Now I’m going to get down to it. I can’t help it. You’ve upset me too much — as you know only you can. That’s the problem with love. And this is why I wish I had never discovered it in the first place — and did, with Mickey, no matter what you or anyone else says. Love makes you vulnerable, and that’s supposed to be a good thing. But is it? Because then you’re easily hurt and when you’re hurt you hit back. So that’s what it’s going to be. But remember, I’m doing this only because I love you.

At one point in the middle of your vile response — vile, because there is so very little there that is not accusation — you stopped to briefly mention how much you love me. I remember how we used to fight back in the day, before you moved away. I remember how your eyes would flash with hatred as you lashed out. It was because I didn’t live up to your expectations. It was because I wasn’t intimate enough. Because I hadn’t yet learned how to bring down my guard and be close. Do you remember how you yelled at me?

I’m going to get very psychoanalytical here.

Why are you so wounded?

The amazing thing about my life is that no one ever molested me. The closest I ever came to that was from my mother. I do think, in her case, an argument can be made for emotional molestation. I’m not diminishing the effects of physical or sexual abuse; I’m certain they are in many cases lethal. But equally lethal is a mother who consistently violates your personal boundaries by manipulating you and tricking you into being vulnerable and then pulling out the rug. At every moment she knew what she was doing. She knew how to hurt me and she twisted the knife. Did something like that happen to you? Because you get so . . . angry. I know you will hate me asking, but I don’t care. I really don’t give a fuck anymore, and why should I?

The things that you said. How am I to remind myself — even when you do so yourself — that they are being said out of love? Your tone is too close to my mother’s. Maybe it’s time for you to think about Cynthia. Yes, I know about Cynthia. How could I not? I know she is the reason you moved away. I’m sure you don’t want to talk about her, and I’m only going to say one thing: don’t tell me you never loved. Don’t tell me our friendship has been the only close relationship you have ever had. I know you loved Cynthia, and that she cut your heart out and ate it for breakfast. And I know the reason you won’t come back here and see me is because of her. You are afraid to set foot in this town because this is the town where your hurt is. These are the streets you walked with her, the street corners where you kissed. And if I know you as well as I think I know you . . . the alleys where you fucked her.

And now, to get really psychoanalytical, is it possible that whatever abuse you suffered relates to your attraction to sadomasochism? I know that I’m supposed to give that aspect of your life a philosophical pass, on the basis of some wretched Foucauldian notion of power that you have wrenched from post-structuralism — just to suit your purpose — after rejecting the rest of it as old-fashioned. Maybe it’s not about power. Maybe it’s just about someone who hit you. And now that’s all you can associate with love.

This is an old opinion, I know. You may observe that I’m pulling out my old bag of tricks to wound you. Do you see what you’ve made me do? Madly thrashing about, I’m like a child. I’m like Helen Keller on the floor again. No, I’m like Patty Duke, herself the actress, trying to discover what acting actually might be — ineptly clawing the air with what was supposed to be impotent rage, beside a trash can in a badly lit pseudo-alleyway in Valley of the Dolls. They claim they had to fire me because of my famous instability on the set. But let me tell you, it was all about Patty Duke. I could not be around her. Oh, she was nice enough — but can anyone say deluded? Whoever gave that listless little thing the notion she could act? The fact is, anyone could have played Helen Keller — all you had to do was grunt and groan. And besides, no one else could imagine what it would be like to be born deaf, dumb and blind and still be alive. So Patty Duke could get away with anything. And she got an Oscar for that little Houdini act.

So are you hurt now? I hope so, because I’m letting the fangs out and turning into my mother. Why shouldn’t I?

Let’s start with this accusation — because this is the lowest and vilest of them all. You suggest that I am drinking. First of all, no, I’m not. And I resent the accusation so much. I also resent the fact that I should have to report to you. I know you have acted as my counsellor and my support over all these years, but you are now

a) not here

and

b) not my jailer.

Your physical absence, and your inability to act as witness to — I don’t know what else to call it but my growth and change (I know these days I actually physically resemble a growth . . . oh the irony!) — is problematic.

The proof you look for is “in the pudding,” as you colloquially jibe. You say that when I get bitchy and angry, and swear it’s proof that I am sitting in a drunken solitary stupor. I find this ludicrous. Yes, it’s true that my tone wanders, and is at times excoriating in the extreme. But I didn’t know I was to be subject to the style police.

I have addressed the subject of style over substance and its relationship to homosexuality. In this context I don’t think anyone has really addressed the relationship between Oscar Wilde’s aestheticism and post-structuralism. I don’t see that there is any difference. Foucault, in fact, suggests, at the crux of his defence of his particular brand of historicism, that one should look at historical traces — evidence, forms, rules and so forth — as reality, rather than trying to find the truth behind them. Foucault’s project could be viewed from a purely aestheticist angle. In other words, for Foucault, the world is a work of art (or its systems are, at any rate). This view of the world is not unrelated to the Renaissance view that saw the world as a book that had to be deciphered, interpreted, for fundamental truths.

Of course, Foucault does not believe in any such truths, but the methodology, the hermeneutics, is similar. One must look to the form — this is Adorno as well — to find the content. So I would say your obsession with the style of my text is a kind of old-fashioned and somewhat hoary post-structuralist aestheticism. I will not hesitate to disagree with your position. In my case, the form is most definitively not the content. In other words, a suddenly brash tendency to curse my mother, or to rail on about Munchkins, is not proof positive that I have lost my noodles or that I’m sitting with a Manhattan in one hand and a smoke in another, poised to pop a Valium. More accurately, I would probably be curled up with a drink, not sitting. Isn’t it interesting that as we age some of us become more fetal? My perpetually curled-up status makes me less and less like a very old woman and more like a baby. But, speaking of Valium, can one even get it anymore? I doubt it. . . . The drugs I was addicted to are so old. How could I even manage to be a drug addict these days?

What I think you are finding hard to digest is the fact that I am changing. And this is only natural, since you have not seen my advanced deformed condition, which is literally making history as we speak. No one has lived so long while morphing into something beyond detritus — almost becoming afflatus. I imagine that eventually I will become a noxious gas. But will I still think? One thing is sure, I’ll still be angry at you even if I’m merely vapour. At the age of 138 (at parties I’ll admit to 135), I am still alive and vital. More importantly, I am still learning about life, who I am and who I might be.

What, after all — since I’m feeling profound, and not the least bit drunk — is death? It is certainly something I must approach soon. After all, I am not immortal. Or let’s put it this way, even if I could be immortal, I would rather not. I know there is the theoretical possibility of immortality today. There are those who are picked for the experiment, those who are supposedly lucky enough to experience it. But that’s not for me. And that certainly isn’t because I enjoy the disintegration of my body or its poetic disfigurement, because I desire the inevitable decay. Instead it’s because there needs to be a terminus. That is part of what makes us human — along with compassion, wit, vulnerability and the ability to make mistakes. I stress this last because you seem to value it so little.

When I first came to Toronto, so many years ago — after my first and nearly effective liver transplant — there was a place near the bus station with a very interesting name. (I arrived by bus; it was thought that the bus station was the least likely place anyone would look for me.) It was called the Terminus Baths. I have no doubt that it was an inglorious destination, and that many a depressed homosexual had died on his knees in the hot tub there. But seeing the name was one of those moments when I embraced my own mortality — which at the time seemed imminent. It was the glorious humanity of the name. This was before AIDS, but when the kind of suicidal ethos that permeates Dash’s letters was in full swing.

One remembers the disbelief in Lady Bracknell’s question. She distrusts someone whose “point of origin is a terminus.” But it was Wilde’s fellow Irishman Beckett who so aptly reminded us that we give birth astride a grave. I am not looking forward to dying. But on the other hand, after living such a long life, some of it as what was once called a “star,” I will look forward to death as concrete confirmation of my humanity. I deserve that, at least — as everyone does — but I deserve it especially, because in my audacity I imagined I might be able to evade it. I don’t mean through anti-aging technology, but by imagining my recorded voice would outlive me. It will, but those recordings are nothing but what we used to call the real. Anyway, I don’t wish to think about immortality. It is anathema to me, the way death is to so many others. One need not be reminded of the persistence of the desire for immortality; all fundamentalist religions are based on it, as is the religion of our present government.

I remember when I was recuperating from my second liver transplant, I had to go to Hamilton, Ontario, for tests. It was a repulsive but strangely attractive town near the larger city. They had an effective cancer treatment centre. I dutifully took the same bus every day to Hamilton, which usually travelled a well-worn route — the local highway. One day I was travelling back late at night after an evening appointment at the hospital, and fell asleep.

This was during the last century, when I was very concerned with being recognized. I resembled an emaciated version of my former self (which was at times also emaciated). I had worn a man’s hat — shades of “Get Happy.” But I wasn’t thinking about these kinds of things at the time. I had slid down on my seat, and the hat had dropped over my face. So there was none of that kind of danger. But when I woke up, the bus had gone off course. It wasn’t charting its usual path, and had left the highway behind. We were riding through unfamiliar territory. There appeared to be a mountain on the right, with what looked like grim little shacks perched in the valley on the left. Some of the shacks had sad but inviting chimneys pumping out the toxins. It was winter. I remember passing by a church that offered “Salvation” with an aggressive sign. There was a muffler-shop sign offering bargains with a similar abrasive tone.

I woke up to these unfamiliar and not particularly heartwarming images in a haze. It seemed to me we were lost. Had I taken the wrong bus? And for one terrifying moment it occurred to me that this was death’s bus, a vehicle leading us all to the terminus. I was being driven to my death. I even for a moment imagined that we had slipped into an Einsteinish universe. I was on a bus without time, one that had veered off the edge of the space-time continuum.

It turned out that the highway was closed and the driver had simply decided to use a back road. But this was a reminder of the fear that those who embrace God must feel. They fear that death is a vast unknown, a chasm suddenly opening beneath their feet. It offers unknown untold horrors, unless, of course, they embrace God. Then there is the vision of heaven in Gounod’s Faust, where God sits on a giant throne like the Ghost of Christmas Present, surrounded by costumed dancers and a table laden with food. Well, for me death is neither a vast chasm nor a hearty dinner. It is just the terminus. And it will make me at least more human than I perhaps have ever been before.

But to get back to the matter at hand . . . What is it with these digressions? I am not drunk. I am, I will admit, still so in love with you that even when I hate you as I do now, I miss you terribly. So there we have it — the eternal, inscrutable puzzle. But to get back on track (and perhaps prove that my digressions merely characterize me, though they are not character flaws) — I am not drunk. So hopefully that issue is settled: I do not drink or take drugs. One cigarette now and then is enough for me. And I seem to be able to control that (but not the expense of it). You need to understand this because there are changes happening in my life that I want you to understand because I do love you. But this may prove easier said than done.

Now, specifically, to your other points . . . You move to an intense and equally paranoid analysis of my remarks about the woman with the cantilevered face. You seem to find it significant that I thought you would be upset about the fame issue. You imagine you are one step ahead of me, and very perceptive about my faults. The key, you say, is not that I resisted the lure of being recognized — you seem to think there is very little danger of this now.

Perhaps you are right — how long it takes us to part with the image of our young selves! I have a mirror placed upon the floor, because I am too short to stand up and look at myself in a normally positioned mirror. Looking at myself from beneath is more horrific, and thus startlingly real, in just the right way. I will not give up on myself. I want to be a witness to my disintegration. This is not to save myself, but to be as fully conscious as I can be until the very end. It’s comic to me that even though I remind myself on the quotidian of the monster that I have become, the image of the wistful in-between is still lodged in my brain.

Anyway, you correct my assertion, saying you don’t suspect I am hypnotized by the prospect of re-experiencing some of my past acclaim. Perhaps I have convinced you with my argument that it was only ever the work that mattered. Sometimes I think, however, that you enjoy belittling my theories. Condescension is part of your strategy. I will, I’m sure you believe, come to distrust my own judgements of myself.

Anyway, you quickly and arrogantly sail into analysis of my discussion of June Allyson and Mickey. You assert that I go on about June because there might have been some truth in her condescension towards Mickey. This would just be silly if it was not so appalling. June Allyson never had insight into anything: I thought I had made that clear. At the heart of your argument is the coup de grâce. That I wish to talk about my love for Mickey alarms you. You also find it ridiculous. Without criticizing Mickey, you suggest that it was a period when I was not myself because of the drugs. This kind of statement indicates an ignorance about taking drugs. I know that you desire so much control over your own life that you refuse to self-medicate in any fashion.

But remember. I was with you on that strangely endearing night when you drank nearly a fifth of vodka — very quickly. And much to your chagrin and mine, you tried on one of my dresses. Of course, nothing I owned would ever have fit you. (How am I to know now if that still holds true, as I have no image of you today to compare with what you or I once were?) Well, first there was the self-consciousness of your drunkenness. It was a metadrunkenness, a postmodern inebriation. You kept repeating, “I am drunk, I am drunk, look how drunk I am. I’m going crazy, I’m losing my mind. I’m going to do crazy things!” And then you insisted on raiding my closet. “Wow! I am going to try on a dress!” you said. Then you ran up to my room, threw open the closet and chose the most glittering garment with the most dramatic décolletage. When you yanked it on, I thought you might rip it. Praise God for spandex — you didn’t. Then you stood in front of the mirrors in my room and pranced around saying, “I’m going to give it a try, wearing a dress. I really want your opinion, how do I look, should I go out to the transgender bar in this?” And then because you were metadrunk you insisted I seriously answer your question.

Obviously you looked more than ridiculous; you had pulled the dress over your own jeans and T-shirt and were making no effort at all to be feminine — although you did model it in a very pointedly clumsy way. I’m pretty sure you pulled on a pair of my high heels. This just exaggerated the ridiculousness of the enterprise. There wasn’t much effort on your part, and that was the point. And what was so funny was that finally you made a concerted, sincere attempt to be a femme. You vowed to me, over and over again, that if this adventure with the skirt didn’t work out, then it would be your one and only foray into girlishness. Eventually you staggered up to the attic guest room where you were staying, still wearing my dress, threatening to slap on some makeup and depart for a night on the town. You didn’t. In fact, many hours later, after I had gone to bed, you woke me up to hand me the dress. “I tried,” you said. “I tried to be feminine, I really did. It just didn’t work. The dress didn’t look good on me, did it?” This little bit of self-fulfilling prophecy was meant to be comic, and it was.

But this bizarre incident was the one and only time I know of when you attempted — in this rather puerile manner — to lose control. It just served to put quotation marks around the whole notion of you being inebriated or experimenting with drugs. This means you have little or no understanding of what I went through so many years ago, or what drugs meant to me, or anyone else. There is only one sense in which this might be a good background for addiction counselling. It’s true, for instance, that you could not possibly enable me, when you have no idea even of the pleasure one might enjoy during a voluntarily induced drug experience. But your lack of relevant experience means there is a serious gap in your understanding of my situation.

This, as I understand it, is your analysis. Here, also, is my prediction. You think that I am talking about Mickey far too much. You think that I am romanticizing my relationship to such a degree that I have forgotten the reality, or have just wilfully abandoned it. You begin talking about this by saying, “Whatever Mickey’s merits are . . .” This, as I understand it, is supposed to represent the epitome of generousness. It is your attempt to see things from my point of view.

But there are several problems with your approach. First, despite your cleverly disguised denials, you are ultimately dismissing Mickey. You see him at best — and these are your very words — as “an ineffectual person.” Mickey was not ineffectual. He wanted to be an actor and I think he could have been. But then there are some people who are not capable of achieving anything themselves; they are simply better at facilitating brilliance in others. Mickey was very good at this with me. He was an amazing support and a witty and charming companion. He was also, significantly, not afraid to love. It wasn’t being taken from him — as it seems to be with so many — instead he gave it freely. It was as if it was his mission in life to do so. I have never met such a kind, loving person.

You say that if I were truly “in love” with Mickey, then I would have kept in touch with him. But you know that this was impossible, that I was in and out of the hospital and on the verge of death for nearly twenty years. You may well remember how unsettling it was for me to watch Elizabeth Taylor go through a similar experience at relatively the same time — the difference being that her illnesses were public. I was, as far as the world was concerned, not alive. So there was not a moment in those twenty years that I could have gathered the emotional energy to make contact with someone who I saw at the time as clearly being a part of my previous life. Nor did I want to do so. At that time, the threat of the past intruding on the present really was much too great.

When I did finally recover from my illness, had assumed my new life and had a liver that actually functioned, I tried to track him down. It was not that I thought anything might continue between us — I was beyond that. It had been too long and, of course, one can never, as they say, recreate the magic. I found him and was unsurprised to learn that he had become an agent. He never acted as my agent, and I was specifically looking for a partner who did not do that. I fantasize that this may have been the right career for him because he was both a great supporter and somewhat star-struck. But as I say, at the time when we were involved I was able to accept the fact that he could love both me and “the star.”

Anyway, I can’t really defend my relationship with him anymore, and I don’t want to. He was a sweet, kind boy. But in my life a pattern recurs over and over again. You must be aware of it; I’ve talked about it so often. Perhaps your knowledge of it explains your reticence to actually openly dismiss my relationship with Mickey. We both know that my evil and manipulative bitch of a mother had, in her arsenal, a unique and powerful weapon: she exercised a sublime and incorrigible skepticism about any and all of my life partners. She ridiculed Vincente to such an extent that I didn’t ever want the two of them to be in the same room. Why did she refuse to support her daughter’s relationships? Because she was intimidated by my talent and couldn’t resist hoping that my life was merely a substandard imitation of her own. I’ll never forget when, during my fifties comeback, after much nagging from Sid, I invited her to see my act at the Palace. She told Sid she didn’t want to go. When he asked her why, she said, “Because at those concerts all anyone cares about is my daughter. They don’t pay any attention to me.” Is there any other mother who acted so consistently unlike a mother?

What she did, among other things, was make it virtually impossible for me to have a relationship. When in love I was habitually seized by twin and equally destructive emotions. On the one hand, I felt unworthy of any sort of love — she certainly taught me that. And simultaneously I felt that the person I was in love with was unworthy of me. One might think these contradictory impulses would cancel each other out, but no, it was a perpetual seesaw. Which was it to be? Was I worthless or too worthy?

So when you even glancingly criticize Mickey — or make what in your letter proves to be a pathetic and obvious attempt to cover up your contempt for him and skepticism about our relationship — it touches me in a deep, angry place. It touches me where all my relationships are being ridiculed by my evil bitch of a mother. Shall we just call her the EBOAM? That sounds suitably and chillingly biblical, does it not?

Your analysis fails similarly in its attempt to understand the effects of drug addiction. I am not denying that I was a serious addict. I was the addict beyond all addicts. I was fully incapacitated, in terms of the ordinary faculties required to commit myself to certain tasks — remembering how to put one foot in front of the other, for instance. People were shocked at my onstage collapses. They had no idea of what transpired during a nightly binge. For even when I was so very wrecked onstage, it was, quite literally, nothing in comparison to my condition when I was off. I do not deny it. And I will not ever forget what it was like to be so seriously physiologically incapacitated by the poison I was pouring into my system.

On the other hand, it’s important to note something that you could never know — because of your lack of experience — but can hopefully grow to understand. The drug addict does not, in the grip of his or her intoxication, become another person. Instead, they ultimately become more like themselves. It’s like dying. June Allyson was a perfect example. I, of course, had no communication with her during her final years, but I did quietly observe her appearances on television.

I noted, for example, that she had become a success as a salesperson for urine-soaked underpants. This was the ultimate irony, that a person whose life had been devoted to jealously criticizing others had found a career as a spokesperson for a garment whose sole purpose was to collect human waste decorously, in a socially acceptable way. FYI: nowhere in those Depends ads did you ever see the words adult diaper. I shouldn’t talk; indeed, I have worn many a diaper in my time. I have become, in effect, a piece of human waste in my old age. But nevertheless the irony of her terminal gig, as it were, was not lost on me. One of her final statements to the press contained a veiled reference to me. You may say I am sensitive to the point of paranoia, but be that as it may . . . The Allyson leopard — she never changed her spots — talked of “the many tragic victims of show business.” Apparently she was not one of them. In other words, the old cunt remained a prime bitch to the end.

The moral? People don’t change when they die. They don’t suddenly become kind and loving before the end. A bitch in life? A bitch she will remain. And in death, perhaps even more so. It is the same with drugs. Their effect is not to change us into better or worse people. Of course, we may stumble, stagger and even momentarily forget who and where we are. But if a person has no self-esteem, then a good old-fashioned booze binge, for instance — though it may lend the drinker a momentary dash of bravado — will ultimately lead her into a bottomless pit of self-doubt. For some this may even end in suicide.

And the same is true of all drugs. Their physiological effects may differ, but you don’t become a different person. You simply become more of what you are. Sometimes the drug takes the infinitesimal seeds of some tendency and exaggerates them. This is why some people perceive that a drug has changed someone into another person. But the seed must be an integral part of the person if the drug is going to find it and exaggerate its effect.

I could not have fallen in love with Mickey because I was high. This simply doesn’t happen. It could not have been that my clouded vision caused me to spend the last six months of my previous life as another person. I would have wished to find Mickey — on or off the drugs. On the drugs I happened, happily, to find him. And that is that. If all this is not enough to convince you that my reaction to a small comment from a woman with a cantilevered face is not a signal of an impending dire situation — and certainly these days it seems like nothing will do the trick — then let’s try something else.

I think discussing your response to my analysis of Dash’s papers might support my argument. What you seem to be hanging on to, and worrying over — the way a dog worries about an old bone — are the dangerous similarities between myself and Dash. I have given you scholarly justifications for my interest in his work. I’m not suggesting they are necessarily good arguments — and certainly far from the quality of what might be put in any academic paper — but they are nevertheless my considered thoughts. I took a lot of time thinking them through; they are sincere. In other words, I care about Dash because of the implications of his tragic life for twentieth-century theory.

Let’s face it, most of the significant post-structuralists were homosexuals. Barthes, Foucault — importantly also Deleuze and Guattari. True, not Derrida — but every rule has its exception. It is interesting, and often ignored, that the collapse of homosexuality and the discreditation of theory (the rise of post-theory) occurred simultaneously, near the beginning of this century. Could the two have been connected? As I attempted to theorize in my last email, albeit ineptly, was there perhaps an association between the tragic arc of Dash King’s life and the decline of post-structuralism? They may have both died of the same affliction: a fantastical irrelation to reality.

What I don’t need from you now is a categorical dismissal of my ideas. Why have you not even addressed them? It is not that I am hurt. We don’t have that kind of relationship and hopefully never will. Why ruin everything with scholarly etiquette? But it does disturb me that you don’t engage with the extensive arguments I have made. Do they not seem, increasingly, to be relevant? This is what concerns me — along with your mentioning again that it’s important that I’m prepared. (For what?) These elliptical remarks frighten me, of course. But what frightens me most is that it is very unlike you not to engage in what could prove to be a significant ideological discussion.

Do I need to spell it out for you? Nothing really has stepped into the breach to take over where theory and post-structuralism once reigned. There is the ever-perplexing transhuman philosophy, but this is, in my view, simply a rebranded version of post-structuralism (where the natural, real universe is not shaped by language, as the post-structuralists suggest, but instead by a future in which reality as we know it is, simply, old-fashioned, because we no longer exist in our bodies). I’ve always found this repellant. I fear that perhaps you’re becoming a convert. Every time I ask you about your opinions on this, you change the subject. It is becoming increasingly clear that you will also change the subject when I talk about the death of post-structuralism in relation to Dash King. So I will not make another argument here. I have exhausted my arguments and I am insulted — not on an academic but on a pragmatic level — that you didn’t respond. I will present you, instead, with more evidence for my previous argument: that Dash’s decline is a significant metaphor for the decline of an entire era.

But also, I think it’s very important that you notice my attitude to Dash’s spiralling fortunes. For instance, you comment on the fact that Dash’s pathetic fate was to be romantically involved with a boy he seemed obsessed with on some manic/romantic level. Someone with whom he had nothing in common and with whom he couldn’t have sex. It was a classic case of “mad love” — beyond even, or not relevant to, the “demon lover” syndrome, because, after all, Dash’s lover simply did not have enough personality to be a demon.

But then you suggest I am interested in Dash because his neurotic relationships are somehow like mine. You don’t come out and say it, but it seems you are implying that some or all of my lovers were inadequate, or that my relationships with them were mad. You also seem to think my lovers were also ciphers who, like Dash’s lover, were too emotionally inadequate to be given the demon moniker. I hope this is not what you mean to suggest — though I think it is. I won’t go there. I have just explained how horrible I find this condescension (or anyone’s condescension) towards my romantic life. And why it disgusts me.

But the fact is I don’t emulate Dash or idolize him — I analyze him. I certainly don’t romanticize him. This is something you consistently imply, but you have no proof. I can see only one possible similarity between my romantic life and Dash’s. The sole similarity (and this is me really searching . . . searching) is that Dash obviously prefers partners who are somewhat remote, who are ultimately inaccessible. What was the term in my time? Oh yes, people who were “emotionally distant.” This is certainly the type of partner I always preferred. But I think that tendency is adequately explained by the boundary issues that were created by my mother.

However, there is no equivalency here. Dash was emotionally abused by a young man who treated him very badly. This is classic homosexual masochism. This is not something I have experienced or wanted to experience. A little distance is enough for me; outright cruelty is taking things a bit too far. The reason I would like you to examine the writing below is that Dash talks, in his own sad way, about the effects that fame had on him. The whole idea of such a small-time theatre artist in a one-horse Canadian town being obsessed with the effects of fame on his short, though melodramatic, life is . . . amusing.

Again, I think you can see — especially in my response — that I have no personal investment in Dash. I am distanced from his agonies. Dash was a kind of Samson Agonistes — or, at any rate, saw himself that way.

I see Dash’s obsession with fame as humorous because he wrote during his — what seems to us exceedingly short — lifetime perhaps fifty plays. They were occasionally produced. By himself, I might add. They were also occasionally celebrated — mainly by politically correct people who were trying to be nice. They were considered shocking for the post-Victorian sensibility that peaked before the turn of the last century. People still had the capacity to be upset by gay plays. Gay actually meant something. Dash’s demonization at the hands of the public and academia — at least, according to himself — ultimately led to his suicide. Dash’s papers indicate this. And it was certainly suicide: death from a heart attack induced by extreme overuse of amyl nitrates — poppers.

In the passage below we find Dash in the throes of agony over what he says is his academic humiliation. Academia was evidently where he went to escape his lack of success in the theatre world. (Nothing short of world renown would have satisfied his narcissism!) In the end, it is to this world of fame obsession that Dash retreats. He becomes possessed by his ostracism, of what he perceives as his enormous, hugely underrated talent. His later papers are to some degree all about fame. This, again, is ironic. Dash was no Marlene Dietrich — he only imagined himself to be. It’s important that you understand I am not emulating Dash for his insane megalomania. I do not wish I were Dash. Nor do I — lady with the cantilevered face or not — wish I was famous again.

Here is Dash. Brace yourself; it’s not pretty.

Antonio:

I guess you know the latest. All of you academic types know what’s going on with each other all the time, don’t you? I mean you probably knew about my journal article being rejected before I did, didn’t you? I’m so fucking pissed off right now it’s hard not to be pissed off with you too. You are the most fucking sympathetic heterosexual I ever met. How’s that for a compliment? But I’ve had it. I’m not casting these pearls before swine anymore. My whole artistic life has been about that. I’m a very funny guy, you know. I could have written for TV. I could have done any sort of writing for money. But instead I decided to write for theatre because I believed in gay liberation. Once! Not anymore. Not now — now that none of the faggots ever want to see this old drag queen’s irrelevant plays. You’re just a sympathetic liberal. You don’t know how savage the gay community can be. Take my word for it — they’re a bunch of wild animals. They tear apart their young, and that means any member of their community that becomes rich and famous. I was only famous for a while, and it practically killed me. I’m still suffering from the effects.

So Queer Studies has rejected my piece on drag. This is after they accepted it, and the journal went to print (but without my article). It’s the last straw. I’ve had it with the whole fucking lot of you. You’re all a bunch of pinched assholes, your mouths are little pinched assholes and you’re so insanely focused on your fucking career trajectories that each and every one of you takes pride in stamping out any point of view you disagree with, or that might threaten yours. I assume you know that I was pushing the idea that drag was transhistorical? Yes, my article had the temerity to suggest that maybe there were drag queens in the Early Modern era. I was nuts to even think about suggesting such a thing. The powers that be won’t have it. The academic line they’re all toeing is “Foucault says that homosexuality was invented by Oscar Wilde in the late nineteenth century so how could there be drag queens in 1580?” Of course, no one would dare question Foucault. Never that.

But what makes me maddest is not the rejection — although that was pretty amazing. Some heavy-duty backstage politics must be going on. I mean, the editor accepted the piece and then a month went by and then some mysterious second reader decided to drop it. Then there is the rejection phrase. I’ll never forget it. The reader who cut my article thought my argument about drag was not “sufficiently nuanced.” Fuck, after nearly thirty years of doing gay theatre and being a drag queen, and after three years of reading a bunch of damn boring theory books and fucking tedious histories of Renaissance theatre (why do we have to call it fucking Early Modern; can’t we just call it the Renaissance?), my argument isn’t sufficiently nuanced? I’ll tell you what happened. They didn’t want this drag queen writing for an academic journal. I mean, they at first thought they did. For a while. They started out by thinking it would be great to have a real drag queen’s point of view. Instead of the usual, academics talking about drag queens, they finally get a real one to talk about herself. But when they actually have to read an essay by a fucking drag queen — an essay that sounds like typical academic crap, but hey, I can’t hide it, is actually from the heart — well, they can’t handle that. I mean, wow, the piece might actually have some truth in it. I guess I just don’t do enough academicspeak to hide that truth.

This is why I’m leaving academia and why I left the theatre. Everybody hates me because I’m too gay. I’ve always been too everything. Now I’m too gay. When I came out, people believed being gay was being a girly boy and a pansy and confronting the patriarchy. Now that’s old-fashioned. Nobody wants to see a gay play or read a gay poem. So I figured I’d become a gay academic. I mean, everybody’s doing queer theory, right? But I’m too late. I didn’t get in in time to escape the latest academic bulldozer. You know — postgender, transgender. Because I haven’t had a sex change I’m actually behind the times. Hey, you know, I wish they said they were rejecting my paper simply because it was dated. There’s a lot of resentment in that word, nuanced. Let’s face it, these guys know who wrote it. I mean, the article may be submitted blind, but they can find out. People know I’m going to school here, and that I’m a triple threat: a writer, director and academic. They can’t hack it. I’m the real thing. I know you think I’m becoming unbalanced. It’s pretty interesting that you said you are uncomfortable with how personal I am getting. Isn’t that the point? Isn’t that the gist? Academics can’t ever be personal.

Hey, I’ve got news for you — scholarly stuff is personal. That high-toned, distanced jargon they use is just there to hide the fact that it’s all about personalities. They’ve got the same petty jealousies, the same plotting and planning behind the scenes, as other flawed humans. You said in your phone message that I should stop sending you written messages because you want to talk to me in person. Or, you think I should see an academic counsellor.

Well, I’m not like ordinary people. I’m a famous faggot and I’ve been around this too small town too long. Do you know who the academic counsellor at the University of Toronto is? He’s another faggot. Haven’t you seen the little rainbow flags in his office? And he even has one that says, “Safe space for queers.” Right, I would be so safe with him. I’ve met him a couple of times at academic gatherings. He’s come right up and talked to me. And he indicated that if I needed any help he would be there. I know what this is all about. It’s not about him getting in my pants — he just wants to have a famous patient. So I can’t go to the school’s academic counsellor because he’s gay and I’m gay and I’m too fucking well-known. He wouldn’t approve of me, anyway, because I’m such a slut. None of them do. Jesus Christ, I could never talk to him about my boyfriend. Most faggots think me being a slut is bad enough. If they knew how fucked-up my relationship with my boyfriend is they’d never forgive me. I’m sure the good counsellor would want me to dump my reason to live. Sometimes I think the beautiful boy is also my reason to die. The good counsellor would advise me to get a boyfriend who was old and fat and sensible.

Shakespeare would understand what I’m going through. He understood it all in those damn sonnets. Love doesn’t make sense. And I can only see a gay psychologist, because if I were to tell the details of my promiscuous life to a straight one they would have me locked up in a nanosecond. But the gay psychologists always want me to fall in love with some doctor or lawyer type. Isn’t that funny? Some professional guy. Well, I know two gay doctors who are married. They are HIV positive and both on heavy-duty AIDS drugs. They also like to do a lot of non-prescription pharmaceuticals that they get for free from pharmaceutical reps. They do these drugs when they’re having unsafe sex with their HIV-positive friends at the sex parties they have once every week in their living room. Oh yeah, I should find myself a nice respectable doctor and get married.

The world is coming to an end. I know because I’m watching it fall apart around me. Maybe it’s just my world that’s ending. Maybe that’s what suicide is. Don’t worry, people who really end up committing suicide don’t talk about it. Or do they? Have you heard about David Prent? Of course you’ve heard about him. I think what happened to David Prent is what’s happening to the gay world. We are being erased and forgotten. Am I the last faggot? Is God trying to kill all of us? All the interesting ones, at least? I do think there’s something to the idea that all the interesting ones died of AIDS — because they did! Only the mediocre, dumb fucks are left. And the mediocre dumb fucks are busy figuring out ways to procreate with dumb-fuck lesbians of the same ilk, so they can have mediocre dumb-fuck children and take over the world. Well, David Prent was a brilliant gay visual artist. And now he’s brain-dead. And what are they saying happened? Oh yeah, an embolism. He had a brain embolism, and now he’s lying in a hospital bed staring at the wall. That’s nice. Good for him. But of course no one mentions the fact that he was a party boy, and liked to do party drugs.

Everyone is doing drugs and having unsafe sex these days, as if there is no AIDS. As if AIDS is over. Or maybe it’s just that AIDS can’t kill you the way it used to, so these guys choose to overdose on party drugs instead. You can’t go to a bathhouse and get a legitimate fuck without someone trying to get you to try some Tina or just get right down and do crack. And all the nice dumb faggots try to keep up the fiction that we all like to stay home and knit with our husbands and our nice sexless lesbian friends. Well, drugs may become the cause of our demise but they aren’t the reason. The reason is that the good Lord above has decided to rid the world of every single fag that ever lived. AIDS started the job, but there are still a few stragglers. Like David Prent. You know what David Prent was working on before his brain died? He was putting together a visual history of the asshole. He’d been working on it for about six years. And he just got a huge Canada Council grant. Do you believe that? From the Canada Council. And what was David going to say about the asshole with his artistic research? He was going to say it was important to world history. He was going to say that the asshole was a way of life. You know what Hocquenghem says? No. Nobody cares what Hocquenghem says these days — except for me. He says, “We’re all women from behind.” Well, David’s artistic project was to build a little library dedicated to the asshole with all the materials he had collected about asshole fetishism. And this Museum of the Anus was going to be housed at Dalhousie University. And he was fabulous and feeling like all was perfect in his world. After all, he had the Canada Council and some crazy Maritime university behind him. Then, just like that, he had an embolism. I had met with him a couple of days before he went vegetative. He talked about how well his life was going. He had quite a bit of material for the Rectal Rectory: videos, sex toys, books, articles . . . He was going to do them up all pretty. He told me there were a couple of huge rooms full of stuff. Then, pffft! The next day he’s gone. What’s going to happen to David’s Butt Breviary? Dalhousie would have probably been too scared to display it anyway. But part of his Canada Council grant was to be paid to that university, so they couldn’t very well say no. So, what will probably happen is the Asshole Library will sit somewhere in the bowels of Dalhousie, because the only person who was interested in it was David Prent. And now he’s lost his wits. And no one else will touch his giant visual ode to the asshole with a ten-foot pole.

I’m going drinking tonight. And after that I’m going to do lots of poppers. I’m going to get lots of strange boys who remind me of my boyfriend to sit on my face. Sometimes I can imagine it’s him sitting on my face. That’s the closest thing I know to love. My boyfriend even said that he may never pee on me again. Who cares? I’ll have a nice night out. And maybe I’ll die in the hot tub. That’s where I’d really like to die, with the smell of some strange boy’s butt in my lips. Some butt that makes me cry — because I can imagine it’s the butt of the boy who will never love me the way I want to be loved. Oh, by the way, if I do die, can you tell that nice lady that edited the journal that I just wasn’t “nuanced” enough for this life? I’d really appreciate that.

Dash’s melodrama suits his personality and his career. His plays are filled with screaming drag queens and pathetic dramaturgical attempts to create real female characters, who are of course nothing but drag queens themselves. Thank God the drag queens don’t do me anymore. It was a kind of homage. But ultimately it became fromage. Am I being flip enough for you? Dash King was a footnote to history — if that. Like all those at the beginning of this century who were still flogging identity politics and bemoaning its demise, he became obsolete. But even this passage — where he bemoans the death of David Prent’s dream — is symbolic of an era. It is an era of extreme self-delusion. This is a man who believed that Shakespeare was not Shakespeare. He could also convince himself that he was exemplifying the masochism of Shakespeare’s sonnets by remaining in a sick, loveless relationship. He was a man who relished the ultimate humiliation. He routinely searched for the aroma of the anus of the man he loved in the anus of strangers. In terms of Dash King, there is no “there” there. This is only a lost soul who has left reality behind.

My theory is that he involved himself so deeply in identity politics that he lost any sense of who he actually was or what he wanted. The narrative he fell into (like Alice down the rabbit hole) was that he would be a tragic figure and suffer for his love. Is this not something like Baudrillard’s hyperreal? Baudrillard’s notion that Disneyland was America — was that not a particularly camp, homosexual notion? How much reality is there in valourizing a library devoted to the asshole — except as a futile reaction against the reality of the homophobia he was all too powerless to defy? Yet Dash’s obsession with identity made the whole situation even worse than it might have been.

Is it not possible that post-structuralism itself is just, in its intellectual reality, a bunch of fags denying that any “there” is there? Remember that Gertrude Stein, a very gay lesbian, invented that catchy phrase. Well, Gertrude and the fags that followed her have been desperately trying to convince the heterosexual world that their lives had transcended that fantasy. They fervently hoped that marriage and traditional families — which they were excluded from at the time — were constructs.

Dash despised Foucault for, it seems to me, very silly reasons: identity politics mostly. But he would find my critique of Foucault homophobic. It’s too bad he can’t come back from the grave to argue with me. I would say, “Relax; have sex with whoever you want. If you had lived long enough, like me, you would be able to do that. In the future, in cyberspace, all things are possible.”

Listen, I want to tell you something. It’s a minor thing, very minor. It’s not really related to my analysis. But, of course, I must tell you everything.

I remember looking for an analyst during my “comeback.” My first therapist was in awe of me — much in the way that Dash imagines that therapists are in awe of him. But Dash shows his superficiality and banality when he suggests that he couldn’t have a therapist because he was too famous for one. On the contrary, Dash’s actual lack of fame was his big disappointment — but one he would never own up to. He was not internationally famous, so there would have been no reason for a psychoanalyst, psychologist or therapist of any ilk to be in awe of him. But it’s more than that. Analysts are only in awe of great people. I’m not saying that I am great, in the sense of being an amazing talent. Although it’s true some people seem to think I am. I can’t think of myself that way, of course. And shouldn’t. And don’t ever now. But there is such a thing as a “great” person — and by that I mean large. That is what I always was — too large for this world. Dash suggests that he was too much. But that too-muchness — this can be gleaned from his letters — is easily contained. It is even more easily parodied.

On the contrary, some of the therapists I visited literally ran from me, frightened, tails between their legs. I had one lock me out of his office. True, I was high on something at the time. I thought it was very funny when it happened; we got into an argument and I just wouldn’t let up. I had to have it out with him. He was terrified. This didn’t have anything to do with me being famous. It had everything to do with me being “great” — not just a little “too much,” but really too much for this world.

Anyway, my very first therapist said something I will never forget. I think I was worried because Sid, in his effort to support a cleaned-up but very obese version of moi, desperately wanted to know everything about me. He endeavoured to peer into every corner of my life. And, at the time, that included searching my chest of drawers.

Yes, I kept a little stash of uppers in a bra — one I never wore because it was way too tight. The bra had been a functioning part of my wardrobe when I was way too skinny. I asked the doctor rather ingenuously if Sid had the right to look in my drawers simply because he was my husband. I remember he smiled indulgently. Little did he know that, with every word he said, he was enabling my overpowering addiction. I could find enablement anywhere. He said to me, “In every marriage, there is something that is hidden between two people. My father was a very mild-mannered, quiet sort of person, who was dominated by my mother.” (Another one of my special talents — I could always get a therapist to end up telling me his troubles instead of listening to mine. I certainly didn’t deliberately try to turn the tables on them, but I am very sympathetic, I have a good sense of humour and I love people. Therapists are so attracted to and intimidated by me that they find it more comfortable, ultimately, to talk about themselves.) He went on: “And my mother really did control my father, and he was very quiet and passive. But after he died we did find some things hidden in the closet, something that belonged to my father that none of us, even my mother, knew about.”

It was an ancient, tiny knife.

We all must have something that is simply ours, something that is just private. Yes, even my therapist’s mother’s henpecked husband had private places. But I cannot hide anything from you. It’s all open. This has much to do with the fact that long ago you accepted me unconditionally. I will never forget that. For someone like me — who never knew unconditional love — receiving it, finally, is utterly overwhelming. And even though our romance was never sexual, it might as well have been. I really do wish I was a lesbian, or was lesbianic — a more proper twenty-first-century appellation. No, I must tell you everything. And what I am going to say — I’m sure it will irritate you. But isn’t that what happens when people love, even if they don’t have sex with each other? But you will always come back. I know you will. Anyway, this is the small thing. I don’t know how you could not think it small. I don’t know how we could be that out of sync.

Allworth convinced me to take another trip to the Tranquility Spa.

You are right to suggest he is a bad influence. This is something I remember from so long ago. Boys — usually homosexuals — always love to indulge my every whim because they are in love with me. Or my fame. Allworth is not in love with my fame, though he knows of it. But I think he finds me divinely entertaining. He gave me that sly look and, to his credit, that sly look absolutely gives me permission to say no. There was a little giggle. “Would you like to go again to the Tranquility Spa?” At first I said, “I don’t think so.” And he said, “That’s fine, I don’t want to force the idea on you. I have no reason to go there and no reason to take you there. I simply thought you might want to go.” And I could see that he really was thinking of my feelings, which immediately made me realize I wasn’t being judged or pressured. “You know, I don’t think I would mind going again,” I said.

I don’t know why I agreed to go. Perhaps it was just that Allworth was so easygoing. And not only didn’t I feel pressured, but I also didn’t feel observed. It is one of the things that makes me sure that Allworth isn’t star-struck. I mean, he is, somewhat. But star-struck isn’t his ultimate attitude. I simply delight him. I wish I was more attracted to him, but I’m not. (For, as you know, I’m quite capable of persuading even the most recalcitrant homo to submit to my lips.) I think he might have sex with me, though he prefers men. I think he would have sex with anyone, especially if it was someone he liked. And if he thought it would please them.

You know, for some people, offering sex is like offering coffee or dessert. That’s what so many don’t understand. Sex was often like that for me. Other people — those like June Allyson — offered more innocent fare: a hot-cross bun or candy from a pink dish. I offered blow jobs. I didn’t then, nor do I now, find my behaviour abhorrent or disgusting. In fact, I find people who don’t understand the sheer practicality of sex simply rude. It is, after all, a bodily function. Many a man was nonplussed by the suggestion of fellatio — partly because women aren’t supposed to do such a thing. But you know, it often happens. And once they get over the novelty of my taking the initiative, they can breathe a sigh of relief. What would happen if sex was as normal as eating? Being guilty about sex makes as much sense as being guilty about an eating binge. These days there is no reason to be guilty. There are too many solutions: the fat can be sucked out; a pill can make the pounds disappear. And it is rare that anything we eat is actually fattening. Ingeniously, food just looks and tastes that way now. So why feel guilty? “Oh, I’ve just done a terrible thing . . . I’ve eaten.” But eating is something we all need to do. But then there’s: “I’ve just done a horrible thing, I’ve given a man a blow job as routinely as June Allyson might have offered him a croissant.” Don’t these statements seem ridiculous?

Allworth understands this, even though we haven’t talked about it in so many words. We do discuss sex. That is, he enjoys relating his exploits without bragging or being distasteful. He talks filth, but he does not aggrandize himself. Sexual anecdotes only disgust me if they smell of boasting. So it was easy to say yes to Allworth’s suggestion that we return to the Tranquility Spa. Allworth is also very indulgent about how long it takes me to get out of the house and into a cab. And what I really value is that he continues talking to me even when people are horrified or unduly perturbed by my shape. At least when I’m with him I forget momentarily the horror that is my appearance. I had taken the liberty of wearing a little black dress. It was, in fact, a Chanel. They are timeless, of course, but it’s something I usually don’t dare wear. Not because the dress is revealing — rather because it seems a little presumptuous for something so ugly to encase itself in something so beautiful.

When we entered the Tranquility Spa all was casual; no one took any notice of us. As per usual we were not the most grotesque beings present. I recognized some of the old crowd. The woman with the cantilevered face was in her usual place, chatting up the nippleless bartender whose gender we had not yet determined. (I know we’re not supposed to care — but we still wonder, don’t we?) Off in a corner, the handless man was nursing a drink in a bowl. He was pushing it about on the table with his stumps. Now and then he would dip his head and lap at it . . . It was very sad. As I sat down at the bar with Allworth, I thought of how easy it might be for the Handless Man if the Cantilevered Lady were to sit down with him. After all, she could lift the bowl and pour it. But it was not to be that simple. Life, human relationships, are not that simple. It’s not simply about getting a hand when you need one. Unfortunately, there is shame, repulsion, revulsion and sexual preference. And the Cantilevered Lady is a handful, pardon the pun. This is almost preposterously evident.

As we slowly made our way from the door to the bar, the dilemma was whether or not to sit close to the Cantilevered Lady. If we were to sit beside her, it would seem too familiar, an invitation to discussion. If we were to sit too far away, it might be viewed as insulting. I chose a seat about halfway down the bar. Allworth, recognizing that I had forged a solution to this sticky predicament, helped me into my chair.

Once I got there I happened to glance at the door to the backroom. I noticed that the Doll Boy was standing there, doing nothing really — looking rather listless. There was a creature sitting at another table, all alone, at the other end of the room. It was not easy to see this creature because of the lighting. This made me want to swivel myself in the chair, for the angle at which I was sitting offered an indirect view. But once I have sat, as you well know, there is very little possibility of me actually wriggling around. The creature seemed to be male. But, as I say, there is no telling how any of these creatures started out. He seemed a neutral sort of figure. His movements were neutral as he pulled the glass to his face and sipped. The light was falling over him in such a way that he constantly moved in and out of it. In fact, the light was flashing off him. I couldn’t help looking at him again and again. But if the creature had caught me, it wouldn’t have mattered, because the angle at which I was seated veiled the fact that I was staring. After a moment or two, I realized he had two faces.

It would be more accurate to say that his face was divided in two. I noticed this because he would turn his head to take a drink and look to the side; but there was nothing to look at, so I was suspicious of this movement. When he did this, different parts of his face would hit the light. This was clearly an unfinished plastic-surgery job. One side of his face was perfect and the other looked like a barely congealed mass of ground chuck. It was hard to discern anything on the ground-chuck side. There was a lump where the side of his nose should have been. The other side of his face was perfect. But not in the way the Doll Boy’s face was perfect. It was not seamless, not smooth and plastic, but instead perfectly human. It looked just like a real face. Was it possible that one half of his face had been dipped in battery acid and not the other? Well, why then could they not fix it? I had heard of instances where people had so many plastic surgeries that they became allergic to it — that their bodies rejected the chemicals that were inserted in them. Perhaps this was what had happened to him. Because it was as if a line had been drawn down the middle of his face, and one half of his face had been fixed, while the other had not.

After I had figured out what was going on, I looked back at Allworth, and realized I had been staring. But to his credit, he didn’t chide me. I could see that he thought my interest in the lone creature at the table was a typical human reaction, and he forgave me for it. I wanted to make a remark about the creature’s face just so Allworth would understand what was obsessing me. For Allworth couldn’t see it from where he was sitting. But I’m sure he knew — even if he couldn’t clearly see the creature’s half-face — why I was staring.

I tried to remember that my own appearance was certainly more disgusting and off-putting than the visage of this creature who had perhaps become immune to plastic surgery. I was, after all, a creature for whom plastic surgery was hopeless. As you know, my bones are now so brittle they could not take any sort of bruising. So I am simply a living, breathing demonstration of human disintegration in all its glory.

His half-face reminded me of the mask worn by the Phantom of the Opera. I remember when I was recovering from one of my liver operations, in Dubai (the successful one), I woke up in a hospital bed. There was an episode of Entertainment Tonight on TV that featured scenes from The Phantom of the Opera — the hit megamusical at the time. I was experiencing one of those odd, dreamlike moments that you always remember. I was half awake and half asleep, very much in pain, and powerless to correct my condition. The scenes from The Phantom of the Opera seemed to be taking a terribly long time. They kept repeating themselves, over and over. I remember John Tesh or Mary Hart saying, “This play is going to revolutionize musical theatre.” I remember being vaguely interested (in my gormless state) because, of course, I myself had something to do with the development of the American musical when I was young. What, after all, might have been revolutionary at such a late date? I don’t remember anything more about the program except that it became nightmarish to watch — and that it made me anxious. I do remember leaving both the hospital and Dubai, many months later, and asking someone — a male nurse who was taking care of me — about The Phantom of the Opera. The inveterate old fag said, “It was all stolen from Puccini and it destroyed musical theatre.” I didn’t really understand. But it seemed a shame.

All this was running through my mind. And then, before I knew it, the Cantilevered Lady was sitting next to me. She had sprinted over from the other end of the bar. She was remarkably limber — though doubtless very old with that wreck of a face. So I was now sitting between her and Allworth. This was an impossible situation. Her comment the last time about “the man that got away” had made me very insecure. And it had been made about the Handless Man, who was now ignoring her. Was she so very unappealing as a person — beyond her deformity — or were they just not suited to each other? Well, anyway, there was something about her I didn’t like. Unfortunately, it was not her face. Her face certainly appalled me, but only in the way one is appalled by a car accident. That’s not hatred or moral judgement, just a visceral response. No, what appalled me was that I realized immediately she was a slimy character. It’s the kind of thing one realizes all too quickly. This is partly, or even completely, because she pretended immediately that we were intimate.

This is perhaps the most repellent of human tendencies. I certainly experienced it when I was a star and I was never left unfazed. People would walk up to me and address me by my Hollywood name. I would turn out of politeness, and they would proceed, chatting away about their dogs or the weather. It really was amazing and frightening. They would then proceed to use my Hollywood name over and over, as if they were practising it, or savouring it, or, even more alarming, masturbating with it. I often felt the urge to yank out the hoary old phrase “That’s my name, don’t wear it out!” But, of course, my Hollywood name wasn’t my name at all. Invariably the chat would be of the most mundane variety. It was as if it were a test. “How long will it be before she breaks, bolts or just plain hits me?” Yes, certainly, incidents like this were expected — part of the job. But surely they knew that I was caught, trapped, because it was my job, and therefore I could not simply ignore them. Of course they knew, and they took cruel advantage. And on top of that, I was such a good little MGM girl. So I would just smile and search desperately for any means of escape.

The Cantilevered Lady began chatting in a similar familiar fashion (but, thankfully, without using my old star name) as soon as she was beside me. She spoke as if we were, in fact, in mid-conversation, as if we had only been cut off momentarily and were now back on track. She leaned into me intimately and whispered. It was disconcerting. I was worried she might wound me with part of her face. She spoke in a drunken tone. Allworth could not hear her little diatribe. He looked at us curiously, not sure if I had found a new friend or an irritating pest.

I couldn’t believe what she was saying. She began by pointing part of her face in the direction of the Man with Two Faces. I suppose she thought this was more polite than pointing a finger, but there was really no difference. “Get a load of him, ” she said — or words to that effect. There was definitely something of the truck driver’s moll about her, faintly reminiscent of Ida Lupino in They Drive by Night. “Can you believe it?” she said, referring to the poor man’s face. “What kind of accident was that?”

I was truly appalled. Such situations are always very difficult for me, because I am, essentially, a nice person. I never want to be rude. So I smiled and nodded and even perhaps laughed with her. But it hurts for me to laugh. So I did not, thankfully, laugh too hard. I think Allworth recognized I was uncomfortable. But he didn’t know what to do. Of course she kept going on and on — she was not the type to speak briefly or worry about taking up too much of your time.

As she continued, I began to think about the horrors of humanity — even to the point of pondering the Holocaust. It seemed to me that she was a person who was ultimately and pathetically human; someone who epitomized mankind’s grossest evil. You see, though she was perhaps, other than myself, the ugliest creature on earth, she could not pass up this opportunity to make fun of someone who might possibly be perceived as less fortunate. She was not merely condescending to, or pathologizing, the creature in the corner; ultimately she was dehumanizing him.

And is this not, ironically, what it means to be human? Aristotle suggested that it was our ability to learn, or our capacity to reason, that ultimately separates humans from animals. But is it really that? And surely it’s not just opposable thumbs! I would suggest, instead, that what makes us fully human is, paradoxically, our tendency to treat fellow human beings as if they were animals. Or worse. We love animals, and pity them in a way we do not pity other human beings. Perhaps one should say it is our ability to treat other human beings as if they were rocks or stones. Whatever tragedy had befallen the Man with Two Faces, nothing could be crueller, especially in the Tranquility Spa, of all places, than to make fun of him. The woman’s jibes obviously forced a comparison: “He is so much worse off than I am.”

What is it? Do we so fear death that we must wish it upon others? Are we so superstitious that we imagine misfortune is like a malignant spell that might waft from someone else upon us? Is the only way to protect ourselves, therefore, to put a safe distance between ourselves and the “other” with mockery? Why does it invariably make us feel better to cause other people pain? Of course, my mother’s heartless, unrelenting sternness in that room in San Gabriel is very much on my mind here.

I didn’t know what to do; I had to get away. If I continued smiling and nodding, which was my deeply inadequate modus operandi, she might have gone on all night. Perhaps she might have slipped into pantomime, fully visible to her poor victim, and acted out her condescension and ridicule. I turned to Allworth and said, “Where is the washroom?” Of course, he knew at once this was a ruse, that I had to get away from the woman beside me. We couldn’t simply leave — we had only just walked in. It seemed like the only solution. He pointed to a door in the centre of the wall opposite where the Handless Man and the Man with Two Faces were sitting. I am not capable of going to the bathroom in the way normal people do, in a public convenience. But there was no way this vicious, boring creature could have known that. I would just hide in the bathroom and wait until I came up with a better plan. Perhaps Allworth could tell her that I had been ill and we had to leave.

This plan was forming as Allworth offered to assist me in the complex process of disembarking from my stool, but I waved him away. It occurred to me that a couple of minutes alone with that monster would make what had compelled me to leave all too clear.

When I reached the washroom, the door was remarkably light. Was it made of paper? A good thing, at any rate, as I am very weak. Inside was like nothing I could have imagined. It’s been a long time since I used a public washroom. And, of course, it has been many years since they abolished gender-specific toilets. I never seem to get used to the neutral streamlined atmospheres that are the typical twenty-first-century washroom environment. I long for the antique powder rooms — the baroque mirrors and makeup tables, comfortable chairs, curtains and attendants. There is nothing like that now. But it struck me as odd that the washroom was so very dark. Then suddenly it made sense. Obviously — although the backroom was “arranged” for people to have sex — it was the washroom where people more routinely consummated their assignations.

The room smelled heavenly, a mixture of cinnamon and coconut. A soothing music played. A laser light was aimed at the ceiling, shooting straight up from the floor beside the sink. It did not illuminate anything, just cast a pale blue. I made my way towards one of the two cubicles because it occurred to me that I might be able to gather my wits there. And I thought that perhaps the toilet seat might be low enough for me to perch on, not too uncomfortably. But before I reached the door, I noticed a movement beside the other cubicle — in a slender space between it and the wall. I took a few steps over and glanced into a sort of side area.

Standing against the wall in the corner was the Doll Boy. This was simply where he was. It wasn’t as if it was natural for him to be there, but it certainly looked as if it was usual. And he was naked — from the waist down. His pants were in a little puddle on the floor. I couldn’t help thinking about Dash King’s poignant reference to the puddle he was allowed to make on his boyfriend’s thigh. The Doll Boy looked amazing. Beautiful is perhaps not an accurate term. Although he was, technically, beautiful, the odd thing about him was that he could not really be beautiful because he was so obviously fake. But the fact that his skin resembled the surface of a modern plastic item, perhaps an airliner or an automobile (only, of course, more pliable), did not mean that he was not, technically, perfectly formed.

My surprise was more of a pragmatic kind. For though I was surprised to see him, it seemed somehow inevitable. He was offering himself — not to me, of course — but to any monster who might happen to wander into the washroom from the bar. No, I was surprised because it had been such a long time since I put myself in a situation where I might offer a man a blow job. In fact, it has been nearly sixty years. And back then I was certainly not as slumped over as I am now. Sixty years ago I was not in this depressing curlicue, and had only just begun to suffer from bad knees. Back then when I contemplated giving a man a blow job, I was taken aback by the anticipation of cracking joints — the pain, the sounds, the awkwardness. Too much. But imagine my surprise to realize I am, in fact, now the perfect height to offer a blow job to a perfectly formed man (someone like the Doll Boy, who is, I would say, approximately six feet tall).

And there it was, in front of me. The Doll Penis. It was not, I immediately noted, particularly large or small. I was amazed at the detail. It was uncircumcised. Obviously it had been fashioned by a superior, loving artisan, a stellar plastic surgeon who loved penises very much. This appendage must have been his crowning achievement. There was something Davidish about it. What is the essence of Michelangelo’s David? As many have remarked, it is the epitome of youthful, coiled energy, the shaft resting so gently on the testicles, like a cobra disdaining the impulse to strike, brutally cognizant of its latent power.

It is important for you to take note of what I did next. I gazed at the Doll Boy’s penis, somewhat dispassionately, musing over the practical possibility of an erection. Since the Doll Boy’s entire body was encased in a kind of plastic, would it be possible for him to manage it? Wouldn’t it rip the casing? There are men who experience a condition called paraphimosis, where the glans gets trapped behind the skin, and they cannot experience an erection. It was hard to imagine that the Doll Boy would have been afflicted with this, as there was something so perfect about the way his penis rested there. But was his plastic skin elastic?

Unfortunately, I couldn’t manage to look at his face, as it would have been interesting to also see his expression, and whether his demeanour was as expectant as his appendage appeared to be. But in my crooked posture that would not have been possible. It was after a moment or two of this kind of contemplation that Allworth burst in. I was very happy to see him. He asked me if I was all right, and I said I was fine. And he then mentioned how appalling the Cantilevered Lady was, saying there was no getting rid of her. He whispered, “Should we leave?” And then tactifully added, “Or are you . . . busy?” Allworth is too well-mannered to have glanced at the Doll Boy’s nakedness. I appreciated the notion that I might still be capable of a sexual encounter, but happily, not at all sadly, I shook my head. Allworth, once we left, was immediately apologetic. He was concerned about my welfare and not at all perturbed by the Doll Boy. I told him not to worry.

This visit to the Tranquility Spa had been a scientific experiment. It had gone exactly as I had imagined. Nothing overt had happened. I had not gone wild, or gotten extraordinarily drunk, or ended up finding someone who deals uppers (are there still such things?) and falling off the wagon. The grand finale of your imaginings would, of course, be me meticulously fellating a veritable chorus line of handsome men. But no, nothing like that occurred. You may be disappointed to hear that I simply visited a bona fide dive, that’s all. I felt privileged to be able to observe the goings-on, to get out of my lair to see how the other half lives. Longing for an encounter of a sexual kind was irrelevant. I did not feel at all frustrated or disappointed that my contemplation of the Doll Boy had been interrupted. Indeed, it had been time to leave.

So that’s the whole story. I hope you will not be too disappointed that I am not the reckless libertine you had perhaps imagined I was, or that I have proved once and for all that I can be trusted. You spend so much time warning me of the perils of my lifestyle. Does all this time spent curled up at home with my new, convenient integration, communicating with you re: Dash King’s tragic legacy — with an occasional visit to the Tranquility Spa — constitute a lifestyle? I suppose it does, technically.

We waited until we had left the bar and passed by the nice Asian woman maintaining the spa illusion at the front door — the wait was absolutely necessary due to the looming presence of the Cantilevered Lady — and then Allworth whispered to me that maybe it would be better to come back another time, perhaps when the Cantilevered Lady was not there. We both noted that this might prove an impossible plan as she seemed a permanent fixture. Allworth said that if we ever wanted to go back he could check to see if she was present first. But it made no difference to me (although it was sweet of him to care). It didn’t matter if we returned or not; returning was the furthest thing from my mind.

Please know that I am not chiding you for your concern. I love it and, increasingly, I am able to see it as a sign of love. Just remember that for someone like me, who never received any proper love as a child, who only had a controlling mother, primarily interested in corralling her daughter for her own projects, it’s not easy to accept admonitions. I know you aren’t looking to control me for your own purposes, that you’re just trying to help. The two actions look very much the same, but I know in my heart of hearts they are not. I want you to think of how addiction operates — the vacillations between abstinence and indulgence. I want you to think of what I am suggesting as my new lifestyle — a kind of consistent voyeurism, with no possibility of veering away, or of participating in any kind of indulgence. Still, you may not approve.

I am steeling myself for your response, whatever it may be. You know, one of my doctors, nearly twenty years ago (only a year after we first met), told me about the changes that had occurred in me after I met you. I wasn’t even conscious of them. “You know,” he offered, “you have always been just this side of a curmudgeon.” He said this in the way that someone informs a person of something negative about their character, or the character of someone close to them, after the fact (“I never liked your husband”). It is not easy for me to imagine myself as a curmudgeon. But maybe someone who has lived so long and is so set in her opinions (if not her ways) might appear that way to the world at large. At any rate, you have perhaps saved me from becoming one. You have taught me how to bend and sway — an apt metaphor for someone who so resembles a crippled branch. I will never forget that, whatever our differences.