> Dan in Plureality 5

The sun's going down of the Aran Islands off the coast of Ireland. We're sitting on the rocks of a beach, our backpacks propped beside us. Nowhere to go. He rolls two cigarettes and passes me one. I take out one of our enchanted matchbooks, fashioned during the six hour ritual that we began this trip with. The sigil inside is for shelter. I strike the match and we light our cigarettes. Before we've finished smoking them a woman has walked up to us from over a hill and invited us to spend the night in her cottage.
*

She turns to him. “Now Dr. James. Surely there's something of merit going on here?” 

Dr. James frowns. Suddenly he drops his file folder on the desk and marches towards the door to the room. Daniel startles slightly when he enters and Ms. Amita frowns. Dr. Hannah follows him in, looking apologetic. And They keep watching. 

“Daniel,” Dr. James says. “In attempting to delineate the effects of your addiction you have so far done little more than show me that you have a penchant for telling stories. I ask you, what is the point of them?”

*


I'm visiting with a friend from the small town I lived in during the summer of the year 2000 and I take the chance and tell her about what happened to me that week in August.

About how I starred in a this reality-tv show called 'Spygame'. It was a lot like that show 'The Mole', but this was before that came out. I was clear with her: I explained how I was aware that my biology spent the week laying in bed, walking along the river listening to a walkman. But I can remember everything that happened on the show. I can remember guesting on Letterman after it was over, with the other three finalists. I remember talking with her afterwards about being on the show, only she doesn't. I even told her about the time in my apartment, once the summer was over, when a song from the 'Spygame' soundtrack came on the radio and I cried and cried, I missed the other people from the show that badly. 

I was so nervous telling her. I even became insistent, almost shouting at her even though she was listening quietly. And then she smiled and nodded and said that she understood. And she told me a beautiful, sad story about being haunted by the first horse she had to put down when she was younger. 

It was like sex, like tantric sex where orgasm isn't the point.

*


Dr. James shouts, “Then what is the point?” 

“You tell me,” I say.

***