Asher Hartman’s LA experimental theater company
ENTER A MAN IN A SUIT. THE MAN WILL BE A BORSCHT BELT COMEDIAN, DE KOONING, A WATERY GHOST, A PAINTING, CHRIST/JACK NICHOLSON. ALL LINES ARE HIS. STAGE DIRECTIONS ARE OFTEN SPOKEN. THOSE THAT ARE NOT SPOKEN ARE IN PARENTHESES.
““Dear Painting,” said my teacher, his eyes rimmed red, his breath a crystallized ointment for an unspeakable disease. He let his hand track the surface. “Dear Painting, I am better than my father, aren’t I? Please say yes.””
BYRON and EVAN are lying in bed. Evan is disturbed, Byron dreamy.
BYRON
But I didn’t stop talking. I said: ” I would take birds to the mountain top, well, not birds, their effigies. I would never touch the actual material. In the umber night, (GAVIN walks in, takes off jacket, lays at end of the bed), I walked steadily up the red rocks into a brightly lit paper house white like a lantern. There I called Briar my bird, my mate. He would bring his beak close to mine. I could see his two golden eyes. They would shift forward so that we could see into one another. That was our meeting place…and then he would slip into me. I could feel his tiny heart beating hard against my breast like a seed capable of lifting me off and suddenly I would be gone… (GAVIN gets up and brushes his teeth) and where I went… (pause)….human shit would walk on all fours and copulate with dismembered earthworms…
EVAN
I think I tuned you out at that point.
RAY
(To an Apostle.)
Then one day I went walking…I cam upon the Holy Spirit crying on a road. I said, ‘Holy Spirit why do you cry?’ He said. (SMOKE mouthing her words.) ‘Magic is existence, utterly.’ Yes, there are those who are compelled to the Spirit, as the world is like a carcass to them, and they leave it.’ I said, ‘Do you need a home? Then follow me.’ And so we went up to the mountains. We drank and sang. I think I might have gotten pregnant. I’m not sure but things happened afterward that made me think that I had. This boy appeared. He worked at the same company as me, claiming to be my son. As he had a sad face, I took him in. He grew. And it soon became apparent that he was of me. I saw his face staring back at mine; we seemed to know. He became a handsome white man. One day he said:
REX
The scariest thing would be to have someone else inside you.
RAY
And I said: ‘But I had you inside of me.’ This disturbed me, that I had voiced this when all I wanted to do was love my child. But I couldn’t love him because he….had…I don’t want to think about it.
“My God (men pose, elbows up) my home
was an ugly cunt
The rats and roaches, the limping hounds
I tell ya it was
Grief
(Men pose with legs bent fists down)
The old men who hid in their rooms
I hated them
Ascots
You know the kind
”Don’t want no trouble here”
“Ma’s neck in the heat, damp,
Reaching across the TV set
To change the channel
Yells, “Tell that faggot to keep it down!”
(Pose with long bent leg)
Theatrical, she was, and the poor man
Had to close his crossword, his magazine
And sit there by his lonesome
To the dim dim (Men fan down on these
beats)
Trailer of the afternoon;
Curs-ed, (Men look up) I was.”
Out in the dark, The Raccoon and The Trapper wait.
RACOON
Curse food, curse life, said the thin man
Who he?
A malnourished man
From the swamps?
No, the trees
He come from hills afraid and craven
But in rivers of gold he found his haven.
TRAPPER
She had it all set up.
I walked in.
There were fish and rocks
Skulls
Hieroglyphs
She set me up, man.
Cattle, geese, deer
RACOON
Fauna.
HARRY WHO TOMATO FACE
I remember when we was young and drunk, comin’ out of the bar, laughing.
There he was an old man at forty-two, marked with disease and you gasped.
Look at you now, warping your mouth the same way.
POSEIDON
Ah, guilt. Doesn’t work. I’m pleased.
I don’t have the guts to go into old age.
Look at you. You’re so lucky. You’re all ready ruined.
HARRY WHO TOMATO FACE
You thought, “I’m a most remarkable piece of flotsam and jetsam.”
You turned out to be just about that.
The wind blows, a few twigs flutter. The sun, a light gleams on one of the ponds fronds
POSEIDON
The beauty of sick
One strives for titanic impermeability
Christ, sword in hand, admits no front entry,
Vigilant, he guards his privates!
And receives his blossoms at the back door
Puckered roses, skin dances,
Something smeared across tomorrow never comes
Oh, it comes all right. It comes.
I’m glass. I’m mirror. I’m rain.
I’m a god, fellas, and I’ll be back again.
HARRY WHO TOMATO FACE
Silence all filled up by squeals of pleasure, they rowed on.
CABEZA (As if telling the audience a “scary story”)
The Bad Thing would come in their huts and take hold of anyone he wanted and with a flint as broad as a hand he would cut that person’s flank and take out the entrails. He would cut off a little piece and toss it into the fire and then put his hand over the wound and it would just snap (snaps his fingers) heal right up. He would come when they were dancing, as a man, or as a woman. If he wanted to, he’d throw a hut up in the air and hold it there, suspended.
Animal raises a painting from the ground on pulleys up to the ceiling. It sways during the following:
TIZON
I borrowed a small chain from my master and turned into a city of gold. In my golden city, everyone knew me. When they seen me they said, “Don’t look. His eyes will tell your sins.” They said, watch out for him, he’s a tricky one.
“The hour is midnight
Near Bangkok
We see reflections on the water
A woman alone, a white woman alone
There can only be danger in the silence”
Her morals are an anchor
To keep her buoyed
Yet she senses her fate fast approaching,
fast approaching.
(With gusto)
In the dark of night we roll along
Rowing without a care
Blithely unaware that there is trouble
In Bangkok
City of Western dreams
