A Day Without Whining Is Like a Drag Queen
Without Coty Airspun Powder
(a play in one teeny-tiny act)
When the house lights fade, the stage goes completely black. After a moment, we hear some rustling onstage, then a loud thunk, as though someone might have just rammed her thigh into the jagged corner of the kitchen table for the third time this week. There is a loud but understated “Shit!”
As the stage lights slowly rise, Pussy Terwilliger enters from a small door upstage right. We’re in her apartment: stacks of books–secondhand, but unread–litter every flat surface of the room. A computer workstation is located downstage left, its 19″ computer monitor completely covered in sticky notes. There are an unusually large number of orchids in the room, most of which cling precariously to life; one gets the sense that if Pussy were to remove even half a layer of dust from their glossy leaves, they’d all be doing remarkably better. Unfortunately for the orchids–and for Pussy–she’s not gonna clean dipsquat.
Pussy walks over to the workstation, lights a cigarette, flicks the mouse to turn off the screensaver, and rips down as many Post-Its as she can in one fell swoop, revealing a close-up screen image of a very large, very uncircumcised penis. She recoils slightly; it’s a bit early for all that.
The phone rings. She wanders over to it, hesitates, then answers.
Pussy: Hello? Why yes–yes I am looking to change my long distance carrier! You must be psychic! I simply must invite you to dinner one evening and have you read my tarot or runes or whatever divining tools you use. Just don’t expect much in the way of dinner–it’s as though my opposable digits fly out the window every time I enter a kitchen. I’m practically useless.
(Sips from coffee cup. Grimaces.)
Pussy: You see, my sweet, as a young girl we lived on a pig farm in Botswana. My parents were devout vegetarians, repulsive detritus from that so-called political movement of the 1970s known as “the hippies.” determined that we should appreciate all god’s creatures, they allowed my eleven siblings and me to eat nothing but the very grain which we fed our porcine charges.
(Lights a cigarette without missing a beat.)
Pussy: Luckily, Margaret Mead’s granddaughter was traipsing through our neck o’ the woods one day, making a tour of local hamlets in an effort to prove that at least some of Maggie’s theories weren’t lies. I doubt she succeeded, but that’s neither here nor there. As I was saying, she stumbled upon our lean-to just as I happened to fall in one of the many mud puddles that dotted our small parcel of land. As I stood up, I spat out several pieces of grain, which I was still chewing when I took the proverbial fall. Thinking they were teeth I expelled from my sweet, tender, pouty, prepubescent, coquettish mouth, la Mead picked me up and, without asking my parents, rushed me off to the nearest Red Cross station. There, I was given a thorough examination and heavily interrogated by several very efficient-looking women—by which I mean they had absolutely no fashion sense. After eating a batch of some dreadful “homemade” cookies—Maggie wasn’t much of a cook, you know–I was whisked away to Burkina Faso, then known as Upper Volta, where I lodged with Ms. Mead for a number of years in the quaint capital of Ouagadougou. I love that word. Say it with me.
(She waits, listening.)
Pussy: Excellent. Anyway, my dear, it seems that one particularly irritating June, I found myself selling flowers at the airport. I had just finished making a rather large sale to a honeymoon couple from Mongolia when I caught the unmistakable scent of pigs being prepared for a cargo flight to Paris. Drawing on my vast childhood experience and creative genius, I used my several saleable bouquets to disguise myself as a deliciously svelte sow and proceeded to board the plane. I arrived in Paris two weeks later, even thinner than usual, and became an instant success on the runways of several couturiers, who shall all remain nameless, of course. Finally, after years of living amongst cafe society, I escaped to the States in the dead of night to pursue my dreams of marrying a Texas oil baron, which, as is usually the case, has led me here. And that, you see, is why I cannot cook.
(Stubs out cigarette.)
Pussy: Well, dear, it’s been perfectly lovely chatting with you. I do hope you’ll call me again sometime. I’d so enjoy a companion on my shopping excursions. Ta-ta!
(Slams phone onto receiver. Pauses half a beat.)
Pussy: Not bad for 9am on a Saturday.
Blackout.
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