Dramatis Personae:
LOU SULLIVAN was a
gay trans activist
who passed away
in 1991

ANDREW SULLIVAN is an
English-born American author
editor and blogger

DAVID TOMLINSON was
best known as Mr. Banks
in Mary Poppins (1961)


Special Thanks:
George Michael





(Lights up on LOU SULLIVAN, alone, impassioned.)

LOU SULLIVAN:
I feel so unsure!
As I take your hand, and lead you to the dance floor.

(The smoke of dry ice is general.)

LOU SULLIVAN:
As the music dies! Something in your eyes!
calls to mind a silver screen
and all
its sad
goodbyes!

(Some smoke, stage left, clears, revealing ANDREW SULLIVAN, who is sitting down.)

ANDREW SULLIVAN:
It is possible to tell who has won a tennis contest not by watching the game, but by monitoring testosterone-filled saliva samples throughout.

LOU SULLIVAN:
So I’m never gonna dance again!
Guilty feet have got no rhythm!
Though it’s easy to pretend,
I know you’re not a fool!

ANDREW SULLIVAN:
I have always tended to bury or redirect my rage. I once thought this an inescapable part of my personality. It turns out I was wrong.

(LOU SULLIVAN is becoming visibly upset at these interruptions.)

ANDREW SULLIVAN: Other scientists theorizing that it was—

(LOU SULLIVAN retrieves a large net from a bag)

ANDREW SULLIVAN: —testosterone that enabled the male zebra finches to sing—

(LOU SULLIVAN creeping up on him)

ANDREW SULLIVAN: —injected mute female finches with testosterone—

(LOU SULLIVAN catches ANDREW SULLIVAN first try)

ANDREW SULLIVAN:
(Frustrated, from within the bag, but not to be silenced:)
Sure enough,
the females sang.

(LOU SULLIVAN feels pangs of guilt. He’s a nice guy and basically Midwestern.)

LOU SULLIVAN:
(beseechingly)
Time can never mend
the careless whispers of a good friend.
To the heart and mind—
Ignorance is kind!
There’s no comfort in the truth.
Pain is all that you’ll find.

ANDREW SULLIVAN:
The effects of testosterone are not secret.
Neither is the fact that men have more of it than women.

LOU SULLIVAN and ANDREW SULLIVAN:
(Back to back, both with arms crossed angrily:)
So I’m never gonna dance again!
Guilty feet have got no rhythm!

ANDREW SULLIVAN:
(in the style of a Dungeon Master:)
Women need some testosterone—for self-defense, occasional risk-taking, strength—but not as much as men.

LOU SULLIVAN and ANDREW SULLIVAN:
Though it’s easy to pretend,
I know you’re not a fool!

(LOU SULLIVAN falls into a brown study.)

ANDREW SULLIVAN: Apart from how great it makes me feel, I consider it no insult to anyone else’s gender to celebrate the uniqueness of my own.

LOU SULLIVAN and ANDREW SULLIVAN:
(Back to back again, angrier still:)
Should have known better than to cheat a friend!
And waste the chance that I’d been given!

ANDREW SULLIVAN:
It seems to me no disrespect to womanhood to say that I am perfectly
happy to be a man, to feel things no woman will ever feel to the degree that I feel them, to experience the world in a way no woman ever has.

(Cheers from the audience.)

LOU SULLIVAN and ANDREW SULLIVAN:
So I’m never gonna dance again!
The way I danced with you!

(Enter DAVID TOMLINSON, best known for his performances as MR BANKS in Mary Poppins and MR BROWN in Bedknobs and Broomsticks)

DAVID TOMLINSON: A world without the unruly, vulnerable, pioneering force of testosterone would be a fairer and calmer, but far grayer and duller, place.

Stephen Ira is a writer and performer. His poetry has appeared in venues like Fence, Poetry, DIAGRAM, and tagvverk. He co-founded and co-edited Vetch: A Magazine of Trans Poetry and Poetics. He has performed at venues like La Mama and Dixon Place. “I Have To Think Of Us As Separate People,” a short film he made with Chris Berntsen, premiered at OutFest in 2019 and has since been screened worldwide. In 2013, he was a Lambda Literary Fellow. He has an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He is currently a poetry editor at the speculative magazine Strange Horizons.

Tags: collage poems, plays, Plays/For Theatre