S2E1 - Dignity

Previously on two foreskins walk into a bar. You can be a slut in New York for 90 days without a visa. I gave myself 89 to be safe. You haven't fallen in love with him. You just think you have. Where are you, Lionel? I looked up to the departure screen. London, final call. Montreal, final call. Where are you headed? He asked. That is a very good question. Two foreskins walk into a bar. Written and performed by Chris Thompson season two episode one Dignity I always cry during takeoff and landing. I think I'm moved by the duality of flight. There's something both sad and hopeful about your old life fading from view and your new life waiting beneath the cloud cover. That. That stirs me. Every landing is at once an ending and a beginning, an assertion of the regenerative process of change. But it's in that liminal space between, as the plane wobbles and bumps in the dreamlit skies, that I ask myself who I am now? Who have I become? In my left pocket is. Is my passport, which I keep on me at all times so I can be identified when they pull me from the wreckage. And in my right pocket, without fail, I keep my door keys. But today I trace my fingers along that right pocket and it's empty. And I wonder, when does one thing become another? Can we ever put a pin in the exact moment of change? Now the clicks of the unfastening seatbelts ripple through the cabin. I step out of the plane onto the stairs, and the humidity hits me. The hard sun severs long, groaning clouds, revealing the steady blue sky. I look out over the airfield. A warm tropical breeze skims my skin, and above the the ramshackle airport building is a bright red sign. Welcome to Key west. I'm 43 now. In my passport, there's a us visa. I returned to live there a year ago. It took five years before I could return, following my previous odyssey. But return I did, and true to form, I'm now homeless, broke and burnt out, unable to find another sublet what would have been my 9th in twelve months. New York had forced my hand again. So I put my final chunk of money into an Airbnb in Key West. I had just enough money to last two months, and in that time, I needed a miracle. New York hadn't been what I'd hoped for. It never is, let's face it. And my career, I feel obliged to put that word in inverted commas these days, was yet again hanging on by a thread. I figured if I'm going down, I'm going down. While going down on as many men as possible. My Airbnb was perfect. Old, tiny, wooden, with peeling white paint faded by the sun. And most importantly, it had a porch. The entirety of the building was described by a thick seclusion of tropical plants. At night, it was lit by fairy lights, and lizards tripped the light fantastic before darting down the cracks in the wood. Here on my porch, I would pay tribute to Tennessee Williams, that old ghost of Key west, and entertain gentlemen callers. Wah. There would be so many gentlemen callers, there wouldn't be chairs enough to accommodate them. I'm unpacking while you figure out the shower. Is it hot enough? Is the water pressure right? And we debate the air conditioner. Will it be so loud we can't sleep? I haven't slept properly since I returned to New York. There's workmen repairing the house next door and I've already clocked one. That look held just a moment longer, the instinctive, atavistic signal of what we are. I open my laptop grandly. I stare at the blank page. I open Grindr and scruff and hinge. I've never feared the blank page. The fear only comes when you finish and you put your creation into the world. That fear used to be a critical mauling. Nowadays, how I long for that. It's the silence I fear most. I type the title with a flourish. Conversations with men. I've a play by Chris Thompson. I take a photo of the title page and post it on Instagram and Twitter. I wait for the response. A new play by Chris Thompson. They'd exclaim finally. Where's he been? The elusive, enigmatic Chris Thompson is back at last. Norma Desmond is returning to Paramount Studios. Chris Thompson returns to theatre. Nothing. But hold on. London is asleep due to the time difference. I check my watch. London is still awake. It's not time difference. It's indifference. A notification. A grinder notification. I want you ass up, face down. Leave your door open. I got out the shower and stood naked in front of the mirror. I considered my body. I was lanky and droopy. My stomach protruded like a melon. I traced my fingers along the scars. No belly button now, just a grimacing vertical rupture surrounded by two lumps of fluidy fat. I tried to suck this disgusting mass in and turned sideways onto the mirror. My mind suddenly leapt to that memory, waking up on the floor in a hospital toilet in a medical gown, covered in my shit and vomit. I've no idea how long I'd been unconscious for. I'd crashed and burned. Earlier that day I was so high on fentanyl I was running around the ward with my bum hanging out, telling all the other patients I had the best bum on the gay beach in Gran Canaria. No bare bottoms on me ward. The nurse shouted, and three of them chased me as I sprinted away with my drip. It didn't take them long to catch me and I was led back to my bed where they sedated me with more opioids and put a Christmas hat on me. This is how I spent that Christmas day, sedated, dribbling and alone with a crumpled red Christmas hat that I did not consent to. How long was I unconscious in the toilet for? And why had no one noticed I'd gone? Have you turned away from Jesus? My nurse asked me as she rinsed me off in the shower. The shame of my smell made me huddle in the corner as she hosed me down like a stray dog. It's the devil coming out of you, the stench of evil, she said. Back in my bed, I looked at the other men in the ward with me. This was the bowel cancer ward and I was the youngest person in there by far. I wished the man in the bed opposite me a merry Christmas. 3 hours later he was dead. In the bed next to me was a frail older man. He must have been in his seventies. Arthur. They were keeping him in over Christmas. As he had no one at home to look after him. I dared not speak to him lest I killed him too. This was during the early days of COVID before vaccines. London was in lockdown. I was one of the lucky ones whose cancer treatment wasn't cancelled. But every appointment I attended I attended alone. Every surgery, I had no visitors allowed and as much as friends and family supported me from afar as best they could, I was doing this on my own. Except for you, of course. On the plus side, I love general anaesthetic. As a lifelong insomniac, I look forward to the sleep on Christmas Eve. I told this to my anesthesiologist. He said, well, give you the good stuff then. And he changed my order from morphine to fentanyl. It's a cleaner high, you'll love it. He was in his thirties and possibly the most handsome man I've ever meth. I leant forward as he gave me an epidural. A nurse stood by me as the long needle went into my spinal cord. She said, you can hold my hand like im your mum. I wanted to so much, but I was so embittered and hardened from the months of doing this on my own. On a perverse point of principle, I refused. She wouldnt take no for an answer and she took my hand and stroked it tenderly with her thumb. The anesthesiologist squeezed my hand too, and we three stayed like that for a moment. Looking back, it was one of the most intimate moments of my life. In the midst of COVID lockdowns, this was the most human touch id had in months. Theres stranger ways to meet your husband, I thought. Well take good care of you, he said. Im going to give this to you nice and slow. His face was so close to mine. I fought the anesthesia to prolong my look at him, but the vision of his beauty blurred from the outside in. Im not sure, but I think I might have murmured that I loved him. Hes straight, honey. Its the first thing everyone asks when they wake up. My nurse in the recovery room had a reassuring gay twang to his voice. It felt a relief to be with someone gay in this moment. I just had twelve inches of my bowels cut out. And my first words to this nurse as I woke up were, can I still take it up the bum? Hold on, girl, ill check. And he lifted up the sheets and looked between my legs. Ooo, girl, maybe time for your top era. Ass up, face down. As instructed, I unlocked the door of my Airbnb in Key west and left it ajar. And then in the bedroom. I assumed the position and waited. And waited. After a while, my back began to ache and the position was making me need to fart. I determined to hold it in, not wanting to ruin the illusion if he arrived. Whilst I was in the bathroom, I shifted my head round and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. Me, a grown man, a master's degree in social work, a couple of minor playwriting awards, a trustee of a charity often turned to for advice. And here I am with my arse up in the air, holding in a fart, waiting for a stranger to walk in and fuck me. I heard the screen door open, then footsteps towards the bedroom and the slow squeak of the bedroom door. I held my breath. You cannot leave the door unlocked. Chris, my Airbnb host said. Holy fuck. What the fuck's going on? Are you stuck? No, no, no. Sorry, sorry. I was doing yoga. Oh, I do yoga. I've not seen that position before. I learned it in Peru. He gave me the spare set of keys I'd asked for and he invited me to his gallery opening. All the paintings on the walls in this Airbnb were his it transpires Judy Bloom might be there. He said shes a rider, too. He left the keys on the table. Im going to ask my instructor to teach me that pose. With my host driving away, I assumed the position again and tried to remember if Margaret ever did find God. I felt utterly preposterous now and buried my head under the pillow. But then I heard the screen door footsteps towards the bedroom and then the slow squeak of the bedroom door. He dropped to his knees and kissed my fundament. After a while, I heard the sound of shorts shimmying down legs and hitting the floor with a flumpy, soft thud. Then he fucked me for quite some time. When hed finished, I wasnt sure of the protocol. Do I stay like this till he leaves? Do I turn around and thank him? Id been watching the masked singer and I knew that timing was key when one reveals oneself. I turned around. Youve ruined it. We both sat on the edge of the bed of. He worked on the military base and loved karaoke, so for my mind we had to be friends. His name was Blake. Hed been in Key West a year, hailing originally from the midwest, which most people talk of in terms of their escape. Blake, it seems, was more exiled and was sending money home to his two children in Danville, Wisconsin. He was hoping theyd be allowed to come visit him, but he wasnt sure how. Theyd take his life in the military base in Key west. Id be a great stepdad to his two difficult daughters. I thought hed also been exiled from the army or active duty, at least. I think he was cagey. But I gleaned that hed served two tours in conflict zones. But then suddenly he went quiet. I put my hand in his and I said, youre the first person ive had sex with after cancer. Unexpected tears spurted from my eyes. I said, im glad I did it with someone nice. I suggested karaoke, but Blake hasty in his exit, was non committal. I sat on the bed alone. I checked social media. No response to the announcement that I was writing a new play. But what was I expecting? Scruff, on the other hand, revealed a new ass up, face down, door open. What is this? The traditional cultural greeting of Key west. In Hawaii, the locals greet new arrivals with a garland around the neck called a lei. In Key west, locals greet new arrivals with a different kind of lei. I hopped in the shower, cleaned myself up, and reassumed the position. I felt like a fool. I assessed if the reality was living up to the fantasy. So far, it felt very procedural. Dare I say surgical. The screen door. The footsteps, the creaky bedroom door. Gonna kiss that pussy. Reaaall good, he said as he approached. And he did, he said, im sorry. I didnt quite catch that. His voice was muffled in my ass cheeks. For the life of me, I couldnt work out what he was saying. Im ever so sorry. Would you mind repeating that? Kiss me back. Oh, right, I thought. Thats what he said. How the fuck do I do that? Kiss me back. All I could think of was to do a few kegels and he moaned with pleasure. Then I got the giggles and unexpectedly gave the desired result down there. And he writhed and moaned more loudly as I shoved my head under the pillow and shook with laughter. By now, I had spent the best part of an afternoon in this position being welcomed by the locals. My back was killing me. When he finished, we sat on the edge of the bed and I put my hand in his. You're the first person I've had sex with after cancer. The tears didnt come quite so easily this time, but I squeezed a few out. Im glad I did it with someone nice. Dont be so gay, bro. The front door slammed and he was gone. How well that position suited me, I thought. It allowed me to hide all that I found grotesque. My face, my stomach, my penis, now rendered useless from cancer. All that repelled could be hidden, and I could reduce myself to one single component. That night, I sat alone in a gay bar full of straight people. I drank a sickly sweet margarita and listened to the drag queens outside bicker and banter. Duval street curated a strange mix of passersby. There didn't seem to be many gay people here. Key west, the seat of Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, the flamboyant haven in the seventies. At the southernmost tip of the country on my first impression, felt stale, a city straining to remember itself. They're in Fort Lauderdale, the barman said. But there's still a few here like me. Disco lights darted around the empty dance floor. A haze machine puffed out a perfunctory cloud of smoke, which collected at the center of the dance floor and lingered, a column suspended in time and space. As I left the bar, I stood and looked at this ghostly, fragile form as if it were my own reflection. How quickly it had formed and how vulnerable it was to its own dissipation. As I walked home on that first night, I didnt know Blake was watching me, or that he was following me. Back at the Airbnb, I switch on the fairy lights and I think I see a figure standing on the edge of the porch. But in the thick black night its hard to tell. Hello? Is someone there? You tell me. Its nothing to worry about. I watch 30 minutes of drag racer spanade. One of the queens said something bitchy and I laughed, jealous of her delusion. But I felt the subtitles were only giving me half the joke. You ask me where ive been and I tell you im in bed now. I imagine youre on the porch watching the lizard scamper. I close my eyes and I know whats coming from the silence. That word screams at me again. That word always. Now my internal monologue is hacked on the cusp of fitful sleep, and a screeching, scorching wail of white noise forces out all thoughts and sears my consciousness with that same fucking word again and again and again. Every day is the same now. Every day I beg those pathetic, soul destroying follow up emails. Hey, just wondering if you got a chance to look at the pitch I sent you. My half blooded, useless erections. My incontinent bowels, the hosing downs in the hospital shower. The penetration of my spinal cord. My rotting, cancerous intestines eating me alive. The penetration of my anus. My face shoved into a pillow, fucked by a man who is not kind. And that word again and again and again. Dignity. Where is my fucking dignity? The screen door. Then footsteps. Then the squeaking bedroom door. I ask you if I've changed much since cancer, since COVID since New York, since everything. Do you think my wound has become my identity? I ask, but you don't answer. Because you are not there and you are not real. Next time on two foreskins walk into a bath. He jerks me so hard, so roughly, and for so long, my penis looks like it's been stung by a bee. Two foreskin's walk into a bar is written and narrated by Chris Thompson. Directed by Andrew Falaise edited and post production by Christopher hoothen.