I am not easily thrown off-kilter. My own outrageousness has made me poised in the face of outrageous events. Did I lose my cool when the 7.1 Loma Prieta earthquake erupted moments after Demetria threw her legs around my waist and buried my jade stalk in her Greek crucible? I did not. I sensibly cruised us both, still joined, over to the nearest doorframe, best place to be in a quake, and continued our rock and roll while the walls of the house shimmied and groaned.

Did I, furthermore, reel with debilitating embarrassment at the age of nineteen when my astrologer pointed out she'd calculated my horoscope wrong, and that I had therefore spent three days and nights camping alone in the White Mountains of New Hampshire meditating on aspects of my destiny which did not exist? I did not reel. Rather, I heehawed and forgave myself on the spot.

Now, however, here in the kitchen of India Joze at 2:35 a.m. on a warm spring night, as I ply my new trade as janitor, my near-perfect record of unshockability comes to an end.

I've just fixed myself a big plate of gado-gado with lots of peanut sauce, plus a dessert of strawberry cheesecake. It's time for my break. I've been scouring and mopping and scrubbing for over two hours.

As I begin my stroll from the main refrigerator towards the dining area to sit down, I hear scuffling from the door at the rear of the kitchen. I curse myself. Shouldn't have left it open. Dave, the guy whose job I took over, said he'd never been bothered by bums strolling in looking for handouts in the middle of the night, but it seems I won't be so lucky. I set my feast down on a counter, grab a butcher knife, and skulk back to investigate.

But it is not a grizzled homeless dude hovering in the doorway. It is a vision of bizarre loveliness. As I gaze upon it, my knees become the consistency of squid, and I half-crumple to the floor. An exotic blend of adrenaline and lust fountains out of my heart with such a sudden gush that I wonder whether I'm having a heart attack.

It's Rapunzel. In extremity. A grinning crazy pretty witch doctor from the pages of Vogue. A New Guinea supermodel on LSD.

She has woven giant silver seedpods into her disheveled auburn hair, which is half-piled Louis XIV-style on top of her head and half-streaming down. Somehow, a white and gold Pope's mitre decorated with a picture of a vulture balances tentatively on top. Her long hula skirt is composed in part of mummified snakes and animal tails. Her belt is a chain of shrunken heads with a suspicious resemblance to recognizable characters like Joseph Stalin, Ronald Reagan, Dan Rather, Carl Sagan, and Mick Jagger.

On top she wears a pinstriped baseball jersey which is a more colorful version of the one she gave me in the Catalyst bathroom. The first couple of buttons are unbuttoned, revealing a black lace bra beneath. On the left side of the shirt is an embroidered logo. The title, however, is not "Menstrual Temple," as I might expect, but "The Eater of Cruelty." Accompanying it is a depiction of a winged angel digging in a garbage can.

On the other side of the shirt is a large pocket with a brooch bearing a photo of one of my heroes, Antonin Artaud, the French playwright. Below the photo is a caption that reads, "Use your nightmares to become rich and famous."

Lustful fantasies are immediately going full bore. I'm lying on top of Rapunzel, swimming madly as I pour my soul into her green eyes. But I'm also surging with a less familiar emotion: loving tenderness. My longing to bless her and give her presents is so strong it's scary. Am I really capable of feeling so sweet and soft and open-hearted? I just barely hold back my tongue from saying the words that are forming in the back of my throat.

I'm amazed at how affectionate I feel towards you, how excited I am by your funny power. I love the way you change me. I love the way you crack me up.

My dream woman has brought props. In one hand is a black bag similar to the kind carried by doctors who used to make house calls. In the other hand is a broom made of the trunk of a young tree with the branches lopped off. This tool hangs over her shoulder, and a gold bucket dangles from the end of it.

"Hi," she bubbles, "I'm Pope Artaud, Chief Tantric Janitor of The Eater of Cruelty."

I monitor the sparkling twists and turns of the wild mind behind her eyes.

"Do you need any help in scouring away your karma tonight, Osiris? You don't mind if I call you Osiris, do you? Seems like a more fitting name than 'Rockstar,' especially now that you've given up music for the janitorial life."

She has come close enough to swish the broom back and forth over my boots.

"Or would you prefer to alchemize your psychic crud indirectly, by cleaning the hell out of this grungy kitchen?" She waves her arm with a flourish, like an assistant on a game show showing off the new car that could be won.

Teach me to understand what captivates your imagination. Don't hide anything from me. Let me listen to you talk for hours. I want to help you name your genius, coax it out, build it up. I want to be your muse.

"Correct me if I'm wrong," I sputter, "but I thought you were the Supreme Arbiter of the Menstrual Temple of the Funky Grail."

"That's my other gig. Tonight I'm Pope Artaud, Spiritual Head of all Tantric Janitors."

"Pope? But why not Popesse? Doesn't Pope mean father? Better yet, why not call yourself High Priestess?"

"You should know by now that I can change into any gender I need to be. Those strict definitions of man and woman are the patriarchy's specialty, not mine. My archetypes are mutating."

"I know what the Theater of Cruelty is," I say. "I've been an Artaud fan since I was practically a toddler. But what exactly is The Eater of Cruelty?"

I'm going to pump her with questions, keep her talking. I want to bask in the majesty of her presence for as long as possible.

"Let's say it's the janitorial wing of the Menstrual Temple; the group that gathers the raw materials for the Menstrual Temple's eucharistic rituals."

"You must know," I say, "that Artaud himself would have considered the real Pope a mutilator of the heart. It was Nietzsche who called Christianity a religion for slaves, but I'm sure Artaud would have agreed. Aren't you blaspheming Artaud by associating his name with the enemy?"

Take all you want from me. Show me your secrets so I can help them bloom and thrive. I want to be an expert at responding to your longing. Let me be the one who gives you yourself.

"We're as opposite to Artaud as Artaud was to the Pope," she harrumphs as she sweeps the floor, heaping up a pile of food scraps I've missed. "Only we're also opposite to the Pope. That's the great thing about being a tantric janitor -- you're opposite to everyone, even yourself. You get to blaspheme all of creation, especially the things you love best.

"And we especially love Artaud. That's why we take what we need from him, throw the rest away, and become the Anti-Artaud. We've transmuted his dark religion into a joyful game he'd never have approved of. Although, to be perfectly frank, we've been around for many eons before Artaud ever came along."

"And how exactly are you the anti-Artaud?"

Rapunzel reaches down into the midst of the pile of garbage she has accumulated with her broom. She plucks out some unidentifiable shred of black scum and holds it up to her lips as if to take a bite. At the last moment, just as I'm about to come to the rescue and snatch it out of her hand, she gives it a big smacking kiss and hurls it back over her shoulder.

"To Artaud," she says, "the world was God's abandoned rot. We think he didn't see deeply enough. The rot's there, all right, but the splendor's hidden inside it. We Eaters of Cruelty like to go rummaging around looking for all that good stuff. The treasure in the trash. The gold in the lead. The manna in the junk food."

Rapunzel heads into the bowels of the kitchen, carrying her black bag, broom, and bucket. I paddle after her.

My bliss is to follow your bliss. I want to feel your nerve endings in my body. I want to sense your endorphins billowing in my brain.

"I have a feeling," I say to her as I lean against a table, "that this has something to do with you telling me to get a job as a janitor."

"Tantric janitor, to be exact. But I didn't want you to get distracted by the sexy tantric part until you mastered the janitor stuff. And by the way, I didn't tell you to get a job as a janitor. I made you an offer contingent on you becoming a janitor."

' From her black bag, Rapunzel removes a pair of red silk boxer shorts.

"Go ahead and change into these," she says. "They're more fitting for an aspiring tantric janitor like you. Don't worry, I won't peek. Go over there behind the cutting table."

I get up to obey her instructions, not sure I want to be so exposed around her but determined not to resist the will of the high priestess.

"The English word janitor is from the Latin word janitor," she says loudly, "which meant 'doorkeeper.'"

I'm receiving a lesson in etymology as I get nearly naked with a woman I passionately desire?

"Janitor is derived from the Latin word janus, which in its generic use meant doorway or threshold. Janus was also the Roman god of doorways, of beginnings, and of the rising and setting of the sun. He was portrayed as having one head with two faces back to back looking in opposite directions. "In this sense of the word, every shamanatrix in the Menstrual Temple of the Funky Grail is also a janitor in The Eater of Cruelty. We hang out in the thresholds and root around for the beauty buried in the gunk that collects there. Where the coming meets the going. Where the contradictions are greatest."

"Because menstruators are threshold-dwellers? In what way?"

"Menstruators are right there on the edge where death and life meet, with their unfertilized egg dying and the next egg beginning to ripen at the same time."

"I can see how menstruation would actually be a good metaphor for all thresholds."

"Yup. Though the Drivetime is probably the ultimate metaphor."

"And Drivetime is what? The 4 to 6 p.m. rush hour?"

"The Drivetime is our term for the wormhole that connects the Dreamtime and the Waketime. It's the tunnel you inhabit -- the hypnogogic state -- as you flow back and forth between the two realms. The Great Inbetween. The mobius strip-like seam at the heart of the tantric yabyum."

"I love that place."

"I know you do, which is why you've got so much potential as a menstruator."

"So tell me more about this Drivetime of yours."

"It's the condition you embody whenever you master the art of simultaneously inhabiting both of any two polarities. It's the joyous celebration of contradictions. The attitude which is always loyal to both sides of every opposition. The power spot where you agree with everything you disagree with and disagree with everything you agree with -- and vice versa."

I've finished removing my janitorial duds and slipping into the shorts. I leave my old clothes folded in a pile on the butcher block. As I return to where she's sitting, Rapunzel pulls out a vial of dark red liquid and holds it up so I can see what's written on it: "Dragon's Blood." She screws off the top and applies some of the viscous stuff to her finger. Then she pulls down my waistband a bit and daubs a red triangle about three finger-widths below my navel. My hormones are in danger of electrifying.

"Rowdy ruby glissando," she chants, closing her eyes. "Rowdy ruby glissando. Rowdy ruby glissando. Rowdy ruby glissando."

She reaches into her bag again and pulls out a tampon. Well, no, it's not exactly a tampon. It's a tampon and tampon applicator that have been modified into a toy flute, the kind you play by sliding a smaller cylinder in and out of a bigger one. Rapunzel demonstrates the technique, playing a loopy version of "Pray to Her," a World Entertainment War song.

"Another threshold metaphor," she says, handing me the thing, "is the archetype of the Great Mother Goddess, known by the ancient Greeks as Demeter. It's through her womb that we are all born into the physical realm."

"I had a past life reading once where the psychic saw me curled up in the fetal position inside the belly of a woman as big as the planet Earth."

"Yes, well, that was real, wasn't it?"

"As real as a red wheelbarrow, in my book. More real, actually."

"Red wheelbarrow?" she says, lifting a lovely eyebrow. "As in the poem by William Carlos Williams?"

"'So much depends/upon/a red wheel/barrow/glazed with rain/water/beside the white/chickens.'"

"The beauty of ordinary things."

"Yes," I declare, feeling my own power returning. It is getting a little old, isn't it, for me to exude such relentless deference towards Rapunzel. And I can't imagine that she could find it attractive.

"But also," I press on, "it's a poem about the sensory world as the ultimate reality. The red wheelbarrow is Williams' symbol for the modern dogma that what you see is all there is, baby. Ain't no such thing as spirit or soul. And don't you go muddling up your brain trying to believe in such nonsense."

"I catch your drift," Rapunzel says. "And yes. The twenty-five-thousand-mile-circumference womb of Demeter is definitely more real than the red wheelbarrow."

"So you and I do live on the same planet after all." This is a daring flirtation.

"And then there's Demeter's daughter Persephone," she says, "the Underworld Queen. Also more real than a red wheelbarrow. She leads us over to the other side of the veil, either through dream or trance or death."

Uh-oh. She's fiddling around inside her bag again.

"Though to be honest," she says, "Demeter and Persephone are two faces of the same Goddess. One is the doorway in and one is the doorway out. As if the two together made up Janus the cosmic janitor."

"Sounds like the Hindu goddess Kali, too."

"Exactly. Kali is another Drivetime tutelary. Both womb and tomb, nurturer and destroyer."

"Though Kali's reputation is more as a destroyer, right? I read a hymn to her once that was titled, 'My Delight Is on Your Cremation Grounds.'"

"Propaganda, my dear. Vicious propaganda. Would you base your understanding of African-American folks on the rants of a white supremacist? The Drivetime-deprived phallocrats who're in charge of writing history have just never been able to get the hang of a divine intelligence who goes both ways. It's true that Kali burns heaven to the ground every day; it's true that she cracks your heart open and steals everything you own. But only so that you'll be empty enough to have room for her subtly stupendous gifts -- which, by the way, include immortality and the ability to make love forever."

Rapunzel has laid down seven objects on the table. Like the flute, they began life as tampons, but their destiny is taking a different route. Rapunzel begins weaving them into my hair, turning them into curlers.

"Got to fix your hair for your date later on," she chirps as she works.

"What date is that?" I ask.

"Don't want to spoil the surprise, but here's a clue: She's got a twenty-five-thousand-mile-circumference womb."

"OK. Will you chaperone us, please?"

"If you're good."

She grabs a cannister of spray-on oil from one of the cook's stations and looks as if she's about to apply it to the areas she's bundling around the curlers.

"I must deny access to my hair with that noxious beauty aid," I laugh, playfully wresting the cannister out of her hand.

"I understand your concerns," she says evenly and goes back to putting in the tampon curlers. Am I fantasizing, or was that a test to see if I would stand up for myself? Maybe my ballsier attitude has caught her attention.

"So, Rapunzel. What's a practical example of living in the Drivetime?"

"Well. Do you know the books of Michael Harner? He's the pop anthropologist. A low-budget Mircea Eliade with more gnosis and less academic bullshit. Harner tells of conversing with a Jivaro shaman in Brazil who makes no distinction between his experiences in Dreamtime and waking life. One moment the shaman is describing how he used his magical powers to fly to a remote mountaintop cave and bathe in the medicine of a liquid rainbow; next moment he's talking about the delicious rabbits he caught while hunting yesterday, or the exceptional talent his wife's sister has for farting during solemn ceremonial occasions. This is one example of a person who knows how to live in the Drivetime."

"What's the difference," I interject, "between that and, say, the high school kids in Pennsylvania who got killed while imitating what they saw in a Disney movie? I guess they didn't make much of a distinction between fantasy and reality either. Just like the actors they saw, they played chicken by lying out in the middle of a highway at night and waiting till the last minute before dodging oncoming cars. Difference was the actors didn't actually die."

I hold up a shiny pan to catch a glimpse of my reflection. Don't exactly look my best. The growing bunches of rolled-up hair give my head an extraterrestrial shape.

"I'm sure you've also heard," I press on, "about how every time an actor portraying a doctor performs a particular kind of surgery on a popular soap opera, real doctors begin performing that same surgery at a dramatically higher rate in real American hospitals. All the poor jerks that thereby get unnecessary gall bladder surgery have a certain resemblance to the Jivaro shamans too."

"Well, that's very astute, Osiris -- considering you don't really know what the hell you're talking about." Rapunzel cackles brightly, without a trace of hostility. "Certainly there is a superficial resemblance between the Jivaro shamans and the Pennsylvania high school fools. For both, there's a conflation of dimensions, an overlapping of worlds. The difference is that the Dreamtime visited by the Jivaro shamans is a real place. It's an objectively existing realm."

"I wonder if the Jivaro dudes could tell the difference between a Dreamtime red wheelbarrow and a Waketime one?"

"On the other hand," she says, ignoring my quip, "the kids in Pennsylvania were suffering from what you yourself call 'the genocide of the imagination.' They probably lost the ability to visit the real Dreamtime long about the three-thousandth televised murder they saw back in kindergarten. No, what overlapped their waking reality was, you might say, Faux Dreamtime. Once the entertainment criminals genocided their poor imaginations, they became eager receptacles for the withered hallucinations of Faux Dreamtime -- deposited in them by those same entertainment criminals."

My infatuated fantasies have officially leapt to the next higher octave. Rapunzel is incorporating some of my own ideas into her rap, ideas I've proclaimed loud and strong from my bully pulpit as lead singer of World Entertainment War. "Genocide of the imagination" and "entertainment criminals" are virtually my trademarks. She also used them a few days ago when she invaded my home, true, but at that time they were merely fodder for her derisive attacks on me. Now she's weaving them lovingly into her analysis. I take this to be a sign that even if she does harbor serious criticisms of my work, she also regards it as interesting enough to steal from.

The implications of this make me giddy with greed. It means her potential is not just as a lyrical lover, not just as a challenging consort, but also as a rowdy partner in crime -- a true equal with whom I can whip up twice the creative trouble I already do. I picture us sneaking out together at dawn to steal the garbage of a Bay Area celebrity, maybe Robin Williams or Adrienne Rich, and auctioning it off at an impromptu "Garbage Sale" during one of my shows. I visualize us collaborating on a rock opera about the Menstrual Temple and performing it at weekend-long salons which also include workshops on the Drivetime and rituals designed to foment holy mischief. I can even imagine us writing a book together. It could be called How To Make Smart Love with Your Best Friend.

"Drivetime is a hard-earned luxury," Rapunzel says as she steps back to admire her hairstyling efforts, "available only to those who've cultivated a vigorous relationship with the True Dreamtime while at the same time maintaining a practical grip on the very different rules of the Waketime. But oh is it a luxury."

"What the hell are those noises?" I say suddenly in response to sounds like voices and banging chairs out in the dining area. I'd heard them before but rationalized they were merely my overwrought imagination. Now they're getting too loud to ignore. "I'd better go check."

Rapunzel grabs both my arms and forces me to stay. "Don't worry about it," she says. "I invited a couple of friends in with me. They're out there straightening up."

"But how did they get in without me seeing them? The front door's locked."

"Never mind. It's time to get ready for the next part of your menarche." She reaches into her black doctor's bag. "Here's the rest of your menstrual lingerie."

The costume she hands me consists of emerald-green velvet knee pads, a satin plum-colored vest featuring an embroidered image of a vulture, and black satin slippers.

As I put on the rest of my outfit, Rapunzel leaves the kitchen and goes out to the dining area. A moment later I hear an explosion of many female voices doing that funny amazon ululation-cum-war whoop. My imagination gets goose-bumps.

Rapunzel returns and takes my hand.

"The Menstrual Temple's welcoming committee awaits you," she says invitingly. She walks me out of the dingy kitchen. Where the dining area begins there is a long, narrow red carpet, newly placed.

The room has been transformed by the addition of eighteen to twenty women, who're sitting at the tables. As I arrive, they applaud and blow me kisses. Though they're all ages, they have in common a slaphappy sartorial sense. I see a rainbow beret sprouting pheasant feathers and a khaki military shirt paired with yellow velvet overalls. There's a gold brocade frock coat and bulbous red clown nose and green silk pajamas and black chiffon skirt that looks like it has a bustle underneath.

The restaurant has mutated in other ways. Stretched across the back of the main room of the dining area is a banner that reads "The Eater of Cruelty Cafe." Below it is a neatly hand-drawn poster listing "Tonight's Specials":

Breakfast of Amazons Cereal with Virgin's Milk

Rosicrucian Coca-Cola

Black Market Pudding from Below the Abyss

Vinegar Tears of Lame Angels

Loamy Ouroboric Christ Resin

Tender Adrenaline Ice Cream with Ancient Spider Webs

Sphinx's Bath Water with Chthonic Plum Ganglion

Licorice Ash of Incinerated Testosterone

Rowdy Ruby Glissando of the Silk Lotus

Near the menu, on two tables pushed together against the far wall, is what looks like a pagan altar. It's crammed with red candles and snapdragons and small animal skulls and a small cauldron and a hundred other things. The centerpiece is an odd television which resembles the one I saw in the gallery installation on the evening before World Entertainment War's last show at the Catalyst. It's either made of stone and mud or else is an ordinary TV with those materials glued on. In several places, vines sprout out of cracks in the mud.

The images on the screen are like those of intense dreams. At the moment, Abraham Lincoln is giving Mother Teresa a big wet hickey on her bare shoulder as they lie outside a Disneyland-like fortress called "Drug City" while an African grandmother dressed in a turban and a tuxedo holds up a sign on a stick that reads "This Bud's for you, Uberwoman."

When I arrived earlier tonight, the tables were covered with white linen. That has been replaced by red satin. Each table now sports a fanned-out deck of large Tarot cards, as well as an oversized silver goblet -- about the height and heft, I fantasize, of the goblet used by the giant in the story of Jack and the Beanstalk.

"Here at The Eater of Cruelty Cafe we refer to that particular story as Jill and the Beanstalk, Osiris," Rapunzel says to me, although I haven't said what I was thinking.

"How could you have possibly known I was thinking about Jack and the Beanstalk?" I wonder.

"I have a telepathic homing device that turns on whenever I'm in the presence of a person who's ripe to have her archetypes mutated," she replies. "And I hope you'll forgive me if I use the feminine form as the all-purpose pronoun. Of course I mean to imply that my homing device also turns on in the presence of a person who's ripe to have his archetypes mutated. But you can't imagine how important it is to use 'she' and 'her' to refer to generic humanity. It could literally be a factor in whether or not all human life disappears from this planet in the next thirty years."

"I'll buy that," I say. "I've always wanted to save the world."

"Good, good," she approves. "I'm always looking for more soldiers to help me kill the apocalypse."

Rapunzel ushers me to a table in the middle of the room where there's a woman I recognize. It's impossible, but I do. She's Jumbler, the Norse leprechaun androgyne from my superdream. There's the same thick, flaxen helmet of hair, the pale skin and turquoise eyes.

A Napoleon-style hat made out of aluminum foil wobbles on top of her head. She's also wearing pointy green velvet shoes and a red leather pouch with a silver buckle cast in the shape of a bull skull. This all contrasts with her sheer black mesh catsuit, which is garlanded by organza ruffles decorated with intricate paintings of red and black vultures.

"Hi, Jumbler," Rapunzel coos to her, confirming that this person has the same name that she did in my superdream, "you look like you're in the mood to kick the apocalypse's butt tonight."

Jumbler places her two thumbs and two index fingers together, palms held up and spread out, and greets me with a perverse toast: "May Persephone annihilate the rotting patriarchal imprints within you -- without killing you. Somewhere over the rainbow, may She inspire you to resurrect the splendorous beauty of poisoned masculinity."

She reaches into her pouch and produces an egg. I'm too startled to stop her as she reaches over, pulls forward the waistband of my shorts, and breaks the egg against my belly. The oozing slime only enhances the erotic fever I have been nursing steadily since Rapunzel's arrival.

"And may Persephone dissuade him," Rapunzel adds with a giggle, "from being just another boring example of the patriarchy's crowning achievement: the hate-everything-that-doesn't-adore-me and fuck-everything-that-adores-me hero."

Jumbler's greeting is scary. I don't like her broken egg and I don't like her violent references -- "without killing you" in particular. Better not complain, though. Don't want to alienate Rapunzel's buddy on our first meeting.

As soon as we've eased into our chairs, a visitor from a nearby table glides over. A handsome, weathered woman with shoulder-length brown hair and a cracked smile, she looks about forty. She's holding a guitar and wearing a decal-bedecked black leather motorcycle jacket over a hunter-green satin mini-dress. One of the decals says "Menstrual Minstrel," which she proceeds to illustrate as she sings us a short ditty that consists entirely of variations on the phrase "The penis is just a clitoris suffering from delusions of grandeur." Rapunzel plucks out the tampon applicator flute that I'd stored in my vest pocket and plays along.

"What'll it be, televisionaries?" she asks us when she's done singing, pulling out a pen and notebook.

"Breakfast of Amazons cereal? Rosicrucian Coca-Cola? Tender Adrenaline Ice Cream with Ancient Spider Webs?"

"Just the cereal for me, Artemisia," Jumbler says.

"Do you have the Unicorn Ovaries with Dragon Mucus and Sacred Cow Memories tonight?" Rapunzel says straightfacedly, whereupon Artemisia nods. "Good. And why don't you bring me a quart of Moon Flower Brine, too, OK?"

An aroma I'd been subliminally aware of before has now crept into my full awareness. How to describe it? Sweet almond blended with musky goat and wet feathers and vinegar mingled with rose. It's not coming from any particular direction. It's just in the air.

Jumbler chooses this moment to pinch me hard on the arm as she makes a throaty aside close to my ear. "Everyone in this place happens to be menstruating at the moment. Except you and me, of course. I'm a hermaphrodite. Don't know what your excuse is." She cackles at this comment.

"You know how it is," she adds. "Women who spend a lot of time together get their periods synchronized."

"What should I bring for the sperm pod?" Artemisia asks Rapunzel sardonically, ignoring me. "Is he in the mood to eat?"

"Let's not call him any bad names tonight, sweetie," Rapunzel says, sticking up for me. "He needs our love and support. Besides, he deserves a little credit. He did read The White Goddess long before it was hip. He has Marija Gimbutas' photo in his wallet, and I dreamed that he once had a sexual fantasy about Gertrude Stein. I even heard he's got 'Listen to Women for a Change' tattooed in a very private place. This one's special. He's ripe. Maybe even a true Lesbian Man."

"Woooooooo! You gonna give him the full treatment?" Artemisia whistles. "Persephone-style immersion? The Honest-to-Goddess eucharist?"

"Could very well be," Rapunzel replies. "I'm proceeding with the Rowdy Ruby Glissando of the Silk Lotus spell."

"Yow! He must be a hardy one if that's his starter plan. Guess you don't want me to bring him any appetizers that might spoil his appetite, then."

"Yup."

I assume this exchange has been scripted ahead of time. It's flattering to contemplate the possibility that all these women have plotted and rehearsed tonight's festivities solely for my benefit. Though I'm also daunted by the responsibility of having to live up to such an immense gift.

As Rapunzel and Jumbler have a whispered exchange that is not meant for my ears, I examine the Tarot deck on our table. It's a bizarre hybrid. One side of each card has a mutated replica of an old baseball card with categories of statistics unlike what usually appears: "Ecstatic Prayers" instead of "At Bats"; "Sacred Pranks" instead of "Runs Batted In." My childhood hero, Al Kaline of the Detroit Tigers, appears in one image, except that here he's wearing a helmet with the horns of a bull protruding and a necklace of vulture figurines. Looks like he has amassed a good number of Ecstatic Prayers, but has been less prolific in the Sacred Pranks department.

On the other side of each Tarot card is a surrealistic photo collage of a female deity garbed in lingerie, below which is a written text. Al Kaline, for instance, is paired with Medusa. Though she has her usual writhing green snakes for hair, she's portrayed as a smiling, pregnant fashion model striding down a runway. The title at the top of the card is "Medusa the Sexy Mama," and an accompanying text, credited to Joseph Campbell, reads, "She is Black Time, both the life and death of all beings, the womb and tomb of the world; the primal, one and only, ultimate reality of nature, of whom the gods themselves are but functioning agents."

I've become aware of a twinge in my lower belly. It comes and goes, throbbing in a slow rhythm. I can't imagine the cause. No food has gone down my gullet for hours.

"So," Jumbler says to me, "would you like a Tarot reading?"

"Sure. Why not?"

Jumbler shuffles the deck several times, then has me draw a card. It's the old shortstop for the Washington Senators, Rocky Bridges. He's dressed in a loincloth and is depicted leaping over a bull in the manner of the athletic maidens of ancient Minoan culture.

"Ah yes," she sighs knowingly. "You are now on a rocky bridge between your old life and the new. You are perhaps leaving behind your role as rockstar and crossing over to the other side of the abyss. I say perhaps. There seems to be some doubt. The going may be rocky. Here, draw another card." This time I get Early Wynn, a pitcher in the 1950s.

"Yes. I see the problem. You are unfortunately seeking an 'early win,' a premature victory. Something about cheating. Fraudulence. You're trying to skip some steps. Cross the bridge without really crossing it."

I freeze. Could Jumbler have sensed that I'm being less than honest and complete in carrying out the program Rapunzel designed for me when she invaded my house? That though I've suspended the band's operations in order to take on the job as janitor, I'm not really planning to make it permanent? "Take two more cards," she demands.

I draw Hall-of-Famer Nap Lajoie and an obscure old-time player I never heard of named Kid Maddox. "Ah. I see. Kid and Nap are telling me that you are not performing your kidnap with a pure heart. I think you know what I am talking about -- the self-abduction the avatar suggested you undertake. Do you see? Your kidnap must be done with 'la joie' -- for joy alone. Not with covert agendas. Not with an acquisitive eye. And it must be done as 'mad docs' would do it -- crazy doctors. The cards are advising you to trust the inscrutable wisdom of the wacky healer. Do not imagine that you know better than she who was born to administer the sacred prank medicine."

I look at Rapunzel, the most interesting beautiful woman I've ever known. Along with her pregnant silence, her amused but intense gaze tells me that she ratifies her friend's oracle. Guilt descends upon me, and worse, fear that I've irrevocably messed up. If she really knows that I've only been pretending to execute my self-abduction, will she cancel delivery of what she called, back in my bedroom a few days ago, "the majestic gift beyond my ability to conceive"?

How could she not be peeved to the point of ending it all right here? Look at the lengths to which she has gone to stage this evening's performance art event for my entertainment. There can be no question that she takes my "menarche" very seriously.

I am filled with the desire to atone.

I promise myself that if she forgives me for my deception, I will do what I should have done right from the start. I will completely, not halfheartedly, die to my old life. I will unconditionally quit the music business. I will renounce my quixotic but ultimately futile efforts to maintain my purity in an institution that makes it impossible. If nothing else, this will ensure that I'm in line to have more of the superdreams Rapunzel somehow delivered to me a few nights ago.

"Now pick one last card," Jumbler adjures. "This will be a picture of your soul's purpose. Of the glory you might possibly attain should you make it to the other side of the rocky bridge." I draw Chick King, outfielder for the Chicago Cubs.

"Chick King," she intones tentatively. "King Chick. Chick King. King Chick."

She closes her eyes and pouts in concentration. Her eyelids quiver.

"I've got it," she beams finally. "It seems your new career as a tantric janitor is ultimately destined to be in the service of King Chick. Notice it's not Queen Chick, but King Chick. King Chick means, I think, that you are destined to help chicks overthrow this overly manly world. Ever hear that expression, 'Behind every great man is a woman?' You're going to be a man behind a great woman."

"So, like, I'm going to marry a woman who becomes President of the United States?" I ask.

"More like you'll be a muse for a woman who becomes President of the United Snakes. Now why don't you read the texts on the backs of your cards. They will provide additional oracular insight."

On the reverse of the Rocky Bridges card is a picture of a goddess who resembles the Hindu Shakti. She's dancing on top of an altar whose central feature is a large silver bowl. The title of the card is "Shakti Mutates the Blood Archetype," and the text, credited to Vicki Noble, reads: "In the real old-time religion, the sacrificial altar was graced with an offering of menstrual blood, gift of the priestess. It was understood to have special power to propitiate divine contact. Later patriarchal religions preserved the idea that blood is charged with sacred potency, but replaced the menstrual offering with the shed blood of a murdered animal or human."

Artemisia arrives and pours red wine from a carafe into the goblet on our table. She also leaves a bowl of cereal and pitcher of milk for Jumbler, and a big mess of purplish green blobs and reddish brown gravy for Rapunzel. There's nothing for me. Despite my desire to improvise within the framework Rapunzel and company are providing, I consider speaking up and placing an order. Hunger is beginning to assail me. I wonder if the aches I feel in my belly are hunger pangs?

"So King Chick, tell me true," Rapunzel says, interrupting my meditations. She picks up my right hand and places two popsicle sticks in it. Half of each stick is stained blue. "What exactly are you doing to kill the apocalypse?"

I don't know what to say.

"Huh? Huh?" she probes playfully when nothing flies from my lips. "Have you got any bright ideas about how to liquidate armageddon? Try rubbing those popsicle sticks together. They're my special magic wands. They could help." She shows me the proper motion.

Not too long ago, in the days before I met Rapunzel, my answer to her question might have been something like "I'm making subversive music that undercuts the ability of the entertainment criminals to genocide our imaginations." But in the wake of my apparent resolve to renounce the music business for good, I'm stumped.

"Would you like some clues?" Rapunzel teases.

"Just get me started," I plead, rubbing the sticks diligently.

"How about if you said, 'I'm resurrecting the splendorous beauty of poisoned masculinity'?"

"I'm resurrecting the splendorous beauty of poisoned masculinity," I repeat, injecting mock histrionics.

"And how specifically are you doing that?" Rapunzel quizzes.

I decide to risk a daring move. I'm going to be vulnerable and humble, but with a feisty edge. What I mean is that I'll really try to inhabit a state of humble vulnerability, not merely perform it as I have so often done in the past. My earliest insight about the seduction game was that women are attracted to men who confess weakness, but all these years I've used that as a crafty technique without actually doing it with complete sincerity. Back in the women's bathroom at the Catalyst, when I first met Rapunzel, was a perfect example. I pretended to be a self-effacing sensitive man even as I secretly billowed with pride.

In my defense, I should note that there has been a good reason for me to keep an ironic distance from the "sensitive man" act. The only version of it I've ever seen in other men is the one motivated by a frowning, judgmental radical feminist in their superegos. It's a whiny form of humble vulnerability, in other words, enforced by shame and guilt. But in the breakthrough I'm having here with Rapunzel, I can envision a spunky, truly masculine kind of humble vulnerability. It would emerge from my lust for life, not my fear of being a bad boy in the eyes of my inner matriarch.

Fascinating to contemplate the possibility that only by being more of a real man can I incorporate a healthy form of feminine behavior.

"One way I'll resurrect the splendorous beauty of poisoned masculinity," I respond finally, "is by admitting how terrified I am of receiving big beautiful gifts from amazing women like you. Not just terrified. Embarrassed. Deathly worried I don't deserve them. Am not worthy of them.

"Then there's the part about how weak and needy the big beautiful gifts make me feel. Not my usual self-sufficient self. And maybe the worst burden of all is the responsibility of having to give in return. I'm always convinced I can't possibly match the blessing."

"You fantasize that you're inferior to me," Rapunzel says understandingly. "You're afraid I'll think you're a stingy narcissist. In your eyes, I seem to have almost too much to give, much more than you, and you subconsciously resent it." She says this with sympathy, as if she's sorry, not angry.

"And yet to your credit," she continues, "you refuse to imitate the billions of men whose masculinity has been poisoned. You don't blame me for your fear and resentment. You don't withdraw into numb aloofness and try to punish me with mysterious silence. Instead, you struggle to change your feelings, to be a real magician. The problem isn't with me, after all, and you recognize that. You don't want to bully me into giving less."

"Yes, exactly." I feel like she's reading my mind again.

"And I can't think of anything that is a more potent weapon in our war against the apocalypse," she concludes.

"Thank you. I'm honored by your recognition."

I'm not sure I've ever used the word "honor" non-ironically before now. It stings a little to be so sincere. Besides which, as if to prove my confession, I've been pinched with the discomfort of receiving the enormous gift of Rapunzel's approval.

Momentarily unable to deal with my feelings, I turn my gaze to the rest of the dining room. Two women at one of the tables are peering intently at me, while the others seem occupied in playing cards with the Tarot decks. I'm surprised to see that a large but rather lovely shamanatrix in her twenties, a lesbian if I know my physiognomy, has doffed most of her costume. All she has on is a "skirt" that's nothing more than shreds of newspaper hanging from a belt, and a makeshift bra composed of two sewn-together floral shower caps. No undies! Two other women, including a fiftyish pixie with very pale skin as well as an exotic-looking mix of maybe Eskimo and African, have also lost their shirts. One reveals another strange "bra" made of two small gargoyle masks connected with a rubber band and the other a "teddy" that seems to be made of round slabs of baloney sewn together.

"I can think of another way I am resurrecting the splendorous beauty of poisoned masculinity," I bubble.

"She's taking notes," Rapunzel smiles, pointing to Jumbler, who pulled out a notebook a while back and is scribbling intently.

"I'm a good listener, but with an edge," I begin.

"You mean you get people to open up so you can use your sharp intellect to probe them, to push them to think deeper thoughts about their secret feelings?"

"Well, I suppose that's one way to describe it, yes."

"Sorry. I guess I wasn't being a very good listener, was I? Go ahead and say what you mean in your own words."

Wow. Rapunzel's being contrite.

"I'm forceful in the way I shut up and get my own opinions out of the way," I say. "I make an aggressive effort to be warmly receptive to what the other person is saying. I fight to ensure that I don't fall into acting like a know-it-all."

"I see. Using your masculine will to serve a feminine agenda."

"Yes. And the other quality in my listening is ferocious curiosity. I ask really good questions. Not just because I want to do people a favor, either. I mean I do want to do them a favor, but I also get a personal thrill from it. It's hard to explain why exactly."

"It's your way of making love to everyone. You send your feelers into their psyches and stir up their juices. You imagine you're impregnating them with your influence."

I've never thought of it this way, but again I feel like Rapunzel has understood me perfectly. I'm aglow and abashed with the notion that she might actually be attracted to me.

Riding my success, I flash on another thing I've always hated about average, boring, "sensitive man"-style vulnerability: Neurosis is its crowning testament. To be vulnerable in this way not only requires nonstop pretentious solemnity; it also seems to lead mostly to expressions of negative emotions.

Why, Lord, why? Why is that if a man lets down his guard and disavows the macho, in-control attitude that is the curse of his gender, he seems inevitably driven to confess his failures, his grief, and his weaknesses? I have nothing against doing this some of the time. But right now I can imagine a more celebratory style of vulnerability in which I might gravitate towards delight, too; in which I would feel an eager and innocent desire to be overwhelmed by beauty. What if becoming vulnerable could fill me with wild reverence?

"I've thought of another way I can resurrect the splendorous beauty of poisoned masculinity," I say bravely.

"By perfecting the art of being a staunch feminist with a raging hard-on, right?" Rapunzel laughs. "Sorry," she adds quickly as she sees my eyebrows rise. "My telepathic powers are out of control tonight. I just couldn't help myself."

I wouldn't have used the words she did, but she has indeed zeroed in on my unspoken thoughts.

"I would prefer to describe it," I begin, summoning my eloquence, "as blending unbridled virility and sweet sensitivity. To be, ahem, compassionately horny.

"Be a big red hot man," she puffs, raising her shoulders and making a macho face, "all rebellious and restless and ambitious. And be a soft, warm, nurturing woman" -- here she softens her features and goes all willowy -- "dispensing thoughtful blessings with loving kindness."

"It would be interesting to see if I could actually be both at the same time," I muse.

"Are you familiar with the concept of the epicene?"

"Isn't that like being androgynous?"

"No, the difference between androgynous and epicene is exactly my point. Androgyny is a melting down of the gender distinctions into a single fuzzy neutral blah. But the epicene person -- the model citizen for the Drivetime, by the way -- is one who's both fervently masculine and vividly feminine. Not the grey, odorless pall that comes from eliminating the contradictions, but the magenta menthol spermatic emerald clitoral saffron that comes from weaving the contradictions together with their full pungent glory intact."

"You're so smart, Rapunzel. Thank you. I can't ever recall a feminist woman telling me to trust my lust."

"That's one of the ways I am killing the apocalypse. By helping a few select lesbian men realize how important it is for them not to shame their testosterone."

On the one hand I'm flattered by this last statement. On the other hand I'm deflated. There are other men she's courting like this?

"I'm still afraid I take it too far, though," I blurt. "I guess I don't even have to say this aloud since you seem to know what I'm thinking. But ever since I can remember, I've been addicted to fantasizing about mass orgies. With me as the only man in a sea of women."

I'm amazed to hear myself confess such an embarrassing secret. I can only imagine that I really must be undergoing some kind of initiation -- not at all like the ceremonial initiations I've undergone during my work with my occult school, but like them in the way that it's stripping away my usual defenses.

"Yes. Interesting quirk," Rapunzel says.

"I never thought of it as a quirk," I protest. "I assume it's what most men idealize. I mean, isn't it every guy's dream to make love to an endless variety of perfect women? Something about the DNA commanding him to spread his seed to as many young, fresh, beautiful hosts as possible."

"But that's not exactly what your fantasy is. Your orgies are not the exclusive domain of young, fresh, beautiful hosts. There are a few very plain women in there. I've even seen a crone or two."

"Now how could you possibly know that? Just from studying my Wailing Wall? Or have you been spying on my meditations?"

"You'd be surprised what I can do with the help of our sixty-six-million-year-old technology. A portable sample of which is right over there. We call it the Televisionary Oracle."

Rapunzel is pointing towards the mud and stone television.

"So with the help of your magic box you sneaked into my psyche and found out I sometimes stoke my orgy fantasies with a handful of women who aren't supermodels?"

"Sort of, yes. Which is why I can say with confidence that you definitely don't trust your lust enough. Because if you did, if you exorcised the shame you've allowed to infect your orgy fantasies, you'd really jack up your ability to resurrect the splendorous beauty of poisoned masculinity. You'd shoot out to the frontier of an even more sublime taboo."

"What taboo could there possibly be beyond that? Beyond the desire to be a lone Dionysus with a gang of horny women?"

"The desire to be a lone Dionysus with a gang of horny women of all shapes and sizes and ages. A lone Dionysus who does not choose only the prettiest, youngest, most supple horny women to run away with into the woods. Who longs for and is available to all women."

Uh-oh. Red alert. So gradually I haven't realized it, most of the shamanatrixes in the room have removed major parts of their elaborate costumes. Were they playing strip poker with those Tarot cards? Vistas of flesh are exposed, along with a wealth of often comical lingerie. These are not stylish items from a Victoria's Secret catalogue, but bikinis made of brightly colored band-aids and yarn, camisoles with attached moss and Christmas tree icicles, and lacy nursing bras with rubber shark puppet mouths where the flap opens.

Furthermore, many of the women are now peering at me with some mix of sweet, sultry, and sympathetic expressions.

I will myself to deepen my breathing as I scramble to assess my feelings. My rational mind knows that if this were any other situation, I'd rate two of the women here as full-on sexy to me and maybe six mildly attractive, while most of the rest I'd feel neutral about except for two that arouse my repulsion. But I'm so far gone from my normal state that my old evaluation system does not hold. To my amazement, I feel a preposterous lust for every single woman here.

Or have I merely had my esthetic exploded by the prodigious titillation and by Rapunzel's quasi-hypnotic suggestions? Have all my habitual responses been rendered irrelevant?

"This potential of yours, to be an all-purpose Dionysian muse, is one of the qualities that makes you so deserving of your own personalized menarche," Rapunzel explains soothingly. "It's also a valuable asset for storming the precincts of the Drivetime."

"To long for and be available to all women?" I stammer.

"You want to live in the Drivetime full-time? Where nothing needs to be true and everything is sacred and Goddess is a tenderly lascivious prankster at your service? Then tap into your hidden talent for being as lusty towards everyone and everything as you are towards me. Meditate on how to rev up your testosterone until it's in love with great grandmas listening to talk radio in nursing homes and chubby Guatemalan peasant women pounding laundry down by the river."

"But if I'm equally carnal for everything," I protest weakly, "if there's no difference between my desire for you and my desire for the grandma in the nursing home, doesn't that make me a ball of mush?"

"Exact opposite of that. You can never be a ball of mush if you're stoked with gargantuan levels of passion."

Rapunzel has undone the rest of the buttons on her baseball jersey. All the other women in the room have abandoned their chairs and are doing yoga asanas or tai-chi moves. My eyes are in crisis mode, frantically reaching out to engorge the epiphanies of breasts and butts jiggling as bodies stretch. I flash on the myth of Semele, who was burned to ash upon beholding Zeus in his dangerous glory. Except that the roles are reversed here. I'm Semele.

The most limber of the teasers, a pretty young Asian woman wearing only loose white silk shorts, is doing an absurdly salacious yoga pose that might go well on a "Girls of Penthouse Workout Video." Balanced on her shoulders and neck, she thrusts one leg out sideways and one out straight, both parallel to the floor. She rotates slowly, like a graceful breakdancer.

In my altered state of exploded lust, though, she evokes no more shivering blithers than any of the other women in the room. I'm equally turned on by the woman with a thick scar on her cheek and a big crooked witch nose, and the forty-something matron with cellulite and sagging breasts that have obviously nursed several children. I seem to be in bloom with the state of omni-horniness that Rapunzel said was helpful for living full-time in the Drivetime.

Rapunzel motions for me to get out of my chair and come hither. I obey. She grasps me around the waist and pulls me down to sit on her lap. Peering down, I have a perfect view of her breasts surging in her black lace bra.

"So what do you say," she murmurs as her bouquet of fruity, musky aromas spills over me, "that we take an inventory of how well you're doing on the project of achieving gargantuan passion?"

I'm hungry for the real goo, I think to myself, for the sauce and the splash and the balm. I seek the true lust unguent that binds and burns, that cures and incites.

"Tell me now. Be frank. How, in your heart of hearts, do you feel about hag marks on your luscious females? Look around here at the holy host of menstrual geniuses for reference. Do you honestly, no bullshit, have a divinely inspired affinity for thick black hairs sprouting from nipples and navels and maybe even chins? How about pimples on the butt? Stretch marks on pendulous breasts and big noble witchy noses and week-old stubble on shaved legs? Did you really, truly mean what you wrote in your personal ad at the Catalyst, 'All my patriarchal imprints incinerated'?"

Keep me close always to your real maw, rolling in the rose dark behind your lids and lips, under the thigh and over the fear and into the sweat and the fur, between the breasts and spirit straight to the taste of your shivering moist soul.

"What I'm driving at, my dear, is this: Do you truly and without any reservations pledge to place yourself under the influence of the mysterious chemicals of real women? Or will you continue to harbor, under cover of your feminist rhetoric, hypocritical urges to love only a narrow simulation of the Goddess' panoramic beauty? I think it's time you took a stand one way or the other. Not just with your fine words. But with your actual body. Know what I mean?"

I want to be awake to the actual low rumbling of your rant and shadow, stretching to hear the strong old medicines of your tongue, pulsing limbless in waves of your lunatic hair -- staring, face loose, into your molten pores and through to the generous dreams of your glands.

"In other words, beautiful, what kind of man do you want to be when you grow up?"

The thrill of the menstrual dark will be my secret salvation; the uterine quiver will be the best hysteria of my obsession.

"I vow to love the hag marks as much as the beauty marks," I speak aloud to the gathering, feeling as if I'm channeling the spirit of an Irish bard, who a psychic once told me I was in a previous incarnation.

"I will swoon for the bumps and the dangles and the wobbly foibles just as much as I will for the smooth, sleek swivels and the taut, trim treasures. Therefore I now and forevermore renounce my worship of the slutty madonna fetishes passed into law by every shit-hoarding religion, and the man-made surrogates called bitches on pedestals, and all the leached, face-lifted, fanny-tucked, depillatoried, silicon-enhanced Olympian cyborgs who pride themselves on having the freshest feminine smell in the history of capitalism. I renounce them all. Forever and ever, amen. Awomen."

Wow. Where did that come from?

Rapunzel smothers me in a big hug and then maneuvers me into a position where she can kiss me on the belly. "May you find the treasure in the trash, the gold in the lead, and the manna in the junk food!" she exclaims. The room explodes in a chorus of ululating Amazon yelps.

"May you use your nightmares to become rich and famous," Jumbler adds amidst the cacophony, her arms stretched upwards in a V like a baseball player who has just smacked a game-winning home run.

"Because you can have anything you want," an older woman pitches in, "if you'll only ask for it in an unselfish tone of voice."

As the hubbub rages on, with others calling out odd slogans, all but Rapunzel work to push the tables to the periphery of the room and form a circle of chairs around me. Eventually, everyone sits down. I am now astride Rapunzel's lap, surrounded by mostly naked shaman-atrixes whose gazes are directed at me.

Jumbler, who is still fully clothed, fetches a curious object from the altar against the back wall. It's a crown made out of willow branches, woven grass, lilies, copper and silver crayons, and a Tarot card which shows the goddess Athena in a "Menstrual Temple" baseball uniform. Jumbler ceremoniously places the contraption on my head.

"Congratulations, initiate," she says, "and welcome to the Menstrual Temple of the Funky Grail! I am very pleased to inform you that you have won a free value-pack of prizes worth three million years of vacation time in the Drivetime, plus the psychoanalysis of your diamond wand, a fabulously useful new organ of perception where your pineal gland now sits, and a reserved monthly space in the menstrual hut of your choice!

"And that's not all. As an added special bonus, you have been selected to be a contestant in the Fuck Your Friends Dating Game. One of three lucky shamanatrixes is going to win the privilege of escorting you through the rest of your menarche. Are you ready to play?"

"Can I take my curlers out?" I say with exultant meekness. "Rapunzel said I only had to keep them in until it was time for my date."

"Of course," Jumbler smiles, and begins removing the tampons from my hair. "By the way, Osiris, I want you to know that the Fuck Your Friends Dating Game is reserved exclusively for Love Geniuses who have demonstrated a potential for juggling rugged individualism and radical intimacy. Think you can handle that?"

Radical intimacy? Don't know what that is, but with Rapunzel as muse I'd be highly motivated to master it.

"I have always wanted to be a Love Genius," I say.

The Asian woman of the sexy yoga pose fame produces a brush, and she and Jumbler tease my hair into a fright wig. Meanwhile, Rapunzel leads the other women in a spritely version of the World Entertainment War song, "Dance Your Monster." Artemisia plays guitar.

"Do you realize," Jumbler notes after they finish, "that the last time an actual male was called on to be in the Fuck Your Friends Dating Game, the ancient Sumerian city of Ur had not yet been built?"

"Considering how big an occasion this is, then," I say, "I think I should clean up that egg you anointed my belly with. I'm sure my date would appreciate it."

"Certainly," Jumbler says boisterously. "Let me get you a sanitary napkin." She hands me two maxipads from out of her red pouch. They're delicately decorated around the peripheries with lozenges, double-headed axes, snakes, and butterflies.

As I pull back the waistband of my shorts to begin the mop-up, I'm taken aback. There is a trickle of blood emerging from the exact spot where Rapunzel daubed the "Dragon's Blood" back in the kitchen. It's blending with the slime of the half-dried egg white. This must be related to the mild cramps I've been feeling off and on.

I wipe the red streak away with one of the maxipads and watch the area for a few moments. The dribble returns, but very slowly. I guess I'm in no immediate danger of bleeding to death. But how did it happen?

Jumbler and Rapunzel are seeing the ooze that I am.

"Are you having any cramps?" Rapunzel asks eagerly.

"A little," I report.

"Rowdy ruby glissando!" Rapunzel announces loudly, and again a cheer goes up from the assembly. "Just in time for the Dating Game!"

"Without further ado," Jumbler proclaims when the hubbub dies down, looking at me with glee, "let's introduce you now to the three friendly Fuckfriends who'll vie for your favor. One of them will be your date!"

"First up we have a thirty-five-year-old genius with Ph.D.s in both music and physics. A major Pythagoras fan, she just happens to be the one and only quantum physicist on the planet who has mastered the art of lucid dreaming. Her Fuckfriend code name is Wealthy Anarchist. She regularly plays violin in accompaniment with the music of the spheres, and she claims her guardian angel looks a lot like Malcolm X. Here she is!"

A Jewish woman with blonde hair teased out into an explosion that must exceed the afro I'm now sporting, Wealthy Anarchist is wearing nothing else but the largest pair of white cotton underpants I have ever seen. They're far too big for her actual butt, so they're always on the verge of slipping off as she wriggles around in her chair. She lifts the waistband up and plays peekaboo behind them briefly. Then she picks up a knife from one of the tables and pokes through the cotton. She rips apart a hole wide enough to fit her face through, and delivers her spiel.

"I'm a disgruntled postal employee looking for a zombie love slave or lonely bank teller to share erotic fantasies about IRS audits and root canals."

Everyone in the room shakes with laughter, especially Wealthy Anarchist herself. When she recovers her composure, she continues.

"Just kidding. Actually, I'm an angel-wrestlin', magic carpet-ridin', sky-kissin' lover of architects who moonlight as exotic dancers and vegetarians who sneak pork chops. So please don't confuse me by being simple."

Again, guffaws whoosh through the room. I'm beginning to like this woman.

"No, really," she begins again. "In absolute actual fact, I am an inveterate xeroxer of my own butt who's seeking a like-minded cynical optimist for clowny adventures like trading clothes and rollerblading out to the nearest bridge for a no-holds-barred spitting-into-the-wind contest. Wouldn't mind if you were also into pursuing a career in killing the apocalypse, cultivating weird companions, collecting the relics of female saints, and exchanging frequent piggyback rides."

I glance over at the stone and mud television -- excuse me, the Televisionary Oracle -- as Wealthy Anarchist talks. The screen now shows the top half of a naked woman sitting behind a news desk and holding a sheaf of papers, as if she were a newscaster. With voluminous auburn hair and bushy eyebrows, she looks like she could be Rapunzel's twin sister -- except for a few other details. She has blue skin, for instance. And eight arms, like some swarming Hindu goddess. Her body seems to be on fire in places, though she shows no signs of alarm. And every now and then she thrusts her impossibly long tongue down and out to the bottom of her chin.

This is not a cartoon or computer animation. The blue goddess appears absolutely real, as does her towering gold crown, which is surmounted by what looks like a sentient eye.

"Thank you, Wealthy Anarchist," Jumbler is saying. "Our next Fuckfriend is a forty-two-year-old painter who claims to be a direct descendant of William Blake's housekeeper and a junk dealer who once punched Charles Darwin in the nose. She regularly dreams she's a tree with its roots brushing the sky and its branches nuzzling the moles and worms. Believe it or not, she also claims to be a close personal acquaintance of the magic bunny rabbit eyes that watch you around the clock in the mirror attached to the ladder to the underworld you built inside your dreams when you were five years old! Code-named Personal Growth Addict, she was recently elected to serve as Keeper of the My