I went out into the hall and changed into my Berlin St. Croix outfit: black turtleneck and black skirt. I disheveled my hair and adopted her crouching, feline walk. When I said my first line, a couple of people in the audience joined in: "My name is Berlin St. Croix, but I prefer to be known as Black Death!"

They were receptive to another appearance by the morbidly artistic poet, and my poems all met good responses. First I did the lark poem, after attributing my long absence to the demands of grad school.

Then I did my second poem, "Halloween."

Dry-rot mummies;
putrid corpses;
blood-soaked vampires;
pustulent witches;
greasy specters;
gory prizes of all shapes and sizes
covered with the inky veil of night...

And I forgot my spoon.

They really laughed at the punch line of that poem, said with morbid irony. Then I performed my coup de grace. I'll put the hand motions in parentheses after each line.

THIS is to hypocrisy. (Bend up left arm with right fist in "fuck you" symbol, but then wave left hand cheerily)
THIS is to hatred. (Stick out tongue)
THIS is to the N.E.A. ("Moon" audience)
THIS is to the Willard preacher. (Make the V-salute — two fingers in a V, held to face. Flicker tongue between.)
THIS is to Sinead O'Connor. (Tear up picture of S.O.)
THIS is to my parents' trust fund, which lets me be miserable only when I want to. (a thumbs up sign)

The V-salute elicited a HUGE response, mostly consisting of embarrassed laughter. And the Sinead O'Connor thing got such a huge response I could barely go on with the last line — they wouldn't settle down. The tearing up of her picture, of course, was a reference to her recent faux pas on Saturday Night Live, when she tore up a photograph of the pope (allegedly in a statement against Catholicism). In fact, Mark came up on the stage to introduce the next sketch before I could get the last line out.

As I stepped down, I got another round of applause. Quite an exhilarating experience, I must say. Joe got up then and recited from memory the reading from the Book of Wonder. I can't think at this moment who originally wrote it.

Holli and I whipped up an Estrogen Twins skit. Linda played the wife and my brother played the husband. It was all extemporaneous (not improv, since we knew what the punch line and frame of the sketch would be).

He came in, threw his coat on the floor, slumped in a chair and demanded a beer. She tried to convince him to pick his coat up but he wouldn't listen. She didn't want to get him a beer so he told her to get him a six-pack. Then Holli and I jumped on stage, arms akimbo, and told her, "We are the Estrogen Twins."

"I'm Ovary," I said.

"And I'm Fallopia," said Holli.

"What seems to be the trouble?" I asked.

She told us that her husband wouldn't listen to her and we offered to help. We put our fists together, Wonder Twins style and said, "Shape of a rapid mood swing."

"Form of a hormonal imbalance."

The wife rushed into the room and yelled at Andy, telling him that he would pick his coat up, he would get his own beer, and he would stop ordering her around. He fell off the chair and then cringed in a corner.

"Is that clear?" she shouted.

"Yes, dear," he said meekly.

We stepped up to the edge of the stage, and I said, "Once gain the balance of power has been restored to America's households... thanks to..." and we said in unison, "The Estrogen Twins."

Again, we got great applause. Bernhard, who'd brought his voice-modifier, gave it to Mark. And he, Bernhard and Joe did a segment of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. They did the part about Vogon poetry. Very well, I might add. From memory.

And last was the 24-second news, brought to us by one of the new members. He made a couple cracks about the day's Collegian and a couple other one-liners.

When he held up a picture about a recent presidential poll, Bernhard noticed that one of the boxes contained only a red question mark, for the undecided voters. He quickly pulled out his umbrella, which has a red question mark for a handle, and had it make a speech about its candidacy. Pretty amusing, wot?