January 1998
s m u g
bumping uglies
by Todd Levin

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Pigs in an Afghan:
Sex At Your Parents’ House

Dear Editor(s), The following is an excerpt from "Handful of Shattered Glass: Fallen Angels", this week's after school special. It is with great thought and consideration that I am submitting this scene to Outlaw Biker Magazine. I feel that Outlaw Biker has always precariously hugged the cutting edge of post-adolescent family drama and I believe this scene will be a worthy addition to your new "Arts and Letters" section beginning in May of the upcoming year. Please review at your leisure, preferably with loved ones at hand.

ACT I, Scene IV - "Brad's Waterloo"

(Int.: modern bathroom, tastefully accessorized with pastel-scented soaps molded into inoffensive shapes -- seashells, daisies, Presbyterians. BRAD is looking in the mirror, shaving his face and chest for the Best Chest in the West Divisional Round Robin Tournament tomorrow. He is humming an incomprehensible tune.)

ENTER: KATHY.

(KATHY is dressed to the nines in a terry Velcro towel wrap, cha cha heels, and those safety goggles that are being worn by all of the hip-hopping, ecstasy-dropping post-adolescents, as our extensive market research has determined. KATHY is the paragon of hip adolescence. Her every pore emits something tangibly "Alannis" and she knows it. KATHY locks the door from inside, then proceeds to turn the water on in the shower. She speaks as steam begins to fill the bathroom, shrouding the two in a dangerous, erotic mist)

KATHY: (toying with the Velcro that separates her womanhood from every man on earth with lust in his sinister heart) I’m going to take a shower, Brad.

BRAD: (nonchalantly) That’s cool.

KATHY: (seductively) It’s so lonely in there. Why don’t you join me?

BRAD: (chalantly) What? Your whole extended family is home, right below us in the kitchen.

KATHY: C’mon, Brad. No one will know. They’re all so strung out on spiral cut ham and deviled eggs, they barely possess the faculties to know we’re gone. C’mon, honey. (KATHY begins running her Elizabeth Shue-like, delicate fingers through her Julia Roberts-style red mane of hair) Don’t you want to wash my hair? It’s full of mites.

(BRAD is wiping at the bathroom mirror, trying to clean the glass as it fogs up with steam from the hot shower)

BRAD: Are you joking? You and I both know we were both downstairs with them not five minutes ago, playing double-elimination PigMania®, so I have no doubt their wits are as sharp as ever. Kathy, I love you. You know I love you. I told you I loved you the day I met you, at Bridgette’s funeral after she died from her eating disorder; I told you I loved you when we both learned to accept that it’s ok if your cousin is gay, as long as he isn’t Alsacian; and I even told you I loved you after I found out your mother killed my Dungeons and Dragons-obsessed brother in a drunk driving accident. Kathy, we have made it through nearly every after single after-school special melodrama the late eighties and nineties could conjure up. Which is why when I tell you that I cannot have sex at your parents’ house, you must understand this is the right thing.

KATHY: (sitting on the toilet like a latter-day Audrey Hepburn) Well, this time I can’t, Brad. I’m sorry. I forgave you when you and your friends got drunk on something like rum, at my Sober Sweet Sixteen Party. But this is too much, Brad. We’ve been dating for 8 years now. Everyone knows we have sex. They all watched me lose my virginity to you in "Innocence Yesterday" last fall. This is no biggie, I’m sure.

BRAD: I don’t know, Kathy. Sex at your parents’ house is such a completely creepy notion. It means having to do it in the same bed you slept in when you had chicken pox. It means boning in the shower your mom just squeegeed for mildew two days ago. And, right now, it means giving you a penile implant right after whipping your grandmother’s ass in Super Yahtzee. It’s unsettling.

KATHY: Brad, you need to relax. Listen. (cue soft strains of music) Sex at your parents’ house is an institution as old and honored as Sex in Your Parents’ Car, Sex at Your Parents’ Summer Cabin, and Sex in your Eccentric Uncle’s Haphazardly Constructed Time Machine. Brad, if we can’t enjoy this together what does that say about our relationship? What does that say about the condition of post-adolescent love? And, most importantly, what does that say about America? Brad, I’m going to ask you one last time, and then I’m going to get in this shower and have sex with or without you. So, Brad, what’s it going to be? Will you have sex with me at my parents’ house?

(BRAD looks at KATHY for a moment, reflects in the way only a cloying, afternoon melodrama player can reflect, and turns to the mirror, which has now completely fogged up with hot steam. He writes something into the fog with his index finger, his back to the camera throughout. Then, satisfied, he turns back to KATHY to reveal - musical score straining like a retired athlete’s lower back - a single word rubbed into the fog: "yes".)

(KATHY extends her hand, and leads BRAD into the hot, jungle oasis of her parents’ shower. The music is swelling like a Black Plague boil on the neck of a Parisian serf and, as camera holds magnificently on fogged over shower curtain, we hear an off-camera KNOCK AT THE DOOR)

MOTHER: Kathy, sweetie, are you in there? Honey, grandma needs to use the ladies’ room. She had some of those Olestra® potato chips and she is going through incredible rectal fits. Honey? Honey?

*

letigre@smug.com

*

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