Pink Lemonade

Mika Onyx Johnson

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781350292598
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Theatre Playwriting

Was the juice worth the squeeze? Just when Mika was starting to feel at home in their own body, they find themselves caught between Simmi who's sweet like sugar but ain't a lesbian and Token Toni who loves a bitta bashment and only dates black and brown butches. How can they catch a break when straight women are like junk food? In Mika Onyx Johnson's Edinburgh Fringe 2019 smash hit Pink Lemonade, original beats collide with poetry and movement to create an explosive autobiographical piece of storytelling. This edition is published to coincide with its transfer to the Bush Theatre, London in September 2021.

Mika enters the space, they have sex in many different ways, it’s sensual and a bit chaotic, there is music, it’s a mood.

Mika (some kinda euphoria moment from a fat orgasm) Wooooooooooo. Fuck. Shit.

They smile and gather themself.

You know sometimes all you need is a good wank, your body is your own, do with it what you will, there’s a lot of power in connecting with your own body, on your own terms, you know what’s good for YOU . . . cuz it’s your body, and since i’ve rediscovered myself my sex game has really levelled up, variety n that. I spent £300 on a dick recently, £300 . . . and trusssss me, it was worth every penny. Something happens to you when you strap up, something shifts, it makes me want to change my name . . . again, to something like Titan or Storm or Daddy Big Beef, I don’t know.

I’ve been a busy boi, spreading my wings, tryin new tings . . . you know getting about.

Testosterone. That shit is wild, the effects, the changes, the healing, the growth . . . literally, my clit went from minnie to MIGHTY.

My junk is THICK, like thicker than a snicker THICK. Second puberty at twenty-nine. Voice dropsss, it wasn’t the liquor that put

hairs on my chest. And the HORNINESS, I mean lawd god! I want it all the time, for real. Hormones are amazing man. So I thought I’d explore a bit, it’s like I have this sexual compass right and whatever direction it takes me in I just follow it, I survey the area and if it feels safe no unexpected hazards I enter it.

I’ve been hooking up with a bag of people, met some folx on the apps, tinder, bumble, scruff,

grindr, . . . okcupes, fucking hit n miss though innit? Like big misses mostly but I did get a little bit lucky, beautiful queers, some with very questionable profiles, if I see one more white queer with hashtag BLM I swear to god, just stop it, stop it now. I read all this liberal gargon on profiles and i’m like what is a fucking liberal anyway? Vegan, climate change, fuck Tory scum, Social justice, yoga, plant parent, anarchist, ACAB . . . and on weekends we sniff coke and gentrify cities 365 days a year.

And yet . . . I still fuck the white liberals. I hooked up with a therapist recently but it turned into an actual therapy session and they said they don’t work for free, sad times for me cuz they gave amazing head. And then I tried a threesome with two guys but how do you work that dynamic when everyone wants to be a top, we just argued for about three hours and then ordered pizza, then there’s the cambridge graduate, very intelligent, FIYAH, the skin, the shea butter, she’s next level . . . but patronising AF!

She’s coming into her queerness, and she really likes to make it known, she’s read Gender Trouble, Judith Butler, a bag of times apparently, I said is it . . . good for you, white people . . . with their inaccessible books. I told her we don’t need to read Judith, one word c-o-l-o-n-i-s-a-t-i-o-n. She knows this but she just loves to read dense repetitive shit that makes no word of sense to me.

Recently she asked to fuck me with my own strap. I said nah babe that can’t be, I’m obviously very protective over my accessories, then she calls me repressed.

Beat.

Like how am I repressed? How? She said i’m scared of being fucked by a furiously dominant femme.

Thing is i’m not, i’m an open book. She can fuck me if she wants just not with my dick.

Do you think she ever fucked any of her ex-boyfriends? These cis dudes? Probably not.

Sometimes she compares me to them, I’m nothing like her exes, I’m a trans dem!

Why do these women always compare me to their ex-boyfriends?

Pause.

You know what I’ll just keep fucking myself, less stress, i’m satisfied, it’s simpler.

A long pause, the past is rising.

I’m not like her ex-boyfriends, am I? It’s jarring, jarring . . . so fucking jarring.

Mika is reflecting, then their delivery changes, more poetic, they’ve gone inside their own head.

PRESENTLY

I just wanted sex

I just wanted my body to intersect

I’ve been deep diving head first

Into someone’s crotch into someone’s curves Nerves

Activated

Admiring myself naked

All these queers that i’ve been dating

Fucking.Sucking.Licking.Kissing.Touching.Loving In this

new

Freedom there’s still boxes i’m locked in I remember a time

Before this

Before i wrote my own thesis

When masculine was a comparison

Toxic

Poison

When she would validate

Thinking back to that time

Starts to percolate

Memories start to take

Hold

Triggers make the past unfold

Now i’m wrapped up

in these past thoughts

All sorts

Liquorice

Acquired taste I’ve been gibbering

Gabbering

To myself in closed spaces

How i’ve changed but her face I still can’t erase it

Tryna misplace it

Still on me like skin yes i’ve exfoliated

If you could see me now what would you think

Do you miss me

Do you see me when you’re sleepin Or daily day dreamin

I’ve been wondering

Been pondering

About us

About my growth since then it’s just

I can’t seem to shake you

I can’t seem to move past

And I ask myself

Who am I now

Who is this person

I still feel your shadow in the background like your lurking

I think about that time together

Me navigating

Me on the sidelines

Me without a map yeah tryna find A way to your heart and a

Way to my inner

Clarity

Transparency

Masculinity

Seeping through pores

Pause

And of course

You think this show is about you

Half true

Miniscule

But the mark you left on me is incredible

Lemme backtrack

Rewind recall

Cuz in this moment It’s mad that I even knew you at all

My sense of self is close to a peak

Gotta drop dead weight though in order to reach

But letting go is harder when it’s you that I see

It’s this damn seed that you’ve planted in me.

Transition.

Mika Do we ever stop performing? Do we?

I think about how much of that performing

is actually us think about people . . . I think

about creating a persona for people . . . for

women. I spent most of my twenties...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Cast
• Biographies
• About Mika Onyx Johnson
• Original performance
• Thank you
• A Note on the Play
• Just a lickle backstory
• Contents
• Pink Lemonade
• Notes
• Chapter
• eCopyright