Preston was right; our trip to New York didn’t tell me much about my past, at least nothing conclusive. It made me realize I wasn’t ready for the Big Leagues just yet, and the Big Leagues weren’t ready for me. At the same time, I realized the Big Leagues weren’t no big thing; Preston was right again—the world could wait for Ms. Megaton Man and Ms. Megaton Man could wait for the world. There was no sense rushing things. Besides, I’d rather spend time with my sister and parents in Detroit, and I still had a job to do in Ann Arbor—which was to get in as much learning in as possible in the short time that was left. Because, when it became time to step forward as America’s Next Nuclear-Powered Hero, there probably wasn’t going to be all that much time for book learning.

      And maybe not for friends or family, either.

      As I said, the spring semester back in Ann Arbor, as I said, went by quick. Without Kozmik Kat around, and with my uniform quietly stored in the back of my closet, there was almost no megahero action to speak of. With so much crushing school work, I didn’t even have time keep up with the megahero files Koz and I had started, although when I looked in the drawer with the hanging file folders in Pammy’s desk after spring break, I noticed an additional manila folder of recent clippings culled from the Detroit Day and Manhattan Project. Each item was annotated in Trent’s neatly-printed handwriting with the date and page number. He’d been saving stories for me as he came across them, for future reference.

     With the semester nearing its end, I fetched out Imelda’s card and decided to give her a call. I had something important I wanted to discuss with her. She wasn’t home, so I left a message on her answering machine. A few days later she finally got back to me, and one early spring evening I found myself sitting in her apartment living room above a storefront in downtown Ann Arbor.

     If I described the rec room Daddy had built in the Ann Street house as a hippie crash pad, I could see now that was little more than an exaggerated conceit. That space, nice as it was, was only a pale, suburban imitation of a hippie crash pad compared to Imelda’s apartment, which was the real thing. Canary and parrot cages, candles, black light posters, beads, incense, goofball objets d’art, rugs, one of those wicker egg-chair things dangling from the ceiling—everything you could imagine as typifying Michigan’s Haight-Ashbury—Imelda’s apartment was a year-round street fair. There was even some weird, ethereal chime music that either came from real chimes or stereo speakers I couldn’t locate.

     She lit some incense and served some tea—which took forever, by the way. I sat on a sofa covered in pillows and afghans while she sat in her egg-chair thing.

     Then we got down to brass tacks.

     “What’s on your mind?” she asked.

     Her egg chair wobbled slowly; she sat cross-legged.

     “I have reason to believe I’m related by blood to my housemate, Trent.”

     “I see. And what convinces you of this?”

     I didn’t want to get into the megaheroic aspect, obviously, so I simply said, “Certain traits we may share.”

     “Matrilineal or patrilineal?” Imelda asked.

     “What?”

     “Do you think you are related to Trent through your mother or your father?”

     “Is that important?”

     “Not really. I was just curious.”

     The egg chair swung slowly like a pendulum. It was exerting a mildly hypnotic effect on me. Also, it was making me seasick.

     “My father, definitely,” I volunteered. “I think my father may be a Phloog.”

     “I see. And what information has your mother told you?”

     “Only that she never heard of Farley Phloog, Trent’s uncle.”

     “Who else could your father be?”

     “Clyde, a much older cousin, whom nobody’s seen in about fifteen years.”

     “What are his last known whereabouts?”

     “The Himalayas.”

     I laughed. Because it sounded like a joke when I heard myself say it.

     “Anyone else?”

     “An infinite number of men in other realities,” I said. “But in this one, that about exhausts it.”

     “Can’t we all say that,” said Imelda. “Let me ask you: What is at stake—some family fortune? Some economic inheritance?”

     I laughed. “Lord, no. Not as far as I know. I guess you could say it’s more of a medical inheritance. Those traits I referred to—that run in the family.”

     “You’re referring to Trent once being Megaton Man, and you presently being Ms. Megaton Man.”

     Needless to say, I was surprised. “You know. Of course—he’s probably told you about his past.”

     “Trent’s mentioned it. And you’re not exactly trying to keep your secret identity secret.”

     Imelda looked at me for a long moment. That seasickness thing was really starting to get to me.

     “Are you planning on having sex with Trent?” she asked.

     “No. I mean…planning is too strong a word.”

     “You’d like to fuck him. And you’re afraid your desires might be considered incestuous.”

     “That, and I really respect Stella.”

     Imelda laughed.

     “Would you like some more tea?” she asked.

     “No, thank you.”

     Imelda composed herself. “Assuming you’re right about your paternity, you and Trent would only be second cousins. In western societies, sexual relations between second cousins do not constitute incest either legally or morally. Now, in some Asian cultures, yes. But even first cousins can get married in half the states of the union—and it’s completely legal in the United Kingdom.”

     “Really? That’s … a relief. Not that I’ve been jonesing all my life for any of my cousins.”

     There was a really long, uncomfortable pause.

     “Clarissa, you could have found out this information at a library—or the bookstore. I’m guessing you already knew it. You certainly didn’t need to come and see me.”

     “No, I guess not.”

     “So why did you come and see me?”

     “To be honest—I don’t know if you’re at liberty to tell me—”

     “You want to know if I’m fucking Trent, don’t you?”

     I blushed. “Well, it’s really none of my business. But yes.”

     “And you’re afraid of appearing nosy.”

     “I am nosy; I suppose you’re bound by doctor-patient confidentiality. But—are you fucking Trent?”

     “I’m not a doctor, Clarissa. Let alone a licensed sex therapist. For that matter, Trent has never discussed keeping anything he has told me confidential. But of course, I want to honor his privacy.”

     “I…you’re right; it’s none of my business.” But I still searched her eyes for an answer.

     “You want to know if he and I are lovers,” said Imelda. “I can tell you, we’re not.”

     Imelda picked up a book from a stack of books on her coffee table. It was bound in leather. I imagine it was a ledger of all her Tarot reading clients. She leafed through its pages.

     “I will tell you, Trent Phloog likes handjobs; lots of handjobs.”

     I snapped my fingers. “I knew it. That whole Chakra thing—”

     “I could give you an exact number, but I’d have to add up all of our sessions over the past two years.” She thought for a moment. “Jesus, the boxes of tissues I’ve gone through.”

     “That won’t be necessary.”

     “I use saliva,” said Imelda. “I went down on him three times, but that was purely at my discretion.”

     “Really, you don’t need to—”

     “I fucked him two or three times—I don’t have it recorded. Frankly, I needed it—I was going through a rough patch personally.”

     “That’s more than I wanted to know.”

     “I have the greatest respect for sex workers,” said Imelda. “Some of my best friends work in the trade. But I don’t consider myself a sex worker on any level. I am purely a spiritual advisor. Well, not purely; as you see, it sometimes gets messy. But I have been some compensation for Trent in this time of transition.”

     “I understand.”

     “And I respect Stella too, greatly, in my own way.”

     She broke out laughing again, then caught herself.

     “Always, our physical interactions have been a part of a deeper, spiritual conversation,” explained Imelda, not the least bit defensively. “It has never been a direct cash-for-sex transaction; I would consider that crass. It has always been a part of a kourotrophic process. Do you know what that means? A spiritual journey.”

     I’m sure everything she was telling me from her point of view was true, but also highly debatable—ethically, sociologically, spiritually, or otherwise. Still, I had to admire her ability to synthesize her own approach to creative self-realization. And after the shit I saw going on in New York, it didn’t faze me.

     She closed the book and looked at me warmly. “I can tell you he has spoken very highly of you, Clarissa. And I can also tell you that there is nothing in his relationship with Stella that would prevent him from having a loving relationship with you, if the two of you decide to explore one.”

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

     “I love Simon,” I said. “But I don’t want to be his mother. I have no desire to replace Stella, you understand.”

     “Perfectly. I’m sure everyone concern understands that as well.”

     “I really just wanted to find out who my father was,” I said. “I thought maybe you could do a Tarot reading or something.”

     “And you want to ball Trent.”

     “I’ve wanted to ball Trent for quite some time, to be honest. I think somebody should be balling Trent. I think Stella is kind of stupid, frankly, for not balling Trent. I think, maybe if I ball Trent a little, that might make Stella realize what she’s missing out on. Maybe not.”

     “And if she doesn’t take the hint, at least you’ve had the satisfaction of balling Trent.”

     “Right.”

     Imelda spread the Tarot cards on the table. “Forget about Stella.”

     “Did you just read that in the cards, just like that?”

     “No, I’m just telling you to go ahead and ball Trent and forget about Stella.”

     “I don’t know if I’m ready for that.”

     “Clarissa, you already know the truth that is in your heart.”

     “How will it turn out?” I said.

     “I can’t tell the future,” said Imelda. “If I could, would I work in a used bookstore?”

Finals week of my “second junior year” was here; spring in Ann Arbor was already warm and humid. I went out back and did something I hadn’t done for a while: I sat down at the picnic table with my I Ching, pencil and notepad, and three pennies, and cast an oracle. It was twenty-three, Po—Splitting Apart. There were no changing lines.

     The hexagram, as you know, consists of one straight line atop five broken lines. As I interpreted it at that moment, the reading was all about splitting off from negative influences, of breaking with the past, of allowing the inferior to do its thing by overthrowing the last superior element, of submitting to the inevitable downturn, and moving on. All good things come to an end, so let it happen.

     The visual image of the hexagram—the straight line overtop the broken lines—made me think of something perhaps completely unrelated: Philippe Petit, the acrobat who strung a high-wire between the Twin Towers in New York almost a decade earlier. For some forty-five minutes, this guy and a balancing pole danced in the negative space between that split towers in two—a hundred and ten stories above the plaza. And he did not have megapowers. It was possibly the most sublime act of daring in human history.

     I closed my I Ching and gathered up my coins, pad, and pencil. It was already blistering hot with the sun overhead and no shade over the picnic table. I went around the house along the driveway to the front porch. Trent was on the swing, in the shade, reading for his finals.

     “Can I join you?”

     “Sure.”

     I went inside and left my I Ching and got my own homework. I sat down on the swing. Pammy, also in shorts and a T-shirt, was packing her Toyota in the driveway. Her book had just come out, and she was off for a book tour.

     “Is there anything I’m forgetting?” she said to herself.

     “How about leaving a couple copies of your book?” I reminded her.

     “Oh, right,” said Pammy. She pulled open the cardboard box in the trunk and grabbed a couple copies. Barefoot, she ran up to the porch an presented them to us. “Can I autograph them when I get back? I have to shower now and change to catch my flight.”

     “Sure,” we said.

     Pammy ran inside and up the stairs. Trent and I looked at our copies. The title read,

Megamusings:

Collected Controversial Columns, 1975-1980

by Pamela Jointly

     “Woo!” said Trent. “Hardcover, dustjacket, and everything. With a forward by Rudy Mayo.”

     “Light summertime reading,” I said. “But it’ll have to wait until after finals.”

     We set out copies down and went back to our studies. I heard Pammy start her shower upstairs. For no reason in particular, I started to get a little wistful.

     “This will probably be the last time we see Pammy here on Ann Street, at least as our housemate,” I said. “She’ll probably stay in Dearborn after she gets back from her tour.”

     “Probably,” said Trent. “But she’ll be around for Simon’s birthday and stuff.”

     “My academic advisor tells me I can probably schedule all of my classes for my senior year at the Detroit extension of Arbor State,” I said. “You know where that is, by the museum?”

     Trent was surprised by this. “Yeah, sure. Do you think you’d just move back in with your parents then?”

     “Maybe, or get an apartment by Warren Woodward University. I’ll probably cross-register for some of my classes there. That’s where I plan to go to grad school anyway.”

     “I see,” said Trent. “So you’ll be leaving Ann Street too—like, imminently. Stella and I are going to have empty nest syndrome.”

     Just then, Stella strode up the sidewalk with her heavy book bag. She’d been studying all morning in one of the campus libraries. “Hey, guys,” she said, as she trod onto the porch. “Quick lunch, then I have a meeting with my advisor.”

     She went inside the house. We could hear her in the kitchen.

     About fifteen minutes later, Stella came out with Simon strapped to her front in one of those baby slings. At two years old, he was almost too big. “Dropping Simon off at daycare,” she said, “so he’ll be out of your hair. You two can do your thing.”

     Trent stood up and kissed Simon on the top of his head and Stella was off.

     “Pammy’s leaving for her book tour,” I called out.

     Stella, already across the lawn, turned around. “Say goodbye to her for me—I’ll catch up with her later.” She waved a kiss.

     I looked at Trent. “A two-year-old is not an empty nest.”

     “I suppose not.”

     A few moments later, Pammy appeared, dressed in a business casual outfit befitting a newly-minted author. “Here goes nothin’,” she said.

     Trent and I got up and gave her a hug. We walked her down from the porch and stood by as she closed her trunk, climbed into her car, and drove off.

     Trent and I went back up on the porch and continued reading.

     “Do you think she meant that literally?” I asked.

     “Do I think who meant what literally?”

     “Stella, about getting Simon out of our hair so we could do our thing?”

     “I don’t know.”

     We went back to reading. Reading—and rocking gently on the swing.

     Trent put down his textbook. “Can I ask you something, Clarissa?”

     “What?”

     “When you became Ms. Megaton Man, and you were, you know, playing the field…”

     I looked at him.

     “You know, after Bing…”

     I kept looking.

     “When you were sowing your wild oats—”

     “My delayed freshman crisis, you mean,” I said, interrupting him.

     “Did you ever think about, you know, me?”

     “All the time,” I said.

     “C’mon, be serious,” said Trent.

     “I didn’t want to interfere in anything between you and Stella,” I said, very seriously.

     “Oh,” said Trent. He turned back to his textbook. “You know, there was nothing to interfere with.”

     “I kinda figured that out,” I said.

     “So, why didn’t you—"

     I put my hand on his.

     I looked him in the eye.

     “It’ll be easier once I have my own place.”

     We rocked a little bit more, just holding hands.

     “Yeah,” he said. “I guess you’re right. Man, it’s already hot and muggy…Stella had the right idea, studying in an air conditioned library.”

     “I didn’t say we needed to wait until I got my own place,” I said. “It will just be easier than this from now on.”

     I stood up.

     “I think I’ll head to the library, too,” I said. “After I take a quick shower.”

     I walked to the screen door, turned, and looked at Trent. I smoothed the back of my shorts with both hands.

     “Care to join me?”

     I opened the screen door, went inside the house, and trod up the stairs. I expected to hear the door slam behind me.

     But Trent had caught it before it could do so. We both had left our books, pencils, and papers to wobble on the porch swing

I’m not going to narrate the scene for you or offer too many details except to say that the shower was warm and soapy—very soapy—and Trent’s hands were soothing, both on and up my backside. When the hot water ran out—Pammy’s shower had shortened the moment considerably—we moved to my room, where there was more stuff that I’m not going to tell you about. But it was really dirty. Clean, because we’d just taken a shower; but dirty, if you know what I mean.

     After it was over, we just sort of cuddled in the sheets, feeling the warm, afternoon spring breeze wafting through the upstairs windows. Everything smelled sweet and fresh.

     “You know, there’s a chance I’m related to one or another of you Phloogs,” I said. “We might be distant cousins or something. Of just cousins. Does that bother you?”

     Trent thought about this for a moment. “Not really. What we just did isn’t likely to generate offspring. It can’t be incest then, can it?”

     “I’m not a linguist,” I said. “But I hope you are, because I’m far from finished.”

     “Wait,” said Trent. “Did you like it so far? I mean, I didn’t hurt you, did I?”

     I smiled at his concern. “It’s not the ordinary, or at least my first, choice of orifice,” I said. “But it wasn’t bad. This may shock you, but I’ve never done it up that one before.”

     “Really?” said Trent. “You saved it for me? I’m honored, I guess.”

     “Don’t get me wrong,” I said. “I don’t want you thinking I’m some anal freak; I wasn’t absolutely crazy about it. But I am megapowered, after all. While you—and don’t take this the wrong way—you’re only a civilian, Mr. Phloog, not Megaton Man. Thank God. But I have to say I found it…weirdly pleasurable.”

     Trent put his hands behind his head and leaned back against a pillow, with that self-satisfied smirk guys often get in such situations. “Is there anything else you want to try for the first time?”

     “Honey, I’ve tried everything else,” I said. “Ain’t no trying about it. But I do have in mind something more, um, mutual this time; more reciprocal, if you feel up to it.” I kissed him deeply on the mouth. “You think your tongue can remember that while our bodies reverse polarities?”

     “I think so,” said Trent.

     I got up and shifted positions so that I was stretching out the other way. I straddled his body, him facing up, me facing down.

     “Isn’t this what the I Ching calls yin and yang?” asked Trent.

     “Usually, they give this particular position a two-digit numerical designation,” I said. “But I think it should be called Em Double-U.”

     “MW? Why? For man, woman?”

     “Because ‘Mwww’ is the only sound either of us will make,” I said.

     Sure enough, for the next several minutes, “Mwww” was all we could say.

After what I call my second junior year came to an end—and I can’t resist saying it ended with a bang—I heard from Pammy. We agreed to meet in downtown Detroit in the café in the art museum’s medieval court, where she happily autographed my copy of her memoir-anthology. She revealed she was already under contract to produce another book— this time, a novel. As you’ve probably guessed, that novel would become Megasomething, the book I complained so loudly about for its inaccuracies at the beginning of my story.

     I knew Pammy was only meeting with me to feel me out for background information—to shore up her own recollections of those early days on Ann Street with Trent and Stella—and to confirm scattered reports she had gathered about Ms. Megaton Man while she was in Dearborn and otherwise distracted. I, in turn, hoped she would yield some clues about the Silver Age Megaton Man or any other candidates for my real father.

     I didn’t tell Pammy about my trip to New York with my sister Avie—I hadn’t even told Stella about her rapist half-brother, who I assumed was France’s problem for the nonce—and and I didn’t mention the official Ms. Megaton Man uniform from Bayonne, New York. I left out a number of other occurrences during my second junior year such as being sucked up into the ICHHL satellite, how Koz and I stumbled onto Megatonic University, or Mervyn exploding in the alleyway between State Street and the university parking structure.

     I certainly didn’t relate the last scandalous episode I summarized for you just now, about the present Woman of Molecules sixty-nining the former Man of Molecules—which I’m sure would have made Megasomething an even more sensational best seller than it turned out to me. But I confirmed a number of juicy pieces of gossip Pammy had gathered on her own, and she used artistic license to make up a whole bunch of stuff that in all sorts of ways was both better and worse than what really happened. Everything seemed magnified beyond recognition in Megasomething, as I suspected they would be.

     For my complicity, Pammy didn’t offer up much in return; she had never met the Silver Age Megaton Man—or Roman Man, for that matter, although she said if she ever had to do a megahero, it would be on with a physique more like Roman Man’s than Megaton Man’s. Like Preston, Pammy claimed no interest in the history of megaheroes per se; she considered herself a cultural critic-at-large, and saw America’s fascination with them as a symptom of deeper societal problems.

     Pammy didn’t inquire at all after my plans for Ms. Megaton Man, and seemed satisfied when I told her I was preoccupied with school and content to live a normal life in Ann Arbor and Detroit. This was more of less true, at least at that moment. So, perhaps I escaped the brunt of Megasomething’s critique only because at the time I was perceived by its author as a peripheral character. But I was still a little hurt by the book’s characterization of me as a wanton woman; it was a caricature not unlike the Tie-Dyed Tabby. I like to think of myself as sex-positive, and screw you.

     I didn’t talk to Pammy again until after the book came out, which was a long while after our meeting. It took her another year to research and write Megasomething and another for her and her editors to revise it extensively—changing the names of the innocent so as to avoid as many lawsuits as possible. The result was entertaining, I must admit, and she certainly captured my smart mouth, my disarming honesty, and my impulsive pluckishness. But any resemblance to persons living or dead should be entirely discounted.

     Steroid-Heroid Girl is nothing like Ms. Megaton Man—and she’s doesn’t have anything like my sardonic sense of humor.

     It’s funny to think back to that moment, the moment when a faux-tell-all like Megasomething could make such an impact, when the public was still so hungry for gossip about the private lives of megaheroes, and could still be shocked that America’s Nuclear-Powered Hero and the Denuded Darling of Megatropolis could conceive a love child out of wedlock. Then raise it without benefit of marriage. Or that a secret agent could be gay. Or that an African-American woman could get off on hooking up with a man made of yarn—and might plausibly have gotten her megapowers through sexual transmission. Those seem like such trivial concerns compared to what the world faced as the next century and millennium loomed—and what me and my friends were about to face before that century even came to a close.

End of Volume I.