A Short Play from University (2008)

Characters
Man James Patterson 
Woman Painter
Plumber Cat



Man: Did you call the plumber in?
Woman: Yeah. Suppose I did. Sink’s broken, what did you expect?
Man: Just like to know is all, monies spent and such.
Woman: Not yours.
Man: I know, I know... I wouldn’t mind it being so you know.
Woman: …
Man: Maybe we could go out some time…
Woman: Please, I’m far too full to think about food right now.
Plumber: Sir, do you know much about fly fishing?
Man: What? Well, I guess I don’t. What are-
Plumber: Don’t invite a girl fly fishing is all I’m saying.
Man: and what do you know about success Plumber?
Plumber: Can’t say, suppose it’s an effect more than a goal.
Man: How’s the sink coming, Plumber?
Plumber: Can’t say, too soon to tell.
Man: And what’s your goal, Plumber?
Woman: Would you not distract the work? Besides, we have a lot of work to do ourselves.
Man: Like?
Woman: Nevermind.
Cat: The St Jude’s marathon is today.
Man: Who taught the cat how to talk?
Woman: I thought it’d be cuter if he could talk.
Man: But we were taking it to the vet to have ‘em neutered Thursday.
Woman: So?
Man: Well we can’t now can we?
Woman: Why not?
Man: Well it’s just not the same.
Woman: You’re crazy!
Cat: What’s all this?
Plumber: Seems to be a CD stuck in here.
Man: Oh that may be that Colin Feral movie
Woman: I remember that. Cassandra’s Dream or something wasn’t it?
Man: Horrible movie.
Woman: Horrible movie.
Painter: I rather enjoyed the wooden guns bit.
Woman: Who are you?
Plumber: How did you get it so far down the drain?
Painter: I’m a painter.
Man: A stick.
Cat: When is Thursday?
Plumber: A stick?
Man: I was drunk.
Woman: Did you hire a painter?
Man: No one hires painters. They just come.
Woman: Since when?
Man: The 40’s.
Plumber: Well that’s what has broken your sink.
Man: The painter?
Cat: Figures.
Plumber: No! Cassandra’s Dream.
Painter: How romantic.
Woman: Would you leave?
Painter: The world is too heavy out there I’m afraid.
Plumber: Get a trade. The world is only as heavy as your wallet is not.
Painter: I’ve got a trade. I’m a Painter.
Plumber: Right. And what do you paint?
Painter: Simulacrum presenting sardonic juxtapositions of sensorial experiences.
Plumber: Keeping a diary is no trade I’ve ever heard of. Sounds more like a hobby.
Cat: When is Thursday?
Woman: Where are you going?
Man: Kitchens getting too stuffy for me, thinking I’d go for a walk.
Woman: and just leave me here with these strangers?
Man: Have the hired one fight the unemployed one then.
Painter: I’m not unemployed! 
Woman: No. You wait for these people to leave here and I’ll come with you.
Man: Like a date?
Woman: No.
Plumber: Fly Fisher.
Painter: I should paint you two. The struggle.
Cat: The humanity.
Woman: How do you get rid of a painter?
Man: You have to starve them off I’m afraid.
Woman: At least its Winter.
Plumber: I think I’ve gotten most of the DVD out.
Man: Well where is it?
Plumber: The DVD?
Man: Yes. It was a rental.
Plumber: I don’t think they’ll want it now.
Man: You tradesmen are all alike.
Plumber: What’s that?
Painter: It’s not true! I am nothing like this Plumber.
Woman: I’m getting the broom.
Plumber: Thank you ma’am.
Painter: I’m just saying I sympathize with this man’s bitterness towards a soured art form.
Man: Art form? I just mean to return the movie properly and on time. It fell in the sink was all.
Plumber: -With a stick.
Man: What?
Plumber: You said you used a stick to get it down there.
Man: I was drunk. It’s an accident. 
Woman: You don’t drink.
Man: Doesn’t mean I wasn’t drunk. And besides, it was a horrible movie
Woman: Horrible movie
Cat: Horrible movie
James Patterson: Horrible movie
Woman: Leave.
Painter: Did anyone see the new Art Forum?
Everyone: no.
Painter: Well, recently, a young Vietnamese artist shat a perfect circle.
Man: Incredible.
Woman: Please.
Plumber: How big was it?
Cat: Excuse me?
Painter: 6ft diameter.
Man: Well that’s quite impressive for a little Asian bottom.
Woman: Please.
Painter: No! It was a line drawing.
Plumber: So you mean to say he shat drew a perfect circle.
Painter: I suppose. What difference does that make?
Plumber: Well, to excrete a perfect circle six feet in diameter would be more impressive than Immaculate Conception I think. It’d been the golden egg... much less impressive.
Man: Much less impressive.
Cat: Much less impressive.
Plumber: Well I’m almost done here.
Woman: Oh good. How much will it be costing me?
Plumber: Didn’t take long. Just the service fee: sixty dollars.
Woman: Very well.
Painter: Me too.
Woman: Say again?
Man: Oh what a mess you have made!
Woman: Stop shitting!
Plumber: Have you lost your mind Painter?
Woman: Stop him! Stop shitting Painter!
Man: It’s so loose…
Plumber: He’s going to burst a blood vessel.
Cat: Looks more like Hawaii.
Painter: So…impotent.
Woman: Get out.

Death Speech (Kurtz)

I’m waiting to die. 

Something has happened to me, I can’t doubt it anymore.  It came as an illness does, not like an ordinary certainty, not like anything evident.  It came cunningly.  Little by little… But you see Melrose, daddy has gone and lost his hat.  It’s humid in here.  Moist.  We Brits are born in clinics, free of this life fouling liquid taint permeating the air; we germinate far away from this goo of bacterial fornication.  I’ve lost my clean sheets you see. I’ve sullied each and every undergarment that the clinic presented me with.   Goo.  Goo permeates my loins.  Goo permeates my tendrils and my whispers. I hear you sweating Marcy.  Go on.  It was a slow stain.  I felt driblets each day but couldn’t be sure if I was walking too aslant or perhaps the sun more gay in the East during my journeys.  To be sure however, they fell in session each day like parliament then in the midst of this foul scum one awful night, I realized that the foul green musk had torn apart my undergarments for good.  Thick and oiled as to never dry or be white again.  Can you Imagine Margo?  Never again to feel that pretty white against my flesh…  I was doomed naked and free underneath my clothes. Doomed naked and free. I see you sweating.  You’re good. 

Yes I came here to civilize the howlers.  You sweat so much….  That was my cross to bear, or so I thought.  I would sacrifice my good years to correct God’s lazier ones.  I was groomed for it.  If a man can be measured it is by the weight of his books and sterility in his eyes.  That’s’ what I learned back in the clin..clever London.  I was a smart lad growing up; a quick one at avoiding the switch and clearing the ditch.  I got strict A’s.  I memorized my etiquettes, and logimathics.  I inscribed them all right here on my undergarments.  Look Mortimer.  You see them?  Well of course not.  Not in all of this algae that’s collected.  It’s ruined my underpants.  THIS JUNGLE HAS RUINED MY UNDERPANTS!  These damned hooter monkeys don’t care at all about these problems.  Yes well I’m getting to that boy.  YOU have no idea what the world is like when the clean whites you are raised and schooled in are trounced upon and smeared with jungle jam.  After they tore astray I stayed in bed for days on end.  I killed.  Weeks past, eating, touching myself, trying to remember what the nurse looked like in all her repressive layers.  I saw the maid undressing once by accident when I walked down to the wine cellar during a game of hide and catch, when I was nine.  I told her if she didn’t continue I’d tell my parents she was stealing kitchen supplies.  The blacks rescued me.  Rescued me from my boredom and dreariness.  Rescued me from the chronic masturbation.  I had the knowledge of my new situation, but the wisdom hadn’t arrived.  I gave them books.  They hated the books. A whole sled of books. I gave them humidors.  They hated my humidors.  I taught them about lawn cultivation and presentation.  They shaved my tum tum.  They were born in filth and so too, my green scummy incident was just a matter of time.  No one leaves this world in clean whites.  No one shares the same pair of whites.  Try it now Myrthil.  Let me in your britches!  You’ll see!  There’s no room, not in there.  Not with all the wonton sweat you have percolating.  Good white sweat I bet.  But give it time.  It’ll curdle and befoul your bed sheets too.  These idiots were born shackled, asses defiant. They are my friends and you ripped me away from them!

            Your cotton whites mean nothing to me.  All things fall apart.  My favorite jazz monkey was Merlot.  I named him to keep my sanity.  He was the best.  He loved me.  And now he hates you.  That him there.  He’s been watching you sweat.  He loves sweat.  He taught me how.  He’s good.  Death is something I wasn’t taught before the jungle.  It took air on my tum tum to even think about death personally.  Merlot is gonna be sore at you all tomorrow.  Merlot has all of my books.  They’re safe.   He fed them to the elephants.  As soon as the others come I will have to be off Marcel.  Kingship belongs to a child.  The world will change.  The Dark footed Africans are the least of your worries.  Explain Merlot.  Merlot doesn’t like you.  Horrors will come.  Look with me.  Hospitals will burn.  Undergarments will no longer be fruitful long-term investments.    Cheap factory made wool run offs will replace the clerical whites.  Apes will promenade with other apes.  Pants will fall.  Pants will rise.  The rivers will change.  Mothers will call sons who will call women who will father rivalry and this will break into another world of heresy the likes of which your bloated inner thighs are only just now beginning to feel.  Habits will bathe you.  Habits will hold you.  Habits will spread you like a wine cellar maid.  Choose your hatreds and never let go of them.  Hold them tight and cling to the little foundation you’ve made.  Weather the wobbles and remember your mothers voice and how lovely she could sing with a bottle to her mouth.  Listen to me Merlot!  Don’t fade off again into this night’s shade until your brothers arrive.  Africa is ruined for England without me. You nitwit.  You ignorant jelly.  Let the gnats have at you all.  The London Bridge is falling.  I left the wood.  You nitwit.  I am Damian.  I am France.  Merlot!  Your brothers are feverish!

The horror!  The horror!

Springtime.

MIM:  Break ups are hard only from geographic empathy.  It will fade as soon as I leave and I’ll have a week of Zen before my confidence shatters from the neutral emotioned high that driver seat decision-making has brought to me.  I’ll wear shirts that show a little nipple contour.  I’ll wear cargo shorts with grey socks and feel risky.  I’ll let my hair rise in it’s inborn tendency of pompadour.  I’m going to wink at children.  I’m going to sit with a wide stride and let the curious eye peak into my pearly whites when the sun rides up my legs.  I’m going to blow a stranger.  I’m going to leer at teens with DTF eyes.  I’m going to tell their parents what they’re doing.  I’m aware of my surrounding for at least 7 more days.  Soon the only mortuary for this relationship will be the 3-kilogram bag of MSG left in my cabinet.

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  This tree is looking great.  The pressure to make eye contact is not winning this day.  New girls every night.  No momma, no momma.  Three male friends on the Internet.  Old dad, old dad.  Lady Gaga in Seoul tomorrow.  Gagagagagaga.  Michael Phelps was with me in my last dream.  Lord Ganesh and I were clasped into two of his fourteen golden medals that hung from his swan like neck.  Phelps battled through debris and seaweed but kept sinking down lower.  I could feel his calves burning.  I wanted his soul to burn.  Our country needs a sacrifice to keep the cogs oiled.  And his mermaid soul shines the brightest.  The maroon leviathan drapes near in the heavier water just beneath.  And Phelps burned each of his long muscles.  You build the Olympics on impoverished villages.  Fair play.  BUT we have Phelps.  Burn motherfucker.  Swim Motherfucker.  Do it for your nation motherfucker, our godmother America, and sweet Betty liberty.  Don’t let the slants destroy what John Smith built in his blood brother spit shake with King Sitting Bull.  We are America.  Our pride perks sit out in the open like Liberacci’s homosexuality.  We must never mention it, but dazzle the world with its diamond-studded splendor.  Attrition until vacancies.  McDonalds specialty burgers.  Yaddah yaddah.  Every yahoo knows about these.  But every American is a celebrity.  That’s not universal.  My son will have silken blonde hair and the skin of a hot dog.  And he will do the Big Boot after an Irish Whip and end in a Jumping Guillotine Leg drop.  If he so chooses.  Because he’s American.  And he’s a goddamned star.  She’s still talking.  Ganesh created the Earth in 7 days and then rested.  Michael Phelps eats 7 boxes of imported Oreo Os cereal before every race.  My mother was seven months pregnant when she gave birth to me.  Coincidences are for those who don’t understand God’s mansion and all of it’s plumbing like we do.  Consummate genius has two very different meanings.  One makes you run to change your underwear. 

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MIM:  What can I say here?  What will make all of this ok without flat out saying I’m a child and possibly a personality fraud?  Your purses remind me too much of my mother and the Cherokee tribe.  I hate leather lace.  You make love a gift and not a competition.  I hate games like Animal Crossing, and I love games like Mortal Kombat.  Be more like Sonya Blade and less like Mary the Pig.  Never tell me your name.  I love the first 4 hours of any relationship.  After that, it takes me needing acceptance or a good sense of humor to get me to pay attention.  The void stares back.  The painting stares back.  Mary the Pig stares back.

M: so…

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