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.”
Jordan stood and pointed a finger at Irma, saying, “You owe me. Big time.”