The first American boy
(a lecture. By a cub scout. Who will become an eagle scout. Who will become a senator and a military man and the president of the united states of America. Until he is shot in the head and reverts back to his cub scout days because he has lost so much of his brain matter. And then lives out the rest of his life on the Appalachian trail, coming out only for the once a year battle of gettysburg reenactment. The year is 1957.)
CUB SCOUT:
let it be forever known that the first American boy did not climb in the trees. Nor did he make slingshots or makebelieve guns out of branches he found on the ground.
The first American boy was not obsessed with ladies underparts or placing his underparts into their underparts.
The first American boy was interested in finding new things, curious and bold he ventured out into the west in search of new lands, new adventures, new friends.
The first American boy did not, would not, could not have harmed the American Indian because the first American boy couldn’t hurt a fly. The first American boy had his vices. He remembers the sandy blonde hair of the woman he once loved. He writes poetry about the curves of her body reminding him of the curves of the Colorado river. He wonders which he misses more. The first American boy misses the Colorado river more than the woman he once loved with the sandy blonde hair. The first American boy doesn’t mind that she doesn’t call on his birthday, even though he called her. They’re not so different her and him. They went to the same Catholic School and read the same comic strips and laughed the same about Archie or Sister Mary Margaret’s mole.
The first American boy has three types of desire. Real desire. Fake desire and a desire that borders between the two. Irony perhaps.
link
Ripped from yesterday’s headlines
Train station
A man my age is sitting at a train station. Bags scattered around him. Ge stares at the ground and he begins to cry slowly.
A black man, probably two and a half times my age sits down next to him. He notices a banjo case at the younger mans feet. Points and says “huh”.
Younger man
What’s all of this bullshit mean?
Older man
I haven’t figured that out yet.
Younger man
Well when you do, can you let me know?
Older man
Only if I figure it out before the train gets here, otherwise it’ll be decades before another chance encounter like this, and I don’t believe in chance encounters.
Younger man
Me neither.
Older man
……..
(pointing at the banjo) why don’t you play something. Something to remember a chance encounter
(the younger man pulls out the banjo and plays quietly at first, singing through some tears. Maybe it’s easy like Sunday morning. Maybe alone again (naturally). But maybe, just maybe it’s a song none of us have heard before, but we all find it enchantingly beautiful and unreal. Like clouds or salt crystals.)
link
i’m a bad bad person
I’ve been terrible at updating this, and I apologize. That was completely my bad. I have been writing more in my notebooks rather than here on the blog, which was the intention of the blog in the first place. I am currently transcribing from the notebooks and have a goal to post the majority of those plays today.
AND I PROMISE TO YOU, dear reader, THAT FROM NOW ON THE PLAYS WILL BE POSTED HERE ON THE DAILY!
-ap.
link
thirty-nine
39. (10/23/2009)
The eulogy for Charles T. Bloom
[Billy O’Donnell takes the podium.
The crowd at the funeral quiets down a bit.
Billy has always had an incredible knack for words.
Funny, and passionate, Billy can easily make someone think,
even while making them laugh, or experience another emotion.]
billy
…
We live in a frictionless universe.
Friction is a myth.
There is nothing to stop us from going on
And on
And on
And on
Forever. Like sliding on ice.
There is no heat, or thermal energy, as once expected.
There is electrical energy, there is no mechanical or chemical energy.
In actuality, there is only one form of energy in the world.
Potential energy.
The child born holds incredible potential. He could be anything.
He is potential.
Potential in a roundish, gooey mass.
Charles, was a man who capitalized on this potential, and transferred it into kinetic energy. Into heat.
You see, I’m… I’m not a physicist, nor am I religious, sorry rabbi, but I do believe in things.
And for a long time…I believed in Chuck. I believed that everything he said, every word that came out of his mouth was true, and earnest, and fact, and held so much of the world in it.
For a long time, when we were friends in college, he could talk to anyone. He could say anything, and our professors always said things that made me jealous, like “Charley, you are such an old soul,” or “Chuck, you’re wise beyond your years.” And when we left, and I ended up putzing around for some time, doing nothing, living in my parents basement an smoking weed, chuck was out there doing something. Making a difference.
And I hated him for it.
…
I’m sorry charles.
…
a man like charles.
He’s gotta lot of names.
Has to.
Charles isn’t enough.
It never is.
…
not for someone like him.
link
thirty-eight
38. (10/22/2009)
an apology to those who’ve had to deal with me.
[Enter a man.
He sets up a typewriter.
This takes a long time.
He notices that he doesn’t have a table.
He walks off stage.
He gets a small fold up table,
the kind you have to unfold each leg on.
He sets it up.
This takes a long time.
He doesn’t have a chair.
He walks off stage.
He enters with an office chair,
the kind with wheels and many levers,
still in its box.
He puts the chair together.
This takes a particularly long time.
Opening the box.
Reading the instructions.
Realizing the instructions are printed in german.
He reads them aloud.
He can not speak german,
But german is almost like English.
English is Germanic.
Right?
He pushes the chair to the table.
Sits in it.
Adjusts the lever.
Begins to type.]
MAN
An apology to those who’ve had to deal with me.
I’m sorry.
[end]
link
thirty-eight
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MOTHER TANGO: What’s all this
LEROY: That’s Gomez’s things.
MOTHER TANGO: All of it?
LEROY: All of it.
Mother Tango looks through the things.
LEROY: That’s not to say that these are all the things that he owned, but all of the things on the table are Gomez’s things.
Mother Tango picks up artifacts, newspapers, pictures of JFK.
LEROY: Because, he didn’t live here.
These are only the things he kept at work.
Mother Tango continues to look.
LEROY: I’m sure he had more things where he did live.
In an apartment,
or a house,
or a con-dough-minimum.
Mother Tango looks some more.
LEROY: A duplex, maybe.
MOTHER TANGO: Why JFK?
LEROY: Obsessed with ‘im.
‘im and pictures.
MOTHER TANGO: Pictures?
LEROY: He had a collection of pictures.
He had this idea he was gonna print every picture that come up on the internet and print them out and put them in a book.
Did all right at first, then the internet took off.
MOTHER TANGO: Thank you so much.
LEROY: Sure thing.
Leroy stands there.
MOTHER TANGO: That will be all, thank you.
LEROY: Oh right…
Leroy begins to leave.
LEROY: Say.
Sister Tango.
MOTHER TANGO: Mother, actually.
LEROY: My mistake.
MOTHER TANGO: Most people make it, it’s the habit and all, I understand. What is it my child.
LEROY: Welp,
Mother Tango,
I was wondering if you might hear some of my sins.
Purify me. While you’re here.
MOTHER TANGO: Only Priests can do that.
LEROY: Really?
MOTHER TANGO: Unfortunately.
LEROY: I gotta tell someone.
MOTHER TANGO: Yes, I’m sure. I understand.
LEROY: You sure you couldn’t?
Just this once.
MOTHER TANGO: I’m afraid its important.
link
thirty-seven
37. (10/20/2009)
37 cardboard cutouts.
[on stage are 37 cardboard cut outs.
They are 37 frames of an actual video of a man being shot. ]
link
Thirty-six
36. (10/19/2009)
an American werewolf in Botswana.
A werewolf walks on to stage.
A man is there as well.
WEREWOLF
Nice night, huh?
MAN
Yes sir.
WEREWOLF
Where am I?
MAN
Botswana.
WEREWOLF
Botswana?
I know nothing about Botswana, including how I got here.
MAN
The Republic of Botswana is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. Citizens of Botswana are called “Batswana” (singular: Motswana), regardless of ethnicity.
WERWEWOLF
You don’t say. I would have guessed, by the name you know, that Botswana was in Eastern Europe. With one of the ‘stans. You know, Kazakhastan.
MAN
In the 19th century, hostilities broke out between the Tswana inhabitants of Botswana and Ndebele tribes who were making incursions into the territory from the north-east. After appeals by the Batswana leaders Khama III, Bathoen and Sebele for assistance, the British Government put “Bechuanaland” under its protection on 31 March 1885. The majority of Setswana-speaking people today live in South Africa.
WEREWOLF
I hate fighting. My wife and I fight all the time. She’s always like: “where do you go on nights when there’s a full moon” and I always say something like “Get off my back!” and she’ll always be like “what happened to us?
MAN
In June 1964, Britain accepted proposals for a democratic self-government in Botswana.
WEREWOLF
No way! I was born in June. But not in sixty-four. In eighty-four.
MAN
Botswana is the world’s 45th-largest country (after Ukraine). Mashatu Game Reserve is privately owned: located where the Shashe River and Limpopo River meet in eastern Botswana. The other privately owned reserve is Mokolodi Nature Reserve near Gaborone. There are also specialized sanctuaries like the Khama Rhino Sanctuary (for Rhinoceros) and Makgadikgadi Sanctuary (for Flamingos). They are both located in Central District.
WEREWOLF
I went to the zoo in my city, the city where I’m from….not for me.
MAN
Botswana has been hit very hard by the AIDS pandemic; in 2006 it was estimated that life expectancy at birth had dropped from 65 to 35 years.
WEREWOLF
Does Botswana have a lot of coconuts? Is that what botswana’s have?
MAN
There are days that I wish I didn’t live in Botswana.
WEREWOLF
Excuse me?
MAN
Days that I wish I were born in Germany, or Russia, or even our neighbor country south Africa. It is not because I wish to be somewhere better, somewhere nicer, but only because I wish to be from somewhere else. To be the personal tourist information for peope in another country’.
WEREWOLF
There are days I wish I weren’t a werewolf. Particularly on days with nights with full moons. Those are the days and nights that I am always snappy with my wife and co-workers.
MAN
Are you going to kill me?
WEREWOLF
No.
I don’t think I am…
…
Tell me something about another country.
MAN
I know only about Botswana.
WEREWOLF
Just make it up, I won’t know.
MAN
What country would you like me to talk about?
WEREWOLF (Taking a seat on the ground and looking up a the man)
Any country you like.
MAN
Okay….
There is no government in Antarctica. No. Instead, the penguins all gather at the north pole and push one another towards an edge. The penguin who stays in the center long enough reigns as the emperor of the emperors. That penguin has then the tough job of saying which penguins must venture to the edges of the ice and swim to the zoos in New York or Washington DC or Los Angeles or Berlin.
He talks to the werewolf about countries.
End.
link
thirty-five
35. (10/18/2009)
Doctors.
1
No…No… please don’t try and tell me how it works. I don’t know how it works. You don’t know how it works. And nobody can tell me how the whole thing “works”… but that’s the point, I think. If no one can tell you how it works then it just works and that’s it and that’s how the whole thing works. It works because you don’t know. That’s how I know I can be with a woman for fifteen years, and force myself to think I love her, and meet someone else, someone new, someone completely different and she can jump into my life and make me feel like that. And I don’t know what to do. So what’s that doctor?
2
I’m a doctor of philosophy, not of psychiatry.
1
And so that’s what I’m saying! You can’t tell me, and even if you could, even if in some bizarre twist of fate, you could tell me what this love shit was, I don’t think I’d want you to. Because… love is… love is not knowing but going with it anyway. I think… I think it’s the biggest adventure you can take and to be truly truly brave is to love someone… Ugh…I sound like a greeting card for the uninspired… I’m sorry I shouted at you.
2
You didn’t shout, you got passionate. People shouldn’t apologize for being passionate they should expect apologies from those who don’t get that way.
1
and the first thing I say to myself when I wake up is, looks like you’re at another day, looks like you’ve got to make it through this now. Why’d you wake up?
Why’d you even bother to wake up at all because now, well now, you’ve got to make it through this whole day. All twenty-four hours of it. Maybe you should try and go back to sleep, but that’s cheating isn’t it.
Isnt’ it?
2.
I’m sorry?
1
that’s cheating. You can’t just kep going back to bed over and over anv over again, because eventually you have to wake up again and that kills people. It kills people to have to realize that, that they’ll be getting back up again.
Because of all of the perks of being alive, sleeping is the best.
2
I’m sorry I don’t have more to tell you. My background is in American literature of the reformation.
1
that’s what I could use.
2
information?
1
a reformation.
link
thirty-four
34. (10/17/2009)
forget it.
[A cell phone rings.
It continues to ring.
It rings again.
No one answers it.
Brian enters.]
SAM (off-stage)
Who is it?
BRIAN
No one.
SAM (entering)
Well that’s not true.
Brian
What do you mean?
SAM
Well, I fit was no one, the phone wouldn’t have rung would it have?
BRIAN
It was my ex-girlfriend.
SAM
Oh.
BRIAN
Yeah.
SAM
What did she have to say?
…
I love you?
…
I want you back?
BRIAN
I don’t know… I didn’t pick up.
[the phone beeps]
SAM
She left a message.
BRIAN
I guess so.
SAM
Well…
Are you going to listen to it?
BRIAN
I wasn’t planning on it.
Not right now at least.
SAM
Why not?
BRIAN
Well, because I’m with you right now and I want to spend my time with you and I don’t care what my ex-girlfriend has to say about anything because I love a new girl now and I’m with that new girl.
SAM
Yeah.
Why don’t we listen to it together?
BRIAN
What?
SAM
You could open the phone, and put it on speaker phone and we could listen to it.
BRIAN
No.
SAM
Why not?
BRIAN
Because I don’t know what it says. It could be private.
SAM
What do you have private with your ex-girlfriend?
BRIAN
Most of it…
I mean, nothing. I just, I just don’t want her to have said something that will make you mad.
SAM
Well, I’m already a little mad.
BRIAN
I know, and it’s a little ridiculous.
SAM
You’re a little ridiculous.
BRIAN
You know, I didn’t flip out like this when last week you went and had dinner with your ex-fiance.
SAM
So?
That’s different.
BRIAN
That’s different?
How is that different?
SAM
Well, he called me and told me he was suicidal.
BRIAN
No he didn’t.
SAM
No, but he said he was sad.
BRIAN
Why?
SAM
Because he broke up with me in the first place.
BRIAN
I thought you broke up with him.
SAM
The first time. But then we got back together and he broke up with me.
BRIAN
Oh.
SAM
I told you that.
BRIAN
Nope.
SAM
Yes.
I’m sure I did.
BRIAN
That sounds like something I would have remembered, knowing that you were going to dinner with him.
SAM
Okay.
I’m sorry.
It must have slipped my mind.
BRIAN
I can’t believe that.
SAM
What do you want me to say?
BRIAN
I don’t know. I’d like for you to tell me the truth.
SAM
I told you!
I went to dinner with my ex-fiance.
He touched my leg under the table.
BRIAN
He what?
SAM
He touched my leg, while we were sharing endless breadsticks at the olive garden,
He put his leg on my knee and then he sort of… you know…
[she makes a hand move showing a clench}
SAM
He sort of grabbed my thigh.
BRIAN
He what?!?
SAM
I told him to stop.
And he did.
He stopped grabbing my thigh.
BRIAN
You didn’t leave?
SAM
He was hurting, Sam. He was a broken man. I couldn’t just leave him.
And I had just ordered the eggplant parmesan.
BRIAN
WHAT?!
SAM
Yeah. It’s delicious there, you really should consider going sometime.
BRIAN
Well, maybe I’ll call my ex-girlfriend up and see if she wants to go.
SAM
I’ve met her before. Her trailer trash haircut wouldn’t be welcome in a fancy establishment like an olive garden.
BRIAN
I really don’t understand why you didn’t leave.
SAM
Brian, there are some things that you just won’t understand until you fiance someone.
[“fiance” is pronounced like “Fee-Ah-Nce” like sconce.]
SAM
Besides, we were having such a lovely time and I had another margarita coming.
BRIAN
You ordered a margarita at the olive garden?
SAM
Oh sure, the italians are famous for it. So anyways, he was touching my… you know, under the table when the waitress arrived.
BRIAN
Wait your what?
SAM
My you know.
BRIAN
No… No I don’t know.
SAM
Do I have to spell it out for you?
BRIAN
Yes.
Yes you do.
SAM
Well.
V
A
G
I
N
BRIAN
Okay.
Okay. You should go now.
SAM
The man was sick. His heart had been broken into a million thousand pieces and I was just trying to help him remember what it was to feel again.
BRIAN
By letting him touch the only thing that’s private?
SAM
Well, it’s my body.
BRIAN
and they were his fingers…and you and I are in love.
SAM
Sure we are, but you know I’m a philanthropist!
BRIAN
That’s not philanthropy. That’s whoring yourself out.
SAM
He didn’t pay me.
BRIAN
He bought you olive garden.
SAM
SO?
BRIAN
Please.
Please tell me nothing else happened?
SAM
Well.
No .
Not at the restaurant.
BRIAN
I can’t hear this.
I can’t hear any more of this.
SAM
Well, at least I’m not calling my ex-boyfriends all the time.
BRIAN
You got finger-banged on the vinyl booths of an olive garden!
SAM
These booths were canvas, thank you very much.
BRIAN
And then he probably fucked you in some seedy motel room!
SAM
What kind of girl do you think I am?
We made love in his rented dodge stratus.
BRIAN
we’re through.
SAM
What?
Baby. You can’t do this to me.
BRIAN
I can.
And I am.
SAM
Well, at least now you can call back your ex-fucking-girlfriend.
BRIAN
Yeah, I guess I should.
‘Cause if you remember, she works at Zales, and I have to cancel a fucking engagement ring.
SAM
Oh.
BRIAN
Yeah.
SAM
Oh my god!
Brian!
…
I do!
[a long pause.]
BRIAN
You really are an idiot.
[Blackout.]
link
thirty-three
33. (10/16/2009)
The window seat
F and R
R
I think it matters.
F
It doesn’t.
R
Isn’t it a matter of opinion?
F
No.
R
Well couldn’t whether or not it is a matter of opinion could be a matter of opinion?
F
Nope.
R
Well couldn’t that just be–
F
Stop.
R
I’m just saying.
F
I know.
I’d like you to stop just saying.
R
Fine.
F
I just don’t like to talk about things like that, preferences like that, when so many people in the world don’t have the option to have preferences like that.
Whether they want
Dark chocolate
Or milk chocolate. Or no chocolate at all for that matter.
Some people don’t get to choose window seat or aisle seat because they always have to be in the middle seat.
R
Or can’t fly at all.
F
Oh, I think everyone can fly these days.
R
Oh.
F
And think about all of those poor poor people who died in the nine eleven.
R
The nine eleven?
F
Yeah. The nine eleven? The attacks on freedom?
R
Oh…THE nine eleven. I thought you said the… Nine eleven.
F
Imagine being in an aisle seat on one of those planes.
R
Imagine being on one of those planes.
F
No.
Mine’s worse.
R
Why?
F
Because it’s one bad thing, plus an even worse thing.
R
Which one is the worse thing.
F genuinely has to think about it.
F
I think that that, is ultimately, in the eye of the beholder.
R
Like booty.
F
Booty?
R
Pirate’s treasure?
F
I think you mean Beauty.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
R
Really?
F
Yeah, that’s the saying.
R
Oh.
What about one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
Wouldn’t that mean that booty is in the eye of the beholder.
F
I…
I suppose it would.
R
So one man’s booty is another man’s beholder.
F
That’s a stretch.
R
Yeah.
…
yeah it is.
link
thirty-one
31. (10/14/2009)
oh to be young and in love and in paris (after Baudelaire)
G and H sitting in a small café in Detroit.
It is quaint.
It is lovely.
Wrought iron tables and chairs.
Overpriced scones and cappucinos.
It will be out of business in a few hours.
Or weeks.
Who knows, but the imminence looms over all of the conversations.
G
I wonder if somewhere else in the world someone else is having the same conversation.
H
I don’t think it’s to ridiculous of a thing to assume.
G
Really?
H
Yeah. I mean. We just got her, expressed a few pleasantries, and then said nothing for close to forty-five seconds and looked at the menus.
G
I guess you’re right.
H
I can’t believe how much they charge for a cappuccino.
G
I can’t believe you drink cappucinos.
H
Sometimes.
Only sometimes.
Silence.
G
I want to wear stripes.
H
Uh-huh.
G
I want to go to sleep and wake up in Paris in the nineteen sixties enjoying cappucinos before the Americans get them.
SO many people I know have been to SO many different places and when I wake up, I feel only slightly compelled to exit my bedroom.
And even then it’s only for coffee.
H
You’ve been to many different places.
G
Where?
H
Here for example.
G
Yes,
I’ve been here and there per se.
To many places.
But never to many different places.
They are all the same.
But I often think to myself, maybe I am just the same in different places.
That there is little to no solution to this problem and that the world is really just different through different eyes.
H (back to the menu)
What about a “Rabbit Salad”?
G
Oh, to be in love and young in paris,
Or to be old and tired in moscow,
Or to be middle-aged and stressed in Boca Raton.
To be exiting the womb in Baltimore, Maryland,
To be entering the grave in Frankfurt, Germany.
To be questioning your own existence in some place exotic:
Cuba…Nigeria…Philadelphia!
H
Philadelphia’s not all that exotic.
G
No, the real Philadelphia! Deep in the heart of the amazon rain forest.
Imagine white water rafting and thinking about your kids, the ones you’ve never met, but still send alimony checks to.
Or walking through Auschwitz and remembering the friends from college, high school or middle school who’s yearbooks are signed with hopeful marks in your blue gel writer pen: KIT or Keep In Touch. You never did though.
What about the man on the bus three days ago who rubbed up against you accidentally, and then kept doing it, where would you think of him?
H
Did that happen to you?
G
Maybe in front of a particularly moving painting in the Venice Guggenheim, equal apprehension over the rising waters as the thought of that man’s corduroy rubbing slowly up against the tight denim of your Capri pants.
Or what about grandpa?
H
What about him?
G
Where will you think about pulling the plug?
H
I never pulled my grandfather’s plug.
G
I think staring down the grand canyon at the tiny river in the bottom, when you think:
“such a tiny river made such a giant canal.”
And the metaphor for his life won’t be lost.
H
Yeah.
G
For me, though, it’s all nothing in comparison to the moment right now, right here, with you.
H
oh.
G
Because right now there is such potential for anything to happen. We could go to those places. We could live in those worlds, those new times, those new feelings. We could be in love in paris.
H
Do you love me?
G
Or we could just stay here and that would be all right, too.
We could just sit here, in Detroit, at this café.
And drink six dollar cappucinos.
And think about al of these things.
H
Yeah.
…
let’s do that for now.
link
thirty
30. (10/13/09)
Halloween Everywhere
a nationwide tactic.
Denver, Colorado.
A husband goes into the bathroom early in the morning.
He shaves.
His wife walks in.
Just like any other day.
He cuts himself shaving.
Blood sprays everywhere.
She screams.
He tells her it’s a joke.
She hits him in the chest.
They laugh.
New York, New York.
A man gets hit by a car.
A woman screams.
A man runs up to him to help.
The man says he’s dead.
There’s nothing they can do.
The police come.
An ambulance.
A coroner.
They zip the man up.
The bag moves.
The man gets up.
Undead.
He bites someone.
That someone turns into a zombie.
They attack the nation,
secretly telling each person they pretend to bite
that it is all part of an elaborate hoax
that the united states is playin on
germany
great Britain
canada
mexico
and france.
San Francisco, California
A woman enters a blood bank,
long white fangs protruding from underneath her lips.
She walks into the storage room and drinks packs of blood
By poking into them wither pointed teeth.
Cedar Rapids, Iowa
A pumpkin rises from the earth.
A man on a horse, his head gone, picks it up.
Turns out his head is just underneath the jacket, so it looks fake.
It’s not real.
He laughs in the night and children all over Iowa wet their pants.
A man in Alabama puts razor blade in the candy he gives out,
but that happened forty years ago and he only gave it to his nephew.
The nation is terrified.
A man in Vermont kills twenty people using an ax,
And hides the bodies under his floor boards.
A man in Texas ties his wife to a radiator
And spits on her face.
A woman in Kentucky
Castrates her husband and runs to a dumpster behind
A seven eleven to dispose of his manhood.
A transvestite in Salt Lake City hires a man from
Demmin, Germany to come to her and murder her on webcam.
A convicted sex offender in Portland, Oregon
Watches your children cross the street wearing
Their “pretty Halloween costumes.”
A woman in Atlanta, Georgia
Apologizes over and over.
“I’m sorry…I’m sorry…”
for something she’s sure she never did.
A friend of a friend in a suburb in Michigan
Accidentally shoots his father.
They were hunting deer.
A tornado touches ground in Tennessee,
But no one sees it.
A UFO flies over a small house in Glen Burnie, Maryland.
Or at least the two kids lying outside watching the sky think it is.
For a moment, they catch their breath, terrified, but excited, at the endless possibilities and hope this world brings.
And for a moment, everything is okay again.
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twenty-nine
Preset on stage there is a small table stage center with a large pitcher of water. Next to it is a small glass.
A man, aged thirty walks on stage. He pours water into the small glass and gulps the entirety of it down. Now that I think of it, maybe it’s a stool. But the flat kind that you can rest glasses of water on without fear that they might crash to the floor.
He looks out at the audience.
MAN: I’ve loved many women over my short life.
I’ve loved Kathies
And Cheryls
And Beccas
And Beccies
And Maries
And I even loved a Candi once. With an I.
She was a dancer.
I met her over the internet. In a chatroom about dogs.
She had a sunny disposition. She was sweet and beautiful and had both of her nipples pierced.
She said it attracted the right sort of clientele.
I didn’t ask.
But no one meant more to me than my dear sweet Hannah.
He looks at the dog dish.
She was beautiful.
The way her hair would sway in the morning sunlight.
The way she would turn to me in her half-awake sleep and smile as if to say “good morning”. I could read it in her eyes.
The way she would beg me to take her on long walks, down to the pier. Strip to almost nothing and jump off and swim with her.
But the best…
The best were her kisses.
Pause. He reflects.
Her kisses were like snowflakes. Each one was different.
It was like she individually selected the one that was right for the moment.
The kiss with no tongue, just a nibble on the side of my cheek, or the one when I couldn’t stop her from kissing me, jumping on top of me and licking my face, things I’d be embarrassed to tell my mother about.
From a small bag he pulls out a dog dish. Printed on the side it reads: Hannah.
Hannah was a bitch. The dog kind of bitch, not the woman kind.
She was a golden retriever and she died on Monday. I still have all of this dog food and her dish, so I set it out for her, thinking I’ll hear her nails on the hardwood floor or the kitchen tile and I’ll make a mental note that I need to take her back to the vet and get her nails cut.
He now fills this bowl with water and then places it on the floor next to the small table.
Hannah was 12 years old.
She had been with me for 11 and a half of those twelve.
I had rescued her from the pound.
She was small for her breed.
She slept on my bed.
At the foot when I shared it, but up next to me when I slept alone.
She never judged.
He pours another glass of water.
Three years ago I met Hanna.
He pulls out another dog dish. Printed on the side it reads: Hanna.
Hanna was a bitch. The woman kind of bitch, not the dog kind.
Hanna had an unnerving allure. Something in her eyes.
They said don’t come near me because I’ll bite.
Not Hannah the dog, but Hanna the woman.
Hannah the dog would never bite.
He pours a little water into Hannah’s Bowl.
I’m not afraid of some teethmarks, so I spoke to her.
She blew me off.
I spoke to her again. And again. And again.
Until I finally broke her down and he gave in to my tries.
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