plays

Russell Heller

917-375-7431

russheller@yahoo.com

Back story:

Dana and Elliot are together, Meg is their common friend and how they met, but she has been Elliot’s close friend for several years. Mikey hates Dana and lives with her (and five other unseen people), and is a little in love with Meg. Meg and Rick dated and lived together for a year. A month ago he dropped her, told her their entire relationship had been thoroughly unhealthy and unreal and went to Europe for a month. Meg began dating a boy named Tom for whom she didn’t care at all but the point is she wasn’t pining too badly. Rick and Mikey are friends that tacitly accept each other’s enormous issues. Rick is not natural in this play, everything that comes out of his mouth should have been heard by everyone in the room (the audience) at least twenty times. Rick may be able to double as the Messenger, although it wouldn’t be ideal. Meg and Elliot have been friends for years, they were at the same high school together where she ran the environmental club, everyone thinks they’re fucking but they’re not. An unmentioned fact is that all of them except Elliot attend the same university, Rick has graduated and is moving away in a month or two, Meg is moving to Germany for a year and Elliot’s college is far away and he’ll be leaving when Meg does. None of this bears mentioning in the play.

Specifications: The majority of the story is told to the people that are in the room watching it. Not some anonymous listener or audience. That doesn’t mean leave the lights up on them. A perception I’ve run across is that the actors just are turned out the entire time, which is boring and static. The characters are telling themselves and each other the story as much as anybody else the way we all do with long detailed stories, the story becomes more about the process we experience as we recreate it for ourselves. In this play especially because so much happens off the stage and isn’t about that it happened but why the person who is reporting it is the one. One other thing: nobody talks to Rick, other than his one interaction scene with Mikey and even there he’s too preoccupied (with kicking his own ass) to actually address Mikey, because he isn’t a real character, he’s hearsay. Rick may simply wear a mask like old Greek Chorus masks, then he could play the messenger too.

Meg -18 years

Mikey - 20

Elliot - 20

Dana - 20

Rick - 22

Meg: (concerning Dana and Elliot to them and Mikey) I can’t believe you christened my couch! My mom’s probably never even had sex in her bed! Oh...wait...I walked in on her once, it wasn’t pretty!

Mikey: (another time and another place, concerning Meg) And she said, "Geez, Mikey, it’s not like I’ve never had come in my mouth before!"

Meg: Oh my god - Mikey!

Mikey: What?...I thought you meant tell that part! You said tell the story and it’s not funny without that, sorry.

Meg: (to Dana) The day after you met?

Dana: (another time, to Elliot) She told me you said, "I want her more than he does, she’d be better off with me."

Meg: (slapping Elliot on the shoulder) The day after you met!

Rick: (another time) I realized all of a sudden, while I was in Europe, that I had one good, one pure, one true thing in my life and that I fucked it up: that I just can’t let myself be loved unconditionally. I did it more to hurt myself than to hurt you. I just wasn’t thinking of the consequences, on us, when it was...happening.

Meg: Unconditional love still excludes cheating.

Elliot: (to Meg) But he’s going to get help, right? He’ll change? Sure! He did it to hurt himself. Not you. Of course not you. This is not my deal.

Meg: Mikey told Rick that I was a wart that needed to be cut off.

Mikey: (to Meg) You should have heard what he said about you.

Dana: (to Meg) Then Mikey immediately tried to get into your pants.

Rick: (delivered straight out and blank)I’m going to see my friend Ralph in Boston.

Elliot: (Meg)So he’s gone for the weekend?

Rick: I’m going to see this girl Rachel and my friend Ralph in Boston.

Meg: (Elliot)But there’s a catch.

Rick: I’m going to visit my friend Ralph and stay at this girl Rachel’s house in Boston.

Mikey: (concerning Meg, not entirely serious, mostly out of personal frustration) That weak willed woman.

Rick: This girl that’s interested in me, but there’s nothing don’t worry.

Dana: (about Rick)Two days after he’s back from being gone for a month.

Rick: I was thinking of hooking up with her when I got back from Amsterdam.

Elliot: (Meg)After treating you like a doormat.

Rick: But I missed you so much.

Mikey: (concerning Rick, to Meg) He said you were puerile.

Rick: I kissed another girl. In Belgium. I hated it.

Meg: He flew into a jealous rage when he heard I’d been seeing this boy called...um... Tom. While he was gone.

Rick: I just imagined you marrying some other guy...It made me angry.

Elliot: She doesn’t often remember Tom’s name on the first try: [he is] a real contender.

Rick: Don’t come back to me, I’m coming back to you.

Meg: I still love him...I’m still madly in love with him.

Elliot: Why do you use the word "madly" whenever you say you love him. Isn’t "sanely" good enough?

Meg: Because I do. I will probably never love any one else in my life that way that I love Rick.

Mikey: He mopes around, cries, and looks miserable.

Dana: He’s really into these public displays of grief. By the way, this play was entitled "Pyrrhus", then it was going to be called "Rochester" because "Pyrrhus" was too opaque a name, but now it’s this again so we can languish in obscurity.

Elliot: (Robert Stack from "Unsolved Mysteries") And we’re the chorus of Rochesterian students that bear witness to this tragic and suspenseful turn of events. In case you were wondering and for your information, Pyrrhus means "fair" in Greek, he was the king of Epirus around 280BC. Yes, opaque. He won full victories over Rome and Macedon at such high casualties that today like triumphs are referred to as "Pyrrhic Victories." Ironically that translates in Gringlish or Eek as "Fair Victories" or "pretty victories", I like the homonym for "Fair" as just personally in that context. It was also the nickname for Achilles son Neoptolemus. I think. Maybe I’m thinking of Paris.

Dana: Whatever. The title "Rochester" would have had the added significance that there is a town or city named Rochester in 26 states. We’re New York

Rick: I’m going to go see this girl Rachel. Nothing will happen.

Mikey: Three days later.

Meg: (Dana) Rick just called me.

Dana: He slept with that girl.

Rick: I wasn’t thinking about how it would effect us. I didn’t think beforehand of the consequences.

Mikey: Three days after he "threw himself at her."

Meg: I’ve never had anyone throw themself - Who they are - so completely at me before. I think that’s why he did it. He can’t feel vulnerable so he had to do something to close himself off.

Elliot: Probably, but I prefer to think of him as a sorry prick.

Dana: When he dropped her he put their entire relationship in terms of what she had done to him.

Elliot: He sounded like Jason in the Medea: "It would be better far if men could find some other way to beget children."

Meg: I missed Rick a lot today.

Elliot: He cheated on you two days ago. Three days after swearing his undying servitude and one month after shitting all over you.

Dana: (to Elliot) What would you do if she went back to him?

Elliot: That’s not my deal. I’ve left before when this sort of thing happened. Has she told you the Cory Story?

Meg: The only time I ever had an orgasm with Cory. Once. In one hundred and fifty times over the course of a year and a half. Was when I tied him down and dominated him.

Dana: mmm....vinyl.

Elliot: I left four months before the death threats. Somebody finally called his college and stuck him with a TRO (that’s temporary restraining order, kids) and his grades for the entire semester he’d nearly completed were set back to nothing.

Dana: Go college harassment laws! That must have pissed him off.

Elliot: Sí, pero uno más complaint and they promised to expel him completely, the fuck crazy little runt. The point is she wouldn’t call in and get the TRO herself, someone else had to do it for her. What would you do if she went back.

Dana: I don’t think I could move in with her when she gets back from Germany. We were planning on it. But not with someone with that little respect for herself.

Rick: I really fucked up this time, didn’t I? (they all turn and look at him in disbelief)

Dana: How stupid! He pretends to have this huge intellect which is the basis for his being a condescending asshole to everyone in the world then he feigns ignorance that he knew fucking this random girl would have a negative effect on their relationship, when we know they discussed it before they left.

Mikey: This is clouding up your whole life, Rick. I think you have to take action. You two fight all the time and you’re leaving for Grad School at the end of the summer; she’s going to Germany for a year! She is not putting anything into your life but distraction. She’s like a wart or something that you have to just cut off.

Don’t be so sad that he’s gone, you know there he was acting like a real jerk. Right before he left. He was just saying all kinds of things about you.

You’ve been over it and you’ve been relieved at that for weeks. It was just spiraling downwards and then it crashed, just like you knew it would, and now you’re getting sad over it again. I’m not just invoking spilt milk here: the guy was a cock. We’re all his friends and we all know he’s a cock. Are you denying that?

Dana: Then he tried to get into her pants.

Elliot: When not engaged in slanderous vilification and closet misogyny Mikey is, terribly enough, a really likable guy.

Dana: He doesn’t take that much time off from slander.

Meg: Mikey hates Dana. They live in the same house with five other people but she can’t not know that he hates her. He thinks she’s too promiscuous.

Elliot: What’s wrong with being promiscuous? What’s wrong with enjoying sex? I admire it. Most women think it’s some sort of virtue to pretend they shower with their clothes on.

Meg: You just want to sleep around. And I don’t even want to mention by name the disease.

Elliot: Thanks for assuming I have noble motives, old buddy.

Meg: You just want to spread your seed or whatever you apes do when you’re feeling primal.

Elliot: I think it’s wrong for them to censure her for not pretending not to enjoy sex. If they have a problem with how open she is about it then A) they should tell her and B) they probably shouldn’t have a video in their living room called "Certifiably Anal." What kind of coffee table conversation do they expect?

Mikey: You’d think she’d fucked, sucked off or slept with half of Rochester. Every sentence she speaks begins with "This guy I was dating used to...", "This guy I was dating said...", "I went here with boyfriend number 642.8."

Meg: Mikey has a real problem with talking about things like that openly...concerning women.

Elliot: (to Dana) How many men have you been with? Please don’t count on your fingers.

Dana: (after a long pause) Well...16...including you.

Elliot: How many of them were worth it.

Dana: (bravely)All of them were worth it at the time. (normal) But as for whether I was glad it happened I’d have to say...about half of them...8 out of 16. I just had sex for the first time when I was 18, two years ago. He was an asshole.

Elliot: I hear that all the fuckin’ time. "He was an asshole." Women always lose their virginity to assholes. That must be because no guy that isn’t an asshole thinks he’s worthy of being remembered as the one. When I finally got tired of virginity I had to neglect to mention I was a virgin until afterwards. I was worn down so much by people that wanted me that I didn't want them to be my "first" or that I wanted to be with that didn’t want to be with me that the second I became numb and didn’t care anymore I was being attacked by women. Nobody wants to be the first time unless you’re high school sweethearts, you’re an asshole, or you think it’s no big deal. Any girl saying "sleep with me tonight" to me, even if I was thinking about it, when I said the V-word they ran for the hills like it was an STD. Girls never believed I was a virgin either, some of them thought I was trying to get out of sleeping with them. I was finally deflowered, after years of oral sex and mutual masturbation by a woman that reminded me of my favorite author. My favorite author is Dorothy Parker. We didn’t last long. You know how it happened? I didn’t tell her.

Meg: I miss Rick. I had a really big "I miss Rick" day.

Dana: ( to Elliot) You should have seen the two of them at dinner. She was actually flirting with him. Two days after!

Elliot: Dana’s upset because her mother is sick. Very sick. And I’m upset because Dana’s upset. Meg’s lack of dignity doesn’t help.

Dana: (about Rick and Meg) I don’t know what happened at the movie later. They probably hooked up. I wouldn’t go.

Meg: I’m just not used to being around him in other than a girlfriend capacity. I don’t know how not to flirt with him.

Elliot: She says it’s over.

Meg: We just are no longer romantically involved. I cannot get involved with someone I can’t trust. I love him - I will always love him - but we are not romantic. It would just be easier if he wasn’t around. Thank god he’s going away for two weeks soon...He looks so miserable.

Mikey: I have to bring his hairshirt home from the cleaners.

Elliot: Meg’s relationships with men and with family are based on subtle but effective emotional abuse. That is our theory.

Dana: Her mother is one of those moms that’s always reminding her she’s on a diet, threatening not to let her move to Germany next year if she stays out past 1am - even though Meg is 20 and this is the first time she’s lived at home in two years. Her brothers are both far enough away from home to be remembered as perfect. And they’re both incredible...[jerks].

Elliot: They’re dicks. One worse than the other. One of them teaches at the high school she and I went to together and she’s not allowed to visit there-

Meg: Because it’s his territory. And my mother supports it. But everyone hates him there.

Elliot: Cory and Rick never physically abused her much. Cory did a bit. Once he made her screw him in the toilet of a Taco Bell. I wasn’t around for that. I met him and told her it wasn’t my deal. I saw where it was going from the beginning but she wouldn’t drop him. Of course, I always ignore it myself when that voice in my head intones, "this will end badly."

Meg: (at, but not to Elliot)Maybe it would have been easier to leave him if you’d been around.

Dana: That’s not spoken. Rick raised a hand to her once and she became hysterical, crying. He was drunk at the time, at a party. He swore he’d never hit her and, to his credit, he never did.

Elliot: Yeah, he just hit other people. She never told us about his temper and violence until after he cheated. The horrid things people in her family and her friends thought about Rick and wanted to do to him came of a different origin.

Dana: Everyone wanted to kill him for cheating, including me. But our reasons for not liking him had been there from the start. No one liked him, it turned out. Everyone thought he was an asshole. Even the people who were close to him thought he was an asshole.

Meg: Nobody told me these things, not even Elliot, until after he left.

Elliot: I didn’t want to get in the way. She lived with him. They did stupid things like partnership rings. Then he drops her after weeks and months of screaming they had considered affectionate. I always hated him. He laughed too loud.

Meg: The only thing we ever really fought about was how we would be able to stay together. He’s going to UPenn to get a PhD in Musicology, I’m moving to Germany for a year, but he’s going there instead of Harvard or Stanford because it’s closer to me. I think he resents me for that.

Elliot: When he got home from Europe he acted like he should have sprung for the titanium chastity belt. They had sex again after his "throw himself at her" "you complete me" speech and it’s not great. He leaves, she misses him, that’s that.

Dana: All she can do is miss him.

Elliot: (delighted with the obscure reference) He plays Heracles with Iole waiting in Boston, but Meg doesn’t do tragedies.

Dana: That was unacceptably obscure.

Rick: I did it to hurt myself, not you. I can’t imagine life without you. I’m seeing a therapist. I know that this constitutes abusive behavior. I recognize that. I can change.

Dana: He sounds just like an alcoholic.

Meg: He admits he has a problem.

Elliot: Yeah, me too, but I just seem to keep on masturbating.

Dana: Not when I’m around.

Elliot: Remember, Meg, when we watched that gangbang porno?

Meg: Yes! "Oh, doctor, I guess I’m just a hopeless slut!"

Elliot: "Yes, but you’re a wonderful slut."

Meg: Twenty guys lined up in a theatre to bang this poor girl.

Dana: Owww...twenty guys, that would hurt.

Meg: But Dana you’ve--

Dana: Yes, but not all at once.

Meg: Mikey, I saw your ex the other day. She came up to me while I was typing a brief and I couldn’t talk to her. She sat next to me for 45 minutes while I typed.

Dana: She thinks I’m trying to bag you.

Mikey: (appalled)Bag me?

Dana: Yes, we’re having a love child.

Meg: (to quell the tension Dana isn’t fully aware of) Elliot and I are having a love child.

Mikey: (grateful for the distraction) Pardon?

Meg: Elliot?

Elliot: It’s a long story. Ever since high school everyone thinks Meg and I are fucking.

Meg: Even though nothing has ever happened (note for performer: that is not entirely true though, but it may as well be, the two of them are like so many male-female friendships that somehow keep that title) So one day...no, you tell it better.

Elliot: No, go ahead.

Meg: So...one day my period is late: I call my doctor, go in get checked out. Go home and he calls after a few days. Now he gets my mom on the phone and thinks it’s me, doesn’t even ask, just starts spewing information about my late period. My mom hears this, finds me, walks right up to me and says: "Are you and Elliot having a child?" Completely serious.

Dana: I was late once and my boyfriend at the time freaked out.

Elliot: CUT!!! Let’s roll that back a second.

Okay, I mention sex, Dana mentions sex, we bring up the porno, then:

Dana: Oww...twenty guys, that would hurt.

Meg: But Dana you’ve --

Dana: Yeah, but not all at once.

Elliot: Dana cheerfully lets herself be judged by Meg. Meg, if interrogated with torture devices would not admit that she’s nearly as prejudiced against Dana’s sexuality as Mikey. It doesn’t matter that Meg had sex with Cory something like 150 times (that’s the number she gave me anyway). The same with Rick. Meg thinks it’s better to sleep with two assholes 300 times instead of 16 people ranging from serious to casual, some meaning nothing at all. Of course Meg had her voyage into one night stands, even a confusing lesbian summer, but those things aren’t brought up when Dana is around, no, Dana is the scapegoat slut, the fatal woman by proxy. Okay, more fun, let’s scroll forward.

Dana: She thinks I’m trying to bag you.

Mikey: Bag me?

Elliot: He hates her.

Dana: Yes, we’re having a love child.

Elliot: (concerning Mikey) Seppuku (hari-kiri motion) is becoming a viable option.

Meg: Elliot and I are having a love child.

Mikey: Pardon?

Elliot: He doesn’t hate me, but he’s disgusted that I’m with Dana. Who, because of her checkered past, he can’t see as anything but...well...sixteen dicks...even though she is veritably remarkably...lovely. Somehow.

Dana: I was late once and my boyfriend at the time freaked out.

Elliot: Even if most things are a continual reference to past boyfriends. It’s not the concept that bothers me, it’s the repetition.

Dana: (breaks out of the instant replay) Elliot is too intellectual. He’d never be of any use in a real tragedy. In fact I think it is because of Elliot that real tragedy is dead. If Elliot was born as Oedipus the play never would have ended because he would have stopped and asked "Am I myself disgusted by this or have I only been told that I should be disgusted by this?" He is passionate, (enjoying it) definitely passionate, but I sometimes wonder if there’s anything he would die for.

Elliot: I used to dream of fighting in Vietnam when I was around 12 years old. And dying grisly deaths. Part of the fantasy was not knowing what I was dying for exactly. But I knew it was good, I knew I could put myself in its hands, [I was] being told that by everyone. Now of course I’m too old to think it’s that remarkably good anymore you know if it ever was, but I’m not moving away or anything. Distance makes us wise and I am often described as wise...and distant. I wisely stick with the winning team. I read at that time, at 12, that the immature man wishes to die nobly for a cause, but the mature man wishes to live humbly by one. I don’t know if that really pertains to me because who knows what my cause is or if I have one, but that’s from "The Catcher in the Rye"...and I stopped fantasizing about Vietnam and death after I read it. That’s characteristic of me. The book that shot John Lennon and Ron Reagan brought me through puberty without violence

Dana: I think that it’s fortunate Elliot turned out the way he did. I think that under different circumstances he could have been one of those children. The new children. He says he was part of a group everyone called "The Black Team" his freshman year of high school. His best friend’s father had a safe full of guns as tall as the ceiling.

Elliot: (Dana being in another place, unaware of her, he continues) My life hasn’t been much like Vietnam either. In Vietnam, our bullets couldn’t prove that we were right and we lost; I win. My friends too. With superior firepower. At too high a cost. Everybody I know wins.

Meg: When Rick came into the house the first person that rose to hug him was Mikey. The irony does not require explanation.

Mikey: We stood up the rest of the gang and went to talk.

Rick: (decorously smashing his head against a wall) I really fucked up this time, didn’t I?

Mikey: (takes no notice of the self-badgering, answers tersely and truly) Yup.

Rick: (hitting himself in the face) I really lost her.

Mikey: No going back.

Rick: (pounding his face, slamming himself onto the floor) I can’t believe I was so stupid!

Mikey: Well. You were.

Rick: (a moment of lucidity and stillness) It just happened. (goes back to beating himself up)

Mikey: Oh, come on.

Dana: We never actually see Rick beat himself up when he’s grief-stricken, but Meg always describes it in such vivid detail we imagine it looks something like this. We can’t imagine him speaking in any language other than cliché either. (she and Elliot take a minute to appreciate Rick WWF’ing himself, then stand behind him and present him to the audience)

Elliot: He wins the stability prize, the poster child for maturity, a bastion of hope for all future generations.

Dana: And he’s 22, at least two years older than any of us. Meg’s only 18.

Elliot: People at 22 either have kids or are kids.

Meg: Strike that, reverse it, either they’re still kids openly or they pretend to be adults.

Elliot: All adults pretend to be adults. I hear there are people out there that are my age, 20, and are married. I haven’t actually met any.

Meg: They’re probably not from our socioeconomic background. (scene shift) The next evening while I was out flirting with Rick, Dana’s mother became very ill. Elliot went and stayed there. Not sure as to whether he was doing any good. He felt maybe just being there would help. They didn’t speak for the four hours he was there. After all, her mother was sick, and she’d known him all of two weeks. She left the next morning to fly home.

Elliot: Rick left also (thank heavens), he would be in and out the rest of the summer.

Messenger: I come with news of Dana.

Elliot: But Dana just left.

Messenger: That’s how these things work. You’re in a place where time has no meaning.

Elliot: (feed the damn line) that means that you’re...!

Messenger: Yes! I am...the Messenger!

A humble gasman I

Filling up the unleaded for a car

In which sat Mistress Dana distressed

At the plight of her poor mother.

Distressed enough to get full service

Gas which while useful costs a good 8 cents extra

Unlike in Oregon, where having someone else pump it is

Mandatory, not that you’d be arrested

For pumping your own gas - at least I

Think not.

The bitter tears rained down upon her cheeks like the

Dew on my Gremlin each morning. I asked from

Whence came this watery messenger and she answered

With a voice fulgent with sorrow.

Dana: My mom’s dying of cancer, thanks.

Messenger:

I topped her off at $12.30 not being a quarter number

But avoiding pennies nonetheless.

I thought to have heard the last

Of it, but that night at dusk I visited

A fallen comrade at Minneapolis’ hospital -7/6 2:00-5:30pm & 7-8pm

Recovering from a slight misunderstanding

With a ‘77 El Camino.

From within a nearby room

Came Cries and Whispers

An unusual Bergman viewing

On hospital television.

The room contained Mistress Dana

Still quite fulgent with sorrow

And the ailing mother

The dreaded cancer, the vile crab,

Spread its night black claw to encase

The left lung of the poor woman.

Being an asthmatic there was no hope of removing it

The sorrow was doubled due to its suddenness:

The matron had possessed a supposedly slow and

Easily treatable thyroid cancer

Upon examination the cancer had run rampant

As though a child’s headache were symptomatic

Of a brain tumor.

She, the mother, hung at death’s door apace,

Whence the fire-haired brother of Zeus

Appeared and sent her back across the

Dreaded Styx, tipping Charon handsomely

For the round-trip.

Mistress Dana emerged, slightly less fulgent with sorrow

Her Mater once more drinking the rays of Loxias, Phoebus Apollo,

Her vigil rewarded with the return of her loved one.

It is said that the Goddess Cypris had a hand

In this turn of events,

Delaying the madre’s day of reckoning due

To the loving service paid her by the daughter.

None of the gods are immune to Aphrodite,

Not even Death.

If one thing is certain

The help definitely came not from

Diana, the Chaste daughter of Leto.

Never shall you yourself suffer the fate

Of those who shun Cypris like that famous

Son of Theseus, Hyppolytus,

Whose soul wanders

The rocky shore of Athens,

Cursed with the love of his stepmother Phaedra

or those people on Jerry Springer

in the same situation.

For your dutiful service I tell you this.

Nor shall your (Elliot’s) 19 years of service to Diana go unremembered.

(well, 14 years if we really count everything.)

Now must I return to my home, and

Gas up Loxias Apollo’s Golden Chariot for

Tomorrow’s run.

It’s a custom Rolls, a true thing of beauty.

Elliot: Stay yet, your news is that of a great friend, but tell more: will she return shortly to me?

Messenger: It will be so. A person can stand only so much of St. Cloud Minnesota before they either leave, go mad, or buy season tickets to the St. Cloud Fighting Knights and start saying "Ofta!"

Meg: How does he feel about her being gone? Does he miss her? Does he just think he does? Last year when he was away from the girl he was seeing he became physically sick and bored everyone with talk of her. But that ended badly. Will this? Is this the same thing? Turning over and over in his head until he does something mindless like working out or working in an office. Forever. Rick leaves for the Bahamas and I’m lonely. I’m lonely. Mikey, Elliot and I have a barbecue.

Mikey: Meg, you’ve been waiting tables for 8 hours, we’ll wait while you shower.

Elliot: Yes, I’ll mix the drinks, Mikey will start the grill. You can do that macho stuff, right? I suck at it.

Mikey: No problem, you just make a big fireball and run. Are you insured?

Meg, Yes, so don’t let that deter you from burning the house to cinders. I’ll just be a second to wash up.

Mikey: By all means, take your time.

Meg: Dana doesn’t even use soap.

Elliot: (under his breath) And we’re off.

Meg: She says it irritates her skin, dries it out.

Mikey: Don’t tell me about that, I don’t want to hear it.

Meg: Ask Elliot, he’s the one that deals with it.

Mikey: Stop Meg, you’ll make me sick.

Elliot: All right. That’s enough. Freeze! Sit down, this’ll take a second. (Mikey and Meg sit) I’m turning off my brain right now. All the protests and unsureties. I love her. And at least for now I promise to ignore any of the "but in which sense"’s and the "love or in love" and the "are you just having fun?" which I’m not just having fun but I don’t know and I accept that and I’M DOING IT AGAIN!! I don’t care if she hasn’t read all the exact same novels I have or seen the same movies that the stale anecdotes I repeat over and over are from. I don’t care that Meg wants me to think she’s promiscuous. Possibly out of sublimated jealousy. It’s like I smoke occasionally so this girl asks me "How much do you smoke?" and I say "two or three cigarettes a day" and she looks at me like I’m a walking tombstone. People used to smoke three packs a day! Billie Holiday smoked four packs a day. Well...Sixteen people in three years. Two years. None all that often I’d bet. Why do they both want that to disturb me? I love Dana. And if they’re implying that she’ll cheat then if she does I’ll ask her if she wants to split and if she doesn’t I’ll say, "Next time tell me beforehand" so I know or can figure out what to do. What I want to do, how I want to respond to that. Not to pretend to be upset by things that don’t really upset me just because I should. We haven’t seen the same movies. That means that I have to be fresh-me every time we go out. And she likes fresh-me and as far as I can tell I am not any less funny or intelligent without a million obscure references that only myself and two other people could possibly get.

Elliot: Dana, I missed you.

Dana: I missed you so much.

Elliot: Dana, I...I lurve you. I luhhh-uh you. I...need a word between like and love.

Dana: I know.

Elliot: Kinda liking lurve right now. I...love being with you. I love being near you.

Dana: I like that. I like that a lot.

Elliot: Don’t go anywhere.

Dana: Don’t worry, I lurve you too.

Elliot: (stepping out of it) Enough about me and my sitcom ending fantasies. (7/8)

Meg: It ended quickly, but not badly. He goes off to New York City for a few days and doesn’t miss her. He comes back and they don’t get in touch. It ends on the same couch they christened three weeks earlier, my couch. She said the words he’s been waiting to hear.

Dana: I think we should stop dating.

Meg: He responds immediately but consciously not too quickly:

Elliot: I agree.

Mikey: And it’s over.

Meg: Time becomes compressed for some people, a day can sometimes have a full 24 hours in it. They’d only known each other for three weeks after all. Elliot congratulated himself on having felt something. Dana moved on to an ex-boyfriend. She never called Elliot or me for the rest of the summer.

Mikey:

"Reuben’s Children" by your girl DP

Accursed from their birth they be

Who seek to find monogamy

Pursuing it from bed to bed;

I think they would be better dead.

Elliot: Harsh. Charles Ludlam once said that tragedies end in death and comedies end in marriage and maybe the death of comedy can be blamed on that marriage does not mean a happy ending anymore. If you lessen the joy at the end of all comedy you lessen the suffering at the end of all tragedy. Our little tragedy wouldn’t make a cathartic fifth act. It ends in email. Rick takes his revenge. Getting back at Meg for himself sleeping with Rachel.

Mikey: An itemized list:

Meg: He wrote

1) Our partner rings were an impulse buy

2) you’re too immature to know what love is

3) I only got involved with you to see how much I could make you love me. You seemed so strong and independent I thought you would be a challenge

4) I am going backpacking for a week with Rachel

Then he said he was really glad that we’d cleared the air and he felt that the tension was gone between us. As if me standing across from him weeping wasn’t a bad sign. He did not take me backpacking the entire year we were together, he always put it off.

Mikey: Rick’s sexual history was revealed to the rest of us finally: He always dated ugly and fat girls, he offers no explanation but the reason we think is that they are easier to control. The one exception was a fifty year old woman when he was 19, easily explained, and then there’s Meg.

Elliot: Little could he have known that Meg’s past abusive boyfriends and cruel family made her prime mind-control material. He’d hit the jackpot: a pretty girl used to abuse far worse than the condescension he was giving her, ready to give herself completely to him. All he had to do was wear her out with months of "I love you"’s. He was never out of control until he was in Europe, and then they were broken up.

Mikey: He couldn’t handle being out of control so he slept with Rachel - the same day he slept with Meg again for the first time in a month, two days after prostrating himself before her. Nice detective work, team.

Elliot: (front and center, bright eyes and straight-facedly sarcastic) He was never out of control, so he was never in love. You can’t really love unless you give up control...and that’s what I learned today.

Mikey: Elliot and Meg’s four year long conversation over sex continues:

Meg: I am only sexually attracted to guys I am emotionally involved with.

Elliot: And I’m sexually attracted to just about everyone. You know that girl that was in the environmental club with us? Really pushy and jerky? Yeah...I’d fuck her in a second.

Meg: But you loathe her!

Elliot: Yes, even faster because I loathe her. And it is not some power thing.

Meg: Well, I could call you a slut for wanting to sleep with so many women but I don’t.

Elliot: Right, because I’d laugh in your face...I’ve had sex about 10 times with 4 people now, and you?

Meg: But I only have sex with people I care about--

Elliot: I don’t? Why are you telling me how I feel about people?

Meg: But it’s something beautiful to me.

Elliot: And it’s not to me?

Meg: Not the way you’ve been acting, no.

Elliot: So it’s better with abusive boys that hit you or cheat on you?

Meg: (right back at him) No, it’s better with someone you love, maybe if you’d ever loved anybody the way I have, lived with them for a year, you’d know that.

Elliot: Well, I don’t seem to be ready at the moment to take that chance and find out a year later that everybody thought my "beaux" was an asshole and I never knew it.

Meg: I don’t think he’s an asshole.

Elliot: Everyone knows he’s an asshole! Dogs know he’s an asshole! He’s a fucking talk-down-to-you-so-he-can-feel-superior laugh-too-loud-at-your-jokes asshole and you are still in love with him!

Meg: Okay, I am, but we’re not ever getting back together and that’s all.

Elliot: But he’s won! He still has power over you and that’s all he wanted. Just like Cory.

Meg: Not like Cory - Cory was a psychopath.

Elliot: So no death threats, but how long did it take for you to get over Cory.

Meg: A long time. And I didn’t rush into this. I couldn’t tell Rick I loved him until we’d been living together for four months.

Elliot: And he waited you out.

Meg: We took vows.

Elliot: In front of who?

Meg: In front of each other.

Elliot: And that’s all it took, vows? I always wondered why so many men marry women just to get to bed with them.

Meg: (getting playfully nasty) Not everyone can bounce from old flame to new flame like you.

Elliot: (more playfully nastier) Don’t get jealous just because I’ve had lots of good sex this summer and you had one lousy day with Ricky Love, a shared day I might mention.

Meg: How many girls did you sleep with this summer?

Elliot: Three.

Meg: And how many without a condom?

Elliot: Just one and she’s on birth control.

And I know her sexual history like the back of my hand.

Meg: But you’ve been with Dana.

Elliot: Damn, why you wastin’ my flava? Yes, I’ve been with Dana, okay the mystique is gone - everything’s over - and she’s more annoying than I thought, and I never feel the urge to talk to her anymore, but why do you get like she’s the town disease? I don’t think 300 times with Rick and Cory qualify you for virgin status.

Meg: Elliot, do you know how many girls Cory cheated on me with?

Elliot: A guess?.......10. More? 15? Am I getting warm here. ick, 20?

Meg: No....40. Most were unprotected and he impregnated two girls during the time we were together. We never used a condom because I was on birth control and once you go without one you can’t really go back. I spent a year getting tested twice or three times or four times a month for a year. A year with only oral sex I might mention.

Elliot: I hope he has it. No, I don’t. Then he’d give it to someone else. I hope he has a totally independent non-contagious disease. Something like terminal crabs or elephantiasis. Some kind of cancer that would make him get his colon removed.

Meg: Wish on a star.

Elliot: Let’s do it! Which one?

Meg: I think that’s Polaris.

Elliot: Good choice...Polaris, can you find the Gemini?

Meg: Not a chance, why?

Elliot: They’re Castor and Polydeuces, Helen of Troy’s big twin brothers, if anyone can help someone wronged in love they’re the guys.

Meg: Sorry, Polaris will have to do.

Elliot: Here, take my hand. Polaris, we wish that Cory, you know the one we mean, be given a grotesquely horrible but non-communicable disease like...is syphilis contagious?

Meg: I think so.

Elliot: Gonorrhea?

Meg: Definitely.

Elliot: Maybe we should stick to cancer.

Meg: Sound option.

Elliot: Polaris, please send Cancer to Cory. We can’t send you anything in return but that assurance that he will deserve his great suffering. You wish too.

Meg: I’ll just watch.

Elliot: Come here, hug me. (they hug) I’m sorry you just--

Meg:(singsongy) Sto-op.

Elliot: (they shove each other back and forth while Elliot rambles until they stop for "Make my dinner", then "just kidding" as she pushes him off the stage and follows) --let men run your life, (Meg sings "Cut it ou-ut") put all your trust there and zap. Not that you shouldn’t trust, ("stopit") you’ve gotta trust, ("stopit") but I wish you could trust more but don’t let men run your life("aauugh!")...Now go make me dinner! (she pushes him off stage) Just kidding!