Monologue
About Spontaneous Combustion — Aunt Emily
Sherry Kramer
Aunt Emily: Parties? Oh my yes. I sometimes think it was why I never married, didn’t ever want the parties to stop, all the young men lined up, begging me to find room for their names on my card. Of course it was work, there’s no saying it wasn’t, I used to have nightmares. I would dream that all those young men had come barging into the house, but there was no food to be had anywhere, the silver not polished, and I had nothing to wear but a ratty old bathrobe, all my pretty dresses had disappeared, but there they would all be, begging to be fed, thirsty as day laborers for some punch. And I had to dance with all of them, with my hair up in braids and my robe coming open at every step. I’d finish with one only to be dragged out by another. (She becomes self-conscious and rubs the silver harder.) Why did they want to dance with me? I could never see it.
I was no great beauty, after all.