fluid biopsy of personality that was somehow captured in the words and music of the original recording. And if you’re lucky, for one small slice of time, you become Otis or Muddy or Jimi or Janis or Lennon.
I have done that.
And if I can do that, I can do this.
When I speak, I hear my voice as Erin’s hypnotic contralto. The sound soothes my nerves. Using stories told me long ago by Bob Anderson, I begin weaving a history of Drewe and Erin’s ancestors, then slowly draw it into a New South tale worthy of Margaret Mitchell. My reason tells me I shouldn’t use too much truth, but instinct tells me that straying too far from it will destroy my credibility. The lives I use for thread are like my own, are in fact part of my own, and the tapestry that results will not be pulled apart, not even by Brahma. Yet as my story moves into the recent past, he begins asking questions.
MAXWELL› You do not get along with your sister now?
ERIN› We get along. How can you not get along with the most perfect person in the world?
MAXWELL› Obviously you don’t believe that about her.
ERIN› Sometimes I do. She’s a doctor now, but everybody knew she’d be an astronaut or something like that even when she was a kid. You’d probably love her.
MAXWELL› I doubt it. I know many female super-achievers, and the image rarely reflects the reality beneath.
ERIN› In this case it does. My sister’s life could be a movie, only it would be too boring. It’s more like a TV commercial.
MAXWELL› Is she attractive?
ERIN› Yes.
MAXWELL› But you are more so.
ERIN› Physically.
MAXWELL› She was jealous of your beauty?
ERIN› If she was, she never showed it. If she’d tried, she could have gotten as much male attention as I did. But while I was cutting class, she was dissecting fetal pigs.
MAXWELL› Did you go to university?
ERIN› No, New York.
MAXWELL› Ah. What did you do there?
I pause. It’s time to bend the truth a little.
ERIN› I was a singer.
MAXWELL› What kind of singer? Opera? Broadway?
ERIN› A folk singer. Sort of Joni Mitchell, but with more edge. I changed my name so my family couldn’t find me. My father had told me I’d end up turning tricks to eat, but I was signed pretty quickly. I was wined and dined and photographed and flown to Montserrat to cut a CD. Then my A amp;R guy got fired for signing too many acts that flopped. I think he only signed me because he wanted to sleep with me. Nobody else at the label cared whether I lived or died. My CD was never even mastered. I got depressed, did more coke than Sherlock Holmes and Freud put together, and crashed in less than a year.
MAXWELL› Crashed?
ERIN› Lost my bearings. Did too many drugs, slept with too many men, even started losing my looks. They’re back now, thank God. I’m vain enough to appreciate that.
MAXWELL› Vanity may be what saved you. But don’t you think it’s time we went back a bit further? Perhaps discussed your father a bit more?
ERIN› Why?
MAXWELL› I think you know. It’s the oldest story in the world, Erin. Let yourself be rid of the weight.
ERIN› You think my father tried to screw me or something?
MAXWELL› Not necessarily. Most adult-child sex involves oral or manual stimulation, not penetration.
ERIN› My God. You’ve got it ALL wrong.
MAXWELL› That sounds like denial to me.
ERIN› And you sound like every stupid shrink I ever went to. My problem has nothing to do with my father. It’s my sister.
MAXWELL› Your sister? Are you telling me you had a lesbian affair with your sister? That you’re haunted by some silly adolescent cunnilingus or suchlike?
ERIN› Or _suchlike_? How old are you really?
MAXWELL› Forty-seven.
ERIN› God. I’m not sure whether we can talk or not. Different cultural vocabularies.
MAXWELL› I transcend generations, Erin.
ERIN› Right. Do you keep yourself in shape?
MAXWELL› Cellini’s
ERIN› I’ve never seen it, but I get the idea. How close do you come to your ideal?
MAXWELL› Perhaps one day you will judge. Let’s return to your sister. What is this thing you try so to avoid telling me?
ERIN› It’s her husband.
MAXWELL› You are bedding her husband?
ERIN› _Bedding?_ No. Worse than that. I have a child by him. A son.
In the ensuing silence, I sense Brahma’s heightened interest like a leopard raising its head.
MAXWELL› Your sister is still married to him?
ERIN› Yes. She does _not_ know he’s the father of my child.
MAXWELL› Ah. Does he know?
ERIN› Yes. I told him three months ago.
MAXWELL› How old is your son?
ERIN› Three.
MAXWELL› How did this happen, Erin?
With a fluidity that surprises me, I give Brahma a condensed history of the relationships between myself, Drewe, and Erin-but from Erin’s perspective. The names I change, yet the eternal triangle retains its mythic power. Brahma seems particularly interested in the diametric personalities of Erin and Drewe. When I arrive at the incident in Chicago, he asks:
MAXWELL› What was the sex like between you?
How do I describe sex with myself from Erin’s point of view? This may be the obstacle that finally trips me.
ERIN› It was the consummation of years of suppressed desire. In a certain way, it was unique. I’d been disillusioned by men very early. Men see women as saints or whores, and at that time I saw men in similar terms. Bastards or wimps. The bastards I was always attracted to tried to destroy me, and the nice guys _I_ destroyed. That’s what’s happening to my husband now.
MAXWELL› Which type was your sister’s husband?
ERIN› Neither. That was the unique thing. With him I responded like I had with my bastard lovers, but he wasn’t one. He was gentle. He was a musician, a songwriter.
MAXWELL› But this is the root of your desire for a man with the soul of a woman. Artists are the bridge between the male and female poles. They are spiritually hermaphroditic.
ERIN› Maybe that’s it. Because he took me to a different place than I’d ever been. Sometimes when we made love, I achieved something more than an orgasm. It was a total obliteration of consciousness. The waves would start, and then suddenly I’d reach this hyperaware plateau, a clear white space like a liquid dream. And then I’d black out. Absolutely. When I woke up, I felt something I never had before. Peace. I felt I’d known what it was to be dead, or at least beyond life. And I _liked_ it, you know? I wanted that peace. Later I found out the French call that “the little death.”
MAXWELL› Sex and death are opposite sides of the same coin, Erin. We in the West repress this,
