MR. UNIVERSE

by Jim Grimsley

He does the double biceps, spreads his lats, shows off pectoral striation, thigh flexion, curved triceps, and flaring deltoids.

  JUDY watches for a long time and then approaches.

  The MUSCLE MAN pushes JUDY away contemptuously and continues to pose.

  JUDY approaches again and is pushed away again.)

  JUDY. I’ve done this before, I’m sick of it. You can’t just stand there, you can’t just wait. You have to come to me. You have to want me too. (Any anger here dissolves and becomes pleading.) If you would try. Please. I can be okay, I really can. Please. Let me touch you, once.

  (JUDY approaches the MUSCLE MAN, who coolly slaps him and pushes him away.

  JUDY goes off, anger building till he cannot contain it.

  He destroys the apartment, completely wild, ripping papers, magazines, and old clothes, throwing things, breaking things, absolutely out of control.

  The MUSCLE MAN stands serenely, as if he had expected this reaction.)

  JUDY (when he is finally calm). Somebody is making all this up. You are, aren’t you? You’re making all this up while I’m standing here. Look at me. Look at me goddamn you. (Pulls a knife.)

  (Enter KATY.

  She stands at the side of the stage, watching.

  JUDY does not notice her.)

  JUDY. Look at me. I’m here. I’m pretty. I am pretty. You can’t just stand there, I’ll kill you. Do you hear me? Answer me, I know you can talk. I’ll kill you.

  KATY. Judy girl, put that knife away.

  JUDY. Fuck you. Fuck you and fuck him too. I am pretty, I am, I am. I’m as pretty as he ever was. But you can’t tell him that, oh no. He’s so holy. He can’t even see you. Oh God. I can’t do nothing with him, I can’t even touch him. I could never reach him if I live forever.

  KATY. Baby you’re high.

  JUDY. No, it’s him. You know what I mean. It’s him, it’s just me and this man and we’re stuck here, forever and ever and ever, oh goddamn everything.

  (JUDY rushes the MUSCLE MAN a final time.

  In the struggle that follows, JUDY is stabbed with his own knife.

  The movement ends in an embrace, and JUDY, in dying, slides toward the floor, tearing away the MUSCLE MAN’s bandages.)

  Silence.

  The MUSCLE MAN kneels over JUDY, touches the wound, tries to move the body.

  When it will not move, he backs away.

  KATY walks slowly toward JUDY, watching the MUSCLE MAN.

  She kneels, hesitates, then picks up the knife.

  She grips the knife as if she had killed JUDY.

  She and the MUSCLE MAN watch each other.

  Enter VICK with red cocktail dress and red shoes.)

  VICK. Katy, some police cars just pulled up out front, Juel Laurie is going to let us know what they do. (Stops.) What is Judy doing down there? (Kneels.) Judy. Judy what’s wrong?

  KATY. She’s dead.

  (VICK simply looks at JUDY.

  He finds the MUSCLE MAN’s bandages in JUDY’s hands, picks them up, looks from the MUSCLE MAN to KATY.)

  VICK. What happened? (Waits; no answer.) Katy, tell me what happened.

  KATY (lifting the knife). This happened.

  (Enter JUEL LAURIE, without knocking.)

  JUEL LAURIE. They’re here sweeties. They got you surrounded, better come out with your hands up.

  KATY. Where are they?

  JUEL LAURIE. Down under the big crack in the plaster with the water stain like Jesus’ face, Vanice is on the landing keeping watch.

  KATY. Are they coming up here?

  JUEL LAURIE. Vanice says not yet. Don’t worry. He won’t sing out loud, they won’t see him. Vanice can be real quiet when he wants to. I told you they would come back. Katy Jume is here and they know it, they say they got a call. They see through walls and open windows without their hands. Better hide, better transport you away on one of them beams, honey, the pohlice have got your name and your number. (Sees JUDY.) Who is this?

  KATY. Judy. Vick’s roommate.

  JUEL LAURIE. What happened to him?

  KATY (looking at the MUSCLE MAN, who is watching her). I killed him.

  JUEL LAURIE. What did you do that for?

  KATY. I just did.

  JUEL LAURIE. He got a knife hole on his rib. Vick, get up from him like that.

  KATY. Leave him alone, Juel Laurie.

  JUEL LAURIE. Now the pohlice will drag you off for sure.

  KATY. They would have anyway. And I’m too tired to care.

  JUEL LAURIE (looking suddenly surprised, turning to the MUSCLE MAN). He was on this man, won’t he?

  KATY. What do you mean?

  JUEL LAURIE. He was on this man. That’s what it was. Don’t shake your head at me, I know. (Moves closer to the MUSCLE MAN.) You should be ashamed of yourself.

  (VICK stands, looks at the bandages, then drops the bandages and gets the dress.)

  VICK (to KATY). Here’s your dress.

  (VICK helps KATY put on the dress.)

  VICK. They’ll be up here in a minute.

  KATY. I know.

  VICK. They did say somebody called. (Looks at JUDY.) I wonder who it was.

  KATY. It don’t matter now.

  VICK. Poor baby. He didn’t have anybody. Anybody at all.

  KATY. He had you.

  JUEL LAURIE. There’s a dead boy on the floor.

  VICK. There sure is, honey. (To KATY.) I brought you a pair of pumps too. It was hard to find the right pair in the dark.

  KATY. How do I look?

  VICK. You need to fix your hair. Juel Laurie, run to my bathroom and find me a brush or a comb.

  JUEL LAURIE. Vanice says the pohlice could be here any second.

  VICK. I know, and Katy’s not quite ready yet. Find me a brush like I asked you to. She’s got a long night ahead of her and I want her to look just right.

  (Exit JUEL LAURIE.)

  KATY. Will you call my mama? Tell her I’ll talk to her when I can? (Almost breaks down.) Tell her I ain’t no bad girl, please tell her.

  VICK. I’ll tell her.

  (Enter JUEL LAURIE, with hairbrush.)

  JUEL LAURIE. It was on the back of the toilet with a hair net on it.

  VICK (brushing KATY’s hair). Thank you ma’am. Do you hear anything?

  JUEL LAURIE (going to the door). Vanice says no. They’re still right down there shooting the shit, right where the landlord bordered up the window.

  (The MUSCLE MAN comes closer to them, then stops.)

  JUEL LAURIE. You got blood on you.

  VICK. He can’t help it, Juel Laurie.

  KATY. You need to take care of him.

  VICK. I will in a minute.

  KATY. No. I mean you need to take care of him from now on.

  VICK. He’ll be gone as soon as I find out who he is.

  KATY. He ain’t nobody. He just walking around in the world. I know him from the minute I saw him. You want to stay here with Vick, don’t you big man? You want to stay right here and let Vick take good care of you.

  VICK. Hush, Katy.

  JUEL LAURIE. The pohlice got their hands on their guns. They say they answering a call. They pulling down their belts like the cowboys.

  KATY. I know what I’m talking about. You’re going to stay right here, ain’t that right? Ain’t that what you came for?

  VICK. He can’t understand you.

  KATY. He can understand me just fine.

  VICK. You got such nice hair.

  KATY. I feel good now. I feel real good. I feel like I’m sitting out on the levee watching the river.

  VICK. I thought I heard a ship horn a little while ago.

  KATY. You know it didn’t even feel like I was doing anything to that man in the motel.

  VICK. Hush.

  KATY. Will they make me meet his wife?

  VICK. I don’t think so.

  KATY. She look so sweet in her picture.

  JUEL LAURIE. They on the stairs now, coming up.

  VICK. It’s all right.
Katy’s almost ready.

  KATY. Go see my baby girl. You’ll do that for me, won’t you? And tell stories about her mama.

  VICK. Yes baby, I will.

  KATY. I love my baby girl. I really do.

  VICK. I know.

  JUEL LAURIE. They knocking on my door now, but I’m not there, and Vanice don’t let nobody in when he’s alone. They’re knocking but he don’t care. (Laughs, as if she sees it.) That’s right. Turn away. Nobody home.

  VICK. They’ll tear this place to pieces.

  KATY. Yes ma’am, they will.

  (Voices and footsteps outside.)

  VICK. I wonder where I put this man’s clothes. I guess I’ll have to dress him and bring him down to the station.

  KATY. They’re in the bathroom.

  VICK. I better go see.

  (Exit VICK.

  KATY crosses to face the MUSCLE MAN.)

  JUEL LAURIE. You look good Katy Jume. The pohlice going to want to eat you up.

  KATY (to the MUSCLE MAN). You owe me for this, motherfucker.

  JUEL LAURIE. I had me a fine red dress like that one time. From Maison Blanche.

  (Knock on the door.)

  But I couldn’t find no clutch that would go. Worried me to death.

  (Knock on the door.)

  Somebody ought to open that. The pohlice is here.

  KATY. I will. Even though this is not my home.

  (Lights fade as she goes to the door.

  Light lingers on the MUSCLE MAN, who kneels at JUDY’s side.

  He touches the wound and smears the red on himself, as before.

  When VICK enters, the MUSCLE MAN stands and faces VICK.

  Lights continue to fade as VICK sets down the clothes.)

  VICK. You’ve got blood on you again. What am I going to do with you?

  (Street noise rises.

  VICK and the MUSCLE MAN face each other as lights fade to black.

  Last of all, the sound of the SAXOPHONE PLAYER blowing Judy’s theme from the street outside.)

  Reynolds Price, on The Lizard of Tarsus

  Given the fact that religious emotions—adoration, dread, praise, and supplication—lie at the origins of drama throughout the world, it’s odd to note that the life of Jesus has played so small a role on the Western stage. With the exception of a few medieval mystery plays and the occasional modern Passion play or Christmas pageant, there has been no supremely successful and enduring theatrical work concerned with any portion of his endlessly engaging life. And the causes of that absence are interesting to consider.

  For centuries after the Middle Ages, many Western societies simply forbade the portrayal of Christ and his companions on stage. Shakespeare, for instance, could not legally have presented a play on the subject; nor could virtually any other sizable later playwright in Europe or America. Churches and governments had decreed that the riveting drama of so many episodes in Jesus’ life—primarily the matchless conflict and triumph of his final week—would be confined to readings from the gospel accounts and symbolic commemorations of his sacrifices in the visible rites of the Mass and in ecclesiastical music.

  And when those public bans began to expire in the twentieth century, no single figure stepped forward to reclaim the lost subject. Thus Bach remains the sole Western genius to have provided, in his Passions, a Jesus drama that endures among us, however unsuited for theatrical production. It remains to be seen if any of the numerous, and intermittently impressive, Jesus films of recent history will achieve such longevity. (I suspect that long stretches of Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ will prove compelling in their freshness and visual precision.)

  Why are there no contenders from those artists whose predilections would seem to have compelled them toward direct theatrical engagement with the story—Samuel Beckett, say, or Ingmar Bergman or Horton Foote; why nothing from Stravinsky, a devout Orthodox Christian, to stand beside his still-vital Oedipus Rex? If I had to venture a single guess at an explanation, I’d suggest that the patently historical drama as relayed to us by the oldest gospel (Mark) and the eyewitness gospel (John) has effectively blanked the field. The access to narrative magnetism and the dramatic power of those two writers have proved so nearly inimitable as to discourage competition from extraordinary writers.

  Yet here is Jim Grimsley engaging the tale in one of its later aspects—an aspect that’s implicit but unacknowledged in the New Testament. In his first three novels and some of his earlier plays, Grimsley’s clarity of gaze at the poles of human evil and victory in ongoing Christian (like it or not) culture goes far toward validating his daring in The Lizard of Tarsus. What living American or English novelist has more unquestionably earned his credentials? Yet even Grimsley balks at a direct examination of the traditional story within its own framework of time and place.

  He sets his invented action at an unspecified moment in a vaguely present world, a time shortly after the promised Second Coming of Jesus—or J., as this figure, with some degree of deference, is called. And the language, props, and costumes suggest our own era. Those cautionary gestures aside, Grimsley proceeds with a blistering intensity of welcome quality of humor (some of it broad) to embody before us one of the central confrontations that continue to invigorate and torment the weakened but still-presiding faith of our civilization—the endless debate between Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth, a provincial healer and teacher who ran afoul of the religious establishment of his own people and their Roman overlords, and Paul of Tarsus, whom Jesus never knew but who is almost single-handedly responsible for the astonishingly rapid spread of a cult about Jesus throughout the world.

  Writers as recent and powerful as Nietzsche and Shaw have probed, in essays, the implications of that confrontation; but no writer known to me has poised that battle on an actual stage and turned it so many ways to the light. I’d give a good deal to see and hear The Lizard of Tarsus in a vivid production by a brave director of ferocious taste and with the three great actors required by Grimsley’s arctic words and burning strength of judgment and mercy. I suspect I’d come away eager to see the play again, to read it more slowly from time to time, and to tend the still-raw flesh that haunts most believers who face the indispensable yet perpetually baleful mind and voice of that immense thinker, lover, and hater—Paul (born Saul in the city of Tarsus), who molds our lives still.

  THE LIZARD OF TARSUS

  The Lizard of Tarsus premiered at Seven Stages Theatre in Atlanta in January 1990, in a production directed by the author, featuring Jim Peck as J., Del Hamilton as Paul, and Faye Allen as Sol Heiffer. The set was designed by Roy McGhee. Sound design was by Brian Engel.

  The play was subsequently produced in New York at the Triangle Theatre Company by Harland Productions and the Triangle Theatre Company, directed by Joseph Megel, with John Pietrowski as J. Jim Ligon as Paul, and Elisabeth Lewis Corley as Sol Heiffer. E. David Cosier designed the set; Christopher Gorzelnick, the lights; and Dean Gray, the sound.

  PLAYERS

  J., a political prisoner

  PAUL, an inquisitor; male, serpentine, good looking, oily, politically shrewd. Age can vary.

  SOL HEIFFER, a follower of Paul; a woman of uncommon appearance

  SETTING

  A bleak room like a prison cell—stone walls, stark lighting, a bench with a thin mattress, very uncomfortable looking. Rough furniture. A crucifix on the wall, the figure grotesque but only partly visible.

  Lights rise on J., lying on the mattress, arms over his face.

  Enter PAUL, with a large file and several pencils.

  PAUL. Are you ready to continue our discussion?

  J. Is that what you call what we’re doing?

  PAUL. Wouldn’t you?

  J. No, I don’t think so.

  PAUL. But aren’t we like two friends having a long talk? Aren’t we getting close like that, the longer we talk?

  J. Do you feel close to me?

  PAUL. Yes, I do. I feel as if I’m standing inside your skin. I feel as if I�
��m thinking your thoughts along with you. Do you mind? Do you feel close to me?

  J. Yes.

  PAUL. Have you been worshiping? While I was away?

  J. Yes.

  PAUL. How? What were you doing?

  J. I was listening.

  PAUL. What were you listening to?

  J. I was listening, I was, just listening.

  PAUL. What did you hear?

  (J. rises from the bed, paces back and forth in long, somnambulant strides, hesitates.)

  J. What were the sounds from outside? The people.

  PAUL. When? Just now?

  J. Yes. (Pause.) I can still hear it.

  PAUL. There’s a crowd. You aren’t surprised, are you? There’s always a crowd when you show up. (Pause.) Careful not to walk too much. You’ve been asleep. Quite a while.

  J. Was I drugged?

  PAUL. Sedated. You were sedated. After we talked.

  J. Was I?

  PAUL. Mildly.

  J. How long are you going to keep me here?

  PAUL. There’s nothing wrong with the room, is there? It’s a pleasant room. Really. There’s a good breeze through here. Stand under the window, you can smell the market. You can smell it, can’t you? The meat cooking and the candy turning in the stainless steel pots, and the beer.

  J. I don’t smell any of that.

  PAUL. It’s really a very nice room. You’ll agree with me, given a little time. The colors are very warm, in sunlight. It’s never very cold. It’s never too warm. I think it’s perfect for you. You’ll be very happy here. You’ll rest. Your mind will find its perfect resonance. These stones are like harmony.

  J. I don’t hear the stones.

  PAUL. Who does?

  J. You were talking about harmony. From them.

  PAUL. The harmony is in their perfect silence. (Pause.) You seem surprised that I said that. Do you think I have no sensitivity for such things? Do you think I cannot listen as you do, to a music that is beyond music?

  J. Do you hear music?

  PAUL. Hear what?

  J. Nothing. Never mind.

  PAUL. Of course. Music. I hear it clearly, with my whole being. The great cosmic throbbing. (Pause.) What did you tell the people in the market?

  J. I tried not to tell them anything, I only wanted to buy an orange.