A stand alone monologue written as a potential audition piece for my friend Kim, MY FORMER NEXT DOOR NEIGHBOR, as it's now titled, was produced by Philadelphia's InterAct Theatre Company in its 2000 Voices festival. The character has an 8 year old son, but her age is relatively indeterminate. As the piece has evolved, the character now is in an elementary school classroom on parent-conference day, coloring a pair of white underwear with a blue magic marker.

(Warning: Using this monologue without permission is illegal, as is reproducing it on a website or in print in any way.)

(A woman colors a pair of boys briefs with a blue magic marker. She is in a classroom at an elementary school on conference day in 2000.)

My former next door neighbor slept in a coffin. He wanted to build a bomb shelter, but he ran out of wood. He settled on a coffin for him and one for his wife. She died a month later. She suffocated. After the funeral, he asked me if I wanted it. He said he'd drill airholes in it. Maybe my son would want it for a fort. I told him no thank you, my son played with dolls, not coffins. Not dolls—I meant action figures. Too late. My neighbor decided my son was an eight year old homosexual. By dinner time, he'd spread the news all over our neighborhood. Billy—my son—took one bite of his carrots and then asked why he had to eat them if he was going to die in the homosexual apocalypse the next year anyway. Easy to apply that kind of thinking to your homework. This was my Y2K problem.

Of course, it was a lot easier to let the cat out of the bag than it was to get it back in again. I confronted my neighbor early the next morning and explained to him that I meant action figures. Muscular, he-man, pro wrestling action figures. He asked if Billy fantasized about leather-clad, muscle-bound men. I made the mistake of bringing some of the action figures as evidence. One of them was wearing a leather vest without a shirt. Rifle strapped to his rippling back, ammo belts criss-crossing his bulging chest. You know the figure I’m talking about. My neighbor whose name I never knew asked if my son wore spandex or frequented certain health clubs, and would I like some powdered milk to hold me over when the millennium hit and the dairy deliveries stopped. I told him Y2K wasn’t even the official millennium, then sulked back across my lawn to find a pink dress smoldering on the grass and a group of gay rights activists parading around the remains of the dress with signs reading "Never Again" and "Closets Come in All Sizes." And there, peeking out of the second floor window, was Billy. He looked terrified. He was so white—at first I thought somebody stuffed a white flag of surrender between the curtain and the sill. When I got inside he asked me if he was supposed to kiss his best friend Michael. I told him to get dressed, go to school and try to think about school things. Mommy would take care of everything.

We went out through the back door, because the most active activist, a hulking, black-faced Diana Ross, was trying to prevent my unnamed neighbor from receiving a large lumber shipment. Seems Billy's homosexuality finally pushed him far enough over the edge to finish that bunker. Diana cracked the windshield of the delivery truck with a high heel and refused to let go even though she was bleeding from a shard of glass wedged into her eyebrow. It didn't stop my neighbor and his redneck friends from hauling the lumber off the truck. It didn't really stop anything, except for one woman who got out of her car to ask Diana where she bought her dress.

By lunchtime, the Y2K bomb shelter was fully unloaded courtesy of two flatbed trucks, each bearing lumber and a screaming Supreme hanging onto the windshield. Gay activists passed out literature. They sang "We Shall Overcome" as a round. And a Motown medley. Diana soloed between screams. Anti-gay activists passed out literature. They didn't sing, but they lit candles and swayed. And me—I have a smoke allergy. I sneezed. I made up a flyer explaining that my son wasn't a homosexual, that he was too young to be anything, that it was all a big misunderstanding. I didn't want to debate whether homosexuality was a choice or genetics, because I wanted to fit two flyers onto an eight and a half by eleven sheet. I try to reinforce environmental awareness at home. No one read my flyer. A few people took it. One of the back-up Supremes promised to read it later—as soon as she got off the windshield—but after she left to tie herself to my oak tree, I found the flyer pinned under the wiper. I even threw myself on one of the rank and file gay activists, proclaiming that I had more information for the cause, but he thought I was making a pass at him. I tried making a pass at one of the rednecks, but he said I was using reverse lesbian psychology, and why didn't I go put on a pair of pants. I told him I just might. None of this helped Billy, who was expecting to come home from school straight. I'm sure he was distracted if he had any tests that day. Hoping to be straight has to be pretty all-consuming. But Billy was, and is, eight. He hates girls. He thinks they have cooties.

It was up to me. And all I could think of was violence. They wanted a homosexual in my house, I’d give ‘em a transsexual next door. Reason prevailed. Blowing off a man’s testicles because he calls your son a queer is a terrible example to set for your child. That and I don’t own a gun. But that left me with no answers and the school bus in sight. I was living a mother’s worst nightmare; my son was in trouble—desperate trouble—and I couldn’t help him. Then suddenly there it was—the dead calm in the eye of the hurricane—and as I watched the bus pull up in slow motion, I knew what to do. I told Billy to be brave, and then I asked my neighbor if my son could borrow the bunker for an hour or two. Before he could even ask why, I threw down the gauntlet: Billy would prove his heterosexuality until dinnertime with every interested neighborhood girl within two years of his age. And I suggested my neighbor’s six year old daughter christen Billy’s love shack. Bunker construction stopped. Everything stopped.

Two weeks later, my anonymous neighbor moved. He said the suburbs weren't remote enough for his bunker. Since then, Billy’s become a reformed sicko pervert—at least until puberty hits—and he and his little gang use the bunker now as a fort. They got into some of our apocalyptic friend's abandoned powdered milk the other day. Rolled all over my blue carpet. Still no girls in their club yet, but it’s a new millennium out there, and anything can happen—even girls.