Someone broke my windchime and when I tried to fix it I accidentally super-glued my penis to my leg. It was probably teenagers or drug addicts or maybe one of my ex-wives who wrecked it. Not knowing is always the hardest part, isn't it? I explain this to the emergency room doctor and to the medical students he brings into my room to teach them how to detach someone's genitals from someone's thigh.

My neighbors were also jealous of my windchime, I explain. It made a wonderful clickety clacking sound that wasn't too loud and wasn't too soft. When you own something as wonderful as my windchime, someone will covet it and then you'll be so goddamn mad you'll forget to wear pants when you try to glue it back together.

"It's a tale as old as time," I say.

The doctor and the med students stand in a half circle and nod at me. I tell them how I recently listened to a radio show which said in the future the only jobs that will be available are ones where you show empathy. Jobs where you need soft and caring eyes, where you need hands that move in calming ways, jobs where you provide a service a robot can't or won't.
      
The doctor sprays some liquid on my leg to help dissolve the glue.

"A good windchime is a friend and a confidante," I say. "A good windchime covers up the screeching of loud birds and the jaw-rattling music from cars that drive too fast down your street."

"Brace yourself," the doctor says. He peels my skin from my other skin and I scream so loudly that not even the best windchime in the world could hide the noise.

After I'm bandaged up, I thank the doctor and I wish the med students well. When I get home, I knock on my neighbor's doors and ask if they saw anything suspicious. Anyone lurking, anyone with bad intentions. My neighbors stare at me with hard eyes and make aggressive shooing motions with their hands.

"Maybe your windchime was wrecked by the wind," they tell me. "Maybe it was old."

"Jesus Christ," I say, "it wasn't old and it wasn't the wind."

I try to sleep but without the sound of my windchime I can't. After a while I get up and I put on a black sweatshirt and black jeans and I sneak into my neighbor's yards. I decapitate all of their garden gnomes so that maybe, even just a little, they will understand how I feel.

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