Kate (or is it Katie?)

When I was young and sleeping I thought the most beautiful girl I had ever seen was a girl from South Africa named Katie. She had turquoise eyes and went from man to man to man, claiming them as her own. By now she must have a thousand pelts. She may be dead now, or she may have converted. First she slept with my roommate Jason. Then she went with my other roommate Goeff and became the love of his life. Certainly the most beautiful girl he had ever been with as she probably was for most of her lovers. She once told me that Geoff was like "a big oak tree". But she must have found a redwood because she left him after a short while. I never forgot Katie, though I wish I remembered her last name.

But then there was Kate. She was mine. I had a crush on her. I met her in psychology class. She would go around campus on roller-skates and went to raves and took ecstasy and talked about how great fun it was. After class one day she invited me to go look at the snails. It had rained and we went to the garden on campus and looked at all the snails crawling from the plants to the stone steps. They were beautiful but I noticed mostly Kate. One day after class she invited me to her boyfriend's house for perhaps the most boring few hours of my life. She was with her boyfriend, they were smoking weed without me and people were playing the Tony Hawk video game. When I had my turn I didn't know how to play and got zero points in my session. Somehow I got home. Kate drove me.

But the story is years later. Kate still remembered me as she remembers all of the boys in her life. She was in a theater group and my roommate Goeff was making a documentary about the play they were performing. The Serpent by Jean-Claude van Itallie. Kate was surprised that I had started smoking cigarettes. She smoked also. I guess I was supposed to be innocent. We had a party for the cast and our roommates and we drunk and at the end of the party Jason was complaining because Kate and another actress would not leave the apartment but also would not have sex with him.

She told me about the play which was a mock of the Garden of Eden and the Kennedy Assassination. Avante-garde I guess it was. She told me at one point all of the girls on stage would be dancing with apples and they would go to the crowd and give the apples to a member of the crowd and we were supposed to eat the apples and she asked if she could give the apple to me. We attended the performance. She danced like Salome and she handed me the apple and I bit and then all of the girl who were dancing pointed at us and laughed and laughed and laughed and not knowing what to do, I continued eating the apple. I don't remember what I did with the core. Was there a garbage can? After that night I never saw her again. Kate, not Katie. Katie was more beautiful, but Kate was mine.

I wonder how many times I sold my soul to the devil? One does not really know until the last judgment. Perhaps a million times.