My girlfriend exclaimed to me in perfectly normal English, "Walt, that cross! your chest!" And I exploded in laughter, my God, yes, too, plunging in her, "What?

She said in her Swiss voice of appeasement, "That cross, on your chest, it's freaking me out."

So I pulled out cold, let dangle my dick in brisk San Francisco night. Shit, she let me in on it. Stoned, weary and droopy, alert and unincorporatedly stirred, she said, yes, the hair on my chest formed a cross.

"Look, it's there!"

She pointed it out. "Shit, it's freaking me out, was maybe doing that."

She cried into herself, too, rocking, a little watery eyed.

Got into San Francisco on a bus, rolled into the station Ginsberg sung, took a taxi to a dive, brick and cherished, checked in, spent the night, figured out, the next day, the bus route to the Cow Palace, saw Stevie Wonder perform magnificently.

Rocked us, moved us, Stevie, and then went home, into the dank dark lobby to carpeted stairs, to the room we shared. Took off our clothes, got naked.

"Walter, that cross!"

On top of her, examined myself. On my chest, not hairy but smooth, a cross shaped itself in the ditch caving in, where breast bones met, pectorals slid down. A cross, undeniably, a cross.

My hairs formed a cross.

"It's weird!"

"No it's not, it's..."

I studied my plight, ran her finger along it to assuage her nerves, went to bed with her snugly, comforting her.

"It just freaked me out, I'm so stoned, spinning."

So went into sleep holding her. Deep into night woke up exhausted, frightened. Foretold, my life, in awful ways. Couldn't let go. Imagined fates beyond me. They fell upon me. Fear overtook me, and then I cried, hollowly and alone, in the bathroom, hoping to wake my girlfriend, with tears.