01/30
ham

Pornophelia calls her boyfriend Ham on the house intercom because their house is so big that it needs an intercom. She says: �To be or not to be, you have to tell me, Hamlet, because the tension in this house is just eating me alive. When can we talk?�

There is this tension between them. �We need to talk.� It�s what she always says during sex. During before and after. But how can she doubt Ham? They�ve grown up together. They�ve been together their whole lives. Pornophelia has always been just like his sister. And besides, Ham lets her get away with calling him by the diminutive form of his name. Hamlet. Which no one else has used since he was five years old.

But Pornophelia made the mistake of calling on the intercom, and Laertes, who has been so much of a brother to her on his own, hears, the date time and circumstances of their planned rendezvous. And feeling all the more kin than kind himself, runs over and hides himself in the curtains of his dear sister Porn�s room.

She doesn�t notice him come in. She�s looking at these horrid magazines, magazines with names like T&A and Buttz and Juggs with two g�s, which doesn�t make a lot of sense, but, she reflects, Hammie was never the best speaker of the English language anyway. All he ever did was moan in bed and mope outside of it. Laertes meanwhile is horrified, seeing at once that his sister is gay and that she�s not even man enough to get it on with a decent real-life lesbian, or at least while he�s watching, anyway.

Ham arrives at the door, stops first to listen in case she�s in the middle of a soliloquy, which could possibly be a soliloquy about him, but she�s not, she�s just singing old English rhyming songs from when they were young. She sings them to herself in a little child�s voice. He enters, she thrusts the magazines in his face, she says �And I thought it was my fault � that you could never � oh, the things I�ve done for you to try and get you off!�

�But haven�t we known each other forever?� he asks, and �Weren�t we just having fun?�

�You�re insane.�

�I�m insane? I was having no complaints.�

�That�s because I would do anything. Anytime. Whenever you asked, I was being everything you wanted me to be. Only I did not know I was being everyone you wanted as well.�

�But, Porn,� he sez, stroking her hair, �But Oph,� he says, �hasn�t it always been about you? I thought you liked this. I thought you wanted to marry me. When I was king you should be queen.�

She mutters: �Yeah, if you ever fucking get around to killing that uncle of yours.�

�What?�

�Oh,� she says, �nothing,� Pornophelia mutters, �it was an aside. �She walks over to her window, pulls the velvet curtain away and gazes kind of longingly out at the tumultuous, rambling river.

Ham, fed up, says �Is that all there is? Can I go now? Or come now?� Is this another kind of sex game? Questions in his mind.

�That�s all I am,� she says, �a game to you.� In hers there are none.

�No,� he says, �you�re like a sister to me.�

At which point, Laertes jumps from the curtains, running toward the Ham with a six-inch rubber dildo aimed straight for our man�s throat. Pornophelia holds him back, says: �No � that�s what I had to say, brother � it�s more than just my words that are pregnant,� and Laertes, in an insane frenzy, rushes at Hamlet and rams the dildo into and out of his throat with a killing choking force, and Ham, unable to breathe, stumbles into the arms of his beloved and kicks it. His dying words are: �Porn, but I never came inside you.� Whereupon Laertes, who hasn�t regained his cool since at least 8 � months ago, maybe more, suddenly has a heart attack and collapses into the depths of Elsinor River below.

What can our heroine do? She pitches Ham�s body in after him.

For a moment, watching the bodies twist so unnaturally in the far-away current, she feels a little pitch of relief. But then she turns around to find Polonius, Claudius and Gertrude in her room, staring in horror at the pornography magazines, and despite her cries of �It�s your fault, you gave me this fucking name� she is abandoned, called an unnatural abomination, and sent to New York City before they so much as notice the absence of their heirs.