PERSONAL EFFECTS - excerpt
ACT ONE
SCENE ONE
REQUIEM
SCENE I: STAGE RIGHT is a hospital room. White, cold, silent. Covered up on a gurney in the middle of the room is the body of BRUCE WINSTON JONES. Downstage is a door through which FRIENDS and FAMILY pass. A spotlight turns on each mourner who speaks, throwing everyone else in the dark.
AT RISE: Enter GENEVA, a middle-aged executive who’s had her hair dyed one time too many, stumbling, fumbling around in her purse for a sedative. In the background are voices of friends and family, squeaks and scrapes of gurneys, E.K.G.s and I.V. racks rolling past.
GENEVA
(trying to look sober)
Oh Bruce, you’re not dead. Knowing you, you’re in some kind of parallel universe bringing the dead back to life. Ready for action after all this time. All those months glued to your black leather couch debating life and death like it was some kind of racial issue, something that drew class lines, a kind of discrimination against which the dead can’t defend themselves so it’s up to the dying to decide. That’s how you worked it all out. Lying there knowing how many times you’d be back to suffer all over again. You can’t look forward to death because it’s a kind of supreme court of eternal life. Can’t give up, can’t give in, can’t give out…sometimes you couldn’t give, period.
(unsteady)
So tell me, now that you’ve arrived, are you in some parallel universe or some kind of after life? I want to know because someday I’ll need a spirit guide. For a change you could do me a favor. For a change, think of someone besides yourself.
(unfolds a hankie and instead of blowing her nose, pops a pill)
Why’d you have to go and leave like that? For Arthur? Arthur was waiting, always Arthur, in death as in life. Your friends never counted no how, outside of holidays when you made this big to-do, with the caviar and champagne and free range turkey you drove twenty miles to get at a wild game farm out in the boonies. Always wondered why you did that but now that I think about it, that’s who you were. Wild game. A fair description, don’t you think? No taming Bruce Winston Jones. You were fierce, lust your greatest weapon, but you always lashed out and struck down your victims, victims of sentiment you called them, not lovers. When you were in love, it was all out nuclear warfare. They were trying to take control, take over, bring down the state of your affairs. Thing is you never had much money til you cashed in your life insurance and no one was left to squander your gold and the sex, well baby, we were the lures. Dangling us before your object of desire like some kind of booby prize.
(Lights down on Geneva and up on LUSCIOUS, an aging drag queen, decked out in a lime green go-go dress with pink polka dots, white boots and a platinum wig that crashes into the door when she tries to pass through. She backs up and does the limbo, managing this time.)
LUSCIOUS
(her voice a Harvey Fierstein baritone)
You’re among the shimmering stars, right Kitty? With Marilyn, Di and Jackie O. Even Jerry. Even The Dead paid the supreme sacrifice. O.D.ed on life. On smack and juice, up and down, down and up and sideways.
(sucking on a candy cigarette which she slips into an ivory holder)
Now you’re among the improper and the privileged. No barriers between the proles and nobility, not where you are now. No idols, no status symbols, no pop stars, no fame… It’s simply not human up there and doll, I envy your freedom to be absolutely, fabulously nothing. Doesn’t seem possible after all these years, the ones when you tried to do yourself in.
(From a plastic purse, she pulls out a vial and takes a hit…glassy eyed)
How come you couldn’t do it? A luxury I can afford, wondering about things like that. I’ll probably do it all the time without you around to remind me how impossible it all was. You know my theory? You know what I think? That you didn’t believe you could be zero, zilch, nada, rien de tout.
SCENE ONE
REQUIEM
SCENE I: STAGE RIGHT is a hospital room. White, cold, silent. Covered up on a gurney in the middle of the room is the body of BRUCE WINSTON JONES. Downstage is a door through which FRIENDS and FAMILY pass. A spotlight turns on each mourner who speaks, throwing everyone else in the dark.
AT RISE: Enter GENEVA, a middle-aged executive who’s had her hair dyed one time too many, stumbling, fumbling around in her purse for a sedative. In the background are voices of friends and family, squeaks and scrapes of gurneys, E.K.G.s and I.V. racks rolling past.
GENEVA
(trying to look sober)
Oh Bruce, you’re not dead. Knowing you, you’re in some kind of parallel universe bringing the dead back to life. Ready for action after all this time. All those months glued to your black leather couch debating life and death like it was some kind of racial issue, something that drew class lines, a kind of discrimination against which the dead can’t defend themselves so it’s up to the dying to decide. That’s how you worked it all out. Lying there knowing how many times you’d be back to suffer all over again. You can’t look forward to death because it’s a kind of supreme court of eternal life. Can’t give up, can’t give in, can’t give out…sometimes you couldn’t give, period.
(unsteady)
So tell me, now that you’ve arrived, are you in some parallel universe or some kind of after life? I want to know because someday I’ll need a spirit guide. For a change you could do me a favor. For a change, think of someone besides yourself.
(unfolds a hankie and instead of blowing her nose, pops a pill)
Why’d you have to go and leave like that? For Arthur? Arthur was waiting, always Arthur, in death as in life. Your friends never counted no how, outside of holidays when you made this big to-do, with the caviar and champagne and free range turkey you drove twenty miles to get at a wild game farm out in the boonies. Always wondered why you did that but now that I think about it, that’s who you were. Wild game. A fair description, don’t you think? No taming Bruce Winston Jones. You were fierce, lust your greatest weapon, but you always lashed out and struck down your victims, victims of sentiment you called them, not lovers. When you were in love, it was all out nuclear warfare. They were trying to take control, take over, bring down the state of your affairs. Thing is you never had much money til you cashed in your life insurance and no one was left to squander your gold and the sex, well baby, we were the lures. Dangling us before your object of desire like some kind of booby prize.
(Lights down on Geneva and up on LUSCIOUS, an aging drag queen, decked out in a lime green go-go dress with pink polka dots, white boots and a platinum wig that crashes into the door when she tries to pass through. She backs up and does the limbo, managing this time.)
LUSCIOUS
(her voice a Harvey Fierstein baritone)
You’re among the shimmering stars, right Kitty? With Marilyn, Di and Jackie O. Even Jerry. Even The Dead paid the supreme sacrifice. O.D.ed on life. On smack and juice, up and down, down and up and sideways.
(sucking on a candy cigarette which she slips into an ivory holder)
Now you’re among the improper and the privileged. No barriers between the proles and nobility, not where you are now. No idols, no status symbols, no pop stars, no fame… It’s simply not human up there and doll, I envy your freedom to be absolutely, fabulously nothing. Doesn’t seem possible after all these years, the ones when you tried to do yourself in.
(From a plastic purse, she pulls out a vial and takes a hit…glassy eyed)
How come you couldn’t do it? A luxury I can afford, wondering about things like that. I’ll probably do it all the time without you around to remind me how impossible it all was. You know my theory? You know what I think? That you didn’t believe you could be zero, zilch, nada, rien de tout.
