A NIGHT AT DYKES WHO DATE
The first piece on this double bill of one-acts is a monologue, A Night at Dykes Who Date. I have considered this play’s value as entertainment, as propaganda, and even as a community service, and I’m left with one overwhelming response: boredom.
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The setting is a lesbian dating service. A woman enters, takes a seat, and responds to tape-recorded inquiries reminiscent of The Dating Game. After a few probing warm-ups–“Describe your ideal woman,” and “What do you like to do on a date?”–the recorder drops the big one and asks the woman to share the gruesome details of her last failed relationship. Her last lover, it turns out, was a man. After several unsatisfying lesbian companions, the woman thought she’d, what the hell, try a man. It didn’t work out. The man was insensitive and bossy. Sex with him was painful. Birth control was a hassle. And the gynecologist kept his instruments in the refrigerator. Hence the dating service, and though she’s embarrassed to be there, she proudly concludes the interview by vowing to never again allow another man or woman to hurt her.
In Crusaders a gay accountant is accosted on the CTA one morning by a religious zealot who tells him, “God wants you to stop AIDS.” The accountant takes this as a cue to get out of town for a while, and so he hops a jet to Cancun. Once there, he unwittingly becomes involved in a plot to smuggle experimental AIDS remedies into the United States. Meanwhile the accountant falls in love with an underground character named Pedro, whom he’s forced to leave behind as he smuggles the drugs home concealed in a pinata. In a conclusion as deep and meaningful as the rest of the story, the accountant is left alone to muse “about where it’s all going to end.”
