Copyright © 2011 Jim Sizemore.
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Today’s Gag
June 6, 2011
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Posted by Jim
Dead Freddie’s
August 18, 2010
When my oldest son was five or six (he turned 49 on August 13), we left the women—his mother and grandmother—in the cave and went to forage for lunch meat and hard rolls at Muller’s delicatessen on Harford Road, in Northeast Baltimore. (Muller’s still has the best German cold cuts and sandwich breads in the city.) Next door to Muller’s is a bar called “Dead Freddie’s.” It’s been there for as long as Muller’s has, but the name has long intrigued me for several reasons. For one thing, I can’t remember if “Dead” was part of its name back in the day. Was it just “Freddie’s” then and, when Freddie (the owner?) died, rather than get rid of what is a fine example of a classic neon, the word “Dead” was added as a dark joke? Or was the word always part of the sign and I just didn’t notice? (If anyone out there knows the history of the bar and/or the sign, please set me straight in the comment section below.)
Anyway, to get to the point of my little story about that day of male bonding, either my son asked to go into the bar or I volunteered to take him. Either way, I thought it was a good idea, so in we went. Once inside I think I bought Shawn an orange soda, in much the same spirit my father used to buy them for me when he took me to bars to keep him company while he drank a few of his “Arrow” brand beers. (The sins of the father really are passed down.) And I clearly remember that I took the opportunity that day to demonstrate to Shawn how the pinball machine worked. In fact, I’m pretty sure he got to shoot a few balls himself. As you and I know, most boys love bright lights, fast-moving objects and noise, so of course he was delighted. And so was I, still being a kid at heart myself. That was it. We two happy guys finished our pinball game and headed back to the home cave with provisions for lunch.
But now comes the sad ending to my little narrative. (Here I feel it’s fair to speak for Shawn, too, because I remember how boys think and feel when it comes to neon and pinball machines.) When we got home, still very excited about our wee adventure, we couldn’t wait to share our delight and high spirits with my wife and her mother. Their reaction was not what we expected. Well, you know what comes next. My wife and her mother were shocked, shocked, that I had exposed the child to the dark and sordid interior of that bar. Their disapproval was clear in their words and the expressions on their faces. And here I won’t speak for Shawn, but personally I felt the morning’s fun feeling exit my soul in much the same way air instantly leaves a pricked balloon.
Copyright © 2010 Jim Sizemore.
4 Comments | business, essays, food, kids, marriage, non-fiction, photography, relationships | Tagged: adventure, Arrow beer, balloon, Baltimore, bar, boys, cafe, cold cuts, Dead Freddie's, delight, disapproval, domestic conflict, essay, family, father, food, grandmother, hard rolls, Harford Road, high spirits, husband, kids, lunch, male bonding, marriage, Maryland, mother, Muller's delicatessen, Nehi, neon, Northeast Baltimore, orange soda, photography, pinball machine, provisions, relationships, sad story, sandwich breads, Shawn Sizemore, son, soul, tavern, wife | Permalink
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Today’s Gag
June 7, 2010
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Posted by Jim
Rendezvous
January 4, 2010It’s a safe bet that few men my age can recall exactly where he was and what he was doing—and with whom—on a 
specific date sixty-two years ago. I’m one of the lucky ones, or at least I think I am. On June 25, 1948, I was ten years old and sitting on a bar stool in Milt’s Rendezvous, a low-end tavern not far from the shipyards in Curtis Bay. Curtis Bay was, and still is, a working-class neighborhood of tiny homes on the southern edge of the Baltimore waterfront. My father worked as a carpenter in the shipyards during World War II, and by this time the conflict had been over for three years. With the shipyards closed, 
daddy was out of work except for odd jobs here and there, but he still enjoyed visiting area bars. They were, he said, his “old drinking grounds.” It seemed that at each bar he took me the barmaids and many of the drinkers knew his name.
That day at Milt’s, I was sipping my usual orange “Nehi” soda and my father, on the stool next to me, was making wet circles on the bar top with the bottom of his beer bottle. “Arrow” was his favorite brand—no glass, he always drank it straight from the long neck. And he used his thumbnail to scratch the damp labels off the bottle as he sipped (a habit I picked up and still do on the 
rare occasions when I’m drinking a beer with a paste-on label). As he removed the labels he also seemed to remove himself, sort of go off someplace else in his mind. In those days I didn’t have the words to describe it that way, but I do remember being aware of his dreamy look as he deconstructed the labels. Meanwhile, my contribution to the overlapping art he created on the bar top was to smear the circles into an abstraction with my fingers. He didn’t seem to mind, at least not while he was on the early side of drunk and still in a good mood. My father could be a mean sot. Sober, he was often a fun-loving man who laughed and joked and did silly things, like singing country songs and accompanying himself with one of his tools. Often his “instrument” of choice was a hand saw, which he gripped handle-down between his knees and bowed with a stick strung with a wire nailed to it. As he stroked, he changed the angle of the saw-tooth blade which produced a wavering, eerie, high-lonesome sound.
My father said that our mission that day at Milt’s was to watch the world heavyweight title fight between the champ, Joe Louis, and his challenger, Jersey Joe Walcott. Walcott was a nobody, pretty much, at least in big-time boxing—until, that is, their first bout in 1947, when he had come very close to beating Louis. We watched the rematch on a small black and white television set mounted on a shelf over one end of the bar. In 1948, few poor people had TV’s in their homes (our family was securely in that category), but every bar in town had a set to lure the drinkers out of their living rooms. (Kids like me, and some adults, watched variety shows like “Texaco Star Theater” with Milton Berle at night, while standing on the sidewalk outside appliance stores. They kept their display window sets on all the time to entice customers. And it worked. By the mid-1950s most families, even some on welfare, had a TV in the house.)
Jersey Joe Walcott was a veteran fighter. His real name, which my father said sounded kind of “sissy,” was “Arnold Cream.” Walcott had learned to box starting when he was just 16, but daddy claimed Joe Louis was by far the better fighter. As it turned out, the rematch was another close one. In the final rounds, Louis was again behind Jersey Joe on points. Daddy was keeping score and said the champ needed to come up with a knockout punch to win. Everyone in the bar thought Louis was going to lose until very near the end of the match, when a single punch to Walcott’s jaw knocked him flat on the canvas for the count of ten. “Happy ending,” daddy said. When I finished my Nehi, and daddy took the last sip of his (fourth or fifth?) Arrow beer, he said “Jimmy, I’ve got to go see a man about a horse.” He had a lot of “saying’s” like that, things he’d drop into the conversation that made little or no sense to me at the time. What he said next I did understand. “You go on home and tell your momma I’m right behind you.”
Alone, I walked the narrow two-lane road from Milt’s Rendezvous to our house at 1011 Mast Court, in the nearby government-built housing project. All the streets in our development were named after parts of ships and boats, and the houses looked like army barracks. Dad claimed they were, in fact, converted barracks stuck up on a hill overlooking Baltimore City and the harbor, put there in a hurry to house the thousands of workers and their families that had moved into town for war work in the shipyards. (Beautiful view, actually, but ugly buildings.) There were no sidewalks on the road home. I walked on the black top facing traffic, like my father had taught me. He said that way, if you see a car coming, you have a good chance to get out of the way. Daddy was right, several times I had to scrunch up against hedges and bushes to let a fast car go by.
Daddy still wasn’t home when I went to bed that night. All evening my mother had looked at the clock and shook her head and tut-tutted, like she always did when Daddy was off somewhere. That was her regular life, but it always seemed to make her mad—or at least sad. When I checked the next morning daddy was splayed out on his back on their bed, fully dressed, sleeping off what my mother said was just another “toot.” At breakfast momma told me he had “come in at some ungodly hour” after the bars closed. She also said that on the way home he must have “skipped into the road and got his-self sideswiped.” Daddy wasn’t hurt, just a scratch here and there, and the upper plate of his false teeth was missing. Momma said she was going to trust me to retrace his steps and find it. She told me the best place to look was in clumps of bushes near the roadside.
All of this crazy business seemed perfectly normal at the time. It was all I knew. Another brief example to illustrate. When I was four or five, while we were still living in Virginia, my mother had taken my younger brother and me with her to a neighbor’s for a “house meeting”—bible thumping revival stuff, singing and testifying, that sort of thing. When we came home we noticed that the window next to the front door had been broken and there was blood on the jagged glass shards left in the frame. Daddy had lost or misplaced his key and smashed his fist through the window so he could reach inside and unlock the door. We found him peacefully asleep on the living room couch, fresh blood still oozing from several small cuts on his arm.
Eventually I found daddy’s upper plate in a hedge by the side of the road, not far from another of his favorite bars, one that happened to be roughly halfway between Milt’s Rendezvous and home. Two years after what I had come to think of as the “False Teeth Fiasco,” I returned home from school one day to discover that my mother had disappeared—she just ran off and left me, daddy and my younger brother. No note, nothing. Later I learned from a neighbor what had happened but, no matter the explanation, in those days I couldn’t understand how she could do such a thing. For a long time I couldn’t forgive her. By the time I was a grown man I had figured it out for myself. It wasn’t something I had done or said that drove her away. She had finally, after more than twenty years, simply got fed up with living her life with what she called a “flat-out drinking fool” for a husband.
Copyright © 2010 Jim Sizemore.
10 Comments | art, essays, kids, love, marriage, non-fiction, relationships, religion, writing | Tagged: 1948, Arrow beer, art, Baltimore, bar, beer, boats, boxing, carpenter, Curtis Bay, domestic conflict, drinking, essay, family, heavyweight title fight, home, Jersey Joe Walcott, Joe Louis, kids, love, marriage, Maryland, non-fiction, odd jobs, prize fight, relationships, school, shipyards, South Baltimore, tavern, war work, wife, World War II | Permalink
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Today’s Quote
June 23, 2009
“The particular charm of marriage is the duologue, the permanent conversation between two people who talk over everything and everyone.”
—Cyril Connolly, The Unquiet Grave (Perse)
Photo-Illustration: My paternal grandparents, Owen & Charlottie Sizemore.
Copyright © 2009 Jim Sizemore.
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Posted by Jim
Today’s Gag
June 20, 2009
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Today’s Gag
February 4, 2009
2 Comments | art, cartooning, gag cartoons, gags, humor, illustration, marriage, relationships | Tagged: couples, domestic conflict, family, gag cartoons, gags, home, husband, love, marriage, relationships, Today's Gag, valentine, Valentine's Day, wife | Permalink
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Real Ringers Read
January 30, 2009For many years I’ve known Jacquie Roland as artist, actress, federal government coworker, cartoonist, playwright, professional clown, writer, etc., etc. I now learn she’s also a “Ringer.” In a short essay below, the clever Ms. Roland explains.
By Jacquie Roland
I’m a “RINGER”. For those unfamiliar with the term, a RINGER is a (huge) fan of the J.R.R. Tolkien saga THE LORD OF THE RINGS. (LOTR). I’ve been reading, and re-reading the books since I was introduced to them in the 1960’s, by an office buddy in the federal government. I like to start each new year with a read, but this year, instead, I reached for my extended dvd’s of the marvelous epic directed by Peter Jackson.
I started 2009, (which due to the state of things promises to be a rather tough year all around) completely immersed in a world of Hobbits, Wizards, Elves and the men of Middle Earth. It was totally satisfying. My affection for, and involvement with, the characters imagined by Professor Tolkien has actually grown over the years, not lessened. Admittedly, this year I have had some help. In February of 2008, I joined a group of like-minded people on the internet, called THE FELLOWSHIP OF MIDDLE EARTH, The Unofficial Site of The LOTR Fan Club Community. This was/is my first foray into the vast resources of the Internet. I have been welcomed into the Fellowship, which is very family friendly, by an amazing group of people, most of whom I know only by their avatars. We share a real love for the books, and now the movies. My avatar is that of one of the Ring-wraiths, or fallen kings of men. Although the Ring-wraith character is male, by adding the “wife” I made it my own.
So the Ringwraith-Wife was born. RWW for short. The photo above is a self portrait I took of RWW in the backyard of ‘her’ new home. People who know me, and remember the Halloween parties that Bernie Wrightson gave in the seventies & eighties in upstate NY, will recognize RWW as an adaptation of another character I dressed as… The Vampire Bride. (Admittedly, I’m also a Halloween junkie, and costume freak.)
When I ‘became’ RWW, I started thinking about LOTR on a daily basis, rather than as my annual enjoyable pastime. Because of this, I’ve begun to integrate LOTR into my daily life… really. Almost to the point of WWGD. (What would Gandalf Do) Even to me, it’s a little spooky. But it sure is fun. In May, I felt confident enough to start an online comic, titled RINGER. Due to other real life considerations, I had stopped cartooning years ago, and I missed it. RINGER ‘publishes’ four cartoons a week, all a parody of LOTR and it’s characters. Because it’s on the Internet, I get instant feedback on the weekly gags… I found out quickly what works, and what doesn’t, and just as quickly I adjust. What started out as a small pleasantry, has now become quite a bit more. I fully intend to try for a book sometime this year. (My only cartoon book so far, I Drive People Crazy, Too, was about Pac-Man… I got the biggest kick when another author asked to include my book in her Pac-Man collectible tome… if for no other reason than instead of being thought of as an antique, I’m now officially a collectible.) As a Ringer, I still have friends who marvel at my fascination with LOTR, the books, the movies… and let’s not forget my semi-obsession with the movie’s stars!
My personal favorite, of the actors, from the beginning, has been Viggo Mortensen as Aragorn. -Sigh!- Other Ringer friends are quite enamored with Orlando Bloom, who played Legolas, Elijah Wood as Frodo, and Sean Bean as Boromir. Heroes, all. Nowadays, we need our heroes. (Can you say… OBAMA ? …I hope… I hope… I hope.)
Anyway, all I’m trying to point out here, if my little ramble has a point, is that nothing you do is wasted. It’s all grist for your mill. A book someone casually handed me 40 (!) years ago, has all but taken over my present life… and in such a good way. So if someone tells you that whatever you happen to be doing at the moment… reading a book, painting, writing a play, watching a movie, or simply daydreaming… is a waste of time… know in your heart that it isn’t… one of these days your ‘diversion’ could just end up being the next chapter in your own book.
As for the Ringwraith – Wife photo, my “hobby” used to be taking self portraits… always in costume, with interesting props. I put my camera on a tripod, hit the self timer, and run like the devil to get in place. I lost my favorite set of photos in a move… In them, I dressed as Esmeralda, had made a soft sculpture of Quasimodo, and positioned myself & “Quasi ” on the steps of a gorgeous downtown stone church. When I clicked the timer I ran and wrapped myself in this huge hawser, and laid on the stone steps at “Quasi’s” feet. I called the best photo from that set “She Gave Me Water.” One of these days I hope to redo the “Quasi” series. (Of course, if I don’t get a move on the new photos will be titled “He Gave Her Walker.”) I also have a few humorous LOTR characters, and setups, in mind as well. But as I’m sure you’ve noticed, there are only so many hours in a day.
For now, my character ‘RingWraith Wife’ will have to do… and my cartoons, of course. And the paintings, and plays… Ain’t life grand? But still, this year, already… something’s missing. Before too long I’m going to have to pull my crusty old LOTR volumes down from the shelves. Even with the movies… I miss the books… and you know what they say… “Real Ringers Read The Books.” (They do… they do… they do.) Damn you, J.R.R. Tolkien.
Copyright © 2009 Jacquie Roland.
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Posted by Jim
Do You Love Me Or What?
November 6, 2008Scene From A Failed Play
There are times when failure is more interesting than success, especially to the person who created the mess—which in this case is me. Of the five plays I’ve written, three have been produced in the Baltimore Playwrights’ Festival, but the one I like best—the one that I think is the most original and accomplished—is one of the two that were rejected. The following is a scene from that play.
SETTING: A modern living groom.
CHARACTERS: ALUNA, female; SKILLET, male; and PASSIE, female; all three attractive thirty-something’s.
ALUNA ENTERS with PASSIE close behind. ALUNA pauses to pick up a gift-wrapped package from the coffee table. She opens it and looks at the contents with mild disgust, then drops it in a wastebasket. PASSIE arranges herself on the sofa as ALUNA straightens the magazines on the coffee table, then she goes to the door and peers through the peephole. After a beat ALUNA turns to face PASSIE and speaks.
ALUNA: Damn—you’re still out there!
PASSIE (nods and smiles): Yep.
ALUNA (again looking through the peephole): You’re hugging the wall, trying to blend in with the paint. This lens makes you look all distorted—thin on top, fat in the middle, thin again at your legs and feet. (ALUNA turns to face PASSIE, continuing): And your face is red and puffy like you’ve been crying.
PASSIE (formal): I expect that’s because I’m concerned about the nature of your interest in my husband.
ALUNA: Your husband? Where did you get him—at the Husband Store in the mall? Was he on sale?
PASSIE (quiet, mean): Bitch. Slut. Maggot.
ALUNA: When it comes to men, all I get is the eccentric, half-baked, pussy-whipped, mother-dominated—and/or married.
PASSIE: Lust is all it is, just animal lust.
ALUNA (laughs): That’s the best fucking reason there is—pun intended. (pause) Can’t help it if a man follows me home, wants and needs what I have. Not my fault the guy only has one brain cell with my name on it.
PASSIE: You lure him. Lure him! (pause) Skillet was raw when I found him, like something that’s been dug out of the ground, some root that when it’s refined you have something wonderful—coffee perhaps, some narcotic even—but first you have to grind it up.
ALUNA: Look, he’s a grown man—mind of his own. I know he’s not mine, but he ain’t yours, either. He’s nobody’s, right? Fair game. Nobody owns nobody.
PASSIE: He’s innocent, like a baby animal in the zoo. No history. (pause, then continuing in dreamy baby-talk) He’s my pumpkin, squeezums, honey cuddles—my duckie, my poopsie. (continuing, adult voice) At night, waking from a deep dream, he’s beside me. Lying there, I nourish him. We drift in and out of sleep. A film of moisture covers our naked flesh. (pause) There’s nothing original in that. We are ancient, repetitive. We could be any two out of millions, billions—even trillions. (pause, defensive) Hey, I don’t kid myself—I know that being a mother is one big vanity, but so what?
SKILLET ENTERS dressed only in trim boxer shorts. He’s carrying a video camera and the women ignore him as he tapes the following action:
PASSIE (continuing): I’m upholding traditional values here—sanctity of the family unit—that sort of thing. It’s my job. Some have to breed, or then what? Zero-population growth—curtains for the human race, right? (pointed, sarcastic) Not every woman is up to it, right?
ALUNA (sarcastic): Never trust a man raised by a woman.
PASSIE lunges and grabs ALUNA by the throat with both hands. They struggle and wind up on the floor, PASSIE’s knees pinning ALUNA’s arms. ALUNA squirms free and they now sit facing each other, glaring.
SKILLET continues taping for a beat but when it’s clear the fight is over he loses interest and EXITS.
ALUNA (fingering her throat): You . . . you tried to kill me! (pause, looks around ) Where’s my mirror? I’ll bet there’s marks. And they’re expecting me to show up at that damn party! (picks up mirror from end table and inspects her neck)
PASSIE (joining ALUNA on sofa, softer) I was a little angry, yes, but in complete control—didn’t mean to hurt you. (smiles) Enjoyed seeing the tip of your tongue, though, between your teeth. (pause) At least we got to know each other a bit better. (laughs) Should be friends, right?—with all we’ve got in common.
ALUNA (pointing to her neck): Look at this! Christ! (pause, then out to audience) Would you look at this?
PASSIE (shifting closer to ALUNA on the sofa): Want some tea?
ALUNA (surprised, shifts away): What?
PASSIE (after a beat, dreamy): There are people I couldn’t stand when I first met them, but now we’re friends. That happens. Loved some others and now they’re mortal enemies. You never know. (sweet smile) Who knows—maybe we’ll become fast friends. (pause) So, can I get you something? Coffee, tea or Coke? I’ve got milk. (she picks up a glass ashtray from the coffee table, distracted) We bought this on our honeymoon at Niagara Falls. (calls upstage) SKILLET! Come here and feel the ashtray! (hands ashtray to ALUNA) Feel it. (ALUNA inspects the ashtray as PASSIE continues): Nice, huh? All smooth and cold like that? Look at the bottom, what it says. (ALUNA turns the ashtray over and PASSIE continues, reciting): “Niagara Falls—Where Love Reigns.” Isn’t that sweet? Touch it to your cheek.
ALUNA (starts to the raise ashtray to her cheek, then checks herself): Just a damn minute—this is MY ashtray! (continues, pointing) MY coffee table! MY magazines! (gestures around living room) All of it! All of it! (points off) MY coffee and tea and milk in the goddamn kitchen!
PASSIE (takes an envelope from her purse and hands it to ALUNA): Snapshots. We’ve traveled all over, Skillet and me. Documented everything. (ALUNA looks at the pictures as PASSIE continues): Shots in front of every vertical object in the world, seems like—statues, fountains, cathedrals—
ALUNA (overlapping): Ha! Towers, smokestacks—a rocket on the launching pad at Cape Kennedy, and—
PASSIE (overlapping): You name it.
ALUNA (continuing): Mosques, the Washington Monu—
PASSIE (overlapping, digging in purse again): We lived in Florida for awhile. Everglades. Did a lot of stuff with gators down there. Got married up here and went down there so Skillet could meet my family of origin. (she pulls some items from her purse and hands them to ALUNA, continuing): Them’s decals from the states we traveled through—Virginia, the Carolinas’, Georgia—check ‘em out.
ALUNA (soft, humoring her): Sure. (she flips through the decals and hands them back, continuing): Nice.
PASSIE: Skillet was fun and full of surprises. He’s kiss me in unexpected places—moving conveyances, mostly. Elevators, helicopters, airport vans. We enjoyed many mutual experiences back in the day, like the time I woke up in a beach house in California, Cheese Whiz squirting from a can into my bellybutton.
ALUNA: Skillet?
PASSIE (sad, distracted): Some friend of his. Some naked woman. She smiled and kissed me. (pause, brighter): I collect state flags, too!
ALUNA (losing patience, mild sarcasm): Wonderful. You may need that memorabilia later—in case you forget who you are.
PASSIE: Exactly! That’s what it’s for. Or I’ll get a tattoo! For purposes of identification—name, rank and serial number on my arm or ankle, or . . . or . . . (trails off, then recovers with false bravado): You know, I’ve decided that unhappiness is inevitable.
ALUNA (soft): Happiness also.
PASSIE: Is that your story, you happy?
ALUNA: Hope to be, some day. Got my hopes up. (the phone rings and PASSIE leans over to answer it but ALUNA clamps her hand over it) This is MY goddamn phone!
PASSIE (freezes) But, but . . . it’s ringing!
ALUNA: So? Don’t have to respond when some stranger—god knows who—rings your goddamn bell.
ALUNA gets up from the sofa and begins to pace like a caged animal, looking at the phone with fear. It keeps ringing throughout the dialogue.
PASSIE: It’s a sin what you’re doing.
ALUNA: Fuck ‘em. They just want me for my luminosity. My goddam luminosity. They need the light. They invite me, they get the benefit. It’s a trick, a goddamn joke. (ALUNA paces for a beat or two more, then continues) Is it snowing out? (pause) If it is, they’re probably canceling the fucking party. (brighter) Hey, that’s it—don’t you think?
PASSIE: It’s summer.
ALUNA: Hurricane?
PASSIE (negative): Huh-uh.
ALUNA: Damn, damn, DAMN! (sad) Do you know what it’s like to enter a room of strangers and wonder who they think you think you are? That moment of dread? You don’t know how to act, what to say, so you stand off to one side, in a corner, back against the wall, watching. A cute guy on his way to the john tells you that you should be out in the middle of things, dancing, out there with the music and bright lights and all. (pause, angry) I hate that, him telling me that, because there’s sights to see and sounds to hear on the edge, also—alone—feelings to feel. (long pause, brighter) So he struts back out of the john, acting confident, but I know better. I know that Truth wears a mask. He’s got this damp spot on his pants leg, near the crotch. (pause) See, right there I know who he really is—just another man. So I relax, smile. He sees my smile and smiles back. ( pause, shrugs) That’s it—boy meets girl.
PASSIE: And you wind up here.
ALUNA: It was romantic. Cold spinach quiche for brunch. (giggles) Never saw the sunrise but I figure they must have had one.
PASSIE (assumes wrestling pose, hands clawing the air in front of her) You’re disgusting!
ALUNA (assumes a similar pose, sarcastic) If you wanna be virtuous, it helps if you’re ugly. (they circle for several beats, grabbing and slapping at each other)
PASSIE: Slut! Maggot! Degenerate witch!
ALUNA: Restraint is the enemy of instinct. (she stops, suddenly soothing) That’s just a line in the mind, you know—it can be crossed.
PASSIE: Bitch!
LIGHTS BANG OUT. End of scene.
The Baltimore Playwrights’ Festival assigns five readers to each new play, and they are required to fill out a four page critique to explain the pros and cons of the piece as they perceive them, and then conclude—based on their comments—whether or not the submission should be recommended for a staged reading, and a possible full production in the festival. On the last page of their critique, each reader is asked to summarize their overall opinion of the submitted play; the following are the final comments they made about Do You Love Me Or What?:
“The playwright’s idea has merit, but the piece is disjointed and confusing. Unfortunately, I feel it needs a complete rewrite. Perhaps it should be be expanded into a two act piece with the first act describing the relationship between the husband and wife in order to give insight into the conflicts the author is trying to present.”
“Good dialogue, credible situations, but the through line is not clear.”
“I’m sure the author feels he has written a very profound play. Unfortunately, I found it merely obscure.”
“I am going to score this play as ‘recommended with severe reservations,’ hoping it will be given a hearing with the playwright given the opportunity to prove me wrong.”
“With a bit of line trimming, could be a tour-de-force.”
I sort of understand their reactions, but on the other hand I did clearly say in my play notes that Do You Love Me Or What? was an attempt to tell a conventional triangular love story in an unusual way. I explained that it is a surrealist/absurdist comedy/drama in one act, and that the action takes place in “real” time, as it is perceived by the male character—it’s all in his head. In his confused mind he and the two female characters combine and change to become still other characters. Past, present and future are compressed. There is no exposition, no explanation of who the characters are—we know them only by their behavior. Everything is contained in the action, what the characters say and do. But their words alone cannot be trusted; the characters (and the writer) are all unreliable narrators. The play is pure action. If the audience goes away confused, that’s O. K., as long as they are also entertained. In my notes I said that I believe that confusion, combined with entertainment, will lead the audience to thoughtfulness, and in that way they will be collaborators in the creative process.
All well and good, but upon reading the play after all this time (I wrote it in 1999), I find myself agreeing with the critiques, at least for the most part. So I’m considering a major rewrite and—perhaps—a resubmission to the Baltimore Playwrights’ Festival. Wish me luck.
Copyright © 2008 Jim Sizemore.
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