R U HERE? M I – September 22, 2013

R U HERE? M I – September 22, 2013

So, after forty years of good playwriting and three years of mediocre poetry, it’s been suggested that I hunt down and tame the elusive essay. Ah, what an intellectual bunch we are on Facebook: suggesting essays instead of flower arranging or knitting. Yes, I know that I will get fifty FB comments defining ‘essay’ and how I’m screwing up the form, but…your suggestions will be appreciated…through gritted teeth at times…but appreciated, damn it. I pray that you will not sweat the grammar to death, as the reason I became a playwright is that I do not see dangling participles but I will put them into a speech if they sound natural. Playwrights don’t have to do that there grammar stuff right.

Thank God for Spell Check.

I will begin this with a statement you will not agree with. While we are all shining stars, all alike and valuable…I am flawed. Please, no happy bright reassurances, I have to confront the reality of being raised by a control freak Mother. When I ran screaming into the night at the age of 19, I was not aware that she had undermined my self worth and self confidence and had habituated me into taking care of She Who Deigned to Permit To Live If I Was of Service to Her.  That I left her was also the best thing that happened to her as she remarried to find companionship.

As for my companionship, I was ripe for anyone who needed to control others. Being rudimentarily female, these masters would all be men. It’s taken me till the age of 64 to realize that they were all also as rejecting and impossible to please as Mom. Part of the Controller is that they will always criticize you, no matter what you are doing for them. (Including paying the bills and keeping house for two husbands.) But I always tried to do better for them. I always thought it was my fault that they didn’t want to do anything for me, that I was unlovable and unreasonable and uneducated and inferior. I eventually left them all and here’s the funny thing…they are all still alone in their 60’s and 70’s because is no way to satisfy a control freak. It’s not about whether or not you do it ‘right’, it’s about control, and so you can never do it ‘right.”

All right. This is Essay 1 and the fun has just begun.

And only one Spell Check error!!!!!

Final Sonnet and end of Reinhard Rites Blog

Sonnet 99 -- Hey Now! Get your game on!

Sonnet 98 -- Life is More Than Sex and Romance

Sonnet 98 -- Life is More Than Sex and Romance

I don’t live in a theatrical script

Nor in the Most Magical Place on Earth

“Happy Ever After” leaves me feeling gypped

         As it’s too late now for houses and birth.

         Marriage is more about mealtime than sex

And Romance withers when the bills come due

Got some idea what a guy expects

And the message is she’s nothing like Sue

But you are as big a fool as I am

If you think that all that matters is bed

Men, without money, chicks won’t give a damn

Women, Love Sweet Love won’t comfort the dead

So I wish you all to find perfection

Just don’t look for it in an erection

From the play "Frenzy Witchcraft"

My Final Word on Sex (Down, Boy!)

My Final Word on Sex (Down, Boy!)

Perhaps my least appetizing memory of sex was in an improvisation class meant to help us free our minds to become better playwrights. We were given some simple situation with which to make free associations, and the key instruction of improv…go along with whatever your partner says or does. A geeky boy, whose name I didn’t know, interpreted this as permission to fly across the room and grab my then younger and perkier breasts; stand on his toes and shove his tongue down my throat. I pried him off and quit the group, but this is what often happens, at least metaphorically, whenever women try to talk about sex.  

Now, I’m a bit old fashioned. I believe that sex is to be performed by two consenting adults of any gender who want to get naked and jump into the fray. I don’t really believe in talking, I believe in doing…just not with random men in a writing class…or any educational setting. I have received two different phone calls from two different Facebook men and did not realize until later that they were looking for that legendary hot phone sex I had heard of, but never learned. I just cheefully talked about the weather and what I had had for dinner. WELL, I DIDN’T KNOW!  I’M AN OLD LADY!

We didn’t need to talk about it back in the nineteen seventies Free Love days. The most verbal we ever got was reading the pages of The Joy of Sex old loud to my husband while trying to place our knees and chins in the correct places that the flabby Hippie Couple in the drawings were demonstrating. This usually ended in a hysterically funny tangled crash to the floor followed by just DOING IT the same old way but on the carpet instead of the bed.

Although I can write a fairly hot seduction scene in a play (Talking God) and give dirty details (Amour Americain), I really never contemplated talking about any of my own excited protrusions or tunnels. If I attempt it, I sound like Lilith Sternin of “Frasier” with her emotionless, flat voice going “Oh do it, Baby. Do it hard.”

Alas, no. Despite my age and illness and unattractive body, I still believe it is something to do in reality, not on the phone or on Skype. I’ve heard it can be done so well in chat rooms that people pay, and you’d think as I playwright, I would be interested. God knows, I could create a false identity for myself, become Bambi the yodeling seventeen year old shepherdess, but you can already see I simply can’t take it as seriously as the chat room experts need.

And what I miss most about men is laying my cheek on a strong, denim covered shoulder, while we talk about our day. I miss their scent and their laughter. I miss having our fingers entwined as we walk silently breathing in Autumn air. Those little closed mouth kisses hello and goodbye, which was my last physical contact with a man and I’m smiling to remember it. So, I’m going to retire from all that and formally announce that the VIP box is closed. My last experiences with actual sex got worse and worse until that last pathetic, unexcited, inept tussle with the wrong man. But my final memory of men will be a sweet, friendly kiss on the lips with the right one.  What more could a girl want?

Sonnet 96 – Elvira Is Slowly Leaving the Building

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Sonnet 96 – Elvira Is Slowly Leaving the Building

She moves like Quasimodo, not Jagger

Her hair is white, her skin sags and wrinkles

To walk with cane has taken her swagger

And her day is ruled by poops and tinkles

Reading great books was not her specialty

Nor did she paint or sing or play guitar

She toyed with dialogue’s simplicity

She was an able worker, not a star

In short, she was simply not good enough

For a well read, talented, handsome man

Trust me, Angel, admitting it is tough

But I have to understand why you ran

May you find a Queen worthy of your throne

And makes both your brain and manhood moan.