They try to lighten things up a little as well with happier reasons: gifts, pregnancies, votes, love that the person is still coming to terms with.

But just like life, it’s the negative stuff that’s really intense.

They end with two guys trying to talk about their past sexual experiences before they go to bed together.

I look away so Becky can’t see my face. All I’m thinking about is Gabriel.

The question starts again: I stay silent because…

Then the room goes silent.

Then the room goes black.

After a minute that feels like forever, a recording of someone inhaling plays loudly as the lights slowly come up; as if the lights and air are connected.

A girl dressed in yellow dances seductively in front of a group of guys. A boy in green walks around tickling people. James stops in front of us wrapped in blue-gray cloth the same color as his eyes. He hugs us both, then walks over to a girl dressed in lace, dips her, and spins her around. When he’s done, she stumbles back, flushed, dizzy. He moves on, stopping in front of random people. Daring them to speak.

Around us, people laugh. Someone screams. A boy’s stomach gurgles. A girl coughs. One by one, they’re picked out of the crowd and taken out of the theater as punishment for their transgressions. Only the quiet ones stay to the end.

By the curtain call, Becky and I are standing with only a handful of survivors. Those who, for better or worse, have kept silent.

We wait by the stage door, and when James comes out, Becky elbows her way through the crowd and throws her arms around him like she never wants to let go.

He’s flushed and his long hair is damp against the top of his collarless jacket. He catches my eye and I feel like I need to say something, but “good show” isn’t going to cut it. And speaking still seems taboo, which I think he understands, because when he extricates himself from Becky and reaches out a hand to squeeze my shoulder, he only nods.

We assume that, like he always does after a show, James will head out with the cast to review the performance. Becky and I walk toward the subway, with only the sound of her boot heels to accompany us.

Finally, I break the silence. Well, that was intense.

Yeah, she replies so quietly her voice is almost lost in the street noise.

Then the silence wraps tightly back around us and there’s nothing left to say.

When we hear from James a couple days later, Becky and I race to meet him at Howard Johnson’s where, instead of a cocktail, he orders a Jameson on the rocks.

Whiskey? Becky asks, looking at the clock. It’s eleven thirty in the morning.

James wraps his hands around the glass and says, Well, it’s five o’clock somewhere.

The show, I start. That was intense.

Becky interrupts. What I want to know, she asks, is whose heartbeat was it?