This isn't a dream, but a drawing half in trance, trying to express a feeling so strong it made me dizzy.

When I drew Awk, I wasn't really timid. I was confident on a dance floor, or facing a wild bear, or a blank canvas, or a scientific puzzle, or a cliff to climb. But I was still awkward with people, and I didn't really know why. Throw sex into the mix, and I fell apart, even though I knew others too were stuck with their own pet Awks. I felt as if my body skinned itself and then started in on the organs beneath, as my head flamed like a candle-top.

At the time I thought it was simple shyness, or inexperience with sex and love.

TWENTY YEARS LATER

Now I know it wasn't. It was real incompatibility with the energy of most humans, directly sensed; if I overrode it, I got sick.

Even today, despite time and experience, that flaming awkwardness only fades when I meet others like me. And that's rare.

A MONTH LATER

I just noticed one more factor. Even then, I saw that smawk (sorry, smog) was a factor. Air pollution didn't just tire me or sicken me, it made me more emotionally and socially fragile--unable to handle as much. That's still true. I have full-blown environmental illness--and one of the best things I can do for myself socially is to strict about dust, toxic foods, pollens, and especially solvents and combustion by-products. Poison feeds my awk. And good physical health starves it.

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