THE NEXT LEVEL DOWN: ACT I, SCENE ONE.

The Next Level Down.

Dramatis Personae:

Drake Andersen.

Jackson Jacobson.

Et al.

Act One. Scene One:

A Café.

DRAKE: Every one seems to presume that if you’re smart then that automatically guarantees your success in the adult world. It’s like if you fail the ordinary rules for unintelligent people do not apply for you. Fate, chance, alien wills, and a basic lack of experience are no longer excuses. If you’re smart and a loser, it is automatically because you are lazy, or otherwise because your intelligence is a ruse of your own device.

They refer to this café as “the third place”, suggesting a sort of half-way home between Home and Work. I wonder if any one during that corporate pitch session raised his hand and said “Excuse me, miss. But is it not alarming that our company policy is a euphemism for Purgatory?”

The indie café that I frequent has a sticker on it that reads “Resist Corporate Coffee”. I only wonder: how can you?

Stirfox Coffee has a similar model to Out-N-About Hamburgers. The idea is that you walk into each Out-N-About and you feel like you have been there before, even if you haven’t. They look identical to one an other. It’s a lazy, corporate way of simulating a mobile home.

Stirfox is not identical, but its impression is related to the aforementioned. Every time you enter a Stirfox, you feel like you’re walking into your home, but every thing has changed. It’s like you’re home but you don’t know where you are. Who are these people? Why has the furniture changed? Why is David Byrne singing about me whilst doing a poorly animated dance routine?

And of course one shall never escape the ever-present looming spectre of the intrusive extravert. Here in Purgatory, all of the people from Work (Hell) feel like they are at Home, and all the people from Home (Heaven) are at work.

I was in a cult once. May be that is why I keep coming back here: Codependency. And free wireless fiber internet.

As Camus said: Some people expend tremendous energy just to be normal. That’s me. I will qualify that there is an other class of people who expend tremendous energy to be unintrusive. That’s every one who isn’t in the first group.

If one more local comes up to me with wide open, optimistic eyes, it’s war.

JACKSON: Hey buddy. How are you?

DRAKE: Awful.

JACKSON: Oh yeah? Why?

DRAKE:  Every thing I hate is in one place: Corporate romanticism,

JACKSON: You mean Fascism?

DRAKE: Precisely. All so self-entitlement, conceit, persona, legal drug hypocrisy and the condescension that comes with it…

JACKSON: You want a coffee?

DRAKE: Huh?

JACKSON: A coffee. On me.

DRAKE: [Sigh.] If it helps.

[Later:]

JACKSON: Did it help?

DRAKE: Marginally and temporarily.

JACKSON: Has the temporary, marginal effect run its course yet?

DRAKE: Not yet.

JACKSON: Well then there’s still hope!

DRAKE: Of what? Permanence?

JACKSON: Sure.

DRAKE: Perfect. Now I know what heaven is.

JACKSON: Oh this isn’t heaven.

DRAKE: Tell me about it.

JACKSON: You know the expression that if you cannot beat them you should join them?

DRAKE: Isn’t that how people get into gangs?

JACKSON: And bad marriages!

DRAKE: I think that’s both beating AND joining in that case.

JACKSON: My point is: may be you should roll with it. Adapt. Make friends.

DRAKE: The last time that I tried that I got the STARE.

JACKSON: How come?

DRAKE: This Mexican-looking family was watching a video of Donald Trump on the laptop.

JACKSON: And…?

DRAKE: The screen was paused on his face.

JACKSON: Great conversation starter.

DRAKE: I walked up and told them it was the creepiest face I’d ever seen.

JACKSON: Did that go well?

DRAKE: They told me that they had not asked for me to interrupt their conversation.

JACKSON: Ahh.

DRAKE: It’s all ways a Kafkaesque experience when you realise that the place that you’d come to call home for half a year or so was populated by false friends who were forbidden by their employer to be real with you.

JACKSON: I’m sure they liked you in reality.

DRAKE: Why would they? I never tipped them. I barely ever drank their coffee.

JACKSON: It’s your cheerful spirit that counts, surely.

DRAKE: Lovely metaphor.

JACKSON: I mean it.

DRAKE: So I’m LITERALLY a cheerful alcoholic beverage?

JACKSON: At times. [grins.]

DRAKE: [grunts.] As though I did not have enough passive aggression on the DEBATE team.

JACKSON: Woah, there. One at a time.

DRAKE: That’s what she said.

JACKSON: What’s the matter with the fine young folks at Stirfox?

DRAKE: They get paid to PRETEND they LIKE you. You get your hopes up.

JACKSON: Oh?

DRAKE: All the attractive women are either married, engaged, or in a possessive and stultifying relationship.

JACKSON: [Looks up at sky.] Taurus South Node.

DRAKE: Come again?

JACKSON: Nevermind.

DRAKE: It’s HUMILIATING! It’s like they didn’t even like me enough to RISK being real with me at the potential expense of their careers.

JACKSON: Doesn’t that seem a bit much?

DRAKE: Under what set of circumstances?

JACKSON: All of them.

DRAKE: In this case?

JACKSON: No. In any.

DRAKE: Thought so.

JACKSON: Then why did you bother to ask?

DRAKE: It’s like: look. I get it. You don’t like me. You can tell me. I’d prefer it. I won’t complain to your “superiors”. I’m barely even a paying customer. God nose I can’t afford this blood coffee.

JACKSON: “Blood coffee”?

DRAKE: You know. Like blood diamonds.

JACKSON: Silly goose. You’re thinking of Amber.

DRAKE: Who?

JACKSON: And that’s made from sap, not blood.

DRAKE: I think YOU’RE a sap.

JACKSON: At least I’m not a blood!

DRAKE: The thing that bugs me most is trying to figure out how many total man-hours are wasted by people waiting for their coffees to be made.

JACKSON: Probably several.

DRAKE: It’s so Absurd. That expectant gaze. Like an adolescent waiting to lose his virginity to a prostitute.

JACKSON: That’s deep.

DRAKE: “Humans too secrete the inhuman.”

JACKSON: And cows secrete milk!

DRAKE: Humans are cows.

JACKSON: This latte is delicious.

DRAKE: It’s like: why can’t they just order a black coffee like a decent person?

JACKSON: People like choices.

DRAKE: Though they hate to make decisions.

JACKSON: It’s an occupational hazard of being-a-capitalist.

DRAKE: And for some reason or an other you get all these couples coming in on their dates. SO original.

JACKSON: O.G.

DRAKE: Original gangsters indeed.

JACKSON: No, I meant Gee, that sucks.

DRAKE: O.K.

JACKSON: I’m only kidding.

DRAKE: Same here. That’s what “O.K.” stands for.

JACKSON: Speaking of “OK”, what ever happened to that guy who threw away your suitcase?

DRAKE: He moved to Oklahoma.

JACKSON: O.K.

DRAKE: Precisely. That’s the abbreviation for Oklahoma.

JACKSON: Really?

DRAKE: You did not know?

JACKSON: No.

DRAKE: I thought that the whole point of your joke was that he moved to a place whose abbreviation was “OK”.

JACKSON: Well I wouldn’t say that it’s a GOOD abbreviation,

DRAKE: Stop.

JACKSON: But it IS an OKAY one.

DRAKE: Damn it.

JACKSON: No I mean it.

DRAKE: OK.

JACKSON: But what’s NOT okay is what he did to you.

DRAKE: Oh really? I did not notice.

JACKSON: Thought I’d affirm your self-respect in case you relapsed.

DRAKE: Thanks for that. I probably needed it more than I let on.

JACKSON: How’s your coffee?

DRAKE: Fading.

JACKSON: Did it help though?

DRAKE: Probably as much as your affirmations.

JACKSON: And are THOSE fading too?

DRAKE: Yes.

DRAKE: It’s like every one here has this mumbling voice that evidences his-being-a-halfwit.

JACKSON: May be it’s just not your personality type.

DRAKE: You DO realise that relativism is the way that people get addicted to drugs in the first place?

JACKSON: Hey. You never get addicted to drugs in the first place.

DRAKE: No?

JACKSON: No. You know why?

DRAKE: Why.

JACKSON: Because you’re ALL ways a loser when you’re a DRUG USER.

DRAKE: Oh god.

JACKSON: Get it? Because first place is a winner and last place –

DRAKE: YEAH YEAH I GET it okay?

JACKSON: Just making sure bro.

JACKSON: So speaking of complicated philosophical statements that berate corporate consumers, can you tell me more about the debate team?

DRAKE: I’d rather not.

JACKSON: What happened with that dude who threw away your suitcase?

DRAKE: I’d rather not.

JACKSON: Was that the only reason that you left?

DRAKE: One of several.

JACKSON: Go on. Do tell.

DRAKE: You don’t say “do” tell if I was not INCLINED to DO.

JACKSON: Then simply tell.

DRAKE: Typical.

JACKSON: Huh?

DRAKE: You’d have fit RIGHT in…

DRAKE: Community College Debate was one of the most neurotic cesspools I have ever wandered into, and that’s on the authority of a former cultist and mental health patient.

JACKSON: Thank God you got out when you could.

DRAKE: Once at the National Tournament a comedian asked us how many of us were beaten as children.

JACKSON: Dear God.

DRAKE: More than half raised their hands, including my partner.

JACKSON: Your GIRLFRIEND?

DRAKE: No.

JACKSON: Boyfriend?

DRAKE: My DEBATE partner.

JACKSON: So girl or boy?

DRAKE: Girl.

JACKSON: OUCH.

DRAKE: She was a rape survivor too.

JACKSON: Oh GOD.

DRAKE: She said she’d gotten over it.

JACKSON: Woah but that’s like. Really.

DRAKE: Dark?

JACKSON: That term is offensive.

DRAKE: Provocative?

JACKSON: That term is sexist.

DRAKE: Politically incorrect?

JACKSON: THERE you go.

DRAKE: It does not surprise me that you settled on that. Apparently if you were NOT politically correct it made you level with a rapist.

JACKSON: Were there rapists on the team?

DRAKE: It’s a matter of dispute. One guy was accused in middle school.

JACKSON: Oh geeze.

DRAKE: He all so admitted to being a pedophile.

JACKSON: No kidding?

DRAKE: He once told me he was “born wrong”.

JACKSON: Hm.

DRAKE: But he would not tell me what that meant.

JACKSON: You figured out?

DRAKE: It came to me. He all so was a bum who lived out of his car.

JACKSON: GEEZE. SKETCH AS FUCK.

DRAKE: And he was a Cancer.

JACKSON: The sign or the…

DRAKE: The sign.

JACKSON: Okay so not the disease.

DRAKE: On top of ALL of that, he was an anarcho-capitalist who voted Republican and supported Rand Paul.

JACKSON: Okay that guy was DEFINITELY every thing he was accused of being then.

DRAKE: He was one of our top debaters.

JACKSON: FUUUUUUU….

JACKSON: Tell me more about the dude who stole your suitcase.

DRAKE: He did not STEAL it. He simply disposed of it.

JACKSON: So wait. So you LEFT it in his CAR?

DRAKE: Am I REALLY going into this?

JACKSON: Because I suddenly want to defend a total stranger who made your life hell and dispossessed you of your private property? ABSOLUTELY.

DRAKE: You know this coffee really HAS worn off.

JACKSON: Oh, don’t worry! You can get a refill for only half a dollar.

DRAKE: If I had that much I’d feel ENCOURAGED.

JACKSON: CONTINUING…

DRAKE: Dominic Delos Santos was what astrologers call a “toxic Scorpio”, or a “grey lizard”.

JACKSON: In what sense?

DRAKE: He was a manipulative bully who practiced Satanism and used his closest associates for drugs and vengeance.

JACKSON: Okay. I’m starting to picture him a bit better I think.

DRAKE: The kid was a total douche. He’d never worked a day of his life. All his money came from his mother, who in turn got it from some aging Asian man that she was manipulating.

JACKSON: How can you tell she was manipulating him?

DRAKE: They had these two big dogs. Both of them had claws and would randomly pounce on me in the middle of the night whenever I stayed over on his couch.

JACKSON: Okay…

DRAKE: At the end of the first semester we had the Winter Tournament in Los Angeles. I was on a three person team with Dominic and Dennis Mendoza.

JACKSON: The tall one?

DRAKE: Yeah.

JACKSON: What happened?

DRAKE: Neither Dennis or I had a car. So Dominic drove.

JACKSON: Okay…

DRAKE: It sounds like he is a real SAINT now doesn’t it?

JACKSON: Only because he provided every thing for the two of you.

DRAKE: Ahem.

JACKSON: And paid for all of it with some old Asian man’s money.

DRAKE: As I was saying: Dom and Mom had moved out of their old two-story house in Temecula. She was living with the two MONSTERS – the dogs, not the kids – in a slightly smaller two-story house way on the other side of the city.

JACKSON: Oh, God. Don’t tell me she made you get in the car with one of the dogs.

DRAKE: She was going for TWO. We talked her down to one, with some fair share of exasperated prodding.

JACKSON: Okay.

DRAKE: We were famished. Imagine eating Out-N-About burgers in the car with a dog breathing down your neck.

JACKSON: Awful.

DRAKE: Then we had to help Dominic clean his old home under the auspices that there would be a party held there.

JACKSON: You know: you should really write some sort of Absurdist television show or some thing.

DRAKE: Believe me: I cannot make this stuff up.

JACKSON: Well. What happened to the party?

DRAKE: There WAS no party!

JACKSON: Oh.

DRAKE: Yeah! All that happened was that Dominic got Dennis to buy him a six pack of beer.

JACKSON: Bottled or canned?

DRAKE: Bottled.

JACKSON: FUCK.

DRAKE: And they spent the entire night blasting hip-hop music and getting wasted.

JACKSON: This was the eve of the tournament?

DRAKE: That I’d spent SEVEN MONTHS preparing for with Dennis!

JACKSON: Wow. That’s what I call commitment.

DRAKE: Except that my grades were low and I could not attend the first few tournaments that semester.

JACKSON: Why not?

DRAKE: Personal call. I decided to just finish all my final projects in the first half of the semester and to devote the rest to debate.

JACKSON: Did it work?

DRAKE: Yes. Except for the fact that my cinema professor would not accept my eighty-page script because it was not “formatted correctly”.

JACKSON: “Formatted”?

DRAKE: That’s all the class taught. All that tuition money. On learning how to make my script writing generic and boring as corporate coffee.

JACKSON: Speaking of which: I can buy you an other if you really want one.

DRAKE: You’re too sweet.

JACKSON: You’re welcome.

DRAKE: It makes you stupid.

JACKSON: Oh. [sad frown down.]

JACKSON: Well: that’s HIS fault then. I mean, if that’s ALL The class was about…

DRAKE: Right?

JACKSON: … then why wasn’t it on the Syllabus?

DRAKE: No. You don’t understand.

JACKSON: It WAS on the syllabus?

DRAKE: Ostensibly.

JACKSON: You did not even CHECK the syllabus?

DRAKE: Naturally.

JACKSON: Well now you know better don’t you?

DRAKE: Fuck you. Get me a coffee.

JACKSON: So back to Dominic.

DRAKE: MUST we? I’d rather talk about my douche-bag film professor.

JACKSON: You can save the beast for last. Just like in Revelations. I want to hear about Dominic and Dennis.

DRAKE: Dominic insisted that my choice to prioritise my education was a deliberate decision to undervalue the team.

JACKSON: I thought education was the foundation that rhetoric was based on?

DRAKE: I know right? Dominic had this way of dividing people. He would call Dennis arrogant behind his back, and calling me dogmatic behind mine.

JACKSON: How did you learn this?

DRAKE: From Dennis.

JACKSON: Ahh.

DRAKE: He was easy to believe because he stated what we all believed in the back of our minds.

JACKSON: That’s deep.

DRAKE: It was actually annoying. On that same trip he made us listen to his entire Spoken Word epic in the car.

JACKSON: I think I heard this one. Is this the one where each track represents a different chakra but all so a different plane of Hell, since it was modeled after Dante’s Inferno?

DRAKE: I DON’T recall showing it to you. And yes.

JACKSON: That one was a riot.

DRAKE: It straight up TRIGGERED me dude.

JACKSON: And the dog was in the car the whole time?

DRAKE: I can’t even remember.

JACKSON: How can’t you?? Animal abuse!

DRAKE: More like Animal Style. Any way: I can’t remember. So many of my memories from that night are missing.

JACKSON: Oh no! You didn’t!

DRAKE: I didn’t drink.

JACKSON: What then?

DRAKE: None of us got any sleep that night. Because Dominic and I spent the whole night arguing. I did not want to sleep on his bare floor upstairs for the second time in a row,

JACKSON: Ha. Row.

DRAKE: And I could not get any sleep downstairs with Satanic Rap Music blasting in my trained musical ears.

JACKSON: At least he let you stay there two nights in a row.

DRAKE: We CLEANED that half-spick’s HOUSE! I had to step over DOG shit as I picked up trash from his backyard!

JACKSON: At least you did not have to pick up dog shit.

DRAKE: Any way the following day we were all sleep-deprived, unhappy, and mostly hung over.

JACKSON: You mean each of you was mostly hung over or…

DRAKE: Two out of three of us were still legally drunk.

JACKSON: Oh okay so that one.

DRAKE: I asked them to take me back to San Diego. I had to volunteer at a high school tournament that was conveniently scheduled for that same weekend.

JACKSON: He wouldn’t do it?

DRAKE: They were going back to Temecula. But no further.

JACKSON: I see. Did you plead?

DRAKE: I told them to wait. Let me talk to the coaches first. Before they left. Make sure that I could get a ride with someone else. For the good of the cause. For future debaters who needed my presence as a volunteer.

JACKSON: Did they wait?

DRAKE: They gave me twenty minutes. All the coaches were in round as judges. When the round got out my so-called friends had left.

JACKSON: Sorry dude.

DRAKE: Oh, it’s okay. I got a ride home with a foxy Aries girl that I’d had a huge crush on.

JACKSON: NICE.

DRAKE: It was awesome. She was totally awkward all the way back, so I got to dominate the conversation. I learned all about her ex-boyfriends and their Sun Signs. More than I could hope for.

JACKSON: Props dude.

DRAKE: But that was only after I met with the coaches. Turned out that my so called friends were in deep horse shit.

JACKSON: How come?

DRAKE: They’d left without telling the coaches.

JACKSON: Is that bad?

DRAKE: Let me put it this way: if I’d told the coaches that my friends had been drinking, the coaches would resent me forever.

JACKSON: Why?

DRAKE: They’d be obligated then to tell the school administration. They preferred to turn the other cheek, but there was so much red tape that they couldn’t. That’s how much red tape there was.

JACKSON: So that’s why your friends were in deep shit? For drinking?

DRAKE: Not directly, no. Rather for leaving without say-so.

JACKSON: And the indirect part?

DRAKE: Huh?

JACKSON: You said they weren’t in shit for drinking. At least, not directly.

DRAKE: Ahh, well INDIRECTLY, if they had not been DRINKING, and instead they’d gone to BED, I would have slept well enough to remember what the team policy was.

JACKSON: You’d KNOWN? But FORGOTTEN?

DRAKE: Some thing about Dominic’s impenetrable charisma had persuaded me to forget that the rules were still the rules, and that they had not changed.

JACKSON: I see.

DRAKE: But my intuition was in ship-shape as it all ways had been. My “friends” simply refused to listen.

JACKSON: So how did you lose your suitcase?

DRAKE: It was still in the car.

JACKSON: Dominic never gave it back?

DRAKE: He would not answer his phone.

JACKSON: You didn’t ask him for it.

DRAKE: I asked him the day he moved to Oklahoma.

JACKSON: And…?

DRAKE: He texted me back telling me that the suitcase had been at the bottom of a dumpster for several months.

JACKSON: How did you take that?

DRAKE: You know, you’re an AWFULLY good listener.

JACKSON: Thank you. [grins generously.]

DRAKE: I told him to start dumpster diving and blocked him in befuddled indignation and disorientation.

JACKSON: You know none of this was your fault, right?

DRAKE: Of course it hadn’t been. It just took me so long to get over my own hurt at having been a victim that I had not yet realized exactly WHY I could not have just picked up my things, given the logistics.

JACKSON: Go on…

DRAKE: The logistics were: Had I picked them up, I would have enabled my friends to leave the moment that I had the suitcase. They had no motive to stay, not even to look good, for they’d all ready given me back my due. They would have gone off, and for all I know they might have crashed the car whilst sipping vodka, killing themselves and getting the entire Debate team cancelled and the coaches fired from their all ready precarious teaching jobs.

JACKSON: All for a good time. [sighs, musing as though nostalgically.]

DRAKE: All so I was in the Kafkaesque predicament wherein every moment that I spent with them, since they refused to join me in the Coaches’ Room, was time I was losing opportunities to talk to the Coaches. And if I joined them in the Parking Lot, it would be twenty minutes or so basically forfeited.

JACKSON: Damn.

DRAKE: So I tried to reason with them. And that was an other twenty minutes.

JACKSON: So does that make it KAFKAESQUE or CAMUSIAN?

DRAKE: Neither here nor there. The point is that they really SCREWED themselves that weekend and had they simply listened to the responsible adult they would have had a great time.

JACKSON: But they were Satanists.

DRAKE: Dominic was the Satanist. Dennis was just a Capricorn. A stubborn goat, as the Aries chick would have put it.

JACKSON: So just Satan.

DRAKE: Then the two peas in a pod took out their own failings on ME by destroying my personal property.

JACKSON: So WHICH dumpster would it be in, again?

DRAKE: You’re awful.

JACKSON: How’s your coffee?

DRAKE: I’m getting used to it actually.

DRAKE: Look at that douche-bag.

JACKSON: What about him?

DRAKE: Smiling moronically. Does he not know there’s a drought?

JACKSON: This isn’t a barfox, is it?

DRAKE: Never mind.

JACKSON: Looks like he’s with that girl.

DRAKE: I wonder if I simply hate him for his idiotic grin, and the fact he has a girlfriend adds to my hatred, or if that is just the grin of some one who has a girlfriend.

JACKSON: MAY be the very thing you hate most about him is what she loves most about him.

DRAKE: Probably.

JACKSON: AND perhaps that’s all so the thing that the absence of which she hates most in you.

DRAKE: Yup.

DRAKE: Why is it that the moment that the music is finally worth listening to is the moment that she criticizes it?

JACKSON: Well what’s her opinion to you?

DRAKE: A lot actually. She has good taste.

JACKSON: But not in music?

DRAKE: She likes dance. And television.

JACKSON: Sounds pretty ubiquitous.

DRAKE: It’s not just that. She is a Taurus.

JACKSON: So a bull.

DRAKE: A Venutian bull. A consumer, yes. But all so a connoisseur.

JACKSON: Turns out that this jazz music is in fact a rendition of “Jingle Bells”.

DRAKE: Okay. I remain disillusioned with Stirfox. But less disillusioned with her.

JACKSON: NOW they’re playing “Sleigh Ride”.

_: I like this song!

DRAKE: And NOW I am again totally disillusioned.

JACKSON: You ever wonder if our minds just set themselves up to see conveniences or inconveniences based upon our moods?

DRAKE: That’s CHEERFUL. If I had some thing to improve my MOOD, may be I’d get to live the life.

JACKSON: I mean: Yeah. I’m not saying that what Dominic did was your fault.

DRAKE: Naturally.

JACKSON: But may be you should not let it get you down!

DRAKE: Man. At this point, the only way I’ll come to terms with Scorpios again will be if some hot one fucks me.

JACKSON: I hear it’s awesome.

DRAKE: It would be my first.

JACKSON: Aren’t you a Pisces?

DRAKE: That’s my Sun-Sign, yes.

JACKSON: That’s so perfect! The constantly-taken-advantage-of Piscean. Finding bliss and redemption in the arms of the sensual, seductive Scorpio.

DRAKE: Tell me more.

JACKSON: The passion! The romance! The mutually unauthorized social network stalking.

DRAKE: Yes. Yes. YES.

JACKSON: The long and arduous journey past her defenses. The turmoil of her own descent into her Soul as she comes to terms with whether or not she can bear to pursue some one so perfect for her, for so many times before the perfection she has so craved has eluded her and told her to settle.

DRAKE: Fuck her boyfriend.

JACKSON: Oh bro. You should lay off. That’s immoral.

DRAKE: This is a SCORPIO we are talking about.

JACKSON: Yeah but all the more reason to FEAR her.

DRAKE: So your entire moral system is rooted in the lowest of human vibrations?

JACKSON: Right below sex and violence. Namaste.

DRAKE: Well that puts you below a rapist then.

JACKSON: But since she’s taken that makes YOU a rape apologist.

DRAKE: What?? What the hell are you talking about?

JACKSON: I don’t know. It just slipped out. I’m so sorry.

DRAKE: I don’t need CONSENT to APPROACH her.

JACKSON: But what if her boyfriend says it’s rape?

DRAKE: DUDE.

JACKSON: Sorry. It keeps coming out.

DRAKE: What would Freud say? Honestly.

DRAKE: You see, in a way, the best thing you could possibly do to get a girlfriend is pursue a girl who all ready has a boyfriend.

JACKSON: How do you figure?

DRAKE: Just look at how I go about it: I have to presume that at one point or an other she’ll be interested enough to stalk me. And when she does: bam! Every post on every social networking service I use: sings the praises of the archetype of SCORPIO.

JACKSON: [muses dreamily:] The sign that robbed you of both friends and property.

DRAKE: The only problem really is that she is not the only Scorpio I know.

JACKSON: Uh oh.

DRAKE: And there are plenty of Scorpio girls I have no interest in.

JACKSON: Really? Plenty?

DRAKE: Well plenty of one in particular.

JACKSON: Oh.

DRAKE: But I’m pretty sure this one does not have a boyfriend.

JACKSON: I see!

DRAKE: And if she does, she’ll probably just get upset that I tried to swoop in on her.

JACKSON: And then break up with her boyfriend on a misguided hint?

DRAKE: And hilarious hijinx will ensue!

JACKSON: And what tells you this other girl won’t just get upset about your swooping?

DRAKE: Oh I’m sure she will be.

JACKSON: But what if she does NOT break up with him? What if hilarious hijinx do NOT ensue?

DRAKE: She will and they will. It’s MEANT TO BE.

JACKSON: So you’re just PRESUMING on the best of all possible worlds in both situations, and precluding the possibility that the roles will be reversed and that your crush will reject you and that your admirer will pursue you with the same futility with which you pursue your crush?

DRAKE: Not at all. In fact I’m mostly sure that this will all fail.

JACKSON: Oh.

DRAKE: But as I’ve stated: there is that one glimmer of hope. And so long as I’m pursuing that then this is worth any cost to any participant.

JACKSON: Even if every one ends up as broken-hearted as you are now?

DRAKE: Absolutely.

JACKSON: Ingenious.

DRAKE: You know I’m starting to really dig this brew.

JACKSON: That reminds me: why are you here?

DRAKE: Oh, you know. Just a Stirfox kind of guy.

JACKSON: She doesn’t work here, does she?

DRAKE: Not at all!

JACKSON: Oh okay. [Pause.] She works at a different location, huh?

DRAKE: Yes.

JACKSON: A different STIRFOX location?

DRAKE: [Pause.] Yes.

JACKSON: And you’re here to get practice hitting on baristas?

DRAKE: And to maintain my identity as a frequent customer.

JACKSON: Why?? Just in case she transfers stores?

DRAKE: Or in case word spreads of me throughout the entire local coffee network. I need an alibi as widespread as the network.

JACKSON: Why don’t you just apply for a job here? Then you can transfer to her store.

DRAKE: WAY too contrived. If she has to know me from work then she’ll hate me whilst suspecting me. And the suspicions will be worsened by the confusion between her professional hatred of me and her personal love for me.

JACKSON: And this love you are SURE of?

DRAKE: Well… we could all ways eliminate it as a possibility entirely.

JACKSON: That would lessen the confusion!

DRAKE: Then it would be ALL hatred.

JACKSON: And less suspicion!

DRAKE: [maintains dry tone:] It’s like I would not even EXIST to her!

JACKSON: Even as you continue to work side-by-side by her.

AND you’d learn a lot about her and her boyfriend.

DRAKE: [still dry and matter-of-fact:] ESPECIALLY each time he walks in and I have to take his order!

JACKSON: Yeah! And you can’t even SPITE her by continuing to love her because she will literally have NO CLUE!

DRAKE: UNTIL she figures it out in one embarrassing public scene wherein I accidentally call her beau by some hideous name and write it on his cup.

JACKSON: OR a subliminal, subconscious reference to some sort of soap opera.

DRAKE: I’m thinking Shakespeare.

JACKSON: Good example.

DRAKE: What was the name of Othello’s nemesis?

JACKSON: Iago?

DRAKE: No. The one that Iago framed.

JACKSON: Oh sorry I was thinking of Aladdin.

DRAKE: [looks off.] You know: it needn’t be so public…

JACKSON: You know that Gilbert Gottfried was in that one?

DRAKE: … I mean: she’s a Scorpio. I am a Pisces….

JACKSON: I all ways regarded him as Robin Williams’ archnemesis…

DRAKE: … we have that whole mystical water-sign connection…

BOTH: but the REAL question is:

DRAKE: You first. What were you going to say?

JACKSON: Did I establish Gilbert as Robin’s nemesis AFTER I saw Aladdin, or BEFORE, and if the former –

DRAKE: You mean former as in Before?

JACKSON: No former as in After.

DRAKE: Uh.

JACKSON: [looks at audience.] Then was it BECAUSE I saw it, or purely incidentally?

DRAKE: Are you talking about Batman?

JACKSON: No. Aladdin. What were YOU talking about?

DRAKE: How people who are on a common wavelength are so perfectly in accord in their communication…

JACKSON: Or was it that I INTUITED what Aladdin would be before I saw it?...

DRAKE: … and never talk at cross purposes.

JACKSON: … And this would be a situation of reversed causality!

DRAKE: You know what? This is perfect!

JACKSON: Yes! But what remains to resolve is whether Monsters or Emperor was the better of John’s roles…

DRAKE: Talking to you about this has redeemed my faith in the utter negligence and ignorance of common man.

JACKSON: Did you just talk down to me?

DRAKE: I mean: We’ll be working one day and I’ll say to her: Caramel Frocha Italiano with room for cream and a shot of caramelized herbal espresso. And the way I’d say it…

JACKSON: Wait. So a double-caramel shake?

DRAKE: She would KNOW.

JACKSON: That sounds good right now actually.

DRAKE: My faith and hope are restored!

JACKSON: Way to call it. And so specific! A single detail off from the original recipe and we would have had to write it DOWN for them.

_: So apparently this is the hour that all the CRAZIES come around.

DRAKE: [friendly.] Hey! You just said some thing that was candid, impolite, and politically incorrect!

_: I’m on my ten-minute break.

DRAKE: Hey. Just so you know. Don’t be too hard on the crazies. I used to be one of them.

_: You still are one.

DRAKE: Wow. I guess you’re still a wetback then.

_: WOAH. I could get you thrown out for saying that.

JACKSON: NICE first step in establishing Ethos, man.

_: “Ethos”?

DRAKE: I happen to be on step ten by now.

JACKSON: Well you just went back eleven steps then.

_: Get out of here.

DRAKE: Literally or idiomatically?

_: Whichever way is faster.

Dm.A.A.