Note from the author: I know some stuff still needs to be cut, but here's a preview of the extended draft.

My parents met on a plane, but I wasn't a mile-high conception; though, according to St. Judas' Hospital's records, I was the only child to ever be born in the gift shop.

"I feel it kicking," my mother said, as "it" plummeted onto the floor.

And to this day, I am still in a rush. Out of the womb, and on with my life.

A life that has found me in danger tonight. It's a sticky sweet journey from puberty to prosperity I've had, but my courage has been a casualty along the way.

Jipton Urdelle was not the kind of fella you wanted to meet in a dark, abandoned subway tunnel at 3 AM, yet I found myself staring into his ash-colored eyes all the same. Jipton, or "Jip" to his friends--of which he had none--was a runner for the mob, a numbers man; strictly a hired thumb for the hand that holds the strings. He scratched at his mob beard and freed a small piece of pasta from the tight clench of his two front teeth, with the business end of a toothpick.

"Tell me some good news, Frank," he muttered, goodfella-like.

"See, the thing about the money . . ." I whimpered, but my voice got caught somewhere in my esophageal tract. Peristalsis would most likely push the remaining words out of my own business end in a day or two.

"You either got the money, or you don't," Jip said, with a menacing stare. "So which is it?"

"Well, I don't, but . . ."

The next thing I knew, Jip pulled out a 12-gauge and blew a hole through my skull. Light, white light . . . maybe a train's coming. No, this tunnel's abandoned, I thought. That was it for thoughts, until . . .

My eyelids opened, and standing before me was Karl, the junkie priest I used to know back in the old neighborhood. But Karl had been dead for years, so I was taken aback.

"Karl . . . what . . ?"

"Save your strength, my child. Your wounds are healing."

And so, by some brief miracle, I was going to live! Now I knew that I had to see Susan one last time.

"Susan . . ." I muttered, four weeks later.

"Frank. Your head! I love you so much, silly man."

And eight months later, we had a bouncing baby boy named Danny.

When Danny was fourteen-years-old, he was thrown from Chester, his favorite mare, who had been startled by a rattler. Danny's arms were sprained, and his neck swollen, but these wounds--as well as those unseen--would heal over time.

In fact, by the time he was ready to rent his first apartment, on some ritzy, cobblestoned area of Greenwich Village, his bones were stronger than that of the average man's. This was especially comforting to Joseph, his African-American lover.

Their adopted daughter was attending her junior prom, when her tongue--that useless instrument up until now--finally struck a deal with her lips and palette. Her first words, after sixteen years of silence, were "I've seen enough!"

My area of that dank nursing home in Tuscaloosa was filled with G.I. Joes and debutantes, aged lightly in a bitter sauce for half a century. It was here that I met Randolph Musk, and it was here that I first heard his harrowing tales of triumph.

But as my heart rested, my mind returned to the springtime. There was Susan, by the bay--that great bay--that had seen so much tragedy, when the Nairobi wind blew colder. And wasn't it just yesterday that Mr. Delacroix had jumped from his tower? And I swear that I can still taste prison, when I choke.

Past, present, future: all of my tenses have merged and become something else entirely.