NU WAVE BAD HAIR DAY

CHARACTERS

Suzanne Aspera: Our Hero
Mimi: Suzanne’s ex-best friend
Andrea: Judas-type Teenybopper
Kit-Katatonic: Gender Fuck on Acid


The entire play takes place on a cross-town city bus.

Andrea: My summer was so amazing.

Mimi: Yeah, that’s good. Good.

Andrea: I went to third.

Mimi: Base?

Andrea: You know. (She holds two fingers together and licks between them).

Mimi: Wow.

Andrea: Yeah. It was intense. I think I had an Origasm.

Mimi: Uh, that’s nice.

Andrea: And you?

Mimi: Ok.

Andrea: You’re always so boring.

Mimi: uh … Cooper died.

Andrea: Cooper?

Mimi: Yeah.

Andrea: The kitten? I’m sorry.

Mimi: Uh huh.

Andrea: What happened?

Mimi: She dropped her catnip behind the radiator.

Andrea: Oh.

Mimi: And then she went after it.

Andrea: Uh huh.

Mimi: And her skull was too big to drop through.

Andrea: Her head?

Mimi: Yeah, she hung herself.

Andrea: That’s too bad.

Mimi: Yeah.

Andrea: How did you find her?

Mimi: It wasn’t difficult.

Andrea: What do you mean?

Mimi: Remember that early frost?

Andrea: In August?

Mimi: It dropped below 15 degrees.

Andrea: Yeah.

Mimi: I had my window open.

Andrea: So?

Mimi: The radiator went into overdrive. Oh god, the smell.

Andrea: Cooper cooked?

Mimi: Yeah.

Andrea: Hair.

Mimi: She must have made a jump from the sill to behind the radiator…and then the rest of her body fell through, if only her head wasn’t so big! When I found her the tongue was all dried up, a stale piece of chewing gum… I picked her up and it cracked off…like it was perforated.

Andrea: The head?

Mimi: Tongue.

Andrea: Shhhh! Shhhh! Here comes that Bimbo, Suzanne Aspera. You remember to play it cool, ok?

--Bus stop

Suzanne boom-baa-baas on the bus. Kit Kat gets on behind her.

Suzanne: (Primping her hair) Good morning!

Mimi: She looks doped. She’s talking to herself.

Andrea: Her pants barely cover her ankles.

Mimi: Water weight.

Andrea: Can you catch down syndrome? I think she’s on the wrong bus. The retard bus comes at 9:20.

Suzanne: I’m not autistic.

Mimi: Just ugly.

Suzanne: Takes one to know one, right? HA! Meems, its me.

Mimi: Who?

Suzanne: Suze.

Mimi: Soothes? What?

Suzanne: Suzanne Aspera.

Mimi: You’ve gotten fatter.

Andrea: Yeah. Much.

Suzanne: Check out my hair. Monique did it.

Mimi: Tell me your not living with that cosmozoologist.

Suzanne: Tologist.

Andrea: Whatever. She did that?

Mimi: Frightening.

Suzanne: Who’s your homeroom? I have your books

Mimi: Sorry?

Suzanne: VC Andrews. They were crazy.

Mimi: You can keep them.

Suzanne: Gee, really? Thanks! So, which homeroom?

Mimi: I don’t have one this year.

Suzanne: Everyone HAS one.

Andrea: Like assholes.

Mimi: Listen, Suzanne. You live with that mulatto woman and you’re father is a drunk.

Andrea: Right!

Suzanne: Mulatto?

Mimi: You heard me. My mother told me all about it.

Suzanne: What the fuck is this?

Andrea: Go on. Tell her.

Mimi: I can’t be seen engaging in heated conversation with a fat cow rocking feathered bangs and that 3 year old outfit. For Christ’s sake I’m 16 now and I’m trying to find a boyfriend. You’ve friggin’ got a banana-clip!

Andrea: What she’s trying to say is this: Everyone thinks you’re a cheap lezzy whore.

Suzanne: Oh. Is that all?

Mimi: Did you hear something?

Andrea: Not a peep.

Suzanne: I thought you were my friends.

Kit-Kat (butting in, wild eyed and on drugs): Damn, life may be a long dark corridor but you don’t have to be shitty. Come here, girl. Let’s go to the back of the bus.

Suzanne: Leave me alone. Don’t touch me.

Bus Driver (offstage voice): Hey you guys sit down back there. Move on back.

Andrea: Who’s your reject friend, Suzanne? You two make quite a couple.

Kit-Kat: Shut your hole, teenybopper. Wanna get cut?

Mimi: Ewww.

Suzanne: I don’t know him.

Kit-Kat (to Andrea): Don’t try to fuck with me, Glenda good witch snot face.

Suzanne: Relax, man. Are you OK?

Kit-Kat: I’m better than okay, baby. I’m Kit-Katatonic. Enchante!

Suzanne: Are you in a band?

Kit-Kat: A band of one. Touring a post-apocalyptic trance land. Sniffing vibrations -killing tragedy - living the lies inside my thighs, baby. Petit mortician est moi. Voulez vous matrice avec moi? Ce soir.

Suzanne: I don’t speak French.

Kit-Kat: Something’s missing from the mise-en-scene – the body and ass of Christ.

Suzanne: What is that. (reads) VCR head cleaner?

Kit-Kat: You’ll like it, I swear… it’ll clean your head.

Suzanne: But I’m not a VCR.

Kit-Kat: We are all VCRs, princess. Recording the panoply of horrors and playing it back for the innocents. Here, just take a sniff and I’ll fix your make up.

Suzanne: Oh, ok. *Cough* Uh. Oh. Umm. I just…uh, I pooped my pants. Omigod. I’m so embarrassed.

Kit-Kat: (sniffs popper) I don’t smell anything. Take another hit.

Suzanne: Wow. Ok. Uhm,

Kit-Kat: Ok, lets get started.

Suzanne: But, I just got a makeover?

Kit-Kat: Oh, Honey!

Suzanne: For the first day of school.

Kit-Kat: You’re kidding, right sweetie?

Suzanne: No - Dad’s girlfriend did it.

Kit-Kat: Who?

Suzanee: Monique…She won first place at the Barbizon cotillion.

Kit-Kat: Now it makes sense.

Suzanne: What?

Kit-Kat: My purpose. I’ll reclaim that prize.

Suzanne: Huh?

Kit-Kat: No offense but that tramp Monique ain’t got no vision.

Suzanee: You know her?

Kit-Kat: She was in my class. That girl’s so conservative. She your mother?

Suzanne: Step-mom…or, Dad’s girlfriend.

Kit-Kat: Figures. She can’t see the inner beauty ‘cuz there’s too much complicated relationshit goin’ on between y’all. I’ll do the correctivity.

Suzanne: Um…

Kit-Kat: (grabs her arm) I thought you wanted it to be different. I can help you. Don’t you understand?

Suzanne: Understand what?

Kit-Kat: That Monique is one of those girls who sit at the front of the bus and point fingers.

Suzanne: But, it took forever to get my bangs right.

Kit-Kat: Take another hit and this time breathe real deep.

Suzanne: *cough *cough, That stings.

Kit-Kat: What-choo got, cosmetics-wise?

Suzanne: Just some lip gloss and blue mascara, ‘s all.

(Suzanne passes her purse to Kit-Kat, who starts rummaging through bag)

Kit-Kat: An eyebrow pencil? Keepin’ this from me? (He pulls it out and examines the tip)

Suzanne: Oh yeah, that too. It doesn’t match my hair.

Kit-Kat: Hush now. It’s time for your close-up.

Suzanne: Ouch. That hurts.

Kit-Kat: For the pain… (rummages through bag, pulls out small plastic baggie) Open up for window pain. One for you and two for me.

Suzanne: Is there strychnine in it? I heard it causes cancer, like Shasta.

Kit-Kat: This LSD was smuggled out of Timothy Leary’s house in the talking asshole of a Manson family member. This is counter-culture concentrate.

Suzanne: This thwat Eigh sid?

Kit-Kat: Leave it on your tongue until I say so. Now where did I put my black grease paint stick?

(Kit-Kat begins the transformation of Suzanne into Princess VCR)

Mimi: Oh my god, what is going on back there?

Andrea: He’s giving her fleas, crabs and lice all at the same time.

Mimi: She looks so out of it.

Andrea: I can’t wait to tell Steph and Raina before first period. They are so gonna FLIP!

Mimi: Maybe we should do something.

Andrea: Are you kidding? She was asking for it.

Mimi: Maybe we were a little too hard on her?

Andrea: Who, Blimpie?

Mimi: I mean, the trauma of losing Cooper is still with me.

Andrea: Grow up. The passing of your cat is emblematic of your maturity. The kitten needed to go. For God’s sake, you get your period now…You can’t be hanging out with fat lezzy mustachioed cows, ok? You do want a boyfriend, correct?

Mimi: I suppose so.

Andrea: Good. Let’s move back a few seats to hear what’s going on.

Mimi: I’m not snooping.

Andrea: Oh yeah? I wish I had some popcorn.

Mimi: You’re perverse.

Andrea: Shut the fuck up. We’re in high school and you’ve not done your homework.

(As Andrea sneaks back a few rows…the audible cries and squeals from Kit Kat and Princess VCR grow more intense. They work up into a crescendo of delight and POOF).

Kit-Kat: I am pleased to present…

(Music starts as Kit-Kat finishes this triumphant announcement…princess VCR looks like a cross between Bridgid Polk and the bride of Frankenstein. Her hair has severely peaked spikes and other possibly dangerous features.)

Kit-Kat: What’s her name? Pah-rinse-cess! How’s it spelt? Vee Cee aaaarR!

Suzanne: Uh, yeah!

Kit-Kat: Work, gurhl. Go’on. Work it out.

Suzanne: Like this?

Kit-Kat: Uh – huh. What’s her name?

Suzanne: Princess.

Kit-Kat: How’s it spelt?

Suzanne: VCR!

(They repeat this chant as these next few lines are exchanged between Mimi and Andrea).

Andrea: Meems! MEEEMS!!! Are you seeing this? I told you! Definite popcorn material. It’s like a makeover for satanic teenage prostitutes on Donahue! Ha!

Mimi: SHHHHH!!!!

Andrea: And you know what else? I think she crapped her pants! It smells like a fucking diaper back here! HA HA!

Kit-Kat: You got somethin’ to say, Missy?

Andrea: Yeah. There isn’t a lavatory on this bus so you’ll have to carry that log out with you.

Kit-Kat: Shut it, ho! (matter of fact) I’ll cut you.

Andrea: What’d you do to her? She looks like a burn victim.

Suzanne: You’re just scared cause I look better than you, Farrah Fawcett. How are the 70’s?

Andrea: (gasping) Charlie’s Angels is better than night of the living dead, Suzanne.

Mimi: Maybe I can help out,

Suzanne: You can’t touch this.

Kit-Kat: Tell ‘em, Girl.

Suzanne: I’m not interested in getting fucked painfully and hashing out the details with a witches brew crew, and I’m not into working out my herky technique with the rest of the squad, either. Fuck the two of you, I’m beyond this Aryan trash heap of suburban mores. I’ve got hair, and I’m headin’ to the city.

Andrea: See, I told you she’s a dyke.

Mimi: She’s obviously in pain. We need to support her.

Andrea: Are you kidding?

Suzanne: You’re bleeding heart shtick won’t work, either, Mimi. I’ll jujitsu you with my split ends.

Kit-Kat: For real. I’ve seen them. They’ve cut diamonds.

Suzanne: I have tried so hard. I have permed, teased, feathered and for what?. So I can look like you? Why should I? You’re at the bottom of the scrap heap, Andrea and I have a flamethrower between my legs. So burn baby, burn. This “fat lezzy” is you’re worst nightmare. Can’t you tell how punk fucking rock my pussy smells?

Kit-Kat: Damn princess, I can smell it. (hits popper)

Andrea: All I can smell is a little bitch who crapped her pants.

Suzanne: I’ve taken your shit for years, Andrea, Here take some of mine (pulls shit from pants and smears it all over Andrea’s face and hair. Kit-Kat and Mimi are aghast)

Andrea: (crumpling in shock) Ohmigod, (gags) I can’t believe you just did that. (starts crying)

Mimi: Why are you being so mean to us? We’re your friends, Suzanne. Don’t be evil.

Suzanne: I will have no part in your morality ploys, Mimi. Your evil is a construct to control me. Evil is when you force me into believing your shit hole life philosophy. I will not believe anymore. I will be more.

Mimi: I’m going to tell the bus driver to stop.

Kit-Kat: Princess, don’t make a scene. Chill out - it’s just the acid kicking in.

Suzanne: I will not chill out, sit down or step off. I am sophomore Godzilla.

Kit-Kat Ok okay…. I AM with you. A rear gunner. Princess VCR, lead the way.

Andrea (crying and sputtering): Fuck you Suzy Q, fat bitch lezzie whore. I curse you. May you never know the happiness of a condoned marriage. I curse you with the marginalized representation you deserve.

Suzanne: This reification of hetero norms will be your quicksand.

Andrea: Whatever, Suzanne. You’re goin’ down.

Mimi: Wait.

Suzanne: For what?

Mimi: I’m sorry. Don’t do this.

Suzanne: I don’t think so.

Mimi: For realz. I’ve been manipulated by the patriarchy. Andrea is a brainwasher, and I was one of the washed. We’re lost already.

Suzanne: You see my hair?

Mimi: Yes.

Suzanne: You want to feel it.

Mimi: Silky-smooth? Do you use Prell?

Suzanne: You tell me. Ha!

(Suzanne attacks Mimi with her bangs and other shellacked hair features. It is obviously violent, a rape. Andrea attacks Kit-Kat and is overpowered. Lights strobe)

Kit-Kat: Hair hath such fury when its scorned.

Mimi: Wait!

Suzanne: No way.

Andrea: Fuck you queers. Bring it!

Mimi: Ow. That hurts.

Kit-Kat: Damn girl you’re dirty.

Suzanne: That’s right.

Kit-Kat: You okay up there, Princess .

Mimi: I’m bleeding.

Suzanne: And I’m just getting started..

Kit-Kat: Next stop. CNN. Mister Bus Driver, we’re gonna be on television.

(struggle continues as strobe lights slow to off)

End of play.

H²O: Joycian

its slow erosions of peninsulas and islands, its persistent formation of homothetic islands, peninsulas and downwardtending promontories: its alluvial deposits: its weight and volume and density: its imperturbability in lagoons and highland tarns: its gradation of colours in the torrid and temperate and frigid zones: its vehicular ramifications in continental lakecontained streams and confluent oceanflowing rivers with their tributaries and transoceanic currents, gulfstream, north and south equatorial courses: its violence in seaquakes, waterspouts, Artesian wells, eruptions, torrents, eddies, freshets, spates, groundswells, watersheds, waterpartings, geysers, cataracts, whirlpools, maelstroms, inundations, deluges, cloudbursts: its vast circumterrestrial ahorizontal curve: its secrecy in springs and latent humidity, revealed by rhabdomantic or hygrometric instruments and exemplified by the well by the hole in the wall at Ashtown gate, saturation of air, distillation of dew: the simplicity of its composition, two constituent parts of hydrogen with one constituent part of oxygen: its healing virtues: its buoyancy in the waters of the Dead Sea: its persevering penetrativeness in runnels, gullies, inadequate dams, leaks on shipboard: its properties for cleansing, quenching thirst and fire, nourishing vegetation: its infallibility as paradigm and paragon: its metamorphoses as vapour, mist, cloud, rain, sleet, snow, hail: its strength in rigid hydrants: its variety of forms in loughs and bays and gulfs and bights and guts and lagoons and atolls and archipelagos and sounds and fjords and minches and tidal estuaries and arms of sea: its solidity in glaciers, icebergs, icefloes: its docility in working hydraulic millwheels, turbines, dynamos, electric power stations, bleachworks, tanneries, scutchmills: its utility in canals, rivers, if navigable, floating and graving docks: its potentiality derivable from harnessed tides or watercourses falling from level to level: its submarine fauna and flora (anacoustic, photophobe), numerically, if not literally, the inhabitants of the globe: its ubiquity as constituting 90 percent of the human body: the noxiousness of its effluvia in lacustrine marshes, pestilential fens, faded flowerwater, stagnant pools in the waning moon

After Pat’s Birthday

After Pat’s Birthday

Posted on Oct 19, 2006

By Kevin Tillman

Editor’s note: Kevin Tillman joined the Army with his brother Pat in 2002, and they served together in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat was killed in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. Kevin, who was discharged in 2005, has written a powerful, must-read document.

It is Pat’s birthday on November 6, and elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier would leave us without a voice… until we got out.

Much has happened since we handed over our voice:
Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that can’t be called a civil war even though it is. Something like that.

Somehow our elected leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything, secretly torturing them. Somehow that overt policy of torture became the fault of a few “bad apples” in the military.

Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet. It’s interesting that a soldier on his third or fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle 50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the seat.

Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal invasion becomes.

Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.

Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.

Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated.

Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.

Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is tolerated.

Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is tolerated.

Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe.

Somehow torture is tolerated.

Somehow lying is tolerated.

Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense.

Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world.

Somehow a narrative is more important than reality.

Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is.

Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and distrusted countries in the world.

Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been replaced by apathy through active ignorance.

Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtue-less, vacuous, malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.

Somehow this is tolerated.

Somehow nobody is accountable for this.

In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people. So don’t be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity. Most likely, they will come to know that “somehow” was nurtured by fear, insecurity and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked, unchallenged parasites.

Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice. People still can take action. It can start after Pat’s birthday.

Brother and Friend of Pat Tillman,
Kevin Tillman

The Firm Desire

- - - -
I have a firm desire, and I enter
Unbending, driven deeply, hard as nail.
What lies! Such gossip has plundered my soul—
But since I cannot bear this flimsy rod,
I'll play the flute until it cries uncle
In secret, before his closet-chamber.

I go softly limp before that chamber
Where conquering men can never enter;
The bedroom guard, both angels and uncles,
Dissolve pride—even to the fingernail—
Of suitors, stiff like boys before the rod.
Such fears of not being his, in my soul!

At least in bodied flesh, if not in soul,
Let him hide me, once, in that chamber!
Let wounds the heart embraced not spare the rod!
Servant to his secrets, I should enter!
Now bind me close to him—as flesh to nail—
And heed no warnings from friend or uncle.

Even the sweet comrade of my uncle
I never loved so well—with all my soul.
The quick between his finger and his nail,
So would I be, and press into his chamber.
And molded to its will, love would enter
This heart, this soldier with a tender rod.

Since syrup last flowed from a withered rod,
And Adam fathered nephew and uncle,
Never has love blossomed so! Now enter
My heart, and dwell in neither flesh nor soul,
But where he lives—in each street, each chamber
That bears me, Father, to the Sacred Nail.

At last, veil bloodied by the caulking nail!
My heart holds him, as bark to sapling-rod.
My dizzying tower's joy, his chamber
Where no love for father, friend, or uncle
Remains—only Heaven's sweet-doubled soul
In spooning's cup, where I slowly enter.

Andre spouts song, of nail crying, "uncle!"
By grace of he who claims the rod's bent soul,
To all! Unchamber his praise, and enter!