Mirror Tango Twists of Kitty & Fang the Clown

Mirror Tango Twists of Kitty & Fang the Clown          
(Concept by Dan Stafford          
& Dialogue by John Hindle)          
         
     Kitty and Joke live in an alternate universe on the other side of a set of fun house mirrors in a creepy carnival.          
     Kitty tells Joke, “Hey this place is creepy, like the fun house mirrors at the amusement park I went too as a kid. The reflections in the looking glasses look like my multiple personalities.”          
     “Who are those other ladies in your psyche?”          
     “Let me introduce you to Artemis. I channel her in my dreams. She is a stern office manager who makes the men under her wear itchy starched shirts and the tie of her choice, a different one for each workday. She also demands her coffee with exactly one teaspoon of sugar to be served with a deferential ‘would madam like cream in her coffee’ each time regardless of the fact that she never has cream in her brew.”          
     “I would love to meet this bossy lady. Sounds like my kind of woman.”          
     “Oh, I keep her in the dungeon where she dusts the torture devices in an attempt to humble her. She only gets out once in a while when she is on good behavior. But she is incorrigible.  You know she is on leave when I get cross with you. Like when I tell you, ‘Haven’t I told you to straighten your tie a million times? Yet you persist is wearing it crooked. You need a kick in the keister.’”          
     “I thought you were just being helpful.”          
     “If I were being respectful, I’d say, ‘Honey can I help you with your tie? You look like you could use my woman’s touch.’”          
     “I like that approach much better.”          
     “Hey, those mirrors look magical. I could swear I see a ghost in one. Let’s try walking through it, like Alice did in the children’s story.”          
     Joke replies, “But I am such a hypochondriac. The glass might shatter and cut me. What if they are just normal everyday mirrors in a fun house?”          
     “If you get cut, I’ll sew you up just like I did my Raggedy Ann doll when I was a wee lass. I am a seamstress. My Mom taught me.”          
     “Don’t you need a medical license to do stitches?”          
     “I was joking. The only kind of stitches I will put you in is laughter. Come on it is safe. Trust me.”  
     “And what if the mirror is a portal, and we end up on the other side into some strange and scary universe?”          
     “The worst that can happen is that we’ll end up at a mad tea party. Since you are mad as a hatter you’d feel right at home, my lovely madman.”          
     “What if the tea is spiked with ginseng and I can’t keep my hands off you?”          
     “That we should be so lucky.”          
     “Or I could get so close to my own image that I fall in love with myself like in the ancient Greek myth of Narcissus. I am already such a Narcissist but my self love could proliferate into millions of aspects of my beauty blossoming in my soul. I could become overcome by my narcissism and never find my way out until I am quite insane.”          
     “Loving yourself is a good thing. But you aren’t a true narcissist because you love me as much as yourself, as you have told me so often. I could make a peanut butter and mustard sandwich, just for you. You’d eat it and say it was delicious just to please me.”          
     “Yes, but I might wince.”          
     “Yes, but you’d say, ‘my compliments to the chef’”.          
     “That sounds hard to swallow.”          
     “Oh, I do so love your double entendres. I’ll make you a cheddar cheese and maple syrup sandwich instead just to test your devotion. How palatable does that notion sound?”          
     “About as much as mint jelly and grits with butter.”          
     “No wonder you are named ‘Joke.’ Believe me the other side will be a better place for us both to be together forever.”          
     Joke replies, “I never thought I’d want to live forever until now. Because I never dreamed that I could be with you forever. But the prospect of what lies beyond is enticing. Let’s go there, you and  
I, hand in hand.”          
     They walk through the porous glass into a city of eternity that lies beyond the veil of ordinary reality. But this new universe is strangely familiar to them. And the mirror image of Joke’s therapist is there to meet them on the other side.          
     Kitty starts seeing his therapist over her obsession with cats. She tells the counselor lady, “I have always had a fascination with felines. My birth name perhaps inspired that. Afterall, I am named for the furry little predators.”          
     The counselor says, “You should go ballroom dancing dressed as a black cat with Joke. The ancient Greeks celebrated the Dionysian Mysteries with orgiastic dances. I think you should explore this feline side of your personality through dance.”          
     “Oh, that sounds like a fabulous idea. Joke and I started dancing during our early dating years. I miss our sensual dances together. I miss so much from those days.”          
     Back at home, Kitty tells Joke, “Our therapist also is a blue blood of the New Orleans elite. So, she gave us invitations to the Mardi Gras Ball. I will go dressed as a black cat. What will you go as?”          
     “You didn’t ask if I wanted to go.”          
     “Oh, I am sorry, I forgot the proper etiquette. I just know you well enough to know you’d agree.”      “Well, you do indeed have my number. I will go as Dracula. But if your nip me with your cat teeth I will bite back with my fangs.”          
     “You mean those plastic dentures you use to look like a vampire?”          
     “If I bite you, you’ll turn into a feline vampire.”          
     “Sounds lovely, we can give each other blood transfusions.”          
     That Saturday night at the Ball, Kitty and Joke waltz across the dance floor to the “Blue Danube.”          
     Kitty says, “You remind me of the Count of Monte Cristo. Except you escaped from a Sanitorium not a prison, only to assume the identity of a royal personage at this here Ball.”          
     “I look more like ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ in this get up.”          
     “Your face does look in need of cosmetic surgery. Like you just got smushed after a long fall.”  
     “But you look ravishing as the Gothic Queen of the Ball, in your feline costume. Even masked I could recognize you if we’d rendezvous as mystery dates.”          
     “Take me across the floor once more. Then let’s try some of the wine selection on the goodies table. I am in the mood for red wine. I am sure as a vampire you would like to imbibe the sanguine burgundy.”          
     “Like breaking into the blood bank, and having a feast.”          
     “Just don’t drink my hemoglobin. I wouldn’t take kindly at that.”          
     “I will only imbibe the wine. I don’t stalk young ladies around London anymore. I am too old and slow to catch them.”          
     “You are not old. Don’t say that because I am older than you.”          
     “Thy eternal summer will never fade.”          
     “I wish it were so. I foresee looking like a bag lady in my golden years. How will you still love me with drooping eyelids and puffy cheeks?”          
     “I will kiss those eyes and cheeks like in the springtime of our youth.”          
      “The years will catch up with us. You say that now because I am still a maiden. But when wrinkles blossom on my face you may not feel so inclined as to kiss me.”          
     “I will bed thee just as I wedded thee should we live to be a hundred.”          
     “Such sweet sentiments yet soaked in vinegar. Don’t lie my love. You will have an eye for the fairer of my sex.”          
     “I only have eyes for you.”          
     “Oh, you know how to woo my heart. They are playing the ‘Arabian Dance’ from ‘The Nutcracker’. That is our song. Take me around the floor again before we drink the burgundy and get too tipsy to waltz.”          
     They dip and swirl until midnight when the time comes to partake of the red wine. Drunk on the poetry of her motion Joke grows dizzy but enchanted in a way with the wine blushing his face.          
     “It must have been a good year for the grapes when this wine was made,” Joke tells her.          
     “It was a good year for love when we found each other.”          
     “We were walking into a café at Pirate’s Alley and you looked like the Gothic Angel I dreamed about in my sleep,” Joke says.          
     “Well, I often dream of you while slumbering.”          
     “Let’s hail a taxi to go home and finish the dance in bed.”          
      Back in their flat in Faubourg Marigny, they kick off their shoes and sit together on the sofa. Kitty says, “I’d like to lap you up like a bowl of warm milk.”          
     “I am not lactose free.”          
     “I like my milk on the sweet side and whole.”          
     “I’ve never been compared to a dairy product.”          
     “Oh, but you are fortified with the vitamin D for devotion I need in the dark night of my soul.”          
     Joke replies, “You are the perfect image of a cat woman in a Pythian trance.”          
     “I did my Practicum in grad school on the Oracle at Delphi. From the classroom to the boudoir, applied learning,” Kitty replies.          
     Joke says, “I think you must really want to be as villainous as a hunting cat and you are dressed appropriately for the role. I am your cat toy.”          
     In the end Joke believes that by stepping  through the fun house mirror into an alterverse somehow the quantum function of his joking vampire’s brain has broken and left his sense of humor in ruins. Unable to laugh at Kitty’s jocularity, he decides to become a circus clown to regain his sense of humor.          
     So, he adds clown lips, and runs away to join the circus as a clown. But Kitty hunts him down and captures him.          
     Joke tells her, “I always planned on coming back to you. I just wanted to exercise my humor muscles to be your comedian once more.”          
     “You never stopped tickling my funny bone.”          
     But one night when he undresses for bed, she is reminded of how pasty white he is and wishes his vampire look was limited to his face when wearing cosmetics.      
     During a boudoir encounter, Kitty tells Joke, “Hey, you are pasty white under your clothes. I am a Pisces who likes Scorpios like you to be dark inside and out. Be chivalrous and join the nudist colony with me so you can be my dark knight.”          
     Joke says, “I am your knight in rusty armor.”          
     “Your armor is so shiny I would need sunglasses just to gaze upon it in the naked light.”          
     So, they lay out in the sun bare as nymphs in a mythical forest where Joke gets darkened nicely. Kitty approves but Joke is like a cat toy to her until he becomes as much a hunter as she is. In a moment of divine madness, they try role reversal.          
     One day in bed with him Kitty tries to reestablish her supremacy over him by telling him          
to get her a cup of orange juice to drink in bed. He replies, “Wasn’t our steamy encounter enough to sweeten your morning?”          
     Their cat curls up next to her and she gets distracted while petting the feline only to make possibly the biggest mistake of her life. She replies, “You will always be ‘a Joke’ I mean ‘my Joke’”          
     “I aspire to be the punchline for your Gothic night at the improv.”          
     To reaffirm her joking intention she says, “Hey I only meant you look like a clown in plaids. All you need is a red rubber nose and you’d be Rudolph the Reindeer reincarnated into Bozo.”          
     “I miss being your clown.”          
     “Even when you are trying to be serious you make me laugh. You still have that wry wit I fell in love with. You aren’t a failed comedian. You are just crazy enough to make you that much more attractive to me. I have always had a yen for madmen.” And so, they live happily ever after.