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Show 3°J lines my first time on stage; and in Antigone I was even more self-conscious, so much so that my body tightened up until the director told me I was walking just /«st 3p>"»>S like a girl*, for which I blushed and practicdd a manly stride; and*when I was ^"AtettAft^ifPftiii so unconfident that my throat tightened up until my voice went up the register, got higher and projected less. But as Horner I projected just fine, voice aid all, the master of all those spirited ladies. I felt I could play Hamlet, Oedipus, anyone. I felt all men in me, from Adam on. Then I would come home and Carrie would frown at me and I would shrivel up inside, croaking hello out of a base desire to placate her. I was relieved when cooler Jtweather made Kite put back on her clothes. I had been fearing and distrusting nakedness and I told myself that in Capri pants her deeriere was as attractive as ever, my own to have and to hold. And we still slept naked, me with my pants ever ready over a chair. We were at ease with one another, old friends and new lovers still, going out to walk in the smoky air under the turning trees, holding hands while we window-shopped on 55th or strolled past the Frank Lloyd Wright house on 56th Street, up through campus and then back past Stagg Field with the ivy blazing red, on past the xxd site of the first atomic chain reaction, on to 55th again to buy delicatessen and bakery and fruit, home to eat and make love. With Ben and Amelia we went to films at the Lyric, drank beer at the U.T., wandered'through the Art Fair on 57th in front of the Re'd Door Bookstore. I drifted off to buy ftlte a pair of delicate, hadd-made copper earrings, came back to find Ben and Amelia snapping at one another: she was five days late with her period and was scaring the hell out of them. I smiled, aloof, my Eden intact. Ben and jtAmelia were delighted that our relationship had changed, Amelia confiding to me that she had never liked Kite with that older guy Tobin. Kite saidAsKa^as asking when we were going to get married, pushing it, and we A smiled together, un-owned, un-compromised, our Eden intact. I wanted ftite to enter some of her work in the Art Fair but she said that |
