Catherine: I feel ashamed now. He was always good to me.
Morgan: You should be ashamed. ---- And you are being far too hard on us. We both eventually became much less monstrous than you would think. We were forced to confront ourselves in ways that neither of us had ever thought possible. Take, for instance, the usual cast of characters that johns bring in to their sessions. It's always the same: parents, wives, old girlfriends, co-workers. We had to learn how to bring anybody we wanted into our sessions and then nobody at all.
Catherine: Your parents aren't always there? Herb and I have attended every sex act that Bob has ever engaged in with another person.
Jean (addressing Catherine with shocked indignation): How could you?
Catherine (addressing Jean): It's just how things are, Jean. Your parents are always there too. Along with the others.
Jean: What others?
Catherine: My parents, Herb's parents, our grandparents, your grandparents. Whoever else happens to be interested. Whoever you are thinking about. There's that nice boy, Kevin, you knew in college. We see quite a lot of him when you and Bob are having sex. You wish you were having sex with him instead. Everybody who's ever watched you and Bob go at it knows that.
(Spotlights slowly illuminate several long rows of chairs at the back of the room. In these chairs sit men and women in a variety of 20th Century and 19th Century clothing from the United States and Europe. Each is surfing the Internet with a laptop computer perched on their knees. These are Bob's and Ruth's dead ancestors and relatives. Bob's dead ancestors and relatives mimic the noises Jean makes when she is having an orgasm. The noises sound like a cooing, excited chimpanzee from an old Tarzan movie ("Oo Oo Oo"). After mimicking Jean's orgasmic noises, Bob's dead ancestors and relatives laugh loudly amongst themselves.)
Jean (enraged): That's a horrible invasion of my privacy!
Catherine: Well, if you really want to know the truth, you and Bob are not much fun to watch.
(Bob's dead ancestors and relatives, now joined in by Ruth's dead ancestors and relatives, mimic Jean's cooing, excited chimpanzee noises again ("Oo Oo Oo"), then laugh loudly amongst themselves.)
Jean: Then why do you do it?
Catherine: Bob brings us with his thoughts the same as he does here. Our parents and the others further back have a vested interest. Especially in any encounter between male and female in which the slightest chance of conception exists. A soul can't come into the world unattended. The past must get its shit-hooks into each of us as soon as we exist to bind us to it and make us a part of it. You'll have to attend your own children's sex acts someday and take your place in the outer circles with the others hovering about when you die. (Addressing Morgan) What was the first thing you did with this trick Nate taught you?
Morgan: The fourth night I brought all the boys from my Grammar School basketball team to watch me. ---- It seemed appropriate. The twelve-year-old boys that these men had been were my first source of sexual knowledge. I took requests from the audience and did all the things they wanted to do with her.
Catherine: Sex is not like you think it will be when you are a child.
Morgan: It is never more than adequate for what we bring to it. ---- Nate taught me that I would have to learn to bring people into my sessions to deepen my experience. That I couldn't just continue to coast by as I had been doing before I woke up. That I'd have to look into myself to find the right persons to bear witness to each type of john I became. ---- I didn't understand then what he was trying to teach me. For the longest time, I contented myself with doing the obvious. During my Stoic sessions, I'd bring the two guys I worked double-shifts with seven days a week one summer at a synthetic textile thread factory. We were bony, poisoned shadows working in continuous 100-degree heat. Nothing fazed us. Those two guys reminded me of exactly what it felt like to be perfectly without feeling. They never even blinked. And neither did I with women who saw me as a Stoic. My Charmer sessions always saw the first three rows of persons from a speech I'd given. Instead of imagining them naked as they tell you to do in books on public speaking, I'd have them take their clothes off for real. For my Lonely Guy sessions, I'd bring the crow that kept me company hitch-hiking one rainy morning on an interstate ramp in Kansas. I'd slept under a bridge the night before and was cold, dirty, and hungry. I stood there for hours and would have been glad to talk to anybody. But I only had that crow for company, hoping I would die so that it could eat my eyes. ---- When being a Lover, I'd have Katie Eggers sit with me. She was decapitated one night in a car accident the summer we graduated from high school. Two years later in a bar over shots of ouzo, her best friend told me that Katie'd had been in love with me since we were 16, but had never told me because I frightened her. ---- Katie was the most beautiful girl there was in my hometown. There was not a boy in town who didn't want her. She always had a good word in her for everybody. She was absolutely perfect in every way. If I could have had her for my own, I would have never wanted another woman in my life. ---- I'd speak to Katie with every bit of desire and humility I possessed during my Lover sessions. If I'd had the courage to seek her out in real life, she might have been safe with me the night she died. I thought about that for years whenever I played the Lover with a prostitute. That feeling of regret became the essence of my role.
Jean: You can raise the dead?
Morgan: Only if they agree, and no harm is done. I rarely do it now. There's a steep price to pay. You shorten your own life when you raise the dead by the amount of time they spend with you.
Catherine: I never saw Nate again after Herb had his heart attack and stopped coming to these places. What happened to him?
Morgan: He completed the Training.
Catherine: What's the Training?
Morgan: It's the whole point of waking up. Once you've completed the Training, you no longer have to pay. You can just appear in some other john's session or somebody's home and chat up anybody you want who's there watching in the crowd. It's where the real sex is happening. It's why I'm here submitting to this nonsense. When I complete the Training, I won't have to pay anymore. That's what Nate taught me our fifth night together with that Puerto Rican girl.
Catherine: Did you ever see Nate again after that?
Morgan: Only once. He came to check up on me. Five years had passed. ---- I'd become a monster. Whenever I didn't have Katie's presence to restrain me, I became vengeful. During my first year, I reminded my parents of every cruel, self-involved thing they had ever done or said to me while having them bark and hump each other like dogs. Then I tortured an old boss of mine who'd been a sadistic bully. I desperately needed the job. I couldn't quit. So I seduced his daughter at the company picnic instead and dumped her as soon as I found another job. During my second year, I criticized the quality of his daughter's blowjobs to his face. While his daughter cried, my old boss would become steadily more angry until he'd keel over from a stroke and die. ---- After I got tired of them, I brought an old girl friend from college into my sessions. She'd kept me with her for a whole year by threatening to commit suicide. For three years, I reminded her of every defect in her character. While I was having my second orgasm, I'd have her commit suicide in different ways. Once, I talked her into burning herself to death using a can of hairspray as a torch. She was extremely vain. I thought it fitting that she die that way, primping with fire in her hand.
Jean: That was so mean.
Morgan: It didn't make me any happier. By the time Nate came to check up on me, I had been killing myself in other john's sessions for close to two years. I was especially fond of shotguns. I got a kick out of watching the faces of other people when I put the muzzle in my mouth. They were always so horrified in the moments before I pulled the trigger. ---- That's how Nate found me - with a shotgun in my mouth preparing to blow my brains out again.
Catherine: Was he disappointed in you?
Morgan: No. He'd done the same thing. Instead of blowing his brains out, though, he liked to cut his carotid artery and spray the crowd with his blood while jumping up and down on one leg. ---- He told me I'd been going at it all wrong. "Kid," he said, "You've gotta stop this Method acting shit. You gotta learn to be like one of them classically trained English actors. You gotta build your Character from the outside without torturing yourself. You fucked up, kid. You learned not to take anything these women are doing personally only to fall into the trap of taking what you do personally. You gotta learn to bring people into your sessions that don't have anything to do with the Character you are playing. Then you gotta learn how not to bring anybody into your sessions at all, so that it's just you, the girl and the crowd she's brought with her. And you gotta get to work on your Hole. I went by there just now and you've only barely reached the upper mantle where it starts to get toasty. You gotta go deeper, kid. All the way through the center of the earth to where you're going."
Jean: What's the Hole?
Morgan: Every night you have to go to the men's room in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel, squeeze yourself until you are the size of a rat, dive into a toilet and swim down through the City's shit. Once you're deep beneath the streets, you walk to your Hole. It's roughly 7,926 miles to the other side of the earth. First, you go about 18 miles down through the crust. That's mostly rock. Then you hit the mantle. That's mostly solid rock too. It can get pretty hot, but not as hot as the outer core and inner core. The inner core can hit 7,200 degrees Fahrenheit on a warm day. The outer core is made up of melted iron and nickel; the inner core, solid iron and nickel. It's the mantle again after that. Finally, you hit the crust once more and tunnel straight up. ---- I'm digging my Hole to come up in the Southern Pacific. I'm about 320 miles below the ocean floor now. From that point to the surface will be another 2 miles. If I time my ascent just right, it will be a new moon and the stars will be thick in the sky on a clear night. ---- When I breathe air again, I will take the form of a sperm whale weighing 70 tons or more and grow to over 80 feet in length. When not mating with passing females or feeding on giant squid in the dark cold waters, I'll roam the Pacific from the Aleutians south to the Solomon Islands. Each night I'll sleep on the surface with a bellyful of ambergris and my huge white hump sparkling underneath the stars. Whenever I'm in the mood for sex with strangers, a part of me will cruise other johns' sessions or wander into other people's homes to see what's available in the crowd.
Catherine: Where did Nate go?
Morgan: Nate dug through to the Empty Quarter in southeastern Saudi Arabia. He was very religious as a child and always thought of himself as a sort of Old Testament Prophet. He settles the disputes of Bedouin brave enough to come see him, and names their children. He's content in the desert and sleeps atop a different sand dune every night with his robes wrapped around him for warmth. He told me that the stars there are as thick and pure in the sky as where I'm going.
Jean: The Training sounds awfully unpleasant.
Morgan: There's no way around it. Every last bit of your vanity has to be crushed out of you and burned. Then you have to keep going and take physical shape again.
Catherine: What did you do after Nate came to visit you?
Morgan: I went to a prostitute who saw me as a Lover, and brought Katie to keep me company. I confessed to her what a monster I'd become since we were 16 and first sat together in the afternoons when school let out. She smiled at me in the same way she always smiled back then and looked past my ugliness one more time to see what was good in me. That was the last time I brought Katie back from the dead.
Jean: What did you do after that?
Morgan: I tried to follow Nate's advice as best as possible. At first, I mixed and matched my usual supporting casts with Characters I hadn't used them with before. I'd bring my factory workers, for instance, to a session where I was a Needy Guy, or have the crow accompany me to a session with a prostitute who viewed me as a Lover. Once I got the hang of it, I started bringing all sorts of folks into my sessions: neighbors, my dentist, people I commuted with regularly on the train, my mailman, the guy who sells me my coffee in the morning. We'd talk about the things we usually talk about when I see them. ---- Then I used my sessions to apologize to all the girls and women I'd treated poorly - including my old boss' daughter. That took a few years. Not one of them forgave me. They all promised to vote that I go to Hell when we die and I meet them again.
Jean: Did you ever tell your wife that you were sorry?
Morgan: It was the hardest thing I've ever done. I tried to explain to her that it wasn't really me having sex with these women, but someone else that neither she nor I had ever met. I told her that it was no reflection of any inadequacy on her part -- that it was all due to a flaw in my soul. She didn't forgive me either. But being rather more merciful than most women are capable of being, she promised me that she would vote that I go to Purgatory as long as she gets to pick my torments. In her view, devils are probably like government employees and won't show any creativity or initiative at all especially in dealing with hard cases like me. She wants to make sure the job is done right.
Jean: Do you bring anybody with you anymore?
Morgan: I'm usually alone now. My father I bring sometimes. He died unhappy several years ago. To ease his soul, he's building a three-dimensional map showing how prime numbers are distributed throughout the number system. There is an infinity of prime numbers, but they get more difficult to find the higher the numbers become. Whenever there is a rumor of a primality-testing algorithm that can help him complete his map, I bring it to his attention. There are harmonies and dissonances in numbers that can comfort the dead.
Ruth: The only perfect moments I've ever had with anybody were with my Aunt Caroline. Every summer when I was a small girl I'd go to stay with her in the small town she lived in out on the Cape and help her in the florist's shop she owned. After we closed the shop, had dinner, cleaned up, put everything away and I had my bath, we'd sit on her porch swing together rocking back and forth. I'd tuck my legs up underneath me and rest my head on her shoulder while she combed my hair and stroked my forehead in that gentle way she always had with me. When the nights were cool, she'd cover me with a quilt to keep me warm. (Resumes blowing Bob momentarily) Her house was on the main street. Every night people would wave and say hello to us on their way to and from the ice cream parlor and movie theatre down the block. She'd tell me about the people who were going by: who their families were; what they did for a living; who they loved; who they hated and were afraid of; what they wanted but couldn't have. I got to know everyone looking out from Aunt Caroline's front porch swing. They were mostly fishermen and trades-people that worked supplying the things fishermen need. Simple people. You wouldn't think it was true looking at me now, but I was a pretty little girl then with big eyes and cheeks and my hair in pigtails. I went to that small town every summer until Aunt Caroline died when I was 12. (Resumes blowing Bob momentarily) I miss the salt air and those people walking past. It was the only place I ever belonged. At night, I dreamt of being a great whaling captain from the early 1800s far out on the ocean. I stood lashed to the wheel in howling gales keeping the bow pointed straight through waves fifty feet and higher - screaming through the wind at my crew to keep their courage up. In the morning, I'd wake and look up at the old harpoon on the wall over my bed and wonder if I'd been dreaming. (Resumes blowing Bob momentarily) I had a very heroic imagination when I was a girl.
(A woman stands up from one of the chairs at the back of the room. She is an attractive, beneficent woma in her 40s wearing a simple dress. She walks through the rows of chairs and sits down next to Ethel, Ruth's mother, in the second row of chairs to the left of Ruth. She greets Ethel with a quiet kiss and holds her hand. This woman is Aunt Caroline.)
Catherine: Have you ever been completely alone with a woman when you had sex with her?
Morgan: I manage it sometimes with my wife. Not too often. Even though we know each other well, it can take us hours to recognize everybody that we've brought into the room with us and let them go.
Jean: Not that I know that much about it, but it seems that sex only appears to be easy because any fool can do it.
Morgan: It's difficult to do well. We're all a little bit like the muttering crazy persons you see on the street talking to voices that only they can hear. Unlike them, however, the people in our heads are real. And it's not just parents, wives, old lovers. There's all the other people that two people have known, a whole small town's worth of characters. All of them demanding that the stink of their cravings, fears, shit and stupidity be inhaled like flowers. ---- It's a miracle when two people manage to be alone during sex. While recognizing everyone that they've brought into the room with them, they must smell each other's stink as well and show each other all the faces they've worn for the people in their heads. ---- When the miracle happens, it's like seeing the moon at night through quickly moving clouds; first coming and then going. At such moments, two people finally succeed in being alone and become lovers.
Morgan: You should be ashamed. ---- And you are being far too hard on us. We both eventually became much less monstrous than you would think. We were forced to confront ourselves in ways that neither of us had ever thought possible. Take, for instance, the usual cast of characters that johns bring in to their sessions. It's always the same: parents, wives, old girlfriends, co-workers. We had to learn how to bring anybody we wanted into our sessions and then nobody at all.
Catherine: Your parents aren't always there? Herb and I have attended every sex act that Bob has ever engaged in with another person.
Jean (addressing Catherine with shocked indignation): How could you?
Catherine (addressing Jean): It's just how things are, Jean. Your parents are always there too. Along with the others.
Jean: What others?
Catherine: My parents, Herb's parents, our grandparents, your grandparents. Whoever else happens to be interested. Whoever you are thinking about. There's that nice boy, Kevin, you knew in college. We see quite a lot of him when you and Bob are having sex. You wish you were having sex with him instead. Everybody who's ever watched you and Bob go at it knows that.
(Spotlights slowly illuminate several long rows of chairs at the back of the room. In these chairs sit men and women in a variety of 20th Century and 19th Century clothing from the United States and Europe. Each is surfing the Internet with a laptop computer perched on their knees. These are Bob's and Ruth's dead ancestors and relatives. Bob's dead ancestors and relatives mimic the noises Jean makes when she is having an orgasm. The noises sound like a cooing, excited chimpanzee from an old Tarzan movie ("Oo Oo Oo"). After mimicking Jean's orgasmic noises, Bob's dead ancestors and relatives laugh loudly amongst themselves.)
Jean (enraged): That's a horrible invasion of my privacy!
Catherine: Well, if you really want to know the truth, you and Bob are not much fun to watch.
(Bob's dead ancestors and relatives, now joined in by Ruth's dead ancestors and relatives, mimic Jean's cooing, excited chimpanzee noises again ("Oo Oo Oo"), then laugh loudly amongst themselves.)
Jean: Then why do you do it?
Catherine: Bob brings us with his thoughts the same as he does here. Our parents and the others further back have a vested interest. Especially in any encounter between male and female in which the slightest chance of conception exists. A soul can't come into the world unattended. The past must get its shit-hooks into each of us as soon as we exist to bind us to it and make us a part of it. You'll have to attend your own children's sex acts someday and take your place in the outer circles with the others hovering about when you die. (Addressing Morgan) What was the first thing you did with this trick Nate taught you?
Morgan: The fourth night I brought all the boys from my Grammar School basketball team to watch me. ---- It seemed appropriate. The twelve-year-old boys that these men had been were my first source of sexual knowledge. I took requests from the audience and did all the things they wanted to do with her.
Catherine: Sex is not like you think it will be when you are a child.
Morgan: It is never more than adequate for what we bring to it. ---- Nate taught me that I would have to learn to bring people into my sessions to deepen my experience. That I couldn't just continue to coast by as I had been doing before I woke up. That I'd have to look into myself to find the right persons to bear witness to each type of john I became. ---- I didn't understand then what he was trying to teach me. For the longest time, I contented myself with doing the obvious. During my Stoic sessions, I'd bring the two guys I worked double-shifts with seven days a week one summer at a synthetic textile thread factory. We were bony, poisoned shadows working in continuous 100-degree heat. Nothing fazed us. Those two guys reminded me of exactly what it felt like to be perfectly without feeling. They never even blinked. And neither did I with women who saw me as a Stoic. My Charmer sessions always saw the first three rows of persons from a speech I'd given. Instead of imagining them naked as they tell you to do in books on public speaking, I'd have them take their clothes off for real. For my Lonely Guy sessions, I'd bring the crow that kept me company hitch-hiking one rainy morning on an interstate ramp in Kansas. I'd slept under a bridge the night before and was cold, dirty, and hungry. I stood there for hours and would have been glad to talk to anybody. But I only had that crow for company, hoping I would die so that it could eat my eyes. ---- When being a Lover, I'd have Katie Eggers sit with me. She was decapitated one night in a car accident the summer we graduated from high school. Two years later in a bar over shots of ouzo, her best friend told me that Katie'd had been in love with me since we were 16, but had never told me because I frightened her. ---- Katie was the most beautiful girl there was in my hometown. There was not a boy in town who didn't want her. She always had a good word in her for everybody. She was absolutely perfect in every way. If I could have had her for my own, I would have never wanted another woman in my life. ---- I'd speak to Katie with every bit of desire and humility I possessed during my Lover sessions. If I'd had the courage to seek her out in real life, she might have been safe with me the night she died. I thought about that for years whenever I played the Lover with a prostitute. That feeling of regret became the essence of my role.
Jean: You can raise the dead?
Morgan: Only if they agree, and no harm is done. I rarely do it now. There's a steep price to pay. You shorten your own life when you raise the dead by the amount of time they spend with you.
Catherine: I never saw Nate again after Herb had his heart attack and stopped coming to these places. What happened to him?
Morgan: He completed the Training.
Catherine: What's the Training?
Morgan: It's the whole point of waking up. Once you've completed the Training, you no longer have to pay. You can just appear in some other john's session or somebody's home and chat up anybody you want who's there watching in the crowd. It's where the real sex is happening. It's why I'm here submitting to this nonsense. When I complete the Training, I won't have to pay anymore. That's what Nate taught me our fifth night together with that Puerto Rican girl.
Catherine: Did you ever see Nate again after that?
Morgan: Only once. He came to check up on me. Five years had passed. ---- I'd become a monster. Whenever I didn't have Katie's presence to restrain me, I became vengeful. During my first year, I reminded my parents of every cruel, self-involved thing they had ever done or said to me while having them bark and hump each other like dogs. Then I tortured an old boss of mine who'd been a sadistic bully. I desperately needed the job. I couldn't quit. So I seduced his daughter at the company picnic instead and dumped her as soon as I found another job. During my second year, I criticized the quality of his daughter's blowjobs to his face. While his daughter cried, my old boss would become steadily more angry until he'd keel over from a stroke and die. ---- After I got tired of them, I brought an old girl friend from college into my sessions. She'd kept me with her for a whole year by threatening to commit suicide. For three years, I reminded her of every defect in her character. While I was having my second orgasm, I'd have her commit suicide in different ways. Once, I talked her into burning herself to death using a can of hairspray as a torch. She was extremely vain. I thought it fitting that she die that way, primping with fire in her hand.
Jean: That was so mean.
Morgan: It didn't make me any happier. By the time Nate came to check up on me, I had been killing myself in other john's sessions for close to two years. I was especially fond of shotguns. I got a kick out of watching the faces of other people when I put the muzzle in my mouth. They were always so horrified in the moments before I pulled the trigger. ---- That's how Nate found me - with a shotgun in my mouth preparing to blow my brains out again.
Catherine: Was he disappointed in you?
Morgan: No. He'd done the same thing. Instead of blowing his brains out, though, he liked to cut his carotid artery and spray the crowd with his blood while jumping up and down on one leg. ---- He told me I'd been going at it all wrong. "Kid," he said, "You've gotta stop this Method acting shit. You gotta learn to be like one of them classically trained English actors. You gotta build your Character from the outside without torturing yourself. You fucked up, kid. You learned not to take anything these women are doing personally only to fall into the trap of taking what you do personally. You gotta learn to bring people into your sessions that don't have anything to do with the Character you are playing. Then you gotta learn how not to bring anybody into your sessions at all, so that it's just you, the girl and the crowd she's brought with her. And you gotta get to work on your Hole. I went by there just now and you've only barely reached the upper mantle where it starts to get toasty. You gotta go deeper, kid. All the way through the center of the earth to where you're going."
Jean: What's the Hole?
Morgan: Every night you have to go to the men's room in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel, squeeze yourself until you are the size of a rat, dive into a toilet and swim down through the City's shit. Once you're deep beneath the streets, you walk to your Hole. It's roughly 7,926 miles to the other side of the earth. First, you go about 18 miles down through the crust. That's mostly rock. Then you hit the mantle. That's mostly solid rock too. It can get pretty hot, but not as hot as the outer core and inner core. The inner core can hit 7,200 degrees Fahrenheit on a warm day. The outer core is made up of melted iron and nickel; the inner core, solid iron and nickel. It's the mantle again after that. Finally, you hit the crust once more and tunnel straight up. ---- I'm digging my Hole to come up in the Southern Pacific. I'm about 320 miles below the ocean floor now. From that point to the surface will be another 2 miles. If I time my ascent just right, it will be a new moon and the stars will be thick in the sky on a clear night. ---- When I breathe air again, I will take the form of a sperm whale weighing 70 tons or more and grow to over 80 feet in length. When not mating with passing females or feeding on giant squid in the dark cold waters, I'll roam the Pacific from the Aleutians south to the Solomon Islands. Each night I'll sleep on the surface with a bellyful of ambergris and my huge white hump sparkling underneath the stars. Whenever I'm in the mood for sex with strangers, a part of me will cruise other johns' sessions or wander into other people's homes to see what's available in the crowd.
Catherine: Where did Nate go?
Morgan: Nate dug through to the Empty Quarter in southeastern Saudi Arabia. He was very religious as a child and always thought of himself as a sort of Old Testament Prophet. He settles the disputes of Bedouin brave enough to come see him, and names their children. He's content in the desert and sleeps atop a different sand dune every night with his robes wrapped around him for warmth. He told me that the stars there are as thick and pure in the sky as where I'm going.
Jean: The Training sounds awfully unpleasant.
Morgan: There's no way around it. Every last bit of your vanity has to be crushed out of you and burned. Then you have to keep going and take physical shape again.
Catherine: What did you do after Nate came to visit you?
Morgan: I went to a prostitute who saw me as a Lover, and brought Katie to keep me company. I confessed to her what a monster I'd become since we were 16 and first sat together in the afternoons when school let out. She smiled at me in the same way she always smiled back then and looked past my ugliness one more time to see what was good in me. That was the last time I brought Katie back from the dead.
Jean: What did you do after that?
Morgan: I tried to follow Nate's advice as best as possible. At first, I mixed and matched my usual supporting casts with Characters I hadn't used them with before. I'd bring my factory workers, for instance, to a session where I was a Needy Guy, or have the crow accompany me to a session with a prostitute who viewed me as a Lover. Once I got the hang of it, I started bringing all sorts of folks into my sessions: neighbors, my dentist, people I commuted with regularly on the train, my mailman, the guy who sells me my coffee in the morning. We'd talk about the things we usually talk about when I see them. ---- Then I used my sessions to apologize to all the girls and women I'd treated poorly - including my old boss' daughter. That took a few years. Not one of them forgave me. They all promised to vote that I go to Hell when we die and I meet them again.
Jean: Did you ever tell your wife that you were sorry?
Morgan: It was the hardest thing I've ever done. I tried to explain to her that it wasn't really me having sex with these women, but someone else that neither she nor I had ever met. I told her that it was no reflection of any inadequacy on her part -- that it was all due to a flaw in my soul. She didn't forgive me either. But being rather more merciful than most women are capable of being, she promised me that she would vote that I go to Purgatory as long as she gets to pick my torments. In her view, devils are probably like government employees and won't show any creativity or initiative at all especially in dealing with hard cases like me. She wants to make sure the job is done right.
Jean: Do you bring anybody with you anymore?
Morgan: I'm usually alone now. My father I bring sometimes. He died unhappy several years ago. To ease his soul, he's building a three-dimensional map showing how prime numbers are distributed throughout the number system. There is an infinity of prime numbers, but they get more difficult to find the higher the numbers become. Whenever there is a rumor of a primality-testing algorithm that can help him complete his map, I bring it to his attention. There are harmonies and dissonances in numbers that can comfort the dead.
Ruth: The only perfect moments I've ever had with anybody were with my Aunt Caroline. Every summer when I was a small girl I'd go to stay with her in the small town she lived in out on the Cape and help her in the florist's shop she owned. After we closed the shop, had dinner, cleaned up, put everything away and I had my bath, we'd sit on her porch swing together rocking back and forth. I'd tuck my legs up underneath me and rest my head on her shoulder while she combed my hair and stroked my forehead in that gentle way she always had with me. When the nights were cool, she'd cover me with a quilt to keep me warm. (Resumes blowing Bob momentarily) Her house was on the main street. Every night people would wave and say hello to us on their way to and from the ice cream parlor and movie theatre down the block. She'd tell me about the people who were going by: who their families were; what they did for a living; who they loved; who they hated and were afraid of; what they wanted but couldn't have. I got to know everyone looking out from Aunt Caroline's front porch swing. They were mostly fishermen and trades-people that worked supplying the things fishermen need. Simple people. You wouldn't think it was true looking at me now, but I was a pretty little girl then with big eyes and cheeks and my hair in pigtails. I went to that small town every summer until Aunt Caroline died when I was 12. (Resumes blowing Bob momentarily) I miss the salt air and those people walking past. It was the only place I ever belonged. At night, I dreamt of being a great whaling captain from the early 1800s far out on the ocean. I stood lashed to the wheel in howling gales keeping the bow pointed straight through waves fifty feet and higher - screaming through the wind at my crew to keep their courage up. In the morning, I'd wake and look up at the old harpoon on the wall over my bed and wonder if I'd been dreaming. (Resumes blowing Bob momentarily) I had a very heroic imagination when I was a girl.
(A woman stands up from one of the chairs at the back of the room. She is an attractive, beneficent woma in her 40s wearing a simple dress. She walks through the rows of chairs and sits down next to Ethel, Ruth's mother, in the second row of chairs to the left of Ruth. She greets Ethel with a quiet kiss and holds her hand. This woman is Aunt Caroline.)
Catherine: Have you ever been completely alone with a woman when you had sex with her?
Morgan: I manage it sometimes with my wife. Not too often. Even though we know each other well, it can take us hours to recognize everybody that we've brought into the room with us and let them go.
Jean: Not that I know that much about it, but it seems that sex only appears to be easy because any fool can do it.
Morgan: It's difficult to do well. We're all a little bit like the muttering crazy persons you see on the street talking to voices that only they can hear. Unlike them, however, the people in our heads are real. And it's not just parents, wives, old lovers. There's all the other people that two people have known, a whole small town's worth of characters. All of them demanding that the stink of their cravings, fears, shit and stupidity be inhaled like flowers. ---- It's a miracle when two people manage to be alone during sex. While recognizing everyone that they've brought into the room with them, they must smell each other's stink as well and show each other all the faces they've worn for the people in their heads. ---- When the miracle happens, it's like seeing the moon at night through quickly moving clouds; first coming and then going. At such moments, two people finally succeed in being alone and become lovers.