Robert Rosen

Too much happened last night, at the second annual Bloomsday on Beaver Street, at the Killarney Rose, to process right now. If I'm counting correctly, there were 11 performers altogether, and I shall give them all their due over the coming days. But the one that everybody's talking about is Lexi Love, and her reading from Cookie Mueller's memoir, Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black.

I'm not sure I understand exactly what happened, or why. But as she read the book's opening pages, a scene in which the narrator visits her lover in a hospital, where he’s being treated for infectious hepatitis, Lexi began to cry--and it was impossible to tell if she was acting or going to pieces in front of us.

I, for one, thought she was acting. Lexi is, after all, an adult actress with more than 500 films to her credit. But, as it turned out, she was having a breakdown. Apparently—and I’m sure somebody will correct me if I’m wrong—the scene reminded her of her own mother’s death from hepatitis.

It was a bizarre and stunning thing to witness, and for the time being, I’m just going to leave it at that.