RA HADN’T LEFT the city since he’d moved to New York, but when I took him to Coney Island his eyes lit up like a child talking about birthdays. We squinted in the sun and walked up and down the boardwalk and waded in the sea with a desperate joy. Sat the rest of the day crunching six dollar daiquiris from plastic cups. Unveiled our arms before the cheap sunlight and smiled. We’d bought a few postcards and we laid them on the table.
“Let’s write someone back home a story,” said Ra.
I liked this idea so I picked a postcard and filled up half before sliding it across the table for him to finish. This is what I’d come up with:
Once upon a time there was a land of shining fields and twisting valleys. In the heart of the best valley there was a village. Everyone knew everyone in the village – there was Tim the Tailor, Reginald the Cobbler and Janice the Baker. Everyone did everything that needed doing, and everyone was proud of everyone in the village for doing what needed doing. Except for Mad Susie. Mad Susie used to sit in the back of a barn scratching letters into a piece of dried pig hide. “What’s that?” people would ask. “It’s art,” she’d reply. No one could remember any art looking like that scrap of pig hide, so they knew they were right when they frowned and called her Mad. “She’s Mad, that Susie,” they’d say. One day, Susie was walking down the lane…”
I handed Ra the pen. I couldn’t tell what he thought of my story because he was wearing very dark glasses and practicing his New York Bitch Face; also known as New York Fashion Face. Most New Yorkers were working hard doing this. Fashion Face is a very difficult face to perfect, but Ra was making a good go of it.
“What are you going to write?” I asked.
“You’ll see,” he said. He scrawled his words on the postcard lazily, lethargically, in between the ocean rollings and seagull caws. An orange jogger with a pebbly midriff winked at Ra. Some more seagulls cawed and I swallowed the dregs of my daquiri.
Ra handed back the postcard.
“One day, Susie was walking down the lane,” I read. “When all of a sudden a pair of HUGE HAIRY BALLS clobbered her from behind. She ran away and had WILD WET SEX with Tim the Tailor, who had just finished fucking Janine’s buns.”
“Well, that’s not very nice,” I said.
“Too fucking bad, Megamon.”
In the end, we decided to send the postcard to our old housemate Katie Bateman.
“Because she’s a hot bitch,” said Ra.
Originally performed at Splinters: Fricked up Micro-Fiction II