Excerpt of Cheap Food and Sex (formatted for web viewing.)
From Act I, Scene 5:30 minutes later, in FRANK’s clunker. (formatted for web viewing)
(Lights down on the teepee, up on the car on another part of the stage. Engine noise as clunker drives through the desert.)
SERENA: So why is your Mom such a freak?
GARTH: Your dad’s no shining star of normality! What’s with the beaver thing?
SERENA: At least he doesn’t carry around a plastic baby doll.
GARTH: Look, my mom just has a couple of issues.
SERENA: A couple of issues! The wheels are turning but the hamster’s dead.
GARTH: At least her hamster hasn’t been cut open!
SERENA: He doesn’t cut it open. It has a zipper.
GARTH: Oh that makes it much better!
SERENA: At least the beaver doesn’t have a car seat!
GARTH: She’s hardly ever in the car seat.
SERENA: She? So you hold her?
GARTH: So what if I do?
SERENA: Do you know what kind of wackos do that kind of thing?
GARTH: Ax murderers?
SERENA: My father is not an ax murderer.
GARTH: I bet he has his ax in the trunk of this car!
(There is a loud BANG.) Well that’s just great. What’d you do, hit a porcupine?
SERENA: A what? Did you see one?
GARTH: Porcupines are not desert animals.
SERENA: Well la de fuckin’ dah Mr. Science. Either way, we’ve got a flat.
GARTH: Well, you’d best fix it.
SERENA: Me? You want me to fix it.
GARTH: You wanted to drive.
SERENA: This is not driving. This is fixing a flat. Take me to a gas station.
GARTH: Yes, let’s hop in my invisible car, and I’ll drive you there Miss Daisy.
SERENA: Here. (She tosses the keys; then, as he catches them and turns aside, she mocks him, mouthing “Porcupines are not desert animals.”)
(GARTH opens the trunk, then yells.)
SERENA: It’s just for chopping wood.
GARTH: What the &*%$# are these?
SERENA: What? (She walks over and looks in the trunk.) Oh, God.
GARTH: What the &*%$# are these? (GARTH begins throwing stuffed-animal-backpacks out on the desert floor. SERENA watches, then quietly goes about picking them up. The desert floor now littered and SERENA’s arms full, GARTH turns around and sees her.) What are you doing?
SERENA: The ground’s hot.
GARTH: They’re stuffed animals!
SERENA: And your mother carries around a plastic baby.
GARTH: It isn’t plastic. It’s polyvinyl and her curls are virgin acrylic. Would you care to explain these?
(…continued…)