"Bizarre" may sound like an inappropriate word to describe a woman's public breakdown. But that is one of the words I used yesterday in describing what happened to adult actress Lexi Love when she read from Cookie Mueller's memoir, Walking Through Clear Water in a Pool Painted Black, at Bloomsday on Beaver Street. ("Stunning" was the other word.) To be clear, it wasn't Love's breakdown that I found bizarre. It's that I didn’t understand what was happening, and neither did a lot of other people.
Love seemed fine as she rehearsed before the event, reading the part about the narrator's lover suffering from infectious hepatitis--the part that would push her over the edge an hour later. Her main concern was the correct pronunciation of certain drugs and diseases referenced in the book.
“This is not the kind of book I usually read,” she said, professing a preference for the works of Malcolm Gladwell.
“You can feel pretty naked, sitting up there and reading,” I told her.
“I’m used to being naked in front of people.”
“It’s a different kind of naked.”
Love’s performance began smoothly enough, with the actress saying a few words about her career in X. She then turned to the book, and the breakdown began around paragraph three. That’s when I asked Mary Lyn Maiscott, one of the musicians, “Is she acting or is she really crying?”
“She’s acting,” my wife replied with certainty.
And I thought: Of course she’s acting. If she were having a breakdown, she’d stop reading and explain what was going on.
But Love bravely plowed on, finishing the chapter.
It was only afterwards that she explained that the scene reminded her of her own mother’s recent death from hepatitis, and that’s why she began crying.
“That’s what I loved about Lexi’s reading,” said Lainie Speiser, who read from her book Confessions of the Hundred Hottest Porn Stars. “That’s what readings used to be about—the excitement of not knowing what was going to happen.”
And that’s what Bloomsday on Beaver Street will continue to be about. Fortunately, we all have a year to recover.