PEE MAKES BABIES

"It's too fucking weird, that's why !!!" Manfred Starnbroom hollers out at his artist in residence. He huffs and puffs and walks back and forth in the "green room", a living room fringed with cherry blossom trunks and branches held up by thin, tight wires bolted into the walls and ceiling which are themselves adorned with murals of marionettists whose hands "hold" the ends of the wires. The marionettists are dressed like lumber-jacks in drag. The artist in residence is called Fratique de Parmeli.

"No but listen to the idea as if it were a child whispering it's first few words. Listen for the beautiful potential in these ideas. Listen to its... comment ca veux dire ?! Listen to it's profusion of profundity. Ommm !!" Whenever Fratique finishes speaking he returns to the beginning with a ceremonial incantation of the universe's first sound, an eccentric habit which has endeared him all the more to Manfred.

Fratique de Parmeli's patron has made hundreds of millions of dollars through overseas trade and investments; Fratique sometimes jokes that he is a billionaire-in-waiting. In spite of his millions, Manfred loves nothing more than to sit down and enjoy a cold beer and a baseball game but he indulges his artist in residence with his plans of "an interior designing of the interior self through creative design." Whatever that means.

"Fratique, just let me keep my den, that's all I ask. I just want to keep my den in the west wing."

"You will sit down to enjoy some theater of the absurd tomorrow night and every other night after that. Of course this is etrange. I have written this play about ten year old astronauts exploring space along with their juvenile notions of sexuality for you. We are all children shaped by the geography of our childhood. Ommmm."

If only they could express their man-love for one another, their lives wouldn't be so contorted into such ornate absurdities.