Next week, I'll be working on a feature story for Boing Boing. I'm doing it for a few reasons, but the main reason is because of a feature story Lisa Katayama wrote for Boing Boing, "The Last Hospice." In it, she wrote about why she volunteers at an AIDS hospice: "I do it because I like to face my fears, and death is the one thing that I fear the most." I thought, That is a good way to live, so I looked for something that interested me and that I feared, and there it was. Mostly, I've found it's people I over-identify with that I fear. Like drag queens. (This story is not about drag queens.) Or transsexuals. Or transvestites. This is not to say I scream and run the other way when I see drag queens, transsexuals, or transvestites -- in fact, I have spent some fine times with all of those types of peoples -- but it is to say that I find them mildly frightening. And also midgets. And that I think this is because I identify with the transgendered, because I feel like being a woman is a lot like drag, being so tall and all. And I feel tiny on the inside sometimes, like a midget. (This story is not about midgets.) There was a TV show on a while ago about people with OCD that made me so nervous I couldn't watch it, but the idea of what they did was right. As long as you keep indulging the anxiety, it's real. But if you can befriend it, you can be its midget drag queen.