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If I have any conscious thought at all, it's that I'd gladly die right now, the moment is so complete. Only another way of saying I'd like it to go on forever, just like this. The contradiction seems entirely apt, and thus not contradictory at all.

The reason I know I've fallen asleep is the sound that wakes me: "Uh-oh."

Even as he utters it he pumps the brake to stop us short. I sit up sharp, shaking the grog, and see in our headlights the dusty stand of royal palms in the parking square. Cars are all around us, for once outnumbering the dumpsters in the industrial barrens of Ocean Park. I peer across at the theater entrance, the squiggle of sputtering blue neon tracing the rim of the awning—our postmod marquee. Beneath it a mob of people is swarming around the doors, some with placards waving.

"Oh Jesus, who told
them?"
I groan, picking out the heft of Mrs. Beaudry, her bovine goose-step unmistakable at fifty feet, leading her picketing troops.

"You didn't think you'd get away with it twice, did you?" Gray noses the pickup into a free space by the loading dock. "Family Values has a special SWAT team, just keeping track of you and Miss J."

I can read the placards now.
BLASPHEMY IS CRUCIFIXION
, red on white, a professional print job, several of those,
SAVE JESUS,
proclaims another, this one scrawled in longhand. My favorite is
DEATH TO THE CHRIST KILLERS,
waved aloft by an Aryan thug in a clerical collar. Many of the protesters are younger than I, some barely out of their teens. They all have a Disney polyester sheen, and are easily distinguishable from the wincing patrons who make their hunched way through the gauntlet into the theater.

The protesters are seasoned enough to know not to block the entrance completely, or else we can have them arrested. They content themselves with snarling and spewing hate in the theatergoers' faces, as if AGORA were an abortion clinic.

Gray gives my hand a squeeze as we move to get out on either side of the pickup. The melee is only twenty feet away, but nobody recognizes me out of costume. Gray steps in front of me heading up the ramp, parting the waters of the crowd with a low WASP murmur of courtesy: "'Scuse me. Coming through." I follow tight behind him, reeling from the memory of the previous skirmish two years ago—when I was young and strong.

We get to within ten feet of the door. I can see Mona checking tickets, a Latino security guard beside her armed with only a nightstick, and looking vaguely frightened himself. Gray waves a finger to try to catch Mona's attention, and then Mrs. Beaudry pounces from the right. "Here he is," she revels, pushing her blazing face into mine. Donna Reed on crack.

I grin, pulling my tits together. "Mrs. Beaudry, how've you been?" I greet the lady cheerily. "Hon, you've cut your hair. The bangs are heaven." All around me I can feel the troops gather in a circle, grim as witches at Stonehenge. Gray's shoulder brushes mine. "Honest, you look ten years younger," I continue giddily, hyperaware of the silence as the protesters defer to Mrs. B. "Is it just clean living, or did you get yourself a lift? Isn't that a little tuck up there?"

I raise a hand to gesture at her temple, and she recoils with a hiss. "Don't touch me with your disease!"

And the spell of silence breaks. The troops erupt in catcalls, rattling their placards. "Blasphemer" is the nicest thing they call me, quaint as
The Scarlet Letter,
though I happen to stare point-blank at a young man waving a sign that says
PORNOGRAPHERS TO HELL
! He's as blond and finely chiseled as my Fiji surfer, and he barks directly at me: "You fuckin' dirtbag."

I raise two fingers above my head, very popish. "Bless you all for coming," I call out over the din. Gray is tugging my arm now. "I know how busy you are, fellating your sons and ravishing your daughters."

Funny, I never used to provoke. I'd march through, shoulders back and haughty as Garbo. The din becomes a roar as I let myself be pulled along by Gray. The guard has meanwhile stepped into the fray, opening us a channel. I bat my eyes at Mrs. Beaudry and point to Gray.

"Hey, did you meet my husband?" I hold my hands a foot apart and give her a bawdy wink. "The human kielbasa."

Somebody spits in my face. And though I flinch I feel exultant. I raise no sleeve to wipe my cheek but wear it like a badge. The Aryan priest appears to be the spitter, bellowing next to my ear that I'm a godless communist. I swear, these fundies are all over the board with their agenda, nailing me for a thousand crimes, and the only curious thing tonight is that nobody calls me a fag. Mona beckons impatiently from the door, sweeping Gray past her into the vestibule. The Latino guard is beside me, arms raised to deflect any further abuse. Mona grips my hand.

But I hesitate crossing the threshold, perverse as ever, reluctant to leave the field. "Juiced" doesn't even begin to describe it.
Here's
where I want to perform. I toss my head back leering, to give them a parting shot. And there in the midst, being buffeted, a terrified look on her face, is a woman of indeterminate years, blue-haired and sporting a navy suit. Very uptown.

"Please—I'm on the press list," she protests, struggling to get past the mad-dog priest.

"Let her through!" The boom in my voice is Old Testament, shaking the very ground. The protesters balk, realizing they're out of line. The impeccable woman walks gratefully toward me. I fling out an arm to gather her in. "Welcome to the theater of the damned," I toss off with a gallant nod, ushering Nancy Marlowe in before me.

For it is unmistakably she, the white-glove critic from the
Times,
previously known to me only in theater-party group shots in the paper. She expels a wilted sigh and declares, "Thanks—I thought I was going to be trampled."

Outside, the noise of Mrs. Beaudry's goons has dimmed considerably, deflated now that I've gotten past them. Mona whips over to cluck a hasty apology, eager to steer Ms. Marlowe to her seat, while I reflect on what a spiffy review I'm likely to get after saving the critic of record from the jaws of a mob.

I go straight to the office, cutting behind the bleachers, and don't need a head count to know that Mona's got us nearly full to capacity. I was promised forty-five, fifty max, but the body heat and the bleachers' squeaking tell me we're double that. In addition to which, the Marlowe reference to a "press list" makes it clear what a busy girl Mona's been.

In the office Sister Kathleen perches on an orange crate by the water cooler, the latter a bone-dry relic of the pen factory. Gray's behind the desk, the mountain of grant applications before him no closer to being filed. The two of them eye me warily, trying to leave me some room to react. The sideshow has left them both deeply unamused, but mostly anxious for me.

"Was that a Polish wedding or an Irish wake?" I wonder aloud. They shake their heads grimly, ready to declare martial law on Disney World. I reach to the desk for a tissue and gamely wipe my cheek. "Has anyone got some peroxide? I think I just got exposed to rabies."

"You don't have to do this," Kathleen declares emphatically. "We can all go home."

"What—not perform? Because of them?" I hook a thumb over my shoulder, insolent with disdain. "Please. Think of Noel Coward at the Savoy, singing through the blackouts. Bombs exploding on every side." I cross to the closet and lift out my caftan, holding it close against me as I tilt my head and give them a noble profile. "We play for England."

Then I make a shooing motion at Kathleen. "Go tell Mona five minutes. If she wants to pitch the angels, she should keep the telethon short."

Kathleen rises from the orange crate, throws her arms about me, and plants a kiss on either cheek. "Tom of Arc," she whispers proudly into my ear, then turns and hurries out to do my bidding. My very own nun.

As I fling off my sweat shirt and peel my jeans, Gray is fetching the sandals, wig, and crown from the closet shelf. It's as if we've been playing the provinces for years, him dressing me, a combination manager and front-man. "You can do ten minutes if you like," he says, fluffing the Dynel curls. "No one expects the whole show."

"How come? They think I'm half-dead or something? Of
course
they get the whole show." I'm rooting around in the top drawer of the file cabinet, where the chaos of dusty makeup tubes and broken pancake suggests a mortician's palette. I pull out a red grease crayon and toss it to Gray. "Okay, Daddy, whip me please."

He looks confused, till I turn and hunch before him, offering my back. He draws a tentative stripe along my spine. "More—more," I urge him on. "Think Jackson Pollock." He gets a little more enthusiastic, slashing and doodling. "We'll have to make do with these," I declare ruefully, checking out my Jockey shorts for stains. "My loincloth is long gone. In a reliquary, no doubt, somewhere in Orange County."

"Okay, you're a bloody mess," he laughs, dropping the crayon back in the file drawer.

I duck into my caftan, letting it fall to my ankles. As I turn to face Gray, curtseying slightly so he can tug my wig into place, I can tell he understands now the paradox of my drunken mood, that I am playing tonight for keeps. The fracas outside has merely given the final goose. I'm Merman on the last night of
Gypsy.
Prospero giving his powers away, to be a mortal man again.
Ariel, I free thee.

"Ouch," says Gray, pricking his finger on my crown. Carefully he places it on my head. "You're a vision," he pronounces wryly, sucking his punctured finger. Then he kneels to do up my sandals.

In the theater Mona has called for attention. Her sob story and plea for funds are second nature by now, but tonight there's the added weight of the First Amendment to defend. Mrs. Beaudry and her Coalition are always a boon to our bank account. Mona lays it on extremely thick, what price freedom and all. They came for the blasphemer and I stood silent and then they came for me. Go, partner.

I gaze down tenderly at the top of my lover's head as he fastens the straps. His beautiful vanishing hair. It all seems unbearably blessed right now. No dying for miles around.

"There—you're all shod." He's up off his knees, an effortless grin, as eager as I to get on with this.

We step from the lamplit office into the theater's shadowed dusk. It's a six-step grope to the corner of the bleachers—I can do it blindfolded. What I
don't
expect is Merle, standing mute as a cigar-store Indian, holding my cross erect. Close up he doesn't look so comfortable, clasping the central implement of the Passion, though I'm sure he's done an ace job on the toggle bolts. Gravely he hands me my toolbox. I've never had a crew before, and I like the feeling. A star's retinue at last.

"Our special guests tonight are from Salva House in Venice," announces Mona McMahon, shamelessly calling the press's attention to our good works. She introduces Sister Kathleen to a scatter of polite applause. "And as for our performer, he needs no further introduction than the reception you got coming in."

They laugh at her droll delivery, but under the laughter there's tension, a collective brace for a pipe bomb through the door.

"But let me add that he's done more for
my
family values than anyone I've ever known. My first real brother." She swallows thickly. Mona honey, please, it's not my memorial service yet. "Ladies and gentlemen, the best of the breed. Won't you welcome the Second Coming.
Miss
Jesus to you."

The plain-chant tape hisses on over the clapping. Gray shifts the cross from Merle onto my shoulder, bending close to murmur in my ear, "When you're done, I'll be right here. You can't miss me. I'll be the one ready for summer."

I can't even turn to blow him a kiss, now that I'm yoked to the cross. Besides, I'm already moving out into the light, on automatic pilot. The applause is enthusiastic from the start, no loxes in evidence. They get the Jeffrey Hunter joke and guffaw when I call my first incarnation a wet dream. They're right in the palm of my hand, almost too easy. I drag my burden upstage and prop it against the platform. They continue to hoot appreciatively as I run through my flouncing warmup. Then I strip off my caftan, and the quiet is swift and palpable.

Not because of the whip marks. It's an extratheatrical response, like Liz Taylor sporting one of her rocks onstage, except in my case it's AIDS. Guiltily, maybe unconsciously, they're scanning my body for lesions. Yet their scrutiny neither bothers nor inhibits me tonight, as I climb on the cross and begin the crucifixion. I use their squeamish sympathy the same way I use Mrs. Beaudry's shocked disgust—to up the ante. And so I proceed to hammer the nails in my hands, groaning with pleasure. This is the part that makes even the liberal Westside vicars cry uncle.

Yet I'm only half-there. Not exactly detached, and certainly giving no less than 100 percent to the show. My carnal writhe on the cross pulls out all the stops. By the time I hit them with "I bet you never realized I liked it," I can hear the strain in their laughter.

But all the while I'm breaking the first rule of acting, drummed into us back at UConn: no picking out friends in the crowd. Foo's in the front row, far left, chin on her owl-headed cane. Kathleen's three rows up in the middle, surrounded by her girls. Gray and Mona stand at either end of the bleachers like sentries. I feel an irresistible desire to break the fourth wall and wave, like a kid in a Christmas pageant.

As the Mormon Choir hallelujahs in the background, I climb from the cross and head downstage for a stand-up riff. Miss Jesus the revisionist, explaining how the whole idea was gay from the start. I reel off the Apostles, enumerating their kinks. Now I'm watching the I-and-A contingent, clustered about the grinning figure of Kathleen. The battered ladies are riveted by my irreverence, too startled to laugh but clearly delighted. I'd still prefer a few ringers from Mrs. Beaudry's flock. There's not enough potential here for outrage. Given my own abstractedness right now, I suppose I'm better off without the rotten tomatoes. It's just that it feels so tame.