3 SUM by Quig Shelby Page A

bench, and begged to make amends for my earlier misdemeanour of not reporting the stickers. I almost wrote the whole truth and nothing but the truth before regretting my moment of daring. There were screams from the cells, before a deadly silence. I was now dreading further involvement, wishing instead to be a wallflower.
    My hormones were all over the place, should have had my depot, and my hand shook as I wrote. I kept it short and not sweet, a grovelling apology. I had presented a token, only it was no longer Tilda’s.
    I had no testosterone, nothing to challenge the world, and no reason to invade anyone’s territory, including women. A hundred years ago I would have been a failure, now I was celebrated, the new man who was safe around females. But beyond the front lines lay the Undiagnosed, barbarians; they were the way we used to be, before our balls were emptied and our minds cleared.
    I walked home through the Park, there were couples, gay men, and single guys looking to hook up either for the night or for life, should they find the one. No one strutted, promenaded, or swaggered, rather they ambled, lazily strolled, unless they teetered on come and get me heels with their asses pushed out.
    No prams, nor children were there. They were brought up by the state, weeded. Birth took place away from men; the chosen ones at the Bank never knew if their seed had been harvested, whom they had fathered. Perhaps we were selected for extinction, and soon they would reproduce without us. A female only planet: Lesbos, with their endless supply of Lusterone.
    It hadn’t taken long for male homosexuality to become the new norm in Utopia. A mind shift concentrated by the rising numbers swamping the earth. New additions were strictly limited, selected. We had saved our resources, reclaimed and recycled. Now the Undiagnosed wanted what we had earned.
    The sun beat heavy on my neck, and I purchased a paper lemon parasol. I was a peacock, but were my feathers splayed for a man or a woman? Maybe I could have my fairy cake and eat it. Take the chop like so many before me, but then be a lesbian. A choice that was the best of both worlds? Or would the female hormones prove irresistible, would I turn against my own will? Desire, lust, was hard to fight, impossible even. If you wrestled with it, submerged and denied it, it would rear its ugly twisted head, deviant, perverse, MAD.
    The birds and the bees were the only animals not culled, and two swans paddled on the calm waters of the woman-made lake. Partners for life. I sighed, loneliness was killing me. I glanced at Tilda’s Boat House and the pedal boats outside, before turning away down a familiar path. Indecision was tearing me in two.
    Rinse Garden apartments: outside painted pink, four floors high, with plants on every rooftop. I was lucky I was uptown. It was not as if there was ever any violence, but across the tracks the guys were loose. I was a demisexual; I wanted to connect emotionally before bodily. They wouldn’t understand, I’d be a tease at first, mocked later, and then mobbed, isolated. At least the guys in Rinse Garden were more understanding, if not aloof. There were three apartments on each floor, and a common kitchen. Lartley 87, Coussan 6, and I timed it so we didn’t get in each other’s hair. I wasn’t even sure what they did for a living.
    I decided to take a nap; the heat was wearing me out.
    I awoke to find a note pushed under my door. People loved to give me messages.
    â€˜You looked nice in the Park today,’ it read.
    The signature sent a chill down my spine, ‘Burdizzo,’ my stalker. This was the closest she had come to my front door. I felt numb, and my right hand was shaking, though not with pleasure.
    It was two months since her first introduction; heavy breathing down the phone at work, then gasping ‘This is Burdizzo’ before the line went dead. Fear and intimidation, the anxiety of not knowing who she