LITMIR.BIZ

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      ~BY THE AUTHOR~

      NOVEL Queen City and Other Dimensions

       PLAYS (Full Length) 3 Guys in Drag Selling Their Stuff Desert Devils Flowers Out Of Season In The Venus Arms Poet’s Wake Streets of Old New York (Musical) Tales of Darkest Suburbia The Moon Away The Proctologist’s Daughter Thor's Day Wait A Minute! West Texas Massacre

       PLAYS (30 to 60 minutes) 20th Century Sketches Empire (40-minutes) Slow Boat to China (30-minutes) * Tough Cookies (60-minutes)

      ​ PLAYS (under 30-minutes) 21 Today (monologue) Civil Unionized Cornered Dick and Jane Meet Barry Manilow Harry the Chair

       Leaving Tampa

       Missing Baggage

      Next Pedaling to Paradise Pink Gin for the Blues (monologue) Road Kill Samson and Delilah Sisters of Little Mercy Slow Boat to China Talking Dog Vampyre Holiday Whiskers

      ​

      SCREENPLAY Road Kill

      All plays are licensed by stageplays.com

      *Tough Cookies,(1 hr. one-act) is handled by Samuel French, Inc.

      Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore. ——Andre Gide

      For Ronald L. Perkins

      ONE

       the other side of wonderland

      Queen City, Colorado began as a commingling of settlers, speculators, alchemists, prospectors staking claims to Rocky Mountain mines of silver and gold. They had given up their every attachment in pursuit of the miraculous mother-load that will, they think, fulfill their every dream. Well, at least it got them out of the house.

      Drifters and grifters from just about everywhere came looking for something. Some weren’t sure what that something was, but some were sure they would find it in the Queen City of the Plains. They came and they settled, putting down roots into mile-high ground situated against the majestic Rocky Mountains to the West that inspired, to one degree or less, the white kinda-mountainous roof of maybe-snow-capped peaks rising over Queen City International Airport. Eastward are the barren plains and the flatlands of Kansas——the dead zone.

      Much like America, equality and democracy, Queen City is an idea——an enchanting idea.It evolves while yet maintaining infinite dimensions of its past: Gothic, Modern, Pretentious, Victorian, Post-Modern, Contemporary, Quaint, Bold, Steampunk, Deco, a hodgepodge out of time and ahead of its time all at once. No one can easily stick a label to it. It is neither fish, fowl, nor Rocky Mountain oyster. Welcome to the other side of Wonderland——Queen City.

      * * *

      Some of the most atypical individuals live in the Capitol Hill district of Queen City. Carlotta Bean is one of many singular residents on Capitol Hill. She owns who-the-fuck-can-figure-it-out Little Alexandria; a converted stable that consumes two extra large lots. “A wonder to behold, but not to be believed. A gaudy mismatch of everything,”was the sum-total of what the Asshole Princess of Self-Focused Critics wrote regarding Little Alexandria for Architectural Digest. The Demon Critic proceeded to slobber her unbearable euphemisms and similes, her unspeakable grammar, doublespeak, and an endless parade of repetitions across two slick pages. That blatantly egregious reference to Little Alexandria was simply used as an example of the antithesis of, “…that fucking rattrap in Cherry Creek…” bemoaned Carlotta Bean, “…a prefab owned by carpetbaggers from Dallas, Los Angeles or some other woe-worthy place.” Carlotta was heartbroken——for a short while anyway——until another side of her arose from the suburbs of Hell to come to her rescue suggesting a vendetta.

      She began her vendetta with a barrage of poison-pen letters handwritten to the editor and to the “sick bitch gonzo writer” herself. Every single day two letters were written in purple ink from a tortoiseshell fountain pen. As her vitriol grew daily, her diminutive handwriting became as large as fingernails and as jagged as the stabbings of a Donald Trump signature. No one from Architectural Digest ever replied. She felt abused, hurt, unnoticed. She was thrown into a tailspin which headed straight into a deep and hate-filled depression which she felt disposed to parcel out among her friends and anyone else who gets in her way. When Carlotta’s unhappy she dragoons those around her to be the same.

      The daily missives and telephone calls, her angry outbursts and farting into her smartphone, pretending to be a lawyer threatening to sue their collective asses became meaner by the day. Once she screamed into the phone, “I know where you live, fucker!” followed by a barrage of ear-piercing shrieks. After a month of menace she made one last, regrettable, not very smart phone call, “There’s a bomb hidden in your building!”

      After an hour, or so, of her bullying interrogation, she finally let the Men in Black Suits talk. Hours later, after explaining the situation ad infinitum, interspersed with her sobbing and contriteness, the Men in Black Suits confessed their surprise that she and Little Alexandria were treated "so shockingly, so shabbily."Carlotta entertained the Men in Black Suits with her coquettish, sensuous, woman-girl persona. She turned into a purring kitten with a come hither smile, “Anytime you boys are in town be sure to come see me. Ohh, and since we all agree that this was nothing but nonsense you may leave now. Ya’ll have a pleasant day, ya hear?” The Men in Black Suits bowed and walked backwards toward the front doors and let themselves out, smiling as though they just had the fuck of their lives. And perhaps they did.

      The following day a computer generated legal document arrived via certified mail. The document was complete with two unreadable notarized signatures from the magazine’s attorneys. If the Men in Black Suits hadn’t helped her to turn over a new leaf, the “cease and desist”order scared the bejesus out of her with threats that, unlike Carlotta’s own threats, could in fact be carried out. She ceasedand desisted. After a month without a word from anyone at Architectural Digest she felt assured that would be the end of it. And it was. She never heard from the magazine again. She did not renew her subscription.

      Carlotta Bean is a slight woman, a natural beauty, a mature woman shrouded in mystery. Her dyed-black hair is cut into a strikingly asymmetrical shape that suits her face and temperament perfectly.

      When Carlotta first saw Mister Bean, Mister Bean saw her as a vagina, a lovely vagina, but a vagina all the same. When she wasn’t a vagina she was a piece of arm candy——a trophy he could fuck. She saw him for what he was; a sad man with a shitload of money. They both knew full-well that their living together was all an arrangement, but after a few months they found the best in each other; the vibes they shared were positively intoxicating, so Mister Bean asked his vagina to marry him and, without any hesitation, his vagina said yes. Mister Bean and his vagina were a match made in somewhere otherworldly: a strip joint on Colfax Avenue where Carlotta gave her future husband a lap dance.

      Carlotta was reasonably happily married right up until Mister Bean died from eating a moldy baloney sandwich while sleepwalking. It took Carlotta nearly an entire year before she could put on a face, an attitude, get out of the mansion, get her hair and her wigs done, get a waxing down under and have a bit of fun. And, boy-o-boy, did Carlotta Bean know how to have fun——and a lot of it!

      On either side of the north entrance to Little Alexandria, rising two stories high, two marble Ionic columns stood attached to nothing. “It’s a wonder they haven’t toppled. Must be some kind of gravity or magnetic thing or something,” those who saw it were heard to say.

      The frieze below the cornice of each depicts naked Greek soldiers with spears, shields and unreasonable stiffies. Some nights the columns prowl around the grounds. One night, while wading in the outdoor pool, the south pillar fell and chipped its cornice. The north pillar

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