Looking-Glass Ladyboy

Instead, he nodded. "That'll be ten dollars," he said--or croaked--for his voice was not the deep bass of the demonic creature I'd imagined him to be, behind the mask and costume of the flesh that he wore. Instead, his voice was the wheezy near-whisper of the truly aged.

I handed him the money, and he handed me a receipt. "All sales are final, you know," he cautioned as I lifted the mirror from the counter and hugged it to my breast. "I can grant neither a refund nor an exchange, not even with your receipt. I'm going out of business."

"I understand," I assured him. There was no way I would ever exchange the mirror for anything else in his store or for the measly ten dollars it had cost me, even if he were agreeable to a refund or an exchange.

His smile broadened, and he looked like the little old man he was, my overactive imagination, stoked by the fear that my intended purchase would be denied to me, aside. "You got quite a bargain, my lad," he said, "quite a bargain, indeed."

I thanked him and hurried home--as fast as I could while exercising all due caution and diligence, lest I break the mirror--and installed my treasure in the living room, on the wall to the right of my fireplace, feeling as victorious as a warrior who'd stolen priceless spoils from a conquered monarch's palace.

* * *

The Internet has made us wealthy beyond measure, because it delivers goods and services at minimal cost--and often free--that would otherwise, in the all-but-infinite variety available to us, at least--be beyond our means, and all with no more trouble than the pressing of a few keys. Like many people who live alone, I surf the 'net a lot; too much, my ex-wife insisted. I check out plot summaries of the latest books, fiction and otherwise; watch clips of the latest Hollywood flicks; look up all sorts of stuff, trivia, mostly, on various websites and online encyclopedias; check the meanings and spellings and etymologies of words; see what my favorite radio talk show hosts and TV personalities are up to; read the dirt that today's armies of gossip queens dish on celebrities; and, of course, like all red-blooded males everywhere, American and otherwise, feast upon the smorgasbord of porn.