Read Soul of a Whore and Purvis Online
Authors: Denis Johnson
BILL JENKS
: What do you mean? The usual. JC
SIMON
: LIAR!
BILL JENKS
: Â Â Â I don't name names. I've got the gift.
I cast out demons in my own damn name.
âIs that what you wanted to hear? Stand back.
I've got the gift. It's mine from my conception.
The powers picked me out, and since the womb
I stand above humanity and spit.
I cast out demons in my own damn name.
SIMON
: I FLEE!
BILL JENKS
: Â Â Â Â Don't flee! Don't
flee
! Nobody said to flee!
Come on! Have you got a message for me?
Prophesy! Gimme a tip on the market!
SIMON
: JAN? JAN? DARLIN'?
BILL JENKS
: Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Wait a minute, waitâ
SIMON
: Where's Jan?
BILL JENKS
: Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Excuse me, I was talking toâ
JAN
enters;
DOC
and
STACY
close behind.
SIMON
: Jan? I'm cold. I'mâ
JAN
: Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Simon? Simon?
SIMON
: I FLEE.
BILL JENKS
: Â Â Â NO!
JAN
: Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â SIMON!
SIMON
: Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â JAN? I LOVE YOUâ
BILL JENKS
: Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Demon!
Come back!
SIMON
: Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Back where?
BILL JENKS
: Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Not yet!
JAN
: Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Simon!
DOC
: Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
Simon?
BILL JENKS
: I'm talking to the goddamn demon, Jack!
âJust a general sense ofâup or down?
Buy or sell? Telephones or hot dogs?
SIMON
: Jan, I'm tired. I'm thirsty. I love you, Jan.
JAN
: I'm here. Simon?
SIMON
: Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Jan. I'm cold. I'm
cold
.
BILL JENKS
: I got a conversation going here!
STACY
: Doctor? Is it Simon?
DOC
: Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Yes, it's Simon.
BILL JENKS
: Justâback
off
â
DOC
: Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â It always has
been
Simonâ
But this is Simon after a miracle.
STACY
: But cool, but neat, but so
je ne sais quoi
!
SIMON
: Stacy? Janâ? Janâ
JAN
:                     Simonâ¦Simonâ¦
BILL JENKS
: Everybody: Take a minute hereâ
JAN
: Simon, have you been
coldâ¦all
this time?
BILL JENKS
: DEMON, DEMON, GIMME SOMETHING HOT!
BLACKOUT
Scene 1
Another year later.
Split scene: Left, peepshow talk booth
(
BJ
'
s hallucination) in
BILL JENKS
'
s living room. Right, front porch of
BJ
'
s rural home outside Dallas.
Lights up stage left:
BILL JENKS
loads quarters into a slot as a screen rises on a peepshow talk booth, revealing
MASHA
in a silk robe and platform shoes.
Each holds a phone receiver.
Â
BILL JENKS
: Slutâ¦slutâ¦slutâ¦slutâ¦slut.
MASHA
: You realize, of course, you're nothing but a faggot,
The balled-up, writhing, Adolf Hitler kind.
BILL JENKS
: People eat you in their fantasy.
MASHA
: You're sloppy drunk.
BILL JENKS
: Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â I'm paying for the call.
â¦You want to hear your story?
MASHA
:Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â All I hear
Is your brain sizzling like a T-bone.
BILL JENKS
:Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Listen, child:
I'll tell you the repeating saga of Masha.
MASHA
: Preacher's comin', duck and cover, boys.
BILL JENKS
: You like to blame us for yourself, then run away.
You're always breaking free, breaking out,
I'll show you the pattern. First, you busted free
From Daddy; then a hot-rod boyfriend, maybe,
And then one of your teachers, and then some artist
Who painted you nude, then some criminal
Made his living jackin' Coke machines,
Then Sylvester of the Purple Prairieâ
Then you ditch your pimp and come to me,
So you can break my chains and fly away
Into the cage of your latest master and captor.
MASHA
: What about your pattern, honey?
Jack 'em up like monkeys till they're jumpin'
High as Heaven on that down-home Bible jiveâ
Cleanse me save me change me fix me, preacher,
Use me, preacher, eat my wallet, suck
My sorry sap.
BILL JENKS
:Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â You slinky slut.
MASHA
: Unbind 'em, heal 'em, fleece 'em, and forget 'em.
All God's chillun got a pattern, sugar.
All God's chillun got to walk a chalk line.
BILL JENKS
: Slut slut slut slut slut!
âI'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry!
I deeply regret the misunderstanding that led toâ¦
The misunderstanding.
MASHA
: How long do we have to stay tangled together?
BILL JENKS
: Until I fathom what the knot is knit of.
MASHA
: Lookâ¦I got tired of
preaching
in my ears,
The mindless mechanical bark, bark, bark.
OK? Don't make it into a work of art.
Don't make me a testimony to the lie
You're living.
BILL JENKS
:Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Lie? What lie, you Jezebel?
MASHA
: Everybody's selling a fantasy.
Your trouble comes from hating the glistening guts
Of that one gospel fact. You'll happily
Confess to dealing crap to your disciples,
But you won't witness to the simple truth
They're selling it all right back to you,
They're the closest thing to God you've gotâ
The audience is everyone and no oneâ
Anonymous mother you're suckled by and hate
And love. You want to see a whore? Go seek
Among the pews. They sell themselves to you.
BILL JENKS
: Crawling on your belly like a Jezebel.
MASHA
: At least I don't fall down to a phony God.
You bow to them. You fear their punishment.
You take the blame because they see a lie
While looking in your direction.
It ain't your lie. It's just their fantasy.
You
want to go to Hell because
they're
stupid.
BILL JENKS
: Masha, Masha, what has become of you?
MASHA
: I was a part of your patternâthanks for the save.
Thanks for the exorcism and the gray suit.
BILL JENKS
: Heck, you ain't halfway exorcised. I'd give
An estimate of twenty-five percent,
If that. Hell, you're a carnival of demons.
MASHA
: It's Satan's world. You buck the tide you get
All waterlogged and wrinkled up. And drowned.
BILL JENKS
: You ride the flow and paradoxically
You end up burning in a lake of fire.
MASHA
: Tell me you've lived one day in fear of Hell.
BILL JENKS
: I sure have lived in fear. Mostly in fear
Of Heaven and its possibilities
For boredom and monotony and Sunday
Every day, and Jesus hanging around.
â¦I can just about smell you through the glass.
MASHA
: What are you talking about?
BILL JENKS
:Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Is it bulletproof glass?
MASHA
: Do you have a gun?
BILL JENKS
:Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â A lot of people do.
How's the security here? Do they protect you?
MASHA
: Who? Where? Why on earth would I need protection?
BILL JENKS
: Who? The demons who employ you here.
Every sex emporium needs security.
MASHA
: What are you talking about, what are you
on
?
I DON'T WORK IN A SEX EMPORIUM.
Lights down on
MASHA. BJ
alone in his living room with a phone in one hand, bottle in the other.
MASHA 'S VOICE:
I've got a house, and I've got a minivan
And twenty-three pairs of shoes. I'm legally married.
I am the wife of the executioner
For all of Texas, and I am the president
Of the Texas Citizens for Victims' Rights.
All you see of me is your fantasy.
That's all any of you ever see.
I should rob banks!ânobody ever sees me.
I'm like one of those Rorschach ink-blot messes
Showing the twisted story in your head.
ALL YOU'RE SEEING IS THE STORY IN YOUR HEAD!
BILL JENKS
hangs up and crawls toward the door with his bottle.
Â
BLACKOUT
Â
Lights up stage right:
BILL JENKS
'
s front porch, next minute:
Off and on throughout scene,
JOHN
works on his cross (it rests against the rail), attaching tokens to it with contractor's glue. His hair grown shoulder-length, and sporting a beard, he still wears his prison whites.
JOHN
[
sings
]:
If I got paid a nickel
Every time you told a lie,
I'd put those nickels in a sack
And tie that sack around my neck
And jump into the river
And sink beneath the water,
If I got paid a nickel
Every time you told a lie.
If I got paid a dollar
Every time you made me cry,
I'd pile those dollars in a stack
And climb that stack and grab the moon
And hide the moon in Houston
Where you could never find it,
If I got paid a dollar
Every time you made me cry,
If I got paid a nickel
Every time you told a lie.
Meanwhile,
BILL JENKS
crawls out of the house and across the porch, lugging his bottle, and sits bracing himself against a post.
BILL JENKS
: Woman claims to be the proud possessor
Of forty-six shoesâ¦
JOHN
[
sings
]:
I'd put those nickels in a sack
And tie that sack around my neck
And dive into the ocean
And mingle with the fishes
And tell 'em all my troubles
'Bout a woman who deceived me
Every time she told a lie.
BILL JENKS
:â¦Who's come for a little BJ?
Come get a little BJ!
Come on and get a quality BJ!
Where are my innumerable followers
To take me back in a tearful ceremony?
I got a zillion bucks, and I can't touch it.
My attorneys won't return my calls.
I held a press conference. Who was there?
Who was there, John?âwasn't it a guy
From the
Neo-Nazi Tribune
, something like that?
The Sword and the Blade
.
The Cross and the Ball
, shoot,
I
don't know.
You
get the sense of it.
JOHN
: Would you shut up?
BILL JENKS
: Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â I might. It all depends.
JOHN
: The suckers love you, Bill, so just shut up.
We'll always love you. That's what makes us suckers.
BILL JENKS
: If I got paid a nickel
Every time you kissed a pickleâ¦
If I don't pull somebody outa their grave,
I might as well get in it, too.
JOHN
: You've gotta train your mind on Huntsville, Bill.
In twenty days they strap my mother down.
If you're gonna raise somebody from the dead,
It might as well be my mother, right?
BILL JENKS
:Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Look here.
What was your mother in for, in the first place?
JOHN
: You know what she was in for.
BILL JENKS
: Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â No. I don't.
Her current fame obscures her former fame.
JOHN
: It wasn't nothing she was famous for.
Vehicular homicide. To be exact
You'd say vehicular infanticide.
BILL JENKS
: Vehicular
infanticide
? O, God,
Sometimes can't you feel the English tongue
Kind of licking around inside your stomach?
JOHN
: Is that enough to say?
BILL JENKS
:              Wellâ¦What'd she do?
JOHN
: Ran over my baby sister with the Chevy.
Pretty much on purpose. So she drew
A twenty-five-year slide. She almost made it.
But then they charged her with another murder,
They claimed she killed that empty-minded girlâ
That nameless, brainless Jane Doe, may the Lord
Have mercyâclaimed my mother perpetrated rape
And murder with a broomstick. That is false.
Even over a couple dozen years
And twenty prison walls, her innocence
Travels out to me like radiation.
BILL JENKS
: Bathes us in its sacrificial light.
JOHN
: Laying in the dirt, drunk and sarcastic.
BJ
aims around with a Derringer, miming shots.
BILL JENKS
: Bull's-eye. Bull's-eye. Bull's-eye.
I just have one more thing to say about Masha:
She used to say “mushmeller” for
marshmallow
And her name was Mar-sha, not Masha.
And she had thighs like marshmallows, which
I never touched one time, not even dreaming.
Announcement!âI have never read the Bible.
JOHN
: Is that thing loaded?
BILL JENKS
:Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Always assume it's loaded.
JOHN
: Well, then, unload it please. [
BANG
] Thank you, you hick.
â¦The way of a fool is right in his own eyes.
BILL JENKS
: Proverbs, chillun.
JOHN
:Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Proverbs, 12:15.
BILL JENKS
: The proverbial Proverbs.
[
Lies back
]
                          HeyâOw! Watch the head!
Man, that's black. That sky is solid velvet.
JOHN
examines
BJ
â
passed outâtakes the gun, considers attaching it to the cross. He points it at the dark. BANG.
HT'S VOICE:
STOP. DON'T SHOOT.
JOHN
: Who's out there? Come up here and get killed.
A space of silence.
HT
[
sings
]:
Wake up this morning