Poet & Playwright

Originally posted June 10, 2005

We left before golden tor-tu-gor lit the horizon. I had considered making the trek by foot or wagon, but rented tarn was the most viable option available to me to reach the City of Venna some two hundred pasangs north of Glorious Ar. Leaving early enough, we alit within gates of the well-heeled community at dusk. The bird, a large, mottled grey, needed only one stop for sustenance. The tarnsman, Joy and I watched enrapt as it took down a fat tabuk, tearing into its golden-furred belly with compelling abandon.

“I usually remain in the saddle when he feeds,” the tarnsman informed me.

“I see,” I said, rather pleased not to have been an integral component of that endeavor.

We dined at a café on an exclusive boulevard in the company of Vesutto of Venna, a pretentious fellow to be sure but a man of incredible wealth. He happened to have been at the Theater of Pentilicus Tallux on the evening ‘Merchant of Ko-ro-ba’ was staged and sent word that he would like to meet with me, promising it could be potentially profitable. Quite an evening; it was a marketing coup. The Boarding House was one of the main sponsors of the production, but the play was only an appetizer for the real show. At the conclusion, after the lights came up and the actors took their last bows, I promenaded several impeccably garmented free women out onto the stage. One by one, to the shock and awe of a completely sold out venue, I ripped down their veils, face-stripping them all save the companion. The ‘free’ women, you see, were none other than the whores of my Boarding House. For one evening, I audaciously used the stage of the Theater of Pentilicus Tallux as my own personal Curulean Block. Ah, but I was not selling these wenches. I was whetting the appetite of the men of Ar for my chattel. Even as the invective of the outraged was hurled at my girls, the lust of the aroused overpowered the environment as they threatened to riot. Who could blame them? Sensual Nirah, hot lithe whore that she is, thrived under their lewd calls and grasping hands. Luscious and needy Sana, too, played to their passion. Evona, four copper girl of my oft slandered Anbar bordello, stood shivering with her garment pooled about her ankles as men lunged for her. She was terrified, genuinely, but men saw it as a ruse to light their need and light it did. I pushed Kawena to her knees and opened her bodice, revealing her bosom, keeping her only horts out of reach of the crowd. And last, but not least, Portia. Not yet enslaved, a debtor to my house, she was displayed. I chose to give them only her exotic face, a hint of her throat. Along the front of her garment, I pressed my hand, fondling her covered breasts. That unforgivable act caused several free women in attendance to outright faint. How could I be so bold and without propriety? The others, fine, they were whores, but this? How little they knew of Portia. She was, and is, as much whore as any of those performing.

“You caused quite a stir, Poet,” Vesutto remarked. “Word of it reached the shoppes and manicured gardens of Venna before, even, I returned.”

“Did you enjoy the adaptation?” I inquired, referring directly to the play as ‘the show’ was clearly what occurred afterward.

He answered with a broad smile and commented that he did and ‘Wouldn’t your Joy have been a fitting catch?’ referencing the part of the slave in the production. He was not the only Vennan in the short time I had been here since my arrival that noticed her. Lovely red-brown curls in a carefully coifed state of ‘disarray’, pleasantly proportioned curves and lean, long legs are merely her physical attributes but they were more than enough to garner the attentive eyes of the other diners. I was, of course, pleased to receive the compliment and told him so. It was then that he revealedthe reason for the invitation. “Would I like to adapt another play; something suitable for the intimate dinner theaters of Venna?” he asked. I was, I told him, writing an original work. It was a one act play with only two characters, intimately set and minimally propped. I related the themes and allegories, subtleties of the dialogue to him. He would sponsor the production provided the play was given an exclusive first run for the citizens of Venna. I was not averse to having it shown elsewhere prior to being staged in Ar and so it was agreed.

No longer a Singer, but still of the Poets, still a seditious blasphemer and proprietor of the Anbar’s Boarding House, I was becoming a playwright.