THE NEXT LEVEL DOWN: ACT I, SCENE FOUR.

Scene Four: A Bus Station.

[A bus station:]

DRAKE: I don’t know if this is a class thing or an introverted/extraverted thing. If it’s a class thing, I am CLEARLY too poor to fit in with the hipsters, but too ambitious to accommodate the other bus passengers. But it could just be that I’m an introvert.

So MOST people I won’t be able to understand. And even if THEY understand ME, it won’t matter.

The upper-class kids, all those ‘perfect’ people, will dislike me because I do not fit in. The lower class people will WANT me to fit in, but I’ll refuse to.

JACKSON: Isn’t that precisely the same bullying you are complaining about?

DRAKE: If you mean from me: No. If you mean from them: then yes.

JACKSON: Elaborate.

DRAKE: I do not WANT to fit in. I would LIKE to, if I HAVE to, but the people I would like to fit in WITH will not allow it, and the ones that WOULD allow it would allow for nothing more.

JACKSON: NO one’s luck is THAT bad!

DRAKE: You would not understand.

JACKSON: So what ARE you looking for, then?

DRAKE: Redemption.

JACKSON: Salvation.

DRAKE: Approval.

JACKSON: No but REALLY.

DRAKE: REALLY, I would like some one to look me in the eye. And then to KNOW me.

JACKSON: Biblically or…?

DRAKE: Personally.

Face to face.

Without the mask.

But as an individual.

Dm.A.A.