Doodlemeister’s Weblog

Final Part

My second and (so far) final attempt to get into the head of my cousin’s husband and killer, came in a play titled “Joe Pete,” which was staged in August, 1999, at Fell’s Point Corner Theater for the Baltimore Playwright’s Festival. The play’s title character is the same as he was in “Cecil Virginia, 1964″—a working man, inarticulate, violent, and someone we come to know (if not understand) through a web of conflicting stories, arguments and verbal games played out among his drinking buddies, and during interviews with a prison doctor. My goal with the new play was to use drama with darkly comedic shadings to deal directly with the killing, to move in on Joe Pete, force myself to examine his behavior in detail. And this time I promised myself there would be no off-stage climax.

The following lines are from a scene in a local bar the afternoon before Joe Pete kills Kitty. The tavern is a hangout for workers from the paper mill, and here we find Joe Pete’s coworkers, Ray and Byron, and Jack the bartender. Ray and Byron are waiting for Joe Pete to show up so they can make final plans for a hunting trip. We begin with a stage direction:

BYRON, thirsty, sips from his glass several times and then smacks the half-empty down on the table, splashing beer.

RAY (Pointing to the glass.): See there, I’m writing a song about that.

BYRON: My damn beer glass?

RAY: Not just the glass, no. It’s really about a guy drinking in a dim joint in the bright afternoon. Just sitting and drinking and talking. Maybe playing some pool. (Pause.) Bright sunlight outside, dim bar light inside. (Pause.) All stuff like that.

JACK: Yeah. Sure.

RAY (Defensive.): Well, I am. (Pause.) See how the light reflects off the glass, how pretty that is?—and look at that bottle! Ever see anything so—

BYRON (Overlapping.): What’s that song of yours called, Ray?

RAY (Mild pride.): “She Took My Love and Took Off.” (Pause.) But all I got so far is—

JACK (overlapping): Ha! Shiiiiiiiiiiiiii-IT!

JOE PETE enters.

BYRON (Overlapping, waving.): Hey, Joe Pete, old buddie!

JOE PETE (Ignoring BYRON, ranting.): That Todd is one sorry son-of-bitch! (Pause.) Sorriest son-of-a-bitch that ever lived!

RAY (Lightly.): What’d that bastard do this time?

JOE PETE (Dismissive.): Just his usual sorry-assed shit.

RAY (Remaining positive.): Todd get you straight day work yet like he said?

JOE PETE: Even if the man gets me off swing-shift he’s still a scheming, no-good sorry-son-of-a-bitch.

BYRON (Gently.): Word at the mill is Todd put you in for a raise and—

JOE PETE (Overlapping.): Look, if I get any of that it’s ‘cause I deserve it. (Pause.) Don’t have to kiss Todd’s ass for what’s rightly mine.

BYRON (Still trying to calm Joe Pete.): Well, Todd’s a fair man. He’s—

JOE PETE (Overlapping, ignoring BYRON.): Son-of-a-bitch calls me in his office. Says he’s talked to the big bosses. (Reciting.) “Told ‘em your situation, Joe Pete,” he says. “It’s up to you now,” he says. “Can’t protect you no more.” (Pause.): Ha! Who the fuck needs ‘im?

RAY: (Gentle.): He just wants to know what it is you’re after.

JOE PETE (Sarcastic.): Ain’t what I want. I don’t care. It’s what Kitty wants.

BYRON (Innocent.): I’m sure Todd knows what that is. I’m sure he—

JOE PETE (Overlapping, suspicious.): What’s that?

BYRON: I’m sure Todd has the best interests of you and Kitty at—

JOE PETE (Overlapping, cold.): How would that sorry-son-of-a-bitch know what my wife wants?

The scene goes on to establish Joe Pete’s insecurity at home and at work, his jealousy of Kitty—especially regarding Todd—and his free-floating rage at what he perceives as the unfairness of his life. During the years I was trying my hand at play writing (1983-1999) I discovered that if I had an overarching concept, a shape or theory—a conceit of some sort—it helped me to proceed without getting too stuck. Picasso said of painting, “You should have an idea of what you want to do, but it should be a vague idea.” I found that for me the same holds true with writing. My vague idea with Joe Pete the play was that the characters Joe Pete, Ray, and Byron each represent distinct stages in the evolution of the human male (primitive, transitional, evolved). In a sense, the characters grew from three parts of my own split self. But I soon realized that Ray was the more interesting character. He’s the good guy in that he matures during the course of the play and becomes a thoughtful, creative doubter who isn’t sure the old “manly” ways stand up too well, even while he’s still attracted to them. Ray is willing to change. He is confused (like me), but the confusion is expressed in positive ways, as a wannabe singer/songwriter, rather than in anger and rage.

Joe Pete was my third amateur production. Over the years an important lesson theater had taught me was that collaboration must include tact, something that doesn’t comes easily to me. I have had a long history of getting into scrapes (mostly verbal) with coworkers. (My mother liked to say that I was the only one of her four sons who was born with his foot in his mouth.) Even now, what tact I can muster has been worked at (rehearsed) over a long life. So when I noticed problems in the Joe Pete rehearsal process, I made a conscious effort to be gentle about getting them resolved. The one problem I found especially troubling was the lack of obvious positive development in the character of Ray. The following is, I think, a tactful note about the situation from me to my first-time director.

“I see Ray as a mixture of Joe Pete (lost soul/caveman) and Byron (older/evolved/sweet). Ray, at this age, is still more ‘Joe Pete’ than ‘Byron,’ but at least he’s headed in the right direction, evolving toward the gentler Byron model. Ray’s tough, but shows softer tendencies as well. I’m not sure I’ve captured this very well in the text. If you dig deeply enough in my words I think you’ll find places where—through gesture, expression, body language, reading emphasis and clever blocking—you can point up Ray’s humanity and his movement away from the ‘Joe Pete as lost soul’ model.

“One example comes when Ray talks about how his wife says their baby is afraid of him. We need to see real sadness in him over that. Another opportunity is Ray’s monologue about throwing their decorated Christmas tree across the room in a rage. He talks about it as sort of funny and sad—I think we may want to show him more sad than amused. There are other places in the script where we can emphasize Ray’s sweeter side. (I can point them out if you think it would help.) Finally, the actor playing Ray is doing a good job but I would like to see the portrayal come across as less consistently menacing, with more softness—and have this become stronger as the play proceeds. Let me know if I need to do some rewriting to help you to achieve this.”

Despite my best (evolved?) efforts, the critics had problems with Joe Pete’s meanness and were not always tactful in saying so. This review excerpt is from our local weekly newspaper, and, while fairly positive, you will note that it amounts to damning with faint praise. “‘A man with a rifle is as likely to use it on his wife as on a deer . . .’ (is) basically the attitude toward the male gender in Joe Pete. The titular character even says, ‘A man who ain’t tough with his woman just ain’t a man.’ . . . . the playwright’s knack for naturalistic banter proves to be a mixed blessing . . . . the mostly comic bull sessions are meant to incrementally build until the underlying tensions finally explode . . . Joe Pete has a strong theme and solid performances (but) some rewriting could whittle down the redundancies, make the characters more than the sum of a few defining masculine traits, and smooth the transitions.”

On the other hand, one Baltimore Playwrights’ Festival judge rated my play a 4.75 on a scale of 5.0 and said, “The Appalachian bar . . . could have been a camp in the Gulag for all my familiarity with it, but one point of art is to take an audience where they have never been or could never be. Joe Pete is a play that intends to show the milieu that produces a senseless murder: a male drinking world consumed with rage against women, with class resentment, and with the helplessness working men feel with an economic system that keeps them poor. The barroom is the classic American dramatic setting for revealing truths . . . where beer is consumed, the talk is aimless and circular, and posturing is elevated to performance art . . . (the playwright) balances the ugly, male swaggering with a rich vein of humor. The oddly catchy language was quoted widely on the sidewalk during intermission (‘available pussy’ seemed to be the favorite) . . . ”

The following partial review, from a local “arts” newspaper, is easily the least nuanced (read “negative”) of any the play received. “Certainly it is possible to write a good play that deals with male bonding and the veritas traditionally attributed to vino, but (the playwright) hasn’t managed to do it with Joe Pete . . . Don’t look for sensitivity; these are anything but sensitive New Age guys . . . While Joe Pete isn’t much of a play, there is redeeming social value in that it succeeds in raising our collective consciousness a bit.”

While writing Joe Pete my own consciousness was certainly elevated. I came to realize—was forced to face—that while I’ve made progress in my own evolution I still have the capacity to become instantly angry in certain contexts, mainly when I feel cornered, and especially when convinced I’ve been unfairly treated. The least perception of mean treatment and/or disrespect can still get a knee-jerk and potentially violent rise out of me. (The curse of the eternally insecure, I suppose.) In my adult life so far I’ve punched, slapped and/or kicked people on only a few occasions, but the fact I have done that at all is troubling, especially since each time it happened I also detected, very close to the surface, the icy desire for blood. With hindsight, I now believe that I made the character Ray too goody-goody, too evolved too soon; not knee-jerk enough. But Ray is still the character to whom I relate the most—not Joe Pete. Perhaps if I had the opportunity to rewrite Joe Pete the play (with a different title, of course) I’d somehow make Ray the focus since his growth represents the path to a higher plane of behavior toward which I’ve been blindly struggling myself these many years, albeit with less than perfect results.

In 1967, when I was thirty, I slapped my wife of seven years for accidentally seating our youngest son in a tub of very hot bath water. The incident was simple oversight on her part but my reaction was instantly violent—and in that moment I really wanted to kill her. Once I calmed down I must have realized that my behavior was symptomatic of a problem in me, not in her. Fearful of what I might do if tested again, and with the knowledge of a bunch of other problems in the marriage, I finally found the courage to leave. Over thirty years later, in 2002, I slapped a girlfriend twice during heated arguments in which I perceived her treatment of me as mean, aggressive, at times physically abusive on her part and—worst of all—unfair. During the last of several verbal battles it (I) turned nasty and I wrestled her to the floor and kicked her—not hard, but hard enough for her to know she had been abused, and for me to realize that my behavior was once more headed in the wrong direction. So, feeling unable to change enough, fast enough—and very much doubting I could change at all—I took the incident as my cue to exit the scene. Once again I’ve moved on, out of range—alone, at least for now—where the bad actor still left in me is in no danger of being provoked.

The two community theater actor/killers I knew never harmed a stranger, but each brutally murdered people very close to them. The fact that they both acted as they did at a specific intersection in their lives suggests to me that, given the right (wrong) motivation, I might behave as they did. But I also know that compared to them, at least when it comes to lethal violence, I am—thanks to my still evolving “Ray-like” self control—very much an amateur.

END

Copyright © 2008 Jim Sizemore.