Last update: 17-Aug-96 by dennette@wiz-worx.com
<Who is this "Dennette" person?>
This is a story idea based on a midnight cross-country phone conversation. We were talking about this really strange year in my life, and it unraveled in the style of Pulp Fiction, very non-linear with an O'Henry quality. Maybe I'll turn it into a play someday, or use it for my first screen-play. :-)
Denny and Sam are in Sam's Manhattan apartment. These are old college chums who majored in photography. Denny is visiting from Rochester, NY.
Sam has always admired Denny's ability to get women to have sex with him the same day they meet, for free. Denny says that he's given up that habit, and tells Sam a story about telling a joke to a woman the morning after he'd picked her up in a bar … "What do you get when you cross a gorilla with a computer? A hairy reasoner!" … and it had gone completely over her head because she had never heard of the newscaster named Harry Reasoner. After that incident, Denny has vowed that he will never sleep with another woman who doesn't get that joke.
Sam is a real urbanite … no car, no steady girl. He finds unattached sex with professional ladies to be sufficient. Denny is between relationships ... he and a woman named Jean had been living together for about a month but there was too much deja vu to his estranged wife, Beth, and a woman named Mary keeps bugging him ("You couldn't pay me enough to sleep with her again.")
Denny feels bad that he had to kick Jean out … "She taught me the meaning of 'sexual obsession', but I didn't want it to get to the point where I became a slave to her passion." He doubts that he'll ever meet a woman who can satisfy him the same way.
Denny has never experienced a "professional", so Sam suggests one of his regulars and a friend. The scene ends with them leaving the apartment door. Punch line: "You pays your money, you takes your chances."
Denny and Mary are in bed together. He tells her the joke about crossing a gorilla and a computer, and she is overcome with a fit of giggles like it's the funniest thing she's ever heard in her life. She starts going on about how her therapist was wrong and she knew Denny was going to call her again. Denny is completely distracted and ignores her.
The phone rings ... Jean is calling from a pay-phone at a bar down the road … she missed her flight and took a later one.
Denny was so pissed that Jean had not been at the airport that he'd picked up Mary, and had been intending to tell her that she was a scab and he didn't want to see her any more, but he was horny, and they'd already done it once … a month before. If not for Jean missing the plane, he would have just ended their relationship without sleeping with her again.
Denny does not have time to give Mary a ride home, so he gives her cab fare and sends her packing. He doesn't trust her to be gone when he gets back, so he'll drop her somewhere along the way to get Jean.
The scene ends with them leaving the bedroom. Punch line: "What did you expect? I told you when I met you I was crazy."
Denny and Peg have come to NYC for a reunion of Denny's college buddies, and Peg is talking to Sam. She tells him about a woman named Caroline that she'd met at the YWCA when she first came to Rochester, NY. Caroline had moved all the way from Washington, DC to be with her lover, and then he'd thrown her out after a month and she had nowhere else to go but the YWCA.
Sam's old room-mate, Stu, joins the group. The conversation turns to Beth, Denny's estranged wife, and how Stu was her first lover within the group, but that Denny caught her on the rebound. Stu tries to make a pass at Peg … she asks him the gorilla joke, and he knows the punch line … Denny had already told it to him, years ago. He gets nervous and excuses himself.
Sam tells Peg that Stu had met Beth by telling her the gorilla joke the same day he'd heard it from Denny. He shares with Peg how he'd lusted after Beth, but Denny got there first. Peg shares with Sam that Denny's pain over Beth's repeated infidelities has prevented him from committing to their budding relationship … Denny insists on waiting until the divorce is official before he'll share an apartment with her.
When Denny and Sam have a moment together, Denny says that Mary has still been bugging him even though he has had three different telephone numbers since he gave her cab fare that night over a year ago, when Jean came to visit. She'd called him the next day, and every week there after until he had his number changed to an unlisted one … after Jean had moved in with him, she got tired of Mary's weekly calls, too.
Just the week before, Denny had been to a chess tournament, and Mary had come because she thought he would be there. Denny lost his game to a seven year old player (sitting on a telephone book so he could reach the board) because he was so distracted by trying to get rid of her.
"When you do that to a woman, and she keeps calling you each week even when she knows you're now living with the woman that you dumped her for, you know she's a woman that you never want to get involved with again!"
The scene ends with them laughing about the time they picked up a pair of hookers, a few weeks after Denny kicked Jean out of his place, and a few weeks before he met Peg. Punch line: "I don't think I'd do it again, but I sure think I got my money's worth."
Denny and Peg are in bed together. Their conversation makes it clear that they have not had sex, but have been getting to know each other by sleeping together.
Peg mentions a bi-sexual woman she met while living at the YWCA before she got her apartment. Her name was Caroline, and that she'd really been screwed-over by this guy. Denny counters that his estranged wife, Beth, had once given him a social disease, and that it took another of her infidelities for him to finally kick her out into the cold, so he was sympathetic to the need to sometimes have to treat a woman badly.
Denny then mentions that he'd been quicker to spot the same kind of insecure behavior in Jean after only a month of cohabitation, and had cast her into the snows after coming home from work to find her in the kitchen with a strange man.
Peg asks him what's the worst thing he's ever done to a woman, and he tells her about the time he gave Mary cab fare and sent her packing in order to meet another woman who had missed her flight. Then he tells her how this woman had been stalking him ever since, even though he'd moved and changed his phone number several times, so he doesn't feel quite so guilty about it.
Denny tells Peg that he's really glad to be getting to know her before they become sexually active. He realizes now that he can never have the kind of relationship he wants with a woman who is willing to have sex with him the same day they meet … that was his problem both with Jean and Mary.
Peg wonders why some people are so obsessed with sex that they are willing to spend so much money on it, and finally concludes that "Sex will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no sex."
They get dressed and leave for breakfast. Punch line: "You're money's only worth what you can buy with it."
Denny and Sam are in the pick-up bar. Sam spots one of his favorites with another lady of the evening, and Denny almost blows the deal by acting like a hick from the sticks during the negotiations.
Hooker (to Sam): "Well, it's scale for your sidekick … your money's worthless tonight, sugar."
Denny: "What's the exchange rate, then?"
Hooker: "I beg your pardon?"
Denny: "You said that our money is worth less tonight, and I assumed that we'd come on a convention rate night, or something. Would it be cheaper to negotiate outside, across the street?"
Hooker: "He's never done this before, has he?"
Denny tells the ladies the gorilla joke. One is genuinely amused, the other pretends that she gets it.
The scene ends with them all leaving together. Punch line: "Hey, you get what you settle for."
Denny and Peg are in bed together. The telephone rings … it's Mary, calling to ask if Denny is free for supper.
Denny explains to Mary that he and Peg have been living happily together for over a month now, and to please leave him alone. He hangs up, and explains to Peg that it's "that woman" again. He reminds her of the story of the woman who he'd lived with for a month, Jean, and that Mary was the one he'd given cab fare instead of taking her home the night that Jean missed her flight from DC.
Denny talks about his sexual obsession with Jean, how no woman had ever made him feel more like a man, and how he'd had sex with her once more after he'd kicked her out, because he couldn't help himself.
Denny had changed apartments and phone numbers again, and refused to give Jean his new number even after they'd had sex, because he knew he would not be able to resist her again.
He explains that he'd had sex with Jean the same day he'd met her, and that is why it was so important that he and Peg had not had sex the first night, but had just talked and slept. Then he admits that Mary was the straw that broke the camel's back regarding first-date sex.
Denny has some of his photography portfolio with him that Peg had not seen before because it was in storage from a previous move, and he shows her a picture of Jean. Peg identifies her as the woman she'd known at the YWCA as Caroline … she'd carried ID for both "Caroline Jean Stale" and "Jean Caroline Stale", and switched between them whenever she had to go on the lamb.
The scene ends with them realizing that Denny is the "ogre" that Peg hates for what he did to Caroline. The punch line is, "It was the best I've ever had, and it was free, but I still didn't get my money's worth."
Sam and Denny are naked on the floor in Sam's Manhattan apartment. The hookers have left and they are discussing the experience.
Sam had let Denny have his regular lady and taken the stranger, which was the gesture of a gracious host … "Here, I know you'll like this one." They discuss the clinical nature of the experience, and compare it with other lovers.
Sam comments that he would not be going back to his partner again, but that it could have just as easily turned into a new standard to be met, and she would have become his new favorite. OTOH, it was their first time, and Denny might not have noticed the difference, but Sam would have had more fun with the one who granted him "special favors" for being a regular.
The scene ends with them going out for coffee. Punch line: "I don't know if I got my money's worth, but we sure got what we settled for."
Last update: 17-Aug-96 by dennette@wiz-worx.com
<Who is this "Dennette"
person?>