THE BOOKS OF THE BOBLE
A play of stories
by Bob Laine
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Characters:
Bob
Clara
Sarah
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This play was first produced in Horse Trade Theater's Storytelling Festival in conjunction with Loup Garou Theater in November of 2016. It was directed by Timothy McCown Reynolds and featured Bob Laine, Clara Francesca and Sarah K. Lippmann.
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Production Notes: This play is meant to be adaptable to any space. As a result there are no stage directions. The original production was a blank stage with two black boxes, but that was unique to the first production and can be ignored or modified as desired.
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Scene 1: I’d Rather Be Known
B: They tell me
C: depression sits on your lap like a fatted cat who knows you may stand
S: but doesn’t mind because you will eventually sit down again
B: I ask them if depression sits on their lap in the same way or maybe I offer perhaps they carry their depression in their purses next to whatever prescription drugs it is that causes them to approach me a gay man in a straight bar and start talking in metaphor. They tell me…
C&S: you’re an asshole
C: We always talk this way
S: and the pills we took have nothing to do with it
B: Then they sit down and confess that they are concerned however about how the Zanex they took will react with the what they are certain couldn’t be more than three margaritas they have thus far absorbed and/or misplaced
C&S: it won’t make us go coma?
B: They ask me like I’m naive enough to believe this is their first time mixing the two.. no such luck I answer them but that only provokes an impromptu palm reading starring them between sips and puffs telling me stuff they obviously memorized off the wrapper backs of the gum they are chewing and smacking whenever they are not sipping puffing or prophesying.. eventually they remember to add breathing to this rotation- claim to see sudden money and good sex in my near future then moments later they offer me five hundred dollars to sleep with them telling me it’s a joke before I recognize it as such
then they schizz slide suddenly serious grab my freshly examined palm mold it into a fist and give a squeeze- a very personal squeeze
they ask me
C: what do you do to feed the day
B: and when I don’t respond they squeeze again and elaborate
S: how do you justify waking up every morning fully believing it is not the day you will die?
B: it seems somewhat clear the return of my appendage is dependent on a response and I’m certain I cannot handle another squeeze.. I answer them
..listen honey I’m just a gay man in a straight bar waiting for my pot dealer so I can go home watch the women’s gymnastics Olympic team optionals grade some papers and try not to think about fucked up people like them and me
then I give them a squeeze just to see how they like it…they just return a smile
I figure it’s because I’m the only idiot who has ever answered them
then they give me back my arm like it’s their gift to me and they jump back in the pond…later my biznis finished and on my way out I see them in full lean reading some guys palm by the light of the pinball machine I imagine this one if he responds at all if he doesn’t throw up will probably answer their question of what do you do to feed the day with:
‘I didn’t know days got hungry’ and after giving it some thought- ‘What the hell does a day eat?’
B: they ask me questions
C: Why do you...
B: because I can set my own schedule I get paid well and since I’m the boss I can pretty much smoke pot whenever I see that’s what the situation demands
S: ...live in Chicago but work in Indiana?
C: Why won’t you...
B: because I can’t see turning something as uninteresting as eating into a bloody ritual by paying too much money for too little food that is rarely prepared my way in an atmosphere that rarely makes me comfortable where inevitably I finish eating before my dining partners and end up waiting impatiently to leave so I can eat my after dinner bowl which is of course now necessary since I gave up cigarettes to make me feel less guilty about smoking so much pot
S: ...go out to eat at sit down restaurants?”
C: Why can’t you...
B: because I generally find them obnoxious overpriced and too noisy for me to talk to or hear anyone I came with and although the limited frat boy like entertainment possibilities and the amazingly generous selection of cheese dishes prepared in hidden microwaves behind the bar can be distracting for twelve to thirteen the sad fact is that while bars enable me to get shitfaced silly smelly drunk they still can’t let me smoke a bowl which to me is as important to drinking as well drinking
S: ...go to a bar for a drink?’
C: Why should you...
B: because I fear them more than I fear the Bible being right and as long as there is softshell Taco Bell and maximum strength Orajel I figure I’ll wait til all my teeth are ready to go and get a group rate because the truth is I just can’t afford it since I have no insurance and I spend all my money on pot
S: ..avoid going to dentists?
C: Why would you...
B: because even though I am proud mind you a hard earned but very slow in coming state o mind of the way I was born it’s like someone who is proud of being born a certain nationality like someone who is proud of being born beautiful and if I am to be known and I can’t be known as George Burns or some other dead celebrity whose kids never wrote a book about then then I don’t want to be known solely for the way I was born for wheter I was more inclined to get a penis puptent by watching Randolph Mantooth in emergency versus Pamela Anderson in baywatch I’d rather be known by something I chose I’d rather be known as a stoner because I know that most people who hear that will quickly dismiss me as someone who makes no difference in this world and that knowledge will bring them closer to the truth than anything I could tell them
S: rather be known as a stoner than a faggot?
B: I’d rather be known as a stone than a faggot….I’d rather be known as a stoner than a faggot…
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Scene 2: Begin
B:
Her two older sisters were identical twins and they drew pictures of horses, which of course were also identical. My older sister knew the twins and would carry home their lookalike equestrian etchings and tape them two by two on her bedroom walls. Whenever my sister felt the need to refer to the artists of the drawings she called them The Twins Who Drew Horses. I guess that’s where I got the idea to call Penny, the twin’s younger sister, the one my age, to call her The Horse-Drawing Twin’s Younger Sister Who Had Nothing To Play With.
See, I’m talking about my first sexual experience, in California, with Penny, in the fourth grade- a prepubescent peep show between adjoining carports. I’ll show her mine and then she’ll show me...Nothing! Well, at least that’s how I saw it. I mean here I was standing there, drawers ankled, offering Penny and the world the pleasures of my young penial wisp and I’ll be damned if she wasn’t wispless! The horse-drawing twin’s younger sister had nothing to play with. Reciprocity, it dawned on me, was completely impossible. This was the only coherent thought I had before Penny’s mother stumbled upon us frozen in our compromising position- wisp and wispless.
It is only obvious that much overreaction followed.
Even when I tried to assure my mother as well as Penny’s mom who shall now forever be known as The It’s Rape It’s Rape I Know Rape When I See It Neighbor Beatch, even when I assured them that they didn’t need to worry, that I had no interest in seeing Penny, clothed or not, ever again- they didn’t believe me. I remember thinking they were so silly. They just didn’t get it. Of course at the time, I really didn’t get it either. I only knew that if there was anyone I wanted to see naked it wasn’t Penny. It was Richard, the boy across the street.
My brother and I had often played with Richard and his sister while our moms sat perched in fraying lawn chairs talking about whatever it is Air Force lifer wives talk about. It hadn’t taken long for me to notice, but still not quite understand, that I enjoyed touching Richard a lot more than I anticipated similar tactile experiences with his sister. And although I would never be brave enough to play I’ll Show You Mine with Richard, I did become quite adept at initiating wrestling holds and other manly touching sequences whenever possible. It was during one of these sequences, and of course it was a hot day, it was California, and Richard and I were defying the sun’s swelter, rolling around and smashing grass. And at some point, I don’t know maybe I lingered too long, but it became clear that Richard was becoming uncomfortable. Wouldn’t you know it, even then I was falling for the straight guy. Anyway, Richard negotiated an awkward dismount and stuttered something, changing the subject in that Let’s Not Go There- Ah, Here’s Something Interesting way. I was disappointed but still clung to his every word like a booger you can’t get off your finger. I visually sculpted him while he told me he had had a younger brother. His name was John and he was one year younger. But he had died. He had swallowed a stick while playing in the yard. He had been killed by a stick.
The sharpness of the story shocked me out of my gush and instinctively I challenged him. He was lying. That didn’t happen, it couldn’t of happened, I would have heard about it before now. But Richard persisted and goading begot goading and the next thing you know I’m marching up to our mom’s collapsible thrones and laying down the challenge. I call Richard’s bluff. I announce his preposterous fabrication loudly and arrogantly to his own mother’s face. RICHARD SAYS HE HAD A BROTHER WHO DIED BY SWALLOWING A STICK. That’s what I said to Richard’s mother’s face- which collapsed like a slo-mo newsreel of a building demolition. As her features fell, I could see my own mother’s features harden and it was clear that my own mother had known, and it was clear that I had fucked up majorly.
It is only obvious that much overreaction followed.
To this day I really don’t know how my first sexual experiences with Penny and Richard devolved into scenes from a Tennessee William’s play, but at least now I understand how appropriate that is. The clarity of hindsight tells me that whether I like it or not The Horse-Drawing Twin’s Younger Sister Who Had Nothing To Play With and The Boy Whose Brother Swallowed A Stick And Died were the start.
They are where I begin.
Scene 3: Believing It
C:
Legs balancing air upon a ladder with wheels
Eyes fingering the length of fluorescent tubing Light revealing an ocean of dust ruffles well some are actually pillow shams but there is still an ocean Me
working at Linens N Things
not to be confused with Linen Center, Linen Shack, Lots of Linens, Linda’s Linens or Lucky Larry Wong’s House O Linens
real people might be inspired to ask why
I’m not
maybe because I already know the answer
definitely because I’m tired of the question
it’s kinda like getting high outside the Toys R Us at lunch break because it’s really the only cool place to go although it’s not that cool it can be cool well if you’re cool
you just have to smile
act nonchalant look at your watch
they like that eye them as they approach
the hurried mothers and fathers
spastic kids pierce them as they exit
let your eyes finger them as they cross the parking lot then just as you hear the swoosh of the store’s automatic door
or the thunk of the closing car door JAB PIPE MOUTH LIGHT INHALE 1,2,3 EXHALE palm the pipe in a wink smile
look at your watch
it’s incredibly easy
for the most part safe
and you are always aware of the time
I entertain the idea that the majority of them
huddled mothers and fathers
elastic kids
are oblivious I mean if a Holocaust was invisible to millions
then it’s not too hard to imagine
a 25 year old stoner sneaking a few tokes passed some saucer eyed kids and their distraught parents in front of the Toys R Us their whole story is told in goofy smiles and quick glances
I can easily forget them
then there are the others
the eyes that vibrate
catching mine like the flick chunk of a dart on cork
these eyes look first sideways at me
second diagonally at their children sideways back to me
“the scent is familiar”
these eyes say
“I’ve worn bell bottoms, tied died time and I don’t appreciate you getting burnt in front of my kids.”
you almost feel pain
a tightness in your skin
your smile breaks in your mouth looking at your watch becomes awkward...transparent
and even the smoke- jesus- even the smoke lets you down
grabs your ankles and pulls you down down
and suddenly you are sober
somber you watch the eyes depart
knowing that they will never really leave you
the sting stays
the smart of the bee’s prick
and it’s the same firm hand I feel across my face
when people ask me why I work at Linen’s N Things
it’s the same pain
it’s the realization that I’m twenty five
getting high in front of a toy store on a break from a linen store
and I have absolutely no fucking idea why
but to real people it’s no big deal
you thought you were someplace you felt there was a reason you knew it was just a matter of time
and then you woke up one morning
and saw the stolen black twin flat Bill Blass sheet wrinkle wrapped around the two mashed potato filled couch cushions you call a bed and you were confused
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you remember that when you were little and couldn’t go to sleep
the down comforter overtaking your breathing
the mattress seeming too needy
you crawled into your wooden toy chest
the one with the panda on it
the panda who ever since you can remember cried tears of chipped paint
and you spread yourself and your dreams across the toys
being comforted by the sound of every shift
discovering the exact position in which a Malibu Barbie doll stuck in the small of your back becomes not only tolerable but soothing
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crawling out of your confusion
you shuck the shit brown and itchy army blanket
chunk the cap off a beer
light a cigarette and watch Xena: Warrior Princess still debating whether or not it’s the stupidest or most brilliant show you’ve ever seen noticing the bowl looking lonely next to the bag you burn one and you feel spent
you remember the clean crowded woods of Alpena Michigan
and feeling your lucid eleven years again when breathing came easy
trotting home from the giant visions
of The Seven Voyages of Sinbad and Snowball Express chugging the life out of an RC Cola
you you debate whether or not the Medusa was as creepy as the Cyclops
noticing the firestick looking lonely in your shirt pocket your lips are soon sticky and hot
spent
you manage enough energy to shift
to blink your eyes at the mouse whom thinking himself alone pulls at the crusty cheese from the two day old pizza hanging about like a throw rug on the floor
you think maybe
maybe you’ll get up and fix yourself some Kraft Deluxe Macaroni and Cheese or a tuna fish and Ritz cracker sandwich
but then again the kitchen is twelve feet away
and you feel so tired
you remember being quick and spastic playing super heroes under a Japanese sun
you were Kamalita V3 the ninja gymnast with the head of an enlarged fly which of course meant you were the controller of the vast riches of your tribe
which of course meant the doghouse
you were unstoppable
tired you finally work your way up only to
stop
you are twenty five and when you look at your life then and your life now you cry because you can’t ever
you can’t ever
really believe that you were that child
nobody ever asks me anymore why I indulge in front of a toy store
although inquiries are still made regarding my employment at Linens N Things
I’m tired I tell them
it’s what I tell myself but that never really seems to suffice
Scene 4: Holmes
B:
We called him Holmes, as in Sherlock Holmes or John Holmes, though he was neither physically nor mentally endowed. He was a homeboy, but that’s not why we called him Holmes either. I mean this was 1978, many years before homie, homeboy and its many variations would enter the vernacular. No, we called him Holmes because, as far as we knew, that was his name- though none of us could tell you whether it was his first or his last. About the only thing anyone could tell you about Holmes, was that he was crazy, and he had done some crazy fuckin’ shit.
The first story I ever heard about Holmes came out of the mouth of a six foot two, ebony everyman named Conrad. Now Conrad was my best friend. He was the one who would hook me up to the grooves of the Sugar Hill Gang, Frankie Smith and the Double Dutch Bus- “Gimme a Ho if you got your funky bus fare, Ho, Ho, Ho.” Back when Ho in a rap song didn’t refer to a woman. Doin’ cigarette sized doobies on his back porch, wrapping my mouth around words like ganja and budley. Conrad introduced me to a whole new world, a world that was inhabited by, among other things, this crazy fucker named Holmes.
Now as it happens, I met Holmes and heard my first Holmes story at the very same time. See Conrad and I were sittin’ atop this scribble scarred picnic table in a park near his house. Conrad had no more than lit up the joint and said
“Let me tell ya a story bout this crazy mother named Holmes,”
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when here Holmes comes makin’ like a sand crab and doin’ this funky sand dance, all smiles, talkin’ crazy shit, shit so crazy that it would make your head just bob up and down and it would make you smile because you didn’t know what else to fuckin’ do. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that this was the crazy mother that Conrad was about to tell me a story about. Now at this point most storytellers would stop- tuck the anecdote away for another time when the subject of the anecdote was not is such close proximity. But since the subject of this anecdote was Holmes, and since- as I would soon find out- Holmes rarely understood or cared much about what went on around him Conrad just kept talkin’.
“Now I didn’t actually see this shit myself,”
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he began, which is the way almost every story I would ever hear about Holmes would begin. Inevitably, the next line would always be
“but so and so saw it and swears on his jimmy it’s true.”
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Well in Conrad’s case the jimmy-swearer was this sick fuck named Marcus who said he had actually put money into the pool that was to be Holmes’ reward for doin’ this crazy shit. Apparently, on a dare to get money to buy a forty or some pot, Holmes- allegedly- had sex with a dog. That’s the story, though Conrad’s version was much more detailed and disgusting. When he finished, Conrad took a huge toke off the joint and passed it to the still dancing Holmes who accepted the gift without any indication or confirmation of the story that had just been told about him. Holmes drew long and hard on the joint leaving his sloppy lippage hanging like an elephants tear from the end- then turned to me talkin’ bout do I want to hit it? Shit... of course I wanted to hit it.
In the three years it would take Conrad and I to graduate from high school, I would hear all kinds of messed up Holmes stories. Everything from his kooky escapades with the cops, to stupid shit he did on bets or for money- even theories on how he got to be the way he is. That was a big one. Everyone seemed to have their own ideas. Some said he was born that way, others told stories of severe child abuse, severe drug abuse, mild satanic rituals. I remember one kid said he believed Holmes was one of those released mental patients we all read about in psychology class. I’m not sure what I believed. I only knew I had hung around Holmes quite a bit- and although he was obviously mental- he didn’t seem capable of doin’ some of the crazy shit everyone said he did. To me, he seemed like Boo Radley from To Kill A Mockingbird, you know- someone whose reputation is bigger than their reality. Of course, at the time, I did not know that I would soon be telling my own Holmes story.
My Holmes story does not begin I did not actually see this, because I saw the shit and I will swear on the fuckin’ Pope’s jimmy it is true. It started out innocently enough, I was on my way to Junior Achievement where I was president of a company called the Trivitors. We made trivets and sold them to people stupid enough to buy trivets. Especially trivets made by stoned high school students who wouldn’t know how to make trivets if the instructions for making trivets were tattooed on their asses. Anyway, here I am hikin’ down the street, when here Holmes comes all jivey, jabber jawin’ about some huge joint he wants to smoke. So I pause and think hummm, huge joint, trivets, huge joints, trivets? HUGE JOINT! Next thing I know I’m at some house that Holmes says is his parents. Now to be honest, I had never really considered where Holmes lived, I mean for all I knew Holmes was homeless. So it was kind of a relief to find out that Holmes actually had a place that he called home, that he actually had parents- wow! Since it was his parent’s house, Holmes said we would have to go into this utility close to burn the joint. For anyone who has ever gotten high in their parent’s house, you know that this is not that odd a request. I should have known somethin’ was up, however, by Holmes use of the word utility. Not that Holmes was illiterate or anything, just that Holmes rarely spoke and when he did utility is not what he usually said. The real bad news came about five seconds later when Holmes closed the door and both of us registered the click that said that motherfucker just locked.
Panic does not describe what happened in those next few moments, I really don’t know what does describe what happened in those next few moments, suffice to say that at the endofthosenextfewmoments, Holmes’ hand was severely bleeding from having broken a mirror at the back of the closet. When he pulled out his penis and started peeing on his bloody hand, let’s just say I was shocked. Frightened is also a very good word. Here I was, locked, in a six by eight utility closet, with a madman- whose thought processes worked in such a way that he could input the information bloody hand and output the solution PEE ON IT. What had to happen between synapses, what dendrites had to connect to make that shit happen? Not wanting to ponder deep neurological questions, I instead grabbed a large piece of wood, I think it was the arm of a chair or something, and I started chopping at the door with more energy than I had expended in my entire life. All the while Holmes is wailin’ and doin’ somethin’ in the background. To this day I do not know what. Frankly, when he pulled out his dick, he lost my attention. Eventually, I chopped a large enough hole in the door to snake my arm through, unlock it, quickly smoke the joint with Holmes and then run like Richard Pryor on fuckin’ fire all the way to Junior Achievement. The prospect of making products from wood never seemed more enticing.
I don’t know what all this means. Even after the incident I still didn’t believe half the stories I heard about Holmes. And in fact, years later sweating smoke and whiskey wrestling a headache on a Soho balcony and hearing through the throbs some blob say that urinating on a wound is an ancient universally known survival technique I would epiphanize as only the right combination of drugs and pain will allow you to do, that maybe Holmes was a lot smarter than any of us believed. Not that any of us would have cared. Hell, none of us ever bothered to find out whether Holmes was his first or last name. In truth, none of us wanted to know Holmes, we wanted to imagine Holmes. We wanted to make his story bigger than his life.
I guess I still do.
Scene 5: Quantity
S:
My friend Kevin cracks surprised, at my surprise, to his announcement that he feels guilty because he has not established a Bennigan’s Bust Your Blues relationship with his pot dealer.
Although they have played Capcom video bowling games together, in a Bennigans, to disguise business transfers, their friendship has never reached the particular Blues Busting level my friend Kevin desires. My friend Kevin imagines his dealer has intimate relations with all his other clients. Probably hangs out with them, he thinks, partying with them in their own homes not meeting clandestinely in some yuppie scum bunghole, playing cool home video systems like Xbox One or PS4 not some silly bowling simulation crap. My friend Kevin is certain that whenever he is not around his dealer passes out free bong hits like tic tacs or m&m’s. “I feel like Rudolph,” he says. “I want in on my dealer’s reindeer games.”
I told Kevin he was being ridiculous. Besides I like it clinical. Quick and clean like an Olympic diver breaking water. My dealer is strictly fast food. She can slip me a quarter ounce of pot in one tenth the time it takes to get a quarter-pounder at McDonalds, and the fries are never cold.
My friend Kevin would probably suggest that I’m the one being cold, and as usual he’s wrong. I do care. Although my dealings with my dealer are brief, what they lack in quantity is made up in quality. We kibbutz, sometimes. Share significant life events, announce upcoming projects. Why just last week she told about some charity fashion show she was organizing for her children’s school, I countered with an amusing story about one of my students. Sometimes it even goes beyond that.
For example, recently I was planning a trip to Florida to visit my parents and I was completing the number one task for making such a trip: buying lots of pot. As usual I arrived at seven fifteen a.m. just as my dealer’s children’s school bus was pulling out, her three kid’s faces sucking at the back window probably wondering and devising theories about the strange man who pulls up twice a week just as they are leaving. Sometimes I get there a little early and as the kids pile past my idling car they see the tennis equipment in the back seat and beg for used tennis balls. I am glad to give them some. On these days, as the bus pulls out, I can see -but cannot hear- the tiny thuds of the balls against the bus’s back window. When the bus pulls from view I climb the two flights to my dealer’s apartment. She is already at the door, sometimes still in her blue housecoat, inevitably and erratically fumbling baggies of pot with remains of Rice Crispies, her nurses uniform slung across her shoulder it’s straps doing small swimming stokes amid the puffed rice. Before I can speak a quarter ounce is thrust into my left hand while simultaneously the money disappears from my right. But on this day I begin speaking while still tackling the stairs warning her that I needed more than usual. I told her about my trip to Florida and she listened as I shared silly stories of the horrors awaiting me. Then she reciprocated with similar tales of relative dysfunctionalism. It was only a few moments, but we laughed a lot. And when the stories just kind of naturally ended and the silence grew heavy she turned to me and said, very business like- “How much do you need to get through it?”
The question really threw me. I mean literally the answer was easy. I need one bowl of pot for every four hours spent with my parents. That formula was simple. It was the largeness and beauty of the figurative question that sent me reeling. How much do you need to get through it? That’s asking a lot more than pot quantities, we’re talking life quantities here. She was standing there asking me The Question. What, and how much of it, do you need to get by. What dosage of pot, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, sex religion, shopping does it take for you to be happy?
Well after asking such a personal and powerful question you can see why I feel very close to my dealer. We’ve bonded. In a very special way. And it’s because of that special bond that I can sympathize with my friend Kevin’s desire to be closer to his dealer. I told Kevin this story and he was all jealous. He says he would love to give used tennis balls to his drug dealer’s kids. I have all the luck, he says.
I tell him it’s because I know what I want which is a complete lie. I can’t even fully answer my drug dealer’s question. How much does it take for me to get through it? But as I get older I have begun to make wish lists.
I don’t want much.
I want to weigh my slumber to determine if I’m a light sleeper.
I want to be able to smoke a bowl every now and then and not be hassled.
I want to be the lemming who says ‘hey guys let’s not run off the cliff this year let’s just stay here and party’.
I want all the world’s problems ending in ism to be engulfed in the columns of my smoky exhalations.
I want a twenty pound dream.
I want little, when I die I want a small minded person in some town in Colorado to implode.
I want someone in Maine, or New Jersey to start crying and have no idea why.
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Scene 6: Burger Death
B:
I saw a man die at a Burger King. Well, not actually saw but became suddenly aware of the result. As a manager, I’m trained to spot things like that. You know, roaches hibernating among the buns, thieves lurking among the crew- dead men wedged into burnt orange booths. Truthfully, he was quite easy to miss. An elderly gentleman taking a nap in his Whopper with cheese plus extra lettuce, tasting his fries with the pores of his skin, ketchup splayed across his forehead. Add a happy tongued dog lapping at his face and you had a regular Norman Rockwell. ‘Grandpa takes a licking, stops ticking’. It was a quiet death evidenced by the fact that none of us heard anything. Like it was a sigh passed between pressed together lips, pop- fizzle and his heart simply went off like a misfired bottle rocket. And he expired. Outlived by his drivers license and senior citizen discount card. It’s incredibly sad to be survived by plastic.
Death and Burger King have always shared commonalties in my experience. It was Lisa, my best friend the first summer I ever worked at a Burger King, who dreamt up the term
C: burger death
B: which we both chuckled over while squeezed into a Michigan Money teller machine swimming in the smoky commas from our bowl timing our break by how much we consumed and the concreteness of our coughing.
C: You can smoke two bowls in about four minutes and thirty two seconds.
B: Not a lot of people know that. Anyway, burger death was Lisa’s catch phrase for the Lifers-
C: You know, those people who would always work at Burger King.
B: Who would become accustomed to fried food smells, eventually getting used to burnt forearms and fingers, finally even being comforted by their
BOTH: Red polyester uniforms. Their lives becoming the slow and quiet Burger Death.
B: Nothing like us. Two college crazies desiring something better to do with a summer than sweat.
L: Who’d of guessed we’d end up at a Burger King with a broken down air conditioner learning the finer points of secretion.
B: Trying desperately not to drip into the Whoppers, but knowing it was hopeless, and figuring
BOTH: ahhhh
B: what the hell
C: beads of sweat look a lot like balls of grease.
B: So that summer Lisa and I sweat
BOTH: a lot
B: Got high even more and picked the sesame seeds out of our clothes and other places. As Lisa always said
C: they get everywhere
B: her eyes would ripple
C: I mean everywhere
B: And in that time and that place, which now seems so unlikely, we mastered the fifteen second cheeseburger.
BOTH: BUN PATTY CHEESE PICKLE KETCHUP MUSTARD WRAP NUKE BING
B: I can think of worse ways to live a summer.
I always thought there were few jobs worse than working at a Burger King. Being a pooper scooper for Ringling Brothers or a bedpan flunky were about the only two I could think of. Well, basically any job dealing with feces. Not to say there ain’t a lot of shit at Burger King. But like participants in life we muddle through hoping that we won’t come out smelling too bad.
C: A pipe dream if I ever heard one
C: Lisa would always say ironically handing me the bowl. And she was right. We smelled. Or rather our clothing smelled. In the back of my cynical little mind, I have to believe that somewhere- anywhere, there is a sandstone building in the middle of a dessert surrounded by barbed wire
C: And German shepherds without testicles.
B: And that in this building are a dozen or so bespeckled bent men
C:With male patterned baldness
B: Squinting into microscopes, devising formulas
C: Splitting atoms
B: All in a desperate attempt to increase the smell retention of Burger King clothing. I have to believe that. Why else would strange felines nip at my pant cuffs, unknown hounds hump my legs every time I walk in to a room donning my red polyester garb.
C: In the streets little children pause in their small footsteps and look up at me as if I were Sammy Davis Jr., fully believing that I can make their whole world taste good.
B: One time I was walking home and this homeless man stopped me and asked for a Big Mac. I politely informed him that Burger King was Home of the Whopper.
C: So?
B: so… he asked for a Whopper. I fished a few fries out of my pocket. It was all I had. He accepted the gift like rolled money. You get used to it. Lisa and I better than most-
BOTH: we had our pipe dreams.
B: It was the end of the summer, the first and last summer I had to believe that I would ever work at a Burger King, when Lisa pinned me between the specialty sandwich station and shake machine.
C: What’s the worse way to die at a Burger King?
B: Ah, getting your hand caught in the broiler and being dragged through?
C: Try again.
B: Dipping your face into the fryer and having it melt off?”
C: Not even close.
B: and then she smiled, and catching on I smiled and then we both just said it in tones usually reserved for hospitals and church pews.
BOTH: What’s the worse way to die at a Burger King? Old age!
B: The end of the summer clearly marked the beginning of our insanity.
Craziness is funny, in that everyone deals with it differently. Lisa straddled hers- put on her spurs and gave it a swift kick in the ass just to see where it would take her. It took her into the hands of a man named Rod. The similarity of his name to a penis did not escape me, and I don’t think it got past Lisa either. I’m not sure if it was his name or the fact that he dragged her to Boise Idaho that pissed her off the most, but in a state of pisstivity she was. She took out her corresponding anger by sleeping with Rod’s boss. But Lisa was never one to settle for mere infidelity. She made it her mission to seek out the lowest scum of Boise. A mission I imagined would lead her to discover unruly farmhands who sodomized pigs on the weekends. But Lisa was serious this time. Who’d of guessed? Lisa, serious.
What happens next seems too usual for the world, but it’s what happened. It’s real. Lisa became addicted to drugs. Yes, even in Boise- or maybe because of. Either way it becomes an ugly, overtold story of needles and heated spoons.
C: Crank
B: is what Lisa called the methadrine she sold, the methadrine she guided with the help of her new lover Gary into her tired veins.
C: Crank
B: is the first word she said to me when she called me exactly one month after my college graduation, two days before I would take my mighty communications degree and hurl it like a thunderbolt at the job market, and three months before I would accept a lowly managerial position at Burger King.
C: Crank
B: she said
C: I’m on Crank.
B: “That’s nice,” I said, “What is that- some sort of motor oil?” I don’t think she found that funny. There was silence and then she just kept talking-
C: Gary and I have been tripping for four days- we ran out of Crank last night so we mixed up some homemade crank in the bathtub. Gary just shot me an armful and I had a sudden passion to call you.
B: Flattered as I was, I couldn’t help but think, I don’t know, maybe it’s just me- but taking something I’ve mixed up in my bathtub and injecting it into my body, well just seems incredibly STUPID. And I told Lisa this so you can imagine where that conversation led. And I was left in a funk. Angry at Lisa for giving in, giving up. Angry at Lisa for changing. Angry just because I wanted to be. I was in the exact same mood when Lisa called me at work almost six months later. Angry at employees that had to be told when scheduled at four that means four and not four forty-five. Angry at customers who wanted Whoppers without meat. Angry because I had already taken the trash out once that day so I wouldn’t be able to smoke another bowl for the rest of my shift. But hearing Lisa’s voice lightened my mood, a little. I told her about the old man who had died in my restaurant the week before.
C: That’s neat.
B: she said then she told me about all the money ..
C: me and Gary are raking in,
B: about the weight …
C: I’ve lost
B: and about her plans
C: to market a methadrine diet plan.
B: I told her Hollywood already had the patent. She laughed. It was nice, but it was distant. I don’t know- to me she seemed a lot further away than the actual miles between us. She seemed to be someplace where even Ma Bell wouldn’t go. A place mailmen fear to tread.
I don’t even need to say this ending. It’s already been done, you’ve heard it. Yes, there is the phone call. You can all hear it ringing. You can all see me in my tiny Burger King office filing hourly sales reports, referring to labor charts. You can all watch me answer the phone. “Thank you for calling Burger King how may I help you.” You can all hear the voice on the other side, you can all listen to the same old story. Lisa M. was found dead, a needle with traces of insulin next to her body. Her boyfriend says she had him shoot her up with insulin knowing it would kill her because she was mad at him. The police don’t buy it, but you know it’s probably true. You think how like Lisa, how utterly and remarkably like Lisa.
BOTH: I’m mad at you, so I’ll make you kill me- ha,ha.
B: And you see me in my tiny Burger King office and you see me crying. You see my employees in their paper hats pausing at their tasks, see them pointing towards the small office with fry tongs and oven mitts and I’m still there and I’m still crying. But inside I’m angry. Angry at Lisa for giving in, for giving up. Angry at the impotence of my Bachelor’s degree. Angry that the last thing that poor old man saw before he died was a fucking Whopper with cheese. And that’s when you see me leave my office, see me walk down the hallway and you see me pass the lockers; pass the cola hookups- you see me walk into the freezer. That’s where I will stay, for an hour, maybe longer. Because right then, because right now, it feels like the only place I can breathe.
Scene 6: Assholes
S: It’s a list
B: She says
S: of things you have never done
things you have never done
but want to do
before you die
a bucket list
B: yes
I tell her
I saw the movie
then I tell her what I think about lists
lists are like assholes
I start
but she stops me
S: everyone has one
B: she says
S: I know
its an old line
and actually it’s opinions
that are like assholes
B: I decide to stop talking to her
she probably thinks I’m an asshole
she doesn’t know
I’m just bull shitting
it’s not like I have anything against lists
I make them
honestly
I am just envious
jealous that her lists
are probably so much better than mine
she
no doubt
wants to skydive
before she dies
see the catacombs in Paris
do Oktoberfest in Germany
visit Anne Frank’s house in Amsterdam
she
I’m certain
wants to run a marathon just moments
before she expires
I would expire
if anyone suggested
I run a marathon
my lists are sad
get toothpaste
call Mom
take a shower
I have to write these things down or I won’t do them
and really who are these people who make bucket lists
who put pen to paper
who use note programs on I products
to actually record their
Top Ten Things To Do Before I Die?
and aren’t they afraid
like I would be
that if they did make such a list
and did everything on that list
that they would then be contractually obligated
to die
besides
people my age
should have already done
all the pressing things
that we just had to do
before we died
I mean
what the hell are we waiting for?
and does anyone really need to do
anything
before they die?
like we would be in purgatory saying
‘I never rode a mule
to the bottom
of the Grand Canyon-
man this death is gonna suck’
my brain would have continued
to spin comedy gold
out of her bourgeois obsession
with doomsday to-do lists
but she wasn’t finished with me
she suddenly got serious
S: seriously
B: she said
taking my hands in hers
S: what is the one thing
you have never done
that you want to do
before you die?
B: I paused
embarrassed at what I knew my answer to be
but I gave her hands a squeeze
and told her anyway
I have never fanned my fingers
across the warm indent of a lover
who has just left my bed
I have never awoke to the sensations
of a body spooning mine
I have never slept in a bed
with someone I loved
and who loved me
that is my bucket list
that is what I want before I die
she
never let go of my hands
never broke eye contact
just softly popped her lips
and said
S: well don’t look at me
I don’t have a dick
B: she is such an asshole
#needanewfaghag
#jk
Scene 7: October 15th 2012
B: Today
I was a bad gay and a good gay
in a way
I did do something very gay
which is good but I felt uncomfortable doing it
which is bad
I went to a cabaret
old chum pa dump bum
my friend April's one woman show
chronicling her journey from
self professed musical theater slut
to almost musical theater star
to baby mama
to single mother
and back full circle to her current triumphant return to the stage
albeit the extremely tiny stage of the Duplex Cabaret and Piano Bar
on the corner of Christopher and 7th avenue
a literal stone’s throw from the infamous stonewall inn
the birthplace of the gay rights movement
and now a national momument –thank you Obama and a block away from Gay street
the streets name not its sexual preference (because streets don’t have sex)
no escaping it
I was going to have what the Flintstones promised me before every show
a gay old time
determined to not let my fellow fruit down
I stareted the evening
on the right rainbow track
I exercised
real gays love exercising
and to up my Gay Credibility Quotient even more
I selected Adam Lambert's Tresspassing album
as my workout soundtrack
(sound cue of the song) tre’ gay
it was an ambitious beginning
but short lived my GCQ (gay credibility quotient) took a sharp nosedive
the second I got dressed
I chose to wear corduroys
a vintage Pepsi employee shirt with my name over the pocket
and my aquaman hoody gay yes
but not in the right way
which was immediately apparent when I entered the bar well
not immediately as it was one of those maze bars
I entered
turned left went up some stairs to the first bar area
moved thru that bar to the back where I went up more stairs
to a second bar area moved thru that bar to the back
and went down a final set of steps into the space
the theater was two thirds the size of a New York subway car
barely enough for a small stage
a tiny piano a mike stand
and ten tall cocktail tables with five stools each
like putting fifty flamboyant mice
into two thirds of a shoebox
most of the seats were filled with young gay men in muscle shirts and skinny jeans
the rest were taken by older well dressed dandy's
and their attending fag hags
all drinking wine
and then there was me drinking Wilson's whiskey
from the bottle
with a sugar free red bull chaser muscle-shirtless
skinny-jeanless Dandyless and Faghagless
I was a bad gay
and not just today
I have always been uncomfortable
around large groups of gay men
I always feel like I am letting my sexual preference down
that my tastes are just not fabulous! enough
that I am a bad gay
I don't know why I
turned out to be a gay heterophile
why my closest friends have always been straight
why I prefer straight bars to gay ones
why I only seem to fall for straight guys
or why I hate Glee
but I do I really really do
that doesn't mean I don't enjoy a beautiful diva
with a divine voice saanging the H E double hockey sticks
out of some killer tunage
and when April ended her show skipping down the aisle singing
"I'm coming out"
I was grinning from ear to ear
waving my arms and singing right along with her
like every other gay man in the joint
a good gay
today at last
end of play