(Second version with 3-dicks ending at end)

(monologue excerpted from “As I Lay Dying, a Play in One Act .” Set in any small town anywhere, it reveals old wounds caused by money and class. An old man speaks from a hospital bed to a well-dressed middle-aged woman with papers in hand. Obviously angry, the woman paces throughout the monologue. The only other occupant in the room is a rail-thin teenage boy sitting by the bed.)

Mary, this is essentially a hollow warning from a fang-less lion, me.

You have done your best to divide this town into warring camps. You do this just to grab more power, to remake things as you and certain other ‘good’ people want them to be.

You dug up facts about me. You know all the details of my life in San Francisco. Knowing I was a call-boy, a male whore for 10 years, do you think you can force me to support your demonizing the the very people I was – the poor, the homeless, the addicts, the dregs of society as you like to call them? Well, just call me a dreg. You have, lets call it disdain, for anyone not rich. And you kiss the feet of anyone richer than you.

You’ve made a couple of mistakes. First, you think I care what you tell to world. I do not. Second, you show up now for my signature to support your morality campaign? It’s very hard to blackmail someone who doesn’t give a shit what the hell you do.

Take this home with you and ponder consequences. Do not mess with any member of my Family. I am not talking about ‘parents, relatives’. I am talking about My Family, the one I adopted, the one that adopted me. When you attack them, you attack me. Even if you do not realize they are my family, I will take it personally. And I will do my very best hurt you back in any way I can.

Even if I don’t know them, I will defend them. What they have done, I will defend them. Even now, do not mock hookers, druggies, alcoholics, and the ilk. Do not scorn my Family. We – and I use the third-person plural with extreme exactitude – may not have much, but we stick together. We protect each other because no one else will. Remember the song “We Are Family?” We are.

It comes with the territory. It’s been 30 years and more since I’ve touched any non-prescription drug stronger than weed. I did all of ‘em and  if I had access, I’d all of ‘em again. People see me now – sick nondescript scrawny old guy with a sad look on his face, needs a haircut geezer boring.

I may look like that now but this ain’t me, the ‘real’ me. The ‘me’ who was a high-priced hooker for 10 years, who put himself through university working Santa Monica Blvd., who sold eggs in our trailer park when I was 7, who survived. I was a lot of people before I turned into this. (gestures across his body)

Yell out ‘trash’ (with a smile, of course; here is where a smile makes all the difference), and you’ll get a smile back. And in all likelihood, a “Hey, wanna go burn one?”

You create a situation with the fineupstandinggood citizens of this town on one side and us trash on the other side – the drug addicts, alcoholics, whores, the queers, the flotsam and jetsam of the bottom 1%. Against any and all odds, I know which side I’m on. I was born trailer trash, I’ll die trailer trash, and I know who my Family is, who I can count on just like they can count on me, and who I want there holding my hand as I lay dying.

That’s you, Billy, in case you were wondering.  (reaches for the kid’s hand and holds it, the kid smiles and kisses the old man’s hand, the woman snorts her disgust)

Not that I’d change a damn thing. Being gang-raped back when I was 13 wasn’t fun, but I survived, and it gave me great respect for other survivors. It’s the cry-bullies like you, Mary, that disgust me. You are a hypocrite, wanting to return to a time with straight, white prudes looked down on the people your God told you to help.  Read Acts 4, 1 to 7: From each according to ability, to each according to need.  Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, comfort the dying . Mary, have you ever done  a single one of those Commandments?

And you seem to forget we lived in the same trailer park when we were little. No matter how much money your daddy made selling shoddy merchandise to the military, you still have memories of the sandbox, the laundry room, the tiny yards with picket fences. You got all hoity-toity when you moved away, away from the trailer court that you still remember in dreams. Where I came from, you did too. We are both the trailer trash you despise.

When you know your place in the food chain, life is much easier. I truly would not want to live The Lives of the Rich and Famous. I don’t want fame, if you’re famous, people watch what you do. If anyone had paid attention to me, I’d be dead. Rich? Too much trouble. First, who can you trust? Naw, anonymous and enough to get by.

There’s a Danish word – hygge – that means comfortable. Just enough

That’s all I need. That’s all I want. Just enough.

(the kid leans forward and kisses him on the lips, the woman stomps out)

[scene, & curtain]