I say I don’t know what she’s talking about, and she says that’s what men do to each other, her face twisted into a mask of revulsion. She’s swaying a little, a fierce hen, confrontational.

I am unbelievably embarrassed and uncomfortable. But somehow I get this courage—because she’s drunk?—and before I think what I’m saying, I argue, “Well, is that so different from what a man and a woman do?”

Pause. She says, “No, no it’s not.” She’s quiet for a minute and then she says, “The woman’s part is no good.” A thought which takes her out of my affairs and into the familiar twilight of her own weeping; she stumbles to her room, as if all her anger’s dissolved now, something dark washed over her. It’s like the opening image of a soap opera she used to watch, The Edge of Night; each weekday noon it would be daylight in the city, the skyline clear, and then a diagonal of shadow would fall across the buildings, the trees, the sky itself, while the announcer said, “The Edge of Night.” That visible borderline would hang there, transparent but still dark, permanent, shadowing half the world.

Now it’s really night. Where have I been? Out to Dino’s, listening to rock ’n’ roll, burning incense to cover the smell of our joint; I know better than to bring anyone to my house now, haven’t for years. Or maybe I’ve been to the park, lying out on the grass on my back to look at the stars, making them leave light trails behind them by moving my head back and forth, as if I’m drawing on the sky with my own eyeballs. Or out to a group meditation at the university, everyone soaking up the collective tranquillity generated by all that transcendence? Or was it the bad trip, the night I thought my bones were smoldering? I was about to burst into flame from the inside out, and only my will could control it, or keep it almost in check. Then I was that boy I’d been the terrible night of the haircut: hide him, nobody wants to look at him.