www.dramavirtual.org
presents
THE SEXY FARMER
"More Stable Than Your Ex"
A Short Play / Stand-Up Monologue
By Gavarre Benjamin
CHARACTER:
- BART: In his late 20s. Born and raised in Queens, NY. He currently works at a high-end educational animal sanctuary in Upstate New York that caters to wealthy city tourists. He is hyperactive, cynical, and highly expressive. He wears a faded Mets cap, a heavy hoodie, and carries a high-tech smartphone stabilizer (gimbal) like a shepherd's staff.
ACT I: THE ANCESTRY TRAINWRECK
(SETTING: A comedy club stage or black box theater. Dim, smoky blue lighting. A heavy, boom-bap 90s Brooklyn hip-hop beat plays. BART jogs onto the stage, nearly tripping over the microphone cord. He catches the stand with practiced agility—a physical slapstick save. He adjusts his cap, breathing heavily, looking out at the audience with an intense, wide-eyed stare.)
BART:
(Into the mic, fast-paced)
What is up, New York? Good to be back in the concrete jungle! Look, look at me. Take it all in. Yes, I am the guy from Queens who shovels goat manure for a living. Do not look at me with that judgmental Broadway face! Let’s be honest: the scent of organic sheep droppings is still a hundred times better than the 34th Street subway station in the middle of a July heatwave. It’s not even a competition!
(He brandishes his smartphone gimbal like a weapon, pointing it at the front row)
Everyone from outside the city has this delusional, cinematic fantasy about New York. My family back in Mexico City? Every time we FaceTime, their eyes light up and they ask: "Oh, Bartolo! Did you bump into John Travolta walking down Broadway?!" And I have to break their hearts! I tell them, "Listen, auntie, the closest thing we have to John Travolta on the streets today is a homeless guy in his underwear doing the Saturday Night Fever dance over a steaming manhole cover in Times Square." That’s our Hollywood magic!
But look at my face. You’re trying to figure out what I am, right? Am I Italian? Am I Scottish? For years, I thought I was the ultimate European hybrid. My dad’s side claimed we were pure Italian royalty from Sicily. My mom’s side swore we were fierce Scottish-Irish warriors. Growing up, I felt like a walking stereotype. I wanted to colonize a neighborhood but then immediately apologize for it while cooking a magnificent plate of pasta. I managed to disappoint both cultures simultaneously. I can’t drink whiskey, and I use store-bought marinara sauce. My ancestors are spinning in their graves so fast you could plug them into the grid and power Long Island!
(He stops, takes a deep breath, and deadpans)
Then, Christmas happened. My girlfriend bought me one of those DNA saliva kits. You know the ones. You spit into a plastic tube, mail it to a lab, and three weeks later a corporation shatters your entire identity. I thought the results would say: "50% Cannoli, 50% Haggis."
Bro. The pie chart of my bloodline looks like a United Nations general assembly meeting gone horribly wrong.
(He uses his hands to draw a chaotic pie chart in the air)
I am four percent Jewish. Six percent Arabic. Twelve percent Spanish. Two percent Cherokee Indian—because apparently every white family in America needs that two percent to feel spiritual. And then, the grand finale, the absolute climax of the lab report: twenty percent black. Specifically from Gabon. Central Africa!
(He looks at his hands, then at his face in an imaginary mirror)
Twenty percent! That is a significant chunk of a human being! I don’t even know how to process that. I went to the mirror, looked at my pale, anxious Queens face, and thought: "Wow. I am literally a walking geopolitical conflict. If I argue with myself, the security council has to get involved." I can’t even use any cultural slurs because I’d be hate-criming myself! But hey, at least it explains my rhythm. I can’t dance to save my life, but when I shovel that goat manure? There is a beautiful, primal, twenty-percent-Gabonese syncopation to my swing!
(He mimics shoveling dirt to a rhythmic hip-hop beat, hips swaying ridiculously, then stops abruptly)
ACT II: THE POP QUEEN AND THE URBAN CHOPPER
BART:
But look, the New York clichés do happen. A few weeks ago, I’m at a Dunkin’ Donuts on the Upper West Side. It’s three in the morning. The door opens, and the bell chimes. In walks this figure. Massive, oversized designer sunglasses. A feather boa that looked like it cost three months of my rent. A giant faux-fur coat.
She walks up to the counter dripping with an intense, heavy cloud of pure New York guilt. The kind of guilt only a Manhattanite who has been on a strict, ten-year keto-and-seltzer-water diet can experience. She was staring at those glazed donuts like she was contemplating a federal crime.
She leans over the counter, looks at the eighteen-year-old kid working the register, and in a raspy, hyper-whispered voice, she goes: "Give me two Boston Kreme... and if my nutritionist walks through that door, you don’t know me."
She slides her sunglasses down to check if they had sprinkles... and boom. It’s Madonna. The actual, literal Queen of Pop. Standing right next to me, sinning with trans fats in the dead of night. She hands the kid a hundred-dollar bill, whispers, "Keep the change, you saw nothing, bitch," puts the glasses back on, and vanishes into a sleek black Uber. That is New York! Nowhere else on earth do you see a global pop icon having a spiritual breakdown over a fried dough ring at three in the morning next to a raccoon chewing on a lottery ticket.
(He does a physical gag: imitating Madonna’s glamorous, mysterious walk, but aggressively stuffing an imaginary donut into his mouth with absolute desperation).
That’s why I fled to the farm upstate. The city is too intense. But let me tell you, the actual biological hazard up there? It’s not the wildlife. It’s the Manhattan hipsters who come up for the weekend to "connect with the soil." They wear pristine Timberland boots that have never seen a speck of dust, and they think they’re shamans because they drank a matcha latte.
Last weekend, this guy steps out of a Tesla. He’s wearing transparent white linen pants—and let me tell you, you could see his entire "real estate portfolio" swinging through the fabric. It was aggressive. He walks up to me, swaying like he’s on mushrooms, and says:
(Imitates an insufferable, vocal-frying Williamsburg hipster)
"Hey, Bart... bro... your goats have like... such a grounding, organic frequency. I feel my throat chakra aligning with their udder. What else do you have roaming around here that’s... wild?"
(Returns to his normal voice, stepping back with an expression of pure disgust)
I had to look him dead in the eye and say, "Bro, my goats are here to make artisanal cheese that we sell back to your mother at Whole Foods for a three hundred percent markup. They are not here to fulfill your rustic-erotic weekend fantasies! Back away from the livestock!" My goat, Gary, has standards, alright? He doesn’t just align his frequency with anyone!
ACT III: THE BROWNIE MELTDOWN
BART:
But I don’t just shovel dirt. I am a curator of high-value lost items left behind by these wealthy idiots. Last month, I’m clearing the picnic area, and I find a gold chain in the grass. Massive. (Gestures to a huge chain around his neck) Pure Staten Island rapper bling. And right next to it? A pair of vintage 1980s four-wheel roller skates.
The story writes itself, right? Some finance bro tried to impress a girl from Bushwick by doing a retro trick, snapped his ankle on the first attempt, and told her: "Babe, take the chain to pay for the ambulance, but leave the skates, they’re a collector's item!"
But the real prize? Two days ago. I found a Ziploc baggie hidden in the bushes. Inside were these dark, dense, homemade chocolate brownies. They smelled like that legal dispensary weed—the kind that currently makes the entire borough of Manhattan smell like a skunk burning in a dumpster. I looked at the bag. I looked at the sky. I said, "Well, Bartolo... you’re twenty percent Gabonese, six percent Arabic, and four percent Jewish. Let’s see how this genetic cocktail handles the forbidden pastry."
I ate two of them.
(The stage lights shift drastically to a pulsing, surreal red and purple. BART’s posture changes. He grips the microphone stand, his eyes rolling back slightly as he enters a manic, climatic storytelling mode. His voice drops an octave, echoing with theatrical intensity).
Oh my god, New York. It wasn't a high. It was a prophetic, apocalyptic vision of our collective future.
I collapsed onto the barn floor, and my soul was ripped out of my body! I was flying over Manhattan, but it wasn't the city we know. It was the year 2045. The rent for my tiny studio apartment in Queens had risen to forty-five thousand dollars a week! To afford it, the landlord forced me to lease out the right side of my bed to a Wall Street AI robot that snored in binary code!
(He starts pacing frantically, sweating, yelling at the sky)
The buildings were so tall they were scraping the satellites out of orbit! The streets weren't filled with cars—they were filled with a massive, unstoppable stampede of human beings, all wearing dark clothing, all with glowing airpods fused into their ear canals, sprinting at supersonic speeds! Nobody was looking at each other!
I tried to cross Broadway, and a flock of delivery drones tried to decapitate me! I screamed, "Stop your capitalistic fury, you Amazon demons!" But they just dropped a package of organic beard oil on my head and kept flying!
Everyone was running on a giant, invisible treadmill! They were throwing wallets and diamond rings onto the pavement because if they stopped for three seconds to pick them up, their productivity score would drop, and the corporate algorithm would instantly vaporize their health insurance! It was a dystopian nightmare of pure anxiety and oat milk!
(The pulsing lights snap back to the normal blue comedy club lighting with a loud, theatrical slap sound effect. BART gasps for air, clutching his chest, completely exhausted).
I woke up on the barn floor. Drenched in sweat. Shaking. Terrified.
Do you know what the very first thing I did was? I crawled across the dirt, I found my favorite goat, Gary, and I wrapped my arms around his furry neck. I looked into his weird, horizontal pupil eyes, and I said: "Oh, Gary, my beautiful, unaligned friend... thank God we are here. Where the only danger is a thunderstorm, and where the highest piece of technology available... is a bag of stray hípster brownies."
Thank you, New York! You’ve been terrifying! Goodnight!
(The heavy hip-hop beat slams back on at maximum volume. BART slams the microphone into the stand—a mic drop—flashes a double peace sign, and runs off the stage with wide, comedic, high-stepping goat strides).
THE END
No hay comentarios.:
Publicar un comentario
Comentarios