Superstar in a Housedress: The Life and Legend of Jackie Curtis (14 page)

VAIN VICTORY: the Vicissitudes of the Damned

by Jackie Curtis

© 1985 The Estate of Jackie Curtis

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

TRIUMPH AVENUE – The Great Impresario

CAMINADA PHANTOM – A Cowboy, The Man in The Moon

CREAM VARLETT – A Cowboy On The Run, and a Juvenile Delinquent

BIG BEAD – A Cowboy On The Run, and a Juvenile Delinquent

WHEELS – A Cowboy On The Run, and a Juvenile Delinquent

THE HOUSE OF WAX GIRLS – The Chorines

MADAME BERTHA – The Head of the House of Wax

CANTA LUPE – A Spanish Vocalist and Maid to Donna Bella Beads

CAREER KIT – An Agent Who Books Variety Acts

ESTA NIL – A Featured Guest Vocalist with The House of Wax

MARY – The Virgin Mary

MADONNA – Leader of the First and Original “Cult of Evil” of the Carnival World

MALA FEMINA – A Wheelchair-ridden Aerialist

DURA, As In Durable – The Fire Swallower

HA-HA – Prince of the High Wire, son of Donna Bella Beads

GRAY IDIOT – Prince of the High Wire, son of Donna Bella Beads

PAPPA RAZZI – A Detective posing as an Italian Monsignor

ELMSFORD HASTINGS – A lost safari member, Bravado, the Comanche warrior

MIRA-MIRA! – The Black Queen of the City of Night and debutante Mona Kimball Ward

WARNER COLOR – An ambitious young man, Soviet pilot Alexis Rosanoff

DONNA BELLA BEADS – Queen of the High Wire, who was Vana Venko in a former life

CHRISTIAN FAITH – Member of the Original cult of Evil

ANNA SIN – Member of the Original cult of Evil

PARAMOUNT – From the Foreign Legion, disguised as Clark Kent

MAJOR CYCLONICA – The Great Mina Bird

VICE VERSA – The Ship’s Captain, Via Crucis, the winged avenger

BENITO BUSTELLO – A Little Prince

ABOLENA BUSTELLO – Twin sister to Benito, she is princess of Arabia

FATIMA VELASQUEZ – The Veiled Wanderer

JUICY LUCY and BIG BUST – The Starlets of Pig Alley, the girls from Chorine Beach

Scene Excerpt from ACT II – THE LIFE BOAT

CAMINADA

I know how one can suffer those first evenings on the high seas. While one’s soul is still a stranger. Do I sleep? You ask yourself. Do I wait up for dawn? Will the others?

TRIUMPH

What have you asked of nature?

BIG BEAD

You said it wouldn’t rain … it’s very cloudy.

CREAM VARLETT

It’s not entirely impossible we might drown out here.

TRIUMPH

To the highest attractive energy man gave the name of divine. For it’s control he invested the science called religion, a word which then meant and still means the cultivation of occult forces.

BIG BUST

I have no friends. Just Christmas balls and peppermint sticks.

MADONNA

Paramount! Leave her be, she’s a long way from home.

PARAMOUNT

She almost went under for the third time.

CHRISTIAN FAITH

He who dances, lives. He who sings, speaks truth. He who closes his eyes, sleeps.

ANNA SIN

Those who voluntarily put power into the hands of a tyrant or enemy must not wonder if it might at last be turned against themselves.

TRIUMPH

Faster you fools! Faster!

PARAMOUNT

Listen! A buoy!

TRIUMPH

What impious mortal bent on death draws near? It is a clear sky in which the endless heat is lost. It is a man of shadows. You! Who are you? Are you a man of shadows?

JUICY LUCY

It’s the anchovy woman! Kill her! Kill her!

TRIUMPH

You demented half crazed moron, shut up! I beg your pardon, Miss Thing, you there! Have you had an accident? One of our House of Wax Girls seems to have been under the sun too long and wishes to know if you might be the anchovy woman?

BENITO

I am Benito Bustello. Brother to Abolena Bustello. Companion to Fatima Velasquez. I play with the wind, talk to the clouds, and sing to the road.

DONNA BELLA BEADS

What do you do with the hatboxes?

BENITO

I will follow the eternal will that governs my destiny.

TRIUMPH

One so young to speak of destiny. Who has taught you of such things?

BENITO

My freedom is my inherent beauty.

DONNA BELLA BEADS

This one’s on a trip. Let him drown!

JUICY LUCY

Let’s face it, Big Bust, the Police wear dresses because they like to wear dresses!

BENITO

I have a feeling that I’m going to be the most handsome man in the world.

WARNER

I just wanna be loved. No matter how bad I am.

MALA

If anyone mentions happiness, swim for shore!

MARY

I am an enemy of the American government.

DONNA BELLA BEADS

Come into my mouth, you fool.

BENITO

I don’t care about you other bastards. I’m gonna be great and famous!

CAREER

Don’t let these police humiliate you. They become more and more fantastic every year. They are turning you all into dirt eating slaves. They represent a few stinking rich people who don’t even stay in this country most of the time while they march everyone else into huge anonymous housing projects and don’t allow them to even take a dog home with them.

BIG BUST

He’s ugly because I can’t have him.

JUICY LUCY

I want to have all my emotions out on the screen.

BENITO

I want to kiss the harps of angels.

ABOLENA

Make it not be true, make it not be true.

MADONNA

Have you tried God, my child?

ABOLENA

Benito, who’s the weirdo?

MADONNA

Do not be frightened. Yay tho’ I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for thou art Walt Whitman.

MALA

Hey Spics! Knock it off.

BENITO

It is the superstition of all witches that the shoes from a dead man’s feet will bring years of good luck.

TRIUMPH

Who are you, woman?

BENITO

She is Fatima Velasquez. Formerly billed as the veiled wanderer. She doesn’t exactly do the dance of the seven veils but she does do a pretty colorful number with an army blanket.

WARNER

I’d like to see that!

CANTA LUPE

Surely the woman is not mute.

BENITO

No … she is not. You should hear her talk.

TRIUMPH

I’d like that.

FATIMA

There is a pageant in the sky tonight. And nature wears the borrowed light of history.

WARNER

Let her keep the shoes. Those soldiers were dead anyway.

MALA

I’ll bet they’re nothing but Gypsies.

BIG BEAD

They’re human.

CREAM VARLETT

They’re SCARED.

WHEELS

It’s the revolution.

DONNA BELLA BEADS

The past is past. I suggest we forget it and wait for dawn.

FATIMA

Skip the talk. You won’t regret it.

TRIUMPH

Have dreams and schemes sufficed to keep man alive. His hands, his back, his honest sweat are the natural tools by which man can survive.

FATIMA

They keep private their bitter tears. Cannot you too mourn silently?

CANTA LUPE

A silent man is dangerous.

MALA

His calm cloaks secrets he must keep.

TRIUMPH

Night that shelters all creation in shadow and silence has failed to still her. I heard you say it. Yes, indeed, she’s a lu-lu.

BENITO

You’re the one who requested she speak.

TRIUMPH

Yes, I was. Wasn’t I?

ABOLENA

The vision of the future was so clear, so sweet she jumped for joy, Benito. She jumped.

She really did, she jumped.

TRIUMPH

All men dream joys few men can attain. I dream of my castle in Spain. Like fools, like friends, like you. I feel the warm sweetness of waking dreams and their soft appeal. Their truthless flattery lifts up my weary soul. All wealth is mine.

Fair women kneel. I challenge foreign tyrants, I will have their heads. Oh, I’m wise. Oh I’m loved. I am king. I’m bright and kind and brave and free, until Career Kit calls and then I remember the plain self I was born to be.

CAMINADA

Noccalula white buffalo zamilu eltoro tortuga Imparato Osopo Cusimano …

CANTA LUPE

I suppose you and your kind think when you take some poor devil of a girl, starving for a little comfort and happiness, and make of her a thing that good women won’t look at.

I suppose you think your measly money pays the price. Pays for the homes you ruin, the Mother’s hearts you break, the girls you send to hell! You pay! No – it’s the woman that pays … and pays … and pays!

WARNER

(To BIG BEAD)

What’s with Canta Lupe?

BIG BEAD

She’s talking to the Spanish Army again.

WARNER

Oh.

CAMINADA

It’s a mirage, you know.

WARNER

You’re a mirage too. You gotta be a mirage. I just don’t believe you’re here. Any of you.

CAMINADA

Give him some quinine water.

TRIUMPH

I suggest we try to rest.

WARNER

Suggest something else.

TRIUMPH

Rest is best.

WARNER

(Takes out a stiletto)

No, really, suggest something else.

MALA

Good government. The game great heroes play. Demanding the death of Vanity.

WARNER

Solitude, where I have known joy in my youth that I still cherish. Shall I never come and bar the loud world from the shadowed freshness that you are?

MARY

Who would hinder me, alone among your dim aisles? To the nine sisters that instruct me in the skies. Were my verses to paint them, it would be enough. Faith chose no golden threads to weave through my life. They are deep, as deep as prodigal, as deep as pleasure.

MALA

I vow fate new tribute. Pressed from ocean leisure.

MALA, MARY & WARNER

When the moment comes and death I have met, I’ll have lived without cares – to die without regret.

TRIUMPH

(Grabs her and points heavenward)

Behold our limits, the sky! I will lend you my wings.

FATIMA

Lend me your money. I don’t want your wings.

TRIUMPH

What’s this? You cut me to the quick!

FATIMA

How long will you abuse our patience? None dare oppose you. The Great Triumph Avenue and his Pig Alley! Well, I’m of a restless breed. I feel like I gotta travel on.

TRIUMPH

And dream, if fenced in, of just how far you might go. Mad with hot dreams of lasting fame.

FATIMA

You lie! Though fools are courted with lies. I am not.

TRIUMPH

I have never lied about Donna Bella Beads. She stuffed herself with self-congratulations. Age spoiled her looks. Farewell, love and adulation.

One empty year passed. Then two, worsening her plight. Regret set in. Older with each day, she felt this charm, that smile, those tricks, even LOVE grew pale, til her features shocked and displeased. Then came the paints, the dyes, the creams. Hundreds … but none eased her losing fight with time, the impalpable thief.

FATIMA

But desire can have its way, even with the proud.

TRIUMPH

We prize the beautiful. The useful we disdain. Beware: the moment of greatest danger arises when the battle is won.

FATIMA

Run! Since men kill men! But who cares who is my master? No enemy army irks me. I just hate the man who works me. Frankly, war is YOUR disaster.

TRIUMPH

An owner has the surest glance.

FATIMA

I’d like to add lover’s glances to that list.

TRIUMPH

The moon was full.

CAMINADA

We and the cosmos are one. The cosmos is a vast living body, of which we are still parts. The sun is a great heart whose tremors run through our smallest veins. The moon is a great-gleaming nerve center from which we quiver forever. Who knows the power that Saturn has over Venus? But it is a vital power, rippling through us all the time.

CHRISTIAN FAITH

All of this is literally true, as men knew in the great past, and as they will know again.

BENITO

Underneath all the tales there does lie something further, something different. How different? The thing which is invoked is of a different nature. However, it may put on a different appearance or indulge in its servants human appetites. It is cold, it is hungry, it is violent, and illusory.

(END of excerpt.)

Craig Highberger

Vain Victory
was a huge hit even though the reviews were wildly mixed, the
New York Times
reviewer calling it “… unabashed trash … the quintessence of Camp ….” Al Goldstein’s
Screw
gave it a rave, singling out Paul Serrato’s song “Who Are You?” (originally written for
Lucky Wonderful
), a duet performed by Jackie and Candy Darling, and also singled out the breathtaking stage-splintering ballet performed by Ekathrina Sobechanskaya, “the world’s most beautiful 6’6” hairy-chested ballerina.” The
Village Voice
review panned
Vain Victory
, calling it “… awful, abominable, execrable, beyond description and beyond belief.” – but Paul Serrato recalled that Jackie loved the impassioned pan because it only helped fill seats. Curtis’s ads for the show had a notable quote from one of the celebrity attendees: “The Best Play I’ve Ever Seen —John Lennon”

Paul Ambrose

On
Vain Victory
opening night at La Mama I was backstage putting on my makeup and Ellen Stewart leans comes in and says, “Now honey, don’t be nervous and don’t be scared. But there may be a bomb in the room. So if you’ve got anything illegal, the police are coming.” And my lipstick went right across my face. And within moments everybody is running in and going through their things to take out all their drugs and hide them. And the next thing I see is the police going through the folds of Madame Sobechanskaya’s tutus looking for bombs – she was a six foot six inch tall ballerina and the tutus were huge. This postponed the opening by hours. It turned out that Ondine hadn’t been able to cop in time so he called a bomb threat to the theatre knowing it would delay the play.