The Puppeteer Trilogy by Mike Marino (book recommendations for teens txt) 📖

ground level, right below the puppeteers second floor apartment, a young student of ballet was practicing her best dance movements to Swan Lake on the hi fi. If not ballet then she would aspire to be the next Isadora Duncan combining modern dance with ballet.

 

Unfortunately she had to break off her practice as outside of her window on the street, the street musicians had already gathered as they did every weekend, homeless looking beat hipsters with guitars and saxophones and steel drums to entertain the stroller and passerby with improv jazz and blues, hoping to catch some cash for their efforts for a party of wine later in the evening when the Standells lover, muggers and thieves take over the not so Grant Wood landscape of Bean Town...the city of dreams...

Chapter Three

 

The sun was blasting through the late morning clouds as Alexia Dyslexia placed the 33 ⅓ record of “Swan Lake” onto the spindle of the old portable Viva Zapata hi fi system that she found while rummaging around at the Salvation Army Store down the street from her apartment next door to the bodega owned by the Gallegos family, recent immigrants from the drug wars of El Salvador. Roberto Gallegos, family patriarch always had a pleasant smile when he saw Alexia and was praying to St. Pancho Villa that her dreams of ballet success would be met.

 

When Alexia purchased the relic record machine she took it home and wanted to buy it a steak dinner as its reward for surviving the years of someone’s rock and roll bedroom. A rescue animal from the nearby shelter waiting to be euthanized (isn’t a group of teenagers in China referred to as ‘Youth In Asia’?) yet saved in the nick of time just as the heroes in those white knuckle Perils of Pauline movie serials. It was however, NOT a stray collie miniature poodle mix used in dog fights for bait. It was merely a hi fi,  so from now on Chuck Berry was to be replaced by the Nutcracker and other ballets of note and distinction.

 

She was mindful of the volume even though she wanted to immerse herself in a sea of sound, but did not want to disturb her neighbor up on the second floor directly over her apartment. A writer, T. Rex Fitzgerald, who wrote fortunes for fortune cookies until he could complete what he called ‘the great American novel’ even though others had done this already ranging in subject matter from Okies on the move to California to Civil War in Spain.   

 

Her neighbor across the street, Kathleen Morphine,  was an artist, a painter who has dreams of having given birth from the artistic  placenta to euvre at the Louvre. She was even so kind as to have done some portrait work, sketches really,  of Alexia dancing. The fluidity of the human body is at its peak when doing a perfect pirouette.

 

She remembered well one evening discussing ballet over a couple of bottles of Burgundy with Kathleen Morphine and T. Rex Fitzgerald as they assumed a lotus position sitting around Alexia’s apartment

According to T. Rex, “Ballet is and always will be to me Nureyev trying to land his swan into  Lake Margot Fonteyn. I hear they also wear a dance belt which is nothing more than a thong supposedly to act as a first defense against any visible signs of an erection and to retard in the leotard by supporting a dancer’s “manhood” to avoid any hint of male “ballet bulge”.

 

It was the wine talking. As much as T. Rex   enjoyed cheerleaders in short skirts showing off ample amounts of thigh, Alexia was sure in his mind he wished  ballerina’s would do handstands or form a pyramid!

 

He continued in a wine soaked observation, “ I suppose we have the great Balanchine to thank for removing the restrictive overly dressed dance wear of earlier eras. The dance wear was god awful, as bulky as John Candy in a gorilla costume. But thanks to his carnal senses the audience can  now drool and actually see the leg movements of the dancers. Supple female legs performing an adagio with grace and style can move a male to warp speed libidinous pole dance mode fluidity in under 60 seconds..faster than Pee Herman at the Club Pussy Cat in a stained raincoat over his lap!” He triumphantly deduced.

 

He did have a point of sorts. Many patrons of the arts favorite movements is the female “Arabesque” which is where the dancer stands on one leg with the other leg extended behind her posing ever more as a flamingo lawn ornament in a trailer park. Done properly she will bring out the Bedouin in you as you race in your mind to her tent for a private Arabian Night of debauchery and tutu madness!

 

Of course there are many leaps and jumps, upwards, spinning like deranged Frisbees making you dizzy with awe and wonder...if you like mental roller coaster rides. Many cities in America have ballet companies and usually in conjunction with that they also have a symphony orchestra to show they have class..unless of course you live in the deep south where the annual festival is to honor Barney Fife or Billy the Exterminator. Hell, even Akron, Ohio of no places has a ballet company or two to compete for the tourist dollar, unless of course that family tour of the Goodyear Tire Factory makes you horny.

 

As he rose from the chair he went to get more wine for Alexia and Kathleen, mumbling his way into the kitchen  “Look If you want to witness the Battle of the Ballet Bulge and watch a swan dive into a ballerina’s lake then by all means have at it as tutu’s go flying high with sky high thigh...as for me I’ll be at the Club Demento drinking and cheering and screaming at the top of my voice..”Give me pole dancing and mud wrestling or give me death”

Chapter Four

 

 

As the writer dashed madly up the one flight of stairs to his own apartment and reaching the landing, he was confronted by the flamboyant neighbor, Dennison Monet, the buildings resident homosexual and bon vivant who preferred to wear Oriental print kaftans and way too much Moulin rouge that clashed with his Goth eyeliner and black lipstick. He was Wynona Ryder and Beetlejuice all rolled into one rather large, imposing life form.

 

In fact it was he who proposed an idea that would ultimately fuel inject T. Rex Fitzgerald’s career!

“May I speak with you for a moment? Please? It’s important.”

 

T Rex was all ears, and always had time for Mr. Monet as he was great copy for a character he could use in his future Pulitzer novel. “Fire away, Dennison.”

 

“I saw your march of the marionettes Sunday down by the park at the harbor. I was thinking a show of that sort, would go over big at the Pink Leather Cabaret bar I frequent, kind of a queers and beer kind of joint. A modified performance of course. Have you ever thought of having gay puppets or those things on strings? They would be a rush at the club! They’d pay you to perform and could open a whole new avenue of art for you.”

 

T Rex thought for a nano second. “You know I can see it now a bisexual marionette who can go either way...hardwood or softwood. Ha...sounds like a challenge. Let me work on a few ideas and get back to you.”

 

Mincing drag queen puppets, gay hand puppets giving gay hand jobs and lesbian leather characters going one one for the straight crowd. The more he thought about itl the more he liked it. It was perverse enough to work! There would have to be some sort of scripted scenarios, costumes and mini sets and damned if he didn’t know who to enlist.

 

Kathleen Morphine the artist would be perfect. He met with her the next night and laid out the plan for her. She hungrily accepted. She would design small scale sets and costumes for the players. They would have scenes, puppetized of course from “The Boys in the Band” and “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert” My favorite line from ‘Band” was Cliff Gorman entering a party scene and asking aloud, “Who the hell do I have to fuck to get a drink around here?”

 

T Rex worked with the fervor of a madman on a set of Broadway show tunes to incorporate into act….imagine a ventriloquist dummy in full drag singing “Why Can’t a Woman Be Like A Man” from ‘My Fair Lady’ along with a modified Jet song from ‘West Side Story’...”When you’re a fag, you’re a fag all the way from your first undercover arrest to you’re last dying day…”

 

As a side note, Kathleen realized quaint slow pace of agrarian America’s pastoral settings lent themselves to canvas and paint, but for the faster pace of today’s urban environment she needed something faster to capture the societal landscape, so she scraped up the cash and bought a Nikon camera with motor drive. No street junkie, wino or hooker could now elude her photographic death rays in black and white which eventually led to a gallery showing of her urban landscapes and street people. She had found the key to acceptance as a true artist. She was now one existential one with her environment and the media was now silver oxide in black and white noirish photographs of Boston’s underbelly.

 

If this LGBT Puppet Cabaret works out they could work together on more projects and do modified puppetry in the park to gain even more notoriety. Social issues tackled by an enlightened Punch and Judy sure to appeal to the college liberals and intellectuals. He began working on scripts for the gay crowd at the Pink Leather Cabaret Bar as well as developing new characters and scripts for the park performances. He wasn’t kidding himself, this would not be Joseph Papp’s Shakespeare in the Park or his father’s Oldsmobile.

 

By Monday he had three outlines for the first three performances One would be a set of Three Stooges marionettes doing their most outrageous nyuk, nyuk, eye poke, belly punch, soitenly routines as well as a second group featuring Marx Brothers Jewish schtick and wise cracks! As the grand finally T Rex wrote a discussion piece between two puppets called Lenin and Marx, where Karl Marx and Nikolai Lenin whose body and souls are taken over by John Lennon and Groucho Marx. The Russian Revolution gets hot to Trotsky and