TANS 

Tans need human skin to exist (see the chapter on parasitical keyholes) just like melanoma, eczema, and boils. The difference is, most of the time, tans are desirable.

Tans hate people who wake up after sunset, such as cabaret entertainers and jazz players. They hate intellectuals, too.

They love body builders and rich girls

They hate New York, they love Cannes.

They hate beach umbrellas, hats, awnings, roofs. They love endless deserts.

They hate 15 SPF sunscreen. They hate 30 SPF more.

They hate the color white. They love all shades of red.

They hate nordic countries, but they love the concept of a midnight sun.

They hate the poles. They love the tropics.

Rooftops, yes. Basements, no.

No caves, no mines, no tunnels, no movie theaters.

The sun will last for at least another 5 billion years. Sadly, it seems that people and their tans won’t.

BAG LADIES’ BAGS 

Some of us have things written on our foreheads, figuratively speaking. Plastic bags have them for real. However, they don’t choose or mean what those words say. Thanks For Shopping With Us is something they’d never come up with.

Sometimes bags are tied into knots by people with idle minds, which makes them really mad and useless. Sometimes, when left alone, the wind will help them take flight and move away really fast. Is a good blast of air what they’re waiting for when we see them loitering and littering the sidewalk?

Sometimes they’re overfilled; plastic bags cannot control what is put into them, so they often stretch and weaken in places, forming streaks, like pregnant bellies.

Thanks to the dependence bag ladies have on plastic bags to keep their belongings dry and safe, used plastic bags can get conceited to the point of becoming delusional. They’ve been known to humiliate paper bags publicly, and even burden themselves with impossibly ambitious endeavors.

ART FRAMES 

As it hears the museum doors lock for the day, the elaborate hand carved wooden frame starts laughing wildly at the childish Miró composition inside it, a nightly ritual of humiliation.

The minimalistic black frame, chosen for its neutrality, bends and twists to expel its baroque contents.

The antique gilded frame conspires to outshine the Klimt painting and its wealth of gold leaf.

Wherever they are, whoever they belong to, frames cannot help competing with what they frame.

BALLPOINT PENS 

Their tips were solid gold and their bodies were covered in fine Chinese lacquer, or sculpted with pure silver. Often, they were inlaid with mother-of-pearl and precious gems.

Such were pens. Owned by rich landowners and industrialists, used by presidents to sign laws that changed history, and by powerful businessmen to close multimillion-dollar deals.

That is, until the ballpoint was invented and pens finally became accessible for the masses. You could see them everywhere: behind the ears of bakers, in the shirt pockets of accountants and waiters, tucked into the overalls of factory workers and mechanics, inside the toolboxes of plumbers and carpenters, next to cheap drugstore makeup in middle class women’s purses.

Unlike pencils — popular from the start and happy about it — ballpoints suffered the same faith of all shoddy versions of luxury items.

As the years passed, the humiliation only got worse; ballpoints became something that people didn’t mind losing, or getting back after lending them out.

You know you’ve reached rock bottom when you’re abandoned in offices and libraries, and nobody even bothers to steal you.

PENCIL SHAVINGS 

The squeamish may see pencil shavings as the painful result of skinning writing instruments.

The scientific mind will see them as the shedding and renovation of the outermost membrane of a pencil’s tissue.

For the spiritual, pencil shavings are seen as the desirable loss of material layers that expose the naked graphite soul.

And what do pencils think? They don’t.

Pencils were made to express other people’s ideas, not to think.

CHEAP THINGS 

Dollar store articles, one imagines, must certainly be envious of their brand name counterparts.

Fancy products, on the other hand, must view cheap stuff with contempt.

Seems logical enough but the truth is, they’re unaware of each other. Value is a concept invented by humans, and never adopted by silverware, make-up sets, or coffee mugs.

A Bugatti doesn’t feel any different from a VW Beetle. A Hermés handbag doesn’t consider itself superior to a shopping bag from the Gap.

Objects will never understand why a certain label could make them more desirable. Quality, rarity, durability, performance, these are all concepts created by humans and too abstract for objects to grasp.

THE WAITING ROOM.

A play

MAGAZINE RACK

(to PERSIAN RUG)

These magazines are so old, some have Liz Taylor’s first wedding on the cover.

PERSIAN RUG

How can you trust a dentist that never replaces his magazines?

MAGAZINE RACK

He’s such a miser.

PERSIAN RUG

Not the kind of flaw you want to see in a dentist.

MAGAZINE RACK

Right. A fake Persian rug won’t harm anyone, but what if he decides to go just as cheap with his implants?

PERSIAN RUG

I know what you mean. A flimsy magazine rack from Ikea won’t last long, but a crown should.

COFFEE TABLE

Stop bickering, please. It’s miserable enough here.

PERSIAN RUG

Worse than the dumpster where they found you?

END OF ACT 1

UMBRELLAS 

Umbrellas don’t know they’re umbrellas. Umbrellas think they’re bats; the similarity between their ribs and bats’ fingers extending under black “wings” is certainly at the root of the misconception.

Ironically, umbrellas come out when the rain falls, but they can’t get any water. Umbrellas are made of waterproof materials that make the rain bounce off of them. Umbrellas are always thirsty, and often become dehydrated.

The lifespan of umbrellas is relatively short. While their canopies are remarkably durable, their mechanisms are fragile. When unable to open, optimistic umbrellas might find new ways to be useful, serving as walking canes or devices of self-defense.

The great majority, though, end up taking their own lives: the tragic view of umbrellas turned inside out in garbage cans is all too common these days.

KEYHOLES 

While not considered objects per se, keyholes belong to a parasitical variety that relies on real objects in order to survive. It includes shadows, smells, reflections, speed, and others, though keyholes are unique in that they’re able to develop symbiotic relationships with keys.

Sometimes called negative spaces or peep holes, keyholes are often mentioned in mystery novels, and used as metaphors (“the thick, long key slowly penetrated the tight keyhole…”)

Unfortunately, keyholes are now an endangered species. With the advent of magnetic cards, millions of keyholes have lost their jobs in hotels worldwide. The predicted adoption of keyless combination locks might be the next, and final, nail in their coffin.

SPIRAL NOTEBOOK COVERS 

They used to have a hundred pages between them.

But spirals lose their pages over time. They may be torn off precociously to destroy evidence, or develop paper fatigue by being handled back and forth excessively.

When the last page is gone, back and front covers meet for the first time. This might be a happy occasion, if they happen to be feeling lonely and empty inside. Or it could be a troubled one, in case they’ve become too well adjusted to their isolation.

In either case, they’re handcuffed to sturdy spirals, unable to go anywhere.

SPIKE RECEIPT HOLDERS 

Thanks to recycling, spike receipt holders now descend from anything metallic, from paper clips to cars, and thus carry their souls. True evil holders from the past, forged from virgin steel with the specific purpose of stabbing innocent receipts and memos are found only in antique stores or offices that haven’t been renovated in decades, and are probably blunt.

A spike holder recycled from a pair of scizzors, for instance, has no idea why it’s putting holes through paper, instead of cutting it.

A recycled steel paper tray could be driven to insanity by having to impale the very things it was conceived to protect.

Even recycled frying pans, hardened by the hellish reality of stovetops, can’t understand what kind of dish you get by skewering pieces of paper.

As expected, recycled swords and hunting knives experience a much smoother transition into their new role.

ALPHABET 

Capital letters think being big and tall gives them the right to ridicule their lowercase counterparts. The following offensive words were heard within the pages of a book:

B to b: Jeez, what happened to your other butt cheek?

F to f: Looks like you need Viagra up there.

H to h: I’m so tired, do you mind if I sit on you?

J to j: I don’t get your point.

L to l: Sorry you lost your foot, but trying to look like number one doesn’t help at all.

It’s not funny. If lowercase letters decide to leave, imagine what kind of world we’ll be living in, with nothing but big, screaming, capital letter ruffians populating all our reading materials.

BEACH CHAIRS

The Portendorfers packed the car with their clothes, a dog bed, a giant bag of dog food, a baby stroller, grandma’s wheelchair, beach toys for the other two children, a big beach umbrella, and matching beach chairs. As expected, the whole paraphernalia didn’t fit in the trunk, so Mr. Portendorfer tied some of it to the roof of the car. The family, including the dog, squeezed into the vehicle and left their suburban home for the beach.

Well into the trip, one of the chairs became loose and fell off the car. That was when the Portendorfers were all singing together, so they didn’t hear a thing.

Luckily for the chair, the impact made it roll all the way to the side of the road before getting hit by other cars. It stayed there for a while, folded as it had been packed. Its aluminum frame had suffered a few dents and the seat was torn. But it was all in one piece.

When the dust settled, the chair stretched its four legs and started walking in the direction the car had gone. Its frame was so badly bent, the only way it could move forward was by limping sideways like a crab.

Night fell, but it was still bright with the moon, and the headlights.

Later, black clouds covered the moon, and the rain fell hard on the forest, drowning the sounds of crickets and cicadas. Sometimes the chair stumbled on a rock or a ditch, but it was important to keep its balance: flipping on its back meant never being able to stand up again.

The Portendorfers arrived at the beach house. While unloading the car, Mrs. Portendorfer noticed that one of the beach chairs was missing, and asked her husband to drive back and try to find it. But Mr. Portendorfer didn’t think that a cheap old beach chair was worth his trouble, especially at this time of night, and with all the rain.

As the Portendorfers slept, the chair dragged itself through the storm. When it arrived at the beach house, the sun was shining and the Portendorfers were eating breakfast.

When the family came out, they found the missing chair on the grass, all twisted and crooked, covered with mud and weeds. The other chairs had gathered around it, to hear its story.

I wish I could say that the family was ecstatic to see their loyal beach chair back, that the children jumped with happiness, that their parents had tears in their eyes, that they all got together and washed it, fixed it, and took it to the beach with them. Yes, I wish I could say that.