La Nuit de L’Homme Eau Electrique

The 4th grade class started performing Oedipus Rex at the middle school 14 years ago and it has happened every year since. Sometimes it is a bit awkward in the parking lot when a parent finds themselves elaborating to another less academic parent about the “meaning” of the play. But it has been going on long enough that neither the middle school nor the community question it anymore, it is just what 4th graders do in April right before the short break, when Principle Callaway and Ms Tina go to Hawaii. The theater director is disappointed with the set for Oedipus Rex this year, but he knows it’s the result of a tornado warning that came at the wrong time and maybe it’s his fault that the window latches weren’t latched in the class and a lot of the cardboard set got rained on and sagged to the floor. Not that the set was all that great to begin with, but the theater director looks at the saggy temple and saggier trees and the out-of-place but agreed upon “Fortnite chariot”, as Percy and Madison call it, all of which have many many many strips of wood hot glued onto the back to make them stand upright. It is all a bit lackluster and he’s self conscious as the parents file in and take their seats for the play. This year he decided to do something new to expand the senses, and he’s emptied a bottle of Yves Saint Laurent into the fog machine that sets the opening scene for Oedipus’ journey in which in meets and kills his own father - they perform a modified and abridged version of Oedipus Rex that’s only 25 minutes long. He knows this smell will electrify the room and distract from the crappy set design. The theater director is an experimentalist at heart, but is never able to learn from his experiments, so he finds himself in an ever narrowing field of possibility, like he can’t see beyond the slightly too tall walls of his own making and can’t remember what’s outside of his own small world. It’s a conversation he hates having with arrogant Principle Callaway, whose approach to principling is more like a self help coach than an academic leader and who is only happy because he gets to fuck Ms. Tina on the weekends and when Mr. Tina or whoever was once the other half, is willing to take the children for a few days. The theater director has no such release and finds he’s fallen into a very boring routine of masturbation, microwave dinners, and reddit while the TV is on. Perhaps something in him has snapped, he thinks as he looks at the cluster of excited 4th graders wrapped in bed sheets resembling togas, but with T-shirts on underneath so as not to be inappropriate. The room is totally full now and he finds himself off stage right, dimming the room lights and gently pushing on the back of Mercedes, who is going to introduce the play. Mercedes walks out and stands on the yellow tape he put there for her. She looks back at him as he nods and smiles a well practiced but fundamentally empty smile, and the room goes quiet. He walks over to the fog machine, which has been warming up and giving off little puffs of smoke in which he can smell the Yves Saint Laurent. He takes the corded fog machine controller in his hand and walks back to the light board, which is just three light switches that the janitor helped him attach to a piece of wood he’d found in the dumpster. As Mercedes finishes her introduction to applause and walks back he turns off the stage lights making the whole room go dark and simultaneously he holds down the fog machine button releasing a big cloud of fog onto the stage. He nods to Eli to walk out to his glow in the dark tape mark before the fog covers it and he counts down from 5...4,3,2,1, and turns back on the 3rd switch, revealing to the audience a cloud of fog pouring off the stage and Eli, Oedipus himself, standing in the middle of it with a walking stick. As the fog starts to reach the audience he can tell they are picking up on the new, audacious blend. Seduction takes on a new shade with La Nuit de L’Homme Eau Electrique. Fresh, intense and sensual, this electrifying Eau de Toilette will be your weapon of seduction for a night without limits. The juice opens with a burst of Apple. The heart of Geranium awakens the senses. Slowly evolving, the sensual note of Vanilla suddenly enters with an electric impulse. A play of contrasts: the first spray awakens the senses by its freshness, before waking up the strength of a carnal sensuality.