew so fast that they were merely a blur. And when the concert ended the audience rose as one, cheering and crying. Horowitz himself came onto the stage and embraced him tearfully. Lana Turner, all in furs, came back stage merely to shake one of his magic hands. He ended up marrying her. Out of pity, more than anything. She worshipped him so.

At other times, in the quiet of his room, Ralph would confront his enemies in the schoolyard, beating them senseless.

But as he grew older the dreams became less grand. At the age of eighteen he dreamed that someday he would be able to point his finger steadily. He never succeeded.

Wise old men say that if a person is handicapped in one respect, then God (who is always kind) will reward him by giving him an abundance of power or talent in another area. This was not true in Ralph's case. He was not particularly intelligent, and had no talent. He was merely a boy who was terribly afraid and lonely and homosexual. His mother caused his homosexuality, (with the help of the little girls in grammar school). He quit school as soon as he was allowed to do so, then his mother died, then he got the job with Goodwill Industries the final act of self-recognition. He wasn't much good at anything. But he could talk into a telephone, after a fashion. He could control his mouth better now, and-beyond an occasional stutter and trouble with vowels-could talk.

"Yes, Mrs. Wondersnit, we'd be happy to have your asafetida bag and your Nancy Drew books."

He attended endless movies, read mountains of books, and occasionally went to a gay bar where he was ignored as much as men could ignore a shaking little figure huddled alone in a dark booth. As he staggered through the darkened city streets late at night no one suspected that he was a human being. He was Quasimodo and the Crypt Keeper and the Black Phantom rolled into one. Little children pointed at him while their mother snatched at their arms. And the beautiful gay young men cruising the streets screamed frantic, unheeded sex cries at each other over his head.

"And that so lamely and unfashionable that dogs bark at me as I halt by them," he would quote at a barking dog which wagged its tail, not knowing any better. Around him, powerful Negro men leaned against darkened buildings and hawked and spat into the gutter and pinched their penises. Whores considered overcharging him, then decided it wouldn't be worth it. Even religious fanatics left him alone-feeling that anyone as grotesque as he didn't deserve an added burden.

"Who knows," he would whisper to himself, "maybe I carve little puppets and give them to orphan children."

But he had never, to his knowledge, seen an orphan child, and he couldn't even eat a sandwich decently, let alone carve.

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