CornRockets.(Play)

Character: CHRISTOPHER, a boy of eleven. Scene: Black. Sounds of copulation, a man and a woman, continuing throughout the piece, rising and falling in intensity and volume as directed.

[CHRISTOPHER is discovered in a womb of light. He sits on the floor, drawing--some domestic scene--a large sheet of white butcher paper beneath him. Crayons lie scattered around. He looks up at the audience.]

CHRISTOPHER: Hear that? [Gesturing back toward noises] That's me they're making. At it, Harold and Mom. Hopped up, like a couple of rabbits. [Beat] Like on that battery, commercial?

The one that never stops? [Beat] That's them. That's these two. [Beat] They got hopped up a lot.

They don't know, of course, it's me that's coming. Nobody knows, not yet. Least of all ha-ha old Shadowface, working graveyard shift at the prison. Shadowface, he's my--[Beat] He's "the man Mom's married to." Right now. [Gesturing back toward noises] Get it? While the bunny show is going on. [Sighs] Ah well. It's as good a way as any to begin.

[SOUND: Lovemaking climaxes and fades. LIGHT expands slightly.]

Anyways, it doesn't matter. Shadowface fades fast. Gets stabbed in the back one night on cell patrol. Next Sunday, Harold shows up at the door. Mom calls me down and says, "Christopher, I'd like for you to meet your father." [Beat] I say, "But my dad's dead." She smiles, "Well, honey, that's true, too, but this is Harold. Your other dad. Biological ..." [Beat] Biological was a big word for Mom. It meant real. They taught us that in school. As in your "biological father." "Go on, say hi, polite," Mom says. "Hey," I say. "Hey," says Harold. [Beat] It was ... strange.

Miss Wong, the guidance counselor at school?--all the kids call her Miss--Wrong she says I have a prodigious memory. I had to look it up. Prodigious: "enormous or extraordinary in size." …