Else the Puck a Liar Call

The greatest short story I ever wrote, plus Superman's cyborg nightmare

Lately, I’ve been trying to reconstruct, from a 35 year old memory, the greatest short story I ever wrote. I wrote it in high school, 1988 or ‘89 maybe, when I was 16 or 17. It was about a turf war for control of the theater underground waged between a gang of mimes and a gang of interpretive dancers. Exactly how I filled the pages or how many pages there were I cannot recall, though I am able to conjure up a few of the highlights.

• It featured a rumble in which the interpretive dancers defeat the mimes by doing a dance symbolic of the wind, forcing all of the mimes to do the “walking against the wind” bit until they collapse.

• The leader of the mimes was named Big Dickie Malone.

• The mimes are able to defeat the interpretive dancers in a shoot-out (where everyone is only pretending to have guns) by miming there being a wall behind which they can shelter.

• Big Dickie Malone’s best friend is killed when one of the dancers does a furious interpretive dance symbolizing death, gently passing a black gauze streamer over the mime, sending him to mime Valhalla.

• There’s a TV news show segment featuring a guest whost who was the author of a book titled In Anger Not Far from Mimery.

• At some point, Big Dickey Malone gazes out from beneath the brim of a top hat and whispers, “Welcome to mime time.”

• Both gangs are massacred when an unexpected third gang—the Shakespearean Overactors—ambushes them, clamboring over playground equipment shirtless but wearing purple robes, wielding a variety of plywood prop weapons, and bellowing or nasally reciting lines from Macbeth, King Lear, Richard III, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

• At some point one of the Shakespearean Overactors says “Else the Puck a liar call” except I misrememberd it and went with “Lest this Puck a liar be.” Close enough for underground theater.

• The big rumble ends with a disbelieving Big Dickie Malone dying while a pasty, gangly guy in a papier-mâché crown and brown bodystocking stage whispers to him, “Good night, sweet prince.”

• The final passage is a guy wearing an unbuttoned black waistcoat over a t-shirt, a porkpie hat, and round glasses sitting backwards in a chair. He looks out at an unseen crowd and recites, “The Shakespearean Overactors think they are the lords, but now we will release the hordes. Our hand is strong, and we will play it ‘ere long, and when we show it, they will know it, the time is nigh…for the Sensitive Poet.” Cue the sound of unseen poets snapping their fingers. Fin.

Exactly what I was on about in 1988 I can’t fully recall, but I am pretty sure this story came out of some mad jumble that included my drama club class going to see an absurd Billy the Kid ballet, The Outsiders, A Clockwork Orange, and Monty Python’s “Hospital For Over Acting” skit. I would blame Shakes the Clown, but that came out in 1991 and this story definitely happened in the 1980s.

I can’t remember my own cell phone number when I’m asked, but I still remember a good amount about this daft short story I wrote as a teenager—including the full poem at the end—even though the manuscript, if you wish to grant it that honor, has been lost for decades (along with my other high school magnum opus, in which our world civ teacher is possessed by Loki and battles Thor, who has possessed a local teen, at a Champs Rollerdrome while the DJ blasts John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Play Guitar”).

Don’t worry, though. I have plans for it.

Childhood Scar of the Week

Childhood Scar of the Week is not necessarily weekly exploration of entertainment and experiences of/from the 1970s-80s that left an indelible and not altogether healthy impression on me.

Superman III's Cyborg Nightmare

Superman III isn't a great movie, although as kids my friends and I did love the idea of Superman getting drunk and flicking peanuts at supersonic speed at the bottles in a dive bar. The first two movies had their share of comedy and cornball, but for part three they decided to really lean into that, including the addition to the cast of Richard Pryor in his "harmless family entertainment" crossover phase. However, nothing scars like an ambush, something utterly terrifying nestled inside otherwise innocuous family fun.

Enter the film’s final battle, against an out-of-control supercomputer that grabs a woman with its wires and cables, pulls her shrieking into its folds, and transforms her into a cyborg zombie. It’s a moment unlike the tone anywhere else in the movie, and Annie Ross’s performance in this scene is one of utter and absolute terror and sheer pain. I’d like to tell you I never watched Superman III again because it’s bad, but really, I just cannot deal with the nightmarish cyborg scene.