Artemesia

the phone rings.



Marc:
Hello?

Artemesia:
Marc?

"Oh, hey, Artemesia, what is up?"

"well you know...we've always been close, right?"

"Ah, yeah."

"And remember how i never ask you to do me favors?"

uh-oh. what is about to happen? (is that i am showing what could have happened if i had remained close friends with this person who i realised had morals that I don't have and a totally different set of value judgments? She drifted out of my life and I didn't resist.)



"Well, I modeled for you that time."

"oh, Marc, shut up! That wasn't a favor! I paid you...and you have fat legs now, too!"


"This is sadly true...and accurate...work isn't a favor. So I would do anything for you, I guess, within reason, what is it?"

(see: i love this person. I learned to love the person underneath the pretty flesh facade. to me, that is important.) i light a cigarette and wonder what is up.

"Well, he's got to die and and really, you should kill him."



"Oh...yeah, I've felt that way. Trust me, Artemesia, when I was with Saula all that time there were many days when I just bit off and swallowed my tongue, puked it down the toilet anything but talk to her again. Yeah. But-- what can you do."

Resignation -- I LOVE resignation.

How could I ever actually start something new without discarding old things, just letting things go? I would explode with shit.


"So...exit visas, huh?"


"You're not taking me seriously. You have to KILL him, Marc, he's on his way over to your house and he knows EVERYTHING."


"WHAT?"

"I MEAN -- you HAVE to kill him cause if you don't, he's gonna kill you."



"Who?"



"Miles."

"Why the FUCK is Miles coming here to kill me?" the live in, boyfriendish, drug dealer husband that she chose or seemed to choose explaining why i distanced myself --


"Oh, Marc, don't you LOVE me? I told him you loved me and that your love was just better than his."


"WHAT? You -- what?"


THIS is the girl who when I worked at the cafe...






the fact that Flora is a baba yaga kind of person, short and very Russian-Jewy and wide hipped and actually resembles the great Blavatsky is why she plays the late ayn rand. the whole play is a homage to Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled and her life story.
"but the world is so divided, hollobecque," and slowly carefully, renata begins unbottoning her long black dress. she is wearing nothing underneath and the point of the play is that simple.

"the world is divided, ancient helena, into castes, and races, and subraces, and geopolitical zone."


she would come up to me and say "Marc, crack my back?" And she would place her pelvis up against mine LIKE SHE WAS TRYING TO FIND THE MATCH and put my hands around her and over backwards, letting her long hair brush the ceramic tile floor
like we were in
some sort
of weird
boho ballet.
And i would stand and NOT get a boner because i am realistic
But it was weird. that's...basically why it wasn't erotic
because it was so weird.
And of course...the baked fuck incident.

ARTEMESIA

The door swings open and light temporarily floods the stage area. Flora walks in in her 1967 business suit and immediately begins removing her clothing. her make up is a pallid blue as she plays dead Ayn Rand, like a zombie freshly exhumed.

she sweats the body paint of her largish breasts but it looks cool. "You are lying to yourself, Helena Petrova Blavatsky, as such mystical thinkers as yourself often do. The contradiction is evident."


helen mirren as ayn rand
flora is four feet nine inches tall. her breasts are like twin cannons annihilating the audience. and of course there is tittering -- her voice is sort of high and squeaky. her accent is entirely too russian. she's awesome in other words, it's as if ayn rand just jumped out of the --

"if, as you say there were supposed to be some mystical theosophistic awakening in the world as you so immaturely see it," -

flora's removed her business woman's skirt. she is unshaven down south. the audience are having aneurisms. it's awesome.

at home, i know anne is watching SNL. little fool.

"hello, hollobecque. may i please have a cigarette?"

"don't you have your own cigarettes, ayn?" i smile at her.

"hollobecque! what i lack is time for games. the afterlife is very cold and impersonal and there are no cigarettes available."
"cold and impersonal," says renata, slowly...'as you were in life...alisa."

"how dare you? ahh...hollobecque, this woman, if i must be summoned, improbably from the grave, if you won't give me a cigarette i simply do not know how well we can..."

"i was only kidding ayn. hey, did she just call you 'alisa', ayn?"

"oh, but of course? miss blavatsky is a mystic, and mystics are unintellectual boorish and coarse as well as lacking in an ability to view the universe objectively."

"you're one to talk, you miserable old ghost! and you trampled my dissertation. i was just about to say that the world is slowly undergoing a beatified transfiguration, such as aquinas..."

"ah, phooey. can i have a light, hollobecque?"

flora is a natural talent. it's a breeze to work with her -- she bends over and well, i light her ciggie for her.

i am used to staring at her massive milky dugs. in the cafe someone says 'daaaAAAaamn." like that. it's steve. i think he has found new appreciation for flora.

"thank you steven," says flora breaking character. some of the regulars crack up giggling in the back of the seating area.
"also, randal, if you would be so kind, i would like a chair. blavatsky is so dull, the old bitch..." said flora reverting immediately back into character, "tires me out! and i am dead!"

"certainly, ayn." i step out of the lit floor area and get one of the empty chairs.


it is silent -- except mari is talking to someone in the front of the cafe. it is her usual steady stream of almost whispered talk, it's just fine, the play can go on.

"the mystical fact of my being dead, however, has slightly softened my opinion of people such as blavatsky. although i still do not see her as my intellectual equal there is much to be said for her as a woman and as a writer. even though ISIS UNVEILED was Aryan propaganda, garbage! how could you?" says flora, narrowing her dark eyes at Renata.

renata mocks contriteness artfully and continues unbuttoning her long black dress. "i...was a spiritual woman in life...what politics and men in general would use my words for...i could not be ready for."

the black frock slipped gently to the floor. the lights dimmed. i know groo was back there, experimenting and doing well. we were bathed in a combination of black light and glowing tones...as the music began to swell imperceptibly. i knew it would build.

"the men who came after me raped my intentions," said renata, putting some soul into blavatsky, "for their criminal purposes...many theosophists were so sure...that the Aryan tribes of antiquity were nomads, philosophers...cultural marvels. i am ashamed slightly...we had a lot to learn."

"I'll say, sister," says flora as an americanicized ayn rand. "they raped your philosophies for all they could squeeze, greedy pigs." i am still a little amazed by the black forest of hair south of flora's belly. her crotch and legs are totally unshaven. it's wild...

"men rape. it is all they know how to do, ultimately...you were a fool, blavatsky, as was i in life. men take what they will with little thought more often than not and then congratulate themselves. where is the living one?"

"camille? she's...on her way. but you were crucifying me. it's astonishing. my eyes are watering."

"your guilt as a member of your race, no doubt. give me another cigarette." she stomps the butt on the floor. her breasts shake and a girl in the front row takes in her breath with a gasp.

i smile. the effect of the black lights combined with the key lightr glowing like a slow strobe from behind is crucial. her already large breasts seem to grow and shrink -- to advance and retreat. it's pretty awesome. and wa smy idea.



"my race...you mean jewish?"

"no, hollobecque, you sycophant. i mean male. homo sapiens as opposed to the finer sex, hetera sapiens, ourselves. the women. jewish is not a race...this is why in life i could only be with other Objectivists. now of course i am dead...a lot more is tolerable. thank you," said flora, lighting the cigarette.

"that was another time...ayn..." and renata smiled like a pixie.

she had a tamborine and she shook it in time to the gypsy music that was rising in the back ground and swayed slightly. "the great spiritual awakening that i am speaking of could not have taken place while we were alive, ayn and it is taking place because of your accomplishments. I am ISIS, UNVEILED," said my wife, and the lights changed and the music took on a more mystical tone. "the males could never have created what is about to happen in the world with their ignorant isms...including your Aristotle, literate as he was...so short sighted."

"and a dead fuck as well. I see that now. i was such a fool when i was alive!" she sits and crosses her hairy legs, smoking and tapping ashes on the floor.

"let me get you an ashtray," i say. and i leave the stage area.


"so how do you like being dead?" flora, as rand.

"we are spiritual beings...they are spiritual beings as well, but they are trapped in bags of skin, generally unaware of their trip through the mundane world of mortality and sadness. ah, what a wonderous gift humanity has in its flesh, being so infused with spirit." renata dances and shakes her tamborine.

i am reciting her lines to myself as i head to the prop area and get the standing ashtray.

"it's sort of true, in a way...but i could have never ever admitted that while i was alive. it was all about the clearly definable, the real, what i could see with my eyes and touch with my hands. things, not objects. we had no way to prove...the existance of the soul. i knew i had one of course, but...ah, i know so much more now, from this perspective."

"we are the ghosts of intellect and wisdom, having a spiritual dance byond the veil of magic," says renata, dancing.

in the prop room rachel is standing with her hand on her hip glancing at the script. "surely you are ready, and don't need that."

"ah, you know, randy," says rachel.

"it's just fun to go over it. but yeah, i am, like, way off book. 'and we, in some strange power's employ, move in a rigorous line."

"towards the stage, mayhap," i add nervously. i am always nervous. it's only partly because we put on plays in a coffeehouse. i am just nervous.

"yeah, it's that time."

she shuts off the audio monitor and follows me to the stage.

"really, randal, it's a bore and a little perplexing that you bring me all the way across town to this little dive," says rachel in her camille paglia voice.

"it's not 'all the way across town.' you know...that's the problem with you penn people. for some of the students, anyway."

"oh, you imagine us disconnected? i think i am pretty much in touch with the community, as much as i need to be."

we are doing this in the back room -- before entering the stage area where renata is swaying to gypsy music and flora is smoking cigarettes. the audience has to turn their heads, but that's all right.

"yeah, admittedly camille, you are not as bad as some of the students. a three block walk from pine to chestnut -- "

"that's more like five blocks."

"true. but the point is the kids call that a HIKE, camille. and they are so provincial."

"mm-hmm," says rachel, staring at me with her bird eyes. "you know i actually am hungry, i will eat whatever, you said something about noodles."

"right, right...the cafe is empty. well except for the ghosts."

end of act one.