NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
Daisy has invited me to a risky, socially distanced performance, called, “Reality Check”. We are double-masked. Though seated next to each other, we are at least five seats away from anyone else in the theater, where there hasn’t been a movie since sometime last year. Who can remember?
The sparse audience manages a good volume of applause as “Tongue Teaser” walks on stage. She wears a body stocking printed with vines leaves and flowers, which don’t conceal the voluptuous proportions and graceful movement of her body. Daisy’s bracelets, jingle, down her long arms in celebration as she claps with enthusiasm.
“I know this girl’s voice.”
“Does she tease you?”
“Oh, she wanted me!”
“For the show?”
Tongue Teaser has her mic in hand.
“Thank you!
Welcome to, Reality Check!
So glad to be here with all you good folks.
Let me introduce, Tongue Teaser!“
Our hostess bows and smiles strolling to stage left as she speaks.
“She is an inspiration.
She moves mountains!
Yes,
Those mountains of new jokes, and slogans, mountains of feeling, of grief
Great rolling hills of joy!
I mean the mountains of mind,
Emotional tectonics,
Floating on associations we make so easily.
Feel that heat?
That truth?
You know.
I know.
What do WE know?
Yeah! That is love’s heat.
Love has the power to glow in opposite ways.
Steep, slippery and hard
Whole ranges that divide people
With snowy peaks of cold disdain.”
Tongue Teaser pauses to stroll across the stage and talk to us from stage right.
“Yes, our many tongues,
Bring us together with words.
Bring us together by ear,
Only to divide us?
You know there is something magic about words.
No. I don’t mean to be superstitious.
I am not superstitious.
Sounds, voices, marks on a page,
think what words can do!
Words can start wars,
And end them too.
They can bring your lover to bed
And out again, real, quick.
Words can move you to make a purchase,
Or cast a vote.
Do you vote, love or stone?
Like, against, to get that gravel out of your sandal,
or in favor to take a step towards aspiration?
To taste sweet realization.
I mean, well ah, that’s politics, isn’t it?
It’s all words.
There are so many of them!
It is estimated there are more than seven thousand languages of them!
All that sound is vibrating
in rooms, automobiles, prisons, jungles, deserts, and bedrooms,
YES, and on the streets
and right here!
I mean can you FEEL it?
Just think!
Okay now, were you thinking in words?
Think again!
How many different ways are there to say that thought in English?
You know any other languages?
Let me hear?”
I look at Daisy as we listen to different voices.
“That was Spanish, but what is that, now?”
“Don’t know, is it Yoruba? Maybe Igbo?
“It isn’t European.”
Several other languages are voiced across the theater.
“Speak up now! we can’t hear you, baby!”
Daisy nudges me. A man with a big white beard gets up and recites a short poem.
“I think that is Russian.”
“Thank you, sir!
“Do I recognize a verse from Lermontov’s poem, Oak Leaf?”
The man bows and responds in Russian holding his hands up as if in praise.
“Yeah!
So many ways to talk, you know what I mean?
There’s the way you talk to your child
the spouse, the friend,
your opponent, your enemy,
a stranger in line at the grocery store.
There’s that thing called, “code-switching”.
Right?
How many of you know what that is?”
“Oh Yes.” hands wave.
The Exit doors, to the right of stage, break open and armed figures run in towards the stage with flags, the Confederate Battle Flag, the Stars and Stripes, and the QAnon symbol.
“My, My, who have we here?”
They climb the steps and chase after the artist. She puts her mic on its stand and jumps from the stage. She runs up the center aisle towards the box office. No one follows.
I pull on Daisy’s arm as she moves to get up.
“Better to get down than up.”
“I want out of here!”
“Who are these people?”
“I am following her!”
“Hang on Daisy.”
“It’s an insurrection. They are probably going to shoot us or take us hostage or something.”
“Why us?”
“To spread terror.”
“But aren’t they patriots? Look they carry flags.”
“Can you imagine white supremacists buying tickets to this?”
“Well, maybe they are here now.”
Five people stand on stage. As well as flags they carry automatic weapons. They wear combat cammies and ballistic goggles. They hold their weapons in the air, while others are walking around the auditorium to guard the exits.
One of them, a bear-shaped man, picks up Tongue Teaser’s mic.
“ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS!”
“We are the future, people!”
They fire their weapons into the air, belching blue and red smoke, and divide into opposing groups facing each other from stage right and left.
“Stop the Steel!”
They start shouting at each other in chaos of voices. No one listens to anyone else.
“USA, USA, USA.
“The election was Stolen.”
“Where’s the evidence?”
“The election was borrowed.”
“There is overwhelming evidence.”
“Where? Where? Where?
“We only have to say it!”
“No, you have to show it.”
“Traitors, Traitors, hang the Traitors!”
“Like the moon landing, it was faked.”
“Fake news.”
“Climate Change”
“Bullshit, Bullshit, Bullshit.”
“The glaciers aren’t melting because the weather is colder!”
“Hoax!”
“Commies”
“Ignorant Fascists!”
“Socialist!”
“Macadamia lost.”
“He won by a landslide.”
The bear shaped man leaps forward.
“Dominate the battlespace!”
“We are not in a battlespace.”
“Fight for it!”
“Socialists are burning our cities!”
The others draw back. They disappear into thickening smoke.
“They are coming for your toilet paper!”
Those who had moved around the theater also come on stage and join in the shout and fire more smoke into the atmosphere. Now too thick to see anyone.
“You are not here.”
“You don’t exist.”
“You are not even real.”
“We are.”
“You are.”
“We,”
“Patriots”
“You.”
“Us,”
“Them”
“Us”
“Them”
Thinning clouds of smoke, or perhaps it is vapor, blow into the audience going gray as the colors mix.
The smoke clears. We see them all turn with military precision and shoulder their weapons facing the audience in a line across the stage.
The lead insurgent takes off her military garb, and her wig, revealing short slender woman with tufts of blond and purple hair.
Tongue Teaser reappears in a pale blue Tuxedo with red top hat decorated in dandelions and ivy. She helps the other insurgents out of their military gear, one at a time.
She reveals a bald man in a tea shirt and jeans.
“Good Afternoon!”
He has the tones of an upper-class Brit.
“Sorry about that dramatic intrusion, dears!”
The bear-shaped man with a beard tumbling down his cheeks in graying waves is revealed in a tweed jacket and open-collar white shirt.
“Greetings! I am professor Bombast from Prestige University, representing the enlightened point of view among all these fools.”
Weapons fire more smoke. A chorus of insurgents who were guarding the exits are now at the back of the stage shouting.
“Elitist!”
“Socialist!”
Tounge Teaser balances her top hat on his oval head. Some dandelions fall off. An ivy vine hangs down the side. Our hostess moves on to a tall woman in a green pants suit waiving a willow branch. Her assault gear is piled up at her feet.
“Well, HELLOW! Listen, here’s the thing. There is not enough land to support free-range cattle and chickens to feed our population. Okay? So, what do we do about the feedlots? The pollution? Pretty shitty situation, huh …?”
The sound of weapons drowns her out and more smoke pours across the stage engulfing Green Woman.
The chorus:
“Fake News!”
“Bullshit”
“We shoot Socialist Traitors.”
The last insurgent has two Colts in hand.
“Yo! Say, Folks. Gun rights! Yo!”
After a pause, Tongue Teaser asks.
“What about it?”
She skillfully spins her revolvers, one at a time and then together.
“The second Amendment.”
“Aha, and …”
“Well, I am not going to let you take my guns?”
“Have I touched those weapons of yours?”
“No, and you’re not going to.”
“Sweety you don’t need them in here.”
“What do you know about my needs?”
She fires her colts in the air and jets of blue and red smoke shoot from the barrels into a cloud.
After dropping her colts, throwing off her black flak jacket. She steps out of the cloud and her cammies, to reveal herself hardly covered by a sequined bikini with blue top and red bottom. She turns to flash her cheeks. She jiggles and gyrates like a pole dancer while singing in a strong contralto voice.
“Oh beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife
Who more than self, their country loved
And mercy more than life
America, America may God thy gold refine
‘Til all success be nobleness
And every gain divined”
Dr, Bombast stares on after her song is finished.
Tongue Teaser speaks in several languages, in succession, apparently saying the same thing each time.
“You recognize that melody, I am sure
but how many of you knew those words?”
She goes off stage and all the others break into the song with the gyrating contralto in front.
As they sound the last notes, Tongue Teaser reappears, in a sleeveless dress. Countless red, white, and blue pleats swirl around her body. A man in minimal loin cloth covered in tattoos, stalks her from behind. She waves to us. Her long white gloves rise above her elbows.
She holds a jeweled magic wand like a cigarette holder.
“The magic of words, folks!
She waves her wand as if conducting an orchestra.
“What is, ‘The Government’?”
She waves her wand in circles.
“Our Government.”
She waves her wand tracing a square in the air.
“The Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary?”
She traces a triangle in the air.
“Socialism?”
She shakes her wand like a fist.
“Government Regulation?”
She waves her wand in slow circles.
“Commie takeover?”
She stabs the air.
The bear-man strips off his false beard and tosses it to the singer.
Our hostess takes off her wig and peels off an unnoticed rubber mask, tossing them to the bear-man.
Daisy nudges me.
“That is, Freda Maidenform!”
“The one who wants you?”
“Well, she did once!”
Freda shakes out waves of her thick red hair.
Stretches her freckles with a grin.
The tattooed man runs naked off stage, waving his loan cloth, and reappears with the butt of a rifle over his groin.
Tongue Teaser stares at him.
“Who could that be?”
The dancer bends to pick up her colts, giggling her breasts and flashing her cheeks to maximum effect. She fires more smoke with her colts.
The naked man holds up his weapon and fires revealing his dangle before he is concealed in vapor.
Tongue Teaser steps forward.
“We have offered you a Reality Check.
Let me invite you to cash and spent it in carefully constructed sentences!”
Our host bows and turns to the cast; all bow.
