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Kathy lying there all swaddled in that icy blue. I had always thought she was kind of pretty, but looking at her now she was exquisitely beautiful.

What a bitch Virge was not to like her more. Maybe it was the way she breathed. Kathy wasn’t liberated enough or something. The couple thing she and Jack had going didn’t pass muster. Come to think of it, I couldn’t think of any couple thing Virginia approved of or anything that seemed to turn her on more than a marriage or a longstanding man-woman thing breaking up.

I got in my sleeping bag and tried to go to sleep but it was hopeless. I was wide, wide, wider than wide awake.

Kathy, my stomach feels all screwed up. Could you rub it? No, no. That was all wrong. It was clumsy and stupid. It was what I meant, but somehow there was no way for me to say it.

Was Virginia not thinking about fucking when she asked Vincent to rub her stomach? What a luxury. I couldn’t ask anyone for a glass of water without thinking about fucking. Men, women, children, dogs, goats, and on and on. Some part of me somewhere wanted to fuck everything.

And here I was in a situation that wasn’t half as kinky as some of my dreams and hallucinations. About my age, single, the opposite sex, someone I had known and liked for a long time. But I wasn’t any more sure that I really wanted to sleep with Kathy than I was that I didn’t want to hump alder trees.

Maybe if she rubbed my stomach she’d want to sleep with me and I wouldn’t want to sleep with her. And if we did make love, weren’t things complicated enough at the farm already? It would be doing to Jack what Vincent did to me or doing to Kathy what Vincent had done to Virge or doing to Virge what Virge had done to me and on and on. Not that those things had been bad. In fact it might be doing us all a world of good, but maybe it would be a good idea to let the smoke clear from round one before firing off round two.

Maybe a good toss in bed would do the trick. According to Freud, sexual repression was the root of mental illness. The sexual content of my hallucinations made it clear my crotch was somehow involved. If I wasn’t such an uptight, hung-up, sexual prig, if I could just let myself go go go…but where would it stop stop stop?

If I gave in to all my sexual impulses, I wouldn’t have time for much else. Maybe Warren was right about lust being my big sin. Maybe I should be put away for the public good. If the choice was between spending my life in a padded cell and giving in to every sexual impulse, I’d just as soon one as the other and I could hardly blame the powers that be if they decided on the padded cell.

A possible alternative suggested by Jesus didn’t appeal much either. If your left hand offends you, cut it off. If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out.

The person I least wanted to know about my sexuality was Virginia. She might put it all together and figure out that my being monogamous with her was the sexual equivalent of what I wanted from an evening with Mary and Joe. I wasn’t following my “heart.” Had I followed my heart, I would have ended up exhausted and with some pretty strange bedfellows.

So there I was, going nuts again and pretty sure I was going nuts again. The voices were getting clearer and more insistent. The crazy taste was in the back of my mouth. Things were starting to glow and shimmer again. Thinking maybe if I could make love with someone it would defuse this whole damn thing, but it becomes too late too fast. As soon as it starts happening people are scared to death just to talk with you. For someone to be able to get into all the tenderness and unguardedness of nakedness and lovemaking with someone on the verge of a breakdown, they’d have to be either awfully brave or so dumb they didn’t realize what was happening.

What if I just laid it on the line? Kathy, I’m starting to crack up again. If you will just hold me and maybe make love with me, maybe everything will be all right.

What if she said yes and we made love and