Stage Play Lovers

“What the hell do you mean I have to kiss her? I don’t see that in my script!”

“I had the screenwriters put in a love scene, kissing, necking, lovemaking, all the fun stuff.”

“No, I won’t fucking do it, this play wasn’t written with intimate scenes, why the last minute changes with gratuitous sex?” I was talking to the director and producer of the off Broadway play we were rehearsing. I played the title character in the production which started in two days and now they decided to change the ending.

“Because gratuitous sex sells. The story ends with the two main characters together anyway, we are just going to show that relationship not let the audience wonder ‘did they?”

I looked at my co-star Toni; she looked perplexed and a little miffed “What are we going to do?” I asked her.

She turned to Mike the producer, “I didn’t sign on for a sex scene, I agree with Dan, we don’t need to do it.”

The director threw up his hands, “What the fuck is wrong with you two!? All you gotta do is strip to your underwear, crawl under a blanket and fumble around for a minute. The curtain falls, play over, you’re a big hit and on your way to Broadway. Give me a fucking break, you two sound like you’re both gay and don’t want to touch someone of the opposite sex!”

I answered “There’s no chemistry, I don’t think I’d be convincing with her.”

He looked at Toni, then me, “What the hell to you mean no chemistry? Look at her, she’s hot, she’s sexy, she’s a fucking blonde bombshell! Marilyn Monroe would envy her. Don’t you have any nuts?”

Toni turned red “He’s right Jerry, I don’t feel anything for him either, not like that.”

Jerry raised his eyebrows to the spotlights “Oh my fucking Christ, a pair of asexual virgins! He swiveled his head back and forth looking at her then me “Go home, think about it, talk about it, work it out. I want the fucking fuck scene!”

Toni and I left under a cloud of apprehension, the only thing we talked about was doing a love scene with each other. Neither of us had signed on for a sexy part and we didn’t want to do one together. Mike was right, Toni was a curvaceous, beautiful blonde and I’m sure that about a billion men would fuck her in a heartbeat but I wasn’t one of those billion. She felt the same way about me, I knew it without asking.

We were struggling young actors in New York where struggling young actors carpet the streets. This was the first leading role for both of us and we knew if we pulled this off, if the play was a success, we could be on our way to Broadway, maybe even film. Everything was going well until the producer decided he wanted an onstage physical encounter with strong sexual overtones.

I went with Toni to her little flat to try to figure out what to do. She offered me a beer “If we can’t talk Jerry and Mike out of this we have only two choices, do it or quit. If we quit the understudies will get the roles and we’ll be on the fucking street again.”

“They won’t change their minds, Mike was already telling the prop men to put together a bedroom set when we left. It’s gonna happen with or without us.”

“What if one of us stepped out and let our understudy take the part?” she mused, “Could you do a bed scene with Patty? I think I could do it with Alan.”

“Yeah, probably, but that’s not going to work. First we can’t substitute our understudies for us, even if the lights are low, the whole freaking world would know. That would be career suicide even before we have a career. Second, if we proposed something like that, they might just give us the hook and put Patty and Alan on stage for the whole play. I’ve worked too hard and too long to screw this up because I don’t feel right about kissing my co-star.”

Toni set her bottle on the table “Then you’d better put down the beer and kiss me.”

We sat on her sofa and went through the lines. I knew I would have to kiss her eventually but we talked out the scene out first. After working through it Toni and I finally got to the point where we kiss. She stood in front of me and let me pull her close then I put my lips on hers.

The kiss was dead. Cold. Lifeless.

She pulled her head back “That was worse than my first kiss when I was fourteen.”

I agreed “We have to do better. If we do that on stage they’ll boo us right out of the building. We have to get over this reluctance to be intimate and be the actors we think we are; we have to act out the scene. We have to become the romantic couple in love no matter what we feel. Start acting.”

Toni looked up into my face, put her hands on each side of my head and pressed her mouth to mine. She kissed me like she would someone she wanted to have sex with. If any other woman in the world would have kissed me like that my cock would have solidified in seconds but her lips still left me inert even though I returned the kiss with as much fake passion as she gave.

She stepped back, “What do you think? Convincing?”

I shook my head, “You know how it is, we’ll have to rehearse this just like everything else.”

Toni picked up the script, “It says we will be in our underwear, you in your shorts and T, me in a slip.”

“I’m sure we can get them to back off that but right now we better practice like its written.”

Watching a gorgeous 5’8” blonde undress for me usually gets my balls worked up to a fever pitch of lust but I was only mildly intrigued when she dropped her skirt down long shapely legs and stepped out of it.