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Man and Woman Talking


ISSUE:  Summer 2020

 

Lighted room. Man and Woman enter talking.

—I mean, we built the world.

—What do you mean?

—You know what I mean. 
    Calling him masculine. 
    Calling him masculine, as if masculine 
    explains why you don’t like him,
    as if masculine explains the hostility… 
    something is required, something more than that 
    is required, okay? 

—I don’t know what you mean.

—What I mean is that we, 
     and that means men, we men, 
     built the world, 
     so calling him masculine as if, 
     you know what I mean, 
     as if that’s kaput, that’s all you need to say to… 
     to justify the hostility, is…

—What do you mean, men built the world?

—Airplanes. 
    Air-conditioning. 
    Amoxicillin. 
    Chartres. 
    Transcendentalism. 
    Calculus. 
    Obviously. 
    Plato.

—Right. So now he’s Plato because he’s a guy. 
    You should hear yourself sometime: 
    “Men built the world.” 
    Nyah. Nyah. Nyah.

—I hear myself fine. 
    I hear myself beautifully. 
    So then you tell me why exactly don’t you like him?
    I mean, you’ve known him forever.
    You introduced us.

—What do you want me to say? 
     I don’t like him because he reminds me of you? 
     What do you want me to say? 
     What do you want me to say?

Blackout.

Lights come back up. Woman enters in a bathrobe talking to herself. 


Oh God what a pill 
The constant subsurface ruptures of self-glorifying need
The need venting its fumes
The need under a mental landscape stinking with theories
The mental landscape every inch ploughed under built over
The need under the brain fissures venting leaking
The suppurating sores of his inner landscape
The gaping fissures oozing magmatic pus 
The sulfurous sighs
They say we leak 
They say we keep showing them our insides 
The crammed insides they don’t want to see
The slick organs they have them too
That is disgusting projection 
I can’t let him bait me like that though
What is the matter with me 
Why can’t I be like Dominique
Blow it off blow it off
Walking around without a clue
Performing themselves without a clue
We’re all performers he’ll say life is performance 
Another goddamn theory
No we’re not
We’re not we’re better than that we have to be
This isn’t playacting this isn’t a movie
We built the world yeah right
Transcendentalism yeah right
Infect the blankets with smallpox
Sell them to the Indians so they die die die
Then put up your skyscraper mausoleums
Your missile silos
Oh God oh God 
Oh God

Blackout.


Lights come back up. Enter Man stage left, reading out loud from a book. 
He walks across the stage while reading and exits stage right.


“I saw Eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright;
And round beneath it, Time in hours, days, years,
Driv’n by the spheres
Like a vast shadow mov’d; in which the world
And all her train were hurl’d.…”

Blackout.

 

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