The Stained Strumpet

"Keep it real."  Keep it real?  If there were but one thing that I've come to know as "real", it would be that we have been searching for the “real" since the start of this human mess and that all that we've come up with is a great deal of fiction.  Life – real or fiction – is just a strumpet lying alone in her room, stained with a very robust red wine.  Now…after all those nights, nights that ache as they become mornings, that moaning little strumpet cries out that the only thing left to her is an obnoxious stain in a strange red hue.  It's been the same stain, each night, and she'll be stained with red wine until some fool tells her that things will change.   Shakespeare had it right, though it may have been Woody Allen: “Life is a strumpet stained in wine.” 

And then there was Morgan, alone on the bed, his white shirt stained in brown from whiskey.  He felt like he heard a cynical laugh coming from somewhere.  It must have been that little strumpet, knowing that she was not alone.  Morgan wasn't alone, either, and the sun continued to rise.  He got up, walked to the bathroom, and laughed at himself, knowing that a little strumpet stained in red was laughing with him.

Peter O’Toole from What’s New Pussycat, Woody Allen’s first feature-length writing credit: “Life is a strumpet stained with wine.  Go to, I'll no more on't; it hath made me mad.  I say, we will have no more marriages!"

Peter Sellers: “Isn't that Schiller?”

O'Toole: “Shakespeare!”