NEW PLAY
LOIS: Yes, I had children. With my eyes open I wanted to have children: they weren't forced on me, I actively wanted them. (Pause) (Then quietly) It shows how unknowing I was. I gave them easy birth, but it just got harder and harder after that. For one thing, (looking at her husband) it took me away from you; we were never the same free, innocent, loving, independent people we were before. Caring for the children, we left the bedroom door open. Afraid of their curiosity and discovery, we began sleeping in separate beds. It was about that time (looking away from him) he started seeing other women. (He starts). No, (referring to him, but not looking at him) you didn't know that I knew, but I knew. We weren't the same after that. What was once a joke: you being careful of the children I was carrying as we continued to make love---became a reality: the children actually came between us. But how could you blame them? They were innocent; they couldn't be responsible for the love, or lack of love, between their parents. Just as we can't be responsible for the lack of love (too-long pause) or the love between them and us now. We had to be modern parents, you know. Not overprotective of the children. Cutting the apron strings, letting them go. We let them go. (She begins to falter, but insists on continuing) So they went. Oh, they telephone every so often; they always say "I love you" before they hang up. Anniversary presents and Christmas presents and Mother's Day presents and Father's Day presents---when all we want is them, the way they used to be when they were five, when they believed that kissing the wound would make it well. When Kevin wanted to marry me, and Dorothy wanted to marry her daddy, and Susan fought with her because SHE was sure she'd marry her daddy. But these are modern times, so they married other people and have families of their own now---families of their own, (reflectively) as if they'd never had a family of their own before---as if we're still not part of their family now. That's the worst part; (almost whispering) we're not really part of their family now. I don't feel that I'm part of anyone's family now. But I want (choking up)---it's too late for what I want---my time has passed, never to return. Someone once said to "suffer the little children." Believe me, I DO suffer the little children. But it does me no good at all.
PAUL: Keep on! Why should I WANT to keep on? Twenty years ago there was every reason to keep on: the children growing, advancement in the company, moving up the ladder, across town, up the tower, into the elite. But what was the toll for the climb? My legs are stiff, now, standing talking to you. I'd rather be sitting. But not sitting too long, because my butt gets sore sitting too long. I could walk, but my ankles don't operate as they once did. NOTHING operates as it once did. Remember looking at a baby's foot? So clean and so soft you could put the whole thing in your mouth like some sweet caramel and suck gently on it as the little eyes widened with wonder at that new funny feeling. But watch those feet: watch the veins stand out and the calluses form and the toes curl under and the nails grow hard as horn. They seem to smell now, even after I've just washed them---not that I can bring them to my nose anymore. Do you remember smelling your toes when you were a kid? I used to bite my toenails as easily as my fingernails. Now I'm lucky if I can touch my forehead to my knee without feeling that I'm pulling something apart in my back. And what a wonderful construction is a back! Did you know I was two inches taller in my prime? But my spine dried out, sank down, compressed, and now it feels like a stack of nickels rubbing against each other. And I have hair on my back now! Hair on my BACK! I was pleased when I got it on my chest, but what man is proud to show off the hair on his back, on his shoulders, or on the backs of his arms, or in his ears? When you find the first hairs growing off the edges of the ears you feel like committing yourself to the nearest zoo! Junk heaps, that's what we become. The women with plumbing that becomes outmoded and the men with apparatus that has become so wrinkled and shrunk and blotched and inoperative that you wash wishing somehow you could rinse the whole handful of flesh down the drain with the scummy soapsuds. Keep on? Without being able to run without fearing for your heart? Without being able to sweep up some sweet little thing in your arms and make a psychological touchdown? Without love?---(this hits him) the oil that lubricates all that apparatus in the first place? What good is affection when all you pray for is a good stiff erection about once a week! When you remember how sometimes three times a night wasn't enough to take that edge off? Keep on?! When no one looks at YOU when you walk down the street, but only at your suit or your overcoat? When women stop laughing at the idea of intrigue and just laugh? I know what it's like to jump into bed when you're twenty and not CARE how you are when you get up. Now I can only jump into bed after I've massaged my gums to keep the half of my teeth that are still really mine, rubbed my scalp to keep the hair at even this sad state, made sure I've emptied my bladder so I won't have to get up in the middle of the night, tucked in the blanket so cold feet won't keep me awake, put out the medicine for my coughing spasms during the night, set the alarm so I won't sleep forever, and been careful to lie on my right side so I won't alarm the bursitis in my left shoulder any more than I have to. They don't put much of THAT into the movies nowadays! Sure, I love to travel and absorb entertainment, but I have to carry along a body that gets smelly only two hours after a shower, with a beard that scratches three hours away from a razor, with knees that won't stand up to the latest dances, with eyes that can't see ANYONE across a crowded room, with a voice that sometimes cuts off for no reason that I can determine, and with hands (this is obviously a sore point with him) that I can't look at anymore: veined and splotched and gnarled and UGLY! THAT'S the price of experience and wisdom and age: UGLINESS! Under a beautiful shock of gray hair is a year's worth of scalp treatments and shampoos so strong that my eyes redden when drops leak into them. Half my teeth have been replaced so long ago I can't tell you which are which. I can't get away with accusing anyone else if my gut rumbles because the SMELLS are definitely coming from my direction. (He realizes what he's doing) And then the TALK---endless TALK, fruitless TALK, lists of pre-rehearsed futile TALK. Like a recording that's skipped some grooves and keeps repeating the same things over and over and over again. (Long pause) Someone---please say something.
DAN: Anything's possible! I even have the perfect excuse if someone refuses me---any "favor" that I want to do for them. They're obviously not smart enough to SEE what a good thing it is they're missing. So it's, "Tough luck, kiddo," and on to the next conquest. Do you KNOW how many people there are in THIS CITY ALONE? If you took a MINUTE to get to know each person, it would take 30 years! What's ONE refusal here or there? Ha-ha. Then, if you wear out this town, you can move to the next, or the next, or the next. Or to the next country, or the other side of the world. And by the time you squeeze that part of the planet dry, you can come right back here and start over again, because it'll be all different. You just don't have to stop! I have too many parties to go to NOW! And I keep meeting more people and getting invited to more events---why should it ever end? I know I'm not rich, but there are lots of people who are willing to pay the bills for someone who's young (intensely, unselfconsciously) and handsome and amusing and intelligent. I've been lucky (knocking wood) with my health, lucky with my wife (she beams), lucky with my friends (he doesn't even see their dislike)---and luck keeps bringing luck. There's no stopping it! Look, three years ago I didn't have a cent in the bank. Now I've got $10,000, and three years from now I'll have $30,000 and ten years from now about $100,000 and in thirty years I'll probably be worth over a million. Everything's comin' up roses! So if you're down, just do like I do; try something ELSE. There's so much to do and never enough time to do it. You want to leave life, when I'd give ANYTHING for an extra ten years JUST BETWEEN NOW AND TOMORROW. There's so much I want to see, and do, and SCREW, and taste, and touch, and experience. It's all a question of ATTITUDE: you've GOT to look forward to things---that's what keeps me young. Everyone says I'm only twenty or so, but you know? I'm twenty-THREE! I'm just starting, and it's all ahead of me, and no one can convince me there isn't a lot of GREAT times ahead, and if you just stick around, I'll show you how to ENJOY yourself. Your trouble is, you THINK too much---get out of your head and into LIFE; it'll be worth the effort. And you have MONEY, too; so what's stopping you? KEEP ON!
ALLISON: Oh, I don't think I'd want to have children---they say they sort of ruin your figure when you're real young; but I wouldn't want to have them when I'm older, because then there's too much age difference and you can't really ENJOY them. But who needs more children anyway? The world's overpopulated and lots of people want to have kids, so LET them. I like my freedom. I have to confess, I think I'm maybe just a bit selfish, too. I've got to be frank and say I'm not really self-denying---when I see something I want, I go right after it. It's nice being married to someone who understands (he beams) because he knows it's just INTERESTING, and not really threatening at all. I don't see anyone more than three or four times, anyway---by that time I get to know what's wrong with them and then I'm not interested. Oh, I know what's wrong with Dan, too, but he's got so much on the ball (she giggles) that I can forgive him his annoying habits. But then I have annoying habits, too. He just HATES it when I sit down to meditate. He says it's just a waste of time, but he doesn't understand that I'm really put IN TOUCH with myself and the whole universe. I get a big, all-encompassing tingle when I hook myself into that whole FLOW of moment-to-moment. I can just FEEL my tensions dissolving and my fears disappearing. Why be worried, when everything's happening right inside your own brain? And as I do it more and more---I've been doing it for four years now, and it just gets better and better---I get deeper and deeper insights. Now, I know it's hard to talk to people who haven't meditated, but can you imagine what it feels like to love someone---like I love Dan---and then to meditate and know that I'm the SAME PERSON as Dan, that when I love him so much I just love me right back. It's so CENTERING and UPLIFTING to be in touch that deeply with someone you love. Really, Lois, I think you should take it up. It's just great for filling those minutes waiting on line at the bank, or waiting for the dryer cycle to finish, or waiting for your facial masque to dry. Put yourself in tune with the infinite and you'll never find yourself out of tune with anything in the world again.
DAN: I know things were uptight with your generation, but things are different now. You're not stupid; people just aren't that hung-up on GENDER anymore.
PAUL: What are you going to do if your body just doesn't turn me on?
DAN: What's on the OUTSIDE of the body isn't important; it's what's INSIDE that counts, and we're really very much the same inside.
PAUL: It's being the same that worries me---what do you do when there are two plugs and no sockets? No one's going to plug ME in the end, and I don't want to plug ANYONE, not even Lois, in the end---that's just DIRTY.
DAN: It's all a matter of upbringing. You were brought up strictly and it's stuck with you; I had a more liberal upbringing and, really, ANYTHING'S OK as long as it's fun, everyone's willing, and no one gets hurt---more than he wants to be---(seductively) hurt.
PAUL: You're into S&M, too?
DAN: Labels aren't important---you'd probably get off with Lois more if there were a bit of variety in what you did. Allison and I hardly ever do the same thing two nights in a row---there's always something new to try if you have the courage to let your imagination loose, once in a while.
PAUL: Dan, let's get on with this; the longer it takes, the more embarrassed I get.
DAN: What do you feel when I move in close like this?
PAUL: (Backing a step, then only a half step when Dan advances two steps) You don't look like you're going to hit me, so I assume you're going to kiss me.
DAN: Smart! What do you think of that?
PAUL: You've just shaved, so I can't even make any complaints about the stubble. And I know where the noses go---but, Dan, I'm just not INTERESTED.
DAN: Are you frightened?
PAUL: No, more like disgusted---no, I'm sorry, that's not right---you don't disgust me, Dan, not even your ideas---I just don't like you making a fool of yourself thinking you can throw me into the sack and I have to prove that you're wrong.
DAN: You ARE frightened!
PAUL: Calling someone a chicken is a very old-fashioned way to get your way---though I have to admit you're almost making me angry enough to---to---
DAN: To just let me try?
(PAUL's furious and silent, lost whichever way he turns)
DAN: The next step is---you have to cooperate.
PAUL: (Stepping backward) You haven't got to first base yet, buddy, and you want me to promise you a homerun?
DAN: (Placidly) No, but I'm not going to kiss a frozen face. I don't care if you have to close your eyes, douse me with perfume, or get drunk out of your mind, but you're going to have to take it as if---
PAUL: Nothing you say can make me WANT to do this---
DAN: ---as if it were something that you were OPEN to, something that you were TRYING, not something that you'd already done and didn't like. You've probably done it before, ANYWAY, haven't you?
PAUL: Not since grade school. Well, of course there was Kevin, but my son was never a sexual object for me.
DAN: When did you stop kissing him?
PAUL: Not until after he was married, which is none of your business. Now if you don't get on with this pretty soon, I'm going to LEAVE this room.
DAN: You're not the easiest person to talk to, but---
(PAUL opens his mouth to say something, but DAN steps in with a full-mouth kiss. After a second, DAN senses PAUL's stiffness of body, bats at his audience-side arm, which responds in the stiffest possible manner. DAN wrestles his arm until it's limp, then places it around the small of his back. PAUL removes it instantly until Dan replaces it, HARD, at which point it's left there. Stalemate. PAUL tries to pull away, but DAN curls his hand around his neck and pulls him in closer. Slowly, the other arm comes up and across to DAN's audience-side shoulder. Long beat, then PAUL pushes DAN away with a sound between a groan and a whimper. PAUL turns away, shaken. DAN just looks on.)
PAUL: That's enough. That's---(a long sigh) enough. I didn't---(he turns to face DAN, then looks away again) This isn't the time (almost a whisper---then with anger) no, this is NOT the time: we've bared each other completely here, and I'm feeling closer to you than---to anyone. It's a rotten trick, but you've proved your point. (DAN opens his mouth to speak) But that's the end of it. You've won. Drop it. Just DROP IT. (Mingled sadness and anger) Though exactly what you're trying to prove I fear I don't understand. Wait till your own soul, your own heart, your own BRAIN is the battlefield. It's all very well to talk in terms of "When---" or "What if---" or "Next year---", but wait till YOU host your OWN war!
DAN: (Defensively) You're dramatizing, it's---
PAUL: (Peak of loudness) OF COURSE I'M DRAMATIZING! You don't believe me, in my PAIN, until I shout at you loud enough to break through your own prejudices. (Quoting DAN from before) You have everything you want; you're at the top of the heap; enjoy your own superiority. (Pause) I don't have ANYTHING that I want. I don't have the body I grew powerful in. I don't have the wife who excited me. I don't have the children I loved so much. I don't have the TIME to look forward to, in which to ENJOY---to ENJOY---what I don't even HAVE anymore!
DAN: So then you have to CHANGE! You're like someone who's just had a fantastic orgasm and is then sorry it's over. You DID live at a peak. You DID everything you wanted to do. Now you have your memories---
PAUL: My memories! I remember more times of WANTING than of HAVING. My memory of the PAIN erases any memory of any pleasure.
DAN: You're just tired now; you don't know what you're saying.
PAUL: But the rest doesn't come anymore. I go to bed tired and I wake up tired. I'd give anything to feel at the peak of my energy just ONCE more. YOU certainly know the feeling, Dan, when you get up in the morning and there are a dozen things to do by noon and you've finished them all by eleven o'clock and you've found a dozen other things to do in the meantime. And you have the energy to do them all: not bothering to eat, not bothering to rest, not thinking about it, and THANKING the sheer ENERGY that pushes you forward. But when that ENERGY leaves, you don't have anything left. All you want to do is stay in bed, never get up, rest---rest---
DAN: Look, we'll leave now; we'll let you get some sleep; we'll talk about it tomorrow---
PAUL: For you there's a tomorrow. For me, there isn't any tomorrow because nothing will be any different from today. When you haven't had so many yesterdays, tomorrow CAN be different. But there comes a time, you have to believe me, when you know that tomorrow is going to be WORSE, not better, than today. (More reflectively) But the young never believe this, they think it'll be different. I never believed it. I never listened.
DAN: To whom?
PAUL: I hear echoes of another conversation, a long-past conversation, here today. My father tried to tell me---
DAN: (The pause is too long) Yes?
PAUL: My father and I were never close, but in his last illness he tried to make up for thirty years of neglect, thirty years of pretending he didn't have a son at all. He tried to tell me---about what I'm telling you now. I didn't understand him; it was just the maudlin blubber of a dying man. I wanted to be with him, so I sat and listened---without listening, without HEARING. (Pause) Maybe no one can really hear; maybe that's the saddest part of it, in this endless cycling: people listen, but they don't really HEAR.
DAN: It's hard to listen to what you're sure doesn't have to be SO. You have lived, that's true. You've worked and planned and played and enjoyed, and now---your energy---is diminishing slightly, but that doesn't mean you have NO energy left. Look at the energy you've expended, here, this evening, for us. That's probably why you're tired---you've been shouting at me all evening, trying to get me to hear what you have to say. (He wants verification of what he's said, but there is none) Look---look at what you've done this evening. You've passed on a message, from your father, through you, to me. I don't know if that's what you wanted to do; maybe at some level it was. (He brightens) Maybe that's REALLY why you asked us here this evening. And you've DONE it---you've DONE what you wanted to do, what you might not have known you wanted to do. Imagine how many other things you want to do---important things, like tonight. If you're not here anymore, how are you going to do them? Remember how many stories you hear about---people leaping off buildings---and suddenly thinking of hundreds of reasons why they want to keep on living. Think of those reasons NOW, Paul. Think of them NOW.
PAUL: When you reach a point of diminishing returns---
DAN: But tonight wasn't small, tonight was a great gift, to me. Now tomorrow (PAUL turns away; DAN grabs for him)---Paul, I want MORE of you---
PAUL: I thought you had everything you wanted! I thought you were complete and whole and happy within yourself!
DAN: (Trying to make a joke) Then I lied. I need you. (Suddenly serious) Paul. I need you.
PAUL: What if I were actually dying; what if it isn't my choice to leave? Where's your happiness then? Where's your completeness and wholeness?
DAN: (Thinking he has something) Is THAT---Paul, have you forgiven---your father---for dying?
PAUL: (Really thinking) It would be easy to say yes---or no. How can I answer a question like that? If I say yes, you'll poke and pry until you find some guilt, some lack of forgiveness---some sort of pain. If I say no, you'll bury me under some program of forgiveness and liberation and progress.
DAN: Forget about me, and about that silly bet. Talk to me about your father.
PAUL: (Angry) It doesn't work that way. You're not my confessor. Talking about it doesn't make it go away.
DAN: Doesn't make what go away?
PAUL: (Before he can sidestep) THE PAIN! Of course I wanted to live---I wanted HIM to live forever. You don't know what a father MEANS unless you want him to live forever. You owe him EVERYTHING: your body, your brain, your feelings, your love, your LIFE. The son should want to DIE for the father. THAT'S how important the father should be. But I didn't---I didn't want to die for my father! (He's discovering himself as he talks) I was GLAD, when he was dying, that it was HE who was dying and not ME. I wanted him to be out of the way---gone, so that I could lead my own life, so that I didn't have to feel obligated to anyone anymore, so that I didn't have to love him AS a father should be loved---because, you see, I DIDN'T love him as a father should be loved! And I felt guilty about it. This man---this old, smelly, fat, tear-filled---boozed-up---THING was my father, and I couldn't look PAST this HULK, this shell that I helped to drain dry, and love who he WAS, love what he should have MEANT to me. It's not a question of forgiving HIM; I've never been able to forgive MYSELF. (He begins to weep)
LOIS: (Gently) My darling. (Holding him) (To Dan, not unkindly) Don't think that you've broken him through to some new level of understanding. We've been over this many times. Not that it's all cleared up, as you can see. But none of this is new. It took years before he was able to talk about his feeling of guilt. Like you, Dan, he thought everything was in its place, and all was right. He's looked at this, and we've worked on this, but, as you can see, there are still bits and pieces that can touch, and cut, deeply.
PAUL: (To DAN) You think, because so far for you it's true, that because between the ages of 12 and 20 your orgasms got better, even improved between the ages of 20 and 24---or however old you are---that it'll KEEP getting better. It DOESN'T. You begin to LOSE feeling. You won't read about it in psychosexual handbooks; but sadly it's true.
LOIS: (To ALLISON) And the sorry thing is, you give YOURSELF credit for being beautiful. You have no idea HOW you did it, but you know you DID DO it. I know; that's what I thought. But when you become older, and less beautiful, you begin to tell yourself that TIME did it to you, or your husband did it to you, or your LIFE did it to you. You're wrong on BOTH ends.
DAN: (To PAUL) I thought I'd grow up and my folks and I could then PLAY? Know what? They got older! How awful of them, that they grew old and TIRED.
Lights dim. Last part of first (of the four) sides of Berlioz's Requiem to final CLIMAX. Lights come up, PAUL sits crying, his wife COMFORTS, makes lighter; they start to TOAST with poison (audience doesn't know yet), and doorbell rings unexpectedly and young couple say they were COMPELLED to come earlier, they'd phoned (the music had drowned out the sound), and they'd come OVER. It turns OUT that the old couple were GOING to commit suicide, and the young couple make it their business to try to PREVENT them, saying THAT prevention will make them happy, otherwise THEY will feel defeated. Into RESPONSIBILITY of old people for the HAPPINESS of the younger ones.
DAN: You're telling me there's NOTHING at the end of the road?
PAUL: Nothing for ME; that doesn't mean there's nothing for YOU; we're not the same person.
DAN: Don't put either of us down---you're not so awful that you couldn't be me; I'm not so awful that I couldn't be you---wait, for YOUR ears I'd have to say I'm not so GREAT that I couldn't be you. Your lines to me would be exactly the same---so we're closer to being the same person than NOT.
PAUL: None of these words mean anything---just as money doesn't mean anything. Of course, when you don't have it, you think it'll solve all your problems. But when you get it, it just shows that the problems never WERE those of money, they were ALWAYS those of contentment, satisfaction, and just plain happiness. I couldn't have said this a hundred years ago, when some people had to STRUGGLE to maintain life, but today there's no REASON to starve.
DAN: You can't SAY that, Paul. There is always famine in the world. There are always people who'd had it comfortable "living off the land" who suddenly find that the land doesn't support them anymore: it turns to desert under their feet and they can't walk fast enough to keep ahead of it, particularly if they're children who can't leave their ignorant parents who don't have the sense to move off the land into the villages, where at least they can subsist on charity.
PAUL: I'd never let myself starve.
DAN: Because you're too intelligent---that's the wrong word---too worldly-wise. You KNOW things are better elsewhere. They don't. They're tied down by taboos, religions, families, ethics that we can't understand, habits we can't condemn unless we've lived in them (PAUL winces) for generations.
PAUL: It's the survival of the fittest---native tribes that RESIST civilization (and this is not to say that TV is the savior of the world) DESERVE to die off---unless we rescue them against their wills and incarcerate them into zoos for the edification of mankind: see, but for your brains, there you are.
(BLACKOUT)