3. The Cast Party

The play ended around 11:00 p.m. when the final light-cue blacked out the very last deed of the last character. Instantly the entire cast exploded into delirious glee, tears, laughter, roars and hacking coughs. The cast party began backstage: drugs, cigarettes, drinks and hysteria were handed around the swarm which swelled in power like a giant beast unharnessed from the plow and allowed to fructify for, at most, one hour till the whip came down again. The party was lusty as a great breast bouncing back to its natural shape when its bra is swept off. A hundred people seemed to be reuniting in the semi-lit stage although only a few dozen people embraced at any moment, passionately, before moving on to the next body. This was the farewell of each to all.

Still in costume, I was dazed and crushed happily in the center of the cacophony. For the first time I felt how huge the emptiness of the fly-space above us was, and the dark theater stretched upwards like a black cavern. The vastness of that blank above made me feel small as a luminous dust speck. But when I breathed in the sweat and make-up, the space collapsed to the width of my shoulders again. The scent of sawdust and metal light-trees was suddenly too remote to make a lasting imprint. Yet I knew life was a totality so perfect in every thing that it was a joy to contemplate forever. On the other hand, if I felt that way, it was mostly because I wanted to, and I was due back at the hospital in twenty minutes.

Like the forlorn anti-hero in Beckett's Molloy, I was lost in a forest in an indefinite country, hungry and frustrated on an indefinite mission. (I loved Beckett's novels so much that I even got a Samuel Beckett haircut.) During this 'quest' a kind of archangel comes, a messenger to reassure the anti-hero: "Life is a thing of beauty, a joy forever...." Renewing interest in life for one moment, almost hopefully, the anti-hero asks, "Do you mean that including human life?"

While people shook my hand, hugged and kissed me, I worked outward to the edge of the throng. A magnetic sorrow dragged me away from the noise and wonder of so much affection. Then one girl named Cynthia gave me a long look, to stop me. In many affectionate scenes that lasted for as long as a gag, she had rehearsed opposite me. She was intrigued sometimes, but like a good actress, she was numbed to all attachment by prior disengagements. She was slender with honey-colored hair, and her costume was substantial as a wet paper towel.

She opened her smile up like a flower and her arms spread below as if to take root in another's warm torso. I paused, apprehensive at the body-heat that rose around me near her. She gave me a kiss to cut me loose, while holding me. Then something happened. My legs and arms pulsed alive, brought me forward into the moment wherein intimacy makes the presence of an other meaningful. Suddenly she was nothing less than a whole history of doings, places-a soul and body replete with sins-absolutions karmic tasks-mysteries, and joys and pangs that shined around me as undeniable and alien as a moon. To me she was unique for the first time. So I kissed her back with a perfect, fragile sigh, and then with all my strength. Drawing her shoulder blades forward so that her heart pounded through us both, I kissed her so I would always feel that pure heat roll from her nape which my lips made moist, sinking in. I kissed her so my thighs would tell her all my fears and pains, the lonely and hungry self I had become, kissed her until a horror in me screamed 'O O O O O......' and in that instant something in her reversed. Resistance broke like a glass in air, she was collapsing, crying and crying in bewilderment as much at herself as at me. Then I realized a strange silence had been around us like an eddy in a whirlpool.... There we were alone, but the vortex of noise sucked us out of each other and back out to the chattering joy of delirium. I let the chance to embrace her again slip away. For a moment, I was happy enough.

This had been the tenth time in my life that I ever kissed anyone, excluding social and obligatory kisses, and I was ashamed at not knowing her very well but feeling so close. (I thought that I should only feel that way for Jenny, whom I'd known for more than half a year by that point). It meant so much more to Cynthia than to me that it seemed unfair. I only wanted, initially, to make it matter because I could, but when it seemed like love to Cynthia I was befuddled.

Some time after I was released from W-6, my other really close friend Jules asked me about this incident while we were hanging out in his apartment.

"You mean you didn't know everyone was watching you two?"

"It was just a kiss, though, wasn't it?"

"No, you both exploded in this weird light, and it even got silent around you for a second."

"Are you serious? I mean, I thought so but, but—"

I reflected for a moment. Despite all the free-floating opiate fumes, he was right.

"She was even in love with you for a while there, Cayle. It was really-dramatic."

"Really? Nah-yer joking.... for how long, anyway?"

"Hours... Think about it! Hours—"

I always trusted Jules because he was such an obscene genius: a virtuoso violinist, the composer of nearly all the songs in the Last Gasps production, a skilled artist, and a good actor. We'd met the previous summer when he used to study lying on the rug in the smoker's lounge in the library with his shirt off, his sunglasses on, and his Marlboros handy. 'My God,' I thought, 'an artist as crazy as me.' But I was so shy that I responded to people in almost a mime-like way. In fact, the first times Jenny had seen me, she had mistaken me for a mime or a dancer. So despite Jules' frequent welcomes, I only nodded and smiled back till one day I was totally broke and desperately out of cigarettes.

Immersed in a book, Jules was stunned when I nervously whispered, "Uh, 'scuse me, but.... But, couldja spare a cig?"

He nervously offered one, then two, and finally insisted I take a fistful.