Scene Three: An Indie Café. [outdoor patio.]
DRAKE: This was the Christian Science thing that Sal was telling me to read.
DENNIS: They have an article here on Trump.
DRAKE: You said it. Looks incredibly well-written. Remarkable how a little theological background makes one’s arguments that much clearer and more transparent.
DENNIS: What’s the difference?
DRAKE: I’ll explain later. It’s an Ethos thing.
DENNIS: Got ya.
DRAKE: This reminds me of our friend on the team, who shall remain unnamed.
DENNIS: Does this particular friend happen to be a Republican?
DRAKE: Absolutely and unfortunately. II had a revelation as of getting this job.
DENNIS: What was it?
DRAKE: That guy was all ways going off like being a model American was some sort of inclusion in a fantastic society called the United States. But I have a job now. And I am every bit as isolated as ever.
DENNIS: You do look happier. I’ll give him that.
DRAKE: I won’t. I’m happy for different reasons.
DENNIS: Understood.
DRAKE: Any way: this article about the left-wing, right-wing switch. It makes me think. Like every thing does.
[Dennis smiles.]
DRAKE: I realise some thing. Neo-liberals are every bit as misguided as neo-conservatives. This whole two-party system isn’t just divisive. It’s essentialising, otherising and scapegoating. In that order. Or may be otherising, essentialising, and THEN scapegoating.
DENNIS: May be scapegoating, essentialising, and then otherising?
DRAKE: No. But I still get your point. My point though: it divides America into two parties. All the dyed-hair feminists are on one side and all the hicks are on the other. But a hippie walking down the street does not see either as part of a click like he’s in high school. Both probably smoke pot and listen to Pink Floyd.
[Dennis laughs.]
DRAKE: Hippies had a different mindset. This was not the hyper-bureaucratic way of life where every thing’s controlled, yet neither was it the old way. Hippies had a religion, and it wasn’t just the Christian point of view, so easily skewed by the patriarchs and based in hoarding the fruits of one’s actions. This was some thing that the East had given us. The notion that distinctions did not really matter. Racial, ethnic, cultural, sex and gender. Even sex and gender weren’t distinctions. That’s the thing about the hippies. They were not trying to be politically correct. But neither were they so arrogant that they refused to be on accident.
DENNIS: That’s profound.
DRAKE: Too bad what few would run would never get elected. People want an egoist. It’s just the nature of this sort of wavelength. Some even have gone so far as to say that the hippies never lived. [pause.] And that worries me. One thing’s for sure, though: let us NOT make this land “great again”. That’s Nazi rhetoric and every body knows it.
DENNIS: True.
DRAKE: Here’s five dollars by the way. You said you wanted coffee.
DENNIS: Don’t you want some too?
DRAKE: Gnaw. I’ll wait out here. You go right ahead inside. Don’t hurry. It’s your life, not mine. Though personally I’d get out of there as soon as you can.
DENNIS: Ha. I’ll try my best. I’ll do my best.
[Dennis exits. Enter Simona.]
DRAKE: Hey. I like your ear-rings.
SIMONA: Why, thank you young man. I got them at the Art Faire.
DRAKE: There’s an Art Faire going on? That’s wonderful.
SIMONA: I know!
DRAKE: Art is important.
SIMONA: And who would have thought? I grew up in this neighbourhood and I tell you: this is one of the most CONSERVATIVE Christian communities I’ve ever found my self in.
DRAKE: I guess you can say that.
SIMONA: Here: would you mind if I sat down at your table?
DRAKE: Not at all.
[she sits.]
DRAKE: What’s your name?
SIMONA: Simona. And who do I have the pleasure of speaking with?
DRAKE: Drake.
SIMONA: Fine name.
DRAKE: Same to you.
SIMONA: Why are you sitting out here?
DRAKE: To say hi to women I guess.
SIMONA: Oh, my dear. I’m a bit old for you. Not to be harsh. I mean no offense, I mean.
DRAKE: None taken.
SIMONA: I’m sure you could get a girl around here.
DRAKE: Thank you.
SIMONA: I MEAN it. With YOUR looks.
DRAKE: I look like a hippie.
SIMONA: Well. This is of course coming from an old hippie.
DRAKE: Oh, you were part of that movement.
SIMONA: I could go on and on about it! You would have to stop me.
DRAKE: I should like to hear some time.
SIMONA: Why don’t you go inside and get yourself some thing?
DRAKE: It’s complicated.
SIMONA: Tell me. Since otherwise I would talk both your ears off.
DRAKE: Well. I appreciate your forthcoming demeanour.
SIMONA: Think nothing of it.
DRAKE: Well: to start, I had a crush on some one who works here. And it was mutual. Then neither of us did a thing about it. SO she started dating some one else. And when I met him I came off as weird.
SIMONA: How come?
DRAKE: How come I did?
SIMONA: How come you THINK you did?
DRAKE: Well: later some one that I knew told me that how I “interact with people” would estrange them.
SIMONA: What does that mean?
DRAKE: Beats me. His best friend would host the open mics here. One time I left personal belongings in his car. He got mad over some thing stupid he did so he took it out on me and he threw them away.
SIMONA: [shocked.] Did he REALLY?
DRAKE: [breathless.] Yes!
SIMONA: Did you call the Police?
DRAKE: Hardly an issue any one could change at this point.
SIMONA: So is that why you don’t go inside here?
DRAKE: That was just the start of it. They kicked me out once for not buying any thing.
SIMONA: Oh. Well they will do that.
DRAKE: Even though I used to play here all the time. With my old band. And I’d promote for them.
SIMONA: Wow! Really?
DRAKE: But they never knew I did. Though honestly they might have guessed. I guess they figured that I had no friends.
SIMONA: Let me tell you…
DRAKE: And then. Oh sorry. Did not mean to interrupt.
SIMONA: Keep talking!
DRAKE: Well: then I came here and I met a guy who turned out to be narcissistic. And he said to me whilst we were hanging out at his house that some one working here said I was a bad customer.
SIMONA: Why were you at the narcissist’s house?
DRAKE: Well. He got caught urinating on some body’s porch.
[her eyes widen.]
DRAKE: So he had to bolt to his car and I got in with him since I’d just only met him that night.
SIMONA: So what did the person working here say?
DRAKE: This barista had apparently described me as “some lame guy who comes in here and all ways takes long to order and reads Nietzsche and Jung.”
SIMONA: Hm.
DRAKE: Which I can’t blame him totally for since the narcissist was trying to get gossip in the first place. But still: if one’s person is being a… well I can’t condone the other for condoning it.
SIMONA: I’ll bet. So that’s why you stopped coming here?
DRAKE: I make a rule never to enter on my own. And if I do it has to be with some one who is close to them. They’re like a cult here.
SIMONA: Hm. Are they really?
DRAKE: It’s all right though. I guess I just don’t fit in.
SIMONA: Well. You don’t have to.
DRAKE: Come again?
SIMONA: You don’t have to! This beard. This hair.
DRAKE: Yes?
SIMONA: Don’t shave it! It’s you! I can tell just talking to you. You aren’t like the rest.
DRAKE: Really?
SIMONA: Yeah! You’re a leader! So be who you are. Don’t let them tell you otherwise.
DRAKE: Thank you. That goes a long way.
[Dennis returns.]
DRAKE: It makes me think, too. I am all ways looking for security in life. Yet astrologically my North Node is in Capricorn. So South Nodewise I am in Cancer. And that’s what you are supposed to get away from in this life. I guess I’m all ways waiting to find Home. But never finding it. Seeking security in all the wrong places.
SIMONA: Don’t. You are fine the way you are.
DRAKE: I know I am. But I still want the world to be my home. And then my Midheaven’s in Cancer too. So it’s all messed up. I’m supposed to be pursuing that same home that I should give up searching for. I guess that I am LOOKING FOR some thing that I should be CREATING. Yes. That makes sense. Doesn’t it, Dennis?
DENNIS: It does.
SIMONA: [briskly.] It does.
DRAKE: SO that’s why I don’t get in where I fit in. I keep trying to find home where I should be CREATING it. And I keep trying to CREATE it where I think I’ve found it. But I’m fighting the inevitable: change.
SIMONA: You strike me as a wise individual. I’ll bet you will be very successful. In ANY thing that you set your mind to. What EVER you do.
DRAKE: I guess so.
SIMONA: I KNOW it.
DRAKE: Yes. Hm. I used to use a sort of Fortune Telling to make my decisions. And I keep getting this Hexagram over and over again. It says I’ve been hurt deliberately and I should abstain from vengeance. So I never looked up that barista on the Internet.
SIMONA: It couldn’t hurt.
DRAKE: Well. I just might. If you don’t mind.
SIMONA: Go right ahead! I have to go now any way. It was so nice meeting you boys.
DENNIS: Same here.
DRAKE: Same.
[she exits.]
DRAKE: Wow.
DENNIS: What is it?
DRAKE: Turns out that he knew this girl named Hestia.
DENNIS: Is she significant?
DRAKE: I met her here once. After the whole Dominic thing. She’d been in one of my philosophy classes. She was a real whiz-kid. Total sweetheart too. We had a nice talk. Looks like she models for this douche-bag’s photos.
[Understanding Dawns.]
DRAKE: You know what this means, don’t you Dennis?
DENNIS: I think…?
DRAKE: He must have been there while the two of us were talking. I mean her and I. Because I mentioned Jung being the best psychologist. And I think I even lectured her on Nietzsche a bit. To her fascination. She was really eating it up. And I dished it out with sincerity. Fuck! That dude must have gotten jealous!
DENNIS: What’s his sign?
DRAKE: Leo.
DENNIS: Then probably.
DRAKE: Don’t you SEE, Dennis? It’s the same thing with MacBeth. I was never the jealous one. HE was. That was the only reason that he sabotaged me. It was not my fault. And Ariana thought that I was being-jealous. And I thought so too! But then I realized that he’d all ways been the covetous douche-bag. And I was so afraid of becoming him.
DENNIS: That you nearly did.
DRAKE: But no. I never will. Because I see it now. I need not level with him in my pain, nor need I level with any one. Simona was right. Fuck what they think. I am a leader.
DENNIS: That you are.
DRAKE: You flatter me. But honestly. You know what? You are too!
DENNIS: Thank you.
DRAKE: Wow. It makes sense. Now. No matter what happens. I will never justify what Tapeworm did.
DENNIS: Who?
DRAKE: MacBeth. I will never justify it because I will all ways know what happen at that PRECISE moment to that PRECISE person who I was. And I will know that such pain never needed to transpire. Yet this will not justify any act of evil on my own part. Nor need it to prevent any act of will, such as deciding to break up the band, which honestly he broke up for me with that act of war. If I stole somebody’s girl, it would be the most fucked-up thing that I could do. It would be the worst pain that I could put an other man through. At a more innocent time in my life I would not have imagined it to be possible. Then it happened. Yet if I DID do that, then I wouldn’t vindicate what he did. It would not be like he popped my cherry and I learned a lesson. I need never play that game again, repeatedly losing just for a chance to win at some one else’s expense. HOWEVER: however close I come to that. However low I stoop. I’ll all ways know he screwed me. And he owes me for that. So I all ways win in terms of virtue.
DENNIS: Um.
DRAKE: He can’t justify it by analogy to any thing that happened either prior nor after the fact. In that brief, fleeting moment of lucidity, when I saw him for what he was, I was immune in pain. And no one can take that away from me. Not even Ariana. Matter of fact: it was the fact she could not take my Truth away from me that led her to the same damn understanding!
DENNIS: So you believe she loves you?
DRAKE: Yes. If only because to accuse her of lying now would be Absurd, considering how often she told me that she did not love me. It’s easier to say that she lied then but finally confessed her feelings truly. And as sketchy as that sounds, the very fact she knows this too makes it clear that she would not lie this time.
DENNIS: I guess I see your point.
DRAKE: And any attempts made to control me, to impose analogy, to exercise an Absolute, to make a “rule”, are just further attempts made to control me. Seeing that my pain would dispossess all entities of such a right, for they have wronged me in their jealousy, I’m free.
MALE BARISTA: Hey man. You have to order some thing.
DRAKE: But I’m free!
MALE BARISTA: Yeah, well that chair isn’t.
DRAKE: Guess that you can’t take it then.
DENNIS: Honestly Drake. I’ll order for you.
BOTH: No. Trust me. He’s bad news.
[Pause. Drake gets up to depart.]
BOTH: So be it.
[exit Drake and Dennis.]
Dm.A.A.
No comments:
Post a Comment