This is part of my Fiction Friday series.
“I want to talk about my vagina.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes. ‘I want to talk about my vagina.'”
“She just came up to you in Starbucks and said, ‘I want to talk about my vagina?'”
“She introduced herself then bam! Straight into her vagina.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I told her how to submit a proposal.”
“You didn’t.”
“I’m sorry, but I’m too nice to tell some woman in Starbucks that Eve Ensler is the only one who can create a theatre piece that talks about vaginas that anyone would actually go see. I’m much better at rejecting via paper.”
“Well, you’ll get to do a lot of that. Why can’t a woman’s theatre festival just have great plays by and about women? Why does everything have to be about menstrual blood and sisterhood?”
“Have you read anything good?”
“Not really. I almost got tricked into thinking something was good, but I snapped out of it.”
“It tricked you?”
“It was a monologue with all this poetic language that actually sounded rather lovely at first, but once I stopped and thought about it I realized it didn’t mean anything. Like it said, ‘Draped in fabric the color of blueberries.'”
“That’s pretty.”
“But what does it mean? Is it supposed to mean blue? Blueberries are almost black on the outside. The inside in actually purple. Does she mean purple? Does she mean like the color blueberry candy? Is there even blueberry candy? I see blue ‘razzberry’ all the time, but I don’t know if I’ve seen blueberry. The color of blueberries is a useless metaphor because I still have no idea what color that fabric is.”
“I haven’t read the rest but ‘Draped in fabric the color of blueberries’ doesn’t bother me as much as it does you.”
“Really? What if the woman at Starbucks said, ‘I want to talk about my vagina. It’s the color of blueberries.'”
“That would actually be an interesting pitch.
“Have you read anything you like.”
“Actually yeah. Really yeah.”
“That good?”
“It’s fun. We could market the hell out of it. I kind of think it’s perfect. And don’t worry. There is no mention of blueberries.”
“So what is it?”
“It’s called ‘A New Feminist Hope.’ It’s a stage version of the first Star Wars movie but with a female cast.”
“All women?”
“Except for Greedo. That way when Hannah Solo shoots first she is literally shooting down the man.”
“That’s awesome.”
“I know, right?”
“What about you? Is there anything decent in your pile?”
The two turn to the third member of the group. She had barely been paying attention to them.
She was wondering why she is doing this. Why since she is a feminist who does theatre she thought a feminist theatre festival would be a fun project, but now it feels weird and bad.
She was wondering what any of this had to do with feminism other than the fact that women were free to make bad artistic choices just like men can. She was wondering what they were going to do with all the money that they got from their Kickstarter campaign that earned far more than it should take to produce this sort of festival.
She was thinking that this was going to be awful and she should quit, but they actually precast her in a very good role in a decent piece. She hadn’t had a decent role in a year.
She decided she shouldn’t say anything. Just let the other two drive this thing to absurdity, do her role, and blog about it later. She would definitely blog about it. Maybe it would go viral: 10 ways that doing a feminist theatre festival made me hate women.
“I did read this one thing. It’s a performance piece where ten women stand in a row and take off their make up on stage.”
“Ooh,” cooed the other two while nodding enthusiastically.
Yes, she would definitely blog about this.
On Fridays I write flash fiction or other short fiction for Fiction Friday. You can read the entire series here including:
- A nice girl says goodbye to a bad boss
- A mom apologizes to her son for a lame birthday party
- Buyer’s remorse
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Kim Z. Dale 