Anemone of the State

Excerpted from the play Men Are Raccoons, Women Are Garbage: A Self-Help Play For The Adult Theatre Of The Mind by Emmet Silverman.

Anemone of the State

NARRATOR

In the land of the naked a blind man isn’t much of a voyeur, I mused. It was a slow day.

a loud gunshot, then another. SILVERMAN jumps and grabs for his pocket. He mulls out a telephone and holds it gingerly to his ear. The telephone is smoking slightly.

NARRATOR

I flinch every time. I really should change that ringtone. It was a client all right. Anne.

NARRATRIX

Did you ever see an anemone in a tide-pool or aquarium? One tiny touch and zip! all the tentacles ingather leaving only a squatty puckered prepuce. It looks like a defensive move, but it isn’t. It’s appropriative, acquisitive, and aggressive: the anemone is hungry. Remember this humble coelenterate! For so often we (I mean you) are quick to label the reactions of others as being defensive. Defense isn’t what you should be worried about. Don’t be so dazzled by the shield that you miss the dagger in the other hand. Anyway, by the time you spot either one, you may already have lost. So be careful. It’s a tidepool out there.

SILVERMAN takes the phone from his ear and flips it closed.

NARRATOR

Not every story has a happy ending. This one doesn’t. Some cases just aren’t going to work out. At least Anne’s suffering was over. Mine was just getting started.

Posted by Søren Renner on Thursday, June 21, 2007 at 06:45 PM in
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Posted by PF on June 21, 2007, 09:03 PM | #

NARRATOR

I flinch every time. I really should change that ringtone. It was a client all right. Anne.

So the narrator is a male prostitute? Is this one of those thinly-veiled “fictional” autobiographies? [Gasp!]

Posted by Soren on June 21, 2007, 09:16 PM | #

Not that. Possibly a therapist, private investigator, or raccoon. The playwright uses this ambiguity in the service of aesthetic tension.

Posted by PF on June 21, 2007, 09:20 PM | #

Not that. Possibly a therapist, private investigator, or raccoon. The playwright uses this ambiguity in the service of aesthetic tension.

Who is Emmet Silverman? Is that a pseudonym of yours?

By the way, I wanted to ask you something Soren. In one of the interviews you mentioned Triage- where does this reference come from? I know about it from a military history of some kind, cant remember where from, but where did you hear about it, and how is it involved in theory?

Posted by Al Ross on June 21, 2007, 09:20 PM | #

‘Anemone of the State’, in the style of Robert B (Spongebob) Parker.

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