Oh, little dove, I didn’t see you there.
Don’t mind me, I’m just putting on my face.
I never feel as fully myself as when I’ve got the greasepaint on.
So, how long have you been with us?
No, that’s not long at all. Girl, you have so much to learn.
Ha! It’s just improv. Long as you don’t choke you’ll be just fine.
Speaking of which, watch out for that Maccus chap.
He looks like a gentle simpleton, I’ll give you that;
big and dumb and from a family tree without many branches
– but I caught him strangling a kitten, one of a litter of six.
The others, beside him, he said were just sleeping. They didn’t wake.
I assume you’ve met Cicirrus. You’d remember if you had.
Tall and thin, dresses all in white with a funny little hat
he wears on his funny little head. That head has wide-set coal-black eyes
and a beak and he never stops making that high-pitched chirp chirp chirping sound.
I don’t know how such a monster comes to be –
but they say his father was a Neapolitan sailor.
I’ll tell you who didn’t sire him – Bucco, that boaster.
He hasn’t been able to find his prick under those rolls of fat for years.
Decades perhaps. Doesn’t stop him from wiggling his leech-like tongue
and making obscene propositions to the matrons in the audience.
Matrons. He likes them over-ripe. Unlike that dottering coot Casnar
who can’t have them young enough. Yeah, him. The one with his beard
down to his knees but only wisps up top, knees that clatter like krotala
as he tries to keep himself erect. He drools and has only a couple rotten teeth left,
forgets more of his words than he stammers, and stinks like a corpse two weeks out.
But the worst of us, by far, is Dossenus.
Even I’m scared of that thing – and I don’t scare easily.
He huddles in the dark, so that no one will see his grotesque hump or misshapen face.
His mouth is forced open by his too large and irregular teeth, constantly chattering,
like one in the grip of the sacred disease, even when he stands still chattering.
He shuns the daylight, so his skin is pale to the point of translucent,
like fishbelly, and hangs from his bones, like chiton folds.
What makes you think there’s anything wrong with me?
You judge me solely by the company I keep, and my profession? That hardly seems fair.
Okay. I suppose you have a point. Well, as you can see appearances are often deceiving.
Physically I am without defect. I’m a veritable Adonis or Endymion!
But here. Take this mirror, turn it just so, so that it captures my reflection – and what do you see?
I’m impressed. That’s not the usual response when people see that.
But then, if there was anything usual about you you wouldn’t be here, or one of us.
So tell me, dear, how are you monstrous?
