Butting Heads and Investigation into the Male Dilemma, a play by Joseph Partington Coleburn

Butting Heads and Investigation into the Male Dilemma, a play by Joseph Partington Coleburn

Act one Scene One

The rocky mountainside stands immovable jutting angrily into the pale blue sky.  Storm clouds on the horizon look on these peaks, but the great crags react to nothing.  They are alone they were here first and they will be here after.  The sun shines down the angular rocks cast foreboding shadows along the Cliffside.  Even the sun, slowly receding upon the horizon, an inconstant in the face of these mammoths.  Looking closer there is a scuffling two horned animals kick up dust on the hill side, knocking rock loose, sending pebbles cascading down the slopes.  Their breath in the cold air is like the smoke from a dragon’s snout.  The beasts stare with unblinking black marble eyes.  One rears up and begins to gallop straight for the other.  The latter follows suit and in seconds these two horned beasts are locked in heated battle.  Grunts and the sounds of their horns butting against one another echo down this uninterested landscape.
 Soon, one horn is locked to another, each animal struggling to get free.  There is pushing and pulling and panting and wheezing.  And then a pause.  The two sets of black marble eyes forced inches apart.  They are stuck.
Beast #1:  Well this is just perfect…
Beast #2: (struggling)  Let go, come on let go!  This hurts!
Beast #1: (laughing but in pain) “Let Go?”  Let go with what dingus it’s not like I have opposable antlers.
Beast #2: (stops)  Well then what do we do?
Beast #1:  How should I know? I guess we will just have to wait for someone to come by…
Beast#2:  This sucks.  This is all your fault.
Beast#1:  My fault!  My fault!?!  YOU tried to steal her from ME.
Beast#2:  Listen Lenny I saw her first that means she is my mate.
Lenny:  (annoyed)  But Dave, I had already mounted her and you come along and push me off, what kind of friend does that?  I mean you mount it, ya mate it am I right?
Dave:  Lenny I known ya a long time, but all is fair in love and mating.  I mean I need to procreate as much as possible, think of the species.
Lenny:  What about me?  That is all I think about too.  I mean I need to spread my seed.
Dave: (sighs)  Ok, Ok, it doesn’t matter now, we just need to figure out how to get free.
Lenny:  Yeah, but how.
:::Pause:::
Lenny and Dave:  HELP!!!! HELP!! HELP!!!!

BLACK
To be continued…

LARRY

He was homeless
He was a vagrant
He was a drunkard
 But he was decent to me

He had his own language
 Cobweb castles in the mornin’ to warm up
 Before he hoofed it down to the library

He always had a schedule
 But nowhere to sleep
He couldn’t eat the chips that the church gave him
 ‘Cause they was too hard for his crumbling teeth

He had nicknames for his favorites
  Two Tone and Spotey Odey
He laughed easily

He just came by for water
 And a jaw wag
He made the squares feel uncomfortable
 I only saw him drunk once and I didn’t like it

He had a family outside the city just like mine
 One day he stopped stopping by
I never saw him again

 But I still wonder about Larry
Every time I walk the streets
 With nowhere to go and nothing to be
I wish I could’ve done more
 But all he ever wanted was water and a quick chat

I hope he is somewhere
 Still hoofing it
Watching out for tiggy and ooch
 And not trusting cats ‘cause they’ll snitch on you
The ghetto screamers blaring bass
  As he tries to find his way home
Wherever that is