Susan has been sitting in the usual little visiting room. Al arrives late. He apologizes.
“I just gave a speech against firearms to a class of high school kids in Sacramento.”
He sits down and stretches his legs sideways in order not to get in Susan’s way.
“They should confiscate all the weapons that aren’t in the hands of professionals. But Americans don’t want that. They’d have the feeling they were walking naked, with their dicks exposed.”
He has started laughing. He’s in a cheerful mood. Then he sighs. “I’ve been remembering our trip to Tomales. When did you leave there?”
“A long time after you, I told you. I fell in love with a guy from Mississippi, and I didn’t like the idea of him sleeping with other women. Ted said we were withdrawing into ourselves, and he didn’t like that. After a while, he asked us to leave, saying we were going against the spirit of the commune. Some claimed he was only keeping the commune going so that he could sleep with all the girls. I don’t think so. I think he was genuinely convinced that returning to conventional practices would drive us back to society. I met him again twenty years later, in San Francisco. We talked a little. He was working for Apple. He seemed to be a success. But you could see from his face how bitter he was that our experiment had failed. Are you writing that section?”
“I already did. Right now I’m getting to the last part of the book. And I’m not sure yet how to handle it. I’m afraid even readers who’ve been with me up until then will reject the book at that point. Could I discuss it with the publisher who’s interested?”
“They want a finished manuscript. We can still fix it later.”
“Leave it to me, I’ll work it out. It’s all a question of knowing how far to go with reality. Fiction is reality. Why would people read novels if they didn’t bring us closer to real life? But if you use too much reality in fiction, you get further away from it because reality isn’t reality. It’s a chicken and egg situation. I appeared before the parole board, by the way.”
“And what happened?”
“Once again, they said I was perfectly sane and posed no danger to society. In spite of that and my model behavior, the warden wasn’t in favor of letting me go. He told me that personally. I admitted to him that I’d put in the parole request just to keep myself occupied but that basically I don’t really want to be outside again. Here, at least, I’m fed and housed and my clothes get laundered. And they respect me. No prisoner has ever dared disrespect me. Except McMullan who called me a “killer whale,” which I didn’t really like. McMullan is a short thin guy, probably doesn’t weigh more than 120 pounds. He was sitting in the canteen. I went up to him, pulled his chair away from the table, sat down on his knees and placed my tray over his. I took my time eating. By the time he walked out, his legs were purple. That was the last time he called me a killer whale.”
He smiles before continuing.
“I’m a little bit bored. I don’t have any personal experience of life anymore. It’s kind of sad but that’s the way it is. How could it be any other way? That wouldn’t make any sense. So, it seems the country’s on the verge of bankruptcy?”
“So they say.”
“People are spending more than they earn. That’s impossible in here, nobody gives you anything on credit. Money, friendship, love, anything. I’d just like to want something. The punishment for having wants you can’t suppress is that after you’ve satisfied them you don’t have them anymore. It’s a strange mechanism, the mechanism of desire. Do you still sleep with guys?”
Susan blushes like a farm girl. “The only man I’d like to sleep with is you.”
Al laughs. “Even if they got me out of here, I wouldn’t sleep with you. Ex-convicts aren’t so desperate they sleep with even the ugliest women. Hell, no!”
Susan starts sobbing, in a dignified manner. “You can be real mean sometimes.”
“I’m not being mean, Susan, I’m teasing you.”