So, Kanani finished up her play this past weekend,
References to Salvador Dali Make Me Hot by Jose Rivera, directed by Asae Dean, presented by the UNM Experimental Theatre. There are many highlights that I'd like to quote; far more than the Top Ten.
Background: Gabriela is a military housewife who's husband Benito is about to return from the field. Benito has been "different" since the war (1st Gulf War). They currently are stationed in Barstow, CA. Martin is the 14-year-old Mexican neighbor who REALLY wants to fuck Gabriela, and watches her pace in the backyard naked every night.
So without further ado, Greg's highlights:
COYOTE: You smell like soap.
CAT: You smell like shit.
COYOTE: Love with chains and collars attached. Love with no purpose to it, no reproduction, no passion. Love predicated on obedience. Love with violence implied.
CAT: After you've swallowed my moist outer layers--you can chew my heart muscles and give your jaws a real workout. Take you all night to eat my thighs.
COYOTE: Saliva's dripping down and something else is coming up.
COYOTE: In the wild we really know how to love ... get dirt in our eyes, wet the ground with our funky juice ... I'll knock you around so hard all nine of your lives will have orgasms ... Then you'll bear little coyote-cats--tough mutant sons of bitches.
MARTIN: I look at her ass and I hallucinate.
GABRIELA: What are you, twelve?
MARTIN: Fourteen, mi amor. And growing. I have new hair about to happen all over my body!
(Pulling away from BENITO, who has already unzipped her pants and undone his shirt)GABRIELA: ...You know the cat's missing?
BENITO: When I'm home from the field we leave words and other debris at the door, then close the motherfucking door!
GABRIELA: Did you hear what I said about the cat?
BENITO: Ain't the pussy I'm interested in right now...
GABRIELA:
Ay, Dios, man, God, shit: go play with yourself!
BENITO: Is it my fault you got the Ass of Heaven?
GABRIELA: Ho many ways I gotta tell you I'm not some strip-artist whore-bitch you picked up in some German night club--?
BENITO: Then don't wear those shorts!
GABRIELA: Clawing at me like I'm a piece of twenty-five dollar street trash--
BENITO: You know where I can get it for twenty-five? Dang! Point the way, girl!
GABRIELA: And it's hot! ...
BENITO: Okay,
nena, that was a joke, I will not claw you , I will respect you, 'cause you are the farthest thing on earth from a twenty-five-dollar-German-whore-bitch-street-bitch-German-thing, really ...
GABRIELA
(explaining her loneliness to BENITO): I tried making friends. But it's a scientific fact: the brain can only gossip and talk about soap operas for so long before it starts to puke on itself. Or maybe I just got tired spending my afternoons with those girls, with cucumbers in our mouths, practicing blowjobs.
BENITO: You were getting a valuable lesson!
BENITO: ... I am in the Army. In the Army you travel. That's what the Army is, homegirl! A great motherfucker of a travel agency! .. One year it's Germany where the whole country is full of Germans, and I'm sorry but we tried to get rid of the Germans, but dammit, the Germans didn't want to go!
BENITO: You gotta stop acting like you know more than everybody.
GABRIELA: I do know more than everybody.
BENITO: Then keep it to yourself, 'cause, you know what, it's boring, okay? It's a turn off.
BENITO
(talking about how shitty his job is): ... and that's my job and I come home to you, all beautiful, like what you see after death and the angels greet you in the morning, and you hope, you know, God allows sex with the angels in Heaven maybe once in a while if you're extra good around Christmas...
(while BENITO sleeps, MARTIN saves GABRIELA's cat from a pack of coyotes and brings her home. Gabriela thanks him, but tells him to leave)MARTIN: You saying you don't want me around no more?
GABRIELA: I'm saying my old man's back form the field and has a limited sense of humor when it comes to who he thinks wants to fuck me.
BENITO
(upon being awakened from a nightmare): Everything's swirling in this room,
carajo. Must be all the drugs I don't take but wish I did...
GABRIELA: You were talking in your dreams.
BENITO: I never dream.
GABRIELA: Everyone does. It's only human.
BENITO: I ain't only human. I'm human-plus.
GABRIELA: ... How come in eleven years in the Army I never heard you or any of your pinhead friends say one honest patriotic thing?
BENITO: I love my country. It's the people in it I hate.
BENITO: I swear,
nena, you are unlimited in your ballbusting gifts!
BENITO: Hey, how do you clear an Iraqi bingo room? Yell B-52.
GABRIELA
(telling BENITO about a scar): That was the morning I fell of the roof of my house playing Super Puerto Rican Girl and I caught the corner of a fridge we kept outside with my knee.
BENITO: A beautiful jagged mess. Like your mind.
BENITO: That's my real job. To hurt what hurts you.
GABRIELA
(as BENITO is trying to become intimate): tell you what else I don't get. How, like, a feeling, which is made of nothing, gets made part of your body--you know? Why would a doubt make a burning hole in your stomach or a lump in your throat heavy as a man?
BENITO: Swear you use words like some people use razor wire and guard dogs.
GABRIELA: You know you get mean when you're impatient?
BENITO: I'm human and male so fuck me...
BENITO: You know I can fix every bad dream in your head. Okay? I can cure this insanity you have if you let me turn your brain off for a night. Turn off this river of words that keeps drowning us...
BENITO
(giving her reasons not to leave him): A house, a car, insurance, shelter, love, you get love, because I stupidly, ridiculously, fanatically love you--you get that?--you see that in the plus column? Should I repeat? It's the love, stupid!
GABRIELA: Why do you gotta be so convoluted?
BENITO: 'Cause I'm not supposed to make it easy for you to break my heart.
MARTIN
(upon awakening next to GABRIELA): After my pistol of love found its target and exploded with love-shrapnel inside her, and sent her mind to the dizzy edge of the universe, where it sat and wondered what the fuck hit it... she fell asleep. Mission accomplished! I am now a man. Seeds are planted. Other men notice my manhood and are suddenly afraid.
MOON
(Bored, sarcastic): So hide your daughters, people.
MARTIN: SO HIDE YOUR DAUGHTERS, PEOPLE!
GABRIELA: Before you go, explain my dream to me. ...
MOON: It's a dream about soul mates.
GABRIELA: Who never agree? Who misinterpret?
MOON: You two go deep. So the wounds go deep. You give a person so much, you rearrange them. You rewrite them. He's your creation. You're his.
MOON: Shakespeare called me inconstant. "That nightly changes in HER circled orb"... even got my gender wrong... the motherfucker...
MARTIN: Are you saying I'll never get laid?
GABRIELA: Not with me,
muchachito.
MARTIN
(angrily): I gotta go. There's nothing here. Nothing here I want. You hear me? Nothing here I want! Nothing here I want!
GABRIELA: Take it easy, Private...
MARTIN: This whole thing is bullshit! And I don't want any more of you playing with my head, you cutting my nuts off, you doing psycho-
brujeria-witchcraft on me. I'm glad we never got involved, bitch! I'm glad I broke your heart!
(MARTIN climbs the fence)GABRIELA: Did I miss something here?
(MARTIN returns over the fence)MARTIN: This is my life: I rent porn. I shoot coyotes at night. I harass faggots. I steal my relatives' weapons. I take target practice on the moon (MOON flips MARTIN the bird) and every day I get closer and closer to manhood and I worry how the world will crush me--and if I don't touch a woman's thing soon, will I finally go berserk and blow you all away?
(MARTIN climbs fence and is gone)
CAT:
Nena, wait! What do I do if my lover's a ghost?
GABRIELA: Fuck him anyway, Cat.
