19 July, 2022
In the age of rising steel open me like a door
toward the orchard where ripe pears fall.
-Sohrab Sepehri
Slide the iron latches, turn my brass handle.
Walk through me when dusk dwindles
into deep indigo dyes. Forget your eyes
and feel for the frame, the last structure
before a garden assembles herself.
Here her fruit. There her flowers.
Her compost heap and spade.
Door is not a destination
and the moon is not helpful, so follow
night’s scent—salt, roses, duff and cedar.
19 July, 2022
This is a story about a mouse whose death taught us what it means to live. It’s a story about a mouse as a teacher. About a mouse and a teacher. And a trial. This is a story about all the ways we don’t understand what we’ve done until after we’ve done it. It’s about a murder and a funeral. It’s also a metaphor, because even a mouse can be a metaphor, if looked at in the right flash of light.
At 1:23 pm on November 7 we condemned the mouse to die. This is when the story starts, with death, but, like all good stories, its beginnings have earlier roots. And like all good deaths, it begins with a lesson.
This one was on electricity. It was also on the end, and what happens to our synapses when we’re gone. It was a lesson that began with the idea that all our human interactions are electrical. All our brain waves and muscle movements, all our hopes and dreams, are simply little arcs of electricity shocking us into existence.
We’d been learning about muscles in Mr. Prewett’s senior Science class. This was in the fall but we were already leaning toward graduation and getting out of this God-forsaken town. We were aiming ourselves elsewhere, not knowing at the time we’d always be circling back to see what we were once like, trying to understand how we ended up the way we are.
Mr. Prewett wore glasses so thick we said he could see the future. Really he just observed the present, and what he saw through his thick lenses were teenagers tired of worrying about their futures but too tough to admit it, so they adopted a degree of indifference that kids have been carrying around since the first synapses of the first one arced into adolescence.
So one afternoon when we weren’t paying attention, while Mr. Prewett tried to explain to us how electrical impulses that originate in the brain drive all bodily functions, as our eyes glazed over and we thought of college or summer or what we would do after school that day, as he could see us slipping away toward wherever we would go after we left here, he said, “Electricity can even stimulate muscles after death,” and, when that didn’t fully arouse us, “That’s why men convulse when they’re electrocuted.”
I assume now he meant in movies, and that art imitates real life. We did not think Mr. Prewett had seen an execution, though we would have, at that age, liked him more if he had, even though we did like him very much. We had taken his 9th grade class too. We had done the egg-drop experiment, climbing to the top of the football press box and dropping our contraptions 50 feet, most of our eggs exploding, reminding me now how difficult it is to convey a concept, like an egg or an idea, across such vast distances. Earlier in the year he had taught us vectors, which I don’t remember much about, except how they can determine the position of one point in space relative to another, which is what writing in general and this essay in particular are about.
But we had gone past learning. We were in our senior year and Mr. Prewett knew we were just marking time. He knew his days of teaching us something new were over, so some afternoons he let us play that paper football game or that game where we broke each other’s pencils. Some days we told jokes and some days we had cut-down fights, though no one ever beat Mr. Prewett. I came close once when I said “You’re so ugly you have to Trick or Treat by mail,” but he responded that I was so ugly I could make a train take a dirt road, and though I’d like to rewrite the scene so I say “ You’re so ugly when you throw a boomerang it doesn’t come back,” that didn’t happen, and Mr. Prewett remained king of the cut-downs.
So in this soft, liminal space before we eased into the rest of our lives, Mr. Prewett said he could prove it.
“Prove what?” said someone, maybe Mike Bryant or Jerry Bradley.
“That muscles move by electrical shock,” he said, pausing just long enough that we were leaning forward. “Even after death.”
In the eager quiet that followed, the kind I’ve gone looking for in every class I’ve ever taught, Mr. Prewett laid out his plan: we would need a test subject, a mouse or a frog or a snake. We would kill it, then hook a small electrical generator to it and send pulses through its body to see its muscles move. We had to kill it in class, he said, because the body only responded to the impulses for a few minutes. After that it was over. Finished. Final. El finito.
I’d like to say there was a moment where we realized the monument of death stood before us, but the collective momentum had not yet struck. As these things go, it would not until years later, when the mundane is rendered monumental, and all our molehills become mountains.
In the silence, Daniel Simpson said he could catch a mouse in his barn and bring it to school the next day. Mr. Prewett told us he had the rest of the equipment, which made us wonder what chemicals and compounds lingered behind the always-locked door in the science room. But the bell rang and we filed out and when we filed in the next day Daniel had a mouse in a big glass jar with holes poked in the lid, and we stood around while it sniffed the air inside and put its little paws on the side of the glass as if looking for a way out.
It was here that the first objection was raised. Heather Hall, who now has a child older than we were back then, said she didn’t want to see it die. Some wit offered she could always leave, but she raised her objection further—we could not kill this creature, she said. It would be inhumane. It would be immoral. We knew what would happen when the impulses hit its muscles because Mr. Prewett had told us, and none of us needed to actually see it happen.
I’d like to contend that Heather was wrong. That we, and by we I mean us humans walking around wondering what we are doing on this earth, have to see it happen. That we do see it happen, every day, and yet we still don’t understand the electricity that flows through us or what happens when it stops, which is, ultimately, what everything is about.
So a chorus of voices shouted Heather down, and that might have been the end of it, but perhaps Mr. Prewett, whose glasses were not quite thick enough to see the future, said if there was one conscientious objector we had to take that into account. Maybe he was as bored as we were, ready to head into summer and the freedom it brings from little shits like us, or maybe he saw some lesson we didn’t—maybe he knew death isn’t the ultimate lesson, only what happens after.
So when someone suggested we have a trial to determine the mouse’s fate, Mr. Prewett agreed. Heather would be the defense. Matthew Foy was named prosecutor, and Cliff McAnally and Sherry Wann were the judges. We would have opening statements tomorrow, and the mouse would have a short reprieve until then.
And look, I don’t remember all the arguments Heather and Matt made the next day. Matt teaches high school music now, and I doubt he’s ever dealt with the death of a mouse in his classes. If I had to guess I’d say he doesn’t use those humane mousetraps at home, nor does he drive captured mice out into the woods to be released, as I sometimes do. Heather’s big mistake, if I remember correctly, was assuming we all shared the same morals she did, when in reality we were, like far too many of us, trying to find some entertainment, even at the expense of others. I remember making a point to ask why we got the mouse in the first place, as if to remind everyone. I remember asking Mr. Prewett if he thought lessons about how our brains control our bodies were important, if learning about death was important to learning about life.
What I’m saying is, I wanted the mouse to die. I framed my questions in such a way as to help Matt in his prosecution. I used words to move the class toward the verdict I wanted, which is what I’m doing now. There’s a verdict coming, and it isn’t the one you think it is, because we can’t ever see it coming until it gets here.
But I wanted to see it happen, there in the classroom. I didn’t yet know what it was like to lose something. I was sad for reasons I can’t recall. I’m sure most of these reasons seem now so small they couldn’t even fill the holes Daniel had poked in the jar lid, but maybe we need to see suffering to understand why we are so unsettled. Maybe we need to see the last throes of death to understand life. Maybe we constantly need to revisit the past in an attempt to see the future.
And I don’t want to belabor the point, so let me just say that Heather lost. Cliff and Sherry went out into the hall and came back in with a death verdict. They didn’t write a dissent, but I’d bet all the mouse shit that had accumulated in the bottom of the jar that it would have said they just wanted to see it die.
When the verdict came back, Heather asked to be excused from class. Mr. Prewett, who later said the whole situation turned out to be an important lesson on moral values, along with learning about the electricity that runs through us and makes us what we are, took some chemical—formaldehyde, maybe, or some other compound back there in that locked room with the beakers and burners and powders and potions—and soaked a cotton ball with it. Daniel opened the lid and Mr. Prewett dropped the cotton ball in and a few moments later the mouse curled up and died.
In my high school yearbook there’s a huge picture of Dustin Blankenship, my best friend on that day 30 years ago, shocking the mouse after it died. And it did twitch a little, as Mr. Prewett told Dustin where to hold the electrodes. Its legs twitched when he touched it and we took turns shocking the mouse until it eventually quit moving, no matter how high we turned up the machine.
And afterward, as men will, we turned the machine on ourselves. Mr. Prewett said the same principle worked with us as well, so we held the electrodes to our arms and watched our muscles jump, but maybe we were only trying to feel something. Daniel held the electrodes up to his temples and said he could see flashes behind his eyes, and when Dustin held them to my knee I kicked a desk so hard it lifted up. For the rest of the class, while the mouse lay dead, we kept shocking each other, watching all our involuntary movements, all the ways we don’t know what we are doing, only following impulses sent to us from the thing atop our necks we never understand.
The truth is, there’s always some electricity swimming through us, until there isn’t. In the yearbook Mr. Prewett is standing next to Dustin, guiding him. Another picture shows the funeral we held for the mouse. We buried him in a little box outside the Science room. Kelly McClendon played “Taps” on her trumpet. Mr. Prewett read from Genesis that unto dust shalt thou return. The funeral procession wound down the hallways of the old high school, past the Typing classroom where the typewriters were ticking away, as if everyone inside had a story they wanted to tell.
So here’s the story I want to tell: 13 years later, after I had moved away and was learning how to write stories about the past, Mr. Prewett was hit by a car and killed one evening jogging along the main street of my small hometown.
The night he died my mother called to tell me. And here’s the way synapses in the brain work: they’re still there, years later. Still firing and connecting and vectoring from one place to another, still reminding us we were once moved. So I told her about the mouse and the trial and the funeral and after I finished, in that tender space somewhere between denial and acceptance, she told me he had died instantly, though maybe she just didn’t want me to wonder whether the doctors tried to shock him back to life.
19 July, 2022
After Laurie Easter
ACROSS
19 July, 2022
As we lie down to sleep the world turns half away
–Elizabeth Bishop
I question whether it’s past time
to pierce my ears, dangle silver hoops,
feathers, add a small tattoo of a wine-
colored bird at the curve of my clavicle,
slip on a pair of stilettos, something low-cut.
All those years beauty wasn’t supposed
to matter. Now it does. I want what
I would have wanted then— a dress
on fire, love beneath the northern lights,
a river of curls no man could ever swim.
19 July, 2022
Setting:
A bar.
Present day. Late afternoon.
A high wire runs high in the air, from stage left to stage right.
Characters:
Rob m., any age, any race.
A man’s man; talks a big game. Slick.
Aldo m., any age, any race.
He appears to be just emerging from a slightly catatonic state, like a man wrestling with the reverberations of a recent trauma.
Words don’t come easy.
Waiter m., formal to the point of absurdity, as if from a former era. Any
age.
Aerialist: f., aerial dancer, expert at using either aerial-silks, rope, trapeze, hoop, or some combination thereof.
Productions might deploy one lone aerialist, many aerialists (as in: a flock of aerialists), or no aerialists at all.
Note about choreography:
In the script, there are places where the aerialist is instructed to enter, exit, drift, float, twist, turn, stay in the shadows, occupy a prominent position center stage, and so on. But directors and choreographers should have complete license to reinvent their own manner and method of choreography, to interpret all and any stage directions loosely, however they wish, or even to disregard them altogether.
The physical movements of the aerialist might emphasize, offset, punctuate, obliterate, or render mysterious certain moments in the script. She may use silks or rope or hoop or trapeze or scaffolding or whatever aerial equipment she prefers.
There are no hard and fast rules when it comes to the choreography for and interpretation of the aerialist-as-theatrical-figure. She might seem an abstraction, a dream, a figment of the actors’ or the characters’ imagination(s), or an absurdity: in other words, as a literal woman suspended in the air in a bar.
Up to you.
*
Prologue:
In darkness, melancholy music plays, mysterious and full of longing. It might be a single flute, or a violin, or a cello.
The Aerialist appears, her long hair pinned up in a bun.
She dangles, mid-air, immune to the laws of gravity.
The light must hit her just so.
She aerial-dances, suspended high above the ground, as if casting a spell.
Then magically disappears.
Lights out.
Scene 1:
In darkness, sounds are heard: horns honk, subways screech, traffic, hollering, planes drone: the rumbling hustle-bustle of a city.
Lights up, revealing…
ROB and ALDO, dressed in business casual, seated at table in bar. Rob has a glass of whiskey; Aldo, an empty glass. An ashtray contains a few cigarette butts.
ROB
Well, that’s horrible.
ALDO
(shrugging it off)
It’s just sporadic.
ROB
You go blind and black out and wake up in a place you’ve never been before? How often does this happen?
ALDO
Once in a blue moon.
ROB
Did you fall off the wagon or what?
ALDO
Been sober almost a year to the day.
ROB
Maybe that’s the problem.
ALDO
Ha-ha.
ROB
Look, I’m not gonna bullshit you. Sounds like an odd form of narcolepsy.
Or a fabrication.
ALDO
It’s not a fabrication. Narcolepsy, maybe.
ROB
And this happens… how often?
ALDO
I told you. It’s intermittent.
ROB
But more than once or twice?
ALDO
Sure.
ROB
How many times exactly?
ALDO
I wasn’t counting, Rob.
Rob removes a business card from billfold, hands it to Aldo.
ROB
Listen, I got someone you should call. Kathy and I saw her when things got crazy on the home front. Helped a lot.
Aldo scans the card.
ALDO
Really, Rob? A psychiatrist?
ROB
Hey, beats blacking out in broad daylight.
(slugs back whiskey)
One more club soda before I hit the road? I’ll order their finest brand.
ALDO
I’m good. You?
ROB
Prob’ly shouldn’t, my friend. Cindy awaits.
ALDO
Cindy?
ROB
My latest “escapade.”
ALDO
I thought you swore off “escapades.”
ROB
Cindy’s not an escapade. She’s a serious hobby. Love to stay, but Cindy’s a stickler for punctuality. Plus, she charges by the hour.
(flags waiter)
The check, good sir!
Aldo reaches for his wallet; Rob holds up one hand.
ROB (CONT’D)
It’s on me.
ALDO
Big spender.
ROB
Not a chance! It’s on the company. I can expense it.
ALDO
Expense away.
ROB
Oh, c’mon, don’t look at me like that.
ALDO
Like what?
ROB
Like that. C’mon, we all need a little Cindy in our lives. No guessing games, no smoke and mirrors, no wild goose chases. No exorbitant mating rituals. No dinner, no dances, no flowers. No expensive jewelry. With Cindy, what you see is what you get.
(slaps cash on table)
That’s basic to a man.
Rob starts to get up, put on jacket. Overhead, in shadows, the Aerialist begins to descend. For now, she’s a silhouette.
ROB (CONT’D)
Anyway, I say give the good doc a shot. Whattaya got to lose?
Aerialist hovers, dips. She flickers, momentarily.
Pause.
Rob stares at Aldo, who seems to be concentrating hard on a point somewhere deep within himself. Aldo struggles to speak.
ALDO
Actually? A lot.
Aerialist belays a little closer, turns herself inside out.
ROB
(studying Aldo, skeptical)
I don’t get it.
ALDO
No. You wouldn’t.
Aerialist spirals, as if in free fall, then collects herself.
Aldo might stare at Aerialist. He might stare off into the distance. He might close his eyes. Whatever he does, it’s in response, on some level, to the movements of the Aerialist.
Rob watches Aldo, perplexed. WAITER approaches with check. He’s strangely formal, old-world.
ROB
Little change of plan here, chief. One more club soda for my friend, and another CC on the rocks for yours truly. Thanks, mon ami.
Waiter nods stiffly, exits.
Overhead, the Aerialist extends an arm as if casting a spell, ascending higher. She holds as much focus as the men beneath her, if not more. Her every movement should constitute a kind of response to the conversation below.
ALDO
And what of the punctual Cindy?
ROB
A few minutes I can spare. Help me understand something, Aldo, lowly worm that I am: when you “wake up” in these heretofore unknown places, how do you manage to find your way home?
Aerialist gestures, unravelling: a smooth, fluid movement.
ALDO
It always seems to work out.
ROB
So you’re not waking up in Timbuktu or Madagascar? These strange, unforeseen places you land just happen to be conveniently located right here in town?
ALDO
Actually, the last time it happened? I was in Eastern Europe somewhere.
Aerialist executes a contortion, as if bending her soul.
ROB
What, like Slovenia?
ALDO
Maybe Croatia.
Aerialist turns and turns, mid-air, as if finding her way in the dark. She reaches out one toe, locating the high wire. Supporting herself with silks (or ropes or scaffolding or hoop) she steps onto the wire, checking her balance.
ROB
So you’re dreaming. Hallucinating. Tripping the light fantastic, to put it mildly.
ALDO
I don’t think so, no.
Aerialist places other foot on high wire. Wobbles, catches herself, pirouettes in other direction.
ROB
‘s gotta be night terrors then? Sleepwalking? Borderline psychosis? Okay, okay, when was the most recent episode?
ALDO
Recent enough.
ROB
Can you be a little less vague?
ALDO
You hunger for specifics.
ROB
Hey. I’m nosy that way.
Rob pilfers a cigarette from Aldo. Aldo lights it for him.
ALDO
Last night. Happy now?
The aerialist executes a breath-taking move, perhaps a teardrop or a split upside-down. Perhaps a figurehead. It should have some grand sweep to it, the illusion of risk.
ROB
(taking a drag)
Sleepwalking, definintely sleepwalking. Some dissociative, dream-limbo state. Land of repressed memories. Amnesia’s linked to trauma, you know. There are studies about that.
ALDO
If you say so, chief.
ROB
So, yesterday, when you found yourself in some… Croatian… wonder-scape… where exactly were you? On the banks of the Danube?
ALDO
The Danube doesn’t run through Croatia, Rob.
ROB
I never took geography. So shoot me.
The Aerialist and Aldo make a connection. It’s subtle.
ROB (CONT’D)
Fine. If not the Danube, where were you?
Slight pause, as the Aerialist ups the ante.
ALDO
On a high-wire. Of sorts.
ROB
Hey, I get it. These incidents would be precarious for anyone.
ALDO
No. I mean I was. Literally.
ROB
Literally what?
Cue: mysterious, melancholy melody from opening of play.
ALDO
On a tightrope wire, a hundred meters or so up in the air. No net.
Rob stares at Aldo. The Aerialist executes a gorgeous move, takes her time. The movement should have breadth and width, encompassing a wild, reckless kind of beauty.
ALDO (CONT’D)
It was some kind of… European circus. Not in a tent, just. Out in the open air. In some kind of… town square.
ROB
In Slovenia?
ALDO
Croatia, Rob.
The Aerialist speeds her movements, gathering momentum.
ROB
This is either neurological, or it’s a load of horse shit.
ALDO
Truth is stranger than fiction.
The Aerialist slows. Dangles in limbo. Perhaps she hides in the rafters. Perhaps she disappears.
ROB
Fiction, maybe. But science-fiction? That’s another story.
Waiter enters, with another round.
ALDO
To Cindy. May she be running late.
ROB
Goddammit, Aldo! You got me all turned around.
Rob starts to drink. Stops. Puts his glass down.
ROB (CONT’D)
Ya know, I miss when you used to drink. You weren’t so fucking weird then. I actually miss you, man.
ALDO
I have nothing to say in my own self-defense. It is what it is.
ROB
Sobriety?
ALDO
That, too.
ROB
Yeah, well, who needs booze when you’ve got other diversions to fall back on. High wire acts, hallucinations, tall-tales and all.
A swift, sharp move by the Aerialist, a touch of venom in it.
ALDO
You think I’m lying.
ROB
Lying? You? Nah, I’ll just take this whole circus thing as a metaphor. With your permission, of course.
Aerialist becomes agitated, unhappy, her movements insistent.
ALDO
But I don’t mean it metaphorically! I just. Mean it. Last night, when I came to, I found myself walking along a tight-rope wire towards a beautiful girl.
The Aerialist commands focus, both of Aldo and the audience.
ALDO (CONT’D)
There were stars in the sky. A full moon. And darkness all around.
Aerialist holds the moment, in extremis. Long pause.
ROB
Sure you don’t want my shrink’s number?
ALDO
What for? So she can cure me? I’d have to be crazy to let that happen.
Aerialist swings up and out of reach, as if being set free.
ROB
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a minute! You’re saying you actually like these episodes?
ALDO
I don’t like them. I love them. Live for them.
The Aerialist spins rapidly, with abandon. Exultant. Sublime.
ALDO (CONT’D)
I pray for them to happen! Pray for the lightning bolt to drop out of the sky and hit me every time! You see, there’s always this beautiful woman…
ROB
Don’t tell me. The high-wire lady?
The Aerialist slowly comes to a halt, floats in darkness.
ALDO
Sure, the high-wire lady. Of course the high-wire lady! Who else would I bump into on a tightrope, a hundred feet up in the air, with nothing but a filmy layer of sawdust between us and the ground?
Aerialist extends her whole being towards Aldo. Tears fall.
ROB
How d’you make it down alive? That’s my question.
Pause: Aldo wrestles with some persistent, ancient feeling.
ALDO
She helps me. Every time.
Pause. Rob takes in Aldo, mystified. Aerialist extends her arms.
ROB
Aldo? You in love?
ALDO
(considers)
Is that what you call this?
ROB
You got all the telltale signs.
ALDO
Huh.
ROB
Take my advice. Nip this thing in the bud. Pills, hypnotism. Acupuncture, the little needles in the spine. A phone sex session. Heck, I can give you Cindy’s number if you want.
ALDO
No. No Cindy.
ROB
Look, you’re on the jagged edge of some kinda crazy freefall here. Grab the wheel with both hands! Take the bull by the horns! Regain a modicum of control, for the love of god!
The Aerialist begins to drift. Further, then further still.
ALDO
(considers, then balks)
I can’t. Can’t give it up. Not yet.
ROB
Can’t give up what? Losing your mind? You could get hit by a truck, or walk off a cliff. Hell, you could fall right off the high-wire! It’s risky, if you ask me. Cut it out.
ALDO
If gaining control means losing her, then, no, I don’t want it.
The Aerialist swings like a pendulum, looking from Rob to Aldo and back to Rob, as if watching a game of ping-pong. She holds her breath in suspense. A bird in mid-flight.
ROB
Hey, hey, Aldo. Hey. Easy there. Look. I get it. Beautiful girl up on a high wire, who could resist?
Aerialist expands ever-outwards, arms and legs.
ROB (CONT’D)
Still, it’s a crap-shoot. Risky at best.
ALDO
I don’t know how long this will last…
ROB
In my experience, these things are fleeting. Easy come, easy go.
Aerialist turns upside down, head toward the earth.
ALDO
I just. Want to stay in the present. I don’t want to analyze it too much. She’s. How do I explain it? She’s. Teaching me things, Rob.
ROB
Things like what?
Aerialist, as if in a trance, reaches one cautious hand to her head, and removes one of many hairpins from her hair. She might slowly, purposefully, drop each hair pin, one by one, onto the floor near Rob and Aldo.
ALDO
How to keep my balance. How to not to look down. How to keep my eyes on the target. How not too dwell on how far I’ve come. Stuff like that.
Rob looks at Aldo, a little mystified. Aerialist continues removing hairpins, one by one.
ALDO (CONT’D)
She almost fell. Last night. From the high-wire. She was doing great, but then she– she lost her footing. A noise in the crowd snagged her focus. The dancing bear broke out of his cage and lunged for one of the clowns and… For an instant– for one terrible instant– her concentration wavered, and she lost her balance. For a split second, she faltered. Faltered hard. But you know what? I was there to catch her. Me, Rob.
ROB
Grabbed her by the tutu, did ya?
ALDO
No, Rob.
In one swift, certain movement, the Aerialist lets her hair come completely undone and fall to the ground. The hair is wildly, strangely, surrealistically long. The Aerialist might release a high-pitched, fantastic wailing sound, sound of a bird or animal, or a whispered cry, off-key.
ALDO (CONT’D)
By her hair! She has very long hair. Extremely long. Six or seven yards.
Aerialist rights herself and walks the wire, hair loose now. Aldo looks up at her, rapt.
ALDO (CONT’D)
Her hair goes past her feet, it drapes like a curtain all around her when she walks the wire. She’s never cut that hair. Not once in her whole life, I don’t think.
Aerialist continues to walk the wire. Rob looks up, notices Aerialist for the first time, does a double-take. Shakes it off, regains his bearings, focuses on Aldo.
ROB
She told you this?
ALDO
Her hair’s a big part of her act. She walks the high-wire with this long, luminous hair shining in the spotlight. Just her hair alone is a major draw. People come for miles to see that hair, pay big money to say they’ve seen that hair at least once in their lives.
Rob and Aldo gaze up at the Aerialist walking the wire.
ROB
(rapt, looking up)
You caught her by the hair.
The Aerialist freezes, mid-wire. She doesn’t move an inch.
ALDO
I almost lost her. But then, I didn’t.
ROB
Wow.
ALDO
It could have been very bad, Rob.
ROB
No doubt.
ALDO
I mean, very bad. The dancing bear had gotten loose, broken out of its chains. That beast eats small ponies for breakfast. One bite is all it takes, and poof! There goes happiness.
Slowly but surely, the Aerialist climbs out of sight, moving into the shadows. Perhaps she watches from afar. Perhaps she peeks out from behind the curtain. Perhaps she adjusts one of the stage lights, dimming it, adjusting the angle slightly.
ROB
(anxious)
But it didn’t?
ALDO
No, thank god. It didn’t go anywhere.
ROB
You pulled her back up onto the wire.
ALDO
It took some effort, but yeah, I did.
Rob’s cell phone dings! – incoming text message.
The Aerialist vanishes from sight.
Shift to more “realistic” lighting.
ALDO (CONT’D)
Lemme guess. Miss Punctuality herself?
ROB
I’m cancelling. I– I can’t stand it.
ALDO
Stand what?
ROB
Another “escapade.” I just– can’t.
Rob texts a reply, puts phone away. Pause. Both men are visibly changed: Rob, viscerally shaken; Aldo, at peace.
ROB (CONT’D)
(agitated, unnerved)
I’m gonna buy some flowers for Kathy. Take her out. Maybe I’ll take a long, hard look at– I don’t know. Her hair.
ALDO
Well, sure. Sure you are. How could you not?
(slides cash on table back to Rob)
That’s basic to a man.
Rob hesitates to take back his cash.
ALDO (CONT’D)
Take it. Go on. I got this round.
Aldo calmly reaches in his pocket, pulls out a money roll, doles out a few bills on the table. Gets up and exits the bar with purpose. Like a man who’s just undergone an exorcism.
The Aerialist might reappear, flickering, to watch Aldo go, then turn to lock eyes with Rob.
Upon locking eyes with the Aerialist, Rob freezes. Sits stock-still for a moment, mystified.
Rob starts to check cell phone, then stops. Puts cell phone down. He fidgets. He looks up. He looks around. Reaches for cell phone one more time, sets it down again. He puts his head in his hands. Stays there a while. Then stands, puts on coat.
As he puts on his jacket, he notices a long, winding crack in the floor. He stops and stares at it. Then he looks around. Seeing no one around, he reaches out one toe, places foot on top of the crack, as if walking on a tightrope. He places his other foot in front of the first, and stands there, arms akimbo, checking his balance. Painstakingly, he begins to walk the length of the crack as if walking a high-wire. He might hum a tune– perhaps the same melody from the play’s opening moments. He might make a low whispery sound, the same high-pitched sound, or the same fantastic animal sound the Aerialist made earlier.
Sometimes he falls off the crack. Sometimes he stays on. Either way, he concentrates very hard.
ROB
(raising his glass)
To love.
(reconsiders, re-phrases)
To losing control.
(thinks, re-phrases again)
To the whole damn circus!
Rob walks a few more paces along the crack. Finds his groove.
He might make an attempt to imitate one of the Aerialist’s moves. At first, he does so tentatively. Then with more commitment. Finally he puts his whole heart and soul into it.
Waiter appears with a tray, but stops short when he sees Rob.
Waiter glances upward, searching for something overhead.
He continues to scan the air.
Rob, oblivious to the waiter, continues to make his way precariously along the imaginary high-wire, sometimes coming close to falling, catching himself, then trying again.
Sensing someone, Rob looks up, sees waiter observing him.
Embarrassed, waiter quickly busies himself. Occasionally, though, he still glances upward.
Rob continues to steal glances at the waiter, occasionally catching the waiter looking up. When he does, the waiter tries to look even busier.
Rob takes in the moment. What is going on? He might laugh.
ROB (CONT’D)
You, too, huh?
The waiter says nothing. Stays busy, remains tight-lipped.
ROB (CONT’D)
Ah, buddy, no need to explain.
Embarrassed, the waiter shoots Rob a dirty look. Goes back to tidying up. Then exits, indignant– but not before casting one last anxious look up in the air, checking for the Aerialist.
ROB (CONT’D)
(to himself)
No need to explain at all…
Rob raises his glass.
ROB (CONT’D)
To life on the high-wire…
He nods, that feels right. He raises his glass in the direction of the waiter, then to the offstage Aldo, and finally to the invisible high-wire lady in the sky.
ROB (CONT’D)
May you always stay on it.
Rob starts to toss back the last of his drink, but stops himself.
ROB (CONT’D)
(calls)
Uh, waiter? Little change of heart. I’d like to get your finest brand of club soda, right here…
FADE TO BLACK.
END OF PLAY
19 July, 2022
CHARACTERS
CLOWN 1: FEMALE, ANY AGE.
CLOWN 2: MALE, ANY AGE.
DOUG, THE LIZARDMAN: EARLY 40S.
TIME: NOW
LOCATIONS: MULTIPLE
The curtains are down as lights come up. From behind them we start hearing one side of a dialogue:
CLOWN 1
(offstage)
Well, where is he! Uh… No, I can’t, I cant! There’s a balance to these things, I can’t just do it alone. They’re gonna hate it, they’re gonna hate me! Listen, I just don’t know how to handle rejection… Ok! Fine, fine!
Clown1 comes through the curtains. She stares at the audience, opens a wide smile.
CLOWN 1
Hi. Hello. How we, uh, how we doing today friends? It’s so nice to have you here, I’m sorry if this isn’t like, great, I usually have a partner to open the show with and…
Doesn’t matter! Does noooot matter. I’ll just, uh, do you folks like juggling? I can totally, yeah… Would you like that?
She puts her head back inside the curtains.
19 July, 2022
Often employing myth, art, and nature, Malisa Garlieb writes personal histories while simultaneously unfolding archetypes. She is Poetry Editor for Mud Season Review. Her poems have appeared in Painted Bride Quarterly, Calyx, Tar River Poetry, RHINO Poetry, Rust + Moth, Blue Unicorn, Fourteen Hills, Sugar House Review, and elsewhere. Handing Out Apples in Eden is her first poetry collection, and there’s a second manuscript in the works. She’s also a mother, energy healer, and artist. Find her at malisagarlieb.com.
19 July, 2022
Paul Crenshaw is the author of the essay collections This One Will Hurt You, published by The Ohio State University Press, and This We’ll Defend, from the University of North Carolina Press. Other work has appeared in Best American Essays, Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Pushcart Prize, Oxford American, Glimmer Train, and Tin House. Follow him on Twitter @PaulCrenstorm
7 July, 2022
Brighde Mullins is a playwright and poet. Her plays have been developed and produced in New York, Dallas, Salt Lake City, London, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Her full-length plays include The Bourgeois Pig; Rare Bird; Those Who Can, Do; Monkey in the Middle; Teach; Fire Eater; and Topographical Eden.
She is the recipient of an NEA Fellowship in Playwriting, the Will Glickman Playwriting Award, a Whiting Foundation Award, a gold medal from the Pinter Review, a United States Artists Fellowship, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.
She has held residencies at Lincoln Center, New York Stage and Film, Mabou Mines (with Lee Breuer), and the Institute for Art and Civic Dialogue (with Anna Deavere Smith). She has been awarded writing residencies at Bard College, MacDowell, and Yaddo. She is a Usual Suspect at New York Theatre Workshop, and has been a Core Member of the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis.
Mullins holds MFAs from Yale and the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and was a post-graduate fellow at Columbia. She has taught at San Francisco State University, Harvard, and Brown. She is currently on the faculty at the University of Southern California.
Mullins teaches Writing for Stage and Screen at Queens University of Charlotte’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program.