NOT MOST PEOPLE:THE PORNOGRAPHIST’S TALE
(A Play in Nine Acts)
by
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THOMAS: So, he says, turning in his chair to face his neighbor once again, you really want to hear how I felt and feel about the Web site and the business I operated? You’ll listen with an open mind? BRAD: I will, man! I think I just got kinda all freaked out by the way you talked about love, man. I mean, I’m tryin’ to keep an open mind and understand, but I never really heard anyone talk about love the way you do. For a woman even! Let alone for some teenage boy. THOMAS: Well, I’m just trying to explain how it is for me, neighbor. This is just who I am. But you’re right, I didn’t love my work the way one person can love another. The way I love Kyle. I love beautiful men: muscular, athletic men. They fill my dreams when I’m falling asleep at night and when I’m waking up in the morning. But this love isn’t the same as my love for Kyle. BRAD: It’s more like lust. Is that what you’re sayin’? THOMAS: Yes, I guess that’s the best way to say it. BRAD: But you do know that some people say lust is a sin, right? THOMAS: I do. But I also know that lust is something all people feel. At least if they’re healthy they do. BRAD: And that makes it right? THOMAS: No. It only makes it human. And I don’t think lust or anything else is wrong simply because it’s human. BRAD: At this, he exclaims as if he’s a prospector who’s just discovered gold, But you admit that it can be wrong! THOMAS: Yes, lust can be wrong. It can be what some might call a sin, I think. BRAD: And when is it wrong? he asks, his interest now deeply piqued. When is it a sin? THOMAS: When it hurts someone. In some way. Physically. Emotionally. Mentally. But I also believe people who deny they feel lust are lying to themselves and often put on a mask and confront the world as liars. This, too, hurts people. BRAD: Hold on a minute there, guy! You just said a couple a’ things, and I’m tryin’ to follow. When Thomas looks at him questioningly, he elaborates, I mean, first I was tryin’ to understand when lust is wrong, a sin. And then you said that people saying they don’t feel lust are sinners. THOMAS: I’m only telling you how I see it, Brad. And I have to live by my best lights. I decided a long time ago trying to live by somebody else’s light can get one hurt. Even killed. BRAD: But everyone dies someday anyway. THOMAS: But I didn’t want to die without at least trying to live an honest life, a full life. BRAD: Which a lot of people do, he responds meditatively. THOMAS: Yes, I think that is indeed the case. BRAD: I don’t think I’ve lived an honest life. THOMAS: You know that better than I possibly can. But from the way you were talking when you landed in this hole, I’d say that’s probably true. BRAD: What about Kyle’s mother? Do you think she’s living an honest life. THOMAS: Colleen Bernard? BRAD: Yeah. THOMAS: Judging from my one conversation with her and what Kyle has told me about her, I’d say Colleen is so afraid of what she imagines her son is or will become that she’s afraid of who she herself really is, if she dared confront her actual feelings and beliefs. Of course, I’m no authority. Having lived as she has for as long as she has, she may not even have any feelings or beliefs that are her own. BRAD: Hey! That’s a thought. After a while, a person may not even be a true individual. THOMAS: That’s a fact, I think. You’re really thinking now, Brad. BRAD: He smiles. Thanks, I guess. So! he adds, another new realization dawning, It’s probably true that a lot of the laws that are made and enforced are made by people who aren’t actual individuals. THOMAS: Oh, I’d say that’s certainly the case! BRAD: Like the laws that sent you to prison. THOMAS: I’m not arguing with that claim either, neighbor. BRAD: What you’re sayin’ then, if I’m understandin’ all this right, is that if you don’t think you’ve broken any laws then, in a way, you haven’t? THOMAS: That’s it! As I see it, each of us has got to decide for himself or herself what’s right and what’s wrong. I mean only a fool would ignore altogether the laws of the society in which he lives. But, if we’ve got a conscience, what matters finally is that our own conscience be untroubled. BRAD: Ahh, I see it . . . and your conscience isn’t troubled at all by your Web site and the business you were runnin’? THOMAS: You said it, neighbor. That’s how I see it. BRAD: But why? What did you say to people who told you it’s immoral, obscene to show men and boys naked and being tortured and molested. THOMAS: I told them not to log on to my Web site. If they’re so offended. I reminded them they were free not to log on and watch any of the videos I posted if they chose not to. At the same time, though, I insisted that adults should be free to log on and watch and buy my videos if they wished to do so. BRAD: And plenty did? THOMAS: Oh, yes! Believe me, business was good.
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About the Book
The fundamental subject of Not Most People: The Pornographist’s Tale is death as a philosophical problem of which all thinking men and women are conscious. Set in an unidentified state penitentiary, the play dramatizes love as that human possibility which enables us to live fulfilled, purposeful lives despite our mortality and our lack of knowledge of what, if anything, may await us after death. The playwright argues that, given our mortality, no form or expression of human love is obscene or immoral, that, in fact, when confronted by the greatest obscenity we experience, namely death, love is essential to our living happy and healthy lives. This is so precisely because death is both natural and inevitable. It is not a creation of man, and few if any would choose to die had they a choice. This theme is dramatized most vividly through the protagonist of the play, Thomas Wright. The pornographist of the title, Thomas is doing time for having had sexual relations with Kyle, a minor, and for sexually assaulting one of the models for the Web site he had been operating, a site dedicated to the bondage and torture of young men. Questions of morality are raised since Kyle, who celebrates his eighteenth birthday weeks after Thomas’ incarceration, loves Thomas and the sexual assault charge is based on perjured testimony. In the course of the action and through the intercession of two strong women, attorney Gloria Pelham and Episcopal priest Susan Murray, most of the major characters experience the transformative power of love. These include Brad, a serial rapist and Thomas’ neighbor in an adjacent cell; Vincent, a friend of and former model for Thomas and Vincent’s girlfriend Katie; Kyle’s mother Colleen Bernard, and Thomas himself. Kyle alone, in his unflinching love, is vindicated.
About the Author
Len Blanchard holds a B.A. degree in English from Washington and Lee University and a Ph.D. in English from Emory University where he was an NDEA Fellow. Employed for several years as a corporate and business writer in Dallas and Little Rock, he began writing seriously upon his relocation to Florida in 1990. Since 1999, he has taught as an adjunct instructor in the Department of Language and Literature at State College of Florida, Manatee-Sarasota. In 2001, Blanchard published through AuthorHouse An American Passion, an epic narrative poem on the life of Crazy Horse, the great war chief of the Oglala Lakota Sioux. He is also the author of hundreds of poems. A few of these poems celebrating the life of the beaches of the Florida coast were published in a collection entitled Provocations of the Birds and the Beach in 2005 by Bellowing Ark Press of Seattle. In 2012, Blanchard published through AuthorHouse a metaphysical drama entitled The First Day: Albert Camus meets Crazy Horse in the Kingdom and another collection of poems, People Matter: Sarasota Portraits and Others. His poems have appeared in numerous national magazines and journals, and he has been nominated on three occasions for a Pushcart Prize. A native of Connecticut, he is now at home in Bradenton, Florida.