Soul of a Whore and Purvis Read online

  You sucked and blew and bent and spread and squirmed

  For college jocks and gap-tooth farmer boys

  And fat-ass salesmen in their Cadillacs.

  You gave each other phony names and fucked,

  And they were all your dirty little husbands,

  And Jesus Christ can strike me down and turn

  My guts to pus if I’ve said one false thing.

  Look me in the face and tell me Jesus

  Jack is gonna cancel who you are.

  …Baby…You are suckin’ my cock with your eyes.

  MASHA: Don’t. Don’t. I’m bad luck. It’s just gonna hurt you.

  WILL: I would kiss you even if it killed me.

  …Jesus won’t protect you. Hell with him.

  You wanna hide? You wanna leave yourself?

  You need a stack of credit cards, a beauty parlor,

  Stocks and bonds and money in the bank,

  A little sports car and a big suburban wagon,

  Air-conditioned condo by the golf course,

  Fifty inches on your television.

  Jesus isn’t gonna give you that.

  I’m the one who’s gonna give you that.

  My fingerprints on your velour.

  MASHA: O, stop.

  WILL: I’m gonna lift your skirt.

  MASHA: You can lift it a little bit.

  WILL: I’m gonna lift it higher.

  MASHA: You can lift it a little higher.

  WILL: I’m gonna lift it all the way up. Do you want me to?

  MASHA: You can. OK. You can if you want to.

  WILL: I’m gonna do whatever I want.

  MASHA: I know you are. OK. I know you are.

  BLACKOUT

  Lights up stage right:

  BJ and SIMON as before.

  SIMON: I love this guy. You’re such a baby loser!

  You shit yer pants while pissing on yer shoes.

  BILL JENKS: You owe me, bud. I left you free to wander.

  Didn’t I leave you free for fun and travel?

  Haven’t you had some share of fun and travel?

  SIMON: Of course I have!—This year or so, since Huntsville,

  I’ve circuited the earth a dozen times,

  Entering any soul who offered entrance.

  From sin to sin I’ve wafted like a spore.

  I’ve bent the gambler to his knee,

  I’ve dragged the junkie through the grime,

  I’ve parked the harlot on her corner,

  I’ve sent the rapist on his round.

  I’ve given reasons to the traitor,

  Glossy varnish to the liar,

  Piety to hypocrites—

  And left them hobbled and alone,

  Waiting like dogs for any scent of me.

  And next, who knows? Some other galaxy.

  Prepare for takeoff! Five, four, three, two, one…

  In whose name do you cast out spirits, Healer?

  BILL JENKS: I’m not casting anybody out.

  We’re talking here. We’re making simple average

  Conversation as we grope toward

  An understanding.

  SIMON: Or you cast me out.

  BILL JENKS: I could. I could. So why not demonstrate

  A modicum of flexibility—

  On both our parts? I let you play with Simon;

  You hand me out my standard three predictions.

  SIMON: You’ve had your three. And one just now came true.

  Today you met your mirror, as I’m sure

  You gather. Sometime soon you’ll touch a corpse’s

  Clay and set it throbbing on the slab,

  And when, one day, as all men must, you die,

  That day an innocent shall be killed.

  BILL JENKS: Unless today’s the day, there’s bigger fish

  To get the griddle under. Bankruptcy

  For one.

  SIMON: It’s coming sooner than you think.

  BILL JENKS: What’s coming sooner? Bankruptcy? Or death?

  SIMON: You get no more prognosticating, Jenks.

  Now, do your worst. I’m all strapped in.

  In whose name do you cast out spirits, Healer?

  BILL JENKS: What do you mean? The usual. JC

  SIMON: LIAR!

  BILL JENKS: I don’t name names. I’ve got the gift.

  I cast out demons in my own damn name.

  —Is that what you wanted to hear? Stand back.

  I’ve got the gift. It’s mine from my conception.

  The powers picked me out, and since the womb

  I stand above humanity and spit.

  I cast out demons in my own damn name.

  SIMON: I FLEE!

  BILL JENKS: Don’t flee! Don’t flee! Nobody said to flee!

  Come on! Have you got a message for me?

  Prophesy! Gimme a tip on the market!

  SIMON: JAN? JAN? DARLIN’?

  BILL JENKS: Wait a minute, wait—

  SIMON: Where’s Jan?

  BILL JENKS: Excuse me, I was talking to—

  JAN enters; DOC and STACY close behind.

  SIMON: Jan? I’m cold. I’m—

  JAN: Simon? Simon?

  SIMON: I FLEE.

  BILL JENKS: NO!

  JAN: SIMON!

  SIMON: JAN? I LOVE YOU—

  BILL JENKS: Demon!

  Come back!

  SIMON: Back where?

  BILL JENKS: Not yet!

  JAN: Simon!

  DOC: Simon?

  BILL JENKS: I’m talking to the goddamn demon, Jack!

  —Just a general sense of—up or down?

  Buy or sell? Telephones or hot dogs?

  SIMON: Jan, I’m tired. I’m thirsty. I love you, Jan.

  JAN: I’m here. Simon?

  SIMON: Jan. I’m cold. I’m cold.

  BILL JENKS: I got a conversation going here!

  STACY: Doctor? Is it Simon?

  DOC: Yes, it’s Simon.

  BILL JENKS: Just—back off—

  DOC: It always has been Simon—

  But this is Simon after a miracle.

  STACY: But cool, but neat, but so je ne sais quoi!

  SIMON: Stacy? Jan—? Jan—

  JAN: Simon…Simon…

  BILL JENKS: Everybody: Take a minute here—

  JAN: Simon, have you been cold…all this time?

  BILL JENKS: DEMON, DEMON, GIMME SOMETHING HOT!

  BLACKOUT

  Part III

  Scene 1

  Another year later.

  Split scene: Left, peepshow talk booth (BJ’s hallucination) in BILL JENKS’s living room. Right, front porch of BJ’s rural home outside Dallas.

  Lights up stage left:

  BILL JENKS loads quarters into a slot as a screen rises on a peepshow talk booth, revealing MASHA in a silk robe and platform shoes.

  Each holds a phone receiver.

  BILL JENKS: Slut…slut…slut…slut…slut.

  MASHA: You realize, of course, you’re nothing but a faggot,

  The balled-up, writhing, Adolf Hitler kind.

  BILL JENKS: People eat you in their fantasy.

  MASHA: You’re sloppy drunk.

  BILL JENKS: I’m paying for the call.

  …You want to hear your story?

  MASHA: All I hear

  Is your brain sizzling like a T-bone.

  BILL JENKS: Listen, child:

  I’ll tell you the repeating saga of Masha.

  MASHA: Preacher’s comin’, duck and cover, boys.

  BILL JENKS: You like to blame us for yourself, then run away.

  You’re always breaking free, breaking out,

  I’ll show you the pattern. First, you busted free

  From Daddy; then a hot-rod boyfriend, maybe,

  And then one of your teachers, and then some artist

  Who painted you nude, then some criminal

  Made his living jackin’ Coke machines,

  Then Sylvester of the Purple Prairie—


  Then you ditch your pimp and come to me,

  So you can break my chains and fly away

  Into the cage of your latest master and captor.

  MASHA: What about your pattern, honey?

  Jack ’em up like monkeys till they’re jumpin’

  High as Heaven on that down-home Bible jive—

  Cleanse me save me change me fix me, preacher,

  Use me, preacher, eat my wallet, suck

  My sorry sap.

  BILL JENKS: You slinky slut.

  MASHA: Unbind ’em, heal ’em, fleece ’em, and forget ’em.

  All God’s chillun got a pattern, sugar.

  All God’s chillun got to walk a chalk line.

  BILL JENKS: Slut slut slut slut slut!

  —I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry!

  I deeply regret the misunderstanding that led to…

  The misunderstanding.

  MASHA: How long do we have to stay tangled together?

  BILL JENKS: Until I fathom what the knot is knit of.

  MASHA: Look…I got tired of preaching in my ears,

  The mindless mechanical bark, bark, bark.

  OK? Don’t make it into a work of art.

  Don’t make me a testimony to the lie

  You’re living.

  BILL JENKS: Lie? What lie, you Jezebel?

  MASHA: Everybody’s selling a fantasy.

  Your trouble comes from hating the glistening guts

  Of that one gospel fact. You’ll happily

  Confess to dealing crap to your disciples,

  But you won’t witness to the simple truth

  They’re selling it all right back to you,

  They’re the closest thing to God you’ve got—

  The audience is everyone and no one—

  Anonymous mother you’re suckled by and hate

  And love. You want to see a whore? Go seek

  Among the pews. They sell themselves to you.

  BILL JENKS: Crawling on your belly like a Jezebel.

  MASHA: At least I don’t fall down to a phony God.

  You bow to them. You fear their punishment.

  You take the blame because they see a lie

  While looking in your direction.

  It ain’t your lie. It’s just their fantasy.

  You want to go to Hell because they’re stupid.

  BILL JENKS: Masha, Masha, what has become of you?

  MASHA: I was a part of your pattern—thanks for the save.

  Thanks for the exorcism and the gray suit.

  BILL JENKS: Heck, you ain’t halfway exorcised. I’d give

  An estimate of twenty-five percent,

  If that. Hell, you’re a carnival of demons.

  MASHA: It’s Satan’s world. You buck the tide you get

  All waterlogged and wrinkled up. And drowned.

  BILL JENKS: You ride the flow and paradoxically

  You end up burning in a lake of fire.

  MASHA: Tell me you’ve lived one day in fear of Hell.

  BILL JENKS: I sure have lived in fear. Mostly in fear

  Of Heaven and its possibilities

  For boredom and monotony and Sunday

  Every day, and Jesus hanging around.

  …I can just about smell you through the glass.

  MASHA: What are you talking about?

  BILL JENKS: Is it bulletproof glass?

  MASHA: Do you have a gun?

  BILL JENKS: A lot of people do.

  How’s the security here? Do they protect you?

  MASHA: Who? Where? Why on earth would I need protection?

  BILL JENKS: Who? The demons who employ you here.

  Every sex emporium needs security.

  MASHA: What are you talking about, what are you on?

  I DON’T WORK IN A SEX EMPORIUM.

  Lights down on MASHA. BJ alone in his living room with a phone in one hand, bottle in the other.

  MASHA ’S VOICE: I’ve got a house, and I’ve got a minivan

  And twenty-three pairs of shoes. I’m legally married.

  I am the wife of the executioner

  For all of Texas, and I am the president

  Of the Texas Citizens for Victims’ Rights.

  All you see of me is your fantasy.

  That’s all any of you ever see.

  I should rob banks!—nobody ever sees me.

  I’m like one of those Rorschach ink-blot messes

  Showing the twisted story in your head.

  ALL YOU’RE SEEING IS THE STORY IN YOUR HEAD!

  BILL JENKS hangs up and crawls toward the door with his bottle.

  BLACKOUT

  Lights up stage right:

  BILL JENKS’s front porch, next minute:

  Off and on throughout scene, JOHN works on his cross (it rests against the rail), attaching tokens to it with contractor’s glue. His hair grown shoulder-length, and sporting a beard, he still wears his prison whites.

  JOHN [sings]: If I got paid a nickel

  Every time you told a lie,

  I’d put those nickels in a sack

  And tie that sack around my neck

  And jump into the river

  And sink beneath the water,

  If I got paid a nickel

  Every time you told a lie.

  If I got paid a dollar

  Every time you made me cry,

  I’d pile those dollars in a stack

  And climb that stack and grab the moon

  And hide the moon in Houston

  Where you could never find it,

  If I got paid a dollar

  Every time you made me cry,

  If I got paid a nickel

  Every time you told a lie.

  Meanwhile, BILL JENKS crawls out of the house and across the porch, lugging his bottle, and sits bracing himself against a post.

  BILL JENKS: Woman claims to be the proud possessor

  Of forty-six shoes…

  JOHN [sings]: I’d put those nickels in a sack

  And tie that sack around my neck

  And dive into the ocean

  And mingle with the fishes

  And tell ’em all my troubles

  ’Bout a woman who deceived me

  Every time she told a lie.

  BILL JENKS:…Who’s come for a little BJ?

  Come get a little BJ!

  Come on and get a quality BJ!

  Where are my innumerable followers

  To take me back in a tearful ceremony?

  I got a zillion bucks, and I can’t touch it.

  My attorneys won’t return my calls.

  I held a press conference. Who was there?

  Who was there, John?—wasn’t it a guy

  From the Neo-Nazi Tribune, something like that?

  The Sword and the Blade. The Cross and the Ball, shoot,

  I don’t know. You get the sense of it.

  JOHN: Would you shut up?

  BILL JENKS: I might. It all depends.

  JOHN: The suckers love you, Bill, so just shut up.

  We’ll always love you. That’s what makes us suckers.

  BILL JENKS: If I got paid a nickel

  Every time you kissed a pickle…

  If I don’t pull somebody outa their grave,

  I might as well get in it, too.

  JOHN: You’ve gotta train your mind on Huntsville, Bill.

  In twenty days they strap my mother down.

  If you’re gonna raise somebody from the dead,

  It might as well be my mother, right?

  BILL JENKS: Look here.

  What was your mother in for, in the first place?

  JOHN: You know what she was in for.

  BILL JENKS: No. I don’t.

  Her current fame obscures her former fame.

  JOHN: It wasn’t nothing she was famous for.

  Vehicular homicide. To be exact

  You’d say vehicular infanticide.

  BILL JENKS: Vehicular infanticide? O, God,


  Sometimes can’t you feel the English tongue

  Kind of licking around inside your stomach?

  JOHN: Is that enough to say?

  BILL JENKS: Well…What’d she do?

  JOHN: Ran over my baby sister with the Chevy.

  Pretty much on purpose. So she drew

  A twenty-five-year slide. She almost made it.

  But then they charged her with another murder,

  They claimed she killed that empty-minded girl—

  That nameless, brainless Jane Doe, may the Lord

  Have mercy—claimed my mother perpetrated rape

  And murder with a broomstick. That is false.

  Even over a couple dozen years

  And twenty prison walls, her innocence

  Travels out to me like radiation.

  BILL JENKS: Bathes us in its sacrificial light.

  JOHN: Laying in the dirt, drunk and sarcastic.

  BJ aims around with a Derringer, miming shots.

  BILL JENKS: Bull’s-eye. Bull’s-eye. Bull’s-eye.

  I just have one more thing to say about Masha:

  She used to say “mushmeller” for marshmallow

  And her name was Mar-sha, not Masha.

  And she had thighs like marshmallows, which

  I never touched one time, not even dreaming.

  Announcement!—I have never read the Bible.

  JOHN: Is that thing loaded?

  BILL JENKS: Always assume it’s loaded.

  JOHN: Well, then, unload it please. [BANG] Thank you, you hick.

  …The way of a fool is right in his own eyes.

  BILL JENKS: Proverbs, chillun.

  JOHN: Proverbs, 12:15.

  BILL JENKS: The proverbial Proverbs.

  [Lies back]

  Hey—Ow! Watch the head!

  Man, that’s black. That sky is solid velvet.

  JOHN examines BJ—passed out—takes the gun, considers attaching it to the cross. He points it at the dark. BANG.

  HT’S VOICE: STOP. DON’T SHOOT.

  JOHN: Who’s out there? Come up here and get killed.

  A space of silence.