A Star is Blown

The Saga of Chauncey Bugger

Scene 1, some years ago.

[Nearly-young, angel-haired CHAUNCEY BUGGER luxuriates in deshabille – baby blue boxer briefs, gartered black socks with little pink Bettie Page images on them, a flimsy white silk camisole, and a long blue-and-white-striped silk dressing gown with fringe – in what looks like a shabby-chic Bloomsbury hotel room from a 70s movie about dissolute rock stars, all chintz and covered dishes and underwear and disorder. His stubby American manager LUTHER DINERO, in an ugly suit, hurriedly waddles in.]

DINERO: Chauncey! What were you up to last night! I got a call from a lady who says her daughter says you raped her and then gave her an Oyster pass and an orange Fanta and kicked her out in the street!

BUGGER: Dinero, Dinero, cahn’t you see I am relaxing and cannaught be disturbed.

DINERO: But Chauncey, this dame is plenty sore, and she says her daughter’s only 13!

BUGGER: Tsk! They all say that.

DINERO: She sent me a pitcher! This the girl?

[DINERO proffers his phone, at which BUGGER glances.]

BUGGER: Maybe. Could be. Cahn’t tell, they all look like that.

DINERO: They all look like that because they’re all underage! That’s the third one this month! Thousands of euros in payoffs, we can’t keep it up — and listen, I hear some of these dames are talking to lawyers!

BUGGER: Solicitors? Rubbish! I have NDAs from the lot.

DINERO: In writing?

BUGGER: Better — in videos. Here:

[BUGGER hits a remote and from a nearby widescreen TV, not visible to the audience, come the sounds of copulation.]

BUGGER’S VOICE: You won’t tell anyone about this, you underage bitch!

GIRL’S VOICE: No, mister, please put down the gun!