The set: Pastel and puffy with lots of beads and busy fabrics draped everywhere
The curtain: A shower curtain
Wacky music from Tex Avery cartoons announces the entrance of Box Chicken played by Dan. He is painted purple and wears an enormous yellow cone on his nose as a beak.
Box Chicken fans himself violently with the latest issue of Diseased Pariah News.
Box Chicken:
I wonder what’s behind this door.
He opens a door, which is hidden behind layers of assorted kitsch at the back of the set. A thousand tiny doll heads, each one painted half blue and half white, roll onto the stage.
Box Chicken:
Hmm. My daily dose of AZT.
Angry Fish (played by me) stomps onto the stage wearing combat boots and a leather mini-skirt. As always, his face is one large grimace and should be represented by a mask. He stomps deliberately and violently on the AZT doll heads in a single abrupt motion, watching carefully out of the corner of his eye so that he’s sure to crush every last one of them. The noise of his stomping boots falls neatly into the offbeat of the increasingly wacky music. Angry Fish pretends suddenly to be aware of the doll head pills under his feet:
Angry Fish:
Mais qu’est-ce que c’est, ce bordel?
Box Chicken begins crocheting a red condom with enormous green hooks, creating a violent clattering noise in time with the music. He barely looks up at Angry Fish.
Box Chicken:
Oh, you’re back from France already?
Then softly, to himself, and throughout Angry Fish’s next lines:
Box Chicken:
Knit one, purl two, knit one, purl two, knit one,…
Angry Fish tries to make fists out of his enormous, clumsy, blue rubber stage flippers.
Angry Fish:
Tu fait chier avec cette histoire de merde! J’en ai marre des sidéens qui ne prennent pas leur AZT.
Box Chicken (never pausing or looking up from his work):
Well, you certainly picked up that French language over there, didn’t you. On dirait un vrai français. …Knit one, purl…
Angry Fish (even angrier with jealous shock):
How the hell did you learn French?
Box Chicken:
I dabble.
Angry Fish:
Why didn’t you write me letters every waking hour since I left you all alone here in Fag Town?
Box Chicken (needles clattering away):
I was crocheting condoms and stringing all these beads. I kept finding stuff to bring home: buttons, stones, paint, antique coins, plastic tubes, pipe-cleaners… (He loses his place in the crochet work. He pauses and counts:). Two, four, six… Knit one, purl two… The boxes just kept piling up, so finally I decided I’d have to do something with them.
Angry Fish (with a sweeping wave of the left flipper):
But what good does that do anyone? And what are you doing about your health? You’ve stopped taking your AZT, which I can understand after that Concorde nonsense, but what about prophylaxis for PCP? And do you think you’re exempt from re-exposure because you crochet condoms for your boyfriend? What about thresholds and CD4 counts?
Box Chicken takes a pause and looks up into space at an angle as if searching for an answer. The theme music from Jeopardy ticks off the silence.
Box Chicken:
Uh,… What is the date of Algeria’s liberation from France?
Angry Fish:
Mais, non!
Box Chicken (resuming his work cheerfully):
I’m on disability!
Angry Fish:
But how long can that last?
Box Chicken:
For one year, unless I get sicker…
At this point in the show, the whole black humor, AIDS-funhouse thing succeeds so brilliantly as a theatrical device that the audience has trouble caring about the lives of any of the characters. Attention drifts to the enormous model of HIV suspended over the auditorium for this special performance, which is subtitled “AIDS Fag Hell: a Musical Comedy in Twelve Scenes” for the occasion. People in the audience are chewing on the corners of their playbills and thinking of where they’ll have dinner. Maybe a rack of lamb or some nice-and-spicy chicken… Angry Fish rips off his rubber fins and throws them into the audience, followed by his flabby, blue fish face, screaming.
Angry Fish:
What does it take to get your attention! Can’t you see he’s dying!
Box Chicken (cheerfully):
I’m not feeling very well.
Angry Fish (grim):
He’s stopped taking his pills, and you don’t give a flying fuck.
Box Chicken (still cheerful):
I have a closet full of AZT pills.
He makes a theatrical cough, exaggerating its fakeness.
Box Chicken:
But I feel another cold coming on.
Angry Fish (turning to Box Chicken):
I worry about you!
He tries to make a grand gesture with a fin, then realizes he no longer has one. He goes into the audience in search of his appendages. Box Chicken (still searching for the right game show answer to more Jeopardy music).
Box Chicken:
Uh? …Thank you???
Angry Fish is too busy to help him, so Box Chicken shrugs and goes back to his crochet work. From the left and right come Octagon Owl (played by Paul) and Dice Cat (played by Mike). Octagon Owl is painted red for the occasion with the letters S-T-O-P across the chest. Dice Cat is white with enormous black dots and a fuzzy pink tail. (Technically, he’s a “Die Cat” but changed his name after contracting the virus.) The two characters speak in unison.
Octagon Owl and Dice Cat:
We’re the new boyfriends. We came to go on a double date with…
Octagon Owl:
Angry Fish…
Dice Cat:
…and Box Chicken.
Dice Cat turns to Box Chicken and Angry Fish:
What were you guys talking about?
Octagon Owl:
Were you remembering old times?
Dice Cat:
Or having a bum AIDS trip?
Octagon Owl:
Maybe it was something you ate.
Dice Cat:
Or something you didn’t eat.
Angry Fish has found his fins by now. He turns to the stage from the audience where he’s still searching for his head.
Angry Fish:
Oh why don’t you both just shut up!
Box Chicken:
Knit one, purl two…
Angry Fish:
Don’t you have anything better to do than walk around in our public drama trying to personalize it?
Octagon Owl and Dice Cat (look at each other for an answer and shrug).
Angry Fish:
Did you at least come with a text? An ending? A way to resolve this stupid little scene in a way that is at once both moving and logical, emotionally direct and politically ambiguous, specific to our personal lives and yet meaningful to a vast public?
Octagon Owl:
Uh… I think so?
Angry Fish:
What? You’re asking me? You think? What do you think?
Octagon Owl:
That I had the finale in my suitcase on the flight over from Paris, but they made me take everything out in customs and now I’m not sure exactly where I put it…
Angry Fish (really angry now):
Well, where is it? (Turns to Box Chicken, suddenly.) And stop clacking those goddamned needles!
Dice Cat:
I have an ending.
He exits. They all wait for him to come back; after a few moments Box Chicken sighs.
Box Chicken:
I guess I’d better go look for him.
Angry Fish taps his foot while waiting. It makes a sound like a tap shoe on a tile floor. Octagon Owl goes over to him and whispers.
Octagon Owl:
While we’re waiting…
Angry Fish:
But there’s nothing to wait for. Don’t you get it? That was his ending, and Box Chicken knew it. We should never have left Paris.
Octagon Owl pulls off Angry Fish’s fins and kisses him on the back of the neck, hugging him from behind.
Octagon Owl:
What are you talking about, sweetie. We are in Paris. Nous sommes tous seuls dans notre appartement…
Angry Fish (pointing to Octagon Owl’s chest):
But we can’t be in Paris. That says STOP! That’s English.
Octagon Owl:
But that’s what the stop signs say in Paris. C’est comme ça.