I looked out at the circle of faces and saw that every single audience member was going through some version of my revelation, some reckoning with the self they had been carrying around until now. I had not even been the only one knotted in miserly pain; that was part of the ride. Resistance, then giving in. He was no longer ascending; he reached

If 321 was everywhere then every day was Wednesday, and I could always be how I was in the room. Imperfect, ungendered, game, unashamed. I had everything I needed in my pockets, a full soul.

In the meantime he was still rising and the warm, hallowed feeling kept growing; I could feel it expanding beyond the walls, into the street. It would still be there when I got outside, gilding the whole neighborhood, the whole city. Indeed the whole world was the motel room. The whole universe? Yes, everything was the room; you could not step

And I didn’t own it. Because you don’t. Own anything, not even your own womb, your own body. It all goes. But every Wednesday I could get back in there, with or without lust, and be—what was the word? Free.

She was leaving? I couldn’t believe it. But then I never can. I suddenly thought of Sam clicking the Lego tower into every corner. My old feeling of stunned abandonment (or perhaps at this point it was a monument to abandonment, a tower) fit any loss, regardless of size. Kris didn’t want to talk about it, but other people did; Arkanda did. I could

We hugged, still sitting on the floor, then I went to the bathroom, unrolled some toilet paper, and brought it back. She wiped her face; I blew my nose. She pulled the clementines from the gift basket and we began peeling them. They smelled unbelievably good, that citrus.

White-knuckling it until the next shared dream, emergency, premiere. And in between these I’d whipped myself into a froth of longing—or worked, created fictions. Fuck. My “conversations with God”—even God was in on this. Was there any actual enchantment or was it all just survival, ways to muddle through?

I was pretty good at getting people to meet me in my mind, but ultimately no one wanted to stay there.

“They should be on display—put them on top of the piano!” There was no way she could have known the import of what she was saying, but it was crystal clear: she had my back as I had hers. We must expand now, at this age, and despite all our fears, there is plenty of room, she was saying, psychically. Or