It's here! It's here! All the local news headlines you need to know about, delivered straight to your e-mail box and from there to your little grey brain.
Learn more about it here.
Sign up at the handy link below.
CLICK HERE to get on board with your very own MISCmedia MAIL subscription!
Miss Inga Person
A noveloid by Clark Humphrey
9/16/96
This story begins like many others by many other people, with a 16 and a half year old runaway. And like many other runaways, she’s certain she’s got a plan that will keep her from (a) getting caught and returned to her degrading and abusive home life, (b) getting caught and imprisoned, (c) turning into a junkie, street whore, petty criminal or something else as pathetic as the life she’s running away from, or (d) dead, of starvation, street crime, OD, AIDS, or something else just as fatal.
First of all, she had the foresight to swipe a blank check or a Social Security number from the checkbooks of several high school “friends,” adult female relatives living in other states, customers at the stupid mall jewelry store where she worked last summer, etc. She also knew a fake ID maker who could make her a quasi-convincing New Jersey driver’s license (the hologram part was only detectable if you took it out of a billfold window). Between that and her friends in the punk scene, she figured she had at least a starting plan for what, she figured, would have to be 19 months of life, if not fully underground, at least at “ground level.”
At first she stayed on couches or floors in a series of punk houses, each a little further from her parents than the last.
She figured she couldn’t stay in one place, or even in one state, very long. She’d hated the Grateful Dead when they were around but now wished that opportunity to travel and live unofficially was still around. She way she figured it, if she’d played her cards right she could have offered to watch Deadheads’ belongings for them back in the parking lots; that way she wouldn’t even have to see the shows.
The plan she did use worked just about as well, and was accompanied by music she sort of liked. She persuaded a guy in a band she sort of knew (she decided it wasn’t whoring if she had sex with somebody she was at least partly attracted to and if no cash was exchanged) to let her ride with them on their next tour. She even agreed to do her share of the work–fixing the van, setting up and taking down the equipment from the stage, finding a place for the band and herself to sleep every night, procuring groupies for the lesbian bass player. She found a particularly nice household when the band stayed in Wilkes-Barre, and stayed behind the next day. The three women in this household were into performance art; they taught her all they knew (not much) about stage make-up, including prosthetics.
Two weeks later another touring indie band came through town. Since there was no guarantee another would play Wilkes-Barre for a long time, she took off with them as far as Ann Arbor. She stayed there a little over a month, until the housemates demanded she get a job (she was still nervous about an employer researching her fabricated identity). An opportunity came to become a glorified janitor at a women’s retreat center in a small town, but she figured she would be more anonymous blending in with a city population.
So she arranged on a university Ride-Share bulletin board to head out with a woman going to Chicago. This woman turned out to be almost creepily similar, from the hair to the cackling giggle to the preference for sappy soft rock love songs, to the older sister who never protected our heroine from the shit at home. But the trip was soon enough over, and our heroine was deposited in front of the WaxTrax! record store. Her only contact in Chicago turned out to have moved with no forwarding address. Lacking a backup plan, she hung out in a punk club (her fake ID worked), sipping the same beer slowly, very slowly. It was getting flat by the time she found a guy she thought she could seduce. He turned out to have a girlfriend in the bathroom. She then hit on the girlfriend, telling (staying this short, she believed, of begging) her about her need for a simple place to stay just one night. The girlfriend was reticent at first but after additional plodding agreed to let her sleep on the sofa. The next morning she left, then snuck back in after the girlfriend went to work and fucked the boyfriend, out of spite as much as anything. She found she was rapidly gaining confidence and assertiveness about obtaining sex, compared to the hopeless situation back in her town, where she and seemingly everybody else was always too afraid or too self-conscious or too something else. She hoped this would soon lead to the ability to assert herself in more immediately important areas, like money.
The boyfriend referred her to a cofeehouse that sometimes paid employees under the table. Sure enough, she got a job there. And sure enough, it quickly revealed itself to be the sort of dysfunctional working environment she had to get out of as soon as she could, which unfortunately wouldn’t be right away. She slept in the back room the first three nights, until a friend of the manager’s came back from vacation; he had a spare bedroom in his apartment after his last roommate left suddenly. As with work, it didn’t take her too long to see why his roommate would have left suddenly. The guy played loud music all night, or rather starting at 3 a.m. and continuing until late morning. He also dealt in light drugs, had hardcore-porn strewn about the place, and left kitchen messes she could almost throw up over. Did our heroine cry or bemoan her fate? No; she figured it was about what she should have expected, and she had still never slept outdoors involuntarily nor had sex for money. She even made a point of remaining drug-free throughout her stay in this guy’s apartment. (He never hit on her, being usually too stoned to notice her presence. He seemed more comfortable around porn than around women, anyway.)
The one good thing about working at the coffeehouse, the thing that almost made up for the rancid conditions, the miserable pay, and the dictatorial couple who owned the joint, was that the very nature of the place as a “scene” hangout meant people were always coming in, people whom she could befriend and who might provide her next opportunity. It took amost until her 17th birthday, but one day he showed up. He turned out to have been somebody who’d met her briefly during her Ann Arbor stay, and seemed to be sincerely interested in her cause. He had a jewelry concession traveling the Renaissance Faire and street-fair circuits in the spring and summer, and agreed to take her along when he left. Until then, she moved in with him and learned the craft of New Age body ornamentation (something she personally found as disinviting as mall-look body ornamentation). Before long she was helping him, designing pieces with more of a gritty, “industrial” look.
She prepared herself for the inevitability of falling in love with him, but that inevitability never came about. Either she’d quickly become too jaded to fall in love, or he was just too normal and businesslike to excite her. During the two months at his house and the five months on the road, they experienced, at best, the kind of unresolvable sexual tension you’d see in some old Code-era movie. She was certain he was falling in love with her, even though she repeatedly told him she was only going to be on the run until she was 18 and her parents couldn’t get to her to drag her into some reform school.
But 30 weeks before that emandication date, fate intervened in the form of a local TV news crew doing a typical scandal piece on the traveling costume-jewelry and moccasin sellers at some local “modern rock” radio station’s fake Lollapalooza-type outdoor festival, taking business away from hard-working local mall stores and not even paying all the right state and local taxes in the process. The story was picked up by the network, which aired it on its 6 a.m. news broadcast, where our heroine’s mother caught a two-second glimpse of what was undoubtedly her daughter, albeit in a wig and shown from a profile on her “bad side.”
By the time she and her partner reached the Oregon Country Fair, they quickly heard gossip that a guy with a short grey beard and a suit who claimed to be a private detective was snooping around looking for her. In his report to the parents later that week, the detective concluded that she’d indeed been there but had been tipped off and left for parts unknown.
They made it as far as Seattle. There, in a moderately priced motel that didn’t find anything wrong with her fake ID, she told him she wouldn’t return to Chicago with him. It wasn’t the winter weather there but the fact that she was now officially being trailed, and didn’t want to risk being seen anywhere she’d already been. That night she gave him a goodbye fuck, as appreciative of one as she knew how to give.
He continued on the late-summer, early-fall stages of the circuit in Texas and Florida, managing to convince other private detectives along the way that he’d never seen that runaway teenager since that one weekend she helped him sell stuff. He traveled with a broken heart, but at least without the threat of transporting-a-minor-across-state-lines charges. He sold out of the remaining stocks of the navel and nipple rings she’d designed for him, then once he was back in Chicago he got a letter from her offering to make more for him. For the rest of that winter, he consigned pieces to indie-rocker boutiques around the upper midwest, never claiming them to be his creations. He insisted to the store owners that he was merely the sales rep for a designer he named Inga (short for Miss Inga Person).
Their Gang
Fiction piece by Clark Humphrey
12/23/95
A regular suburban gang of five to seven ten-year-old girls, most of whom are holding onto their pre-pubescence with fear disguised as defensiveness disguised as pride, are in their semi-secret hideout, the garage of an unfinished and unsold tract house.One of them has “found” a hardcore porno magazine. They’re all gawking at it and discussing it, each searching her soul for the direct emotional response she thinks the others will find most acceptable.
They unspokenly agree to speak about the way the women in the pictures look. By the standards of the female nudes they’d seen repeatedly in fashion magazines, the girls immediately agreed these women were U-G-L-Y.
Fake tits that don’t even look like organic matter (one girl said they looked like her mom’s nicotine patches only on steroids). Big teased bleached hair.
Train-wreck-looking makeup jobs, and lipstick that looked like it belonged on Ronald McDonald.
The most ridiculous looking high heels, worn even when the women were wearing nothing else.
And weirdest of all, wide waists and hips like you only see on real women like their moms and sisters, not on anybody cool enough to be in a magazine. If they knew what bad lighting and photography meant they would probably have mentioned that too.
None of them dare speak out loud about the men and especially not about the erections; none will admit to being even the slightest bit interested in that particular horror/mystery. Each pretended she was worldly enough to already have known what was inside boys’ pants, but too worldly to care about it.
Each girl carefully measured her staring time, making sure not to be seen as unduly interested in those odd-looking things with their ridiculous bulbous dangling extensions. One girl made the silent conclusion that when a guy’s pants bulge looked big it was probably just the size of those extensions; in other non-words, nothing to get excited about.
Then Sharee turned the page to be confronted by the first “uncut” male human in her limited experience. She turned her eyes away one second too late; she immediately knew all the other girls knew where she’d been looking. Sharee knew she’d failed to play the game by the unspoken rules.
In an instant, she felt estranged from her friends, even ostracised. She wondered whether she was doomed to become boy crazy, and if boy-craziness meant she’d forever be driven away from real friendship with the girls.
Seven years later, she remembered this incident while she was directing her best girlfriend’s boyfriend towards her, Sharee’s, bra clasp. As the boy’s nervous hands found their way around her, Sharee also realized what the fashion magazines used to say about how Being A Woman meant Making Tough Choices, and how sometimes the choices weren’t so tough to make after all.
Naked Earth
Weird fiction piece by Clark Humphrey
6/28/95
In this dream, there are parallel Earths due to a dimensional split, somehow related to the 1945 A-bombs. This dream is about a story about two of these Earths, neither of which is ours.
On one of these Earths, Stalin died shortly after the war. His eastern European conquests were taken over by faceless bureaucrats and technocrats who believed in controlling the human passions and emotions that they felt led to the war, smothering them under a “rational” system of industrial growth, scientific and athletic achievement, modest prosperity for all, and moderation to excess. This dictatorship of civil engineers becomes so powerful it doesn’t fear religion or parlaimentary democracy, and as such becomes a model for postwar governments throughout the world. By the 1990s, scattered tribal and radical rebellions aside, this Earth is a “decent” but decidedly dull and repressed place to live. Its crowning achievement: a dimensional gateway to another Earth, which two duty-bound scientists bravely cross.
This other Earth was the oyster, immediately after the war, of the American soldiers who became enamored of looser Euro sexual attitudes and collectively decided to bring those attitudes home. The women they left behind had discovereda new level of self-esteem and self-sufficiency working in factories and other man-deprived workplaces, and were only too happy to take up a more sexually liberated role at home as long as it was under their terms. This battle of the sexes worked itself out slowly over the ’50s. This Earth didn’t have the postwar housewife role blared into it by governments and developers and advertisers; the women wanted nothing to do with it, or with lonely suburbs. As you might expect, this new promiscuity led to a rash of STDs. But there was no sexual stigma attached to the patients, and the initial waves of these diseases were wiped out by the early postwar drugs like penicillin. By the ’90s, a Brave New Worldish “everyone belongs to everyone else” philosophy ruled. Public nudity in warm weather or indoors is a given option. Friends (of different or the same genders) greet one another by lifting their shirts before hugging. Only old people and self-conscious early adolescents attend the suit-required hours at public swimming pools. None of this sexual liberation is considered “dropping out” or “in opposition to the dominant culture.” By now, it is the dominant culture. Sexual happiness is believed to be important to being a successful worker and an emotionally balanced family member. Families are defined by the sharing of households, not by sexual exclusivity.
By the time the pioneers from the dull Earth arrive at the sexy Earth, not only are there massive cultural differences, even the languages are different enough to make communication difficult, especially in the scientific and technical terms that make up most of the dull-Earth people’s vocabulary. There are indeed a few aspects of the dull-Earth people’s messages and promises that tempt some of the sexy-Earth people — the promise of a more rational political system, of a more efficient life with less wasted effort, of certain medical and engineering breakthroughs, of a world ruled more from the head and less from raw lusts. And, needless to say, the dull-Earth people find plenty to tempt them. Because the gateway is entirely controlled from the dull Earth, even if the dull-Earth scientists drop out and disappear among the sexy-Earth people, more dull-Earth expeditions will follow. It’s only a matter of time and influence before one Earth assimilates the other. But which will win this war of competing loves?
EAT CAFE:
THE PILOT
A teleplay by Clark Humphrey
4/9/95
CAST (15):
SETS (3):
ACT I (approx. time: 3:15)
(ESTABLISHING SHOT: Exterior of the Cascade Crossroads Cafe, better known around town from its exterior sign simply reading EAT. It’s a rundown working-class storefront eatery on the rundown main street of a small Northwest city somewhere outside Seattle, early afternoon)
(INT.: CAFE MAIN AREA, early afternoon)
(The lunch rush, such as it is, is over. Several old-timers crack unintelligible jokes as they amble toward the front door.)
OLD GEEZER #1
How was lunch today, you old gourmand?
OLD GEEZER #2
Patty melt: Undercooked. Bun: Overcooked. Fries: Soggy. Apple pie: too cold. Coffee: Weak, lukewarm. Service: If that new waitress weren’t so fine, I’d have something to say about that too.
OG #1
So it was the same as it’s been for the past 30 years?
OG #2
That’s what I love ’bout this place, you know that! Consistency! Brings ’em back every time!
(to waitress ANDREA, busing the recently-vacated booths and counter seats)
Right, milady?
ANDREA (to OG #2)
Yes, if you say so.
(to herself)
Nothing is new under the sun. Vanity, all is vanity, all leadeth unto death.
(She smiles as she says the word “death,” like a subject of adoration or lust. The old geezers have left. ANDREA pockets tip money from the table she was busing, then brings a full tray of dirty dishes toward the counter.)
ANDREA (half to herself, half to dishwasher IVAN behind the open wall space behind the counter)
Ivan, my non-heterosexual tableware-cleansing compatriot, there are only a few consistencies I have found in my current line of income production. Among them is how the most shabbily-dressed customers tend to leave the biggest tips.
(REXXX, a “straight edge” punk rocker, enters dressed in his usual wardrobe of pre-ripped black jeans, spiked arm bands, a leather jacket (this week painted on the back with the words READ CHOMSKY) and a “This Is Not A Fugazi T-Shirt” t-shirt.)
ANDREA (to Ivan, upon seeing Rexxx)
I retract my prior statement.
(to Rexxx)
Good afternoon Rexxx; just coffee again I presume?
REXXX
Yeah that’s right.
(REXXX sits at the counter next to KEVIN, a soft-spoken teenager.)
REXXX (to KEVIN)
Hey Kevin, ready for the Big Night?
KEVIN (barely looking up from his coffee at REXXX)
Yeah I guess.
Ya better be up for it! First all-ages punk rock show this lousy town’s seen in years, and with as great a band as Sicko!
KEVIN (showing somewhat less open enthusiasm than Rexxx)
Yeah that’s cool. Thanks for taping that Sicko album for me; they’re great.
At last, a place where good bands can play. Where underagers like you and devout nondrinkers like me can see them! And all thanks to Pete Shrieve, the new boss of this here joint. He grew up here. He went to Seattle and formed Peter and the Beaters, one of the greatest bands that never had a hit. Now he’s back.
(to ANDREA)
Hey Andrea, where is Pete anyway?
ANDREA (in her Goth-wistful voice)
I am not my employer’s keeper.
(To IVAN, liltingly)
Ivan, have you any knowledge of where Pete might be?
(Ivan, wearing a gay-pride pin on his apron, emerges from the swinging doors separating the customer/counter area from the back kitchen area.)
IVAN
Pete had to pick up the band. I think he said their van broke down out of town. I don’t remember when he left. Do you, Paula?
(PAULA, Pete’s girlfriend and assistant manager of the cafe, trundles out exhausted from the kitchen.)
PAULA (quasi-grumpily; to ANDREA)
I know just when Pete left: Right at the start of lunch, leaving me to do all the prep work and all the cooking. Thank god it’s just a light day.
(She hints nonverbally to Andrea that she’s having a “light day” in more than one meaning)
But I’ll still strangle that partner of mine the second he walks in.
(PETE boistrously enters the cafe, followed by the members of this week’s GUEST BAND, apparently old friends from Pete’s musician days.)
PETE (to the band)
So like I said, after ten years playing in Seattle, I had to take over the restaurant when my mom hurt herself. Apparently it was a freak accident. She’s OK but she has to stay off her hip. That meant she also had to move out of the apartment upstairs. But it’s going fine now, the cafe’s still in business, and tonight’s our first all-ages band night. And I couldn’t have done any of it without Paula here. Ain’t that right, sweetie?
(PAULA stares back at Pete with a stare of icy scorn, revealing to all her temporary lack of hospitality toward Pete and his guests. Pete, familiar with this stare, freezes in his tracks.)
OPENING CREDITS MONTAGE: (time: 0:45)
Quick cut to the main title EAT/CAFE, seen as a fading neon sign in the front window. Interspersed among shots of the central cast are cutaway shots of hamburger patties frying on a grill, milkshakes being mixed, French fries getting lowered into a deep-fat fryer, dirty dishes being hosed down, and coffee being poured from glass pots into ceramic cups. The theme music should be a post-punk-garage-pop guitar ditty, passionate and upbeat.
FIRST COMMERCIAL BREAK
ACT 1I (approx. time: 8:15)
(INT.: CAFE MAIN AREA, moments after the end of Act I)
(PETE and PAULA have evolved from stare-down to arguing. They are seated at the largest booth in the cafe, along with the three BAND members.)
PETE
I said I’m sorry a dozen times. Would you want me to leave my friends stuck five miles out of town for three hours?
PAULA
It’s not just that you left me at the start of lunch. It’s more.
BAND GUITARIST (to PETE)
Oh oh. When a girlfriend says “it’s more,” IT’S EVERYTHING. Prepare to have every fault and personality tic dissected and catalogued.
PAULA (to GUITARIST)
Please, it’s great to see you all again, but this is between me and Pete.
(to PETE)
It’s not a battle-of-the-sexes thing.
GUITARIST
That means it is.
(PAULA stares down the GUITARIST until he backs off.)
PAULA (to PETE)
It’s this, Pete. I supported you those years you tried to get your band going. Then I get laid off and before I can get another job you tell me your mother’s hurt, you ship yourself and me to this dying town. Now your mother expects me to permanently take over this business. And what’s more, I have to run everything but you won’t let me redecorate or even change the menu.
But Paula, this is a classic American diner. One of the last of its species.
Species die when they don’t adapt. It’s not the Fifties. People want exciting food, food that doesn’t sit in your stomach like a cannonball. Right, Andrea?
ANDREA (swinging around toward the table where Pete and Paula are seated)
I would not know. I merely serve it, you merely pay me.
See? Even in a town like this, people want better than we’ve got.
ANDREA
Actually, I do not dine at restaurants.
(She leaves the area swiftly.)
BAND DRUMMER
What the hell was that all about?
That doesn’t matter.
(to PAULA)
So Paula, what do you want?
(PETE reaches over to give PAULA a neck rub. She pulls away from him.)
I don’t know. Just not this.
(She gestures toward her greasy apron.)
BAND DRUMMER:
It’s amazing you’ve stayed together this long. Remember that party where you fought over whether you (gestures to PETE) were gonna spend five weeks on tour? And you (gestures to PAULA) took that big cardboard standup of Mr. T and–
PAULA (rubbing her temples as an electric whirr is heard in the background)
Please. That sound means I have to be happy.
(What Paula hears is a motorized three-wheel cart driven by Pete’s 66-year-old mother EILEEN SHRIEVE motoring into the cafe, trailed by and arguing with the town’s mayor, SYLVIA HARRISON.)
PAULA (switching instantly to “happy” mode)
Hello Eileen.
PETE (to EILEEN)
Hi mom. How’s it going?
EILEEN
It would be fine if I weren’t trailed by a certain parasitic creature.
SYLVIA
If you’d just hear my proposal, Eileen, you’d see it’s your only viable–
(notices PETE and PAULA)
Good afternoon, Paula, Pete.
PAULA (in an aside to the BAND MEMBERS)
Sylvia Harrison. The mayor of our friendly community.
Pete, have you a clue on how to reach your mother? She won’t acknowledge my existence.
I am aware of your existence, dear. I am aware of those papers you hold, and I need not be reminded of their contents.
But if you’d look at the plans, you’d understand. Your family’s been part of this town so long, I don’t see how you wouldn’t support this.
Still plugging your development scheme?
It’s the only salvation for your mother’s property, Pete. The last cannery here in Potlatch may close any year now. Downtown retail’s been decimated by the new mall. We’ve got to come together and make Olde Factorie Towne a reality.
BAND GUITARIST
Hey, can I see that?
(SYLVIA unrolls a small poster with a sketch of the cafe and nearby buildings transformed into tourist shops. She hands it to the BAND GUITARIST.)
SYLVIA (to the BAND MEMBERS)Â Behold. Maybe people like you can’t appreciate quality, but trust me. Tourists, families, and couples on romantic getaways will love Olde Factorie Towne.
(Rhapsodic)
Imagine: Glass art galleries! Ice cream parlors! The Olde Cannerie Toure, with authentic re-creations of sheet metal stamped into can molds! A mini-theme park with actors playing the roles of old farmers and townspeople! And where this greasetrap is now, a dining experience with the best regional dishes — (to PAULA) I’ve found this great chef from L.A., Paula. He’s dying to come up here and create our own traditional cuisine!
PAULA (Patronizingly)
That’s nice.
EILEEN (Increasingly agitated)
How many real townspeople will be evicted so you can hire your phony townspeople?
Easy, mom. Remember, you were arguing with Sylvia when you had your accident.
When I tripped on a bucket of salad dressing that shouldn’t have been where it was. (to SYLVIA) I can’t prove you put it there, but–
Still on those prescription painkillers, I see.
I’m lucid enough to tell you as long as I, my son Pete, and my son’s “friend” Paula are here, the Cascade Crossroads Cafe will stay open and unsullied. If you’ll excuse me, I have to ask my son about today’s receipts.
Eileen, I told you. I’m handling that, for now.
But Paula, if you’re in charge of the kitchen AND the receipts, what’s Pete in charge of?
Let’s talk about that in the kitchen, OK?
Good idea. I can show you how to make that pie crust more solid.
(Eileen honks a small bicycle horn on her motor chair, then follows Paula into the kitchen area.)
SYLVIA (to PETE)
I may be a “parasitic creature,” but I know a few things. I know you’re lucky your mother had her accident on the job, so she could get Workman’s Comp. Maybe next time you won’t be so lucky. Maybe for her sake you should sell this property, while you can get a good price.
Suggestion noted. Excuse me, Sylvia, I have a show to get ready for.
SYLVIA (sternly, while staring at the BAND MEMBERS)
I heard about this. Noisy disrespectful teenage punk rock. Not the attraction that builds a community image. Pete, your experience in entertainment could be valuable to our efforts. If you’d only put on some nice blues or classic rock.
You’re saying if I switch to oldies, you’ll call off the cops and fire marshals that have been here all week to try to shut us down?
I don’t micro-manage my city departments. But if our civil servants have legitimate questions about the safety and security of this firetrap, I hope you can answer them.
I already have. But if you really want this building for your development, your people better not uncover any obscure ordinances to try to stop our shows.
BAND BASSIST
Enough with the civil disobedience. We haven’t eaten. What’s good here?
Everything. I like the meat loaf sandwich on classic white bread, or the bacon cheeseburger with genuine Velveeta.
Ahh, the taste of America.
Great! Let me get Andrea to take your orders.
(The BAND MEMBERS open the menus at the table while PETE rises and walks over to the counter, where ANDREA has been chatting with REXXX and KEVIN. PETE motions ANDREA toward the BAND’s table.)
PETE (to ANDREA)
Sorry to interrupt your little literary soiree there, but we’ve got business.
(The camera follows ANDREA as she silently but reluctantly heads to the band’s table behind PETE, writes down the BAND MEMBERS’ wishes while PETE sits back down, and saunters back to the counter. There, she tears off a page from her order pad and sticks it on the turntable.)
ANDREA (to PAULA, off camera in the kitchen area behind the counter)
Paula dearest: I regret that I must interrupt your family quality time, but we have business.
(PAULA sits back down at the counter, as IVAN emerges from the kitchen area with a tray of freshly washed coffee mugs.)
ANDREA (to IVAN)
Ivan dearest, please resume your poetry recital.
IVAN (putting the mugs away)
You asked for it. This is my stronger stuff, and I don’t know if the judges at the Potlatch Community College poetry slam will like it. You guys tell me if you think it’ll be too much.
I can take anything. Right, Kevin?
KEVIN
Yeah, whatever.
IVAN (in an amateur poetry reader’s monotonic rant)
We do not live in this world alone, but in a thousand other worlds. I live in the world of lumber mills and fruit canneries, of gimme caps and late-model Detroit pickups. But I also live in a world seldom seen in daylight, in the open. A world of men whose love of men would spark a storm of hate if it were known. A world of secrets, of kept promises, of hard working men’s muscular arms embracing on darkened car seats parked deep in the woods. Of lithe male muscles in tension and relaxation beneath the overcast night.
(Andrea is coolly but clearly smitten by IVAN’s descriptions of manly love. KEVIN is taken by the poem’s invocation of a dangerous underground subculture, but gets subtly bored by the stuff about guys kissing.)
REXXX (to IVAN)
So far, merely strong enough to get you expelled from the poetry slam for life. Go for it. Mind you, I still believe casual sex fosters the treatment of other human beings as consumer items, which runs counter to the goal of building a true revolutionary society. It saps strength from the body without contributing strength to the soul.
IVAN (to REXXX, half-mockingly)
Which straight-edge anarchist pamplet did you read that one out of?
ANDREA (to IVAN, gushingly)
Do not bother with that, Ivan. I loved your poem. I want to hear more about the muscular arms. You do also, Kevin, no?
KEVIN (trying to hide his youthful embarrassment)
I don’t know. I liked the parts about the secret world. I feel like I’ve always lived in one, without anybody else in it. As I grew up I liked things nobody else liked. I liked cabaret music, movies with tough women, and fantasies about secret subcultures. I hated the stupid jocks in school and anything they had to do with. They hated me too; I’ve been called a faggot since the fifth grade. I ended up thinking I probably was one, whatever it was.
You’re still young, Kevin my boy. Some people don’t doscover their true sexual nature until well into their twenties, or after.
Another reason to hold off until you know.
Or to experiment, safely of course, ’til you find out.
(SYLVIA obviously overhears some of this as she brushes past Ivan, Rexxx, Kevin and Andrea on her way out of the cafe. She gives a firm, haughty stare of disapproval toward Ivan.)
SYLVIA (to herself, as she exits the front door)
And they say we don’t need to clean up the neighborhood.
SECOND COMMERCIAL BREAK
ACT III SCENE I (approx. time: 4:00)
(INT: REAR DINING ROOM, later that evening)
(The room is filling with what passes for an alternative-music community in the little town: teenagers, community college students, and other young adults, some in various subculture costumes, some in street clothes. PAULA and PETE are greeting fans and handling last-minute details.)
OK. We’ve made sure nobody has alcohol on the premises, so the Liquor Board can’t bust us. We had Ivan and Andrea stand outside during sound check, to make sure the cops can’t bust us for noise. We’ve issued numbered tickets printed with the admissions tax. We’re only selling tickets to the cafe’s legal capacity. And if Mayor Sylvia’s troops have any other objections, (smiling) let ’em come to me.
PAULA (deadpan)
Just flash that aw-shucks cuteness at ’em, Pete, and they’ll melt away. Always worked for me.
So you’re not mad at me anymore?
Let’s just say I’m learning to be cuteness-resistant.
(PAULA walks off camera. PETE walks to the small stage, where the BAND MEMBERS are still setting up their gear.)
Guys, it’s time for a little ritual sacrifice. I’d like you to try to be nice to Stoker McGee over there, the entertainment reporter for our little local afternoon paper.
(PETE points to a table where STOKER is seated. On his table are a reporter’s notebook, a red pen, and several pages of a computer printout of some double-spaced text.)
Anything for ol’ Peter Beater. C’mon guys.
(PETE leads the BAND MEMBERS toward STOKER’s table.)
Stoker McGee, meet the members of Sicko.
STOKER
Pleased to meet you. So Pete’s starting out this concert series of his with some old friends.
BAND DRUMMER (reading the computer printout)
Hey, what’s this? You already wrote your review!
Well, uh, my editor likes to have some early material. I’ll update it if anything happens.
BAND DRUMMER (reading)
“The three-piece ensemble feebly attempted to breathe life into the tiresome repetitions of three-chord garage rock, to an audience largely too young to have experienced Real Music.” What’s this crap?
C’mon. You look like you’ve been around. This teenybopper punk rock might sell a few CDs, but you must admit it just doesn’t have the textural power of the Real Music we had in the Sixties.
Then what are you doing here?
My job obligates me to report on major entertainment events in this county, and yours happens to be the biggest event here since the On Your Toes Players’ Christmas performance of “The Nutcracker.” Also, I’m here to get the story in case some of these impressionable youths decide to start rioting and looting.
(Cutaway shot: Pan of audience members expressing bored, timid, giggly, and other decidedly non-violent youthful looks.)
STOKER (continuing)
And my publishers would like to show their support for live music in downtown, up to a point. They’d like this sorry little exercise to lead to a glorious future with —
BAND BASSIST in unison with STOKER
— with Olde Factorie Towne.
BAND BASSIST (on his own)
Gotta go. Keep those ink stains out of your nails.
(The BAND MEMBERS return to the stage, where PETE is working on some electrical connections.)
I saw you out there. You did great. Remember: Stoker McGee has an almost perfect reverse golden gut. Anything he hates, you can bet it’s good. The worse he writes about your show, the more people will show up at my next show here.
Then maybe we should’ve spit on him.
(PAULA approaches the foot of the stage.)
PAULA (frustratedly)
I mean it this time, Pete. You’ve got to pull some of that weight of yours around here. Could you please go help Ivan at the door?
PETE (to the BAND MEMBERS)
Hey, gotta go. Break a leg, guys. Paula, you know I couldn’t keep this place going without you.
(PETE moves to kiss PAULA, who pulls away from him. He walks off camera, passing ANDREA who approaches PAULA.)
ANDREA (to PAULA)
Paula, I must congratulate you and Pete. The evening shows every potential for triumph.
PAULA (sarcastically)
Great. If it were a smashing failure, maybe I could have gotten run out of town.
Tell me, do you know the identity of that overdressed and somewhat conceited looking young male at that back table?
(ANDREA points to TOMMY, extremely noticeable due to his clean-cut college-boy grooming in a room of dissipated punksters. He’s looking around in all directions, as if casing out the joint.)
No, Andrea. I’ve never seen him before. I didn’t think you cared for the well-fed type.
Please. You may be sarcastic toward Pete, but let us at least be friends. I would not be interested in placing a Wiccan curse upon someone like that man there. However, he did attract my attention when he started to ask many nosy questions at the door. Among his interests: How much money do we charge, do we really pay the admissions tax and if so to whom, are any contraband pharmeceuticals available for purchase here —
I get the picture. I’ll watch out for him. Thanks.
(PAULA takes to the stage)
PAULA (into a microphone stand on the stage)
I’d like to thank you all for coming tonight to our first all-ages show, and maybe my last. Please welcome Sicko!
ACT III SCENE II (approx. time: 2:00)
(INT.: Cafe back room)
(The new kid appears to be appreciative as the BAND performs one almost-complete song.)
ACT III SCENE III (approx. time: 0:45)
(INT.: Cafe main room)
(As the band continues to play, TOMMY the new kid sneaks out to a booth in the front room and pulls out a cell phone from his suit. He calls someone.)
TOMMY (whispering into the phone; a female voice can faintly be heard from the receiver)
Hi. It’s Tommy. Yeah, I’m here. Yeah, the band’s pretty good, if you’re into that sorta thing. The people look a little strange — OK, some of them look a lot strange — but they’re well behaved, at least so far. The place looks clean, but not to worry; if there aren’t drugs or under-21s drinking here, I can plant ’em. Something small, something nobody will ever notice except the cops. Gotcha. (Familially) Love you too. Bye.
ACT III SCENE IV (approx. time 1:45)
(INT.: LIVING ROOM OF PETE’S APARTMENT, later that night)
(PAULA emerges from the door leading to her and Pete’s bedroom, bearing a pillow, bedsheets, blanket, and alarm clock in a large unweildy bundle. PETE stands just outside that door, as PAULA just barely moves her collection past him.)
But Paula, I told the band they could stay in mom’s old room. Paula, can’t we fight when we don’t have company?
(PAULA silently maneuvers herself and her bundle through the door leading to a second bedroom. She quietly closes the bedroom door as the BAND MEMBERS trudge into the room, themselves laden with sleeping bags and tote bags.)
Seems Paula won’t let me apologize. I hope you’ll let me.
No problem, we’re used to all exigencies. Right guys?
(The other two BAND MEMBERS nod in agreement.)
BAND GUITARIST.
I’ll take the rug. It’ll be good for my back after sleeping in the van most of our last tour. You guys flip a coin. Winner gets the couch, loser gets the La-Z-Boy.
No. I’ll take the recliner the first half of the night; I’ll trade places with Rob the second half.
How’ll you know when it’s half?
I always wake up at three. It’s a legacy from when I lived in this band house. All the roommates would come back from their band practice promptly at three. I had my room in the basement, so I’d hear their Doc Martens boots clomping on my ceiling. Clomp clomp clomp clomp. Punctuated by the occasional breaking beer bottle. It’s been wired into my biological clock ever since.
ACT III SCENE V (approx. time 1:00)
(INT.: PETE’S LIVING ROOM, 3 a.m.)
(The band is sleeping, or trying to sleep, with the drummer curled up on an old overstuffed sofa, the bassist in a foam-leaking recliner chair, and the guitarist in a sleeping bags on the carpet. The DRUMMER promptly awakens and checks the wristwatch he still has on.)
BAND DRUMMER (yawningly)
Hmm, 3:02. Watch must be a little fast.
(The DRUMMER rises from the recliner, still in his sleeping bag, high enough to observe PETE and then PAULA step out of his room, approach PAULA’s door, prepare to knock, have second thoughts, and return to his room. Just after PETE’s door closes, the DRUMMER watches PAULA emerge from her room, approach PETE’s door, then turn around and return to her room. The DRUMMER shrugs, then climbs out of the recliner and approaches the sofa.)
SLIDE: “TO BE CONTINUED”
THIRD COMMERCIAL BREAK
CLOSING CREDITS (0:45)
The credit slides flash over a background of this week’s guest BAND performing a segment of another song on the cafe dining room stage.
Go to the Eat Cafe concept
EAT CAFE
A punk soap/sitcom series proposal by Clark Humphrey
3/11/95
A weekly half-hour comedy/drama series with continuing storylines, set among the punk community of a small Northwest city somewhere outside Seattle.
The pivotal character is PETE SHREVE, a.k.a. Peter Beater, 32, a former musician with an early-1980s punk band in Seattle. He’s returned to his hometown to take over the family business, a working-class cafe on a storefront on the city’s rundown main street.
As one of the downtown’s last surviving retail businesses, it’s been a draw for area seniors and lunching businesspeople. But that wasn’t enough to keep it in business. Pete, however, has quickly brought it close to solvency by transforming it into a hangout for the local punk community, while continuing to serve inexpensive meals to the pensioners.
At night, the rear dining room becomes a performance space, with local and touring bands, solo musicians, and performance artists on a small corner stage. While Pete’s band never attained mass popularity, it was known within the alternative-music community; so he’s able to get relatively well-known acts to pass through town. He puts them up for the night in the living room of the apartment he shares with three other young and old punks, upstairs from the cafe.
The cafe’s building is the last site on its block not yet taken over by would-be developers who want to “restore” the downtown into an upscale tourist attraction complete with the exact same “unique” shops and eateries you can find in any upscale tourist trap. Pete and his ailing widowed mother EILEEN SHREVE are holding out against the development. The city’s politicians, business leaders, radio stations and newspaper are all trying to get the cafe shut down, both to expidite the redevelopment scheme and to quash those dangerous punk rockers.
EACH EPISODE will contain at least three storylines–the continuing storyline of Pete’s efforts to stay in business, and at least two storylines involving the staff and regular habitués of the cafe. Each storyline will be structured in four- to six-week arcs, so there’s either a cliffhanger or a climax or both each week. Each episode will also contain a performance segment.
THE DIALOGUE in the cafe will set the main pace of the show. The cameras will switch between simultaneous conversations at the cafe tables, counter, and prep area. It will not be the kind of shallow, gag-fortified dialogue you get in many modern sitcoms. Instead, it will flow like the dialogue in a good involving TV soap or in the classic comic soaps of old radio. The show will depict Pete, and the punk scene, as bastions of honest communication and community surrounded by hostile forces of enforced blandness. As such, Pete and his friends emphatically do not see punk as a trend, a fad, or as a branch of the bigtime entertainment industry, but as an expression of rage and passion that’s timeless and universal.
THE SUPPORTING CAST should represent a cross-section of “alternative” youth culture, with perhaps six regulars and an ever-changing peripheral group of semiregulars and one-story-arc characters. There are also Pete’s mom; the know-nothing ex-hippie entertainment reporter for the local paper who hates anything that doesn’t sound like sixties music; and one character personifying Pete’s raucous relations with the city fathers (perhaps a politician, a cop, or an executive). As opposed to the media stereotype of rock as a boys’ club, this cast will be at least half female, and will include at least one gay regular.
THE REGULARS
PETE SHRIEVE: Our (anti?) hero is a “comfort” character, just as the cafe serves “comfort” food. A gregarious lovable lug with a beer gut, a broad walk, a tender smile and hair unfashionably up to here that belie the passionate, disciplined noise he made in his old band (imagine Buzz Osborne of the Melvins). What kept his band together nearly 10 years was his knack for sincerely making contacts and friendships (as opposed to LA-style schmoozing). These same skills help him in the cafe, bringing his old musician friends to play there and keeping the core clientele of old pensioners happy while he adds a new clientele of the town’s youth-culture crowd, who previously had no local hangout space. He’s not all that bright, so he needs PAULA’s help keeping the cafe’s books balanced; and the chummy-buddy side of his persona has begun to wear tiresome on Paula, who sometimes feels taken in and used by him.
PAULA and JAMES: Pete’s two roommates in the apartment above the cafe. More specifically, Pete’s ex-girlfriend (and still his assistant manager at the cafe) and her current boyfriend. She’d moved here from Seattle with him. In the first episode, Paula moves out of Pete’s bedroom and tells him she wants to keep living with him, just without sex, at least while she sorts out her feelings for him and the new life he’s thrust her into. In the second batch of story arcs, she brings home James, a leather fetishist and dominator who lets her fulfill her self-image as Persecuted Female while satisfying her desire for the kind of power-sex she could never get from Mr.-Sensitive-Male Pete. If there is any torture in Pete’s life, it’s hearing them have loud violent sex from the next room at night. Pete can’t “let go” of Paula enough to kick her and James out.
ANDREA BOWLES: Waitress. A slender, pale Goth waif. Her high school insult-name was Andrea Bowling Pin, both from her complexion and her waist size. Dresses all in black, uses face and body make-up to look even whiter than she is. Talks all about death, living death, vampires, and macabre/horror writers.
Has never been seen publicly consuming anything more substantial than bottled water, coffee and cigarettes. Pete’s mother takes to her as a stray pup needing extra love, something Andrea loathes.
In one story arc it’s decided Andrea must be an anorexic in need of professional help. Pete and some of the punks sneak into her bedroom and discover a hidden microwave and a mini-fridge full of microwave entrees. Andrea’s real aversion, it turns out, is against being seen while eating. It’s a disgusting sight, the ingestion of solid matter into the body, and if the Queen won’t be shown eating in public neither will she.
Why she works at a restaurant with this loathing, then, is another issue that leads into a new story arc, as she goes into regression therapy and discovers a truly boggling array of past lives, past hurts and self-declared qualifications for victim status.
IVAN: Dishwasher at the cafe. A gay S/M afficianado (though not a leather wearer) and poet of violence. Andrea is in thrall to his poems, especially when they involve explicit descriptions of male muscles in motion. The “brains of the outfit” in this gang. His knowledge of the town’s gay underground, and the closeted business and political leaders in it, will prove useful in Pete’s attempts to thwart the cafe’s enemies.
EILEEN SHREVE: Pete’s aged mom doesn’t get around much these days. She’s had a bad hip injury and currently moves around on a motorized chair/golf cart contraption (later in the series she’ll trade that in for a walker).
In her day she was a determined businesswoman who kept the cafe going on spit and bailing wire while Pete’s father ran around with his drinking buddies’ wives. In one of the early story arcs, Pete recounts by flashback why he rebelled against his parents and ran off to be a punk rocker. He’s reminded of those days because he discovers the family secret: that his mother cheated as much as his father did, but was simply more discreet about it. Eileen eventually confesses this, and in a tender moment reveals some past wild escapades that make Pete’s life look positively poseur.
Eileen and Paula don’t get along that well. Eileen has some very particular notions about how a restaurant should be properly run, even if those notions don’t extend to modern notions of healthy cuisine or timeless notions of cleanliness. A restaurant, Eileen believes, should be more comfortable than home dining; it should be welcoming, familiar, and comforting. This clashes with Paula’s more urbane tastes. If she had her way, Paula would redo the entire place to emphasize lighter fare, including at least some vegetarian entrees made with fresh ingredients.
SYLVIA HARRISON: The town’s mayor. Advocate of all things upscale, bland, and “mellow.” Wants the punks thrown out of town and the cafe removed for redevelopment into a “unique” upscale eatery. Came to town with her second husband nine years ago, quickly established herself as a networker and schmoozer of the first rank, culminating in her winning the mayoralty at the last election. May or may not have caused the accident that got Eileen laid up.
SOME OF THE SEMIREGULARS
STOKER McGEE: The entertainment reporter for the local paper. A middle-aged ex-hippie who prefers never to cease talking about how radical he was in the sixties. Today, his loathing of anything that happened since the sixties fits nicely with the conservatism of the local afternoon paper he works for.
TOMMY BROGAN: The mayor’s son by her first marriage. Not well known in the town; he spent his teen years in Oregon with his father and stepmom. His real mom, Sylvia Brogan Harrison, had come to this town with a new husband and without Tommy.
In the first set of story arcs, he arrives home from college and becomes a regular at the cafe. His feeble attempts to fit in with the alt.crowd are first seen by Pete and the other regulars as the annoying but benign traits of a poseur wannabe. But at first nobody knows he’s in cahoots with his mother the mayor, to set up a phony drug sting that could get the cafe shut down.
In a subsequent story arc, the punks try to discover why Sylvia wasn’t awarded custody of Tommy eleven years ago, when Tommy was 10. They discover a secret in Sylvia’s past (other than her possible, unprovable involvement in Eileen’s accident) that, if local conservatives found out about it, would ruin her political career, but which the punks see as no big deal. Something along the lines of past pot smoking, alcoholism, or premarital sex. Pete and the gang have to decide whether to use the information against Sylvia or to practice their oft-espoused belief in tolerance.
KEVIN: A virginal PC waify boy-man who hangs out platonically with Ivan the gay dishwasher in one story arc. He thinks of himself as gay simply because he’s sensitive and non-macho, qualities that got him labeled as gay in school. He can appreciate much of the gay culture: cabaret music, movies with vamp women in them, outré clothes, and political activism. There’s only one difference: despite his attempts to convince himself otherwise, he’s simply not sexually attracted to men.
REXXX: A 17-year-old “straight edge” punk who wears felt-marker X’s on the back of both hands. He bores/annoys the other patrons with his incessant boasts of how he never drinks, smokes, does drugs, or has promiscuous sex. Like the fundamentalist parents he claims to be rebelling against, he’s adamant about pointing out the faults of other people’s lifestyles. His hair is close-cropped (causing some ignorant types, including the reporter Stoker McGee, to mistake him for a Nazi skinhead); his T-shirts are all hand-painted with slogans like “Read Chomsky.” His entire life is built around his nervous adherence to a prepackaged, fully-defined ideology of indie-rock and anarchism; he has a strong judgement about nearly every issue, and isn’t shy about expressing it.
In one of the second-round story arcs, his elaborate worldview is challenged when he reluctantly and unexpectedly falls in love with someone who’s all wrong by the standards of his philosophy.
JESSIE THE JEZEBEL: High school insult name for the teenage girl ReXXX tries to convert to straight edge, until he ends up falling in love with her despite/because of her high-partyin’, hard-rockin’, sex-teasin’ ways.
REXXX’S PARENTS: As married-in-the-temple Mormons in an historically Protestant town that looks upon Mormons as heretics, they’ve tried extra hard to prove themselves as upstanding citizens and community pillars. They dislike their son’s appearance and his love of punk rock, but support his anti-drug evangelizing. They also are adamantly opposed to Jessie being in ReXXX’s life. Apparently there’s some bad blood between their family and hers; they claim Jessie comes from a line of unscrupulous rogues and wenches going back four generations to the town’s founding; they charge that her dad was a reckless Camaro boy in his youth, and hint that her grandmother was a whore. ReXXX eventually finds the latter allegation to be true, by talking with some old men at the cafe who have fond, endearing memories of the grandmother as a wonderful woman who lived in Room 315 of the old Central Hotel circa 1953.
THE FUNK PIMPS: An all-white-jock funk-rap band appearing in the second batch of story arcs, managed by Stoker and touted by him as the band that will put this town on the national music map. They turn out to be very derivative and borderline-racist, adopting wholesale the media images of black youth as woman-hating, drug-dealing, murderous gangbangers. Pete takes it upon himself to expand their consciousness, to learn to make their own sounds and express their own existence instead of simply imitating whatever’s hot on MTV this month. They evolve into an original, experimental and far less commercial band, infuriating Stoker.
THE EPISODE OUTLINES
Each episode (except the first) will begin with an off-camera MONOLOGUE by Pete narrating clips of the story so far. After that we’ll usually open onto:
ACT I: A scene in the cafe, cross-cutting between several dialogues at the counter and booths, some of which relate to the current stories, some of which seem to be just people saying funny or interesting things (actually, some of those dialogues will turn out to be setting up future storylines). We may also see flashbacks that reveal the resolutions to the previous episode’s cliffhangers.
OPENING CREDITS
ACT II: Returning to the cafe, usually later the same day, we get dialogue scenes that push one or more storylines forward. By cross-cutting and flashing back like this, we can have a continuous flow of action and dialogue that still keeps individual units of activity within the 1.5-2 minute scene length producers prefer these days.
There may be additional scenes in the cafe, the office, Pete’s apartment, or on location.
ACT III: Usually at night, this is when guest bands or soloists perform in the dining room (or in the living room of Pete’s apartment). Right after that we get the scenes that lead up to the episode’s cliffhanger.
CLOSING CREDITS: Over shots of this week’s guest band playing part of another song.
THE PRODUCTION (STUDIO VERSION)
There are only two main studio sets in the series, the cafe (with four areas) and Pete’s apartment (with two areas). Most scenes requiring other settings will be shot on location, including the town’s main street (which could be shot in Bremerton, Tacoma, Kent, Auburn, Centralia, Aberdeen, Mt. Vernon, or Everett).
THE CAFE: A comfortable old main-street storefront diner, with punk and contemporary artworks added onto the traditional decor of cheap paneling and old beer signs. This set has four areas, from right to left:
* The storefront and sidewalk outside;
* The main dining area, with a counter and kitchen area in the rear behind a counter and partial partition (which hides potentially-expensive equipment like a grill and fryer), booths in the front;
* The rear dining room, with a small triangular performance stage in the left corner; and
* A small storeroom-office, not seen in every episode.
THE APARTMENT: The architecture should be similar to the cafe. An entrance-exit door at leaft opens onto a wood balcony, presumably leading from a rear stairwell. At front are an old sofa, chairs, rug and TV/VCR. Along the walls are old punk posters and show flyers, and a stereo system (with turntable) and record/book shelves. At the rear is a small kitchenette unit and dining table. To the right are doors leading to the bathroom and two bedrooms. Only one bedroom set need be built; it can be redecorated to serve as either Pete’s or Paula’s room.
CREW NEEDS: Line producer, assistant producer, set designer, lighting designer, decorator, props, wardrobe, hair/makeup, boom operator, dialogue sound mixer, band sound mixer, three cameras, at least three or four stagehands, videotape operator, TD, assistant director, editor.
THE PRODUCTION (ALL-LOCATION)
The key to producing this on location will be finding a real cafe that meets the needs of the story (or can be quickly redressed to meet them) and is or can be closed one day a week for shooting. My first choice is Lemieux’s on First Ave. S.; it’s a classic comfort-food diner that’s closed Saturday night and all day Sunday, is situated in a suitably rundown-industrial area, has a second dining area, and is spacious enough for efficient production.
A compromise option would be to build a non-audience set in a garage, warehouse or storefront space somewhere, and still shoot it one-camera style.
CREW NEEDS: Line producer (administation), assistant producer (logistics), videographer, lighting designer, assistant director (script/continuity), wardrobe, hair/makeup, props, videotape operator/dialogue sound mixer, boom operator, band sound mixer, a few grips and stagehands, editor. A few of these tasks can be doubled up. Interns and cast members can do some of the grip and gopher work.
Notes 4/1/95:
The town should be fictional, allowing us to create our own high school teams, history, industry, crooked politicians, summer festival, etc. It’s big enough to have two high schools, a community college (with a 100-watt student radio station), a couple of commercial radio stations, a cable-access studio, and a small afternoon paper.
Future story possibilities:
Go to the Eat Cafe pilot script
Community Service
12/16/94
Even a highly-paid escort can feel the need to give something back to her community. So Tiffany (not her real name) signed up to volunteer at a long-term care facility for the invalid. She soon found herself assigned to a male residential wing, which was fine with her. The fewer women around, the less she’d have to talk and the less she’d have to lie about what she did for a living that would allow her this much free time.
Besides, her professional skills soon proved invaluable in her assigned task of relieving the patients’ misery. The men ranged from young men who’d become paraplegics and quadraplegics in sports injuries, middle aged burn and accident victims, and elderly victims of assorted debilitating conditions. Tiffany fed them, showered them, held their hands, read them stories, bought them birthday presents, mended their clothes, and rooted with them on Super Bowl Sunday.
She became particularly fond of one young man, who’d snapped his spine in a snowboarding fall last December and would eventually be moved into a semi-independent-living home. He had limited movement in one arm, none in his other arm or his legs, and was expectedly despondent as hell. They were alone in his semi-private room one evening when she asked him to raise his head so she could change the pillows. He teasingly asked her if he granted her request, would she grant one of his. After ten minutes of teasing and exchanging cute remarks, she acquiesed and slowly raised her sweater. He gaped for a quarter minute, then uncontrollably began to sob. Tiffany raised his good arm up to her left breast. The only words he could get out between the sobs were about how he hadn’t seen a woman since two months before his fall.
In that moment, Tiffany knew her true calling in the world. Like a bakery that gave its surplus goods to a food bank, she would freely offer segments of the love she rented to others. The nursing staff found out soon enough, but it turned out they didn’t mind as long as the top management never found out. Indeed, the nurses were grateful for anyone or anything that raised the men’s low spirits.
Because her escort job required Tiffany to at least pretend to enjoy sex with men of all kinds and ages, she had few if any qualms about sharing herself with the older men. It even felt good to clutch their arthritic, grizzled hands to her breasts. She set limits far short of coitus, because she made sure not to let the men who had penile capability flaunt it before the men who didn’t. Those who were well enough could go down on her (or rather, she went up on them) or help her use a vibrator. She gave special strip shows to those who could only watch. She even gave special fantasy routines dressed as her friends’ favorite fantasy figures (even dressing up as specific members of the nursing staff).
After eight months of this, Tiffany had the opportunity to marry a wealthy client, leave the sex industry, and resume the pre-law studies she’d dropped out of two years before. Before she left, she arranged for two other employees of the escort service to take turns in service to the community.
George and Girls
12/15/94
George knew about the boys with reputations. They were the ones who’d had a few affairs, perhaps with some of the more prominent or busty girls in school, and boasted about them to death. George was different. He was both far more active and far more discreet. He had to be discreet, to keep his nose from getting bashed in by angry boyfriends. By the spring of his senior year, his nose remained unbashed.
The girls secretly thought George “more mature” than the other boys. Some of his favorite trysts, indeed, had been with some of the 16-year-old girls who normally preferred the 21-year-old males who still hung out in their cars outside the school.
George didn’t think of himself as terribly “mature,” at least not the way his mother defined “maturity.” Hell, if he was “mature” in that way he wouldn’t even be as crazy for girls as he was. And he was crazy for them. He fell into a secret swoon at the right perfume. He wa obsessed with the way girls walked, the way they stood up and sat down, the way they talked (even when they talked and talked and talked). He was sincerely enthralled by every girl he met, fascinated by every girl he slept with. He gave far less than he should have, social-standing-wise, for the rituals of boasting and strutting to other boys, the realm in which most other boys tried way too hard to prove their manliness.
George knew from the third grade on that he was in love for life with girls, not with any one specific girl with with all of girldom. He knew from the sixth grade on that he was going to be perpetually horny as soon as his horniness hormones kicked in, and his suspicion proved right a year later. He daydreamed not about cars or guns or sports but strictly about legs, shoulders, lips, hair, eyes, breasts, hands, fingernails, hesitant alto voices answering the teacher’s questions right every time, musical soprano voices rapidly dishing all the latest dirt to one another in the halls.
Ignoring his mother’s demands, George never went out for sports and didn’t take many computer classes. He preferred classes and activities with as many girls as possible. In middle school this meant the rowdier boys would always call him a faggot, in keeping with that peculiar middle-school logic that said a boy who only liked boys was a real man and a boy who liked girls was a fruit. By high school, when real homosexuals began to emerge (some more openly than others), George wasn’t usually thought to be one, but he wasn’t thought to be much of a Real Man either. That was fine with George; it helped his drive for discretion.
His current romantic situation was typical of his life this past year. There was Janelle, a young woman of 16 he was seeing less often these days, maybe once every week and a half; from past experience he knew it was only a few weeks before she cut him off altogether, saying it was too dangerous and her boyfriend was close to catching on. He was now spending two or three afternoons a week making love to Shannon, who told her mom she was doing “volunteer work” at church when she was really exploring her own inner truths with him in his car or in one of the eight secret trysting places he’d discovered around the neighborhood. And he was starting on the road to the inevitable with Winnie, the exquisite and intelligent exchange student from Barbados. Some of the other white boys liked to shout in the locker room how they’d be the first to “taste the brown sugar;” George didn’t say, and never would say, how rapidly he was earning Winnie’s respect and confidence, and would soon earn her desire.
All George’s lovers knew he was simultaneously involved with other girls. Indeed, at least half of them got involved with him on the discreet recommendation from one of his prior lovers. They generally said he wasn’t a potential “trophy guy,” someone to show off to dad on visitation day or to go to basketball games with. But he was a definite dream lover. He always smelled nice, he was polite to excess, he actually listened to you and paid attention, he cared about your problems, he had smooth skin and skillful hands, he was never hesitant about going down, he always used protection without complaining, and he could stay up and inside for almost ever. He was perfect; too perfect. Girls soon tired of his utter niceness. They always left him to go back to the challenge and excitement of their boyfriends, usually tougher guys the girls always thought they could tame and civilize.
George knew how his days of discretion would end. He would fall in love with someone too smart, too clever, too damn special to let go of without a fight. He would openly declare his love for her, let her boyfriend have his macho-stupid way with him, and then display his busted-for-life nose to her as proof of his commitment to her. He hasn’t met that extra-extra-extra-special someone yet, and figures he might not until after he goes off to college or wherever. For now, he’s more than willing to enjoy every chance he can get to visit inside the miracle that is woman, to exchange split-second knowing stares with past lovers in the cafeteria, to await the next confident smile that asks if he’d like to study for finals with her this afternoon.
The Groupie in Winter
11/9/94
Claudienne Fisher (born simply Claudia; she told everybody she’d changed her name because it made a more positive numerological reading) was the acknowledged Empress of the Groupies in Seattle. Her name and reputation spread far and wide. Bands arranged their touring schedules to accommodate her periods. Her conquest list included most of the big names in the business, as well as scores of session musicians, roadies, hotel detectives, and theater personnel. Stars knew their careers were on the skids when Claudienne declined to show up backstage. Conversely, they knew their fortunes were rising the first time they were in town and saw Claudienne in her customary spot backstage, efficiently fending off the other local girls, shoving them aside, and presenting herself to the lead singer with her patented cut-the-courtship-crap-let’s-fuck-now stare.
Somewhere toward her self-imposed achievement point of 2,000 men, her magic began to falter. She was actually refused entrance backstage at some shows; at others, she’d present herself at the hotel or the band bus and receive only a polite handshake and autograph from the stars. At first she thought it was a matter of her getting old. She’d spent nearly half her 29 years as a human “All Access” badge, and the age difference between her and the newbie groupies kept getting bigger. She did stay in shape; she went religiously to her health club, ate a healthy macrobiotic diet, and laid off booze and pot when she wasn’t with a guy.
But as she saw younger, equally eager groupies also get turned away backstage, she began to realize something was truly amiss that had nothing to do with her. Her gossip-trained ears soon learned the scoop. These newer bands didn’t believe in groupies. They brought girlfriends and even wives along with them. Some of these females worked for their bus fare as roadies, tour managers, even as band members or as the leaders of their own bands. Claudienne admired this on one level, but on another level found she couldn’t identify with it. Her whole life had been based on being the radiant planet that shines from proximity to a star. She didn’t want to be a star herself. She was stuck, a relic of a passing era.
There was only one thing for her to do. As much as it disgusted her at first, she gave in and redefined herself as an oldies groupie. She regularly appeared at the Ballard Firehouse and Under the Rail, always ready to strike up renewed friendships with her favorite newly-clean-and-sober ’80s rockers.
The Test
9/27/94
Charlotte was the most popular girl in the senior class. Unfortunately, she knew it. Girls hovered around her, trying to join her inner circle. Usually she brushed them off. They needed her a lot more than she needed them. She was too busy impressing her teachers, collecting enough awards and endorsements to lock up an honors scholarship, to bother with the grossly immature sophomore and junior girls shoving their flat, fat, or pimpled selves into her perfect face. In class, or whenever an adult with authority was around, Charlotte made sure to be conspicuously nice to everyone; but in the locker room or at the Dairy Queen or on the street, she made it clear in no uncertain terms that she had a busy year and would have no need or use for new friends.
Just before Thanksgiving vacation, though, one particularly pesky junior named Cynthia approached Charlotte, alone, in an otherwise deserted hallway an hour after school; both had been working on some worthless after-schhool volunteer project that would earn them brownie points with the faculty. Charlotte tolerated Cynthia’s bright and bouncy chatter about meaningless topics like weather and clothes for more than five minutes. But as her migraine began to throb and Cynthia’s high-pitched drone seemed to make it worse, Charlotte interrupted Cynthia with a brash but not officially obscene hand signal. Charlotte took a hidden cigarette and lighter from her purse, took a relaxing puff, and laid down the law. If Cynthia wanted to be Charlotte’s friend, she had to do something for her. Something no other girl in school either could do or would want to. Something she couldn’t talk about to anybody afterwards. None of Charlotte’s warnings deterred Cynthia, who remained just as open-mouthed and enthusiastic as ever.
“Fine. We can’t talk about it here. Meet me under the Buckingham Hills sign at 10 tonight. Yes, I know it’s a school night. If you’re serious about doing this for me, you’ll be there. Good.”
Cynthia drove up to the front entrance to Buckingham Hills in her mom’s Reliant K. Charlotte was waiting by the ugly wood-carved beefeater statue. She got in the car and instructed Cynthia to drive to the back roads of the decidedly unhilly development.
The Buckingham Hills subdivision was still only half built up with big ugly two- and two-and-a-half-story houses, porticos and wings jutting out from homely-shaped central boxes for no apparent reason. The back streets and cul-de-sacs still had curbs with driveway dips that led only to vacant stretches of dirt and sand, filled in so long ago that wild grasses were sprouting in them. Only half the streetlights on these roads were operational. As instructed, Cynthia parked in one of these driveways to nowhere. When the motor had fully stopped, Charlotte repeated her demand that Cynthia never repeat a word about this to anyone. Cynthia unhesitantly agreed.
“Fine. I normally keep my private life private. I don’t hang out at the Dairy Queen, I don’t talk about any boys I might have slept with. I’m trying to get an early graduation and an honors scholarship that would get me out of this stupid school and out of this stupid town. But there’s one thing I’ve got to do before I go. You still willing? This here’ss the point of no return, hon.”
Cynthia nodded her perfectly-tossled head.
“Fine. What you’re going to do is help me and my mother. She’s done a lot for me. She’s worked hard to keep us living in this so-called upscale housing community.” Charlotte pointed to her house, in the middle of the front half of the subdivision. “She’s encouraged me in my studies, to make something of myself. And I know I’ve been a selfish little princess, not showing any appreciation. Well, now’s my payback time. My father’s taking his sweet time with the divorce. He keeps saying he wants to get back together with us. I played along with it for a while. I was selfish, I admit it. They like to give those student-of-the-month awards to kids that still have both natural parents. Some role-model thing. Family values in the age of broken families or some crap like that.
“But now I’m getting out of here early, so I don’t need him and neither does my mother. She’s had to put up with his badgering to let him back in the house for almost three years now. He’s always calling with another reason she should let him back in. He’s had another AA birthday; he’s had a safe driving record; he turned down a big transfer just so he could stay close to her.
“I’ll introduce you to him. I want you to wear my clothes and seduce him. Now don’t go looking weird on me. I can tell he wants me and not as a daughter. No, he hasn’t said or done anything about it. I can just tell. The way he first looks at me at our visitations, then he immediately corrects himself. The way he avoids ever touching me, even to shake hands. Don’t worry about me, hon: he won’t do anything to me. I can tell he’s repressing it and he’ll keep repressing it. I said don’t look weird on me! It’s perfectly understandable. He can’t have my mother anymore, and I look a lot like she looked five years or so before they met. But the way I figure it, if he can channel his frustrations into a nice healthy kinky affair, it’ll not only keep him from bugging my mother so much, it might even make him look bad when the divorce finally comes through, and maybe my mother will get some more money out of it. You’ll like him. He’s not that bad looking for an old guy, and he’s got money to waste on somebody like you. If you sleep with him you’ll be my best friend for whatever time I have left in that dump of a school and I’ll let all the teachers and administrators know what a great student you are and what a great person you are. If you keep playing your cards right, you’ll be a cinch to get next year’s honors scholarship. Don’t worry about getting a reputation; you’ll learn how to be discreet about it, and if anything does come out you’ll be my best friend and nobody thinks bad thoughts about any of my friends. So you’ll do it, right?”
Cynthia didn’t run away. She didn’t shove Charlotte out of the car and speed away. She didn’t hit Charlotte or cuss at her. She just stared at Charlotte with her perfectly made-up eyes, took a couple of deep breaths, borrowed a cig from Charlotte, and pondered the details of Charlotte’s unusual test.
What Price Freedom?
8/22/94
I’m in a town that’s a little like Seattle, only familiar streets aren’t where they should be on the grid (Aurora and N. 40th are near Belltown, which is more like an expanse of streets in residential West Seattle only poorer) and other things aren’t quite right either (there’s an office tower instead of a freeway just south of the Paramount, and a secret passage leading thru the abandoned F&N basement leads to a series of catacombs where stylish people hold banquets, fetish parties and tasteful orgies).
I find myself alone, as usual, when I stumble into a small Westlake storefront office, where apparently I’ve been hired as a computer grunt. There’s a woman working beside me, apparently the boss’s personal assistant (while I was dreaming this I apparently knew what the company did; I don’t remember that part now). The woman was about my age or a little younger; grown up but not mellowed out, white, medium-length dark hair, average figure, average overstatedly “understated” work clothes. We hit it off immediately, and it’s clear without saying so that we’ll be having dinner together. We have it at the Puppy Club. We stroll off from there to her place, a small bungalow in a neighborhood of lookalike bungalows, inhabited by lower-middle-class families, situated where either Belltown or east Phinney Ridge ought to be. We go to bed without saying a word; none are necessary.
After several days of this, I’m still not sure where I am, where this neighborhood is, most importantly where this house is in this neighborhood. I can only go by landmarks, like a Central District-style second-hand store on a corner in the neighborhood.
One Friday evening after work I’m at the Puppy Club’s bar. It’s some other country’s independence day this day, and the bar conversation gets around to the topic of freedom. I raise a toast to freedom and express a wish for my own freedom.
I leave the restaurant and go to my new home, only to find I’ve lost all sense of direction. I don’t remember its address, and trying to find my way via the landmarks only gets me further lost. I forget my lover’s name, and I’m having a hard time remembering her face or body. I walk into the kitchen of a bungalow that looks sort of like hers. A cute seven-year-old girl with missing front teeth cheerfully says hello and asks who I am and why I’m here. I politely tell her I’m in the wrong house. I can’t remember enough about the right house to even ask her to help me find it, so I walk out embarrassed.
I wander the neighborhood that I thought I knew. I’d wished for freedom and I got it. For what? I was alone again. I knew who I was, and I knew what the general world political situation was, but nothing in between. I was slowly losing all memory of having had a lover. I seemed to remember that I had a job, but not quite what it was. I figured if I wandered the vicinity of my job I’d find the place, somebody would show me to my desk, and the rest would come back to me.
After a half hour that seemed like days, she walked up to me, dressed in home sweats. I didn’t recognize her at first. She thought I was only pretending to not know her. She lifted her sweatshirt to flash her left breast to me, joking about you-must-remember-this (not singing the “Casablanca” song, just saying it). She had the most wonderful news: She was quitting work and applying for a graduate scholarship. But before she started school, she wanted to try to have a baby. With me. Slowly, the realization that it was indeed her came to me. She embraced me warmly. As I felt her firm waist and ribcage through her soft sweatshirt, I decided that “freedom,” as currently defined in rugged-individualist America, was a greatly overrated and misunderstood concept.
HungryMen
8/18/94
Jennifer knew from early childhood who she was, and who she was going to be: A traitor to her sex.
Her mother had been a traitor to women, and everybody in the town knew Jennifer would be the same. Jennifer’s mother had had a life’s pursuit/obsession/whatever for sleeping with other women’s boyfriends and husbands; before, during, and after her brief marriage to Jennifer’s father. As soon as Jennifer was old enough to answer the phone, she was taught a system of codes to help her mother keep track of calls from past, present, and nasceant lovers. Jennifer helped her mother change the bedsheets at least once a day, sometimes twice. Later on, she learned the importance of looking and feeling sensual at all times. More importantly, she learned the fine art of ignoring the judgmental stares and remarks given off by other girls. She learned to walk proud, head high, eyes straight ahead, mind focused. If the other stupid girls wouldn’t stop giggling and whispering about her, Jennifer would take their rejection and turn it into a force of pride.
Among the things Jennifer was proud about was that she was, to her knowledge, the first girl in her class to rid herself of that horrible state known euphemistically as virginity. She already knew from her life with mother that a woman’s sex life was, like anything a woman did well, an art and a discipline. It was the fools who held their inexperience as a dubious asset, only to give in at the height of seduction in the stadium parking lot with some 20-year-old, who turned into pregnant dropouts. Jennifer knew better. She knew about birth control since the week after her first period. She knew from observation how to lure, get, experience, and politely drop a guy. She first put her knowledge into practice at an interschool say-no-to-drugs assembly. She scoured the gym for the perfect target. Sure enough, he was there in the fourth row. He had glasses and a flannel shirt on, along with the kind of jeans that the ads said were in last year. He was the kind of guy you’d most likely see at a say-no-to-drugs rally and the kind you’d least likely see using drugs. She maneuvered herself to bump into him after the rally, and to get herself invited to his after-school computer science study group. During the group’s meeting three late winter afternoons later, she made sure to listen attentively even during the long bouts of technical jargon; she made no giggly little-girl apologies for her ignorance of advanced PC lore, but at least pretended to pick up every piece of knowledge she heard. She got her would-be victim to drive her home after the group. It was no hard trick for her to “mistakenly” give one wrong direction, getting him hopelessly lost amid the recursive maze of curving suburban roads while darkness quickly fell, until she harmlessly suggested they stop at a cul-de-sac whose houses were still unfinished. The act of seduction itself went remarkably quickly, thanks to herself having a pronounced self-esteem edge. As she ripped open her first non-practice condom package, Jennifer thought about how the boys back at her school had symbols and code words to boast of their sexual exploits, but even in the ’90s the girls in her backwards town kept quiet about such things until they got pregnant or got an STD or both. Jennifer thought up her own little way of telling the world she was A Woman now, without having to actually tell anyone. The next time she was at Fred Meyer, she got herself a scarf in the closest shade to scarlet they had. She wore it to school all the next week. That, and her even-cockier-than-normal attitude, were enough to let on to the girls that she’d done what they just teased and giggled about.
As the high school years dragged on for Jennifer like a jail sentence, she continued to emotionally distance herself from the immaturity and stupidity she saw in the other girls. Besides, not thinking of the girls as people just made it easier for her to seduce their boyfriends.
But after graduation, she had a change of heart. Or rather, a change of tastes. Three years’ worth of studs, hunks, football players and popular boys left her with a jaded feeling. She decided to recapture the excitement she’d had the first time, when she pretended to be as experienced as she now was, when the wide-open eyes of her immensely grateful fellow virgin could have lit up the twilight sky.
So her adult sex life became a series of what she called to herself “Hungry Man dinners.” She found it easy to spot Hungry Men in bars, restaurants, supermarkets. They were the men without a woman to tell them not to wear THAT shirt with THAT tie, without a woman to tell them not to buy THAT soap or not to drink another drink on an empty stomach or not to laugh that loudly at such an obviously bad joke. Once picked up, they were putty in her hands, to mold into the perfect lover, or as close to the perfect lover as she could mold them into before she tired of them (between three and thirteen weeks, including a few two- or three-man overlap periods). Their technique usually left something to be desired, and they mostly didn’t know how to dress, speak, or comport themselves in the right way to lure or please a woman; but they were always so eager to learn! Occasionally she’d run into a former lover in the store or on the street; he’d often now be happily married with a kid and another on the way, happily living with a dead-end job in some dying company. Such visits confirmed her resolve not to get emotionally involved with any of these nice guys, though she sometimes found herself worrying that by making them perceptively more sexually valuable, she was setting them up for some less-altruistic woman to capture them for a lifetime of suburban ennui, to raise kids just like the suburban girls she’d once hated so much.
Surviving In The Matriarchy:
What a woman-run society would really be like today
7/20/94
It wouldn’t be just like our society only with females playing the traditional male roles and vice versa. It would be a society where, long ago, military might and brute force became subservient to education, culture, and family-palace intrigue. In short, a western world where women instead of gay men ran ancient Greece, where this female-led Greece conquered Rome instead of vice versa; an eastern world where ladies instead of lords effectively ruled the feudal clans. A few key developments at the proper points of history could’ve done it. If iron in the diet had been discovered sooner, fewer women would have died in childbirth or before menopause and the historic image of the frail woman would’ve developed differently. If a few key tribal groups in Europe, India and China got under strong (i.e., bitchy, judgmental, cunning) matriarchs, the rules that followed would have been different.
In this alternate Earth today, education (and hence nearly all the professions) are considered women’s work. Anything involving staying at home and building the non-physical aspects of a community would be woman-run, as well as anything involving the traditional feminine arts of food, apparel and design. Men would be seen as fit for roles descended from the hunter role in hunter-gatherer tribes. Those roles would include grunt labor, construction, and expendable roles like soldiering. There would still have been wars, and they would still have been nasty things that left many people dead and many more people subjugated under the thumb of far-off empires. Perhaps they might have been crueller, since the generals and monarchs giving the orders would be people who had never been foot soldiers, who had arisen in all-female leadership academies where they’d learned cold strategy based on second-hand knowledge of what male soldiers could physically accomplish.
The Greco-Roman adoration of the male body would have developed differently, too. With women doing the sculpting and painting, the vision of male beauty would have taken subtle differences. Instead of proud muscle definition, male images might have emphasized boyish eyes, big Elvis-like lips, and soft unerect penises of every known size and shape. In female images, the model might become credited as the real creator of the work, with the painter or sculptor a mere artisan preserving the model’s beauty for all time.
A society run by empresses, queens, dames and ladies of the court would be far more into palace intrigue and gossip, intercene treachery. Classic drama would be based on these woman vs. woman disputes, not on physical battlefields. Epic sagas would matter less than intimate disputes upon which the fate of nations would turn.
A female-led society would place far more importance on sanitation and safety. The Greco-Roman plumbing system would not have been allowed to collapse, and would have been among the last things to be defended as the empire receeded and eventually faded away. If the conquerers of the various former Greco-Roman colonies had female leaders themselves (or gradually became female-led under the empire’s influence), these conquering nations would have kept or rebuilt the aqueduct system. With better health, the population of Europe might have exploded centuries sooner. With fewer opportunities for a Black Plague to relieve this overpopulation, effective methods of birth control would have been a priority in the academies of research. Even with that, there would have been pressure between these nations over resources, and these nations would have gone on invading one another and eventually invading “new” worlds.
Without the male-idolatry of Rome, male-monotheist religions like Pauline Christianity would’ve surely developed differently. Judaism might have remained a minority tribe, misfits everywhere for their quaint custom of letting men learn to read, write, and perform religious rituals. Islam, a belief system tied in closely to male military discipline and female subjugation, might not have developed at all. The Turkish and North African nations would have developed some system to assert their independence from whatever belief system developed in Europe, but it might have taken very different forms. Perhaps it would have been Egyptian polytheism, a religion more suited toward helping diverse populations “fit in” and toward feminine sensibilities of collectivity instead of rugged individualism.
The daily lives of most people in middle-ages Europe might not have been much different. Men would still toil on the land (and, later, in the factories); women would still give painful childbirth when they weren’t preparing food, making clothes, and building social structures. The main differences would be among the educated classes. No matter which gender gave its family name to the next generation, the women would get the schooling and inherit the property. Male children would be bred and reared in the lower classes to be workers (perhaps even slaves) and in the upper classes to be soldiers, arranged-marriage partners, sexual playthings, athletic playthings, artisans, and art models.
Art and culture would have high priorities in this world, of course. Poetry, storytelling, textiles, food and wine, painting, pottery, and household goods would be among the preeminent genres of creative activity. Architecture would be influenced by practicality, not by monument.
Female imagery would definitely have been a part of the arts all this time. These images would have had a psychological purpose similar to the purpose of female nudity in women’s magazines today: to make women feel proud and/or ashamed of how they fit or didn’t fit the proper ideal of womanhood. Indeed, the ideal female image might be officially different in each nation or each regime of a nation, as different matriarchs impose their own standards of female being onto their subjects.
So where would this kind of a society be today? One where “pioneer spirit” wasn’t worshipped as much. Overseas exploration teams and colonizing armies might have been male-staffed, but they’d only have been considered the advance teams for the women who came in and organized the new societies in places like America.
It’s a society where the development of an idea is more important than its initial creation. Patent and copyright laws would give less priority to the concept of something, more priority to its application. It was a society where home and family were more important, a society with fewer opportunities for misfits and conconformists to make their own alternate social rules. As in our society here and now, home consumption is the driving economic force. Industry exists to make things for people, particularly things for women and families. Girls and boys would still grow up facing rigid gender roles to which to conform, but those roles would be different in ways big and small. Girls would still be expected to be pretty and to market themselves for success; boys would still be expected to be dumb jocks. The differences would lead from the way that girls would also be expected to organize everything, while boys would be discouraged from getting in the way of the ladies and to go off and play sports and not think too hard about trying to become doctors or presidents.
Because The Family Structure would be even more important in a feminine-led society, sex mores would, alas, be little more liberated than they are in our world. A man who gave a woman lots of great orgasms would be a prized possession. Women’s “health spas” would be near-sacred institutions, the sites of many importnat business deals; and some would discreetly feature male sex workers. Adultery for the sake of romance, however, would be strictly punished if caught, particularly if it led to a pregnancy outside of an arranged marriage. Love affairs outside the boundaries of prescribed family set-ups would be a threat to mothers’ power to control their daughters’ rise in society. Young women caught with men below their class would be outcasts.
The Punk Auntie Mame
7/12/94
Mamie Van Winkle (born Mamie Henderson in 1962) was a fat and fabulous former punk groupie who became a self-employed manager-promoter, and who later became marginally self-sufficient (not terribly rich) in the mid-1980s inventing a popular novelty product, a hollow dildo from which you could drink beer (an opened longneck bottle and a plastic straw fit snugly inside).
The invention came to her one night with a typical moment of inspiration. In the midst of a typically active play session with her then-boyfriend, she casually remarked that if she could only get beer out of a cock she wouldn’t have to work for money. With the help of her boyfriend’s lawyer daddy, she sold the idea to a porn supply company. The company did a bangup job at developing her concept into a working product. The dildo looked like the perfect dream cock, complete with tender pink folds and a thick firm main shaft. It proved a big hit with the rocker women, as Mamie fully expected, but it was even bigger among teenagers and sorority girls who used it at slumber parties where they pretended to be naughty.
Nowadays, Mamie lived off her Beer Dildo royalties, carefully invested in income stocks. She had enough income left over after her modest living expenses that she could support a so-far unprofitable business managing a succession of metallish punk bands and punkish metal bands. She got along great with promoters and booking agents, because she knew how to manipulate them. She was all woman and one of the boys at the same time; she could be a hard-drinkin’, hard-swearin’ dude or a voluptuous babe, whatever worked best in any particular deal.
She’d never gotten on well with her parents, though. As a teenager, they’d always tried to quash her obsessions with sex and music; they tried desperately to get her interested in more acceptable female obsessions like dieting.
Mamie took no gruff or condescending remarks about the 200 pounds on her 5′ 4″ frame. She admitted to everyone, including her mother, that she lived for three things: Hot music, cold beer, and hard cocks. She had no intentions of giving up any of her three pleasures, including the beer. If some neurotic bulimic skinny woman stared at Mamie in disapproval, Mamie would meet that woman to her face and tell her that yes, she did indeed like to eat good hearty food — but she only wanted to taste it going in one direction, apparently unlike some of the people in the room.
Mamie’s life slowed down only slightly when she became the legal guardian of her 12-year-old neice Jennifer, whose father was in jail for two years for growing pot and whose mother had just declared herself unable to cope with the girl.
Jennifer was a sweet young thing, obviously trained for what her mother thought would be a good life for a girl (be nice, make friends, find a more stable man than Jennifer’s father had been).
Mamie immediately knew that she had to change this girl around to save her life. Mamie knew nice and sweet didn’t cut it in the near-millennial era, when a woman could expect to have to support herself for life in the hostile universe of corporate day jobs. She’d have to make this little girl aware of and hoping for something better than the dreaded fate of wasting her life in the temp pool of some law office. In short, she had to punkify this girl and do so quickly, in case her mom suddenly decided she wanted her back.
Mamie promptly commenced to give Jennifer teen-punk basic training. The 12-year-old got a crash course in the history of the music of immediacy and “No Future” that had been around since five years before she was born. Jennifer was encouraged to express her “real feelings” if said feelings were angry or skeptical She was discouraged from appearing peppy or spunky when those expressions were clearly out of sync with the reality fo the world around her. The only thing Mamie never showed Jennifer was the Beer Dildo; though Mamie did fantasize about how level-headed she’d be if Jennifer accidentally found its hiding place in the dresser.
Mamie got Jennifer an all-black wardrobe, including boots, and encouraged her to wear it around the house until she gradually assumed its particular image of beauty. Jennifer learned the steps toward a proper punk attitude: the precise combination of decadance and righteousness, the importance of fighting for your right to party.
As Jennifer grew more comfortable in the black clothes, she started wearing them in the neighborhood. Finally, the day came for Jennifer to wear black to school. Mamie gave her a full pep talk about standing up for herself and not letting anybody put her down for who she really was. Mamie told Jennifer that if anything happened to her bad in school, to feel free to call her on the pager at any time.
As Mamie went off on her daily rounds of errands and deals, she felt an unfamiliar sense of trepidation. She didn’t know how to deal with it. She’d been so independent, for so long, that the notion of being on the verge of despair over somebody else’s fate quietly scared her. Not that Mamie let it show to anybody, of course.
Mamie made sure to get home to her basement apartment in time. As she waited for Jennifer to come home, she planned the next step in Jennifer’s transformation, a tasteful cotton-candy-pink hair dye. Mamie couldn’t keep her mind on it, though. She found herself uncomfortably afaid for Jennifer’s fate. She smoked her last pack of Marlboros, and then finished off the panic-pack of Kools she’d kept hidden in the top cupboards. She drank a quarter-bottle of Monarch Vodka mixed with Safeway Select lemon-lime. She put on her precious vinyl Fear LP and nodded into punk heaven in earphones. She was well numbed for any result when Jennifer opened the door and entered the room.
The Beneficiary
6/18/94
Janine Winters always knew she was one of the lucky ones, a rare beneficiary of the social mores surrounding her. She was one woman who actually benefitted from society’s sexual double standards.She’d known male high-school teachers who liked to sleep with their students and got decertified or, in one case, sent to jai. The worst thing that happened to her from her own seductions was that she’d gotten fired once or twice and had to go to another state. The districts that fired her never listed her conduct as a negative reference to her subsequent employers.
Ms. Winters held a private justification for her affairs. She never considered than an abuse of her authority. She told herself until she believed it that she was providing a valuable service to her charges. She was furthering their personal and social development, by teaching her most anxious and inhibited male students to be less afraid of females in general and of intimacy in particular.
Even in the absence of disciplinary action she was always moving from district to district every year or two, never progressing beyond last-hired-first-fired status. She was typically stuck with the classes nobody else wanted, the troublemakers and the unreachables. She’d rent a one-bedroom apartment in a discreet location near the school. Within her first week in a new school, her teacher’s sense for instant chracter recognition would draw her toward the anxious boys, the boys who didn’t dress quite in step with the fashions, the boys who’d never been good at sports and didn’t have hot cars. The boys who seldom raised their hands in class and had a hard time finishing their sentences when they were called upon. There was always a justifiable reason why these boys needed special tutoring after school. From there, it was a simple step to invite them to her apartment on Sunday after church.
It might take three or more tutoring sessions in her apartment before she dared make a move on a boy. But once she did, she was in control all the way. The boy would always be nervous and hesitant; at least one peed his pants the first time she reached over to unbutton his shirt. On the featherbed they were clumsy and awkward but eager to be taught. What she didn’t get from them in the way of orgasms was more than made up by the immensely thankful faces they showed her at the end.
In a typical town, she only had to seduce one boy in this way. Others would then approach her, trembling with desire and fear. She knew she had the power to ruin these boys’ lives forever by implanting a flavor of desire they’d never be able to consummate with any other woman. But she kept on her tiptoes, never crossing the line from initiation into domination.
Ms. Winters knew that she could not keep up this life forever. As she continued to creep toward her thirties and her students remained the same age, the differential would grow and someday become a gulf. Her hair, her clothes, her sense of slang would become out of step with that of the boys, and any attempt by her to keep up with the fads would be perceived as the pathetic actions of a poseur. She would have to become a positive image of an Older Woman. And if she kept on being nice to the nice boys, she would eventually get caught.
She never expected how she finally got caught. Seven female seniors issued a formal complaint. They knew she was sleeping with the boys in the class but didn’t mention it in their documents or statements. The only thing they claimed to care about was that she was ignoring the females in her class, calling on the boys much more often and giving them one-on-one counseling that she never offered to the girls. At the school district’s formal disciplinary hearing, she was defended in passionate speeches by the parents of several boys whose academic performance had turned around for the better under Ms. Winters’ guidance. Ms. Winters was an exceptional teacher and role model, the boys’ parents insisted; someone who should be kept on to help more at-risk students.
But the girls were too persuasive. Showing great initiative and scholarship, they presented results of their private scientific study proving that Ms. Winters routinely ignored female students and their needs. Janine Winters was dismissed at the end of the school year; she received a negative recommendation on her written record and never worked in her state’s public schools again. She spent her 30th birthday behind the counter of a Dairy Queen in Eastern Washington, as part of her first week as night manager. As the controller of the till during her shift, she had to stay up with the girls at the counter while all the beautiful thick-lipped boys who worked there stayed in back at the grill.
The Best Fucks In Town!
5/30/94
Chet and Vivian were the best fucks in town, and they knew it.Chet learned as early as the eighth grade that he had just the right cute/rugged good looks to attract the girls, and just the right equipment and stamina to keep them returning to him. By his junior year in high school, he had bedded nearly every non-religious girl in his school (and several of the religious girls), and invoked enough lifetime ire from those girls’ boyfriends to ensure that he would never attain any respectable adult social standing. He realized long before graduation that if he ever attempted to take over the family gas station, he could rely on not getting a single male customer from among the town’s residents of his generation.
He also knew that if he stayed in town long enough, he would be destined to marry Vivian, his true female counterpart. She considered it a mark of personal pride that her first score preceded her first period. By her senior year she had made half the boys in school happy, the other boys frustrated, half the girls jealous, and the other girls angry. Her sexual appetite got the better of her many times. She couldn’t prevent herself from stealing away the affections of the boyfriends or desired boyfriends of the most influential girls in school, the daughters of the most influential families in town.
Chet and Vivian never slept together as teenagers. They both preferred to be the one in power. They both preferred the challenge of curing naive innocents of their pesky virginity instead of the chore of proving themselves to a knowing, experienced player. But Chet knew that the girls he so attentively pleasured would, one by one, marry “nice” boys and/or leave town. The only people moving to the depressed logging town were grownup hippies in search of The Country Life, the kind of college graduates from rich suburbs who always turned their noses up at working stiffs like him. Any boys with anything better to do would leave town, taking their wives with them. And any girls with anything better to do would go off to college and never come back. Chet couldn’t get into anything beyond community college or voc-tech, and there weren’t any worthwhile jobs in town to train for. Vivian, Chet saw, was on the career path toward Town Slut, whose employment in any local retail or service business would cause said business to be boycotted by the Respectable Women of the community.
Since they weren’t going anywhere and both their libidos were still raging, Chet knew that Vivian would tacitly accept her fate as his bride. He proposed to her in the coffee shop the Monday after the Thanksgiving after their graduation. She knew what he was going to ask, more or less; she thought he was going to try to pick her up first, instead of proposing marriage. She agreed to move in with him on a trial basis as soon as she could explain it to her parents, with whom she still lived.
They didn’t sleep together until the day she moved in to his apartment. They both looked on the encounter with a sense of dread and fear; neither had had a sexual relationship based on mutual strength. Their fears proved unfounded. They discovered that they were two of a kind, ready and able to screw through the night and half-sleep through work the next day with almost obnoxious-looking grins on their faces.
Chet took over the family gas station, which indeed lost all business from the men of the town’s old families. The women of those families, however, often came by. Sometimes they spent a little time with Chet in the stockroom, with Vivian’s approval.
Chet’s station began to prosper again when the oil company paid him to move it to a new spot on the highway. A year later, the oil company turned the garage part into a convenience store. Vivian came on as the day clerk, since she was more capable at early hours than Chet. It was true what the grownup hippies who got gas at the store said about how, in bad sex, men take strength from women, but in good sex, women take strength from men. After a typical night of agonizing sheet-surfing, Vivian usually awoke refreshed and ready to take on the world. Chet was usually ready to sleep in until noon, take a hit or two of caffeine pills, visit a newly-divorced classmate while Vivian worked, join Vivian for the peak afternoon hours, take over the store for the evening shift while Vivian (with Chet’s approval) carried on affairs with the grownup hippies (the only guys of fuckable age left in town with any money).
As the years dragged on, Vivian remained popular among the local men while Chet became less and less of a prize dalliance for the local women. He let his appearance go to hell as he settled into the dead-end life of selling six-packs to truck drivers. He gradually became resigned to his fate. Every afternoon before his shift, he indifferently watched Vivian cheerfully leave the house for a midafternoon tryst while he settled down to porn videos and beer.
Chet and Vivian had three daughters. Vivian carefully taught them to respect their bodies and protect their hearts. She taught them to love themselves and to spread that love out to the world around them. She arranged for each of them to enter sexual life at the earliest opportunity, scheduling long weekend trips with Chet and the rest of the family to provide each girl with an unoccupied apartment. Chet proudly realized that his life had served a purpose on the day when he overheard two teenage boys in the store describe his daughters as the girls they’d most like to be caught with by the cops on the beach at sunrise.
But then the middle daughter disappointed her parents badly when she married into the LDS Church in her senior year, without even being pregnant. Vivian’s only consolation was to remind herself that with all the kids Mormons have, there must be some great balling going on.
Then the oldest daughter phoned home from college with the news that she was moving into a platonic common-law marriage with a gay celibate poet.
It remained for the youngest daughter to carry on the family tradition. But her soul wasn’t into it. Sure, she had the urge to kiss every pair of tender male lips in school, to bring boys into her hormone-enraged lower body; but she valued her friendships with the girlfriends of some of those beautiful boys, enough that she could manage to stay away from those boys’ deep eyes and well-defined muscles. But as soon as one of those boys became available, and as soon as she got the assurance that his ex-girlfriend wouldn’t mind, she let him know clearly that she would be more than willing to go with him to the hippies’ private hot-tub salon and that he wouldn’t need a suit.