Rant

Somebody gets high—an actual, primary high, shooting or snorting—then they boost some packaged episode, let’s say a Little Becky transcript. They out-cord their experience, then we run a subtraction equation on that script to strip out the original Little Becky. What’s left over is pure opiate effect. A wireless high. Just a rush we can narrow-cast on the stage, looping it so the effect never lets up. A dancer steps into that feel-good spotlight and she won’t have a care in the world.
    Phoebe Truffeau, Ph.D.: In 1347, England was a nation of grain farmers, cultivating and exporting corn. That year, Italian traders arrived in Genoa with the Black Plague, and by 1377, one and one-half million English were dead, as much as a third of the
    population. Because agrarian labor was in such short supply, the entire economy switched from producing corn to raising sheep, and the English feudal system had been destroyed.
    Vivica Brawley: Bernie was working the door. It’s horrible what happened. Them tearing him apart the way they did, before the cops came around.
    Carlo Tiengo: The customers, mind you, they’re a different matter. Our business is, we sell a one-time, primary experience. We catch anybody transcribing or out-cording their experience in the club, and they’re eighty-sixed.
    To protect our product, we made it policy to broadcast a scramble effect. Renders any active port inoperative. Jammed. If we didn’t, you’d have script artists sitting ringside, out-cording every dancer, and dumping her on the Web. One out-corded lap dance can wreck the career of some poor girl. The first shitheel pays to be with her, but everyone after him gets her for free.
    Phoebe Truffeau, Ph.D.: During the Great Plague of London in 1665, the weekly death rate fluctuated between one hundred and four hundred persons until July 1. By the middle of July, the weekly death rate had risen to two thousand. By the end of July, sixty-five hundred were dying each week, and by the end of August, seven thousand. Though the common source of bubonic plague had been fleas carried by the European black rat (Rattus rattus), the explosion in new infections arose from a change in disease transmission. Instead of bites from fleas, the causative organism, Pasteurella pestis, had begun spreading from person to person via droplets of saliva and mucus ejected in coughs and sneezes.
    Carlo Tiengo: It’s the rabies, why we had so much business lately. These perverts come down with it, and they can’t boost their secondhand smut off the Web. They’re forced to come downtown and pay for a primary experience. Mind you, I should’ve known. Any Tuesday night, we see more than six fellows in the audience, that’s a warning sign. The night we lost Bernie, there had to be fifty Droolers around the stage. Twitching. Spit looped in long strings out the corners of their lips. They squint, even in the dim light. All those tendencies, obvious rabies symptoms.
    Phoebe Truffeau, Ph.D.: Beginning in 1490, a new epidemic spread across Europe and Asia. The first symptom was a small ulcer at the site of infection, which disappeared after three to eight weeks, leaving a faint scar. Within a few weeks, the victim appeared free of infection. The Chinese called it the “Canton disease.” The Japanese, the “Chinese disease.” To the French, it was the “Spanish disease.” And to the English, it was the “French pox.” The modern name is derived from a shepherd imagined in 1530 by Girolamo Frascatoro in his poem “Syphilis sive Morbus Gallicus.”
    Vivica Brawley: One of my regulars, this balding Nighttimer, he didn’t look so good. He’s sitting with both elbows propped on the padded edge of the stage, drooling, drool running down his chin, real shiny. The rule is, no touching, but he reaches out a five-dollar bill, folded long-ways, like he’s going to slip it between my toes. He’s a Teamster, if I remember.
    Used to be I always had a French-tipped pedicure, back when I still had ten toes. These days, if I took off my shoes in a salon, the girl who does the nails would run screaming.
    Phoebe Truffeau, Ph.D.: In its late latent stage, tertiary syphilis weakens the walls of blood vessels, leading to death by heart failure or stroke. The disease also enters the central nervous system, damaging the brain. Symptoms include personality changes marked by a manic optimism and increased excitability, which ends in general paralysis of the insane (GPI). This