TENNESSEE WILLIAMS

Life Story

After you've been to bed together for the first time,
without the advantage or disadvantage of any prior
acquaintance,
the other party very often says to you,
what's your story? And you think maybe they really and
truly do
sincerely want to know your life story, and so you light up
a cigarette and begin to tell it to them, the two of you
lying together in completely relaxed positions
like a pair of rag dolls a bored child dropped on a bed.
You tell them your story, or as much of your story
as time or a fair degree of prudence allows, and they say,
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
each time a little more faintly, until the oh
is just an audible breath, and then of course
there's some interruption. Slow room service comes up
with a bowl of melting ice cubes, or one of you rises to pee
and gaze at himself with mild astonishment in the
bathroom mirror.
And then, the first thing you know, before you've had time
to pick up where you left off with your enthralling life
story,
they're telling you their life story, exactly as they'd
intended to all along,
and you're saying, Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,
each time a little more faintly, the vowel at last becoming
no more than an audible sigh,
as the elevator, halfway down the corridor and a turn to
the left,
draws one last, long, deep breath of exhaustion
and stops breathing forever. Then?
Well, one of you falls asleep
and the other one does likewise with a lighted cigarette in
his mouth,
and that's how people burn to death in hotel rooms.

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