Playwright’s note: “Hot Sox Sex” was originally performed at Manhattan Theatre Source. It starred Michael Nathanson as Dalton and Ryan Metcalf as Henry.
HENRY: (Right sock puppet, in a male British accent) I don’t like this at all. (Left sock puppet, in a female British accent) It’s over. Our marriage. Our love. (Male puppet) Will you at least give me back my English accent? (Female puppet) Bugger that. Just keep the children.
(DALTON enters)
DALTON: Hey, man. (HENRY, embarrassed, hides his puppets) Sorry, were you masturbating?
HENRY: Uh. Yes. Sure….masturbating.
DALTON: (Sigh.) Were you enacting celebrity breakups with sock puppets? Again?
HENRY: (Bringing the socks out, sheepish) Uh, hello? It’s called foreplay!
DALTON: Foreplay is for girls. Next you’ll be buying your cock dinner.
HENRY: With any luck I’ll buy it dinner and then it’ll go home with someone else.
DALTON: Dude, only you would get cock-olded by your own cock.
HENRY: I may enact celebrity break-ups with sock puppets for my own purposes of entertainment, but at least I don’t stoop so low as to engage in penis-punnery. That’s the basest form of both penis and pun!
DALTON: But in cockney rhyming slang, cock and sock are interchangeable. Boy I bet that leads to some awkward laundry room prostitute situations.
HENRY: Well we’re not in sockney/cockney, are we?
DALTON: Sockney/cockney? Don’t mock me! Aw, you’re right, I’m so lame! I feel like punching myself! (Walking around, nervously)
HENRY: (Coming up to DALTON, he removes and hands him the sock from his right hand) Here, use this. It’ll soften the blow.
DALTON: (Putting the sock on his right hand) Thanks! (He punches himself in the stomach). Ow! That hurt! Great, now I feel like punching myself for other reasons. (He raises his fist as if to punch himself)
HENRY: (Grabbing DALTON’s wrist) Break the vicious cycle now!
DALTON: (Looking at his raised puppet-clad hand, which HENRY holds at the wrist) Huh. I worried your sock would be gross and crunchy. It’s actually pretty soft. Like a woman’s cheek, properly moisturized.
HENRY: Well of course. I bathe my babies between breakups.
DALTON: (Breaking his hand away) You have got to get a girlfriend.
HENRY: She might take away from my D D D and D time!
DALTON: At least one of those d’s has got to stand for “dorkiness.”
HENRY: Two of them. Dungeons & Dragons, drinking and drugs.
DALTON: You combine booze and drugs, two of the best things ever, with role-playing games? Not cool!
HENRY: But to my credit it’s even less cool sober.
DALTON: Jesus. I’m gonna teach you how to talk to women. We’ll do some role-playing, but not the gay-ass D&D kind. We’ll use the sock puppets.
HENRY: Sure, I mean we’re already wearing them, why waste it?
DALTON: And I’ll be the man, it’s less of a stretch.
HENRY: Do you really have to insult my manhood? It’s not just mean, it’s redundant.
DALTON: (Philosophically) Does anyone really have to do anything? Or are well all just victims of mechanism?
HENRY: You can have the free-will argument with yourself in the shower. Or when you make love to a fat chick.
DALTON: (Wistfully) Arissa? She never returns my calls.
HENRY: The point is, we can discuss cosmic predestination later. But for now we’re trying to get ME laid.
DALTON: Right. (The sock puppet) “Hello, Danielle.”
HENRY: (British accent)”Hello, Bartholemew.”
DALTON: OK see there’s the problem. Why is your sock puppet British?
HENRY: (genuinely curious) I…I don’t know. She just feels Liverpudlian in my hand.
DALTON: Well I’ll tell you, you’re never gonna score with a British chick. British chicks are either classy and way out of your league, or else they’re too skanky for you to handle. There’s no such thing as a mid-level British chick!
HENRY: Now you tell me! Where were you when I was taking European history?
DALTON: Where was I? Behind the science building getting stoned. With the stoners, and the science teachers. That reminds me I should call Roy.
HENRY: Let’s try this again. (sadly) Though without a British accent I am no longer sexually attracted to my own sock puppet.
DALTON: Yeah, life is full of minor tragedy. There is no one single cathartic event.
HENRY: My sock puppet seems to put you in a philosophical mood.
DALTON: You got your causality wrong. I smoked a bowl in the bathroom.(pause) Where were we?
HENRY: (female, non-British)”Hello, Bartholemew.”
DALTON: “Hey. Danielle. What would you like to do today?”
HENRY: “Nothing that involves Dungeons & Dragons, that’s for sure.”
DALTON: “You’ve just described 99% of the sex I’ve ever had! I am so turned on!” (The sock puppets start making out)
HENRY: I had no idea women were so easy. I totally get them now.
DALTON: From a lump of nerd-clay, I have made a man. I feel like a god.
HENRY: You are the best teacher ever! And my kindergarten teacher used to give us pot brownies, until she was arrested for other crimes.
DALTON: I feel like a god, and yet I am but a pawn in God’s idealized structure.
HENRY: Um…Why are our sock puppets still making out?
DALTON: I believe that when you create a fictional character, it has its own volition beyond you. I put a sock on my right hand and the world keeps on turning.
HENRY: So this doesn’t strike you as, like, super-gay?
DALTON: Of course not, your sock puppet’s a girl. So maybe it’s a little gay for you, but not for me.
HENRY: Oh ok. (He surreptitiously puts his hand in his pants)
DALTON: Dude, we’ve been over this. If you’re gonna spank it in front of me, at least wait until I’m either passed out on booze or I’m too stoned to remember. Which I’m not, quite, so feel free to drug me.
HENRY: I swear, this isn’t weird, I’m not thinking about you. I’m embodying the entirely heterosexual lust of my female sock-character.
DALTON: Maybe it’s the pot talking, but that sounds entirely reasonable. (The sock puppet is turned on)”Oh yeah, Danielle. You’re hotter than pantyhose.”
Alaina Hammond is a poet, playwright, fiction writer, and visual artist. Her poems, plays, short stories, nonfiction, paintings, drawings and photographs have been published both online and in print. Her novelette “Jillian, Formerly Known as Frog Girl” was published by Bottlecap Press. Four of her flash fiction stories (“Jane Passes The Bar Exam,” “To Serve In Retail Hell,” “As Numb As I Am” and “Why I Said What I Said To The Bartender”) were nominated for the Pushcart Prize, all in 2025. Additionally, her microfiction pieces “Muffin Or Something” and “Wigless” are both Best Microfiction 2026 nominees.et, playwright, fiction writer, and visual artist. @alainaheidelberger on Instagram.