This is a sample from my one-character play Eleanor Rigby’s Revenge, which premiered at Trap Door Theatre in Chicago in August 2002. It’s about a 30-year-old author who escapes into a Monet painting to escape a hapless life.

 

You look up.  There he is.  Whoever he is.  You never learn his name or anything more about him.  Yet he stands there like a flesh Praxiteles, all contra possto.  Oh, I don’t mean to knock that stage of the game. It’s invaluable. It’s a lot of what makes life worth living.  In fact, I wrote in my book:  (Reads) “If you’re a soul who is prohibited from having a beautiful man, try to at least be grateful they’re here on earth to look at.”  His Attic posture might even trigger a hormone rush you wouldn’t have that day without him.  But it’s all as fleeting as that train you’re riding. 

His shoulders shrug back.  Head tilts forward, slowly back, to the side.   Eyes become soft as a cat’s in heat, pointed as rifles.  Lips pout with as much intent to kill as to kiss.  Pheromones, seeping out of his pores, shiver their way into yours.

You play it cool like you’ve seen and slain every Minotaur in town.   All the while, your wrists clench.  Mouth goes wet and dry.  Tongue thickens.  You cross your legs to exhibit a more relaxed pose and keep down what might be sticking out.  If you’re close enough to where he’s standing - say, three seats away or less - you may catch him being a little vulnerable too.  May see that, cool as he is, you’re making his trousers into one hell of a tent.  – All the same, good to know he’s human, just like you.  In fact, it’s the ultimate compliment.  Next to, “I love you.”

Don’t know what to say.  – Neither does he. – Hand him my name and number. He stumbles. Gives a twitching smile.  “Thank you…Drew.”  Again, his smile twitches.  Takes a look around, sees if we’re being watched.  All bravado collapses.  Go back to my seat.  Train pulls up to his stop.  He decamps, tail between his legs, puppy eyes.  He doesn’t call, though. 

Is synchronicity one big fiction?  People talk about star-crossed lovers, destined mates.  Am I supposed to see all these tantalizing come-ons as peak experiences?   Gifts from God?  Why would the Universe lay out the bait, just to drag it away like that?  I used to watch Cary Grant movies and productions of Romeo and Juliet.  Funny how you can’t sell a movie or play about how life really is – one anticlimax after another.

One early December evening, I’m on my way to Ray’s Used Books on Clark Street.  Not in the market for anything light.  I want big and meaty.  An arctic winter will soon be hitting. I’m looking for something I can stay indoors with and be close to under the covers.  Maybe a George Eliot I haven’t read yet. 

A forest-green overcoat flaps in the mutinous Chicago wind.  For a block now, the man wearing it has been just a step ahead of me.  He slows down, turns his head my way.  Black hair, light streaks of gray.  An unmistakable smile plumes out of the corner of his mouth.  I’m an old hand at this.   I dig into my coat pocket for the trusty phone number. 

Shoulder to shoulder now.  We walk and gaze and smile.  Walk and gaze and smile.  Walk. Gaze. Smile.  Ray’s Used Books is right on the corner.  I stop.  He turns.  I hand over my number.  His smile broadens.  It’s freezing out.  I go in. 

A minute ago, I just planned to browse. Now I’m hell-bent for George Eliot. Never read Mill on the Floss before.  Try opening to page one. My hands fumble. Open to the middle instead. Okay, take it from 320: “Tom felt in an uncomfortable flutter as he took off his…”  -  Hello!  - Yeah, I…I like to buy them used.  It’s like recycling paper.  I mean, it’s pages and pages, and you’re not the only one who’s gone through them.  It’s the responsible thing, buying the…book…used…Yes, I like George Eliot very…Dinner? …Um, no, no plans…Just stopping by for something to read…Well, a writer…I mean, I do other things to put lentil soup and Saltines on the table …Yeah, ‘fraid so…Lentil soup and Sal…No, damn right you can’t, can’t live on that alone…Drew, Drew Sullivan… Nice to meet you, Carl…Um, no, never been there…Well, see, Carl, I’m a little out of pocket…Well, I mean, long as you’re asking me…No, I’ve read Middlemarch, Adam Bede, Silas Marner, but not…Oh, I can take care of…well, since you got the cash out.  Thanks.

Carl and I walk over to his two-story graystone on Astor.  He goes in to get the keys to his jet-black Miata.  He has tarps over what’s sure to be a luscious garden by summer.  A full-sized replica of Aphrodite, shrouded in plastic, stands guard over the dormant flowerbeds.  Story-high, wrought iron gates protect her in turn. 

Carl’s taking me to Tresor.  Says it’s a swank, smoky dining parlor that meets his three “e” requirements: “elegant,” “eclectic,” “exotic.”  I’ve read about Tresor.  Papers call it a “Weimar cabaret with sultry jazz.”  Say you don’t walk in there unless you’re looking for money and trouble.  I’m a writer.  I err on the side of trouble. 

I’ll be safe, though, just like the flowerbeds or that Venus in a body bag. Maybe Carl will even have a place for me in his graystone someday.  I picture myself on the second floor, writing in a room of my own, pausing to watch people walk by on Astor Street. “Look at the poor dears, having to go to work.”

Carl opens the car door for me. No sooner do I click on my seatbelt than he slips me the Altoid-tainted tongue. I take it like a soldier.  Some minutes go by. Stop to breathe.  Stare each other down. I peer deeply into his soul, clamp onto his lips again, tight as a vise.  - Tight as a vice. -  Well, okay, I’m not paying much attention to his soul.  But I can sure feel his lips wrapping round mine – full and muscular. 

At Tresor, Carl and I walk through a cast-iron door.  Down a spiral staircase: golden railings, white marble steps.  Into a Versailles-style salon, swathed in velvet, lit low with electric candles.  All tables ensconced in black velvet booths.  A saxophone cajoles from the bandstand. The scarlet-corseted hostess helps us negotiate our way through a gauntlet of dim booths.  She seats us in a far-off corner, where we won’t be disturbed.  Carl lights a Dunhill with a vintage gold lighter, orders a white Russian.  I order Chianti.  He puts his hand on mine.  The ruby on his pinky astounds me.      

Think so?…I dunno, just never really saw myself as that.  But thank you…Well, come on, I’m the last of ten kids…Yep, Irish Catholics…So didn’t get many compliments, growing up.  Sure as hell didn’t hear, “You’re sexy”…You kiddin’?  Never heard shit about that. For talk like that, you’d go hang out with the broken-home bad-asses…No, we didn’t consort.  They called me faggot…My folks left it to Sr. Agnes…fifth grade religion class…Not much.  Just that God intended it for married couples only - in their bedrooms - nowhere else – and it makes babies.  Oh, and it has no place in civilized conversation. Hope she’s not skulking around our table now.  Although, I don’t know, she did always wear those see-through blouses.  She might just turn up here…Oh, yeah. In fact, under one of her infamous blouses, Sr. Agnes sported the first lacy bra I ever saw.  - Kid you not.  - So, maybe she was just the one to teach sex ed.

What kind of importing you do, Carl?…Big market here?…So why not move up to Toronto?…Huge Asian population.  Far more cosmopolitan than Chicago…No, baby, not trying to move you out of town.  Stick around, Carl.  Stick around.

Led you to me?…Well, yes, I believe in fate, absolutely.  Usually just in retrospect, though…It’s hard to call it on the spot…I don’t know what to feel about you, Carl…But damn that feels good…Keep doing that…So much hasn’t materialized…Oh, you have, have you?…Maybe…So much has fallen through, though, in the past…Mmmm… Maybe….Mmmm… Maybe the past only repeats itself for a while….Mmmm… Maybe…Maybe trials are just pathways to new plateaus.  Maybe fortunes do pull out of reverse.  Maybe you’re on to something, Carl.  Maybe.

*

I stretch out on Carl, tight as a drumhead. 
His granite belly rises and falls - rises, falls – in even tempo with my
quickening breath. 
Rhythmic, rhythmic, how rhythmic. 
Been waiting my whole life long for this perfect, gasping rhythm,
thoroughgoing as knuckles, gentle as lathering waves. 
Heart claws my sternum.
Chest drapes his lightly as the soft veils of night on the Chicago rooftops. 
Mouths meet, voluptuous. 
His tongue rolls on to mine,
kneading it with masterful, masterful, masterful application. 
Nipples, cocks, harder than his two-story graystone.  
Stars flare brighter, brighter in the deepening twilight. 
Been waiting my whole life long. 
My whole
life
long to be fucked this good.