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• • • Is That You? It was no dream. I'd simply entered a parallel universe that looked, shook, and smelled like Times Square. Suddenly I was meeting strangers on the street who seemed to know me quite intimately. They advised me in elevators, ran from me down dingy hotel hallways , and threatened me casually in the parkway at the Marriott Marquis . The man who put me into a passing car in front of St. Luke's told the driver, confidentially: "All she did was write some poetry." Who were these people? But, more important, who was "I"? There was no escaping myself this time. I'd arrived for Fiona Templeton 's You-The City at what certainly seemed to be an office. But my motives were already in question. A "secretary" asked me to fill out a questionnaire while I waited on a black leather couch. Dutifully I answered the cryptic queries. "Are you now or have you ever been?" "What is this making of you?" Meanwhile, a "businesswoman"-or god knows, some sort of "therapist"-opened her office door and asked the other "client" (Franklin Furnace's director, Martha Wilson) to come in. I could hear some sort of animated speech after they closed the door. Would I have to say something in there?! As they exited into the hall, I heard the "businesswoman" telling Martha to "laugh, if you are you...." You-The City is a play for an audience of one, taking you-the audience -through encounters with maybe a dozen performers. So I figured the "businesswoman" would return. For me. Yes, the office door was opening. But, no. It was some other "businesswoman" or "therapist ." In any case, she was dressed for success. I took a seat in her "office." She sat behind the desk and began to speak as though we had an important deal to make. But she was saying things like, "Get your desire like you get a joke.... What you're not getting is in...." Soon 160 REGENERATE ART we, too, left the office to end up in the downpour outside, facing the novelty shops and the movie palaces. "Your new idea will get older," she said, taking my elbow. "I don't say your name to tell you it, but because it's not mine." The "businesswoman" jumped over a puddle into Seventh Avenue. Was I supposed to talk back to her? If so, whadd-I-say? I didn't know my role. I had thought I'd do my usual: "professional spectator." But I couldn't take it all in. Couldn't write much of it down. I needed more distance for true spectating, and I'd been turned into a participant. I felt silly taking notes. I took a few anyway. I had become what the piece was about. Over at a theater showing Midnight Crossing, the ''businesswoman'' left me as a woman in a fake leopardskin coat rushed up. She and I, apparently, had known each other all our lives. Taking my arm, she guided me up the crowded sidewalk, her speech full of vague threats. I would have to "decide." My family would be "devastated." I seemed to be implicated in something. This charade. My passivity. My voyeurism. Self-consciousness. The usual crises of perception and attention. We'd arrived on 46th Street at a joint called the Harlequin. There a woman waited in the doorway. She started up the steps, then began to run. I followed, entering a shabby waiting room that seemed stuffed with soda machines. She'd disappeared. No. There she was in the corner being coy. She ran the minute I spotted her. As I followed, because I figured my role in this was to follow, she kept giving me just a glimpse, then running ahead through the brown hallways and up stairs until I found myself in a little room, where she closed the door, turned her back to me, and slowly dropped the raincoat from her shoulders. She was wearing an evening gown. Directing me to sit on a chair behind a curtain, she took her place facing me through a window/mirror. I mean I saw both her and myself. Our faces merged as she confronted me: "Isn't that why you're here? Because you're terrified?" Should I answer? (What was the answer?) I tried to take notes on what she said to me. Was I supposed to? "You try to get it out of your mind by clasping...

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