The Brooklyn Rail

Characters
Narcissus: 25, any race/ethnicity. Transfag. He/him.
Tiresias: 29, any race/ethnicity. Doll. Prophet. She/her.
Prometheus: 30s, any race/ethnicity. Trans guy. Gender-affirming surgeon. He/him.
Cis Gay Man: any age/race/ethnicity. What it says on the tin. He/him.

Setting
New York City. Present day, infused with a casual faggy Greek mythos. Don’t think too hard about it.

(Narcissus and Tiresias in a gay club in Bushwick. A perfect summer evening.)

NARCISSUS 
Hey. This spot taken?

TIRESIAS
Narcissus? I know everything about you.

(Prometheus appears in a verdant sun-filled hospital room.)

PROMETHEUS
Hi. I’m Prometheus. You’re here for the top surgery bottom surgery super special combo?

NARCISSUS
Oh my god, Dr. P, I wanna be so, so hot. You’re gonna make me hung, right?

(Tiresias and Prometheus pull Narcissus into their orbits. A tug-of-war.)

TIRESIAS
Let’s see. It’s your first night in the city of dreams. Running away from home to find a new mythology to fit yourself into.

NARCISSUS
How do you—

TIRESIAS
I am the girl who knows everything. I am prophecy. Second puberty, second coming, it’s all the same. Want me to keep going? Buy me a drink.

(Narcissus gets her a drink. Vodka soda, extra cherry.)

PROMETHEUS
So, tell me a bit about what you’re hoping to get out of these procedures.

NARCISSUS
Just envision my Grindr profile and how much I would really like the perfect headless torso to present the resume of my body to the world, okay?

PROMETHEUS
Is that what you want? To buy a body so beautiful, nobody will refuse you?

NARCISSUS
I want to feel things with people I’ve never met before and I’ll never meet again, I want to be who I am without ever having to be who I was. You get that, right?

TIRESIAS/PROMETHEUS
(in unison) Yes.

TIRESIAS
You’ll become obsessed with their gazes. Change yourself from lead to dirty gold.

PROMETHEUS
You won’t want it to stop.

TIRESIAS
But they’ll use you and leave you. You’ll wither away—

PROMETHEUS
Wondering where it all went wrong—

TIRESIAS
Wondering who you even are—

PROMETHEUS
Good luck—

TIRESIAS
—with your second coming.

(Tiresias and Prometheus disappear. Narcissus looks at us.)

NARCISSUS
Hey gays. My name is Narcissus and all I ever wanted was to be who I am. The horizon that’s just out of reach.

(Tiresias and Narcissus are in the park. Tiresias unscrews a bottle. Knocks back a pill.)

NARCISSUS
Buying e off some sus guy at 1am in Maria Hernandez Park, I love my life.

TIRESIAS
You want one?

NARCISSUS
You know what? Why not.

(NARCISSUS feigns taking a pill. They laugh.)

TIRESIAS
You’d make a good doll.

NARCISSUS
Thank you. That is actually the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me. You know, I feel like the only way I could be a woman is if I was a trans woman. Sorry. Is that a fucked up thing to—

TIRESIAS
Freak.

NARCISSUS
No really that’s like, the only way I can articulate—

TIRESIAS
It’s like—I could be a man. Maybe…Jeffrey Dahmer.

NARCISSUS
Hey, at least he was gay.

TIRESIAS
GIRL—

(They burst into laughter. Then, silence.)

NARCISSUS
Who were you, before New York?

TIRESIAS
Why does it matter?

NARCISSUS
Because I can’t imagine you as anyone other than who you are. And it’s driving me crazy, I—you’re like a Polaroid. Just…the moment. No before, no after. Just: flash. Blur of light. How did you become you?

(A shift: leaves on the ground. A crispness. Fall in NYC.)

TIRESIAS
I was in Williamsburg. At Buffalo Exchange. I found it. This dress. Red sequins, last season’s Dior. I put it on and… I was catcalled on the train. But I was outside and I was there and people could…see.

NARCISSUS
You know, when I started T, I started in November. So when I was reborn I’d still be a Scorpio.

TIRESIAS
You are such a fag.

NARCISSUS
Thanks. It’s so a part of me I don’t even remember who I was without it.

(They sit in silence.)

NARCISSUS
I met up with this guy last night. A Wall Street bitch. But like, the most eggest of eggs. He was really sad and kept talking about dresses.

TIRESIAS
Guys like that are never going to get it together.

NARCISSUS
I dunno. Maybe one day he’ll snap.

TIRESIAS
I mean, all power to the girl if she does, but… do you honestly feel sorry for a day trader? Spare your tears for the ones who go out in lace and thongs. Not the ones who wish they could.

NARCISSUS
Oh—sorry, did I say something—

TIRESIAS
People see us on the street and call us goddesses. Visions. It’s not all that, it’s not easy.

NARCISSUS
I never said it was easy, I just—people want people like you.

TIRESIAS
Why were you looking for chasers on Grindr?

NARCISSUS
I wasn’t looking. He found me.

TIRESIAS
But you said yes. Playing the fantasy will break your heart.

(Tiresias vanishes. Narcissus is alone.)

NARCISSUS
I’m scrolling. Everybody’s faceless. I pick out this redneck who, I mean, is he even gay? Do I even care?

(Grindr notification. Reveal: Cis Gay Man and Narcissus in bed. They’ve just fucked. It was good.)

NARCISSUS
You know, I was really expecting you to be a terrible person. No offense—

CIS GAY MAN
Say more.

NARCISSUS
Um. I mean, in a closeted gaybro lowkey hates us way. Like “this is the future liberals want” way—

CIS GAY MAN
So what future does this “liberal” want? What’s your vision, mad prophet, for the new world? What would you do, if you were god?

NARCISSUS
Wow. Well you win hookup of the month.

You wanna know what happens in my ideal world? My transsexual fantasia on national themes? My most speculative of fictions? Well, gender and genitalia have ceased to matter except when it’s convenient for me. The marker on everybody’s IDs turns into a smiley face, no one ever gets stopped and IDed anymore cause we’ve killed all the cops, and when I go on the apps or linger in the bars or try to shout in someone’s ear at the club on a sloppy Saturday, all they care about is my absolutely sparkling personality. Also my massive cock. And get this: I don’t even have to use it, mostly, for people to like me. Yeah. That’s my heaven. Nothing matters, and so everything does, when you’re at the end of the world.

CIS GAY MAN
A smiley face for your ID marker—can they do that now?!

NARCISSUS
No!

CIS GAY MAN
Damn, I was into that.

NARCISSUS
So, yeah. That’s my heaven. Not much, is it?

CIS GAY MAN
Apps and clubs and genderless bodies, every night. Sounds pretty good to me.

NARCISSUS
Hey, you know. Earlier. Did you… do you see me as a man?

CIS GAY MAN
What?

NARCISSUS
Forget it. I’m going. Thanks for—

CIS GAY MAN
Hey. No.

(Cis Gay Man catches Narcissus’ arm. Narcissus stills.)

CIS GAY MAN
Yes. Yes, I see you as a man. But…that’s not really the right, I mean, you’re so much more than that. No, seriously. You know, in that whole bear vs. man debate, you’re like, this secret third thing, like some poisonous black berry with juicy red seeds, sexy, if you wanna die. That sounded weird, no, like, if the world was a solar system and each of its planets was a gender then you’d be, I mean, a male planet, but also like that fucked-up volcanic bitch, you know the one—

NARCISSUS
Io?? You’re calling me fucking Io???

CIS GAY MAN
Yeah, but like—you’re a whole other world. And I love that, baby.

NARCISSUS
I didn’t ask if I was me, I asked if I was like all the other guys you’ve fucked.

CIS GAY MAN
Okay, fine. You’re not a cute guy I saw on the L train. And I didn’t want you because you were. I wanted you because you’re a planet. I’m a planet. We’re all just planets, with our own gravity, and sometimes, we let ourselves be… pulled.

NARCISSUS
You know what else I see? When I think of heaven? I see all the boys I’ll turn down. Gleefully, gloriously. I will be abundant in my riches. A young and careless god. They’ll treat me like that, too, because they are gods, too. And we are all equals, at the burning of the world.

CIS GAY MAN
Uh, okay.

(NARCISSUS laughs)

No, no, like, I want that for you. But you can have that now. Tomorrow.

NARCISSUS
You really are hookup of the month.

(Cis Gay Man kisses Narcissus. A shift. Narcissus is in a hospital room. Prometheus enters.)

PROMETHEUS
Today’s the big day. How are you feeling?

NARCISSUS
Is it weird that I’m kind of—not sure who I’ll be after this?

PROMETHEUS
You are unknowable. I mean, until you start the knowing. Which you are.

NARCISSUS
That’s… sexy.

PROMETHEUS
Is everything sexy to you?

NARCISSUS
If I don’t objectify myself I will go insane.

PROMETHEUS
Werq.

NARCISSUS
What’s it like to operate on people? What are you thinking about?

PROMETHEUS
Clay. I took this pottery class once. It’s what made me want to get into this business. I was making things with my hands I didn’t know I could. It was like being God. But messier.

NARCISSUS
Sooo what does that have to do with making dicks?

PROMETHEUS
Life these days is so scattered. Dispersed among terabytes and texts. Twinks chasing every daddy who gives them a second glance—

NARCISSUS
—hey—

PROMETHEUS
But I want to make something with my hands. Something that lasts. I want to raise people from the riverbed. Watch them breathe again.

NARCISSUS
What’s it feel like? The sculpting?

PROMETHEUS
Like stealing sunbeams and taking back time. I don’t write that in the reports, though. You okay?

NARCISSUS
It’s just—I have worked so hard to get here and I have worked so hard to not go insane and I would really like everything to be smooth sailing from now until forever, is that too much to ask?

PROMETHEUS
But isn’t it beautiful? That we can change in ways we can’t even imagine?

You okay to start?

NARCISSUS
What the hell. Sure.

(Prometheus slips away. Light shifts. Darkness. Haze. We are not in the hospital anymore. Rushing river. The sounds of mud, muck, splashing, oozing. Clay, maybe red? White? Visual as fuck.)

NARCISSUS
I don’t know what’s happening to me. I’m being eroded. Sharpened. My skin is tingling, I look into his eyes and I—

(A flash of red: Tiresias in a sequined red dress.)

NARCISSUS
I look in the mirror and I see someone who shatters his heart on the dancefloor like a shot glass. I look at her and I feel everything inside me bubbling to the top like cotton candy, and I try to keep it down but I—

(Prometheus puts a clay-covered hand on Narcissus’ chest. It leaves a mark.)

NARCISSUS
And he’s seen it, the transformation, he’s lived it—

(Tiresias runs her fingers through Narcissus’ hair.)

NARCISSUS
It’s the way she walks down the street—

(Prometheus caresses Narcissus. Sexual.)

NARCISSUS
The way he stands. So solid. Strong. Fuck—

(Tiresias, Prometheus, and Cis Gay Man begin to circle Narcissus, shaping him. Sculpting.)

NARCISSUS
I want to make casts of their bodies and step into them and let myself be filled. That sounds crazy. I’m not crazy.

TIRESIAS
Second puberty, second coming—

PROMETHEUS
This is just the beginning—

TIRESIAS
What’s your vision, mad prophet, for the new world?

NARCISSUS
I’m so fucking scared of these people who know me better than I know myself who are watching me alchemize into some really shitty gold who have seen my inspo pics that are all Chris Hemsworth and Jeremy Allen White and not any normal 5’5” medium ugly people—

(Tiresias, Prometheus, and Cis Gay Man’s voices overlap and echo. A whirlwind maelstrom of clay, creeks and riverbeds, a fantasia of growing from nothing.)

TIRESIAS/PROMETHEUS
And I wondered… And I wondered…

TIRESIAS/PROMETHEUS/CIS GAY MAN
What it would be like / what it would be / To own the world

NARCISSUS
And if they knew I was thinking this shit about them oh god I’d pass out I’d pass AWAY but I don’t know how to live in any way but this

(He is engulfed. Transfiguration. Second coming. Holy shit.)

(End of Play.)