You’ll protest that that was my fantasy, that the capitalist might have no taste for the scald. That he might just have been caught off guard, and stopped things as soon as he noticed he was able to. That he might want, and might want to want, only the falsely advertised modern prize—comfort and titillation in the same package, each on demand—and thus be doomed. But you’d be wrong, or rather your argument would be flawed, though you might be right about the capitalist.

For one thing: that the prize is falsely advertised does not mean (a) that the picture of it is complete or (b) that it is impossible. Every writer lives things that can’t be written.

After what’s happened recently with S, you might ask me: E, are you in Love? And I can only say, if I’m being truthful—and why not?—that I’m afraid I am. Which is to say that I am in love, and that I am afraid.

But that isn’t how I’ll introduce myself to this group when my turn comes, after Marc and Leslie and Kim and Stella and R and R and S and the rest take theirs, and after I’ve stepped away and taken my place among the others, arrayed around a table sipping boiled-and-cooled water (and, yes, facing S in public for the first time).

I really am sorry for the interruption. It rose up in me at once and nonnegotiably. Like a bout of hiccups or a sneeze. And now it’s done.

THE INTRODUCTIONS CONTINUED

along the lines already established by Marc and Leslie: Kim teased Leslie about casting him in her example, dissipating the real tension that casting had caused; R (from Love, who introduced herself as Rinda) spoke eloquently about her ambivalence, as a person who had been raised in a village much like this one and fled it for the city decades ago, at finding herself in the role of interloping “flatlander”; another R (also from Love) made everybody laugh with a selfdeprecating introduction that hid real anxiety about losing access to their familiar hookup sources (this routine included a spontaneous live demo of one of their favorite apps, which disproved, in real time, any worries that the regional scene wouldn’t be able to provide them); Stella (from Anti-Love, the one who was quiet through both versions of Gaslight) didn’t say much, because she never said much, but what she did say—“I’m kinda freaked out, honestly. And confused.”—before stopping and staring into a point in the distance with a small tight smile on her lips, created an opening.