The Plays
Bedtime Stories
by C H A R L E S L . M E E
Originally produced under the title of The Imperialists at
the Club Cave Canem
PROLOGUE
The monologue Rindecella:
Rindecella was a gritty little pearl
who lived in a wottage in the coods
with her two sugly isters and her sticked wetmother.
Now her sticked wetmother made Rindecella do
all the wurty dirk around the house
like pining the shots and shans.
(Wasn't that a shirty dame?)
Well, one day the ping issued a kroclamation:
he said "my son the pransom hince wants all the giligible earls
to come to the palace for a drancy fess ball."
Well, of course, the sugly isters had drancy fesses
but Rindecella only had the wurty dags she worked in.
So along came the gairy fodmother, and wouched her with her tand,
and turned the wurty dags into a drancy fess,
and the hice into morses, and the cumpkins into a poach.
And said, "go to the palace and dance with the pransom hince
all night long,
but be sure and be home by the moke of stridnight."
So Rindedella went to the palace and danced with the pransom
hince all night long,
but at the moke of stridnight, she ran down the stalace peps,
and at the stottom pep, she slopped her dripper.
The next day, the ping issued another kroclamation:
he said, "my son the pransom hince wants all the giligible earls
to sly on the tripper."
Well, of course, when the two sugly isters slied on the tripper
it fidn't dit.
But when Rindecella slied on the tripper,
it fid dit.
And Rindecella and the pransom hince mot garried
and hived lappily ever after.
OVERTURE
A violin solo with voice tape.
1.
A couple in bed.
MOLLY
Did you hear about this two ton guy?
PETER
Two tons?
MOLLY
About two tons, something like that, you know, like 240 pounds, five
feet four, who didn't want to admit he was fat and so he wore clothes
several sizes too small for him. He had a 44 inch waist but he wore
pants size 38, and he choked himself to death on his shirt collar. One
minute he was eating spaghetti with his fork and the next minute he was
on the floor gasping for breath, and his shirt was so tight no one could
get it unbuttoned. He died with a forkful of spaghetti in his hand.
[SILENCE]
I knew this guy who killed himself with his pants.
PETER
How did he do that?
MOLLY
He let them get so tight they choked off his circulation and
he had a heart attack.
PETER
You mean he gained weight?
MOLLY
Sure.
PETER
A lot of weight.
MOLLY
I don't know. I guess so.
[Silence]
Did you hear about the little girl who fell into the washing machine?
PETER
I don't think so.
MOLLY
This is a true story. She was, like, 2 years old, and her mother had
gone to take a shower, so she climbed up to look into the washing
machine and she fell in and turned blue and her eyes were glassy.
PETER
Did she die?
MOLLY
No.
PETER
That was lucky.
MOLLY
That's like this guy who's a champion skier who skied off a
natural little ski jump and landed head first in a snowbank and
suffocated to death.
PETER
Sort of like that.
MOLLY
There was another guy.
PETER
This isn't going to be another story about death, is it?
MOLLY
No. There was a guy who died—I mean it starts out about death, but then
it doesn't stay there. There was this guy who died but then he came
back to life...
PETER
I think I've heard this story.
MOLLY
Wait. He came bact to life and this is how he proved he had died. Wait a
minute. Start it this way. There was this kid named Charan Varma from
India who claimed he had been killed by British soldiers in 1857 during
the Sepoy Rebellion. He said he had been shot twice in the chest, and
slashed over and over with sabres after he was dead—by British soldier
(I don't know why)—and nobody believed the kid, so he led four
archaeologists out to this grave where they dug up a mummified corpse
that had the fragments of two bullets in the chest and markings on the
rib and legs and arms consistent with stab wounds and sabre slashings.
And this corpse had on the remains of a uniform worn by Sepoy soldiers.
[silence]
FETER
Well. So.
What did he learn from the experience?
MOLLY
Learn from it?
PETER
Has he learned anything from coming back to life?
FiGLLY
Well.
He forgives the British.
PETER
Unh-hunh.
Really, nobody knows whether he was telling the truth or he had already
been out in the field, happened to dig up a body in a shallow grave, see
the uniform, and make up the story.
MOLLY
Sure, anything is possible.
PETER
Yes, well, some things are more likely than others.
MOLLY
Sure. That's what makes this such an amazing story. This is the first
time anyone has proved there is life after death.
PETER
You know, there are stories you shouldn't believe. For instance, did you
hear about these pilots who were taxiing down the runway ready to take
off, this was last December, and it was raining a little, and the
co-pilot said to the pilot, you know I think the wings are icing up. And
the pilot looked out the window...
MOLLY
How do you know this?
PETER
It was all recorded—this is a true story—and the pilot said, yes
it looks like a little icing up, and he said something along the lines
of did you see the Giants game on Saturday, and the co-pilot said
something like what a runback, and are you going to see the Broncos
play when we're in Denver and they went on, and the pilot said you
know it looks like some heavy ice on the wings, maybe we should ask for
a delay, and the co-pilot said he thought the Broncos were going to take
the championship and the pilot said, not in my lifetime. Not in my
lifetime. And the co-pilot said I'm worried about that icing up on the
wings, and then they got clearance for takeoff, and they took off, and
they got a few hundred feet into the air, and then they came down
because of the ice, and a lot of people were killed including both the
pilot and the co-pilot.
MOLLY
Jesus.
PETER
So, that's a story with a moral.
MOLLY Yeah.
PETER
It's not like a pointless story.
MOLLY
Well, I don't believe in dying anyway, really.
PETER
You mean you believe in an afterlife.
MOLLY
No.
PETER
Reincarnation.
MOLLY
No.
PETER
Well, what do you think has happened to all these people?
MOLLY
They died. I know that. I'm not a maniac. But that doesn't mean I
believe in dying.
PETER
No.
MOLLY
I believe in living. You know, like, I've never been a religious person,
and I never believed in God until recently when I was touched by God. In
other words, I never believed in anything spiritual, really except
having a good life and not hurting anyone. I always prayed to God, but
just out of habit, and I never got anything from him anyway. But one
morning I was in bed just thinking about my age, how long I've got left,
and I thought I'm lost I'm totally lost, and I thought you know God help
me. And all of a sudden—and I don't do drugs or anything—I lifted
about two feet off my bed and moved like a clock hand all the way around
my king-size bed. I mean I was in ecstasy. Unbelievable ecstasy. I
couldn't believe it. I still don't believe it. It was such a feeling of
floating—like having an orgasm 20,000 times for about 60 seconds. I
thought, I must be imagining this. But I looked at my bed later, and the
covers were not messed up. So I realized I had evidently gone out of my
body.
PETER
That's not even necessarily rational.
MOLLY
Right.
[silence]
Neither is this. Like, the last election I went to the polls and stood
in line for a couple hours and when I got up there these people at a
card table said wel1, you're not registered in this district. Not
registered? Fuck, I've lived in this neighborhood for eight months, you
know what I mean? I've been here longer than anyone except the
Ukrainians. Plus, I'm a fucking American. So, I said, look, I k:now my
fucking rights and I'm pulling a lever on that fucking machine or else
I'm pulling your fucking arm out of its socket.
PETER
You said that?
MOLLY
That was good, hunh? So naturally they called the cops, and it turned
into this big unpleasant scene, and I wind up in fucking jail for the
night—that's what happened the last time I tried to vote. And you
think, okay, what's the loss, cause she doesn't know a fucking thing
anyway, but I'll tell you what I know: each man is an expert in the
conditions of his own life. You know who said that? Jefferson or someone
like that. You know, Lincoln. And I am a fucking expert in the
conditions of my own life.
PETER
Is this relevant?
MOLLY
To what ?
PETER
To what we were talking about.
MOLLY
What were we talking about?
2.
A performance piece.
3.
A couple in bed.
KAREN
I had lunch with Kurt yesterday at City?
PETER
Yeah?
KAREN
You know Kurt?
PETER
No.
KAREN
He's putting the finishing touches on PIK ME UP, a club that's opening
in a few nights, and we talked about a possible collaboration on a
video, and we were sitting right next to David Steinberg who I used to
open for in my first rock n' roll incarnation. And he's eating with
Arlyne Rothenberg, who was his manager at the time, and who eventually
became my manager when I decided to ditch the road and become just a
song writer because it was all too much to handle. This was back in
1976, but at some point Arlyne...
PETER
God.
KAREN
decided I was too much to handle so she turned me over to Irving Azoff
who I lasted with about two months and who became president of MCA
Records, you know, I forget when. Do you know Irving Azoff?
PETER
No.
KAREN
My best Irving Azoff story is that when we decided not to work together
anymore he wouldn't give me my demo tape back. I was completely broke
and it was my only tape. So after a month of calling I dressed up as a
cowgirl and my boy friend went as a gangster and we pelted Irving with
water pistols as he walked into his office with Boz Scaggs, who he had
just signed. So the next day I start writing with Mark Leonard, who
co-wrote "Missing You," the John Waite song. He was in my first
demo band. He was also in the Alan Thicke Sick of the Night show band. Do you
know Jeff Stein?
PETER
No.
KAREN
Men screw you, you know. Women can't screw you. They can seduce you,
but they can't screw you. Physiology is a fact. You have to have a
cock to screw someone. Or, like Reagan, you know, when he was brought
into the emergency room after Hinckley shot him, this friend of mine
who works in the emergency room said, the standard procedure for a
gunshot victim is you strip him down completely so you can trace where
any bullets entered and any bullets exited, and so they stripped
Reagan down, and they couldn't find his dick. I mean, it was so tiny,
they had to call in a specialist to make sure he had one. So you could
say he was compensating by screwing everyone because he didn't have a
dick. But usual1y, if you don't have a dick you can't screw anyone.
And I've often thought—these politicians, they all go around screwing
people all the time—I'm not thinking politically now, although that,
too, but personally screwing women all the time: the Kennedys, Gary
Hart. I had this friend who worked in the White House who said Lyndon
Johnson used to screw everyone, not just in his office but anywhere in
the White House, in waiting rooms, in corners, standing up in closets. I
don't think women do that. Of course, we haven't had a woman president.
But, for instance, Margaret Thatcher, I don't think Margaret Thatcher
screws people in closets.
You don't know Jeff?
PETER
I don't fol1ow politics, you know.
KAREN
This isn't politics, this is just, you know, we're friends.
PETER
Well, you know, I like Louis XVI.
KAREN
His politics?
PETER
Yeah, well, his style.
KAREN
Unh-hunh.
PETER
And then, you know, in Sweden, the stuff of King Gustav III—most
people don't know it, but they didn't seem to make one mistake. The
linens are nice. The mattresses are nice, striped with mattress ticking.
The first time I went into this house of the aunts of Louis XVI in
Paris, there were eight of us for lunch. We sat in that dining room with
the silver, all from Catherine the Great, and we had a footman behind
each chair. Then in the salon I saw "MA" embroidered on the brocade
on the Louis XVI chairs; and I said, "Why do they say 'MA'?" And
this guy Arturo was happy I'd asked because he could tell me that it was Marie
Antoinette's crest. So I was a great favorite immediately—not because
of being naive but just because I'd say whatever came into my mind.
KAREN
Sure. And you like history.
PETER
I was like that when I was a kid. One night after my parents took me to
see the movie Cleopatra I got together with some of my friends. We were
about nine years old. We al1 wore towels wrapped around our heads. The
kids in the neighborhood were al1 the slaves and I, of course, was
Cleopatra. We erected statues in the living room and I draped myself in
the chiffon curtains as an outfit. It was very Egyptian. When I was in
the fifth grade I would tweeze my eyebrows, dye my hair, apply
Clearasi1, I mean real1y cake it on all over my eye lids. You know, I
was looking at the fashion magazines, and I wanted to look like Twiggy.
I bleached my hair, but I couldn't do it right, so it was dyed in spots.
My uniform consisted of stove piped bell bottoms, a purple sweater and a
bow tie. I always was who I was and did what I did. Also in high school
the collegiate 1ook was in and I tried to work that look, but instead I
just 1ooked like a Lesbian trying to be collegiate.
KAREN
Unh-hunh.
[Silence.]
So, okay, anyway, the next night, Jim and I go to a party at Rusty
Lemorande's house in the hills. Pee Wee Herman is there, Randal Kleiser,
who directed Flight of the Navigator and a bevy of teenage beauties, and
Greg Gorman, Herb Ritts, Pristine Condition, Shooter Hill, Catherine
Oxenburg. Great view. Great food. And just a great spot for cosmetically
perfect hairdos, you know, I'm just very glad this place exists.
PETER
I'd love to work with Richard Chamberlain.
KAREN
In 1979 Klaus and I met David Bowie at the Mudd Club, and he said
he liked how we looked and he asked us to perform with him on
Saturday Night Live.
PETER
How did you look?
KAREN
We were wearing padded Thiery Mugler dresses. I like my body. I think
probably my shape will never go out of fashion. I love the way I look.
You know I think shapes will come and go, but I think people will always
want someone like me.
PETER
I'd like to do a male Mae West someday called Mae West of the Mounties.
He'd have huge bulging arms, a huge crotch, big thighs, a blonde wig,
huge cheekbones, kind of a mixture of Dudley Dooright and Mae West. And
then I'd say, if my right leg was Christmas and my left leg was New
Year's Eve, why don't you come between the Holidays and visit.
[She screams in ecstasy.]
4.
A performance piece.
5.
A couple in bed.
DAVID
In Africa there are people I've heard of who have pulled down their
lower lips so far, you know...
KAREN
Is this in India?
DAVID
No, Africa.
KAREN
Because I didn't think this sounds like India.
DAVID
No, listen to me. Africa. I'm talking about Africa. Nobody ever heard of
this in India. These are people who have gotten their lower lips so long
that the only way they can eat is by walking backwards over their food
until their lower lips get to the right position, and then they have a
friend sort of shovel it up over their lower lip.
KAREN
Who told you this?
DAVID
I saw it on television. It was this program about these people in
Afghanistan.
KAREN
I don't think this is new, you know, I don't know why this is on
television, because I think people have known this for a long time.
DAVID
I thought, you know, it was an incredible coincidence.
KAREN
How is it a coincidence?
DAVID
Well, you know it's a coincidence.
[Silence.]
KAREN
Did you see that program where they discovered these people whose ears;
were so long that they didn't need clothes and they wrapped themselves
up in their ears when it got cold?
DAVID
Where is this?
KAREN
Some of them have their heads in their chests. In Melbourne, Australia.
DAVID
I didn't see that.
KAREN
You know where the car hookers hang out down Second Avenue or whatever
it is below Houston Street?
DAVID
Yeah.
KAREN
Well, I went into that gas station there during this terrible
thunderstorm, I drove in near the pumps and directly into what I thought
was a huge puddle but turned out to be a deep pit. The car sank fast,
and I had a hard time getting out through the window on the driver's
side. There were these two gas station attendants there watching me.
Neither one of them made a move to help me out. And, when I got out on
my own at last, neither of them was sympathetic either. One of them
said, well, that's it for your car. But it wasn't. A few minutes later
the three of us looked at the other side of the puddle, and there was
the car. It had emerged by itself and was parked just across the water.
It was a miracle.
DAVID
No, I dreamed that.
KAREN
What?
DAVID
What you just said. That was a thing that occurred to me in a dream.
KAREN
No, this is my story.
DAVID
Well, I mean, you can have it if you want it, you're welcome to it, but
in actual fact it is my event that occurred to me.
KAREN
Where did I hear about it, then?
DAVID
How would I know?
KAREN
Where do you think I heard about it?
DAVID
I wouldn't have any idea.
(Silence.)
KAREN
Often I hear something and I remember it and I think it happened to me.
DAVID
Or it was your idea.
KAREN
Right. Like I'll see it on television maybe. One time I saw Stephen
Gould on television. Is it Stephen Gould?
DAVID
Who?
KAREN
The biologist you sometimes see on television.
DAVID
I don't know.
KAREN
Anyway I thought I had this conversation with him in my living room.
DAVID
That happens to everyone.
I was with this woman named Lisa once, and she asked me if I'd like to
have dinner, and I said sure. She had cooked spaghetti in the bathtub
and she said, why don 't you get in first? And I thought: oh, get into
the tub, well: sure. And so I did. I got in and she handed me this soup
spoon and I tasted the broth, it was very delicate and—lucid. I
thought, well, I felt awkward, you know, thinking: there's something not
quite correct about this, and I was not sure about the meal: there was
very little spaghetti in the tub; it was filled with the clear broth and
a few strands of spaghetti and some few herbs from her garden, but after
a few minutes I relaxed, and she let the towel fall to the tile floor
and joined me in the tub.
KAREN
I went to this performance once, I was late, most of the audience had
already arrived and they were sitting in folding chairs that had been
set out three deep around three of the four walls.
DAVID
You mean, like the chairs were facing the fourth wall.
KAREN
Right. There were about fifty people there, and the room was empty,
painted white. I mean there was no performer in the space where the
audience wasn't sitting. And I was expecting some kind of performance
art.
DAVID
Right.
KAREN
But I didn't know exactly what it would be. And pretty soon this man in
the front row began to speak, a short, stocky man, an Irishman, he
looked like a cab driver or a carpenter, someone who worked with his
hands, he was reading from his autobiography, and he was really good,
you know he wrote with real force and—grace.
DAVID
Right.
KAREN
And I was really getting into it, thinking, gee, he writes practically
as well as Joyce, you know.
DAVID
James Joyce
KAREN
Right.
DAVID
As well as James Joyce.
KAREN
Well, almost, you know, only he's writing about numerology, when anyway
someone behind me began to whisper, and I turned around to shush them,
and it was this man whispering to the young woman who was with him, and
she was laughing and smiling and they were carrying on a whole
conversation.
DAVID
People do that all the time.
KAREN
Yeah, well, anyway, it made me furious, and then while I was trying to
get them to be quiet I heard someone over to my left near the wall
talking—not whispering, but talking entirely out loud, and I just lost
my head.
DAVID
I don't blame you.
KAREN
These people make me so fucking mad. I stood up and I shouted at them:
why don't you shut up. And the whispering man behind me told me to sit
down, so I said something to him, I don't remember what it was, something I was trying to have a tone of voice that showed some respect for the performer, and
then these people behind the whisperer began to talk to each other,
about me I guess, and then these two people on
the other side of the room started talking out loud, and I was still trying to listen to the Irishman, but I could hardly hear what he was
saying, and I was completely enraged, and everyone was talking all over
the room, and the Irishman persisted with complete wonderful calm for
about ten minutes—he was completely undisturbed by the whole thing and
then, when he finished, he just neatened up his papers, put them into a
manila envelope, took off his silver-rimmed bifocals, and got up to
leave, and I couldn't tell whether he had come to the end of his piece
or just given up because of the distractions, but all these people who I
guess knew him came over to congratulate him and I sort of wandered
toward the door to leave and sort of stopped there by the door where
there was a table with some programs on it, and because I had been late
in arriving I hadn't gotten a program, so I picked one up, and I saw
that the performance had been called PATTERNS OF INTERFERENCE, and so I
realized: I was part of the act!
DAVID
I don't get it.
KAREN
You don't get what?
DAVID
I don't get why it was called PATTERNS OF INTERFERENCE.
KAREN
No, because, you see, it was all planned, or anticipated, and
incorporated into the conception of the piece, so that even what I said
was already thought of even before I said it.
DAVID
I get that.
KAREN
Then what don't you get?
DAVID
I just don't get why it was called PATTERNS OF INTERFERENCE.
KAREN
You mean you don't like the title?
DAVID
No, I mean I don't get what it means. I mean, I know, since it is a
product of human intelligence or culture it must mean something even if
the Irishman didn't know what it meant or what it means is unintentional
or that it means something about the collective consciousness even
though the Irishman doesn't get it but is just the unknowing medium
through whom the culture speaks, you know, but I don't get it.
[Long silence.]
KAREN
No. Neither do I.
Do you know Grace Paley?
DAVID
Well, I know who she is.
KAREN
She picked up the phone—this was what I heard anyway—and said hello
and this voice said, hello, this is Linda Ronstadt and Grace Paley said:
who is this really?
6.
A performance piece.
Music.
THE END.
Charles Mee's work has been made possible by the support of Richard B. Fisher and Jeanne Donovan Fisher.
