MAN GONE DOWN
Michael Thomas

No true idealist has a solid backup plan.

It changed when I was with her. I changed--to them--seen through the lens of my wife. I was no longer frightening, perhaps intimidating but in an exotic kind of way, for the women at least. The men reacted with a timid acceptance, tolerating their wives' open curiosity when they passed on the street.

Then the children came. "They" had always considered Claire as one of their own, and perhaps, after I became a father, they considered me that, too. Somehow they let us in--they let me in. And although I don't think that I changed a bit, we became a part of the "us," that seemingly abstract and arbitrary grouping that is able to specifically manifest itself...

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