The Nutty Nut and the Wild Slut (1)
A finger exercise in writing for the theatre, just for the fun of it.
The two characters
The Nutty Nut (NN): A well educated, privileged, well adjusted, middle aged white male, with a secure university job, but in the process of losing the certainties that he once derived from his fine education.
The Wild Slut (WS): A wild fearless woman who is exploring femdom (female dominance), womanhood, female power, running a start-up company where she offers spicy relational training for men and women alike.
Setting
A private room adorned with bondage paraphernalia such as whips, ropes, handcuffs, blindfolds. There is also a large bed, with a lattice headboard, suitable to tie someone to. WS is sitting on the bed, dressed to kill in a very sexy outfit. The picture above gives the idea.
The First Act
Ring of the doorbell. WS answers by speaking on the intercom. Voice of NN sounds through the loudspeaker.
WS: Hello, do we have an appointment? Is that you?
NN: (on the intercom) Yes, it’s me. The person that contacted you via FB messenger.
WS: Then it is you. Please come in. (Presses a button on the intercom device.)
Noises outside. The door opens and NN appears, well-dressed but in a conventional style, and looking somewhat dishevelled. He looks around, taking in the bondage attributes. Then he sees WS.
NN: I hadn’t expected this.
WS: What do you mean? What did you not expect?
NN: Well, nothing. I mean, this room looks like a room in a whorehouse. I did not expect…
WS: Don’t worry, it’s not, and I am not a whore. Just a woman that is feeling free to fuck every man that she likes.
NN: I am not here for sex. Married and all that, you know.
WS: I didn’t know. (WS takes her time to take him in.) But I can imagine. I saw on FB that you are a university professor. Not that it matters. You can leave all your learning behind here.
NN: The way you look at me. Like you are studying me. I don’t know.
WS: I don’t know either. Just looking. For really seeing, you need to look, you see.
NN: (a bit puzzled) I see. It is all right with me. I suppose. Except that it makes me feel uncomfortable.
WS: I figure you have a nice career, nice wife, nice kids, nice house. Money saved in a pension fund. Everything looks so damn right about you.
NN: I cannot help it that I am what I am.
WS: Read the right books too, maybe?
NN: Yes, on human nature and the understanding. I have always taken my clues from David Hume, the philosopher, but he deceived me. Hume tries to separate the sense from the nonsense, but what I am discovering now is that there can be a lot of sense in the nonsense.
WS: What do you know of human nature? My femdom intuition tells me things about you.
NN: (Surprised) Like what?
WS: That there is wildness in you that is left unexplored. You can still explore it with me, if you wish.
NN: I feel a bit too old for that. You see, after a certain age, a man’s course in life is set. He can no longer afford to take the yes of a woman for an answer. But your website caught my attention. I would like to get to know you. You intrigue me, that’s why I signed up for this session with you.
WS: You seem to know what you signed up for.
NN: Drink tea with you. Exchange views. I could instruct you a bit, too. I have been reading up on Buddhism, recently.
WS: How interesting. What did you learn?
NN: The importance of letting go. How the Buddha instructed his disciples to let go of their cows.
WS: Figuratively speaking.
NN: Figuratively speaking, yes.
WS: Reading about that is different from practicing it.
NN: Tell me about practice.
WS: Did you know that many Buddhist monks are horny as hell, lusting after their female disciples? Silently watching their breath, but secretly dreaming of pussy.
NN: Why do you say that? How do you know?
WS: I say it to shock you a bit, to shake your comfort. And I know it because I tested several of them. Very easy to seduce. But no fun.
NN: Really?
WS: Seducing a happily married man is much more of a challenge.
NN: If there are married men that you led astray, then I feel sorry for them.
WS: I was showing them the true path.
NN: Breaking in to disrupt a stable marriage, that is a mean thing to do.
WS: Well, it’s glorious.
NN: But it is not nice.
WS: Why should I be nice? Who is telling me that?
NN: I get a sense you do it just to feel powerful, as a woman.
WS: It is glorious to feel female power, yes. But always a deception when you find out you have seduced a man that has no balls.
NN: Really?
WS: If I seduce a man and he has regrets afterwards, what does that mean? It means that his sense of safety, before he met me, was an illusion. And his regrets mean that he cannot accept that.
NN: No balls, no glory. What are you after?
WS: Wasn’t there a philosopher who was looking for a real man, in vain?
NN: Diogenes the Cynic. Carrying a lamp in the daytime, claiming that he was looking for an honest man.
WS: Didn’t he look at himself, then? Or was he disgusted with himself, too? Many men that I have seduced were.
NN: What do you look for in a man? How do you pick the men that you seduce?
WS: I want to explore my sluttiness and my womanhood to its deepest core. If a man sleeps with ten women, he is a hero. If a woman sleeps with ten men, she is a slut. Now isn’t that interesting? I want to find out more about that. What do I experience, what can I know about myself?
NN: I cannot make sense of you.
WS: Finally. The first thing you are saying that makes sense. Men like you, educated, adjusted, articulate, well-meaning even. You that defined the world that we have had to live in. You that carved the stones that block and constrict our view. We must escape. Put the boot in your anthill.
NN: What did I do? You cannot hold me responsible for defining you. In fact, I am not.
WS: You are not what?
NN: Defining you. Please go ahead and define yourself. I am listening with interest.
WS: Definitions are a problem. They restrict our space, make up our cage. The cage that you try to put me in. I want none of it.
NN: Fine with me to forget about definitions.
WS: Forgetting is not enough.
NN: If my defining you has hurt you, I apologize.
WS: That’s better. Except that I detect sarcasm in your voice.
NN: There are things one can observe without definition. You and I are different. We look different.
WS: You are half dead and I am brimming with life. That’s a difference, I suppose.
NN: I am quite a bit older than you.
WS: See, now you are limiting yourself. Snap out of it. I can teach you a bit about yourself, about ourselves. Do you want to learn? Do you want to experience? Just give yourself over to me and let go.
NN: Letting go is an invitation to chaos. I need some order in my life, so I cannot let go, completely.
WS: Letting go is forgetting about order. Order is an illusion, anyway. When life kicks you in the balls, when a loved one dies, then where is order? When my father died the only thing I could do was grieve, grieve, and cry my heart out. But I am not afraid of pain anymore, so I could just do that. And it was fine. I was fine.
NN: Your father, I could have been. You could have been my daughter.
WS: My father is dead now. He was a bit younger than you are now, when he died. I will have to make do with you, here and now.
NN: We do not have to talk about that. About death, I mean. If it is painful for you.
WS: He taught me lots of things that I had to unlearn later, my father. But I could see in the end, near the end, that he had meant well. Nothing wrong with talking about death. It serves as a reminder to be fully alive now.
NN: Sages tell us that we should not identify with the body.
WS: Is that what sages tell? It is through my body that I feel, that I sense the world. To be alive. The stirring, the current, the voltage. The sudden jolts, when something happens that I did not expect. I love it. I love my body. I love to be intimate with myself. How often do you jerk off?
NN: (Embarrassed.) Not a thing I want to discuss.
WS: OK, as you wish.
Awkward silence
WS: You say you are observing differences. Well, go ahead. Express yourself.
NN: For one thing, I am stronger than you are. Men have greater physical strength than women. We, the men, are more dangerous than you, the women. In hand-to-hand combat, I mean. Much stronger fists. Just an observation.
WS: And how is that relevant? Here and now, I am in the position of power, of strength. I invited you for a session. You paid a fee to be here with me. Just an observation.
NN: The fee makes me uncomfortable, that’s true.
WS: Why does it make you feel uncomfortable?
NN: The fee makes me feel like a lonely older man that has to pay for intimacy with an attractive younger woman.
WS: I am running a business. And that business is to give guidance, to give help in exploring feelings. Do you want to do that now? Do you feel lonely?
NN: We all feel lonely sometimes, I suppose.
WS: I am not talking about sometimes, I am talking about now. I am not talking about all, I am asking you. This is about you. You are a university professor, right? How does that define you? And are you willing to let go of that definition? I have a nice story here about a university professor.
(Reads from her Iphone:)
“A new lawsuit alleges that university officials failed to properly respond to complaints that John Searle, an 84-year-old renowned philosophy professor, sexually assaulted his 24-year-old research associate last July and cut her pay when she rejected his advances.” That’s from the Los Angeles Times.
NN: Do you know who John Searle is? He is a famous philosopher.
WS: Yes I know, Chinese room argument, that you cannot simulate consciousness. Argument about the nature of consciousness, that it is real, but caused by the physics of the brain. I used to be in academia myself, got a PhD and all. But I dropped out when I was a postdoc.
NN: Dropped out? Why?
WS: Sexual harassment. Insincerity. Fatigue from the relentless pursuit of rationality. The need to escape from the male dominance. The disgust with fake professors obsessed with their stupid careers. The desire for some fresh air. Lots of reasons.
NN: Searle wrote a famous paper, How to derive an ought from an is. Maybe he should have concentrated on How to derive an ought-not.
WS: How would you derive an ought-not?
NN: Professors ought not to harass their students, for if they do, they may end up in the place they fear the most: humiliation, disgrace.
WS: It baffles me why he did it. Why would any sane person, any man, want to bully a woman into giving something that she does not want to give of her own free will? Why do you do that to us? What is the gain?
NN: I do not know. Honestly, I don’t.
WS: He could have developed a different relation with her. Without sex, but fulfilling for both. He could have developed intimacy. Why did he demand what was impossible? Why didn’t he explore what was possible?
NN: I honestly don’t know. Fear of death, maybe? I mean, he is 84. Having affairs with younger women makes it easier for an old man to believe that he is still alive. To pretend he is still young himself.
WS: Intimacy is about surrendering to what is. Not about forcing what is not. Forcing yourself on a woman is rape.
NN: He was afraid, and he was lonely, maybe.
WS: Rape is what women fear the most. Rape, to be violated. So much worse that humiliation.
NN: I feel sorry for him.
WS: All his brilliance, all his learning, all his philosophy. Just veneer, really. When I try to look at him, I see a bully. I see a boy that never grew up. A hungry ghost maybe, the shadow of a man. Not at all the kind of man that women need.
NN: What kind of men do women need? It’s puzzling, a kind of miracle. That women still like men, still want men, at all.
WS: Some of us are confused, and they confuse you. But some of us have grown strong and wise.
NN: Strong and wise? Maybe you can tell me what you want.
WS: Strong, wise women want deep, stable men.
NN: Depth? What is depth?
WS: A deep man is a man who isn’t afraid of women shouting out their truth and irrationality. We need you to stand still in our raging storm. We want you to be with us in our thunder and lightning.
NN: That’s a tall order.
WS: What women need is adult, grown up, fearless men. And it is a great pity that such men are very, very rare. We are looking for gold dust, really.
NN: You are more deeply connected to the origin than we are.
WS: Hmm.
NN: So I am turning to you, in pursuit of wisdom…
WS: The first thing we have to learn if we want to be wise is not to be afraid. What are you afraid of?
NN: The unexpected, maybe.
WS: The unexpected, yes. The unexpected is what gives us life. Dionysus and his cult, led by women, celebrating the chaotic, the dangerous, that which escapes human reason.
NN: The random acts of the gods.
WS: You are at the right address here to confront your fears.
NN: How do you want to do that?
WS: First give me your jacket.
NN reluctantly takes off his jacket and gives it to her.
WS: Let me unbutton your shirt.
WS gets off the bed, unbuttons his shirt, and invites him to sit next to her on the bed. She strokes him softly on the chest.
WS: Now let me tie you up, and you will find out. About letting go. About fear and fearlessness.
NN: I didn’t know this was about kinky play. I am not into that.
WS: This is about confronting your fear. It’s up to you, really.
Long hesitation. Awkward silence.
NN: Well, all right then.
She handcuffs him to the bed.
WS: And now I am going to leave you for a while.
NN: But… You cannot do that.
WS: I can do whatever the fuck I want. And you will see much more of that, I promise you.
WS leaves, closing the door behind her. Then silence. Then the smartphone of NN starts to ring.