Stray Cats
by Warren Leight

THE STORIES: Some guys are leaders, some guys are joiners, some guys are Stray Cats.

This collection of musically influenced monologues portrays nine “cats” as they hit bottom, paint themselves into a corner, or reach a moment of transcendence.

The nine lives include: ALONE, BUT NOT LONELY: Tom “shares” at a twelve-step support group on Valentine's day.

THE POEM WRITER, who after having a little too much to drink, delivers a bitter, funny, self-loathing, self-aggrandizing speech to the Poem Writers Guild.

AN LA AGENT TALKS ABOUT LOVE, or more accurately about power and abandonment—love Hollywood-style.

GOOD-BYE, JACK: A kid works the drive-thru window at Jack-in-the-Box.

The night they take the clown away he realizes he's “just another little drive-thru guy in orange and brown, alone on the graveyard shift.”

JOCKO THE CLOWN, backstage in a moment of crisis, suffers from extreme “mime block.”

OL' GATOR is an aging TV weatherman who has been kicked off the air for politically incorrect statements.

His farewell apology skids into a near breakdown.

DIARY OF A VOYEUR chronicles a writer, who instead of meeting his deadlines, spends months obsessing and writing about a couple in a window across his courtyard.

THE NIGHT ALI LOST: A lifelong men's room attendant at the Roseland Ballroom relates with grace his point of view of the Big Band era, racism and bodily functions.

JAGUAR JESUS: A young man listens to a street saxophone player.

The two trade riffs, each “stroking the night, blazing out of control.”