Lillian said, “When did lesbianism become so popular?”

“Where have all the lesbians been hiding?”

Amy butted in, “Um, Mom?  Lillian?  Do you all mind keep your voices down?  Maybe not embarrassing me?”

Claire whispered, “Good idea.  I don’t want to get you kicked out of the lesbo club, dear.”  She then said to Lillian, “This is the first time she’s shown an interest in any club.  Even in high school she was a loner.”

Jordan guided them to the last row of seats.  Amy and Jordan sat.  Claire and Lillian sat in the row directly in front of them.

Claire said, “Let’s pretend to be lesbians together, Lillian.  It will make us fit in.”

“When in Rome,” Lillian said.  She then turned to Amy and Jordan and asked, “What do lesbians do at the theatre?”

“Hold hands,” Jordan said.

Claire and Lillian held hands and turned back to the front.

“Sorry,” Amy mouthed.

The lights began to lower and everybody crowded into the chairs.


Operation Meltdown, Phase Two

Edison stumbled into the dark theatre and slid into the seat next to Jordan.  Her sunglasses were on top of her head.  She leaned over Jordan and said to Amy, “What’s up, Doc?”

Jordan rolled her eyes.  “How original, Ed.”

“I know right?  I always wanted to say that and now I can.”

Amy laughed. “Okay, I’ll let you say it, but only you.”

“I feel special,” Edison said.

“Soooo,” Jordan said, putting as much meaning as possible into one little bitty word.  “How’s things?”

Edison nodded slowly and whispered, “Operation Meltdown is a-okay and ready to rock ‘n roll.  Irma is baby-sitting the… uh, baby.”

Amy leaned across Jordan and said to Edison, “What’s going on?”

“What makes you say that?” Edison asked much too innocently to be innocent.

“Code words and subterfuge,” Amy said.

“You have highly developed observational skills,” Edison said.

“I’m a doctor.  I’m supposed to,” Amy said.  “Now, spill.”

“She might have to be our new mastermind,” Edison said.

“I concur,” Jordan replied.  She looked over at Amy dressed in loose organic hemp pants, a tie-dyed blouse with a plunging neckline, and her blue high-top sneakers.  She was cute and loveable and sexy all wrapped up into one package.

“Do you really want to know what we have planned or wait for the surprise?  I think you’ll like it as a surprise best, but we’ll tell you if you want.  I’ll even give you a hint.  It involves the Ice Queen and tires and paint,” Edison said with an evil chuckle.

Claire and Lillian whipped their necks around and stared at Jordan.  “Are you plotting revenge on your ex-girlfriend?” Claire asked.

Jordan was shocked into silence.  Edison was not.  “Hey, nobody likes eavesdroppers.  So, turn your faces back around.  And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll forget you ever heard that.”

“That’s Amy’s mom and her lesbian, Lillian,” Jordan explained.

“Oh,” Edison said.  “Sorry.”  She leaned over and said to Amy, “I didn’t know your mom was a lesbian.”

“Oh, goody,” Claire said, “It’s working.  We’re officially undercover, Lillian.”

Amy shrugged.  “I don’t know what’s going on anymore.”

The house lights went out and the stage lights came up.  Jordan took Amy’s hand.  Edison noticed and sighed.  Irma slinked through the doors and sat in the chair beside Edison.

“All set?” Edison whispered.

“Of course is set,” Irma said.

Edison nodded and looked at her watch.  She punched a few elaborate buttons.

“Look it’s a lesbian on stilts,” Claire said, pointing to the stage.  All six women sat up straighter in their seats and watched intently.


Operation Meltdown, Phase Three

The lesbian on stilts was not funny.  Her wandering around the stage telling jokes and stories was not funny.  The stilts did involve some skill.  Jordan knew this because she and Edison had used stilts to finish putting up the dry wall in the dining room.  “It’s not easy to walk on stilts,” she whispered to Amy as if apologizing for the not-funny comedienne.  The comic ended her performance with a joke about two vulvas, one Catholic and one Jewish, walking into a bar.  Irma hurrumphed with disgust.  Jordan was inclined to agree.

“Oh, she wasn’t that bad,” Amy said as the stilted lesbian exited the stage.

“I remember being like you - everything lesbian was bright and shiny,” Edison said, “But you’ll get over it.  Believe me.”

The next act was a short play called Sweet Sufferings and it was good, and not just because the previous act was so bad either.  It was a clever little play about a lesbian on her deathbed.  Not to be confused with lesbian bed death.

There wasn’t a dry eye in house at the end of it.  Jordan swore she heard Irma, the tough as nails Russian, sniffle back tears.

“Now, that was good,” Lillian said.

“The Ice Queen is up next,” Jordan whispered to Edison.  “Start the timer.”

“I know, I know,” Edison said, furiously punching numbers into her watch.

The lights onstage changed from warm and inviting to bright and cold.  A woman dressed in all black put a three-legged stool center stage.  A spotlight popped on and pinpointed the stool.  It grew quiet and expectant.  Jordan knew from past experience that Petronella always had to make a grand entrance.  She even did it when they were going to bed.  Jordan would be about half asleep and no longer in the mood and Petronella would come into the room in a white negligee and lean against the door like some 1930’s movie star.  It was so overblown and fake that Jordan found it a major turn off.

After an interminable length of time with nothing happening onstage, Petronella made her entrance.  She glided on from stage right, wearing an all white tuxedo with long tails.  There was a collective inhalation of breath from the audience as Petronella took her place in the spotlight.

When is she going to start?” Edison hissed.

“What do you mean?  This is her favorite part,” Jordan replied.

Irma glanced at her watch.  “Irma thinks she better step on her poetry before she is never late than better.”

Jordan had no idea what the fuck Irma just said.

Petronella addressed the audience, “Tonight I’m going to read from my latest collection of award-winning poems, La Furie Vagin.”

Lillian whispered to Claire, “Did she just say ‘the furry vagina’?”

“Sshhh,” Amy said.

Petronella continued, “The poems I have chosen for this evening center around a theme of the persecution, subjugation, instillation, fabrication, illumination and excommunication of the Great Female Spirit.  They are poems of destruction and triumph, of creation and defeat, of sensuality and sadism.”

“How uplifting,” Jordan said, under her breath.

“This first poem is titled Vagina Dentata.  Or My Vagina Has Teeth,” Petronella said, solemnly.

Irma whispered, “Irma like this poem already.”

Petronella stoically recited:

Vagina Dentata

My vagina is angry

Since the dawn of time

Men have raped her

Men have beaten her

Men have bruised her soul

Then

My vagina grew pointy teeth

And this scared the men

Now men try to

Bind my vagina so she cannot walk

Make her wear high heels so she cannot run

Shave her so she will be shamed

Pierce her so she can be chained

Pay her only seventy percent of every dollar earned so she will be poor

Ah, but my angry vagina

Will not take it lying down

She gnashes her teeth like Hannibal Lector

Waiting to eat the penis with fava beans

…And a nice chianti

Petronella dramatically bowed her head.  The audience sat stunned and silent.  Then Irma stood.  She brought her hands together in one loud clap.  Then another clap.  And another.  She shouted, “Brava! Brava!”

The rest of the audience surged to their feet and joined in the standing ovation, clapping and whistling.

“What are you doing?” Edison whispered while tugging on Irma’s arm to make her sit back down.

“Irma is mesmerized.”  Irma looked at Jordan.  “You did not tell Irma that she was so gifted.”

Jordan said in her best imitation Russian accent, “Jordan did not know Irma would like.”

Claire looked over her shoulder and smiled.  “Makes me proud to have a vagina.”

Edison lowered her sunglasses and discreetly pulled a remote control out of her jacket pocket.


Operation Meltdown, Final Phase

As the audience quieted and took their seats, the theme song from Jaws blared from off stage right.  Petronella looked offstage and made slashing motions across her neck.  The music continued.  Petronella looked out at the audience and put her finger up as if to say “Wait, I, the Ice Queen, Mistress of the Universe, will take care of this.”  She strode toward the offending music.

Petronella stopped.

She froze with eyes wide open, horror-struck.

She took a step backward.

Edison’s remote control tanker car wheeled onstage.  Edison had built another car like the prototype that had caused the Mr. Pip-falling-out-the-window accident.  Only this car had a tank on its back.  A tank filled with blue, red, green, and yellow paint. The paint nozzle was attached to a retractable arm that could be raised or lowered from the remote control that Edison was now pointing at the stage.

Petronella took another step backward.

The audience clapped, mistakenly thinking this was a part of the show.

The car braked.  The paint nozzle raised and pointed at Petronella who was too confused to move.

Edison punched a button on the remote.  Irma shrieked.  She threw her body at Edison, shouting, “Do not shoot!”

But Irma was too late.  The tiny car shot a stream of paint out of its nozzle.  The red paint arced high in the air and splattered Petronella right in her angry vagina.

Jordan threw her body on top of Irma’s body who was on top of Edison’s body and they all three rolled around the floor.  Edison’s glasses flew off and her remote control skidded down the aisle and out of sight.

Chaos erupted.  Petronella shrieked.  The audience screamed.  Claire and Lillian stood on their chairs so they could see all the action.  Amy covered her face.

The house lights flickered on and off like a strobe light.

Jordan climbed to her feet and chased after the remote.  She ran from person to person as it was kicked around the audience like Charlie Chaplin’s hat.

The car obeyed each command from the remote as it was kicked.  The car shot paint left and right, up and down; red and blue and orange and yellow paint spewed from its nozzle, splattering Petronella and the audience.  The car whizzed back and forth across the stage, in elaborate figure eights, gushing paint like a rabid, demon-possessed lawn sprinkler.

Petronella, now wearing a rainbow-colored tux and tails, picked up her stool and chased after the car, shouting Dutch obscenities.

The audience was a swirling mass of hysteria and color.  The people bumped, banged and barged into each other, smearing the paint into one swirling mass of brown.

Petronella cornered the car against the proscenium arch and brought the stool down, hammering it, over and over and over, until the car was smashed to smithereens and nothing more than a giant rainbow puddle.

Once the car was demolished, the audience quieted down except for a few intermittent sobs.  Everyone stared at the stage.  Before them was a striking tableaux vivant:  Petronella, legs spread, arms akimbo, a la Rambo Warrior, Victorious Vagina Woolf.  The Ice Queen brought her hands up over her head in a victory gesture.

Claire and Lillian began clapping.  The audience joined in, whooping and hollering their approval.

Petronella bowed deeply.  The audience went wild, stamping their feet and chanting her name.

Jordan dejectedly walked back to Amy and collapsed in a chair.  Edison fell into the chair next to her.

“Operation Meltdown failed,” Jordan said.  Amy sat down beside her and patted her shoulder sympathetically.

Irma sat next to Edison.  “What the hell were you doing?” Edison said.

Irma gestured helplessly.  “Irma does not know.  Irma was overwhelmed by feelings  here,” she pointed to her heart, “and here,” she pointed to her lap.  “So sorry.  Irma hear rousing poem and lose control.”