Tag: dramedy

short swings

A one-act play for mature audiences.

“Two people confront one-another about their feelings, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, in the wrong way – and possibly, to the wrong person.”

THE SCENE
A party in a suburban home. Nighttime.

THE CAST
Kristan, she/her, 30s, standoffish, with coloured hair.
Kevin, he/him, 30s, brazen.

Graeme, 30s, a smoking guest.
Tommy, 30s, his friend.
A Man in a Suit, 30s, a silent weirdo.

Karl, a drunk partygoer, adult-aged.
Holly, a curious partygoer, adult-aged.
A Goof, 30s, an idiot.

*

As the audience enters the theatre, the CURTAIN is CLOSED and the HOUSE LIGHTS are ON. In front of the curtain at STAGE-LEFT, under a spotlight, is a patio chair and an outdoor table with an ashtray on it. On STAGE-RIGHT, on a bench, sits A MAN IN A SUIT – looking forlorn, “smoking” a cigarette, ashing on the ground. Behind the curtain, you can hear bass-heavy background music, played at a minimal volume.

Five-minutes before the start of show, GRAEME enters STAGE-LEFT. He “lights” a cigarette and stares out into the crowd like he’s looking-out from a porch. Occasionally, GRAEME will look at the MAN IN A SUIT, but the MAN IN A SUIT does not look back, nor do they share any pleasantries.

HOUSE LIGHTS FADE. TOMMY enters STAGE-LEFT, also “lighting” a cigarette.

TOMMY
Hey Graeme!

GRAEME
Tommy! What’s shaking?

TOMMY & GRAEME “pound” fists.

TOMMY
Not a whole Hell of a lot. I thought I’d never run into someone I know here.

GRAEME
Yeah, me neither. The wife dragged me. But it’s nice to see you!

TOMMY
You too! Are you coming with us next weekend?

GRAEME
To do what?

TOMMY
The guys didn’t tell you?

GRAEME
No…

TOMMY
Oh. Well we’re all going hunting.

GRAEME
(apprehensive) Hunting, huh?

TOMMY
Yeah. Don’t take it too personal. If anyone asks just say I invited you.

GRAEME
No, it’s not that. I’m just not sure how comfortable I’d be with going hunting.

TOMMY
If you’re sad for the deer, it’s an annual cull.

GRAEME
Yeah, there’s that. But it’s mostly just all the random shootings going on everywhere. I don’t know how cool I am going shooting for fun when kids are getting killed for no reason.

Continue reading →
Posted on by wd 0

tanning parties do not exist

A short story for mature readers.

“A crusty, middle-aged loser is afforded a second chance at love, with tragi-comic (and self-actualized) consequences.”

Which window was hers’? The left or the right?
He threw the rock in the air & caught it: once, then twice, then over again; thinking it over, the thud against his hand cracking through the silent night air. He had seen this done a million times in the movies before, and he didn’t recall one single time that it didn’t work. He was going to give it a shot.
Any second now.
Thud, thud, thud…
Em would love it, he was sure. The gesture. Classically-romantic. Chivalrous. Well, not really. There was no way to climb up to her window except if he was Spider-Man; or if he lowered himself down from the roof, which he could see himself getting to via a Mouse Trap-esque Rube Goldberg setup that nature & suburbia had blended together over generations, like that tree in the neighbor’s front lawn with the long-reaching branch, that he could use to get to the neighbor’s roof, and then a hop over. He didn’t care about the neighbor so much. He was a goof.
No, forget it. Forget it! It was ridiculous! He expected himself to what, clip the carabiner that held his water bottle to his bicycle out-front to the laundry line? Tyrolene-traverse himself across, like he was James Bond? That would be pretty cool. But what was more likely to happen was him falling pathetically from the tree – after only getting maybe halfway up, barely passed the stump – and break something. His ankle, perhaps. But that was all hypothetical. Right now, he was trying to get laid, in the most dignified way possible.
Left or right window?
Crap… he dropped the rock. It tumbled a few times away from him in the grass before coming to a halt. Suddenly, things didn’t seem so quiet anymore. He was wasting time… pick one! Before somebody calls the cops. Some nosy, restless goof up at two AM on a Saturday morning! He picked the rock up and noticed it was damp now from the dew on the knoll. He looked back up at the windows, and threw the rock at the left one.
Left. He was sure that was the one. Too late now, as it tapped violently against the dormer, ricocheting off the glass & coming back at him on the ground by his feet. Why not pick it up and try again? OK, he will. He picked the same rock up and threw it back against the same window.
It sailed through the glass making a perfect hole, like a bullet. And as a gunshot would, the sound rang long & far, and it was a matter of moments before every dog in a two-block radius was getting in on the clamor. Crap! That wasn’t supposed to happen! That never happened in the movies!
What should he do? Should he stay? Should he go? Like that song… get the damn song out of your head right now, man! This is serious stuff! A light turned on through the left window – what was left of it – as a man’s silhouette approached & lifted the busted shutter. “Are you fucking nuts? Who’s out there? There’s no use hiding: I can see you from behind the shed!”
“…Hi Derrick!”
“How do you know my name? Do I have to come down there and kick your ass?”
“It’s George!”
“George? As in, Emma’s George?”
“Yes! I’m sorry I broke your window!”
“She’s not even here tonight, dude! You’re just lucky our parents are out too! What the fuck are you doing?”
“…I was trying to be romantic.”
“What?”
“I was trying to be romantic!”
“Did you think the rock was just going to bounce off like it was ‘Romeo & Juliet’? Did you even see the size of this rock?”
“I was sure it was a small one!”
“A small one? Look!” Derrick bent down and picked the rock up, holding it high up: “This thing is fucking enormous!”
“Well, it didn’t seem that big a second ago!”
“It’s huge!”
“I’ve been out here a while, OK?”
“What the Hell is going on out here?” It was the next-door goof patrol, sticking almost his entire upper body out his upstairs bedroom window, “Hey Clear-mont, do I need to be calling the cops or what?”
“No, it’s good Bob, thanks! I’m taking care of it.”
“Well take care of it faster, cause some of us are trying to sleep!”
“George, go away. I’ll call you tomorrow.” Derrick closed the shutter and the impact against the sill broke some more glass from the frame. You could hear the shards rolling down the eave, with some making it to the edge, pitter-pattering on the concrete below like rainfall. George was pretty happy with how the whole experience went, really. It could have been way worse, like, if he didn’t get along with Em’s brother. Or if Em really was home, and he got the window right after all, but it broke her glass and scared her. And then he would be explaining to her why he thought it was romantic to break her bedroom window at two o’clock in the morning.
He walked around the front of the house only to find that his bike was missing. Where did it go? Wasn’t this where he left it? How long had he been standing there?

Continue reading →
Posted on by wd 0

the scientific wonder and a sober son

A short story for mature readers.

“A blossoming but otherwise-normal young woman learns some odd lessons – and some not-so-much – about life & love during her Senior year.”

I’ve got a junkie heart in a cage of bone
I’m a scientific wonder, a sober son
I was born blue-blooded
So I’ve never made a cent on my own
…Will you remember me, after I’m gone?

– “Will You Remember Me” by Jann Arden

*

A Prologue

Once upon a time, in a place not unlike that of your own adolescence, there lived a girl. There was nothing particular about this girl that stood out on first glance: just a plain high school Senior. Nothing special, nothing significant. She would blend in to a class of her peers like a chameleon, sharing the faces and features of those in her own circumstance. Her grades were impeccable. She came from a middle-income upbringing, and fate had chosen her to live the quaint, “normal” life of a juvenile from the suburbs.
Having said that, we open the curtain to our story in a frank moment of passion between our heroine and a boy, in his bedroom. She did it because she wanted to. She did it, because no one was watching her. Only him. And there was no judgment in his eyes: only pleasure. Pleasure that she was giving him. For underneath her perennial exterior beat a fiery heart, felicitous for stoking. It made her feel confident & powerful. Older. And as she carried on and his undulations became vulgarer & his complexion reddened, she managed to tune him out – in the same way an extra’s face in one’s dream is distorted – and became solely & absolutely concentrated on the task at hand, no pun intended. Because this was what this was all for, wasn’t it? At the end of it all, wasn’t this really just for him? And plus, she couldn’t stand this old music he had playing in the background, and the sooner she was finished the better. So depressing! What did he say it was? The Smiths? Who they Hell were THEY?
“Oh fuck that’s so good baby, give me more of it like that, yeah… shit…

She had no desire to become pregnant. There was a girl in her grade who everyone watched like a celebrity trial: from those first public cries of fear in the cafeteria, to when her baby bump began to show, to when she returned after a month’s absence only to push her pram around the school’s half-empty corridors to special classes. Our heroine didn’t want to be like that, with strangers scrutinizing her and making assumptions. But that girl was so plain about all of it, like there wasn’t anything else to talk about. No one knew who her baby’s daddy was: that was the only real secret she kept. No, our heroine attracted attention in a different, more obvious way. Because despite being ordinary in an unfussy, homespun way, she was still a girl in the inescapable midst of becoming a woman. In that way, she felt like a part of something: like she always had a community behind her, of girls all going through the same thing. That empathy. She knew she was privileged to be White & attractive so she never felt a need to be more overt than that to anyone.
The boy was close now. His face contorted in that way she saw the boys in the movies do, as he whipped his hands around the back of her head & held it down.
When he was done, she stood up, spat the cum out of her mouth and on to his face, and left. Pig! She was already dressed, and by the time he composed himself she was gone & he was too blind to chase after her. He just rolled around in pain & the fast-crystallizing ooze. The boy’s name, haplessly, was Chance.

Continue reading →
Posted on by wd 0

watching me watching you

A short story for mature readers.

“A man’s morality is tested when he’s asked to be a wingman on a friend’s blind date.”

One thorn of experience is worth a whole wilderness of warning.

– James Russell Lowell

So many beautiful women passing him, he didn’t know where to direct his attention. He liked getting the attention back, even though he knew he wasn’t physically-desirable; it was still nice having these young, pretty faces smile back at him. If only he were more handsome. It took him forever to be able to smile back and now if only they came to him to help him complete the cycle. But he really didn’t want them to: honestly, he really didn’t know how old any of these girls actually were. There was a nice, tiny Filipina, with a blemish-free smile and an onion booty: has to be under fifteen. What about that tall, slender White girl with the amber hair down to her ass, with no tits and a flat back? Gorgeous, undeniably, but young. Obviously too young. But was she? The Friend had worked with women before who were underdeveloped: petite husks for the blossoming female underneath. So it wasn’t unheard of. But they were always taken, and never taken with the Friend. No, he was more the “dateable” type, his ex’s had told him: a man a woman ends with, and not part of the journey. He should believe them, since they all left him in the end anyway. No, he was contented with being sidelined. The girls on his computer could comfort him later.
The mall was packed today. No telling why, must have just been one of those days, where the planets were in-alignment and everyone had money to spend, but no one seemed to be carrying around any shopping bags. A shopping mall bursting with the young & bountiful and no one was buying anything. Maybe we were all just here to scope ourselves out, be communally creepy to one-another, in the one public place where it was allowed. In the same way all these young girls kept looking in the Friend’s direction, a curiosity, burgeoning with emotion & development. It must be so easy for some of those guys, isn’t it? Just to roll up on someone half-their-age and be able to ignite that spark within their teenage will as easily as the opposite sex could to him, the flame burning hot & bright for the tight, chaste juvenile body. Was this what made the collective blood of the predators of the world boil for flesh? Someone who didn’t know any better? Someone with no frame-of-reference, no prior dick, no resumé? No experience meant no disappointment to the Creep. No one talking down to them, making them feel low for their inadequacies. Now, they could be the one in charge. Now, they were finally a man.
The Friend had to jolt himself back to reality, lest he became stuck in the warren of his mind. He was here for a purpose. He was here, to help out his buddy, who walked beside his Friend with a faux-confidence one can only lather from a social entourage. The boy was nervous: he was nineteen and still a virgin. The Friend, who was a few years older than the boy he had met in College, had to reassure him there was nothing wrong with that: Hell, even he was a virgin till he was 20, although he was thankful this was no longer the case. The Friend could remember the conversation:

Continue reading →
Posted on by wd 0