Some amazing things began to happen for me at the end of my Rocket House days. I got a paying gig writing infomercial scripts for a pharmaceutical marketing firm.
Up to this point, I had never endeavored to write for “the man.” After all, I am a creative type, the kind of writer who functions partly in the vacuum and partly with community. When I was approached by the marketing firm, it gave me new thoughts. New thoughts? That's right. I had never seen infomercials, nor had I ever thought about them. There is no TV in our house, and I have almost always been at work in the late night hours when the programing turns to entertainment stylized advertising.
But this gig paid. Moreover than paying, they treated me in such a way that lead me to feel like a professional writer or advertisement copy writer. I got the job because the gentlemen who hired me had seen Pastrami on Rye and knew someone, Gio I think, over at Rocket House Studio.
I showed up at their office at the appointed time. I felt somewhat out of place. I mean, this was early morning. I looked like a bum waiter the morning after, which summed up what I was. I was also suffering from a slight hangover which was the custom in those days too.
I learned about a disease. I learned about a smart technology in place to treat, or at least diagnose the disease. I also signed twelve pages of nondisclosure agreements. So, these are all the details you need to know.
What I learned: 1) writing screenplays can be lucrative and 2) I am a fiction writer.
I went to graduate school to develop my mode of work as a novelist. Afterward, I went to work at Umbrella Factory Magazine as the fiction editor. At UFM, I learned how to read, decline and accept short stories. Either way, novels, short stories, it's all fiction.
The screenplay thing came about haphazardly. And now, I was working for “the man.”
It all comes down to gaining and learning from experience. In a way, it was the height of my time as a screenwriter, the infomercial.
Meanwhile back at the factory... UFM is a no profit endeavor. UFM functions as a forum for the work of other writers. In its short existence, I have not been disappointed by it as a product, as a process or as an exercise.
In the early days we taught writing workshops. All of us on the UFM staff taught them. We did it for two reasons. The first was simply to grow community and support. The second reason was for money. Any money we made with tuition was for the advancement of our publication. I taught a few initially. They were all fiction writing workshops. I felt pretty good about the results and the participants.
When my work at Rocket House waned, I felt good about that too. The good old days writing for animated shorts would not last forever. When it comes down to it, even if I labored for days or weeks over a script, I would still work faster than a stop-motion animator.
Months after my screenwriting days ended, I was again approached by Gio. He and his studio were planning on expanding their efforts and growing into live action film. Real film and with real actors was a strange prospect for them.
For me, I was out of film by now. I was falling head long into my work as a fiction writer as well as my work at UFM. I was busy working on Sand and Asbestos the serialized novel which appeared weekly at Sophia Ballou. I was also coming up with curriculum to continue new and interesting workshops for UFM.
As always, I thought about consolidating my efforts. How could I write a screenplay for Rocket House intended for live actors and develop my workshop curriculum?
I was sitting still one morning and thinking about old times. I thought about the early 1990s. I thought about where my parents had moved off to, a suburb on Salt Lake City's south side. No, my parents aren't Mormon. They moved to Salt Lake City for work. I had gone to visit them in the early days and on one such visit I became enamored with the Sugar House neighborhood. Here was a half-abandoned neighborhood of weird shops. There were guns and records and sex shops and psychics. There was also a Chinese restaurant. In the twenty years since then, Sugar House has changed, like all downtown neighborhoods in all western cities, it has become clean and reputable. Yet, in my mind's wanderings, after my conversation with Gio about live action, I was delightfully lost in a forbidden and now dead neighborhood.
I used the location of Sugar House for this short story about obsession and bad first dates:
Sugarhouse
The good days can't last forever, this, Jorge said. These are the good days. It was a reassuring statement. He made it for no one's ears but his.
The radio failed.
Static began.
Jorge turned his back to the window where he'd been standing, looking, waiting. The stereo receiver was so old, it had been made by an American. It wasn't his. It came with the shop.
Jorge wiggled the wire.
The static eased up and stopped.
Voices came through: tax measures, moral concerns, ballot issues, important things.
Back at the window Jorge stared at the street. The cars parked there had been parked there forever. If not forever, than at least since the 70s. Cars came and cars went, but he never did keep track of them.
The plume of smoke became noticeable on the very edge of the shop window. It was the exact faint movement to attract his attention.
He untied his apron.
He discarded it.
He opened the door.
Outside on the sidewalk, he saw her before she turned around to see him.
Theresa, he said. I love you, I have to have you. He dropped to his knees and his arms uncurled from his chest so they could be outstretched in the expression of love. I have to have you, it will be death to see you with someone else. I want to take care of you and fuck you and do you and do what you want.
She turned around. She heard him, clearly, because she looked right at him. The cigarette was clamped loosely in her teeth. “Hello Jorge,” she said. “How's the picture framing business?”
“Slow,” he said. “How's the magazine business?”
“I swear, I'm over it.”
Jorge smiled a grape skin smile. There weren't too many things left to do, or to say, but the important thing was for him to keep her eyes on his and for those eyes not to wander south below deck.
“Look at this fucking place,” she said.
Jorge looked around, just like she said. Chinese restaurant, public statue; psychic's, record shop; gun shop, pawn shop; his shop, her shop. The tingling in his pants stopped. He could tell her, but there was nothing he could think to say. He'd have to think about it. He'd have to find poetry, or love songs. Using any romantic talk, or dirty talk wouldn't get him anywhere, she saw that stuff all day everyday.
“It's dead Jorge, it's dead.”
Death starts slowly. Death starts in one kitchen and then spreads to a whole house. The house dies and then the yard, the garden and the grass and the hedges and the trees. The children make stories up and embellish them at every turn, every retelling about the dead house, the haunted house.
Death is haunting and haunting is cancer. One haunted house becomes all the houses that border it. Then the churches close because there are no more parishioners. Then the schools close, and the stories stop. The decay of buildings, then the weeds grow up through the cracks in the sidewalks and the broken asphalt of the streets. Who cares about children's stories then? The broken streets in a dead neighborhood need no preamble.
“Theresa?” Jorge asked.
She dropped the remains of her cigarette on the sidewalk and stepped it flat. There on the sidewalk was the day's butts, eight or ten of them in all. She would eventually kick them into the gutter, but it was still too early for that. She looked at him with her big brown eyes and raised her painted eyebrows. Her nod was the entreaty.
“Yeah, um,” Jorge stammered.
“What is it Jorge?”
He wrung his hands together. He wanted to ask her since the first day he ever saw her. She came out of the psychic's place, it was still summer then. Her wild hair hung down over her bare shoulders, bare above her sea colored dress. Jorge stood and stared. The process of unloading the sixteen foot length of picture frame molding halted the same amount of time for her to walk from the psychic's place to Wild Desires Books and Magazines. She vanished inside and then the neon open sign flickered on.
I want to have sex with you, I want you in my bed. When you're gone, I'll collect any hair you leave behind, I'll smell you on the sheets. I want you.
Since the summer, she no longer looked the same. Her exoticism gave way to the familiar and the familiar gave way to beauty. Her neck, covered now in a plain maroon scarf, made her face seem like it hovered over her shoulders. Her skin, like soft shell crabs made for a dozen stories like fairytale romances or the back pages of the skin magazines.
“Would you like to have dinner with me?” he asked.
There, that's as good as it's going to get. There that's dressing up in a Halloween costume and not having a party to go off to. That's the end of the night with soap and cold cream when no one saw the brilliance of the disguise, no party going friends, no children trick or treating at the door.
“Tonight?” she asked. Her hands, deep in the overcoat's pockets emerged suddenly. She slowly opened the box of cigarettes. The movement seemed natural enough.
“Well, I don't, I haven't, well, okay.”
“Ching's Garden?” she asked. She held her hand in a point to the place just across the street. She retracted her hand, and stuck the wheel of the lighter. She ignited the cigarette.
Long ago yes, long ago. In the waning days of his life, Mr. Henry spoke about the old days and Las Vegas. He sat at a sun bleached, and weathered picnic table. He smoked one cigarette after another. His backyard smelled like WD40 and cigarettes. He'd say: “Goddamn it, I never made one single fucking swear. Shit.” He pulled his shirt sleeves up. “I never drank, never smoked, shit,” he'd say. He hit the cigarette violently on the side of an abalone shell causing the brittle ash of the cigarette off and the entire table to shake. “My mother died when I was at Midway. You know Midway?” he asked.
Jorge sat still. He sat in awe of the old man. He sat with him everyday, all summer long. “No,” he said.
“She hated that I went, you know? Do what your mother tells you to do. And don't fuck around.”
“Yes sir. Yes, okay.”
“Yes, okay,” Jorge said. “You know, I've never been in there.”
“It's settled. I close at six.”
“I know,” he said.
There she was. There were the smudges on her bathroom mirror. The kinds of smudges that happen after long hot steamy showers. Rolling from her neck, down her back, splitting like forks in rivers down her legs came the rest of the condensed steam from her shower.
“So what is it?”
“What?”
“You like me?”
“Yes.”
“You want to kiss me?”
“Yes.”
“Date me?”
“Yes.”
“Fuck me?”
“Yes.”
“I see how you look at me.”
“You do?”
“Yeah, it's all over your face.”
“It is.”
“You masturbate, Jorge?”
“What?”
“Beat off, jerk off, rub one out?”
“Yes.”
“You think about me?”
“Sometimes.”
“You want to fuck me?”
“Yes.”
“I don't do that Jorge, you wanna know why?”
“Why?”
“Because I look at porn everyday and I masturbate so much I'm raw.”
“That happens to girls too?”
“Not the same way.”
“Oh.”
“I haven't had sex in a long time.”
“Me neither.”
“Except with myself, of course.”
“Right. Me too.”
“I'd like to be friends with you though,” she said.
The interior was cliché, gaudy, over Chinese-ified. There were fish tanks and big bright plastic plants. The place was dim. It was mostly red and dark brown. Jorge flipped through the table jukebox. There weren't any songs he knew.
The chapel was washed white and bright in springtime. The flowers proved lovely, fearless, sex organs severed from roots or stems and shoved with perverse care into a vase. A man of the cloth, an old man of the cloth spoke the words.
There were four of five rows of folding chairs. They were mostly vacant. Theresa looked radiant. The thought of old dreams reemerged. There was the garden to tend to and the picket fence which needed mending. There were days after work and curtain lace and smells of pot roast and celery. They were coming, the good old days. In the chapel, she'd gotten over the porn thing. Maybe, he didn't care. I've always wanted you, that was more potent, more sensual than I do. In the vacant chapel, it didn't matter. No one knew a thing and no thing was on none to know.
“This stuff is greasy,” she said. “Look at it.”
Jorge rolled the chopsticks around in his fingers and pushed the food around on his plates. “Yeah,” he said.
“I'll have heartburn for sure,” Theresa said. Her face neared the table and her eyes rolled high to her lids and gazed at Jorge. “I really hate heartburn,” she whispered.
“Me too.” He sipped Coke through a straw.
Theresa sat straight and leaned back in the bright red booth. This motion brought her well away and out of the light which only lit the table top.
The place was vacant, empty. They were the only table, a booth against the far wall. A forlorn waiter stood near the door and looked out the window to the vacant street.
She lighted a cigarette. She clutched it between the index and middle finger of her left hand and with the thumb and small fingers she dribbled the plastic lighter on the table top. Later, she tried to adjust the chopsticks in the left hand without the benefit of the fingers on the right hand. She gave up and used the ancient fork. “It's fucked up, I know,” Theresa said.
“What? What is?” Jorge asked.
Away into the distance, a hazy mountain like an old volcano loomed into the clouds. They were clouds. Maybe it was nothing more than wind blowing snow from the peak. Jorge was at the wheel of the exotic car. A red car. A two seater car. Convertible car. Theresa's face, wrapped with a silk scarf, seemed contented under the big sunglasses. The flat plain of the boulder filled valley stretched on either side of the road. The boulders were sporadic like pumpkins growing in their patch, they were all the size of houses. She whispered something, but it was not clear over the sound of the wind rushing in his ears. “What?” he said.
“I know it's fucked up,” she said. She held up the hand with the cigarette and then she held up the hand with the fork and the fork load of food. Her painted eyebrows raised and she smiled in a tight-lip-now-you-see-what-it-means way. “Oh, who cares, I smoke in bed too.”
“What?” Jorge asked.
“So, Jorge, tell me, what's your last name?” she asked. She dropped the fork into the plate.
“Sanchez.”
“Funny. You don't look Mexican.”
“I'm not.”
“Oh,” she said. “I guess that's why.”
“What's yours?”
“Tucker.”
“Theresa Tucker?” Jorge asked. “Great handle.”
“I've thought about changing it to Samantha Rex.”
“Oh?” he asked.
“You know, a pen name.”
“You're a writer?”
“No. Maybe stage name.”
“Oh,” Jorge said. He sipped the rest of the Coke and made slurping noises with the straw.
The tea came.
Then the check.
Then the fortune cookies. “What does yours say?” she asked.
“It says: 'Depart not from the path which fate has assigned.' Wow,” he said.
“In bed.”
“In bed? Yours says in bed?”
“No Jorge. You add in bed to the end of your fortune.”
“Why?”
“Because it's funny.”
“What's yours say?”
“Happiness is a warm gun.”
“In bed?” he asked.
“Yes it is.” She crumbled the small slip of paper and dropped it into the ashtray.
She tended to roses. Her tight apron only covered her front. She slowly bent over the flowers and clipped one here and another one there. The length of her legs ended in the high heel shoes on her feet. She gathered a dozen roses and slowly straightened herself and walked into the house. The red roses fit in the crystal vase on a sideboard butted up to a pale pink wall. “Jorge,” she called. She pulled the tie of the apron loose. “Jorge, come on,” she said. The apron left her. The apron left her naked.
“Jorge.”
“What?”
“Come on,” she said. “You got a car?”
“A car? Yes. Yes, I do have a car.” He stood when she stood. She snubbed out the cigarette and quickly put her coat on. She helped him with his.
“What kind?”
“Honda,” he said.
“Compact?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Let's take mine, if we take one,” she said. She snapped the bill off the table and marched to the door.
At the counter, the waiter eyed Jorge suspiciously as he paid. Theresa shook her head. They were the only ones eating there, and he was the only one working there and still, she wouldn't know him. “Jesus,” she said as they neared the door. “Don't all Chinamen look alike?” she whispered.
“What did you say?” Jorge asked.
“I said: the car key is in the shop,” she said. She pointed to the shop across the street. The place looked even more barren now. The psychic's windows were dark despite her neon signs: open and psychic and tarot. The pawn shop was illuminated in fluorescent ecstasy. The street? Dark.
“Inside?”
“Yeah, come on,” she said. “It won't take but a minute.”
“I'll wait here,” Jorge said.
“Outside? Don't be silly.”
“I'm not being silly,” he said.
“So what is it Jorge? Too good to come into the bookstore? I've never seen you in there.”
“I've never seen you in the frame shop,” he said in quick refute.
“Touche,” she said. “But in my defense, I've never needed any framing, and we need to get my car key.”
He stood on her heels as she unlocked the store. She became real as the smell of cheap hair spray and leather and cigarettes wafted off her body. She pushed the door open and they quickly went through. The heavy, blacked-out glass door swung shut quickly and the doorbell buzzed. The lights came on slowly, one row, and one section at a time.
There were severed legs everywhere, all right legs. They boasted of stockings: fishnets, stripes, leather and vinyl. They were all paired with dismembered torsos with corsets and lingerie. Below the plastic body parts, the rows and rows of shelves held magazines and books and video boxes. On the wall the plastic wrapped severed penises shone brightly: red, pink, black and blue. Theresa moved to the wall and Jorge followed. He hesitated at the wall as she vanished into a hidden door. He looked up the length of the wall at the merchandise displayed there.
It became all too real. At Thanksgiving dinner or possibly Christmas, the whole lot of them gathered. It was Christmas, yes, Christmas, the ugly sweaters were the evidence. Theresa sat at one end of the long table. To her left, his right, her family sat. To his left, her right, his family flanked the table. His family held crosses and Rosary beads instead of forks and knives. Her family held vibrators and anal beads. “Merry Christmas all,” Jorge said. He started to carve the turkey.
“I like the Stimulator 2000,” she said.
“What?” Jorge said.
“Yeah, this one here,” she said. She pulled the package from the wall. “It's the right size, this part stimulates the clit, and this little nubby back here, well, you know what that's for.”
“Oh? Yeah,” he said.
“Comes in all colors: red, green; purple, blue; black and pink. I figure if they made orange you could buy one of each and have a different one for every day of the week.”
“Yeah, I guess,” Jorge said.
“What's your shop like?” she asked. She hugged the package with the Stimulator 2000 before hanging it back on the wall.
“Well,” he began. He spun slowly on his heels and took in the general size and dimensions of the store. “It's a lot like this one.”
“With toys?”
“Frame samples.”
“Magazines?”
“Glass samples.”
“Books?”
“Mat samples.”
“Lube?”
“Lube?”
“No,” he said. His tone changed. He was no longer reflective and now more defensive.
“Chippy,” she said. “Don't you like lube?”
“I-I don't know. I guess. I don't not like it.”
“Here,” she said as she pushed past him. At the register counter she grabbed something from the end cap. “Try this. It's on the house.”
He took the little tube when she handed it to him. He held it in his open palm. “What's this?”
“Lube, just try it. It's pretty good, but for you, olive oil probably works the best.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Just about a dime size drop. Right here in your palm. That's all. Do you use your right or your left?”
Jorge straightened up. He grabbed the tube now and held it tight. There were too many things he had to say to her. Things that rang of truth or admiration or love. He needed to tell her he loved her and had for months. He could tell her that the Lo Mein was not so greasy and he never worried about heartburn. “The right,” he said in a low growl that raised in pitch as he said it.
“When you want to make it feel like someone else is doing it, use the left.”
“What the-,” he began.
“Oh,” she interrupted. “And you might want to double the lube.”
“What the hell is the matter with you?” he asked in a calm manner.
“I work here. I give advice.”
“I'm not a customer.”
“I told you not to expect anything, I'm not the type.”
She smiled. She tapped him on the shoulder and nodded to the door with a sideways jerk of the head. Jorge put the lube down on the end cap. He couldn't take it home now, he didn't want to confuse it with something he might want to saute vegetables with.
She clicked out the lights.
She closed the door.
She jammed the key into the lock. “Well, that was a disaster,” she said when she turned around.
“What was?”
“Your date,” she said.
“Yeah,” he agreed. He waited for her to say something, something in contrary, something in humor. Anything. Instead, she put a cigarette to her lips. “Well?” he asked
“Well, what?”
“How was your date?” he asked.
“My date? My date was not a disaster,” she said. She linked her arm in his and lead him away. Away from the porn shop, away from the suspect intersection. Away from the dead hub of the dead neighborhood of Sugarhouse.
Jorge squeezed his arm into his body and in doing it pulled her closer to him. “I don't know whose date you were on,” he said playfully now.
“On yours,” she said. “And I think it'll get better for you.”
“Do you?”
“The next date has got to be less of a disaster.”
“You think I'll ask you out again?” he asked. She hesitated then and pointed to her car, some huge monstrosity, a rusted, formerly a woody sided 70s vintage station wagon. She disengaged herself from him. She held the burning cigarette in her teeth and adjusted herself.
“Of course you will, baby. We're the last man and woman alive, at least in Sugarhouse.”
“Yeah? Sure. Are we?” he asked.
She exhaled. “Yeah, we are.” She propped herself up on her toes and kissed his check. “I'll think about you,” she said. “All night too.”
Jorge stood still as she cranked the car on, then flooded him with headlights. A fan belt squealed as she backed away.
“The last man and woman of Sugarhouse?” he asked. Not true, there was the Chinese restaurant waiter and the psychic lady. And they seemed about an unlikely couple. He'd never seen anyone else, no one in the gun shop, he'd never been inside either the record store or the pawn shop. Maybe she was right and they were the last two.
Would they be able to repopulate Sugarhouse on their own? When he thought about her, he'd have to use 20 cents of olive oil and his left.
Jorge peeked in one shop window after another on his walk back to his car.
There were days.
There were days when he could pass the time listening to the radio and framing pictures. There were days when he could be content with this work. There were days.
Now, the days would not be the days. No. How could he be expected to work when she was so close by? On the other side of the wall, and alone, the last woman in Sugarhouse. She was the last woman of Sugarhouse and she was waiting for him. Waiting for him or maybe she waited for the arrival of the orange Stimulator 2000.
After the story was completed, I couldn't give it up. With the conversation with Gio and Rocket House, I adapted this short story into a short screenplay:
REV 03/20/2011
Sugarhouse
INT. Frame Shop. Day.
Jorge (Voice-over)
The good days can't last forever
The radio fails. Static begins. Jorge wiggles the wire. The static eases up and stops. Voices come through: tax measures, moral concerns, ballot issues, important things.
Jorge (Voice-over)
Theresa. I love you, I have to have you. I have to have you, it will be death to see you with someone else. I want to take care of you and make love to you and do you and do what you want.
EXT. Street. Day.
Theresa
Hello Jorge. (Beat) How's the picture framing business?
Jorge
Slow. How's the magazine business?
Theresa
I swear, I'm over it. Look at this fucking place. Just look at it.
Jorge
Theresa? (She nods for him to continue) Yeah, um.
Theresa
What is it Jorge?
Jorge (Voice-over)
I want to have sex with you, I want you in my bed. When you're gone, I'll collect any hair you leave behind, I'll smell you on the sheets. I want you.
Jorge
Would you like to have dinner with me?
Jorge (Voice-over)
There, that's as good as it's going to get. There that's dressing up in a Halloween costume and not having a party to go off to. That's the end of the night with soap and cold cream when no one saw the brilliance of the disguise, no party going friends, no children trick or treating at the door.
Theresa
Tonight?
Jorge
Well, I don't, I haven't, well, okay.
Theresa
Ching's Garden? (She lights a cigarette)
EXT. Back yard picnic table. Day.
This is a Jorge flashback sequence. Jorge as little boy, and an old man neighbor.
Mr. Henry
Goddamn it, I never made one single fucking swear. Shit. I never drank, never smoked, shit. My mother died when I was at Midway. You know Midway?
Jorge
No.
Mr. Henry
She hated that I went, you know? Do what your mother tells you to do.
Jorge
Yes sir.
Mr. Henry
Don't eat in those slimy oriental places. They'll poison you, do you understand.
Jorge
Yes sir.
Mr. Henry
And don't fuck around.
Jorge
Yes sir. (Beat) Yes, okay.
EXT. Sidewalk. Day.
Jorge
Yes, okay. (Beat) You know, I've never been in there.
Theresa
It's settled. I close at six.
Jorge
I know.
INT. Restaurant. Night.
Theresa
So what is it?
Jorge
What?
Theresa
You like me?
Jorge
Yes.
Theresa
You want to kiss me?
Jorge
Yes.
Theresa
Date me?
Jorge
Yes.
Theresa
Fuck me?
Jorge
Yes.
Theresa
I see how you look at me.
Jorge
You do?
Theresa
Yeah, it's all over your face.
Jorge
It is.
Theresa
You masturbate, Jorge?
Jorge
What?
Theresa
Beat off, jerk off, rub one out?
Jorge
Yes.
Theresa
You think about me? When you're doing that?
Jorge
Sometimes.
Theresa
You want to fuck me?
Jorge
Yes.
Theresa
I don't do that Jorge, you wanna know why?
Jorge
Why?
Theresa
Because I look at porn everyday and I masturbate so much I'm raw.
Jorge
That happens to girls too?
Theresa
Not the same way.
Jorge
Oh.
Theresa
I haven't had sex in a long time.
Jorge
Me neither.
Theresa
Except with myself, of course.
Jorge
Right. Me too.
Theresa
I'd like to be friends with you though. (Beat) This stuff is greasy. Look at it.
INT. Wedding Chapel. Day.
This is a soundless, scene. No dialogue. Since this is a retreat into Jorge's fantasy, the chapel should be chaste and twisted. If there is a groom side, and a bride side, populate them appropriately. For instance, normal people for Jorge's family and sex dolls for Theresa's. Since there is no inherent action, have fun with it.
INT. Chinese Restaurant. Night.
Jorge
Yeah.
Theresa
I'll have heartburn for sure. I really hate heartburn.
Jorge
Me too.
Theresa
(Lights a cigarette, plays with food on her plate.)It's fucked up, I know.
Jorge
What? What is?
Theresa
I know it's fucked up. Oh, who cares, I smoke in bed too.
Jorge
What?
Theresa
So, Jorge, tell me, what's your last name?
Jorge
Sanchez.
Theresa
Funny. You don't look Mexican.
Jorge
I'm not.
Theresa
Oh. I guess that's why.
Jorge
What's yours?
Theresa
Tucker.
Jorge
Theresa Tucker? Great handle.
Theresa
I've thought about changing it to Samantha Rex.
Jorge
Oh?
Theresa
You know? Kinda like a pen name.
Jorge
You're a writer?
Theresa
No. Maybe like a stage name.
Jorge
Oh.
INT. Restaurant. Table close shot. Fortune Cookies. Night.
Theresa
What does yours say?
Jorge
It says: Depart not from the path which fate has assigned. Wow.
Theresa
In bed.
Jorge
In bed? Yours says in bed?
Theresa
No Jorge. You add in bed to the end of your fortune.
Jorge
Why?
Theresa
Because it's funny.
Jorge
What's yours say?
Theresa
Happiness is a warm gun.
Jorge
In bed?
Theresa
Yes it is. (She crumbles the small slip of paper and drops it into the ashtray.)
Theresa
Jorge?
Jorge
What?
Theresa
Come on. (Beat) You got a car?
Jorge
A car? Yes. Yes, I do have a car.
Theresa
What kind?
Jorge
Honda.
Theresa
Compact?
Jorge
Yeah, I guess.
Theresa
Let's take mine, if we take one.
INT. Restaurant Register Counter. Night.
They make a transaction with the waiter.
INT/EXT. Doorway. Night.
Theresa (Whispers)
Jesus. Don't all Chinamen look alike?”
Jorge
What?
Theresa
I said, the car key is in the shop.
EXT. Sidewalk. Night.
Jorge
Inside?
Theresa
Yeah, come on. (Beat) It won't take but a minute.
Jorge
I'll wait here.
Theresa
Outside? Don't be silly.
Jorge
I'm not being silly.
Theresa
So what is it Jorge? Too good to come into the bookstore? I've never seen you in there.
Jorge
I've never seen you in the frame shop.
Theresa
Touche. But in my defense, I've never needed any framing, and we need to get my car key.
INT. Family Dining Room. Night.
This is a Christmas dinner fantasy. Again, like the wedding chapel scene, Jorge's family might be real, and Theresa's family the sex dolls. Make this outlandish. Ugly sweaters, cliché family dinner, etc.
Jorge
Merry Christmas all.
INT. Porn Shop. Night.
Theresa
I like the Stimulator 2000.
Jorge
What?
Theresa
Yeah, this one here.(She pulls the package from the wall.) It's the right size, this part stimulates the clit, and this little nubby back here, well, you know what that's for.
Jorge
Oh? Yeah.
Theresa
Comes in six colors: red, green; purple, blue; black and pink. I figure if they made orange you could buy one of each and have a different one for every day of the week.
Jorge
Yeah, I guess.
Theresa
What's your shop like?
Jorge
Well, it's a lot like this one.
Theresa
With toys?
Jorge
Frame samples.
Theresa
Magazines?
Jorge
Glass samples.
Theresa
Books?
Jorge
Mat samples.
Theresa
Lube?
Jorge
No. No!
Theresa
Chippy. (Beat) Don't you like lube?
Jorge
I-I don't know. I guess. I don't not like it.
Theresa
Here, try this. It's on the house.
Jorge
What's this?
Theresa
Lube, just try it. It's pretty good, but for you, olive oil probably works the best.
Jorge
What are you talking about?
Theresa
Just about a dime size drop. Right here in your palm. That's all. Do you use your right or your left?
Jorge
The right.
Theresa
When you want to make it feel like someone else is doing it, use the left.
Jorge
What the-
Theresa
Oh. And you might want to double the lube.
Jorge
What the hell is the matter with you?
Theresa
I work here. I give advice.
Jorge
I'm not a customer.
Theresa
I told you not to expect anything, I'm not the type. (She clicks out the lights. She closes the door. She jams the key into the lock.) Well, that was a disaster.
EXT Sidewalk. Night.
Jorge
What was?
Theresa
Your date.
Jorge
Yeah. Well?
Theresa
Well, what?
Jorge
How was your date?
Theresa
My date? My date was not a disaster.
Jorge
I don't know whose date you were on.
Theresa
On yours, and I think it'll get better for you.
Jorge
Do you?
Theresa
The next date has got to be less of a disaster.
Jorge
You think I'll ask you out again?
Theresa
Of course you will, baby. We're the last man and woman alive, at least in this neighborhood. We're the last man and woman here in Sugarhouse.
Jorge
Yeah? Sure. Are we?
Theresa
(She exhales) Yeah, we are. (She kisses his cheek) I'll think about you. (Beat) All night too.
EXT. Long Shot. Sidewalk. Night.
She walks away leaving Jorge on the sidewalk.
Jorge
The last man and woman of Sugarhouse? Yeah, right.
I submitted both the short story and the the screenplay. Rocket House decided not to use it.
The experience was worth it to me. Sure, I would not be able to add another screenplay acceptance, but I had a new skill set and a new idea. From this situation, the workshop series “Adventures in the Short Screenplay,” was born. The initial workshop sessions made an appearance on my blog during June and July of 2010.
These workshops form the second half of CFC. Please enjoy.
No comments:
Post a Comment