A couch in a living room. There is a coffee table with some magazines on it. A television set can be heard in the background. He is sitting on the couch. She is walking around while he speaks, only sitting on the couch when he is finished. She doesn't appear to be listening to him.

HE:            I had planned it for tonight

After days of teeth

Ripping through my thoughts

Tearing at my mind to snap

Bloody pieces away. How

I would let your hand

Open that door…let

Me out to let you know.

You'd run your tongue

Into my ears with words

over my eyes with images

Of what you feel, want.

I planned it for tonight.

A bit of wine after dinner

A little talk of where

we are.

Some touching like we had

hesitation

Then, I'd lead you with words

My hand holding yours, guiding

You to what I am

Wanting it to be we.

SHE:            Robert moved over to the mannequin. There wasn't a price tag. He wondered if she were for sale. He walked back to the record rack, picked up a cheap album and purchased it from the girl.

SHE:          An economic

HE:            (and perhaps also ideological)

SHE:          exploitation of eroticization

HE:            from sun-tanned products to pornographic films.

SHE:          Responding precisely to the revolt of the body

SHE & HE:  [in unison] we find a new mode of investment

HE:            which presents itself no longer in the form of control by representation but that of control by stimulation. 

SHE:          [Giggling playfully]  OK, I'd love to spend the day with you. Just tell me what to wear.

HE:            [Mock announcer voice]  "Get undressed. But be slim, good looking, tanned!"

SHE:            The next time he visited the shop the mannequin was still there. Robert browsed a bit, bought an ashtray that was molded to imitate a coiled snake, and walked out. The third time he was there he asked the girl:

HE:            "Is the mannequin for sale?"

SHE:          "The mannequin?"

HE:            "Yes, the mannequin."

SHE:          I want it

To have it

To grab at that flesh

To rip into it

Rip through some body

Love has nothing to do with my desire

To eat the other

Use the body

HE:            We have mistresses for our pleasure, concubines for the daily service of our bodies, and wives to give us legitimate children and look after the housekeeping.

SHE:            Hi, sweetie.

Just getting set.

Take your clothes off

Sit opposite me.

HE:            Come on, now. No

Hesitation. I want

To see your gun again

Now that I've got one of my own.

Yes, that's it.

SHE:            Ooh, it's so much

Smaller than when

You rammed it down

My throat. Remember

How you made me lick

And nibble it so slowly?

HE:            Love is forever . . . lust is right now.

SHE:            My thoughts drift back to her touch

And we are together at last

Quivering in the ecstasy of convulsions

HE:            so long awaited our tantalized naked bodies anointed with the undulating reality of our fiery fantasies

SHE:          and intense desires

HE:            round and round and side to side faster and slower and faster and slower moaning and heaving the sweat on your thighs your heart your blood are carving ripples in my soul closer and closer in time with the drums in my head which just keep beating faster and faster

SHE:            and the lightning flashes across the sky with the sheer brilliance of eternity and the ephemerality of a cherry blossom but it's enough to awaken me and I realize that it’s just another fantasy

HE:            a simulacrum of experience that never was

SHE:          and may never be

HE:            a dream within a dream within a dream from which we never awaken, your absence so unbearably present charging headlong into the violent chaos of my soul a tortured moan escapes my parched but eager lips.

SHE:           Love is forever.

HE:            Lust is right now.

SHE:          "You want the mannequin, sir?"

HE:            "Yes, is she for sale?"

SHE:          "Well, not really. You see, it's kind of a display piece, a joke."

HE:            "I want to buy her."

SHE:          "Well, let's see…"

HE:            The old Jew went over and began to touching the mannequin, touching the dress, the arms.

SHE:          "Let's see…I think I can let you have this…thing…for $17.50."

HE:            "I'll take her."

SHE:          "I'm going to miss it, sometimes it seems almost real. Should I wrap it?"

HE:            "No, I'll take her the way she is."

SHE:          Robert picked up the mannequin and carried her to his car. He drove her home and took her up to his apartment. He stood her in the center of his room and looked at her.

HE:            "Stella. Stella, bitch."

SHE:          He walked up and slapped her across the face. Then he grabbed the head and kissed it.

HE:            It was a good kiss. 

And so in that moment I realized what a ridiculous fool I was to fall in with your proposal that I should take my turn in your eulogies of Love, and to call myself an expert in love-matters, when really I was ignorant of the method in which eulogies ought to be made at all. For I was such a silly wretch as to think that one ought in each case to speak the truth about the person eulogized….

SHE:            You can't keep his dick in your purse. 

Heterosexual men and women are also capable of giving themselves over to same-sex excess.

HE:            Additionally, normally sexed individuals are no less likely to engage in self-defilement….

SHE:            And they are equally likely to assault male but especially female minors…to indulge in incest; to engage in bestiality…(and even behave depravedly with corpses if their moral self-control does not control their lust).

HE:            And it is only amongst the normally-sexed that the special breed of so-called “bleeders” occurs

SHE:            those who, thirsting for blood, can only satisfy their passion by wounding and torturing.

Starved of its sustenance, it begged and pleaded with me: I found it repulsive. I was forced to admit a truth that I had been doing my best to conceal ever since my adolescence: my physical appetites were greater than I wanted them to be. In the feverish caresses and love-making that bound me to the man of my choice I could discern the movements of my heart, languorous excitement cried out for anyone, regardless. In the night train from Tours to Paris the touch of an anonymous hand along my leg could arouse feelings—against my conscious will—of quite shattering intensity.

HE:            You god dammed whore! You've been cheating on me, haven't you?

SHE:          Stella didn't answer. She stood there looking so cool and prim. He slapped her a good one. It'd be a long day in the sun before any woman got away with cheating on Bob Wilkenson. He slapped her

HE:            another good one.

Thus, it is not through sexuality that we communicate with the orderly and pleasingly profane world of animals; rather, sexuality is a fissure—not one which surrounds us as the basis of our isolation or individuality, but one which marks the limit within us and designates us as limit.

SHE:          Love is forever. Lust is right now.

HE:            It was quite nice for Robert as time went on. He made certain adjustments. He bought Stella several pairs of underpants, a garter belt, sheer long stockings, an ankle bracelet. He bought her earrings too, and was quite shocked to learn that his love didn't have any ears. But there were advantages—to take her to dinner parties, to dull movies; all those mundane things that meant so much to average woman. Yes, there were advantages. She wasn't like all the other women he had known. She didn't want him to make love at inconvenient moments. He could choose the time. And she didn't have periods. And he went down on her. He cut some hair from her head and pasted it between her thighs.

SHE:            Sexual relations are elaborated and developed by and through mythical relations.

HE:            For just a moment he felt extremely foolish, then his passion took over and he began kissing her along the neck. Afterwards, Robert washed Stella down with a dishrag, placed her in the closet behind an overcoat, closed the door and still managed to get in the last quarter of the Detroit Lions vs. St. Louis Rams game on T.V.

[There is a brief break in the dialogue. The noise from the television grows louder and fades out into instrumental hip-hop beats. The rest of the dialogue proceeds at the pace of the music.]

SHE:          I am taking the word love away from the object, away from the body astral as a food glowing on the plate.

HE:            I am taking the word love away from the boy with skin the light sinks into and hair red as steak on fire. When he leans from his window like ice cream melting my mouth waters hot salt. I am taking the word love away from that desire to bite.

SHE:          I shall become his collector of small things; become his collector of burps, biceps and smiles;

HE:            I shall bottle his farts, frowns and creases;

SHE:            I shall gather up his moans, words, outbursts wrap them in blue tissue paper; get to know them; watch them grow in importance; file them in their place in their scheme of things;

HE:            I shall collect his scraps of food; ferret them among my taste buds; allow each particle to saunter into my cells; all aboard; calling all food particles; c’mon board this fucking food express; climb into these sockets golden with brine;

SHE:  [insistent]  I need to taste him again.

HE:   [slowly]  Stella didn't answer.

SHE:          You can't keep his dick in your purse

[Music stops suddenly and the actors face the audience].

SHE & HE:  [in unison]  Sexuality is a fissure.

[Lights fade.  Curtain].