General Bliss
Characters:
Santa Anna, the General of the Mexican Army
Rosa, a hot woman
Sound: throughout the dialogue, muffled thunder, gradually amplifying as gun and cannonfire. The Baroque music of Scarlatti plays quietly behind this.
Inside the tent of Santa Anna. Post coital.
The General lies on the ground in his underwear, exhausted.
Rosa stands over him with fingernail clippers. She wears a dirty petticoat and a torn camisole.
ROSA
All advice old people give you is bad advice.
My brother says that.
They lie.
You are the exception.
(She looks at her fingernails, clips one or two)
My brilliant career.
The truth costs you nothing
I wouldn’t say you’re honest…
“man of action”
The charnel grounds, my brother.
It has always been my fanstasy
to lord over a man like you
a killer of men–he ate human flesh–
but the reality is boring.
I am hungry so I will not eat
It is—yoga.
Is it indecent to wear the skin of the dead?
To urinate in a parked car?
GENERAL
Tell me Rosa, was your brother
somehow…disabled?
ROSA
When the famine is on the land
The families cannot bring rice pap
to the charnel ground with their dead.
A country so poor there are no
sheets to bind the corpses.
He flayed the the corpses
and used the skin for clothing.
His happiness was pure.
GENERAL
You want my advice?
ROSA
He tied his hair with a snake
and girded his loins with tiger skin…
he killed every man in the valley
and mated with every female
and they became subdued
and the gates of hell closed.
GENERAL
Is that all?
ROSA
He ate their flesh and drank their blood.
GENERAL
A lapse in governance.
Lack of structure.
No more dumbass questions!
Silence. He sits up and starts playing with his Iphone.
ROSA
How long has it been since you stood at attention?
GENERAL
I can listen if that’s what you want.
It isn’t in my nature but I guess I owe you.
ROSA
My mother and father wept.
But they had little choice.
It makes him happy, and he won’t be caught
he is very accomplished
and beyond your understanding.
GENERAL
All my men. All — my — men.
The sound of it.
I have seen bravery.
Savages wrapped in rope and filthy sheets.
Boiled until their bones and flesh
release their nectar
and it pours all down through me.
That is how I love.
ROSA
This tent is translucent with sweat.
The fragrance of the battlefield
rises from it. The morning fires
shine through it.
What will history say?
GENERAL
I love the music of Scarlatti.
My favorite color is red.
You can’t make these things up.
ROSA
Am I supposed to remember?
I would write it down and bury it in a rock
but I am…at a loss for words.
Lick me.
GENERAL
I was never an admirer of guns.
The din is appalling. The men,
they become repulsive
in love with their own fear
if you could call it that
love–not the girl–not the woman.
the demon–the love demon.
Ha Ha. that was a joke
at your brothers expense.
You put him up in front of you.
Is this creature something to be
proud of?
ROSA
I have no brother.
I am nothing.
Rarely do I breathe, but when I do
death cannot be far behind.
GENERAL
You have a brother.
He was the one who sold you to me.
ROSA
I am bound by an oath.
What comes next?
I can clean your ears.
If you have socks, I can sew up the holes.
I can load your gun.
I can get you a tequila.
I can groom your horse.
A storm is gathering.
It won’t be like the last time.
There are zombies now,
who appear to speak,
in voices propelled by the gases
of their own decomposition.
(pause)
I know I am just a woman
chattel sold to you for–
for I don’t even know how much we go for,
these days–
but I have seen things
and you know how times shift
ebb and flow
yellow fever
money changing hands
slaves driving the economy.
GENERAL
That brother of yours
A good looking kid.
He had a funny way of talking.
Did he always talk like that?
He smelled good though. Give him that.
ROSA
My brother bathes in the sebum of cows.
He is a bone farmer. All his ways are
superior, so that to speak of him
is blasphemy.
GENERAL
You Texian women think you’re hot stuff alright.
ROSA
I’m from Connecticut.
GENERAL (putting his hand on her)
Stay with me. I figured out what I want
you to do.
ROSA
If I were real, I would scream and
run away, naked as I am
throw myself on the back of the nearest pony
and ride away down the wash.
GENERAL
I want you…to fry me…an egg.
silence
ROSA
General, are you ready for death?
the end.
Gunfighter Nation 