A monologue play that will not be about Pot
by Bob Laine
CHARACTERS:
The Jazz Man (male or female)
The Stoner (male or female)
The Linens N Things Employee (male or female)
The Burger King Manager (male)
The Storyteller (male)
The Student (female)
The Homosexual (male)
The Teacher (male or female)
The Dancing Joints (male or female)
This play was first produced in 1999 by Aaron Beall at Toda Con Nada in New York City directed by William Coelius with the following cast: Calvin Alden, Joshua Berg, Josie Whittlesey, Art Wallace, Alexandra Farkas, Yuri Lowenthal, Liz Joyce, Caraid O’Brien, Bob Laine, Jeni Henaghan, Rob Coelius and Sarah Lippman.
Production Notes: This play is meant to be adaptable to any space and any group of actors. The stage directions and transitions between scenes provided were unique to the first production and can be ignored or modified as needed. Three of the monologues, The Burger King Manager, The Homosexual and The Student have a second female character in them and can be staged as duologues with minor adaptations to the script.
Scene 1: The Jazz Man
A snappy Jazz tune plays as lights come up and The Jazz Man enters- snapping his fingers to the music, he wears a cool ensemble and dark glasses, he has a joint hanging from his lips. The music continues as he speaks.
Jazz Man:
this is the play that will not be about pot
the one that won’t be about his pathetic life her pathetic job or their pathetic observations about their allegedly pathetic families
that won’t be about her last ride on a city bus his last meaningful encounter with a homeless person or their last dream slash acid trip
that won’t be about his tooth decay her sexuality or their fear of being intimate with dentists
this is the play that will not be about twenty anything thirty nothing or some generation described by a letter of the alphabet
that won’t be padded with witty pop culture references ostentatious adjectives ala Roget or obscene vulgarities like motherfucker and goddamn shitty fucking asshole
this is that play
the play that will not be about those things
instead
this is the play that will be about...
about...
about...
OK this will be a play about pot
blackout
Scene 2: The Stoner
We hear the sounds of someone playing video games. Lights up on the stoner sitting on a couch with a beer and a pipe nearby, he has a video game controller in his hand. He pauses his game, takes a swig of beer and speaks.
The Stoner:
​
A dog who looked like Abraham Lincoln fucked my brother one night when we were all on acid at Kit’s house. I am convinced of this. OK, maybe actual copulation did not take place, but it sure looked like fucking to me and my brother’s terror was real. Something in the way he vibrated and shouted, ‘I’m scared, I’m scared’ told me he was frightened. And wouldn’t you be frightened if a two hundred pound Great Dane with bucket-sized jowls of saliva dry-humped you while you writhed in the throes of psychedelia?
You bet your ass! Of course I, not being the recipient of the incredible canine’s affections, found the whole thing pretty damn funny, and later, as the acid slid from our bones, even my brother would laugh; cackling over his near loss of bestial virginity.
I want that laugh.
I needed that laugh.
Especially the next morning when I woke up and saw the giant letter B my drunk friend crow barred off a department store under construction staring at me, wanting me to live up to its’ size, daring me to exist as largely as it does.
‘How huge a statement can you make?’ it taunts, ‘how big can you BE!’
Being cross examined by large letters of the alphabet is not a good way to start the morning. Particularly the morning after your brother has been molested by Marmaduke. But on this morning I had bigger worries. You see, yesterday I lost my coat. Now it wasn’t the coat that was important per se, but rather the half ounce of pot I had in my left hand pocket and the extra-large tube of maximum strength Orajel I had in my right hand pocket. So now in addition to being chastised by enormous inanimate objects, I have to wake this morn contemplating who the lucky fuck is who found my coat and spent the night in a delirium of free grass and numb gums. And when that person wakes in the morning will they even begin to think that somewhere some stoner with bad teeth is waking up pot-less and in pain?
Hell No!
But that’s just one of my problems.
I also noticed this morning that I woke up with stigmata.
Again.
Not religious stigmata but stoner stigmata. Which occurs when you smoke a pipe, like I do, and after hitting the pipe you cup it in your hand to contain the smoke, like I do, and the rim of the bowl combined with the resin from the smoke creates a dark stain on your palm, like I have. Stoner Stigmata.
Tonight my stigmata is glowing, and in its light I see the answer. It is about the dog beng too large for my brother. It is about the giant letter B’s shadow eclipsing mine. It is about not being big enough, knowing it and like my brother still finding a way laugh, even if you have just been fucked by a really large dog, even if that laugh is just a dry rattle caught in your throat like a cough drop.
blackout
Scene 3: The Linens N Things Employee
We hear elevator music, the kind played in Malls, and a voice over a loud speaker asking for customer assistance in aisle 4. Lights up on a Linens N Things employee on a ladder, at the base of the ladder is a smattering of dust ruffles, pillow shams and such.
The Linens N Things Employee:
Legs, balancing air upon a ladder with wheels. Eyes, fingering the length of fluorescent tubing. Light, revealing an ocean of dust ruffles. Well some are actually pillow shams, but there is still an ocean. Me, working at Linens N Things. Not to be confused with Linen Center, Linen Shack, Lots of Linens, Linda’s Linens or Lucky Larry Wong’s House O Linens. Real people might be inspired to ask why. I’m not. Maybe because I already know the answer. Definitely because I’m tired of the question.
It’s kinda like getting high outside the Toys R Us at lunch break because it’s really the only cool place to go although it’s not that cool it can be cool, well, if you’re cool. You just have to smile, act nonchalant, look at your watch. They like that. Eye them as they approach, the hurried mothers and fathers, spastic kids. Pierce them as they exit. Let your eyes finger them as they cross the parking lot. Then just as you hear the swoosh of the store’s automatic door or the thunk of the closing car door: JAB PIPE MOUTH LIGHT INHALE 1,2,3 EXHALE, palm the pipe in a wink, smile, look at your watch.
It’s incredibly easy, for the most part safe, and you are always aware of the time.
I entertain the idea that the majority of them, huddled mothers and fathers, elastic kids, are oblivious. I mean if a Holocaust was invisible to millions then it’s not too hard to imagine a 25 year old stoner sneaking a few tokes passed some saucer eyed kids and their distraught parents in front of the Toys R Us.
Their whole story is told in goofy smiles and quick glances. I can easily forget them.
Then there are the others. The eyes that vibrate, catching mine like the flick chunk of a dart on cork. These eyes look first sideways at me, second diagonally at their children, sideways back to me.
‘the scent is familiar’
these eyes say
‘I’ve worn bell bottoms, tied died time and I don’t appreciate you getting burnt in front of my kids.’
You almost feel pain, a tightness in your skin. Your smile breaks in your mouth, looking at your watch becomes awkward...transparent. And even the smoke- Jesus- even the smoke lets you down, grabs your ankles and pulls you down, down, and suddenly you are sober. Somber, you watch the eyes depart knowing that they will never really leave you. The sting stays. The smart of the bee’s prick and it’s the same firm hand I feel across my face when people ask me why I work at Linens N Things. It’s the same pain. It’s the realization that I’m twenty five getting high in front of a toy store on a break from a linen store and I have absolutely no fucking idea why.
But to real people it’s no big deal.
You thought you were someplace. You felt there was a reason. You knew it was just a matter of time.
And then you woke up one morning and saw the stolen black twin flat Bill Blass sheet wrinkle wrapped around the two mashed potato filled couch cushions you call a bed and you were confused.
You remember that when you were little and couldn’t go to sleep, the down comforter over taking your breathing, the mattress seeming too needy. You crawled into your wooden toy chest, the one with the panda on it. The panda, who ever since you can remember cried tears of chipped paint. And you spread yourself and your dreams across the toys, being comforted by the sound of every shift, discovering the exact position in which a GI Joe doll (Barbie Doll) stuck in the small of your back becomes not only tolerable but soothing.
Crawling out of your confusion, you shuck the shit brown and itchy army blanket, chunk the cap off a beer, light a cigarette and watch American Gladiators (Xena: Warrior Princess), still debating whether or not it’s the stupidest or most brilliant show you’ve ever seen. Noticing the bowl looking lonely next to the bag you burn one and you feel spent.
You remember the clean crowded woods of Alpena Michigan and feeling your lucid eleven years again when breathing came easy. Trotting home from the giant visions of The Seven Voyages of Sinbad and Snowball Express, chugging the life out of an RC Cola, you debate whether or not the Medusa was as creepy as the Cyclops. Noticing the firestick looking lonely in your shirt pocket, your lips are soon sticky and hot.
Spent, you manage enough energy to shift, to blink your eyes at the mouse whom thinking himself alone pulls at the crusty cheese from the two day old pizza hanging about like a throw rug on the floor. You think maybe, maybe you’ll get up and fix yourself some Kraft Deluxe Macaroni and Cheese or a tuna fish and Ritz cracker sandwich, but then again the kitchen is twelve feet away, and you feel so tired.
You remember being quick and spastic playing super heroes under a Japanese sun. You were Kamalita V3, the ninja gymnast with the head of an enlarged fly, which of course meant you were the controller of the vast riches of your tribe, which of course meant the doghouse. You were unstoppable.
Tired, you finally work your way up only to stop.
You are twenty five and when you look at your life then and your life now you cry because you can’t ever, you can’t ever really believe that you were that child.
Nobody ever asks me anymore why I indulge in front of a toy store although inquiries are still made regarding my employment at Linens N Things. I’m tired I tell them. It’s what I tell myself but that never really seems to suffice.
blackout
Scene 4: Interlude
We hear the unmistakable sounds of the flight of the bumblebee. Lights up as two performers dressed as giant joints with tutu’s enter and perform a choreographed ballet to the music.
blackout
Scene 5: The Burger King Manager
We hear the sounds of a retro Burger King commercial from the 1980’s (the one for the bacon double cheese burger with the jingle ‘Aren’t you hungry for Burger King now’ is perfect). Lights up on an actor in a Burger King Manager uniform sitting at a desk littered with BK paraphernalia.
The Burger King Manager:
I saw a man die at a Burger King.
Well, not actually saw but became suddenly aware of the result. As a manager, I’m trained to spot things like that. You know, roaches hibernating among the buns, thieves lurking among the crew- dead men wedged into burnt orange booths. Truthfully, he was quite easy to miss. An elderly gentleman taking a nap in his Whopper with cheese plus extra lettuce, tasting his fries with the pores of his skin, ketchup splayed across his forehead. Add a happy tongued dog lapping at his face and you had a regular Norman Rockwell. ‘Grandpa takes a licking, stops ticking’. It was a quiet death evidenced by the fact that none of us heard anything. Like it was a sigh passed between pressed together lips, pop- fizzle and his heart simply went off like a misfired bottle rocket. And he expired- outlived by his driver’s license and senior citizen discount card. It’s incredibly sad to be survived by plastic.
Death and Burger King have always shared commonalties in my experience. It was Lisa who worked with me the first summer I ever worked at Burger King, who dreamt up the term Burger Death, which we both chuckled over while squeezed into a Michigan Money teller machine swimming in the smoky commas from our bowl timing our break by how much we consumed and the concreteness of our coughing.
You can smoke two bowls in about four minutes and thirty-two seconds. Not a lot of people know that. Anyway, Burger Death was Lisa’s catch phrase for the lifers. You know, those people who would always work at Burger King. Who would become accustomed to fried food smells, eventually getting used to burnt forearms and fingers, finally even being comforted by their red polyester uniforms. Their life becoming the slow and quiet Burger Death.
Nothing like us. Two college crazies desiring something better to do with a summer than sweat. Who’d of guessed we’d end up at a Burger King with a broken down air conditioner, learning the finer points of secretion. Trying desperately not to drip into the Whoppers, but knowing it was hopeless, and figuring ah what the hell beads of sweat look a lot like balls of grease. So that summer Lisa and I sweat, a lot, got high even more and picked the sesame seeds out of our clothes and other places. As Lisa always said
‘they get everywhere’
her eyes would ripple
‘I mean everywhere.’
And in that time and that place, which now seems so unlikely, we mastered the fifteen second cheeseburger.
BUN PATTY CHEESE PICKLE KETCHUP MUSTARD WRAP NUKE BING!
I can think of worse ways to live a summer.
I always thought there were few jobs worse than working at a Burger King. Being a pooper scooper for Ringling Brothers or a bedpan flunky were about the only two I could think of. Well, basically any job dealing with feces. Not to say there ain’t a lot of shit at Burger King. But like participants in life we muddle through hoping that we won’t come out smelling too bad.
'A pipe dream if I ever heard one,’
Lisa would always say ironically handing me the bowl. And she was right. We smelled. Or rather our clothing smelled. In the back of my cynical little mind, I have to believe that somewhere- anywhere, there is a sandstone building in the middle of a dessert surrounded by barbed wire and German shepherds without testicles. And that in this building are a dozen or so be-speckled bent men with male patterned baldness squinting into microscopes, devising formulas, splitting atoms all in a desperate attempt to increase the smell retention of Burger King clothing. I have to believe that. Why else would strange felines nip at my pant cuffs, unknown hounds hump my legs every time I walk in to a room donning my red polyester garb. In the streets little children pause in their small footsteps and look up at me as if I were Sammy Davis Jr., fully believing that I can make their whole world taste good. One time I was walking home and this homeless man stopped me and asked for a Big Mac. I politely informed him that Burger King was Home of the Whopper. So he asked for a Whopper. I fished a few fries out of my pocket. It was all I had. He accepted the gift like rolled money.
You get used to it. Lisa and I better than most- we had our pipe dreams. It was the end of the summer, the first and last summer I had to believe that I would ever work at a Burger King, when Lisa pinned me between the specialty sandwich station and shake machine.
‘What’s the worse way to die at a Burger King?’
‘Ah, getting your hand caught in the broiler and being dragged through?’
Shaking her frame
‘Try again.’
‘Dipping your face into the fryer and having it melt off?’
‘Not even close.’
and then she smiled, and catching on I smiled and then we both just said it in tones usually reserved for hospitals and church pews. What’s the worse way to die at a Burger King?
‘Old age!’
The end of the summer clearly marked the beginning of our insanity.
Craziness is funny, in that everyone deals with it differently. Lisa straddled hers- put on her spurs and gave it a swift kick in the ass just to see where it would take her. It took her into the hands of a man named Rod. The similarity of his name to a penis did not escape me, and I don’t think it got past Lisa either. I’m not sure if it was his name or the fact that he dragged her to Boise Idaho that pissed her off the most, but in a state of pisstivity she was. She took out her corresponding anger by sleeping with Rod’s boss. But Lisa was never one to settle for mere infidelity. She made it her mission to seek out the lowest scum of Boise. A mission I imagined would lead her to discover unruly farmhands who sodomized pigs on the weekends. But Lisa was serious this time. Who’d of guessed? Lisa, serious.
What happens next seems too usual for the world, but it’s what happened. It’s real. Lisa became addicted to drugs. Yes, even in Boise- or maybe because of. Either way it becomes an ugly, over told story of needles and heated spoons.
Crank
is what Lisa called the methadrine she sold, the methadrine she guided with the help of her new lover Gary into her tired veins.
Crank
is the first word she said to me when she called me exactly one month after my college graduation, two days before I would take my mighty communications degree and hurl it like a thunderbolt at the job market, and three months before I would accept a lowly managerial position at Burger King.
‘Crank’
she said
‘I’m on Crank.’
‘That’s nice,’ I said, ‘What is that- some sort of motor oil?’ I don’t think she found that funny. There was silence and then she just kept talking- telling me about the four days she had been up tripping, about how they had run out of Crank the night before, about how they had made some homemade Crank in their bathtub, about how she had just shot an armful when the inspiration to call me struck. Flattered as I was, I couldn’t help but think, I don’t know, maybe it’s just me- but taking something I’ve mixed up in my bathtub and injecting it into my body, well just seems incredibly STUPID. And I told Lisa this so you can imagine where that conversation led. And I was left in a funk. Angry at Lisa for giving in, for giving up. Angry at Lisa for changing. Angry, just because I wanted to be.
I was in the exact same mood when Lisa called me at work almost six months later. Angry at employees that had to be told when scheduled at four that means four and not four forty-five. Angry at customers who wanted Whoppers without meat. Angry because I had already taken the trash out once that day so I wouldn’t be able to smoke another bowl for the rest of my shift. But hearing Lisa’s voice lightened my mood, a little. I told her about the old man who had died in my restaurant the week before. She thought it was neat. She told me about the money her and Gary were raking in, about the weight she had lost, about her plans to market a methadrine diet plan. I told her Hollywood already had the patent. She laughed. It was nice, but it was distant. I don’t know- to me she seemed a lot further away than the actual miles between us. She seemed to be someplace where even Ma Bell wouldn’t go. A place mailmen fear to tread.
I don’t even need to say this ending. It’s already been done, you’ve heard it. Yes, there is the phone call. You can all hear it ringing. You can all see me in my tiny Burger King office filing hourly sales reports, referring to labor charts. You can all watch me answer the phone. ‘Thank you for calling Burger King how may I help you?’ You can all hear the voice on the other side. You can all listen to the same old story. Lisa M. was found dead, a needle with traces of insulin next to her body. Her boyfriend says she had him shoot her up with insulin knowing it would kill her because she was mad at him. The police don’t buy it, but you know it’s probably true. You think how like Lisa, how utterly and remarkably like Lisa.
I’m mad at you, so I’ll make you kill me- ha,ha.
And you see me in my tiny Burger King office and you see me crying. You see my employees in their paper hats pausing at their tasks, see them pointing towards the small office with fry tongs and oven mitts and I’m still there and I’m still crying. But inside I’m angry. Angry at Lisa for giving in, for giving up. Angry at the impotence of my Bachelor’s degree. Angry that the last thing that poor old man saw before he died was a fucking Whopper with cheese. And that’s when you see me leave my office, see me walk down the hallway and you see me pass the lockers; pass the cola hookups- you see me walk into the freezer. That’s where I will stay, for an hour, maybe longer. Because right then, because right now, it feels like the only place I can breathe.
blackout
Scene 6: The Storyteller
We hear the song “Double Dutch Bus” by Frankie Smith playing. Lights up on the storyteller sitting on a park bench/picnic table with a boom box which we realize is where the music is coming from. The actor turns the music off and speaks.
The Storyteller:
We called him Holmes, as in Sherlock Holmes or John Holmes, though he was neither physically nor mentally endowed. He was a homeboy, but that’s not why we called him Holmes either. I mean this was 1978, many years before homie, homeboy and its many variations would enter the vernacular. No, we called him Holmes because, as far as we knew, that was his name- though none of us could tell you whether it was his first or his last. About the only thing anyone could tell you about Holmes, was that he was crazy, and he had done some crazy fuckin’ shit.
The first story I ever heard about Holmes came out of the mouth of a six foot two, ebony everyman named Conrad. Now Conrad was my best friend. He was the one who would hook me up to the grooves of the Sugar Hill Gang, Frankie Smith and the “Double Dutch Bus”- ‘Gimme a Ho if you got your funky bus fare, Ho, Ho, Ho.’ Back when Ho in a rap song didn’t refer to a woman. Doin’ cigarette sized doobies on his back porch, wrapping my mouth around words like ganja and budley. Conrad introduced me to a whole new world, a world that was inhabited by, among other things, this crazy fucker named Holmes.
Now as it happens, I met Holmes and heard my first Holmes story at the very same time. See Conrad and I were sittin’ atop this scribble scarred picnic table in a park near his house. Conrad had no more than lit up the joint and said
‘Let me tell ya a story bout this crazy mother named Holmes,’
when here Holmes comes makin’ like a sand crab and doin’ this funky sand dance, all smiles, talkin’ crazy shit, shit so crazy that it would make your head just bob up and down and it would make you smile because you didn’t know what else to fuckin’ do. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that this was the crazy mother that Conrad was about to tell me a story about. Now at this point most storytellers would stop- tuck the anecdote away for another time when the subject of the anecdote was not is such close proximity. But since the subject of this anecdote was Holmes, and since- as I would soon find out- Holmes rarely understood or cared much about what went on around him Conrad just kept talkin’.
‘Now I didn’t actually see this shit myself,’
he began, which is the way almost every story I would ever hear about Holmes would begin. Inevitably, the next line would always be
‘but so and so saw it and swears on his jimmy it’s true.’
Well in Conrad’s case the jimmy-swearer was this sick fuck named Marcus who said he had actually put money into the pool that was to be Holmes’ reward for doin’ this crazy shit. Apparently, on a dare to get money to buy a forty or some pot, Holmes- allegedly- had sex with a dog. That’s the story, though Conrad’s version was much more detailed and disgusting. When he finished, Conrad took a huge toke off the joint and passed it to the still dancing Holmes who accepted the gift without any indication or confirmation of the story that had just been told about him. Holmes drew long and hard on the joint leaving his sloppy lippage hanging like an elephants tear from the end- then turned to me talkin’ bout do I want to hit it? Shit... of course I wanted to hit it.
In the three years it would take Conrad and I to graduate from high school, I would hear all kinds of messed up Holmes stories. Everything from his kooky escapades with the cops, to stupid shit he did on bets or for money- even theories on how he got to be the way he is. That was a big one. Everyone seemed to have their own ideas. Some said he was born that way, others told stories of severe child abuse, severe drug abuse, mild satanic rituals. I remember one kid said he believed Holmes was one of those released mental patients we all read about in psychology class. I’m not sure what I believed. I only knew I had hung around Holmes quite a bit- and although he was obviously mental- he didn’t seem capable of doin’ some of the crazy shit everyone said he did. To me, he seemed like Boo Radley from To Kill A Mockingbird, you know- someone whose reputation is bigger than their reality. Of course, at the time, I did not know that I would soon be telling my own Holmes story.
My Holmes story does not begin I did not actually see this, because I saw the shit and I will swear on the mothafuckin’ Pope’s jimmy it is true. It started out innocently enough, I was on my way to Junior Achievement where I was president of a company called the Trivitors. We made trivets and sold them to people stupid enough to buy trivets. Especially trivets made by stoned high school students who wouldn’t know how to make trivets if the instructions for making trivets were tattooed on their asses. Anyway, here I am hikin’ down the street, when here Holmes comes all jivey, jabber jawin’ about some huge joint he wants to smoke. So I pause and think hummm, huge joint, trivets, huge joint, trivets? HUGE JOINT! Next thing I know I’m at some house that Holmes says is his parents. Now to be honest, I had never really considered where Holmes lived, I mean for all I knew Holmes was homeless. So it was kind of a relief to find out that Holmes actually had a place that he called home, that he actually had parents- wow! Since it was his parent’s house, Holmes said we would have to go into this utility close to burn the joint. For anyone who has ever gotten high in their parent’s house, you know that this is not that odd a request. I should have known somethin’ was up, however, by Holmes use of the word utility. Not that Holmes was illiterate or anything, just that Holmes rarely spoke and when he did utility is not what he usually said. The real bad news came about five seconds later when Holmes closed the door and both of us registered the click that said that mothafucker just locked.
Panic does not describe what happened in those next few moments, I really don’t know what does describe what happened in those next few moments, suffice to say that at the endofthosenextfewmoments, Holmes’ hand was severely bleeding from having broken a mirror at the back of the closet. When he pulled out his penis and started peeing on his bloody hand, let’s just say I was shocked. Frightened is also a very good word. Here I was, locked, in a six by eight utility closet, with a madman- whose thought processes worked in such a way that he could input the information bloody hand and output the solution PEE ON IT. What had to happen between synapses, what dendrites had to connect to make that shit happen? Not wanting to ponder deep neurological questions, I instead grabbed a large piece of wood, I think it was the arm of a chair or something, and I started chopping at the door with more energy than I had expended in my entire life. All the while Holmes is wailin’ and doin’ somethin’ in the background. To this day I do not know what. Frankly, when he pulled out his dick, he lost my attention. Eventually, I chopped a large enough hole in the door to snake my arm through, unlock it, quickly smoke the joint with Holmes and then run like Richard Pryor on fuckin’ fire all the way to Junior Achievement. The prospect of making products from wood never seemed more enticing.
I don’t know what all this means. Even after the incident I still didn’t believe half the stories I heard about Holmes. And in fact, years later sweating smoke and whiskey wrestling a headache on a Soho balcony and hearing through the throbs some blob say that urinating on a wound is an ancient universally known survival technique I would epiphanize, as only the right combination of drugs and pain will allow you to do, that maybe Holmes was a lot smarter than any of us believed. Not that any of us would have cared. Hell, none of us ever bothered to find out whether Holmes was his first or last name. In truth, none of us wanted to know Holmes, we wanted to imagine Holmes. We wanted to make his story bigger than his life.
I guess I still do.
blackout
Scene 7: Interlude Two
Two actors enter dressed as giant joints and lip sync to the scene from Star Wars between Luke Skywalker and Obi Wan Kenobi that begins with Luke saying ‘It looks like Sandpeople did this’ and ending with him discovering his Uncle Owen and his Aunt Beru dead.
blackout
Scene 8: The Student
Lights come up on the Student on the floor. There are text books open and scattered around her. There is an easel with some weird painting on it, a stick of Mennon deodorant and a small picture of a monk on fire sitting on the lip of the easel.
The Student:
I had to be nine or ten, one of those ages at which other people’s parents believe that certain types of music can turn you into a serial killer, or playing with the wrong doll can affect your sexuality. I was watching television, a science show I think. But all I really remember was that it was in black and white and it had that awkward eerie quality of an old home movie whose participants are all dead or wrinkled and in nursing homes. A man was playing with a dog, one of those irritatingly bulimic Chihuahuas, making it jump for some sort of dog snack. This continued for a moment, and then something happened. The man became disoriented and stepped out of the frame. The camera jerkingly followed- and the man was standing there, a little off balance, looking confused. Then he burst into flames. We saw the man burning for maybe four seconds and then the camera lurched forward and went black. Presumably, the camera man had gone for water. Then a television scientist came on, wearing a requirement for their profession, white lab coat and glasses, and started talking about spontaneous human combustion. The discussion went almost completely over my head. About the only thing I could pick out was that sometimes people burst into flames and nobody seems to know why. Of course, I had my own theories centering on killer tacos or the possible presence of Drew Barrymore. But I was not left to wallow in those ideas because it is at that point that my mother came in and offered me this explanation.
​
‘The reason the man burst into flames, dear, is because he disliked himself so much- he was so full of self-hate- that it built up and built up until there was nothing left for the man to do but catch fire. So you better love yourself, and while you are at it, everyone else too, or one day you may burst into flames.’
​
I have often wondered and quietly respected the potency of the herb my mother had obviously been smoking only moments before dispensing this advice. But she swears she was straight. In fact, she will tell me, she can clearly remember the event occurring on a Wednesday morning in October approximately 12 minutes before she would leave to teach her Philosophy class at NYU, 14 minutes before she would smoke a quick wake and bake bowl while walking from our hole to the classroom and 28 minutes before she would instruct 21 future account reps, stocks tradesman and retail boutique managers that everything- is bullshit- including the obscene amount of money she would be paid for teaching them that very thing. So- my mother will inform me- it follows that when she offered that particular morsel of advice on that specific October morning she was not high, and for that matter my mother will add, she actually remembers being quite exceedingly lucid.
She’s right I’m sure- hell even after smoking she’s more exceedingly lucid than anyone I’ve ever known- then and now.
And while her advice then and now is questionably warped there’s no denying an idealistic charm to her motives. Of course, then I simply accepted her peace and love philosophies like a child swallowing Bible parables. Now, I argue with her all the time about her bumper sticker solutions. Now, I always insist, that no matter how much I would love to believe and want to it to be true- that solutions are always as easy as she makes them out to be- the truth is- they’re not. Now, I am continually finding myself confronting my mother with things like- You gotta admit Ma, telling your child that she’ll burst into flames if she experiences a moment of self-doubt is not the best way to build her self-esteem. My mother will admit nothing. Instead my mother will take arms. Instead, my mother will pummel me with quotes and references as sharp as arrows until I have no choice but to pull out the dugout, pack a one hitter and literally place the bat between her lips just so she will shut up. My mother knows this is my white flag and soon we will begin to talk movies and books. Soon we will melt into unrushed whispers about the new Anne Rice, or the last John Irving. And for a while it will become exceedingly clear that my mother is right- that it is all that easy.
​
Not too long ago, I did an evening- as she insists on referencing it- with my mother. It was a Saturday night and Dad was at a Communications Conference in Chicago. We got some take out, some wine and a video called American History X, which, my mother said to the video clerk as if the clerk gave a damn, she was renting because she felt it would be educational. On our way back to my place she admitted the only thing she really hoped to learn was how good Edward Norton looked without a shirt. Sometimes I forget she’s my mother. This was one of those nights. We drank, we smoked, we watched most of the movie once and the shower scene many many times and then talked and talked until we could only whisper.
We were sunk a full fifty percent lower into our respective sitting apparati when my mother’s direction of vision alit on a postcard I have propped on this easel which in turn props up this painting by a former roommate of mine- who one day disappeared leaving $800 of unpaid phone bills, his assortment of seemingly but not shockingly unused toiletry products and the painting, which, in my opinion, had far less chance of being in a museum than his mint condition Mennon Deodorant which I assume must have been given to him by some dear dead uncle since he treated it like a family heirloom. I’m serious, he would dust it, but he wouldn’t open it.
Anyway, propped up against the smelly man’s painting is this postcard. It’s of some Indian monk seated in the middle of a dirt road. He is on fire. Not spontaneous combustion but self-emollition. The man has chosen to burst into flames. My Mother saw the postcard and then she looked at me. She looked at me until she knew I was making the same association as her. Then she said ‘talk about self-esteem problems.’ It made me laugh, it made us both laugh. And then it made us both think- and inevitably we fell into our usual scripts with my mother’s common sense no brainer solutions to the day’s headlines and my consistent rebuttals that Kosovo, Rwanda, Littleton aren’t that easy. A rhyming protest chant no matter how appealing the alliteration or how genuine the chantee’s convictions is never enough, I told my mother. We both know that the pot is never so good that it can fix all the wrongs, I said. ‘Well,’ my mother whispered ‘if everyone smoked pot- and I mean everyone smoked pot- well…well I have to say I don’t think your little monk friend there would have any need to set himself on fire.’ I reminded my mother that everyone doesn’t and never will smoke pot and that for me the point is well- the point is there will always be wrong. The will always be, I explained to my immensely high mother, a need for something to hate. A common hatred is what keeps civilizations alive I told my mother. There was a silence and then my mother nodded but I could tell it was a dismissive ‘yeah yeah you just don’t get it’ nod. I knew she would not release her belief that life was that simple. That it really did come down to little, and sometimes- nothing.
​
On the floor and her eyes at half shade, I left my mother to get myself a diet coke. When I returned, the crumble that my mother had become stirred and in a moment that I actually remember being quite exceedingly lucid she told me that she did have the answer. And that the answer was simple. If everyone must have someone to hate, then everyone could hate her, my mother whispered. Everyone could hate her so that they may love themselves and each other. Yes, my mother sighed as she slowly collapsed again into her comfortably resigned crumble, the bumper stickers could read “I Hate Professor Ellen Sturgis So That I Can Love the World.”
And there was my mother crashed on my floor dreaming of bumper stickers, spontaneous combustion, Edward Norton and martyrdom.
blackout
Scene 9: The Homosexual
We hear the sounds of a noisy sports bar and perhaps a football game in the background. As the sounds fade lights come up on the Homosexual sitting on a bar stool sipping on a drink.
The Homosexual:
She tells me ‘depression sits on your lap like a fatted cat who knows you may stand but doesn’t mind because you will eventually sit down again’.
I ask her if depression sits on her lap in the same way or maybe I offer perhaps she carries her depression in her purse next to whatever prescription drug it is that causes her to approach me, a gay man in a straight bar, and start talking in metaphor.
She tells me ‘you’re an asshole, I always talk this way and the pills I took have nothing to do with it’. Then she sits down and confesses that she is concerned however about how the Zanex she took will react with the, what she is certain couldn’t be more than three, margaritas she has thus far absorbed and/or misplaced. ‘It won’t make me go coma?’ she asks me like I’m naive enough to believe this is her first time mixing the two. ‘No such luck’ I answer her but that only provokes an impromptu palm reading starring her between sips and puffs telling me stuff she obviously memorized off the wrapper back of the gum she is chewing and smacking whenever she is not sipping puffing or prophesying. Eventually she remembers to add breathing to this rotation- claims to see sudden money and good sex in my near future then moments later offers me five hundred dollars to sleep with her telling me it’s a joke before I recognize it as such. Then she schizzes, slides suddenly serious, grabs my freshly examined palm molds it into a fist and gives a squeeze- a very personal squeeze.
She asks me ‘what do you do to feed the day?’ and when I don’t respond squeezes again elaborates: ‘how do you justify waking up every morning fully believing it is not the day you will die?’
It seems somewhat clear the return of my appendage is dependent on a response and I’m certain I cannot handle another squeeze. I answer her. ‘Listen honey I’m just a gay man in a straight bar waiting for my pot dealer so I can go home watch the women’s gymnastics Olympic team optionals, do some paperwork, and try not to think about fucked up people like you and me.’ Then I give her a squeeze just to see how she likes it. She just returns a smile. I figure it’s because I’m the only idiot who has ever answered her. Then she gives me back my arm like it’s her gift to me and jumps back in the pond.
Later, my biznis finished and on my way out I see her in full lean reading some guys palm by the light of the pinball machine. I imagine this one, if he responds at all, if he doesn’t throw up, will probably answer her question of what do you do to feed the day with: ‘I didn’t know days got hungry’ and after giving it some thought- ‘What the hell does a day eat?’
There is an abrupt light change as the Homosexual swivels around on his bar stool and is suddenly under the glare of an interrogation spotlight.
They ask me questions.
“Why do you...”
Because I can set my own schedule I get paid well and since I’m the boss I can pretty much smoke pot whenever I see that’s what the situation demands.
“...live in Chicago but work in Indiana?”
“Why won’t you...”
Because I can’t see turning something as uninteresting as eating into a bloody ritual by paying too much money for too little food that is rarely prepared my way in an atmosphere that rarely makes me comfortable where inevitably I finish eating before my dining partners and end up waiting impatiently to leave so I can smoke my after dinner bowl which is of course now necessary since I gave up cigarettes to make me feel less guilty about smoking so much pot.
“...go out to eat at sit down restaurants?”
“Why can’t you...”
Because I generally find them obnoxious overpriced and too noisy for me to talk to or hear anyone I came with and although the limited frat boy like entertainment possibilities and the amazingly generous selection of cheese dishes prepared in hidden microwaves behind the bar can be distracting for twelve to thirteen minutes the sad fact is that while bars enable me to get shitfaced silly smelly drunk they still can’t let me smoke a bowl which to me is as important to drinking as well drinking.
“...go to a bar for a drink?’
“Why should you...”
Because I fear them more than I fear the Bible being right and as long as there is soft shell Taco Bell and maximum strength Orajel I figure I’ll wait until all my teeth are ready to go and get a group rate because the truth is I just can’t afford it since I have no insurance and I spend all my money on pot.
“...avoid going to dentists?”
“Why would you...”
Because even though I am proud mind you a hard earned but very slow in coming state of mind of the way I was born it’s like someone who is proud of being born Indian or Jewish like someone who is proud of being born beautiful and if I am to be known and I can’t be known as George Burns or some other dead celebrity whose kids never wrote a book about them then I don’t want to be known solely for the way I was born for whether I was more inclined to get a penis pup tent by watching Randolph Mantooth in Emergency versus Pamela Anderson in Baywatch I’d rather be known by something I chose I’d rather be known as a stoner because I know that most people who hear that will quickly dismiss me as someone who makes no difference in this world and that knowledge will bring them closer to the truth than anything I could tell them.
“...rather be known as a stoner than a faggot?”
I’d rather be known as a stoner than a faggot.
I’d rather be known as a stoner than a faggot.
I’d rather be known as a stoner than a faggot.
blackout
Scene 10: Interlude Three
Two actors enter dressed as giant joints and lip sync to a scene from GoodFellas. It is the ‘You think I’m Funny?’ scene between Tommy DeVito and Henry Hill.
blackout
Scene 11: The Teacher
Lights up on the Teacher sitting in a comfy chair, a stack of papers that need grading on a coffee table next to the chair. The teacher prepares and rolls a joint throughout the monologue.
The Teacher
My friend Kevin cracks surprised, at my surprise, to his announcement that he feels guilty because he has not established a Bennigan’s Bust Your Blues relationship with his pot dealer. Although they have played Capcom video bowling games together, in a Bennigans, to disguise business transfers, their friendship has never reached the particular Blues Busting level my friend Kevin desires. My friend Kevin imagines his dealer has intimate relations with all his other clients. Probably hangs out with them, he thinks, partying with them in their own homes not meeting clandestinely in some yuppie scum bunghole, playing cool home video systems like Xbox or PS3 not some silly bowling simulation crap. My friend Kevin is certain that whenever he is not around his dealer passes out free bong hits like tic tacs or m&m’s. ‘I feel like Rudolph,’ he says. ‘I want in on my dealer’s reindeer games.’
I told Kevin he was being ridiculous. Besides, I like it clinical. Quick and clean like an Olympic diver breaking water. My dealer is strictly fast food. She can slip me a quarter ounce of pot in one tenth the time it takes to get a quarter-pounder at McDonalds, and the fries are never cold. My friend Kevin would probably suggest that I’m the one being cold, and as usual he’s wrong. I do care. Although my dealings with my dealer are brief, what they lack in quantity is made up in quality. We kibbutz, sometimes. Share significant life events, announce upcoming projects. Why just last week she told about some charity fashion show she was organizing for her children’s school, I countered with an amusing story about one of my students.
Sometimes it even goes beyond that. For example, recently I was planning a trip to Florida to visit my parents and I was completing the number one task for making such a trip: buying lots of pot. As usual I arrived at seven fifteen a.m. just as my dealer’s children’s school bus was pulling out, her three kid’s faces sucking at the back window probably wondering and devising theories about the stranger who pulls up twice a week just as they are leaving. Sometimes I get there a little early and as the kids pile past my idling car they see the tennis equipment in the back seat and beg for used tennis balls. I am glad to give them some. On these days, as the bus pulls out, I can see -but cannot hear- the tiny thuds of the balls against the bus’s back window. When the bus pulls from view I climb the two flights to my dealer’s apartment. She is already at the door, sometimes still in her blue housecoat, inevitably and erratically fumbling baggies of pot with remains of Rice Crispies, her nurses uniform slung across her shoulder it’s straps doing small swimming stokes amid the puffed rice. Before I can speak a quarter ounce is thrust into my left hand while simultaneously the money disappears from my right. But on this day I begin speaking while still tackling the stairs warning her that I needed more than usual. I told her about my trip to Florida and she listened as I shared silly stories of the horrors awaiting me. Then she reciprocated with similar tales of relative dysfunctionalism. It was only a few moments, but we laughed a lot. And when the stories just kind of naturally ended and the silence grew heavy she turned to me and said, very business-like- ‘How much do you need to get through it?’ The question really threw me. I mean literally the answer was easy. I need one bowl of pot for every four hours spent with my parents. That formula was simple. It was the largeness and beauty of the figurative question that sent me reeling. How much do you need to get through it? That’s asking a lot more than pot quantities, we’re talking life quantities here. She was standing there asking me The Question. What, and how much of it, do you need to get by. What dosage of pot, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, sex religion, shopping does it take for you to be happy?
Well after asking such a personal and powerful question you can see why I feel very close to my dealer. We’ve bonded in a very special way. And it’s because of that special bond that I can sympathize with my friend Kevin’s desire to be closer to his dealer. I told Kevin this story and he was all jealous. He says he would love to give used tennis balls to his drug dealer’s kids. I have all the luck, he says. I tell him it’s because I know what I want which is a complete lie. I can’t even fully answer my drug dealer’s question. How much does it take for me to get through it? But as I get older I have begun to make wish lists.
I don’t want much.
I want to weigh my slumber to determine if I’m a light sleeper.
I want to be able to smoke a bowl every now and then and not be hassled.
I want to be the lemming who says ‘hey guys let’s not run off the cliff this year let’s just stay here and party’.
I want all the world’s problems ending in ism to be engulfed in the columns of my smoky exhalations.
I want a twenty pound dream.
I want little, when I die I want a small minded person in some town in Colorado to implode.
I want someone in Maine, or New Jersey to start crying and have no idea why.
blackout
​
END OF PLAY