DR. X: Does this rock star have a name?
KID Y: Lou Reed.
DR. X: I’ve never heard of him. Maybe he’s not such a star.
KID Y: Maybe not.
DR. X: Maybe he’s a star in your own mind.
KID Y: No, he has a following.
DR. X: Are you one of his followers?
KID Y: I was his friend.
DR. X: Was?
KID Y: Well, he’s gone.
DR. X: Where did he go?
KID Y: I have no idea.
PAUSE
DR. X: Did he tell you to write the words on your body?
KID Y: No.
DR. X: You did it under your own volition?
KID Y: Yes.
DR. X: Does he ever tell you to do things?
KID Y: Well, he’s asked me to do things. He didn’t really tell me to do them. I had a choice.
DR. X: What did he ask of you?
KID Y: Oh . . . let’s see . . . He wanted me to take dictation but that never happened.
DR. X: He wanted to dictate what you did, give you orders?
KID Y: No, no . . . he wanted me to help him write. He was writing a play.
DR. X: Was he a rock star or a playwright?
KID Y: I guess he was a rock star who was writing a play.
DR. X: And he needed your help.
KID Y: No. I think he just didn’t like being alone.
DR. X: Do you like being alone?
KID Y: Sometimes.
DR. X: (reading from a page of the file) “If you need someone to kill I’m a man without a will.” Whose words are those?
KID Y: Those were the words he wrote on the wall. I think they were the lyrics to a song.
DR. X: That’s a very strange song, don’t you think?
KID Y: Not if you knew him.
PAUSE
DR. X: Tell me about Victoria.
KID Y: Victoria who?
DR. X: Your friend who took her own life.
KID Y: Veronica.
DR. X: Yes. I’m sorry. Veronica. Tell me about her.
KID Y: She was very smart, very pretty . . . creative . . . kind.
DR. X: Were you in love with her?
KID Y: Yes.
DR. X: It must have been difficult for you to lose her.
KID Y: It was.
DR. X: After she did what she did, did you want to do the same?
KID Y: No.
DR. X: But you told my colleague that you would be surprised if you made it to your eighteenth birthday.
KID Y: I did say that and I still feel that way.
DR. X: Because you are a danger to yourself?
KID Y: No.
DR. X: Then why did you say that?
KID Y: I don’t know . . . I just feel a sense of impending doom.
DR. X: Did you write the words on your body because of what happened to Victoria?
KID Y: Veronica.
DR. X: Sorry. Yes. Veronica.
KID Y: No. I wrote Lou’s words, his lyrics, which he had written on his wall, on my body because I couldn’t find a piece of paper.
DR. X: Is that the truth?
KID Y: Yes. Lou was gone, he moved out and I had a bad feeling about it so I thought it was important to preserve his song for posterity in case he was dead. But I really had no reason to believe he was dead, just that day I was thinking maybe it was possible he had killed himself because his girlfriend had left him and the last time I saw him he was so depressed. Plus, I was feeling that sense of impending doom like I told you. So if these were really his last words, I felt somebody should write them down because the apartment was probably going to be painted soon and the wall where he wrote the song would be covered over.
DR. X: He was depressed because his girlfriend left him?
KID Y: Yes. But she wasn’t a girl, really. I think she was a guy who looked like a girl and dressed like a girl and Lou treated him, treated her like a girl. So did I. I considered her a girl.
LONG PAUSE. DR. X WRITES IN THE FILE THEN READS FROM THE NEXT PAGE.
DR. X: “Dirty’s what you are and clean is what you’re not.” Do you feel that you are dirty, and not clean?
KID Y: No.
DR. X: Then why did you write it on yourself?
KID Y: Third base.
DR. X: What?
KID Y: Third base. Who’s on first? It’s an Abbott and Costello routine.
DR. X: What’s that?
KID Y: A comedy routine.
DR. X: Ahhhh. So you think it was funny when you wrote on yourself?
KID Y: Not at all.
DR. X: Do you want to be a rock star?
KID Y: I have no musical abilities.
DR. X: What if this rock star does not exist?
KID Y: There’s people you can ask about him. The doorman of the building. Go to a record store. He exists, he’s real.
DR. X: Yes. Yes. We will look into all of this. We shall. Very soon.
KID Y: I heard Allen Ginsberg was a patient here and stayed in my room. Is that true?
DR. X: That would be confidential.
KID Y: Of course.
DR. X: Judy Garland was here, though. And Lenny Bruce.
KID Y: They’re not confidential?
DR. X: They’re dead.
DR. X CLOSES THE FILE.
DR. X: Okay, Matthew, that’s all for today. (Dr. X grins.) Maybe all we have to do is just give you a head transplant and send you on your way.
PAUSE
KID Y: Do I get to approve the donor?
THE LIGHTS GO TO BLACK. IF THERE IS A CURTAIN (THERE SHOULD BE), IT SHOULD COME DOWN NOW.
forty
I was told
