plays

Trysts

Man 1 – 29 years

Man 2 – 21 years

Woman 1 – 29 years

Woman 2 – 16 years

Set – generic hotel room: made up bed center stage, the symmetrical wall lights on either side, night-table SR of bed with drawer for Gideon Bible. On top of table there is a circular ice holder and two or three plastic cups in shrink wrap. Bathroom is SL. No doors necessary.

NOTES ON PERFORMANCE:

1) punctuation is for speaking, do not correct it.

2) Words in brackets [] are not spoken out loud, they are provided to assist the speaker.

3) the disembodied sections: the performers are to be visible during them, I might suggest four stand up microphones at different places on the stage. They are not addressed directly to each other except when directed.

4) The song "Fuck and Run" can be found on Liz Phair’s "Exile in Guyville" 1993 Matador Records, its length is 3:07.

5) The description of Woman 1 in Sc.1 can change depending on actress as long as it remains that general, hair dark or light, rather tall or rather short or average height, etc.

6) The unwritten scene is to be arrived at with the particular performers, the jump from there to the end I leave to you to bridge in your own way. I would prefer that it not feature people reaching out to each other longingly to the strains of Enya.

 

W1: Have you seen me?

M1: No.

W: Not at all?

M: A flash, when you entered the room. Dark hair.

W: Okay.

W: Lighter hair. Short.

M: (ironically) Like you expected?

W: I’m shaking.

M: Don’t.

W: You’re harmless?

M: No.

W: You hurt many people?

M: More than I’d like, but…

W: Yes?

M: At times it’s the thing to be done.

W: Take off your shirt.

W: Are you smiling?

M: Yes.

W: Why. Why?

M: I don’t know.

W: You’re uncomfortable.

M: Not too bad.

W: Not what you’d had in mind?

M: I didn’t have any expectations.

W: None at all?

M: Just a few.

W: No.

M: Take your shirt off.

W: Yes.

M: What do you look like?

W: I’m rather tall, I’m fairly young, my hair is long and dark, my skin is pale, my eyes are dark, I bruise easily.

W: (lifting the back of her shirt) Is there a mark?

M: (without looking) Yes.

W: You fucker.

Woman 1: Tell me something.

Man 1: [Tell you] what?

W1: Something.

M1: I love you.

W1: Not that. Say that again.

M1: I love you.

W1: Why do you say that? Why would you say that?

M1: We’re playing.

W1: Yes.

M1: May I look at you?

W1: No.

M1: I know what you look like.

W1: No you don’t.

M1: Look at me. (pause.) Look at me.

W1: No. I don’t want to get hurt.

M1: [Then] don’t leave your room.

Man 1(not showing any emotion at all): Trust me. Tell me what the two of you did together. Oh, that’s interesting. Did he…? Oh. Any good? Ha, you flatterer. Not all that exciting? Oh, that was exciting. Mmmm. Did he kiss you, on the mouth? Well of course. Hmmm? Would I tell you?…No.

Woman 1: My eyes open and close, open and disclose. They are wide, regarding, telling you they hurt they love they accuse they hate but worst. Is when they turn on you open disks: Blankness: you pass not here. I can look into your eyes for hours with safety you don’t know you don’t know. They light upon you and rest. No fear. No reason to move. I hope that they are burning you. I hope, that they set you on fire.

Man 1: I could be wrong but I love you.

I could be emotionally damaged but I love you.

It could be a trick of the light; I could, just be misplacing the affection I had for the dog I had that was sold without my permission and then doggy-napped from that owner (who went near insane and searched for him for two years: he was a very charismatic dog learned that from me). And I don’t actually have any idea what love is or how and in what way it differs from continuous desire. (pause.)

I think about you frequently, not always. (pause.)

I feel happy when you’re around and that doesn’t happen with many people.

Woman 1: Don’t tell me how much I mean to you, don’t tell me how deeply I affect you. Touch me. Or hit me, fuck me, cry out tear your hair write it yourself or kill yourself otherwise I don’t care.

Woman 2(not a complaint): All we do is eat fuck sleep watch movies and read books.

Man 2: We’re very essential.

W2: I want you.

M2: I want you.

W2: I miss you. (ruffles his hair) I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t let myself fall in love with you. What do you think?

M2: You shouldn’t.

W2: I know I know. You’re not in love with me. Are you.

M2: (silence, gazing up at her.)

W2: I was with somebody.

M2: Don’t tell me.

W2: Health risks.

M2: Healthrisks I trust you, don’t tell me. Tell me about it.

W2: He’s a freshman.

M2: That’s sexy.

W2: I went down on him. We’d been planning on hooking up for months and months.

M2: I envy him. A little freshman getting performed on by an older woman.

W2: I took him into the back seat of my car. It was parked on the street outside my friend’s party. He had a belt on, more fun to take off.

M2: Did the people at the party know where you were going?

W2: Maybe, we were talking about it in the living room.

M2: Talking about it.

W2: Describing it.

M2: And was it like you described it?

W2: Somewhat.

M2: Not as exciting?

W2: Some of it was exciting.

M2: Really, what?

W2: Like you said, Me with a freshman in the back of my car.

M2: Exciting.

W2: It is. (to him) Isn’t it.

Woman 2: I love you.

Man 2: That feels good.

W2: Good. I want to make you feel good. I want to be what you want.

M2: I don’t want you to change. Even if we’re not right for each other. Even if we don’t fit.

W2: You care for me. I won’t change for you. I won’t cheapen us.

M2: I want you to be exactly you when it’s over, I don’t want to worry that I’ve made you pretend or to push away friends to be with me.

W2: That’s selfish of you.

M2: Yes it is.

W2: You change me. Being with you changes me. I’m not the same.

M2: I know. I want you to be strong.

W2: I want you to pretend for me.

M2: Pretend what?

W2: The promises we make to each other. I want you to pretend that we’ll last forever. I know it’s finite just like I don’t know if there’s an afterlife, if I’m wrong I’ll probably be much more happy.

M2: I don’t want to do anything unhealthy.

W2: I won’t forget. I promise I won’t. But when I say that I can’t wait until winter so we can go sledding, or next spring so we can watch it together, or that we’ll travel to Europe or Antarctica or wherever, I don’t want you to say, even to yourself, "if we’re together." I promise I won’t forget. Yes?

M2: I want you.

W2: I want you.

M2: You’re my baby.

W2: You’re my little boy.

Man 2: When was the last time sex grew out of something, was the result of the evolution of a relationship. For me…ever? For me it’s always the first time I meet someone, with an exception here or there that proves the rule. I’m a fling. I’m a fucking (in the sense of goddamn) fling.

Woman 2: I don’t want to think about how it’s going to end. The only thing certain is that you will lose everything. (referring to herself) How much it hurts you is right next to how dead you already are. How much you feel depends on how good you were at disentangling yourself from it before it died or exploded. How far you could get away from the bomb running. What’s your premonition?

"Fuck and Run" plays:

Fuck And Run by Liz Phair

I woke up alarmed
I didn't know where I was at first
Just that I woke up in your arms
And almost immediately I felt sorry
'Cause I didn't think this would happen again
No matter what I could do or say
Just that I didn't think this would happen again
With or without my best intentions

And whatever happened to a boyfriend
The kind of guy who tries to win you over?
And whatever happened to a boyfriend
The kind of guy who makes love 'cause he's in it?

And I want a boyfriend
I want a boyfriend
I want all that stupid old shit
Like letters and sodas
Letters and sodas

You got up out of bed
You said you had a lot of work to do
But I heard the rest in your head
And almost immediately I felt sorry
'Cause I didn't think this would happen again
No matter what I could do or say
Just that I didn't think this would happen again
With or without my best intentions

And I want a boyfriend
I want a boyfriend
I want all that stupid old shit
Like letters and sodas
Letters and sodas

I can feel it in my bones
I'm gonna spend another year alone
It's fuck and run, fuck and run
Even when I was seventeen
Fuck and run, fuck and run
Even when I was twelve

You almost felt bad
You said that I should call you up
But I knew much better than that
And almost immediately I felt sorry
'Cause I didn't think this would happen again
No matter what I could do or say
Just that I didn't think this would happen again
With or without my best intentions

And I can feel it in my bones
I'm gonna spend my whole life alone
It's fuck and run, fuck and run
Even when I was seventeen
Fuck and run, fuck and run
Even when I was twelve

Man 1(disembodied): I looked at each and every person I passed on the street today. Nobody looked back at me. I didn’t try anything I didn’t wave my arms or anything to get them to look I…didn’t want to interfere with their instincts. I was thinking about it while I was walking and trying not to look and not succeeding. I think that I have to not be looking for them to look. Sometimes I try letting my head loll forward and look at the ground, look out of the corner of my eyes or casually snap my head up to try to catch someone checking me out. No one. I think maybe you have to be the kind of person that doesn’t feel the need to look. But I am apparently not that person. And the person that is looked at…he either knows about it or he doesn’t. Either he basks in it, throws a sly wink at an admirer…or he takes it for granted and thinks everyone is looked at…or he doesn’t care…or he’s always one. second. late. And he can’t understand why nobody sees him, why he isn’t there. (pause.) Even more invisible I didn’t register even in the eyes of the people that passed me. When I spoke to anyone they would react as if I’d just materialized out of thin air, a trick they didn’t find particularly interesting. When you’re walking down a street you look at people, the other people in the elevator. I never seem to be taken in in that way, even when I’m being looked at I feel like no one is seeing me.

M2: You shouldn’t touch me.

W2: Now [that you’ve said that] I have to. (moves to encircle him)

M2: I can’t.

W2: What’s wrong.

M2: It’s me. I’m not here.

W2: You look there. Where are you?

M2: I’m no where.

W2: Is it me? Is this my fault, somehow?

M2: No. (pause.) I’m not with anyone else. I’m not with anyone. I don’t know how long this is going to last. I don’t want you to wait…I don’t know when I’ll be back.

W2: (goes to him) I’m not going to lose you. Not now. Not yet.

M2: (holds her) I don’t know. I don’t know. You might.

Man 1(disembodied): Radio Silence. What it feels like sitting next to a phone that doesn’t ring. It doesn’t feel passive at all. Every second she is performing the act of not speaking to me, not touching me. It’s a complicated maneuver: see me in the distance and dive.

Woman 2(disembodied): I test you and you fail me.

M1: I think that the largest conjecture I have made is that people know. People know what other people need. They know what others are afraid to ask. You want this? Fuck you, it builds character. Thanks for playing. Thanks for wanting to be me.

Man 2(disembodied): I’ve thought about it and I realize now that it’s you I love. You I’ve loved all along! Music swells. Am I lying? I don’t know what different games different parts of me are playing, but they’re at odds with one another. Is it free floating affection that has fastened on to her? I need some kind of impossible empirical evidence that I love her. I suppose there aren’t that many reasons not to love her. Maybe she thinks I’m lying. Maybe she knows I’m lying. Maybe if I ask her she’ll clear it up for me. What is it, love or love substitute? Sugar, soma or saccharine. The Real Thing? Or am I just bored? Trying to feel something about something. And is it cruel or honest if you tell somebody that?

M1: They can smell if you want it: your friends, the people you lust over, the people in a position to do you good. God.

M1 & W2: And them.

W2: They’ll only want you if you offer them the promise of neglect and dissatisfaction. You want to make them happy? That’s your problem:

M1 & W2: Fuck off.

M1: If they wanted to be happy they’d be happy.

M2: Wouldn’t it be easier and take less energy for the world to make us happy? I think it would. It must not be in our nature.

M1: If they cared if you could make them happy or not they’d be sitting next to you instead of out spending their time with those extras, those non-entities: people that are not them and are not you.

W2: My God do you still exist? I haven’t seen you haven’t heard your voice received no responses. Better you had been dead than disappointed me so. Better far.

W1:(speaking to herself as she finishes dressing and brushing her hair, leaving the room and arriving in her place at the stand by "It is important…") I wonder if I’ll ever stop functioning so strangely efficiently. Moment to moment. Maybe permanence isn’t for me. Where is my past? I’m not showing my background. Each day resets to zero, I can’t live as an extension of accrued experience. I wake up and function all over again. It is important to me to carry the means of escape at all times. I keep a set of airline passes and my passport at all times. I’m sure there are people that carry the means for their death at all times and it does make me a little embarrassed that if the mood should ever take me I might not have an efficient way of doing it. There is a lake right outside my window…I suppose. Everybody needs options…or at least their appearance. I think that it is more upsetting sometimes to be strong than to be weak. Or at least worse to be inured. I say, "How much more of this can I take?" and answer truthfully, "Infinite perhaps." To think. That this might not be a rut, this may be the path. The peaks are more likely to be the aberration and this tedium, this limbo the median made terrifying by its habit. Maybe it’s just the Winter. Maybe it’s my soul.

W2: Love, you don’t have to play that you care as much as I do. I care enough to kill my love.

Man 2: I win. I have successfully fended off everyone that has thrown themselves at me. I am true to myself in the sense that I am the person performing the actions that are being performed by me. I am myself being the icon of myself, my soil-shit representation. My pheromone factory and sperm generator. That which engages in the decision making and vacillation process. (pause.) That to which the choice is ascribed either way. (pause.) These thoughts are so in character for me. Even that one. I say these things not because I believe them and not because I doubt them. I say them to hear myself say them over and over again.

Woman 2: You’ve disappointed me but I won’t tell you. I’ve tested you again and again and you’ve failed. If you’d succeeded I’d have tested you again and again until you failed or the world ended.

Man 1: As it is you have no tests to worry about. Who can say if you even think about it. Who can say if I ever cross your mind before I break in on your consciousness.

W2: You don’t ask. You don’t ask why I’m hurt or if I’m hurt or if I’m just faking it and playing by rules I don’t believe in at all anymore.

M1: Do I believe in pride? When I think that if I sacrificed pride I might get you…but

W2: that’s a false go. You’d never take me

M1: without pride. Do I believe in my friends?

W2: My work? My commitments?

M1: I’d push them all aside to be with you and never tell you about it. Still you smell it on me.

W2: You’re not worth that, you say, which means I want you too much. I have to not want you at all if I want you. I’m just wasting time here spending it looking for you. I know

M1: I will only find you when I stop looking. I will only find you in a place I cannot be. I will only get to have you through a choice I cannot make.

M1 & W2: Two paths, both lead to abortion of love.

W2: One we’d never forgive each other. Alone I only have to never forgive myself.

Man 1: Show me your face. (pause.) Show me your face. (pause.) I’ve seen your face, show me your face. I’ve seen your face. Show me your face.

Woman 1: Why make me say it? Why make me do the dance with you. We both know the next words.

Man 1: You have to say them.

Woman 1: Magic Words. Do you want to hear them?

Man 1: No. but everybody has to say them, everyone that has ever been forgotten or never forgotten has had to say them. It hurts to be to one to say them. So say them.

Woman 1: Do you think you’ll be remembered when you die?

Man 1: While I live would be sufficient.

Woman 1: What do you want?

Man 1: You.

Woman 1: You have a strange way of going about it. (pause.) I’m not with anybody right now. If I wanted to be with you I would be.

Woman 2: Are you jealous?

Man 2: Well, you haven’t done anything…contractually invalid.

Woman 2: But you’re jealous anyway?

Man 2: (silence.)

Woman 2: Tell me you love me.

Man 2: I love you.

Woman 2: Tell me you’re in love with me.

Man 2: (silence.)

Woman 2: I know you are. Tell me you are.

Man 2: (silence.)

Woman 2: Everything I touch turns to shit.

Man 1 & Woman 2:

What do you want? A comparison

Between the letters I’ve written

to you and what I send to everyone else?

To prove it was something in you

That made me write this way, that even now

I lose coherence when I lose the thought of you? And

All I have of you is your absence. I will sit there

And stare at you from my closed eyes and wonder

How my heart could have been so wrong to run

To someone that neither understands it nor

the less important mind. Do you know what

Songs you draw from me, you make me dream at night.

I love you. If you don’t love me then

Fuck away. I don’t want to be your friend

And I couldn’t care less about "Want you

In my life." If we’re not going to fuck and

Have children go away so I can kill this

Worthless lame animal. I can wrap my cold

Dispassionate hands around its throat and

Suffocate it. It can take years, I know. If

My love for you stirs I’ll fall to it again

So I’ll keep it in spikes. I’ll nail it to boards,

I’ll feed it a clock. So I can hear it following

Me about, coming for the other half of my soul.

(unwritten)

Woman 1 & Man 2:

If I’m through with you, you may not know it.

I won’t write you a letter. I might possibly call you the next day.

It may take you years to see that I’ve gone away.

You may never realize it.

If I’ve shown you I’m probably trying too hard.

I’m probably unsure, not resolved. The open eyes

Take effort. The blank terrifying look

That tells you if you can feel it that you’re banished.

It leaps up after a second, but it’s unpracticed.

It’s still a performance.

It’s more than that when I can sit next to you.

Tell you my hopes and dreams

(after all, they’re on my lapel

they’re on the noticeboard with my body).

Even touch your skin.

Even go deeper.

And be farther away from you than the most unpleasant stranger.

ALL: You’ve lost.

Or I have.

I’m dead when I’m with you.

I’m nerve endings with the corpse of a soul.

When you see me.

When you rub yourself against me.

I am no where.

I. Don’t. Exist.