Christopher Sorrentino - Trance

“‘There have been at the least one hundred and twenty-seven incidents in the last three years when you have consumed veterinary drugs, in particular antibiotics, along with meat,’ she says. ‘Enough?’ Go on, I say.

“‘At least twice you have eaten food that was contaminated with measurable amounts of radioactivity,’ she says. ‘Enough?’ Keep going.

“‘The Korean barbecue, the taqueria, the dim sum, the Jack-inside-of-the-Box, these are all fine and likely places where to encounter certain uncommon and exotic livestocks in cooked form,’ she says. ‘Enough?’ Don’t stop now.

“‘Soft-serve ice cream from all purveyors is a virtual poison to human beings because of certain diminutive parts in the apparatus used to make this confection which are requiring but never getting virtually constant disinfection,’ she says. ‘Enough?’ More, more.

“‘The number of times you have devoured insect parts, larvae, and waste are far too copious to enumerate,’ she says. ‘Enough?’ Onward!

“‘Once you consumed pretzels and other gratuitous comestibles in a saloon in San Bruno, and these were tainted with human urinary and fecal residue,’ she says. ‘Enough?’ Not by a long shot.

“‘A tubercular waiter who did not like you did an expectoration in your soup in a restaurant last month,’ she says. ‘Enough?’

“And finally I say, OK, enough. That is just dandy. ”

The young man is laughing; the table is rocking on the uneven surface of the lawn. Guy tells the story with his usual animation, his hands periodically moving to reshape the crystal ball he has formed in the air before him.

“Guy, how do you suppose she knew about that pain in your side?” the young man asks.

Guy’s face falls.

In the kitchen Yolanda is cursing and throwing empty bottles into the trash.

“Norman Mailer, he said, god damn it! Hunter fucking Thompson !”

The young man is Adam K. Trout, an instructor at a junior college over the Canadian border. Ph.D. from Brown and — more important, for the purposes of revolutionary accreditation — an expellee from the London School of Economics. “I took a shit on a picture of the queen,” he says, proudly, by way of explanation. Trout gazes at Tania over his bottle of Genesee cream ale and her face slips into a practiced glazed dullness: Trout has that now-familiar starstruck look.

Guy leaves them again, climbing into the indefatigable Bug and taking to the road, leaving behind the writer, a tape recorder, and miscellaneous stationery supplies.

Teko talks about a dog he had, Rex. Who taught him the value of selflessness. Of loyalty.

Yolanda talks about the injustice she saw working as a waitress in Illinois. It was a form of awakening.

Trout’s face, impassive and still, gazes steadily at each of his interlocutors from over the tape recorder sitting between them.

Later they listen to the playbacks, Teko and Yolanda do, while Tania, Joan, and Trout play gin rummy in the kitchen. Their own voices unspooling, monotonous and strange, from the tape. The afternoon’s session has captured them sounding banal, clichéd, incoherent, naive, rambling, tongue-tied, and unaware, to list things alphabetically. Not to mention the sounds, embarrassing to the point of faint nausea, of the quotidian goings-on the tape has arrested. At one point in the recording, Yolanda whines, “Gimme couple more, some more of that ice. Will you, sweet pea?” Really, is that how she sounds? In the background is Teko’s unintelligible response and the tinkling of the extra cubes he drops into a glass.

Why is it so embarrassing on tape?

Because it reveals to you as naked and obvious the open fact of your own preposterousness, a fact that normally is concealed only from you?

“What I saw was like I saw maybe there was something more than what I like thought there was. I mean like a different world, society or whatever?”

Tomorrow they will do things differently.

Here is the way Teko decides that they will do things differently: They will work out questions ahead of time, with as little assistance from Trout as possible, and then fabricate appropriate answers to them on paper. These scripts will be recorded, then retranscribed, and then the transcripts scrutinized to identify and correct any inconsistencies between the statements provided by the SLA three (Joan has declined to participate), to firm up and clarify matters of political dogma and philosophy, and to begin to shape the interviews toward the desired end, a finished book. In short, an assembly line approach, precise and controlled.

Trout’s reaction is diffident but unenthusiastic.

Tania works on a mattress in the sleeping loft, lying on her side to write. So many choices. Was she kidnapped, rescued, liberated, or saved? Was she converted, rehabilitated, reeducated, or transformed? Is she a freedom fighter, a revolutionary, an insurgent, an urban guerrilla? So many decisions. Well, definitely not saved, she thinks. Or converted. Too evangelical-sounding.

She rolls over onto her stomach and continues to write. Soon it’ll be time for her session with Trout. They’ll sit outside on the grass, if it’s pleasant, or in the creamery. Someplace informal, Trout says.

So many questions. They proffer themselves to Tania, though most are far outside the parameters of the “Tania Interview” as established by Teko and Yolanda.

Did she love her family? Does she see herself as different from the person she was when she lived with them? Did she see herself as different from the others at the time?

On the tape, she says, “The media knowingly spreads propaganda lies regarding how close my family is.”

She says, “An upbringing like mine, coming from my class position, was all about bringing me in line with my parents’ and their friends’ values and ideas. In high school everyone I knew was from a background like mine. Though I was embarrassesd by and ashamed of my parents’ wealth, I had no support, no one to help me understand why I felt the way I did. Everyone was too like me.”

Does that make sense?

Who is she now? Is the SLA her family? Is a family something it is possible to choose? Did she choose the SLA? Did Cinque actually offer her a “choice” per se? Hadn’t she already, in effect, chosen — left her birth family; surrendered some of the burdens and privileges of that “class position” and its “values and ideas”—by choosing to live, out of wedlock, in genteel though hardly luxurious circumstances with Eric Stump?

On the tape, she says, “I wanted Eric to take me away and change my name. I felt very safe with Eric. I thought that I would be able to escape my ruling class upbringing with him.”

She says, “I cooked dinner and cleaned the toilet. I let my mother plan my wedding. I posed and smiled for the engagement pictures. But soon I was wishing to escape from this relationship that I’d begun to hate.”

Does that make sense?

Does she remember making love to Eric for the first time in his Menlo Park apartment, then driving to Draeger’s for thirty dollars’ worth of gourmet specialties that would please him? That would please them both? Was there anything that she hated on that day, anything that she felt other than the most delicious sense of triumph watching Eric’s face tighten as he convulsed with his orgasm?

When, at Draeger’s, she tore the personal check out of her checkbook and passed it over to the checkout clerk, did she thrill a little as she saw the clerk’s face brighten with useless comprehension at the sight of the famous name?

Hadn’t she wanted to be engaged? Hadn’t she dreamed of a station wagon, with a big dog hanging its stupid head out the window?

And hadn’t she always really liked to cook? Wasn’t it actually the fact that Stump was ready and willing to eat just about any old slop that was around that had provided her with her most acute marital, as it were, dejection?