ADVERTISEMENTS FOR MYSELF
535
made up the obdurate materials of new sociological alloy in the heat–
forge of a ball at Cara Beauchamp's. What gave this party an added
attraction, an unconscious verve, was that there were guests who
were not altogether what they appeared to be, a Russian spy for one,
avid to snap up the friendship of our physicist, a spy of such im–
portance that an agent of the FBI was also present, each of these
gentlemen carefully furnished with a false life which was not his
own. To complicate matters, there were two other operators with
portfolio from the police: one, a narcotics agent, unfortunately ad–
dicted himself; another from the vice squad of New York City–
what completed the circle was that the detective from the vice squad
believed himself close on the proof that Marion Faye had murdered
another detective from the vice squad some years before, which in
fact was true, but what was unknown to any of these policemen (al–
though the agent from the FBI smelled hints of the possibility) was
that the Russian spy, suffering from the mitotic tension latent in the
psyche of all spies, had not been content with a double life, but in–
deed had divided a part of himself again; certain of his more des–
perate and unprofessional activities in this country had spilled him
into the broth of blackmail which nourished the vice squad detective
who had been killed; Marion, in taking care of this precise act, had
discovered the profession of the spy and so was able to use him for
purposes which were by now related to his program for the party–
if
all of this seems complicated, I can only say that it is but a super–
ficial counterfeit of the real complexities which involved a dozen
other guests as well, including Shawn Sergius (born perhaps as Sergius
O'Shaugnessy), the only creative personality ever to dominate tele–
vision, and Dr. Joyce, the psychoanalyst, who had become so over–
extended beyond his humane means, and had so compromised his
career, his profession, and his intimate honor that he was contem–
plating suicide long before he came to the party.
Indeed a suicide did take place (I do not yet know whether
it
was the doctor), it was followed by murder, a murder inflamed into
fury by exactly that suicide, the suicide preceded by an orgy, the
orgy by a series of communions in the act of coitus, both natural and
illegal, by sodomists who dictated their characters upon weaker flesh,
and copulations which failed as well as fornications which captured
pure smell of the fact and left the lovers dancing fluxed with the
