Sabbath's Theater

Sabbath ventures out into New York City and feels pursued by “the-desire-to-not-be-alive-any-longer” (191). As he rides the subway, he and this desire write his obituary. In his obituary, he mentions his obscenity trial and even hints that he killed Nikki. He descends into unstructured thoughts, letting his mind wander and imagining different versions of Nikki. He gets coffee and remembers a happy summer he spent on the Jersey Shore as a child before Morty went to war. Once, when a poor man came up to ask him for money, Sabbath thought that he was holding a knife and stomped on his foot, discovering that it was an erection. Someone drops a quarter in Sabbath’s cup of coffee and though he is at first angered, he eventually becomes a street performer again, reciting King Lear on the subway. As he does so, he thinks back to how he lost his job.

In the fall of 1989, Kathy Goolsbee, a student Sabbath was sexually involved with, left a tape of their sexual phone call in the university library bathroom. Kathy’s tape was discovered, and before it landed on the dean’s desk, a copy was made and a group called Women Against Sexual Abuse, Belittlement, Battering, and Telephone Harassment (SABBATH) played the recording continuously on a new phone line.