Prince of Dykes
Last night I started on the screenplay of Prince of Dykes. Got one scene deep before the water works.
That’s a title that’s bound to piss people off. So it goes. Between dicking the right with Jesus H. Christ PI and jamming up the left with my take on isolated liberal fantasies, I’m not looking at a huge audience here. But the title is accurate, monarchy references notwithstanding. As the screenplay progresses I’ll go into further detail but for now:
Once upon a time, in far off Baltimore County, a married woman produced a womyn’s gathering called In Gaia’s Lap. Her husband wasn’t invited. A prolonged girl’s night, clothing optional. But her two sons, mullet-headed trouble makers, they got to come along and flap their infant balls alongside the breasts and bush.
From whence I come.
A commune sprung from the loins of In Gaia’s Lap. Heathcote Valley, pissing distance from the Mason Dixon and right off I-83, has hosted a couple hippie gangs since Mildred Loomis founded the land trust in 1965. Vegetarians huddled in shacks and a mill built before the Declaration of Independence. Mostly folks wore pants, as long as they’d reached puberty.
So when I claim the Prince of Dykes title, I’m not piecing together incongruities.
It kinda sucked, by the way.
Liberals, and I count myself in their number, romanticize the rural utopia. It’s the American Dream. Homesteaders off the grid living in peace and harmony outside the rat race. Trouble is, homesteaders weren’t peace freaks. They broke the crust of the Earth and prayed for rain, faced violent threats. They worked their fucking asses off.
How’d they live in close quarters without murdering each other? They didn’t have a choice.
Doesn’t go that way so easy when you’re governed by the almighty hippie dogma: Offend None. When the answer to city mice, “How do you get anything done?” is dropping the word Consensus like abracadabra. It’s tough. Leaderless life isn’t for the weak of heart; it’s a haven for those who turn weakness into a brutal hand of law.
As far as the kids went, “It takes a village to raise a child,” right? But what about when one of those kids grew up a little bigger than the others? Hurts other kids, mostly by accident or in good-natured tussles. Asks hard questions.
Like, when mommies friends talk shit about dicks, do they mean mine too?
And his mom’s off in Colorado courting a new girlfriend while his dad hides in a ramshackle carriage house playing Hearts on the PC to stave off overwhelming depression. Should someone step in and help? Well, any self-respecting hippie knows that conflict is scary. Best to let these things work themselves out. They preached their love of all, and left me to my own devices without companionship. A child gone feral out in those woods, with only Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer for company.
I don’t understand why anyone was shocked when I hung myself at age eight from a tree in the farm yard.
I earned that fucking name. I understand the PC wars, and more so respect the evolution of language. But I suffered for my title, so I bear it with pride.
That’s the screenplay I started last night. Because eventually, you need a project that forces introspection. Makes you look at your own super-hero origin story, and contextualize the misdeeds that followed.
Catch you next time, I’ll haunt your thoughts and dreams!