For Your Pleasure: The Annotated Stockboy's Revenge

In 1995 and 96, I was working part time as a stockboy at F & M Pharmacy, a local chain that has unfortunately since gone out of business. It wasn't a bad job, and people tended to leave me alone as I worked on my homework in the breakroom over my dinner. It was, however, a bit of work: putting aside the whole stock angle, I was responsible for, among other things, retrieving the carts from the parking lot, as well as keeping the sales floor clean. Retrieving carts was difficult, especially in the summers, when it was extremely hot over the pavement, and when drunk teen agers would roar through the parking lot at 9:30PM, when I would be trying to gather all the carts in for the night. The cleaning was fairly standard, lots of broken Snapple bottles, except occaionally a kid would puke or piss on the floor, and that was honestly revolting. Especially the puke: If you have kids, ALWAYS CLEAN UP YOUR KIDS' PUKE. I can not stress enough the fact that I honestly believe that there is a circle of Hell reserved for parents who leave their kids' puke in a hot, chunky mound on the floor of, say, grocery stores, for some kid earning $6.00 to clean up. Well, I'd believe that, if I believed in Hell.

The drug store, at a certain point, changed managers, and the new manager hired a bunch of 17 year olds as stockboys. This should have been reason to celebrate, but I quickly discovered that these guys were essentially useless: I still cleaned up all the puke, I still retrieved all the carts -- essentially, nothing had changed. I was extremely upset by this, and ignored by the management. I eventually was able to get one of the managers I was allied with to confront them about it, and all the stockboys either shaped up or got fired. I eventually became friendly with a couple of them: one of them had an irrational obsession with the TV show, "Are You Being Served?" He also was a big fan of the Partridge Family's music. He was an odd one.

Anywho, so around this time, I was really interested in Elizabethan tragedy. I blame Thomas Pynchon: after reading The Crying of Lot 49, I started reading Elizabethan Revenge Tragedies, just because they seemed very odd and exotic to me. I read Thomas Kyd, John Marston, Beaumont and Fletcher, John Ford, Tourneur, among others. And of course, it also lead (via the most popular Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy of them all, "Hamlet") to a big Shakespeare phase, by the conclusion of which I had read 22 of them.

One evening while I was working, fueled by indignant rage, I suddenly had the brilliant idea to write an Elizabethan Revenge Tragedy based on my experiences at F & M. I began researching the genre further, and started reading the material those writers had admired (foremost among them, the Roman playwright Seneca). I even checked out a facsimile edition of a contemporary Latin-to-English dictionary, in order to work out the names for the characters.

Unfortunately, the amount of research I was doing meant that I wasn't actually writing it. The Elizabethans wrote by sort of mining the work of other playwrights, both classical and contemporary, which is a difficult way to work when you aren't that familiar with the works. I have notebooks of quotations I was planning to incorporate into later scenes. I had the scenes all planned out, but by the time I had written the two scenes here, the problem at work had been rectified, and I no longer had the motivation I once had.

Keep in mind that poetry is not among my many skills, and I had little experience with drama at that point outside of reading it. The meter of my blank verse is sort of inexact. And it was always basically a pastiche, in spite of the amount of effort I put into it. I have no idea if anybody else would understand what I wrote, but I'm posting it out of vanity, and because I can.

So, here it is.

*********

The
Tragedie
of THE
Stockboy's Revenge
Containing the PITTIFULL and
LAMENTABLE death of underpayde
GUILLERMO

As it hath been fundry and
diverse times
acted.

*********

[DRAMATIS PERSONAE:

Perifologos, a seer.

Guillermo, a stockboy.
Lappolone Nullus, his friend.

Dometa, manager of Emporio Pharmace.
Regolo, first assistant manager.
Balocco, second assistant manager.

Regolo's Stockboy Minions:

Sanguisugio.
Cannacca.
Perdicio.
Istrice.

Bel-Cittonia, the love interest.

VOCE, the voice on the Intercom.

Various and sundry victims.

*********

Scene: Emporio Pharmace, a Discount Apothecary.]

[1.1]

Enter GUILLERMO and LAPOLLONE NULLUS.


Guillermo.

Lapollone Nullus, good friend: Hades?
Nay, 'tis too mild an oath for this,
Mine workplace, pays its wages in woe!
O, Untend'rable currency! I toil,
Sisyphean, perspire libations from
My knotty brow, until pillars of salt
Encumber my feet. What vain hope to quell
Craz'd throngs in emptory! Emporio Pharmace,
Thou I accurse, e'en as I'm curst in thine employ!
For, scant hope as doth yet harbor this breast
To placate unceasing legion of shoppers,
Labor Herculean, compound'd as it is,
By the congenital ineptness of
Those very sloths, co-workers hir'd to
Relieve my toilsome drear!

Lapollone Nullus.

                                            Hyperbole
Now must thine tongue afflict, for, surely,
No such mortal contrivance can yet compare
With those unspeakable torments lavished
On the damn'd. Keep league with reason,
I beseech thee, Guillermo.

Guillermo.

                                             Reason? 'Tis strange:
No spark thereof lights the dark of the world!
No reason lives to keep league withal:
I see no reason to reason at all.
As for the damn'd, such woes would fain embrace,
Accept, and learn to hold a blessing. For if,
On grinding cog, my members drawn taut,
And creepingly rent as infernal plumes
Encinder my flesh; an rav'nous buzzards,
Grown fat on my spleen regenerate e'er,
Each noon furrowing my cavernous bowels,
Sowing, reaping cold seeds of despair,
My sundry limbs held helpless in gyves
To the barren crag of Caucasus' peak;
An serpents serve viceroy for absent entrails,
Writhing and pulsing themselves into knots,
Glutting on innards that could be of use,
Sparing only inflam'd appendix;
An my seething brainpan burst open,
Birthing no Pallas, but gellied remains
Of this gray, fevered mind, oozing forth,
Staining this loathesome Dacron smock -- In short,
If torment inutt'rable did wrack this flesh,
Nary a breath of complaint 'scape these lips.
But these! these manifold petty annoyance,
Doth heap on all former, enacting such
Suffering. One honey bee alone can
But merely sting: multiply legion,
They dispatch you in swarm. And what be a
Mountain, but incorporate mass of thousands,
Much smaller molehills, in sum?

Lapollone Nullus.

                                                     Thou speak truth:
But why lend voice of dire grievance to I,
Who am quite alien to that which thou bewail,
And quite impotent to resolve such strife?
Guillermo.
I have lent many breaths to these sundry 'plaints,
In audience of him who I had hoped resolvent.
But alack! Dometa to breath proves immune,
As my meager pleas do fail to affect
Thick fortification he terms a head,
But which I may politely refer to
As atrophied mire.

Voce.

                              STOCK OUT FOR CARTS,
STOCK OUT FOR CARTS.

Guillermo.

                                             Fie and again, say I:
Five other stockboys haunt these same aisles,
Not one will respond to enact Duty's call!

He sigheth in exasperation.

This battle beaten, so out go I must.
Lapollone Nullus, bosom friend,
Anon I speed to yon gray concrete plain,
To gather buggies for shoppers, and then,
Bring them in.

Exit.

Lapollone Nullus. 

I fear friend Guillermo
Impassioned and wild: I suspect this finds root
In humouous violence. Such lunes
Are wont to eclipse a man's reason:
Bitter fruits reap'd in intemperate season.
So shall I temper his temper with speech,
Honeyed entreaties to lull him to peace,
Perchance to counter this foul lutescence
And biliousness he hath now evinced.

Exeunt.

[1.2]
Enter PERIFOLOGOS [pushing an empty shopping cart].

Perifologos.

How hap it that I, bereft of all sense,
Feel the foul pricks of fury burn afresh?
Oh Grief accursed, all sorrow's deep,
Where are those items for which I doth weep?
The in-store flyer proclaimeth a sale
On all Kellogg cold breakfast cereals:
But neither Krispies of Rice, nor any Flakes,
Be they Frosted or Corn, nor Apple Jacks,
Froot Loops, nor Bite-sized Frosted Shredded Wheat;
Shelving yields naught, the displays pick'd bare.
At two bucks a box, it was quite a deal --
I wonder if I can get a rain check instead?
But those other items which I ha' writ,
Inscribed in blue ink on my grocery list,
Are scant to be found in their given aisles.
No Vernors, no Pringles, no Udder Cream,
Nor Spray-Starch, no Rit Dye, nor Irish Spring:
Hours of searching's yielded nothing I seek¹
But lo! as I blither, fair day steals away:
Night clouds my eyes, 'sif Dian's swart mantel
Were draped across the azure welkin.
Even as two suns in heavens blaze bright,
Shadows prove unyielding to dazzling light.
O Phoebus, I beg thee, cease these vile fits,
Expel these sprites which have cleft me from wit.
Extinguish that flame which ashens my heart,
Which so prompts me to gad and trot about:
For whom do I mumble, made mad by ghosts,
Why play I prophet, sith Troy lies in dust?²
Beware the gaze of the dread basillisk,³
A Prince whose foul heart's cankered over with spite,
And ambition, whose face bewitch so mine eyes.
The linoleum I trod will soon be awash
In puddles of gore, none left to mop up,
Nor convienantly place placards lucent,
Which advise consumers: "CAUTION: WET FLOOR";
Bones, grown blanch'd and picked bare by Chronos,
Corrupt with rot, in thick'ning mire cast.⁴

¹ This litany of consumer products is based on the products which we ran out of most during the bi-weekly sales events. They had a remarkably difficult time keeping anything that was on sale in stock, meaning that towards the end of the second week of a sale, I would be ritually accosted by a host of octagenarians who just couldn't understand that it was out of my control, and that they needed to go to the Customer Service counter to get a rain check for when they were in stock. (Actually, I just included the Udder Cream because I think it's funny.)
² This rather abrupt shift was quasi-deliberate: the lines about Troy are most likely adapted from the Orestia, and are meant to signify that they old bugger is having a case of the prophetic fits. I'm not sure that I made it overly clear.
In the plan for the play, Perifologos was to reappear towards the middle of the play, at which point he would gouge out his eyes to get rid of the visions -- I know, heavy, but it is a "Tragedie" -- and at the end, where he would wander onstage after everyone was dead, and slip in a pool of blood. Nothing better to end a "Tragedie" than a pratfall.
³ The name of the villain of the piece, Regolo, was translated in my latin dictionary as basillisk. Regolo was going to use his stockboy minions to overthrow the management regime of Dometa.
⁴ The play would progress with Guillermo (accidentally) killing the entire cast one at a time (including Bel-Cittonia, the love interest), except for Lapollone Nullus and Regolo. Regolo and Guillermo would smite each other in a sword-fight in the last scene, and with his dying breath, Guillermo would charge Nullus to warn everyone about the soul-corrupting nature of vengeance. This is pretty standard in these plays. But as Nullus dutifully crosses the stage to exit, he would trip in his pantaloons, and skewer himself on an up-turned sword, and then Perifologos would do his pratfall, and the audience would laugh and laugh. And then there would be a musical number, wherein all the dead people sing really jauntilly, and with Busby Berkley-esque choreography, about how great tragedy is. The audience, confused, would leave in silence.

It's probably better that I never finished it.