Having my way with Ulysses

by God yes wait yes hold on he was on the cards this morning when I laid out the deck

The cards are vague and mysterious.

Scene: [On a bed of something as soft as what do you call it gossamer, wait, what is that, snakes? That’s a bed of snakes now? How the hell are we paying for this? Did we have to hire snake wranglers too? Jesus Christ!]

Jesus: [On the god mic] Yes we have wranglers, but just for one infinite snake. God says don’t worry about the budget he thinks he has a donor. Ok head in the game people. Places please Cassandra, Lakshmi, Vishnu keep Rip Van Winkling it right there where you are. He’s sleeping hard. Let me know when we have places. From the top of the show, standby on lights 1 through 5, and snake wranglers: go.]

Scene: [On a bed of snake soft as what do you call it gossamer, Vishnu is sleeping while Lakshmi massages his feet and gossips with Cassandra.]

Lakshmi: So how is God’s play going to go, it must be opening soon, no?

Cassandra: Wait, am I sitting on a snake? I better not make an alnight sitting on this affair. I mean. Sorry. What? His one man show? Oh honey you wouldn’t believe me if I told you.

Lakshmi: That bad?

Cassandra: I did the cards, and first off I get reversed four of pentacles crossed by the happy squirrel.

Lakshmi:  Oh that’s cute. Isn’t that good?

Cassandra: It’s bad. I mean, corners are being cut all over the place and it’s like he’s obsessed with promotion. He says that he has money of course so we’ll be all right, but you know the membership numbers have not been good lately. Christmas drove in a few advanced ticket sales, but we won’t see any of those people again until Easter. And then you cross all that with a happy squirrel: this show will stink like road kill.

Lakshmi: But it will have a long run?

Cassandra: No. And it’s his own fault. He got reversed 5 of swords at the top, I mean, come on. He brought it on his own damn self and then hooking up with his with his ex wife all the time squandering money and getting drunker and drunker. The rest of the time he’s been just plain intoxicated on himself. He has wardrobe making skinny jeans! You should see him all squeezed and squashed into them!

Lakshmi: No!

Cassandra: Sure enough. It will be a spectacle on the stage, imagine paying $450 in the preserved seats for that to see! It was all right there in the reversed three of cups. Yeah it’s all great fun, and won’t it be the biggest hit show of all time, so hey! Lets celebrate now!

Lakshmi: Was that his attitude?

Cassandra: Acting upon him.  His attitude was the reversed ace of wands. So.

Lakshmi: Blocked.

Cassandra: Yup. He did have Judgement straight up; that was interesting.  He’s going to have to make a change.  It’s time to look everything over and weigh it all out.  The show can’t sustain itself as a one man thing.  It just doesn’t work in this day and age, with audiences like these.

Lakshmi: I know it. Fickle. He should have stuck with the triple act. So much less pressure when you’re in an ensemble.

Cassandra: Don’t I know it and I told him too, but does he listen to me? No. Does anybody listen to me? No.

Lakshmi: They don’t.

Cassandra: No they don’t.

Lakshmi: God’s tongue is too flat.

Cassandra: Really? Ew. I wouldn’t let him lick me.

Lakshmi: He does it all wrong too.

Cassandra: Pigs of men. And what about that one? Don’t you get sick of Vishnu’s big square feet up in your mouth like that?

Lakshmi: The first night ever we met, I had just floated up out of the ocean and we stood staring at one another for about 10 minutes as if we met somewhere. It was a recognition, you know? I saw him and I knew I’d be rubbing this man’s cold feet for all eternity. So tell me more. What’s the future, what’s the final outcome for God: The One Man Show!

Cassandra: I drew the king of swords for the future, so he’ll find a different layer of consciousness to work in. He’ll have to. He’ll figure it out, he just has to be rational about it. And the play? I don’t even know how to tell him.  What am I going to tell him? It was the five of pentacles reversed: he’ll lose money on this thing. Really, he ought to lose money itself from the whole enterprise: money has nothing to do with being god. I tried to tell him. I talked and talked until you couldn’t even see me anymore, I was just this angry woman’s mouth telling him come on man, believe me! This is how it’s going to be damn it, listen! I’m telling you!

[Cassandra is interrupted by somebody on the god mic. Who the hell is that?]

no thats no thats no way no stop just stop shut up cassandra shut up people dont believe you because some man told them not to believe you here i am apollo telling the story first so dont believe cassandra when she talks the one who tells the story first wins my ass ok my motherfucking ass is that what you think chica no just speak girl and let them all believe what they will and you know what congratulations everybody wins so lose it just let it go baby love its no loss what are you losing whats lost its a gain you want to spend all time trying to make people know the future you want them to see dont you see it too the truth its true its true thats you all the time with believe me believe me and they dont believe you and poor me im such a victim is that what you tell yourself and why because ajax raped you and whats her face athena just stood there and watched is that going to be the why for everything you going to let that be your loss forever get over it its done let it go no loss ok its a gain to be done with that lot and let apollo say whatever he likes to any born fool wholl believe all his blather because hes god hes god so what you be god too ok youre god too you are god done moving on now go

In what final satisfaction did these antagonistic sentiments and reflections, reduced to their simplest forms, converge?

Shhh.

3:25 am

[Scene: Two lovers in bed, AE with Lizzie Twigg: coiled head to toe they quietly discuss the fixity of their volatility and the volatilization of their fixation, until within his fixedness AE has become nothing and feeling everything, Lizzie becomes volitive. They communicate intermittently in increasingly more laconic narrations. Also a small angry dog is trying to take up as much space as possible between them. It’s so cute! Come here little puppy, come here. What a good doggie. Who’s a good doggie? Oh Jesus God! He’s all teeth! Get off me! Like petting a piranha with fur.]

AE: It’s just that we define ourselves contrarily to each other. I am me because I am not you, and you are you because you are not me. We are poles apart.

Lizzie: We are the same person, AE, don’t you feel it?  After all the mutual deaths we have died? Resurrection, translation, return, distillation, putrefaction, decay, still you don’t know you had it backwards the whole time. You were resurrecting in the wrong direction.

AE: I know. I know it. I just wanted to be the material representation of eternality, in linear time. Just once. Just for a little while. Only long enough to re-experience that feeling of linearity. Don’t you miss it? And feel what it could be, to be linear and eternal simultaneously.

Lizzie: But you can’t just translate yourself into linearity and say I’m back, everybody, I’ve  gained bodily entry into eternity and now look at me! Look at what happened to Lazarus. No. If you want to see how a human mortal finds a place within eternity, that’s not going to cut it. That gets you nothing.

AE: Nothing’s not nothing. Don’t knock nothing.

Lizzie: No, nothing’s not nothing.

AE: I was trying be the eternal temporalized. I wanted to be the all at onceness linearized. I wanted to square that circle, just once. Just the one time and be it and feel it, really feel what it is to be the coexistence of the infinite and the finite.

Lizzie: Be eternality living in linearity? Darling, you’ve done it. You’ve been there already. The infinite and the finite are the same things whichever side you’re on, if you really must take sides, can’t you tell? Just look at us, two beings contrarily defined yet coexisting as aspects of the same reality.

AE: I know. I get it. You don’t have to scratch me like that.

Lizzie: That wasn’t me, but here’s a flash of light for you AE: when we were mortals we didn’t have to go around worrying all the time about gaining bodily entry into eternity: eternity had already gained bodily entry into us. We have always already been since time immemorial and forevermore, the material representation of eternality.

AE: We are God.

Lizzie: Exactly. We are already a squared circle: we can take a finite form, but our infinite selves are in there too.

AE: We are a circle, containing everything.

Lizzie: Everything and nothing.

[At rest relatively to themselves and to each other, the lovers settle into silent contemplation. Small birds rise gently, sweetly, from Lizzie and from AE. Hundreds of them flitter up in swirling concentric patterns bringing with them, as if reflected from the sheen of their feathers, an increasing luminosity of ruby light. Thousands of little birds, aeons of them, softly forming clouds as soft as what do you call it gossamer, the clouds forming mist, the mist gently drifting downward covering the lovers, the lovers blurring about the edges. Together they coalesce and dissolve, their bodies languid, breathing, watching their spirits unrestrained, circling, birds rising into mist falling, like self knowing wheels revolving uniformly: self knowing and self known.]

Three seekers of the pure truth.

They never listen to the voice of reason without being tied up by their prejudices, as Ulysses was by his fellow travelers, and giving them the order in advance: "Pull the rope tighter, the more I squirm and beg to be set free, until we will have lost sight of the Sirens."2:17 am

[Scene: Atop Mount Pisgah in Madaba, Jordan, Moses greets two more Moseses who have come to play a little chess, grill up some lamb, and argue, always argue. Always the same fight about the same damn thing.  Move on already.]

Moses: Welcome gentlemen, Moses, your face.  Not this again.

Moses Maimonides: [His badly scarred face sports wounds in varying stages of freshness. Some of them weep a yellow pus. Stinks. Moses, put a bandage on or something. A mask. Nobody wants to see that.]  Nothing.  A mirror.  Nothing.

Moses Mendelssohn: [Back bent double but nicely dressed]  Oh I’ve done that. Hurts.

Moses: You have to stop. This ridiculous pursuit. It must end. Let it go.

Moses Maimonides: I just wonder, if I could just, if I could just hear it from him once and for all.

Moses Mendelssohn: He was not Jewish. Aristotle was not a Jew. Don’t waste his time asking him that, please, man, have some dignity.  Remember who you are. From Moses to me there was none like you.  You talked Aristotle into the void! Why does his faith mean so much to you?  My closest friend is a, well, not a Christian per se, certainly not a Spinozist or some sort of athiest, more of a pantheist. He’s not Jewish anyway and you don’t see me trying to make him into a Jew.

Moses: It is Plato who is Jewish, not Aristotle. Or Socrates rather.

Moses Mendelssohn: Nonsense. Must anyone be anything? Aristotle. He dealt in reason: his philosophy conjures the purity of truth found only in mathematics. If this equals that then that equals this. Mathematics, not superstition. Most of humanity embark on the journey of life with delusion of superstitions and with the firm resolve to complete that journey with them.  You think a man who rejected the infinite and the void with an even greater resolve was a Jew?

Moses: Stop. Superstitions! I did not lead my people, God’s chosen people, all the way to the holy land for superstitions! With kids too! Are we there yet? Are we there yet? And feeding everybody, and everybody all cooped up together bickering and sick to death of each other already, and can we stop here, and can we stop there every five minutes.  I can’t tell you how many times I threatened to pull the whole thing over and turn around.

Moses Maimonides: And you did it for what? You died here!

Moses Mendelssohn: But the view, Moses, it’s soultransfiguring.  The light in the morning hours must be magnificent.

Moses: It’s a nice place to end up, I’ve got to say.

Moses Maimonides: Your barbeque pit is phenomenal, you could roast just about anything in there. How do you keep such a good smolder going?

Moses: Eternal fire. Really, it comes down to how you shape your burning bush. I like a nice pyramid with a pan of water next to it.

Moses Maimonides: Get that from the Egyptians?

Moses: Yup. You know, Moses, I’m going to ask Plato if he was Jewish. I just have to ask.

Moses Maimonides: I know, right?

Moses Mendelssohn: I can’t listen to these words.

Moses: It’s too late Moses, we are deep into the quicksand now. Our world without end is a different kind of world without end, so don’t give us your mathematical rationality. Parallel lines meet at infinity now.A = A + B.  Mathematics has been entangled in strings of its own making for infinities beyond infinities now.

Moses Maimonides: And all that bound into a finite space too.

Moses: Exactly. Everything is made from infinity and void as you well know. And was Aristotle a Jew? It was Socrates I’m sure of it, or Plato rather.  Was Aristotle Jewish? Let Moses ask him.  See what he can do.

Moses Mendelssohn: Fine. Go ahead Moses, it’s your face.

Moses: Good. Now how do you like your lamb?

Their two or four eyes conversing.

Others asked such questions as "Why should we care what happens after we are dead" or "If this Rebellion is to happen anyway, what difference does it make whether we work for it or not?"

1:33 am

Scene: [A rabbi and a priest walk into a bar. The rabbi says:]

Rabbi: Where is everybody, are we the first ones here?

Priest: Must be. Good, I wanted to talk with you alone. You and I need to take control of this thing before it bloats to an inmanagable size.

Rabbi: Yes. Our revolution must come on the due instalments plan, if we expect to pull this thing off at all.

Priest: [Turning away from the others who probably and speaks nearer to, so as the others in case they.]  Shush for Christ sake.

The Rabbi: Am I not right?

The Priest: Yes, but this place is all eyes. I don’t want to indulge in any, orthodox as you are.

Rabbi: Right. Of course. Listen. We want to homogenize all faiths yes, but some faiths are, you understand. I mean, all faiths are equal.

Priest: But some faiths are more equal than others.

Rabbi: Indeed. So your plan to raise money, I don’t see it.  How do your people do it? It seems you raise your money on false pretenses, fork it over and you’ll go to heaven. What heaven? Show me heaven.

Priest: The abstract future reward is always more powerful than immediate gain or punishment. Don’t you know that yourself? Heaven, its glories, its boundless bountiful plenitude, the sheer everythingness of the whole concept can take any size, it can stretch to any or no limit, it can fill every space, it can

Rabbi:  Save it for your congregation, father, you can be all their daddies but not mine. Try selling buy now receive later to people who concern themselves with life here and now. I walk in with future reward and say pay money for it, I might as well sell crosses. Mine won’t be the only ones, prepare yourself, and what about the Muslims?

Priest: That’s where self sacrifice for eternal reward will pay off.

Rabbi: Yes, but their temporality, so unpredictable. So branching and forking.  Touch it and it folds up on itself, how do we manage that? Call something a crusade and they feel it like it happened yesterday. And so it did happen yesterday. Bring up any event of any kind and bam, it’s now. We’re in it now. We’ll need a work around.  I’m assuming we’ll want everyone to go linear?

Priest: Makes sense to me. The Hindus are persuadable, but the Buddhists, the Taoists especially.  They’ll make trouble, and that’s not trouble we want.

Rabbi: No.

Priest: No.  To keep linear time we’ll have to speak of other things. Distract them with other issues. Look, we’ll have to say: it’s hard to lay down any hard and fast rules as to right and wrong but room for improvement all round there certainly is. We pose to them that we all resent violence or intolerance.

Rabbi: Yes. It never reaches anything; It never stops anything.

Priest: Never. It’s a patent absurdity on the face of it to hate people because they live round the corner and speak another vernacular.  No. We must be practical.  We must imbue ourselves with the proper spirit.  It will be the only way to create our New Bloomusalem.  By the way, do you like the symbol I came up with?

Rabbi: It’s a little busy. The Hindus might like it. It’s a good job you didn’t add a bleeding saint to it, or we’d never convince the Muslims to get on board.

The point was the least conspicuous point about it.

Fate is partial to repetitions, variations, symmetries. Nineteen centuries later, in the southern part of the province of Buenos Aires, a gaucho is set upon by other gauchos, and as he falls he recognizes a godson of his, and says to him in gentle remonstrance and slow surprise (these words must be heard, not read): Pero, ¡ché! He dies, but he does not know that he has died so that a scene can be played out again.
1:26 am

Scene: [An endlessly large room once belonging to to all the infinite possibilities but now cavernously empty save for Caesar who is curled up on the floor patting his knife wounds with smooth caresses.]

Time: [On the god mic, sotto voce] Are you ready to listen?

Caesar: What’s the point?

Time: You must stop looking at the point of everything. This particular version of you has no point. Or rather, you have many points. You are legion.

Caesar: Blah blah blah.

Time: You’re tired, you’re not taking it in. Maybe some solid food? I’m a stickler for solid food. Here. [A cup of coffee appears on the floor next to Caesar. It’s over-roasted, must be Starbucks.] Now Caesar, honey, you do know that history is a tale like any other too often heard. But darling, your history, your place in Roman history, is only one manifestation of infinite possibilities. You have ousted all the others and now here we are, at a standstill until you can accept it. You are at a crucial point.

Caesar: But if I have other selves, some which did not die, then they are not to be thought away.

Time: They are, but not by you. You occupy a non-dimensional point, the stilled eternity. Move to become a line, then a plane, then a tetrahedron and you’ll gain some perspective. Trust me on this one. Your other selves did.

Caesar: I refuse to accept other selves.

Time: They are the possibilities you have ousted. You did that. Get used to it. You think you can square the circle lying there in a puddle of yourself? Stand up, man, form a line. Until then you are both center and circumference. Unless you straighten up beyond this particular singularity, that thing you call “self” to which you stubbornly cling, sweetie love, you will understand nothing, and only nothing.

Caesar: Leave me alone

Time: The point is always alone.

The mystical finesse involved was a bit out of his sublunary depth.

Ready the bone wax. Metzenbaum scissors. Get that cat out of here. Ready to close.
1:25 am

Jesus: [With a smile of unbelief] Dad, not to sound too pompous but your soul implantation technique is unsurpassed and will probably make your name live beyond eternity.

God: Probably?

Jesus: Too wishy washy. Forget the probably. Are you ready to close?

God: Not until after the breath of life, this is no simple soul. Well it is, but you know what I mean.

Jesus: I shouldn’t think simple is the proper word.

God: No? Give me a little sweat on my upper lip. Ok remove sweat. No no, the soul is simple, it has no contrary, and corruption is found only where there is contrariety. And since it is the recipient of my life giving breath, well.

Jesus: Goes without saying.

God: Exactly.

Jesus: Still, no one can give what he hasn’t got. I believe you are supernatural!

God: None of that, now, everything aspires to being after its own manner. Come to think of it, we might want to revise that into holy writ. Sounds good, no? Get some monks on that. Here, help me stuff the soul into there.

Jesus: Like that?

God: No, put your back into it. Good.

Jesus: Maybe we should say a few words to the soul before we close?

God: Good idea. In Dillman’s Grove my love did die and now in ground shall ever lie. None could ere replace her visage, until your face brought thoughts of kissage. Right. Good? Ready to close. 10 blade scalpel. Sponge stick. Scat! Damn cats around here. Cranial screw top. Check for stripping. Now all we can do is wait.

This was a quandary

Pray don't imagine it was my intent To live with her on bread and cheese and kisses. No! just upon the threshold of our blisses, Kind Heaven must snatch away the gift it lent.1:01 am

The Mad Nun: [Not yet perfectly sober]  Shh get down! Jesus! O Jesus! Jesus!

Achates: [Disgustingly sober] Did they see us?

The Mad Nun: Shh! Don’t speak! Good god what is that noise that one is making in the street?

Achates: I think he’s trying to whistle.

The Mad Nun: He should leave whistling to the professionals!

Achates: Shh! They’re coming this way.

The Mad Nun: If we get caught I’m prepared to swear a hole through a ten gallon pot that it was you who came on to me.

Achates: Judas! And I’ve been so faithful.

The Mad Nun: Freeze in hell.  I know people so don’t piss me off.

Achates:  Well there’s gratitude. And after I wined and dined you. Gave you fancy bread, that came from the heart!

The Mad Nun: It went to my head. I’ll say you put something in my drink.  Now get down, there’s not as much room in here as we had last night.

Achates: The hearse tomorrow night?

The Mad Nun: It’s up to my husband.

Jesus: [Who up to then had said nothing whatsoever of any kind]  I’m in, but the state of our last cab was not what you would call clean when we left it to the tender mercy of others the last time, or more properly, last night when not to put too fine a point on it, we left an enormous wet spot, as it is called, or, more properly, dry crumbs.

You are the link between nations and generations. Speak, woman, sacred lifegiver!

In fact, under the closed eyes of the inspectors the traits featuring the chiaroscuro coalesce, their contrarieties eliminated. 12:57 am

[St. Barbara and St. Juliana, their heads coalescing, speak explosively.]

St. Barbara: My own father cut off my head!

St. Juliana: Cut off my head!

St: Barbara: For want of more light I made him see red!

St. Juliana: Made him see red!

St. Barbara: Not marry Jesus? I’d rather be dead!

St. Juliana: Rather be dead!

St. Barbara: (But that was before he took me to bed!)

St. Juliana: (He took me to bed!)

The last straw.

Friends, I have forgotten two things. I wish all to know that I do not propose to sell any part of my country, nor will I have the whites cutting our timber along the rivers, more especially the oak. I am particularly fond of the little groves of oak trees. I love to look at them, and feel a reverence for them, because they endure the wintry storms and summer's heat, and not unlike ourselves seem to thrive and flourish by them. One thing more: those forts filled with white soldiers must be abandoned, there is no greater source of trouble and grievance to my people.

12:44 am

Scene: [Tranquilla convent, infirmary. Lizzie Twigg is unconscious and lying on a tinseled oak bed. The shading she has painted with loving pencil on her eyes, bosom, and shame is badly smeared. Sister Mary Peter lifts her from the secondbest bed while St. Agatha straightens the warm impress of her warm form.]

St. Agatha: Don’t jostle her like that.

Sister Mary Peter: I should drop her for what she’s done. She has sinned. We have suffered!

St. Agatha: Sister. Our Sister. Shh! Just look at her. Classic curves: a thing of beauty. Here, put her down on her stomach, we can take the powderpuff to the spot where her back changes name.

Sister Mary Peter:  No, please I beg you. What must my eyes look down on. [Nearly drops Lizzie Twigg but catches her with her leg.]

St. Agatha: Nekum! Remember your wounded knee! Come on, let’s see if she has hair there.

[Sister Mary Peter returns Lizzie Twigg to the bed, facing up.]

Lizzie Twigg: [Talking in her sleep] Where dreamy creamy gull waves o’er the waters dull.

Sister Mary Peter: Oh that’s it. [Gives Lizzie Twigg a hard shove with both hands. She rolls a dummymummy in the sheet off of the bed and onto the floor.

St. Agatha: Mary Peter!

Lizzie Twigg: Bbbbblllllblblblblobschb! What’s happening? I feel like I fell from a cliff!

St. Agatha: You fell out of bed. Sister Mary Peter help her up! [St Agatha rushes to kiss Lizzie Twigg in four places as she crawls jellily forward from under the bed, with dignity].

Lizzie Twigg: [Returning to bed] I’m fine. What happened? Mnemo? I don’t think I’m in full possession of my faculties. I feel like I’ve been run over.

Sister Mary Peter: You were run over, and me too trying to save you. I think I have a concussion.

St. Agatha: Ssh! She is right, our sister. Don’t you remember, dear? You tried to perform a solo ghost dance and then you threw yourself under Jagannath.

Lizzie Twigg: [Covers her face with her hands looking through parting fingers] Oh God. Where’s AE?

Sister Mary Peter: Where’s AE? Sacrilege! Who cares about AE? He’s nothing! What are you doing trying to re-kill yourself over a man? Your crucifix not thick enough? What do you lack within our barbed wire?

St. Agatha: Ssh! Lizzie, you can’t kill yourself again. We immortals have no word for that in our dictionary. I know AE’s return was difficult for you.

Sister Mary Peter: Difficult!

St. Agatha: Ssh, sister yes, it was difficult. Lizzie, you fell 32 feet per second per second for him all over again. But here at Tranquilla we are brides of Christ. You must have no more desire. We are only the ethereal.

Lizzie Twigg: Only ethereal! Then how do you account for that large moist stain on Mary Peter’s robe? And Mother Agatha, I can smell the cloud of stench escaping from your crack.

St. Agatha: [A button pops off of her sackcloth habit; she’s lost a charm] Listen sister, we know where we’d all be if we were only ethereal, but we won’t turn your strength into our weakness. Where do you think you were going to end up, after Jagannath squashed you? Where? Where was that ghost dance going to take you? To Sitting Bull floating in the ether? Rise up all you want, go ahead, but you’ll come back down. You think you were going to ghost dance yourself up to some cloudy waiting lounge, then sit around wondering when the vorex will open under AE’s feet? Circumstances alter cases, have you learned nothing from your time here? Don’t you understand anything? Our convent is built on buffalo holocausts. The skull mountains: we’ve shaped them into cathedrals. You think we don’t bleed? We are the sisters of the last straw and Grandfather Tatanka Iyotanka is our patron saint. [Looking toward Standing Rock] Father I come! Father give us back our arrows! [Looks at Lizzie Twigg with features hardening] You say you are done with AE then you try this? Fool someone else sister, not me.

And a prettier, a daintier head of winsome curls was never seen on a whore’s shoulders.

My matchless lamb that may atone for all, said she, glorified my destiny, chose me for his equal, although unequal our coupling once seemed. When I went from your wet world he called me to his graciousness. Come hither to me, my lover sweet, for neither mote nor spot is in you. He gave me power and also beauty. In his blood he washed my pledge and place and crowned me clean in virginity and adorned me in flawless pearls.12:32 am

Scene: [Some time after midnight in the offices of Holy Mother Public Relations Martha and Mary are having a stitch and bitch.]

Martha: So you weren’t always a virgin. What was your life like before?

Mary: Before? God. Things were different, I mean I started working at fourteen, you know? I started young. Here’s a picture. [A photograph of a teenaged Mary appears in Martha’s hand; she almost drops her wine.]

Martha: You were cute, look at your hair!

Mary: I had two right feet.

Martha: So tell me about the first one.

Mary: [laughing] Jesum chrysanthamums, that was so long ago! And I was so stupid; I mean I knew absolutely nothing about men. Nothing. My first one was a Libyan eunuch and I was such a neophyte, I had no idea!

Martha: [choking on her wine a little] Mary! Jeez

Mary: Oye! Careful!

Martha: Jeez and crackers would be great with this wine.

Mary: Nice save. And yeah, I could eat something. [Mary widens her eyes just perceptibly and a deliquescing bleu cheese appears with sesame crackers] You like bleu?

Martha: Sweet. Yes. Thank you. So didn’t you realize that he had nothing going on downstairs?

Mary: I’m fourteen. What do I know at fourteen? He looked like a Ken doll, nothing alarming there. But I’ll tell you who was alarming, this guy I knew, what was his name? Pen something, Pendenis. Panther! Holy mama.

Martha: Ha!

Mary: Lord I knew I was going to be in trouble, and he had it all out there too. I mean, he was packed into these tight pants on a stage just about dick level with the crowd. I got whacked in the head with that thing! It must have taken some serious divine intervention to get him into those pants. Anyway, he’s the one who burst my tympanum. Hey, where’s your sister?

Martha: Speaking of getting dickslapped. I don’t know. I don’t care. She’s probably off with J being a cocktease.

Mary: Seriously?

Martha: She won’t do him until he puts a ring on it, so they’ve been doing everything but. I tried to tell her

Mary: I thought they were married? Or at least engaged, didn’t they just have the wedding?

Martha: They called it off. It’s on, it’s off. He’s been cheating on her with a ton of potential Mrs. Je

Mary: Watch it!

Martha: eepers. Sorry.

Mary: You want him popping in here?  Jeezum Crow!  So she’s still technically a virgin?

Martha: Yeah, but come on.

Mary: I know, right.

Martha: So.

Mary: Yeah. The thing about virginity. Who cares? You know? I mean really, look at who cares, it’s never the virgin. And whatever she’s telling herself, I highly doubt she can get off on a technicality.

Martha: Or much else.