Please Help Me With My Show: I WAS RAPED BY MIKE DAISEY!

Think, Spike! Think! Think what kind of drinking glass will portray you in the best light to your audience!

Y'all, now that my new show, I WAS RAPED BY MIKE DAISEY,  is sold out for the foreseeable future,  I guess I'm actually going to have to write the damn thing. Fortunately, though I will portray myself as having actually been raped by Mike Daisey, I won't actually have been raped by Mike Daisey. (And oh-- meta of meta!-- I learned this fake reporting crap from the master himself!)

So far, all I have worked out is that I will sit at a table with a glass of water and a piece of paper. I think I will use a mason jar to hold my water, to give the set a folksy feel. Do you think that's okay? Or should I use a goblet? A sippy cup? Jesus, I don't know how these big shot performers do it-- coming up with that super authentic feel -- when there are untold choices out there. If I go with a cheery, brightly colored glass that was Made in China, I fear I will be called out in some monologue somewhere for not being sensitive to the working conditions in that country. If I go with something Austrian and handblown, then I might give off the wrong impression that I'm part of the 1%. Frankly, I'm sort of going fucking nuts deciding on this.

But I'm pretty sure I'll use regular old printer paper for my piece of paper, unless you think a legal pad would look more... uh... throwback and hipster? (Speaking of hipster, I've got this beard that's coming in which is just what happens to us pre-menopausal women. I fear that if I depilate I will give the message that I am a self-hating woman, afraid of the aging process, caving into the beauty myth. But if I keep it, it might look like I am mocking hipsters and/or the Amish and or Civil War re-enactors. So I probably need help with this choice, too.)

Meanwhile, as I continue to ponder all those technical decisions, there is the matter of CONTENT. I figure there are a couple of ways I can go with my description of Mike Daisey as Rapist. I could flat out make him into a monster, a total brute, not a shred of humanity in him, a narcissistic fuck who rampantly thunders through life concerned only for himself. But you know, that's already been done-- by Mike Daisey himself.

The other angle I'm working on-- and I know it's a stretch because, bear with me, even if it is far from the truth it might get to some GREATER TRUTH the way that some people lie and lie but do so, in their words, as a means of doing society a service-- well anyway, this other angle... I thought I might try to HUMANIZE Mike Daisey. Yes, yes, I understand how challenging this could be, given the antics of the real life Mike Daisey. And I realize the audience will find a sympathetic portrayal hard to buy, but think about the conflict it will create both in the narrative and in the hearts of the audience members if I pull it off! I could give him some backstory that sort of helps explain how he grew into a monster!

If I do go that route, I wonder if the following scenarios, provided I write them very carefully, could be accepted as truth by my audience (or if, at the very least, they would be willing to suspend their disbelief, the way Mike Daisey's own audience does). To wit:

1. I thought maybe I could give him a mangled hand! Or maybe two mangled hands! Probably just one mangled hand because if he has two mangled hands then even I would have a hard time believing that his victims couldn't easily escape him. I think if I do the mangled hand thing, it will really lend sympathy to his character. Currently, I'm considering proposing that he mangled his hand by dropping his iPad on it. Probably it would be better to have him mangling his hand by reaching into a Vitamix to rescue a fly that he notices is trapped on the top of smoothie ingredients, about to be sucked down into the vortex, toward the spinning blades. That would make him seem a lot more sensitive than an iPad accident, huh? Well, I guess there are all sorts of possibilities. So when you cast your vote for whether or not I should even bother with mangling his hand, if you vote yay, do let me know how you would like the hand-mangling accident to occur.

2. I want to work in an underage kid here. No, no, not as a direct victim of Mike Daisey. Even I'm not that big of an asshole, doing a show about a fake rape that involves a child. But I was thinking-- I could have Mike Daisey accost me and lock me in a room and have the room guarded by a gun-toting six-year-old. Or maybe I could talk about Mike Daisey's childhood and how his parents kept him locked in a room guarded by a gun-toting six-year-old? Or maybe I could have Mike Daisey, as he leaves me broken and crying on the floor, my hand totally mangled (this will be his signature move-- mangling his victims' hands to "see how YOU like it!") escape to a getaway car being driven by a gun-toting six-year-old. Again, I appreciate your assistance in helping me with this.

3. Finally (for now)... So, we all know that the real life Mike Daisey doesn't apologize, because such is the life of a narcissist, apologies are an ungraspable foreign concept to them. But as I have repeated ad nauseum, my goal is not to tell the actual truth, I want to tell the Big Truth, you know, the one built on lies. In which case I could actually allow Mike Daisey to apologize to me after the rape and hand mangling. Do you think the audience would buy this? Me, in my best Mike Daisey voice, quoting him saying, "I'm sorry, Spike! I'm so so so sorry! I didn't mean to do this to you, and the hand mangling has got to stop! But I am a sick man. A very sick man. I can't stop myself! You. Have. Got. To. HELP ME! HELP ME SPIKE!!! PLEASE!!!" (And then, of course, I could have him breaking down in sobs.)

I eagerly await your feedback. Show starts soon so I gotta hustle and get it written. Please send me your thoughts asap.
Thanks!
Spike