On Friday, Brian’s boss left town for the weekend and delegated him to close an important deal with the makers of an oven-cleaning product called Miracle Foam. Brian was supposed to meet with the Miracle Foam people in the computer center on Saturday, but he never made it there. The Miracle Foam people waited. Then they called me. Then they called me again. Brian did not come. I phoned everyone I could think of and finally just sat at home chewing my nails and knowing something dreadful was going to happen.

At five o’clock Brian called to read me a “poem” he claimed to have written while walking across Central Park Lake. It went:

If Miracle Foam is only a bubble.Why does it cause us so damned much trouble?If we don’t act soon the world will be rubbleAll for the sake of a silly bubble.

“How do you like it, honey?” he asked, all naiveté.

“Brian-do you realize that the Miracle Foam people have been trying to reach you all day?”

“Isn’t it brilliant? It really sums the whole thing up, I think. I’m planning to send it to The New York Times. The only thing is I wonder whether The Times will print a poem with the word ‘damned’ in it. What do you think?”

“Brian-do you realize that I’ve been sitting here all day answering calls from Miracle Foam? Where in hell have you been?”

“That’s precisely where I’ve been.”

“Where?”

“In hell. Just as you’re in hell and I’m in hell and we’re all in hell. How can you worry about a mere bubble like Miracle Foam?”

“What in God’s name are you going to do about the contract?”

“Just that.”

“Just what?”

“In God’s name, I’m going to forget about it. I’m not going to do anything about it. Why don’t you come downtown and meet me and I’ll show you my poem.”

“Where are you?”

“In hell.”

“OK, I know you’re in hell, but where should I meet you?”

“You ought to know. You sent me here.”

“Where?”

“To hell. Where I am now. Where you are now. You’re pretty slow, baby.”

“Brian, please be reasonable-”

“I’m perfectly reasonable. You’re the one who cares about a mere bubble You’re the one who thinks it matters if there are calls from Miracle Foam.”

“Just tell me what corner to meet you on in hell and I’ll come. I swear I will. Just tell me what corner.”

“Don’t you know?”

“No. Honestly I don’t. Please tell me.”

“I think you’re trying to make a fool of me.”

“Brian, darling, I only want to see you. Please let me see you.”

“You can see me right now in your mind’s eye. Your blindness is of your own making. You and King Lear.”

“Are you in a phone booth? Or a bar? Please tell me.”

“You already know!”

The conversation went on like this for some time. Brian hung up on me twice and then called back. Finally he agreed to identify the phone booth he was in, not by name but by a sort of guessing game. I had to participate in it by eliminating the possibilities. This took another twenty minutes and several nickels. Finally it turned out he was at the Gotham Bar. I dashed out and took a cab down to meet him. I learned that he had spent the day taking Puerto Rican and black kids for boat rides on Central Park Lake, buying them ice cream, giving money away to people in the park, and planning his escape from hell. He had not actually walked on the water but he had thought about it quite a lot. Now he was ready to change his life. He had discovered he was possessed of a fund of superhuman energy. Other mortals needed sleep. He did not. Other mortals needed jobs and degrees and all the paraphernalia of everyday life. He did not. He was going to embark on the destiny which had always awaited him-saving the world. I was to help him.

To tell you the truth, none of this talk really displeased me very much. It rather excited me. The idea of Brian quitting market research and my quitting graduate school and our going off together to save the world was perfectly OK with me. I had always urged him to quit market research, in fact. I had tried to lure him to go off to Europe with me and just wander for a while. But Brian had always protested. He had gone into market research as if it were the last great crusade.

As we walked through the city that Saturday night, it was his behavior which disturbed me far more than his wild talk. He wanted us both to close our eyes and cross streets against the lights (to prove we were gods). He would go into stores and ask the storekeepers to take down various items, then handle each one, talk elatedly about each one, and then walk out. He would go into a coffee shop and play with the sugar pourer on every table before he sat down. People kept staring at him. Sometimes the storekeepers or waiters would say, “Take it easy buddy, relax buddy” or sometimes they’d throw him out. Everyone sensed that something was wrong. His agitation jangled the air. To Brian, this was only proof of divinity.

“You see,” he said, “they know I’m God and they don’t know how else to react.”

It was doubly hard for me because I half believed Brian’s theory. Exceptional people are often called crazy by the ordinary world. If God did come back, he would probably wind up in the psycho ward. I was a Laingian way before Laing began publishing. But I was also scared to death.

When we finally got home at 2 a.m., Brian was still frantic and wide-awake, though I was exhausted. He wanted to show me his power. He wanted to prove he could satisfy me. He hadn’t screwed me in about six weeks, but now he wouldn’t stop. He fucked like a machine, refusing to succumb to an orgasm himself but urging me to come again and again and again. After the first three times I was sore and wanted to stop. I begged him to stop but he wouldn’t. He kept banging away at me like an ax murderer. I was crying and pleading.

“Brian, please stop,” I sobbed.

“You thought I couldn’t satisfy you!” he screamed. His eyes were wild.

“You see!” he said, lunging into me. “You see! You see! You see!”

“Brian, please stop,”

“Doesn’t that prove it? Doesn’t that prove I’m God?”

“Please stop,” I whimpered.

When he stopped at last, he withdrew from me violently and thrust his still-hard penis into my mouth. But I was crying too hard to blow him. I lay on the bed sobbing. What was I going to do? I didn’t want to stay alone with him, but where could I go? For the first time I really began to be convinced he was dangerous.

Suddenly Brian broke down and started to cry. He wanted to castrate himself, he said. He wanted our marriage to be purified of all carnality. He wanted to be like Abelard, and me to be like Heloise. He wanted to be purified of all fleshly desires so that he could save the world. He wanted to be soft like a eunuch. He wanted to be soft like Christ. He wanted to be shot full of arrows like Saint Sebastian. He threw his arms around me and sobbed in my lap. I stroked his hair, hoping he’d finally fall asleep. I fell asleep instead.

I’m not sure what time I awakened, but Brian had been up for hours-probably the whole night. I staggered to the bathroom and the first thing I saw was a crude drawing Scotch-taped to the mirror. It depicted a short man with a halo and an enormous erect penis. Another man with a long beard was about to blow him. Behind them both was a huge eagle (resembling the American eagle) except that it had a very obvious and human-looking erection. “The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost” Brian had scrawled above the picture.

I went to my desk in the bedroom. Pieces of my index cards (containing all the notes for my thesis) were scattered on the floor beneath the desk like confetti. On the desk top was a display of books: the complete works of Shakespeare and Milton were propped open and certain words, phrases and letters were circled in various colored inks. I could make out no system or code at first glance, but there were furious notes in the margins. Phrases like “Oh Hell!” or “The Beast with Two Backs!” or “Womankind is too unkind!” Sprinkled over Shakespeare and Milton were the remains of a carefully torn-up twenty-dollar bill. Elsewhere on the desk were reproductions ripped from art books. They all depicted God or Jesus or Saint Sebastian.