The Deflowerer
Description
The American frontier is abuzz when the Deflowerer, a mysterious middle-aged blind
man, comes with his eunuch sidekick all the way from France to perform a public service
and collect the maidenheads of eligible bachelorettes. But the work stalls when a callow
fellow named Widward appears, claiming to be the man’s son.
Characters
John Earl
Sarah
Widward
Weejun
Deflowerer
Big Joe
Lucy
Widow Maybelle
male, 17
female, 17
male, 18
male eunuch, played by female actor, 20s/30s
male, 50s
male, 30s/40s
female, 20s/30s
female, 50s
The frontiersman could be any actor, disguised in rugged furs, or a crew member.
Diversity in the cast is encouraged, and in fact will complement the anachronism-friendly
nature of the piece.
1
Prologue
(The middle of the night. Out comes a frontiersman. He looks at a sign: THE
FRONTIER. He surveys the area. He pulls the sign out of the ground, takes two
steps to the west--stage right--surveys again; satisfied, drives the sign back into
the ground.)
2
1.
(The balcony of a log cabin. Night. John Earl Muggins, an enthusiastic young
man, gathers pebbles to throw.)
JOHN EARL
Psst! Sarah!
(He throws pebbles.)
Sarah!
(Sarah appears, and gets a pebble in the face.)
JOHN EARL
Oh, shit.
SARAH
John Earl Muggins, what’s itching your britches?
JOHN EARL
You! I can’t wait to have sex with you! I can’t wait to put my pointy thing in your
whole-y thing!
SARAH
I’m looking forward to it too, but I have to go back to bed. It’s a big day tomorrow.
JOHN EARL
What are you doin tomorrow?
SARAH
I’m goin to town!
JOHN EARL
Why?
SARAH
The Widow Maybelle is taking me to be Deflowered!
JOHN EARL
…Say which?
3
SARAH
Oh John Earl Muggins the world could come and knock on your door and you wouldn’t
think to check through the peephole. Ain’t you heard about the man come to town to
Deflower all the virgins? He’s from France.
JOHN EARL
Oh.
SARAH
That’s how they do it there. It’s “in vogue.” All the young French girls learn the
mysteries of love from a kindly stranger so she don’t embarrass herself on her weddin
night.
JOHN EARL
How’s a person embarrass herself on her weddin night?
SARAH
Oh I don’t know by just lyin there like a wall-eyed mackerel, maybe, or snortin like a pig,
or bleeding all over the floor.
JOHN EARL
Ew.
SARAH
Exactly. So this poor gold-hearted man’s been spendin his life doin a public service by
collecting our maidenheads. And the Widow Maybelle got him to come here! From
France!
JOHN EARL
Shucks.
SARAH
What is it John Earl?
JOHN EARL
Aw it ain’t nothin.
4
SARAH
Come on now don’t make me sit here five minutes trying to drag it out of you and me in
my shift like to catch the influenza and die.
(John Earl turns surprisingly nasty.)
JOHN EARL
Well I’m just wonderin if you don’t maybe want to go ahead and marry this flowery
Frenchman if he’s so special!
(Beat.)
SARAH
John Earl you know I wanna marry you.
JOHN EARL
Why?
SARAH
Cause you wanna marry me.
JOHN EARL
Oh I do huh?
SARAH
Yes.
JOHN EARL
Why?
SARAH
Cause I’m the light of your stars. Cause even without my weekly bath I still smell like a
pine cone. Cause you and me are a green green valley untouched by the things of man
with a spring goin deep down into the center of the earth like the fountain of youth. We
ain’t never gonna get tired of each other. You can’t get tired of water, it’s what gives ya
life.
JOHN EARL
Shucks, Sarah, I’m sorry. Sometimes I think I should lose my temper just to hear you talk
me out of it.
5
SARAH
I’m not sure we need all that. I forgive you. Now I’m goin to bed. I got to get my beauty
rest.
JOHN EARL
For your Frenchman?
SARAH
Well we can’t let him go thinking we’re just folk. I’m gonna use some of that special
perfume you made me behind my ears here.
JOHN EARL
Aww shoot that ain’t nothin special. Just a little molasses and creek water.
SARAH
It’s an invention is what it is, and I’ll not have you belittle it.
JOHN EARL
I’m sorry it turns the skin behind your ears green.
SARAH
That’s alright. I think that’s the algae.
JOHN EARL
Aww, what good is it if you’re wearin it for another fella. He’ll probably fall in love with
you.
SARAH
He will not neither.
JOHN EARL
Why the hell not? I did. I love you. I love you. Sweet corn I can’t wait to have sex with
you.
SARAH
Hush!
JOHN EARL
It’s true! Here: look!
6
(He attempts to scale the balcony. He falls off of it.)
JOHN EARL
Piss and shit.
SARAH
John Earl! You okay?
JOHN EARL
You got the only log cabin balcony I ever saw.
SARAH
It’s “in vogue.”
JOHN EARL
Well here.
(He tosses her a music box.)
SARAH
What’s this?
(She opens it. Music plays.)
JOHN EARL
I don’t know if it’s in vogue or not but. I was just sittin around, thinking about how much
I wanted to have sex with you, and my fingers started itchin, and before I knew it I’d
made that there box with music in it.
SARAH
You ain’t never made me nothin before. I mean nothin that didn’t have creek water in it.
JOHN EARL
I know it. I never knew how. But ever since that day we played Louisiana Purchase in the
woods together and you showed me your Lewis and I showed you my Clark and we
theorized about how they might go together, it’s like all I can see is blueprints. All I can
see is how things fit together. Sarah, you make me know how to do things I can’t do. And
I want to do everything with you. Everything two people ever done in the history of man,
we’ll do. And then some: I wanna, I wanna, ride bikes with you.
7
SARAH
What’s a bike?
JOHN EARL
(Wonder.)
I don’t know!
(The music box goes faster and faster.)
SARAH
John Earl this here box is cranking as fast as your heart.
JOHN EARL
Yeah that’s not supposed to happen.
(The box explodes. Sarah drops it, throws a hand to her face.)
SARAH
Ah!
JOHN EARL
Sarah! Where did the music box touch you? I swear to high-handled Heaven.
SARAH
It’s alright. I think just a piece of it got in my eye here.
JOHN EARL
Pickle my grits!
SARAH
It’s alright, John Earl. I just, I won’t turn my head very fast, ever again.
JOHN EARL
I sure am sorry, Sarah. I didn’t mean to.
SARAH
It’s alright. Your heart was in the right place. I forgive you.
8
JOHN EARL
Shucks. Sometimes I think I should make you go blind in part of your eye just to hear
you say you’re not mad.
SARAH
Well I’m not sure we need all that.
JOHN EARL
Do you think there’s anything I could do, Sarah, that you couldn’t forgive? I just wanna
know so I can avoid ever doin it.
(Sarah thinks.)
SARAH
You could go against your heart.
(Beat.)
Good night, John Earl. Tomorrow I’ll learn something I can’t do. And then I’ll teach you.
JOHN EARL
Well, as long as you don’t enjoy it.
SARAH
Oh no. I expect it will be perfectly awful.
9
2.
(In the darkness, sounds of a squeaking brass bed, sex noises.)
LUCY
Oh. Little Big Man. Oh. Sitting Bull. Sitting Bull. Hiawatha. Oh. Crazy Horse. Crazy
Horse. Hiawatha. Pocahontas. Squanto. Squanto. SQUANTO. SQUAN—oh.
(It is an incomplete journey for her. Quiet. Recovery breathing.)
LUCY
You lose it again?
BIG JOE
I don’t see how I couldn’t with you yammerin out all them Injun names. What the hell
was that about?
LUCY
I don’t know. Just trying to get the spirit moving I guess.
BIG JOE
Shit.
(He claps twice. Lights come on. This is Big Joe’s cabin. It’s rugged. Big Joe and
Thick-Lip Lucy are in bed together. He looks for a reaction.)
BIG JOE
I got them new fancy clapper candles.
LUCY
Uh huh.
BIG JOE
Well I guess nothing impresses you today.
LUCY
Sorry Big Joe.
BIG JOE
No I get it. I got it too. Bedbugs, of the spiritual variety.
10
(He gets into his pants.)
BIG JOE
I guess the two of us have pretty near run this town to the limit. I’ve been with every
whore and housewife in the territory, and I guess your little unlicensed hoo-ha’s met
every one-eyed snake at the watering hole.
(He gets up. Looks out a window.)
BIG JOE
They moved the frontier again.
(Beat.)
You want some more squirrel?
LUCY
No thank you.
(He gnaws on a squirrel on a stick.)
LUCY
Maybe we can try something new!
(She gets into a sexual position.)
BIG JOE
No we done that one last summer.
(She gets into another, more strange sexual position.)
BIG JOE
Hell I done that lots of times.
(She gets into a third.)
BIG JOE
What if I stuck it in your armpit?
(He tries to demonstrate with her.)
11
BIG JOE
You could kinda clamp it down like, and uh.
LUCY
Like this?
BIG JOE
Yeah. No. Let’s not do that. That uh, that makes me feel funny. There ain’t nothin new
under the sun. You know who said that? God.
LUCY
Oh yeah! Let me read out of the Bible again if you want, I’ll do the sexy voice again, tell
the story of the burning bush-(She goes to playfully touch his crotch, but he swats her away, a little viciously.
She touches her hand where he hit her.)
BIG JOE
Even blasphemy’s lost its thrill. Goddamn ain’t this a time to be alive. I mean practically
everyday they come up with something you’d never think of, not even if they locked you
in a closet for two days and said “think shit up!” We got clapping candles, player pianos,
a fledgling sense of human rights for anyone who’s white rich and male. You’d think
somebody would think up something to catch us a fresh scent in the boudoir.
LUCY
Well look at you speakin French!
BIG JOE
Who is?
LUCY
Boudoir silly.
BIG JOE
Shit I didn’t know that was French. I learned it from a whore in St. Louis.
LUCY
That’s a French name, too.
12
BIG JOE
That ain’t my fault! How come you know so much about it?
LUCY
I guess it’s just in the air on account’a that new gentleman in town. He’s from France.
BIG JOE
Who?
LUCY
Nobody knows who. He keeps himself a secret on account’a his work. He even blinded
himself intentionally on purpose just to be right for the job.
BIG JOE
He blinded himself intentionally on purpose?
LUCY
With the stick end of a gold brooch.
BIG JOE
Well, that shows why we beat the shit out of them French in the revolution.
LUCY
That wasn’t the French.
BIG JOE
Well we beat the shit out of somebody. That’s why we don’t have taxes.
LUCY
We do have taxes.
BIG JOE
Well not on squirrel!
(Beat.)
LUCY
Anyway he’s not a warrior, he’s a lover. He’s here to Deflower all the little maids.
13
BIG JOE
I’ll keep that dry-socketed frog from takin the honor of an American woman or my name
ain’t Big Joe Muffsnatcher. Hey.
LUCY
What?
BIG JOE
That felt kinda good. Taking someone else’s power. Even just the idea of it. Felt kinda,
new.
LUCY
Shit honey you got power over me.
BIG JOE
That’s different. You want me to have that power.
LUCY
And see these girls want him to have power. They’re paying him to. He’s teaching them
secret arts of love.
BIG JOE
What secret arts?
LUCY
Well I don’t know do I? But I could find out for you.
BIG JOE
I thought he only fucked virgins.
LUCY
So? You think I can’t fake it?
(Virginal.)
Oh, please be gentle.
BIG JOE
I don’t think your problem will be the acting part, Lucy honey. I’m thinking about pure
mechanics. Virgin ain’t supposed to feel like throwing a toothpick down a gopher hole.
(Beat. She begins to dress herself.)
14
BIG JOE
Oh come on.
LUCY
No. I’m plugging up the gopher hole.
BIG JOE
Don’t do that. I love the gopher hole.
LUCY
You do not. You ain’t successfully burrowed me in weeks.
BIG JOE
Ah, that probably ain’t your fault. I think I’m in a funk.
LUCY
Maybe the Frenchman has a secret for that too.
(He thinks.)
BIG JOE
You think so?
(She shrugs.)
BIG JOE
Hell, it was a Frenchman discovered the New World.
LUCY
No.
BIG JOE
I mean other than the Chinamen who lived here already.
LUCY
No. Let me do it, Big Joe. Let me go to him. Maybe he’ll teach me some ancient art of
being irresistible to men, some Cleopatra thing, and you’ll be driven so mad with desire
you’ll have to finally marry me.
15
BIG JOE
Who Deflowered you, huh?
(Beat.)
Or has it been so long since you’ve had a bloom on that thorny shrub you can’t even
remember?
LUCY
No…I remember.
BIG JOE
Go on then. Put the virgin back in your daiquiri and give it a shot. Meantime I’m gonna
work on this power thing.
LUCY
(Sexy.)
Meantime I’m gonna work on this power thing.
(She claps three times. The lights go out.)
BIG JOE
I don’t think it’s coming back tonight.
LUCY
Maybe if I speak some French to it. Oh la la. What ees thees leetle bon bon? It seems nice
and steef…
BIG JOE
That’s the squirrel.
LUCY
Oh. Well. What about zees leetle-BIG JOE
That’s still the squirrel.
LUCY
Jesus Big Joe!
16
BIG JOE
Sorry.
17
3.
(A room in a semi-distinguished boarding house. The Deflowerer sits. Weejun,
his eunuch, stands in a corner. Widward, a nervous young man, stands, ready to
deliver. The Deflowerer speaks with a Maurice Chevalier type accent.)
DEFLOWERER
And what can I do for you, monsieur?
WIDWARD
I’d like to talk to you in private, if you don’t mind.
DEFLOWERER
Whatever you have to say to me you can say to my assistant Weejun. He is a eunuch.
WIDWARD
Oh...a eunuch? ...Cool.
DEFLOWERER
Oui. So when you surrender your little buttercup to our little butter churn, you can be
assured that neither of us will enjoy her like you will.
WIDWARD
Uh. I don’t have a little buttercup.
DEFLOWERER
A little butterball, perhaps? It’s an unusual request, but this is the frontier.
WIDWARD
I’ve just come to ask you your name.
(Pause.)
DEFLOWERER
Is that all?
WIDWARD
It’s a lot to me.
DEFLOWERER
But I cannot tell you.
18
WIDWARD
Listen, Mister. I don’t want to do this the hard way, but you’re sure pushing me toward
that general vicinity.
(He takes out a fish.)
WEEJUN
He’s got a fish.
WIDWARD
Not just a fish. A Kan-tuck-ee rainbow welter. You ever been slapped in the mouth with a
Kan-tuck-ee rainbow welter?
(Pause. The Deflowerer nimbly stands, grabs the fish and slaps Widward in the
mouth with it. It nearly knocks the man over.)
WIDWARD
Shit’s whiskers. Hoo-eee. Damn. Awwww, shoot, my good tooth.
(The Deflowerer casually makes his way over to him, then nimbly, again, grabs
him by the balls. The French accent drops.)
DEFLOWERER
Listen peckerwood. I’ve seen some reddish business in my day. In fact I gouged my own
eyeballs to black it all out. But that don’t mean I can’t spot a haytooth hillbilly from a
hundred paces. Now you’ve got to the count of three-quarters to tell me just what in the
name of Billy the Kid you’re-WIDWARD
I think I’m you’re son!
(Beat. Weejun stiffens.)
WIDWARD
I mean. I am your son. I think.
(Beat.)
19
DEFLOWERER
That’s impossible.
WIDWARD
What’s your name?
DEFLOWERER
I can’t tell you.
WIDWARD
My mother is dead. She screamed her way to sleep every night until her brain finally
rotted out of her. Thanks to you. Her name was Zenobia.
WEEJUN
Zenobia what?
WIDWARD
You got a lot of Zenobias in your neck of the woods? Zenobia lick my butthole, he knows
which one.
DEFLOWERER
I remember your mother, and I’m sorry to hear she’s dead. I am not your father. And I
can’t tell you my name because I don’t remember it.
(Beat.)
WIDWARD
Well ain’t that some shit.
DEFLOWERER
It’s true.
WIDWARD
How do you forget your own name?
DEFLOWERER
Practice.
WEEJUN
What’s your name?
20
WIDWARD
Widward. I ain’t got a last name cause it’s yours and I don’t know it. Ma wanted to name
me Windward for our side of the mountain, but she couldn’t ever spell real good on
account of her bein’...real dumb.
WEEJUN
Probably just never had any schoolteachin’.
WIDWARD
She didn’t reckon on needing it. She saved her pennies for sixteen years waitin’ for
someone to teach her the only thing she thought she had to know. Only problem was this
miserable bastard was the tutor. I figured he weren’t likely to come out and recognize me
as kin. But he can’t deny what he did to her.
(The Deflowerer says nothing.)
WIDWARD
See? So the way I see it, I got a line of credit with you. Now I’m the student.
(Weejun laughs.)
WEEJUN
You want him to take your cherry?
WIDWARD
Shut up!
(The Deflowerer strikes Widward with the fish.)
WIDWARD
Dagnabbit! No! I don’t want that lesson! I wanna learn the trade.
(The Deflowerer considers this. In accent again.)
DEFLOWERER
Alright.
21