the

body beautiful

or

Making Light of a Weighty Matter

by

Steve Whitney

(A One-Act Play)

٤٠٤٠

66666

Our scene is laid in the editorial, mailing, subscription, and clerical offices of

ONCE, monthly magazine devoted to Higher Homosexuality. The scene, though inclusive, is not crowded. ONCE bears out the maxim that good things come in small packages: its offices are all found in a room large enough for bridge, but scarcely for ping-pong.

Behind the desk, occupying one of two straight-back chairs, sits Norm D. Plume, a pale, thinnish man in his early thirties, one of ONCE's dimmer editorial lights. Enter Melvin Musclebound, a mountainous youth whose face and undraped figure loom on countless covers of America's leading physique magazines. He is now draped in an expensively-tailored, pearl gray number with pegged cuffs and what ancient slang called a "drape shape." His face, resembling a genial snowplow, registers considerable astonishment as his stare travels about the office of ONCE and eventually lights on Plume.

one