Tuesday, October 22, 2013

TESTAMENT

My one-act play TESTAMENT, a comic monologue about an elderly man setting down his final thoughts regarding the disposition of his estate, was staged at the Theatre Artists Workshop in Norwalk, Ct. last weekend, as part of the annual Playwrights Festival.   It was performed by the magnificently funny Jim Noble, and he was brilliant as always.




TESTAMENT


(LUCIUS PEMBROKE, an elderly man of some considerable wealth,  sits at a table, writing.  He holds up pages and reads from them)

         LUCIUS
         (reads aloud)
I, Lucius Pembroke, being of sound mind and body, do hereby set forth my Last Will and Testament, which of necessity voids all previous wills.   I do this of my own consent and volition, and without the benefit of legal counsel.  I’ve been dealing with lawyers my whole life, and over the years those leeches have sucked me drier than my first wife’s hoo-ha.  As far as I’m concerned they can all go screw themselves for a change.

The practical disposition of my estate is a subject that has long consumed me.   I have truly lived the American dream – I’ve worked hard and sacrificed much to preserve the fortune that my parents left me - and I feel it incumbent upon me to assure that this great legacy does not, upon my demise, fall into the waiting hands of lazy unproductive moochers.

To wit, my various ex-wives – Sheila, Madeleine, Bambi, and Juanita - who have already benefited from my largesse far beyond their combined worth.   These indolent cows have been grazing on the pastures of my alimony payments long enough, and by this point they could live quite comfortably off the fat of their grass-fed asses.  Accordingly, I leave them nothing but the fruits of my decomposing corpse; accustomed as they are to feeding off my flesh, they are welcome to any and all of the maggots that my cadaver may spontaneously generate.  Bon appetit.

To my son, Fielding, who has proven to be a monumental disappointment in every respect, from his muddle-headed embrace of socialist politics to his execrable taste in unattractive patchouli-smelling women – to Fielding,  I leave the key to my safe-deposit box, which he will find as empty as the cavernous gap between his ears.

To my daughter Wendy, who through some weird process of surgical alchemy is now my son Wendell, I leave my first edition of  “Finnegan’s Wake”, so that she/he may be as thoroughly confused in mind as in body;

To my cat Muffin,  who taught me so much about myself - primarily, that I hate cats; it’s a miracle I haven’t strangled that son-of-a-bitch already – to Muffin, I leave a year’s supply of Meow Mix, liberally laced with rat poison.  See if you can hack that up into a hairball, you little fucker.

And now, to my nurse Inga…
Inga,  young and fresh-faced, full of high spirits and the promise of springtime–
Inga, barely twenty-three but wise beyond her years, her bright green eyes and winsome smile evoking the very essence of Scandinavian innocence -
Inga, with her soft yielding mouth and darting tongue; her long silken hair cascading over lush ripe breasts; her waist trim and supple; her round firm buttocks, plump and juicy…
         (goes into a happy reverie, then snaps out of it)
What was I talking about?  Oh - 
Inga,  who turned my musty bedroom into a playground of sensual delights…Not just for me, mind you, but for my chauffeur, my personal trainer, my sous chef, and most disturbingly, my accountant – Inga, who slept with everyone on the property but the garden gnome…
Fuck you, Inga.

Having suffered dispiriting failure on every front past and present, I now turn my hopeful gaze to the future.   And the future, my friends, is Space.   In that grand exploratory spirit,  I hereby bequeath the entirety of my remaining estate  - my properties, my off-shore accounts, my stocks and holdings  - all to my good friend Zarkon, the Imperial Leader of the planet Moktu.

It was while summering in Fiji that I was first visited by Zarkon and his hearty crew of extraterrestrials, and spirited aboard their spaceship.

There, as is customary in all alien encounters, I was anally probed, gently but with great thoroughness.  A long cylindrical tube was introduced into my rectum, and methodically snaked through the winding catacombs of my gastro-intestinal complex.

While thus impaled, I received an intense genital massage from a handsome Moktu woman who had fifteen fingers on each hand, but nevertheless used her feet.  Afterwards, my cranium was removed with a laser beam, and I was allowed the privilege of holding my own brain in my lap.  It was an experience I will never forget, even though I don’t quite remember it.

I spent a week on planet Moktu, and found the Moktuvian people congenial and without pretense.  They have no word for “hate”.    They have no word for many things.  They’re a very primitive race. They can build spaceships, that’s about it.

But they’re a great bunch of guys, and I want to help them out, any way I can.   Hopefully my small contribution will help the Moktuvians establish a colony here on Earth, a base of operations from which they may create a New World Order, one based on peace and kindness and mutual respect.  If we could achieve that kind of cosmic love, if we could reach a defining moment of pure universal bliss – and wipe out a bunch of worthless assholes in the process - then my money and my dreams will not have been spent in vain.

Such are my wishes in these, my final moments.   The next pill I take will transport my soul through the galaxy vector and back to Moktu, where eternal life awaits me. 
         (Lucius pops the pill)
Some will probably challenge the wisdom of my directives here;  some in desperation may even question my sanity.  But anyone who tries to contest this will on those grounds,  just be forewarned: Zarkon is watching, and he’s got an anal probe with your name on it.

         (Lucius keels over gently onto the will)

        


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