Scene
Two: The Theatre.
DRAKE:
In the past women were rewarded for being feminine. In the
present no one is rewarded for being feminine. In the past even men were
rewarded for being feminine, via a reversion of roles that was peculiar but
efficient. In the present, the roles are flipped for every one, but the
feminine role is never rewarded. Woman fails as man because she does not wish
to listen to masculine tradition. The result is that she competes with man (in
a very boyish fashion) for the coveted male role. The man fails in his new feminine
role because women do not possess the sufficient masculine maturity in order to
fulfill the chief purpose of masculinity: to serve and to protect femininity,
and to reward and nurture it.
In this sense masculinity becomes femininity because to nurture
femininity is to be nurturing and to be feminine. But since no one wants to
nurture (as a rule, and by that I mean to suggest that there are rare and
precious exceptions) this synthesis, the ideal of Integration, is seldom
achieved. And so society falls out of balance and into total discord.
[Clapping
from Cat-walk. It is Dennis.]
DRAKE:
Dennis Mendoza.
DENNIS:
Drake Andersen.
DRAKE:
Long time no see. Ought I to come up?
DENNIS:
Naw. I’ll come down.
DRAKE:
You still talk to Dominic?
DENNIS:
Not for a while, no.
DRAKE:
That is for the best.
DENNIS:
Yeah.
DRAKE:
How’s the family?
DENNIS:
Same as always.
DRAKE:
I hope not. You know: I know that it offended you. The time your mom did not
have toilet paper in the house. And I began a scene. Because earlier that same
day she was buying Stirfox. And even *I* cannot afford that blood coffee.
DENNIS:
[Laughs.] I understand.
DRAKE:
Of course you do. You are a Capricorn. Deep down you have standards. And I knew
that. When I lectured you on settling, in hushed tones, it was really all for
you. I knew I had to leave you then to your devices. I just wanted to make sure
that, in my absence, you would do some thing to save yourself.
DENNIS:
I know. I did. And thank you.
DRAKE:
There’s some thing that has been bothering me still. You remember that guy who
fucked Ariana? Please: don’t utter his name here. I’d rather that you said
MacBeth.
DENNIS:
Let’s call him MacBeth then.
DRAKE:
Well: I started out by wondering. Why did he do it? He, of all people, would
understand how fucked up it was. Ariana never understood. Not until she felt
jealous, and even then she was all ways so damned detached. But any way: my
point. He never would have let it happen to him. Come to think of it: the only
reason that he even let it happen was that he was so afraid that it might
happen to him in my place.
DENNIS:
What a coward.
DRAKE:
Yes. A savage. But one that could use a cell phone still. It wasn’t I that
texted him afterwards in my desperation. It was not I who sought vengeance. I
did not want to talk about him. I did not want to acknowledge his existence.
Virgil came to me asking for information yet I would not give it to him. Not
until that Jew started to act like he KNEW. Because that bastard – MacBeth –
poisoned all of my old “friends” against me. You know: like I ever needed them.
Not to sound petty. But who would believe a man on THAT many drugs?
DENNIS:
Yeah.
DRAKE:
And when he texted me, he could not admit that he still needed me. No. He had
to try to “persuade” me that my shock was either my own hallucination or my own
fault. Pretty fucked considering I am a mental outpatient.
DENNIS:
Yeah.
DRAKE:
The closest thing that he ever produced to an excuse was telling me he could
not stand the sight of some one that he “liked” walking off with an other man
(not even his “best friend”). Fuck. He could not have thought of a more
eloquent way to describe therefore just how badly he FUCKED me. Because that’s
EXACTLY what I went through, all on his behalf, against my will.
DENNIS:
Yeah.
DRAKE:
And yet confronted with this he would further the abuse. As though it happening
was not enough, he brought up instances from hitherto. Our past. Wherein he got
offended and he started a scene. Not like I did at your place though. This was
not for my best interest. I merely THOUGHT it was. I thought he’d live up to
those values. That, not having known of them before the fact, I could integrate
them after the fact. Into my own values. That even if he never gave a damn
about my values I could trust him to observe his own.
DENNIS:
He was a hypocrite.
DRAKE:
He was. That much is clear. He knows it. But he still deludes himself that
every body is. It’s in the nature of a hypocrite to call every one else a
hypocrite. If he has figured all this out all ready, though, he is too lazy and
confused to change it.
DENNIS:
Drugs will do that. I know.
DRAKE:
Yes. Your father.
DENNIS:
Yeah.
DRAKE:
Still: it’s incredible. I could write a whole play, beginning with just my
frustrations with Dom, and ending with my frustrations with MacBeth.
DENNIS:
Was Dominic as bad?
DRAKE:
Dominic was going down the same path. I thought that I needed Dom in order to
recover. But all that Dom ever did was try to hold me to my own standards.
DENNIS:
Isn’t that what you are trying to do to MacBeth?
DRAKE:
No. Because Dominic was hypocritical as well. He just did so in an other way.
Both of them were cowards. They were vengeful. And vengeance is the worst
cowardice. [Pause.] I trusted them both, against the better warnings of my
Intuition. I thought Dominic would understand enough to shoulder my own
healing. I could heal so many people. That’s why Virgil all ways came to me.
And you. I tried to educate you in Debate. To help you.
DENNIS:
And I’m sorry if I never fully thanked you.
DRAKE:
Dominic persuaded you that I was using you. Didn’t he?
DENNIS:
Yeah.
DRAKE:
But he was using both of us.
DENNIS:
That much is clear in retrospect.
DRAKE:
Then we are brothers in arms. Survivors of two Scorpio-ass Satanists.
[Dennis
Laughs.]
DRAKE:
Dominic could have helped to heal me. But instead he used all I confided in him
against me to promote his own feeble, petty, self-entitled agenda. He absorbed
it all but never did any thing about it. And when he grew bored of it he raged
against me. Like I never was a victim and like I did not deserve to heal.
[Pause.] Like he shouldn’t have been grateful that I trusted ANY one after what
happened. This is why Americans are so distrustful. Because this stuff happens
all the time.
DENNIS:
Only in America.
DRAKE:
True that. And back to MacBeth. That tapeworm. Honestly. He all ways brought
things up from hitherto that did not matter any more. Many of which had never
mattered to BEGIN with. And not only did he try to criticize me for things
which literally Did Not Matter. But he would make me re-LIVE the LAST time that
he’d criticize me for them. So it’s doubly abusive.
DENNIS:
I see.
DRAKE:
And what does he have to say now in response? Only that they do not matter to
ME, as though they ONLY did not matter to me.
DENNIS:
Hm.
DRAKE:
And if I insist that my opinion matters simply by being-my-opinion, he asserts
his own. Even though it’s mutually exclusive with mine.
DENNIS:
Yeah.
DRAKE:
And yes: I use the word “ONLY” dismissively in both cases. I’m every bit as
dismissive of him as he is of me. But why not? It’s not like he’s REALLY
leveling with me. He is one-upping me! By telling me that my opinion now does
not matter, he’s invalidating his own. How am I supposed to value his opinion
if it is mutually exclusive with my own? If I invalidate my OWN reasoning, I
must invalidate his, because I can only validate his reasoning by avenue of my
own.
DENNIS:
Hm. That makes SENSE! Wow.
DRAKE:
So my use of “only” stands. It’s all his karma. He’s demeaning himself by
demeaning me. [Pause.] And he does so all the time. To every one. Except it’s
often just behind their backs.
DENNIS:
A coward would.
DRAKE:
And I’m romanticizing him now by pretending that it’s NEARLY as sensible a
dialogue as I’ve depicted. I use “reason” with a touch of naivete of course,
because it’s one last passion he does NOT possess. That’s burnt to its
destruction long ago. I understand the absurdity better than even him: the
Grand Absurdist. Which is why he all ways stole my Camus quotes in order to
impress Ariana. Like they did not belong to me. I mean: I actually READ Camus.
I don’t know that he ever did. And it would not matter now.
DENNIS:
No, it wouldn’t.
DRAKE:
See: I cannot validate his position by invalidating my own. Reason Dictates
That. But to his mind: *I* dictate that. Because he lacks Reason. He’s in want
of it. But it won’t have him. [Pause.] Reason dictates that I can only validate
his reasoning by avenue of my own. So it must be with ethics. I can only hold
him to a moral standard if it’s my own standard. So I’m not self-righteous.
However, if I ADOPT his standards as my own, then I can hold him TO HIS OWN
standards, because they fall under mine.
DENNIS:
Brilliant.
DRAKE:
Yes. And so I’m not at fault for holding him to my own standards, as Ariana had
suggested you should never do. I simply held him to HIS standards. HE held me
and every one to HIS own standards. And – true to form – he never had held
himself to those same standards.
DENNIS:
Yeah.
DRAKE:
Yet all these vengeful hypocrites maintain one last defense. They say the best
defense is a strong offense. And they all ways TAKE offense, as though it might
defend them later.
DENNIS:
Wow. [genuinely in awe.]
DRAKE:
They ask us: so what? Why does it MATTER? As though by uttering something so nihilistic
they do not invalidate their own values by implication.
DENNIS:
They lose Ethos.
DRAKE:
NOW you’re getting it. See? You can do debate well. You just need to turn into
an asshole first.
[Dennis
laughs.]
DRAKE:
Not to suggest that saying “Ethos” is part of being an asshole. To be clear.
DENNIS:
Oh, yeah. I get what you meant.
DRAKE:
Right. “Ethos” is a strong point. Being-an-asshole: we have room to improve
that.
[Dennis
laughs again, though as an afterthought.]
[Enter
Tyrone the Janitor, to clean.]
DRAKE:
ANY way: enough semantics. Where was I?
DENNIS:
Nihilism.
DRAKE:
Right. They ask: what does it matter? After all: WE hurt THEM FIRST. As though
that made it okay to hurt us in return. Well. They ask it as though to say:
What makes it OKAY for you to hurt us when it’s NOT okay for us to hurt you?
DENNIS:
Right.
DRAKE:
But it’s so stupid. It’s a skewed idea of time. They act like hypocrisy happens
over years, just because they’re still living in a grudgeful haze from long
ago.
DENNIS:
Hm.
DRAKE:
The truth is: Hypocrisy is all ways instantaneous. It’s instant karma. And the
karma’s all ways bad. That’s just what vengeance is. Hypocrisy. By asking that
question they answer it. But they don’t hear the answer, in their narcissism.
Because ACTUALLY *I* could ask the same thing, and I must, for my own pain
occurs at the very moment that the question’s asked of me. I could retort: If
what I did to you was NOT okay, then what makes THIS okay?
DENNIS:
Oh!
DRAKE:
And they reply: it makes it okay because you MADE it okay. So they call ME the
hypocrite. But in fact I never knew that it was NOT okay to begin with. They
INSISTED it was not okay; that was THEIR value. The same value I’d go on to
absorb, and thus to hold them to. The value they betray when they betray us.
DENNIS:
Holy fuck.
DRAKE:
And in truth they held it against us all these years. But rather than being-MEN
about it, owning up to it and leading by example, they find fault with every
body but their selves. And then they hold THAT against us too.
DENNIS:
Because it’s in their NATURE to be HYPOCRITICAL!
DRAKE:
Right. And in the nature of a hypocrite one must do what?
DENNIS:
[Pause.] I don’t know.
DRAKE:
Accuse OTHERS of hypocrisy!
DENNIS:
You’re right!! Oh! [slaps own head.]
DRAKE:
And finally when the time comes to prove their own integrity, to preserve their
Ethos, they betray every one. They turn on every one and every thing. And they
rationalize afterwards by blaming others for past hurts. But they invalidate
their own reasoning by promoting the same hurts NOW. To THEM, time moves
CAUSALLY, OUT of the past, THROUGH the present, and INTO the future. But you
know what’s puzzling? You spend all this time trying to figure out WHY things
are what they are, ACCORDING to the past.
DENNIS:
Right.
DRAKE:
But it’s NOT right.
DENNIS:
I know.
DRAKE:
Alan Watts, Rupert Sheldrake, and all these other hippie intellectuals – even
Kierkegaard and Nietzsche damn it – all agreed upon one thing: that time does
NOT move out of the past, through the present, into the future. It starts in
the FUTURE, then we MEET it here and now, and we decide how we wish TO meet it.
This I all ways argued with MacBeth about. I tried to reason with him that
causality in the Aristotelian sense cannot exist because all events are interconnected.
And all he could do was recite the same old dogmatic semantics for cause and
effect. He had the most naked metaphors. He talked about his mom’s condo. And
how if that building that housed the complex blew up, we would know WHY it was
a mess of rubble if we encountered it the following day, inferring the cause
from the effect.
DENNIS:
Right.
DRAKE:
But it’s NOT right. As you know. Because in fact you’re only CONCEPTUALISING
the destruction of the building as an EVENT that you took no part in, not even
as a witness.
DENNIS:
Oh!
DRAKE:
It’s entirely abstract. And aimed at blaming some one. The terrorists. Or
whatever.
DENNIS:
Don’t say that in a theatre.
DRAKE:
Sorry. Noted. Any way: where was I?
DENNIS:
Conceptualising the destruction…
DRAKE:
Totally. Totally abstract. But let’s suppose they saw it happen. They’d
EXPERIENCE its “aftermath” differently. Why do we call a painting a “painting”?
“Painting” is both a gerund and a noun. The ACT of painting produces the
PAINTING. And when the painting stops the PAINTING is finished. Both the
process and the product. They are all one. But a fool says: painting is the
cause, and A painting is the effect.
DENNIS:
Wow.
DRAKE:
So a mess of rubble may be called “a bombing”. And consider how Vonnegut
depicts the Dresden Bombing in Slaughterhouse-Five. He REVERSES it. To show
that time can work both ways. So some one like MacBeth or Dom asks: hey. Why is
it WRONG for us to hurt you IF you hurt US THEN? And I reply: What makes it
RIGHT for you to hurt me IF IT WAS WRONG then?
DENNIS:
Right.
DRAKE:
At last it is. But they don’t see that. They don’t see how time flows back from
this point. Even though one time I quoted Kierkegaard. “Life must be lived
forwards. But it can only be understood backwards.”
DENNIS:
Great quote.
DRAKE:
MacBeth thought so too. But I could not understand it. My ex, at the time still
my girlfriend, had to explain it to me.
DENNIS:
I see.
DRAKE:
He hated me for dating her. Though I knew she would not date him. And I had
been led to believe that he was over trying to date her. Because that’s how he
put it. That he “used to” have a crush on her. And I knew from her that it had
been a year.
DENNIS:
That’s a long time.
DRAKE:
I’d only known Ariana for a month!
DENNIS:
Yeah.
DRAKE:
By a year she had lost interest.
DENNIS:
I’m sorry.
DRAKE:
In him. Not me.
DENNIS:
Oh.
DRAKE:
Ariana taught me how to see both sides: mutual causality. Time flows BOTH ways.
But vengeful people see it causally. Alan Watts saw it in reverse. As did
Vonnegut. When MacBeth read Slaughterhouse Five he thought it was Determinist
fiction. It was not. Vonnegut was LAMPOONING Determinism. But MacBeth was so
stuck in the causal thought pattern that he did not see it.
DENNIS:
I see.
DRAKE:
Alan Watts was of course irresponsible in many ways. And Dom would say, in
desperation, that we’re BOTH wrong, and that two wrongs don’t make a right, but
that it makes us even. But it doesn’t. Because I see both sides. Alan Watts saw
only one side. Which is why he turned into a slacker. But now I’ve finally
figured it out. The last nail on the coffin of these vengeful bastards.
DENNIS:
What is it?
DRAKE:
That they never see both sides, all because they OSCILLATE perpetually between
them. One moment they’re totalitarians and Fascists who want to punish every
one for every thing that’s ever happened to them. The next: total hippies who
haven’t the faintest clue what sets their own debauchery apart from the
Spiritual Quest of Others. [Pause.] That integrity that you and I possess they
never see. They either hate us for it, in the former situation, or pretend that
it’s not there, in the lateral case. And only people like you and I – sober
people, more or less – can see both sides. And that hypocrisy is NEVER okay.
TYRONE:
Sounds like you have had an encounter with the Pharisees.
DRAKE:
Hey T.
TYRONE:
And I just got to ask you: first. What’s your name?
DENNIS:
Dennis.
DRAKE:
Well. PLEASED to MEET you Dennis. Now: secondly. Might I offer either of you
gentlemen some advice? Just you know. FROM MY OWN EXPERIENCE.
DRAKE:
Go right ahead, T.
TYRONE:
GET IN WHERE YOU FIT IN.
DRAKE:
Hm.
TYRONE:
I have to tell you. And I HOPE it ENTERTAINS you. I was born in COMPTON,
CALIFORNIA. Not the nicest neighbourhood you could ask for.
DRAKE:
Certainly.
TYRONE:
CERTAINLY. And back in my day I knew guys who wanted to be rappers. You know
what they had to find out? EVERY BODY wanted to be RAPPERS.
DRAKE:
Heh.
TYRONE:
Me: I elected to study hard. Do you know where I graduated from?
DRAKE:
You never told me.
TYRONE:
The UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA at BERKELEY.
DRAKE:
Wow.
TYRONE:
[knods.] Did pretty well for myself, didn’t I? WE called it CAL. You want to
know what CAREER I chose to pursue with my University Education from CAL?
DRAKE:
Which?
TYRONE:
Pharmaceuticals. Though I did not have a license. Want to know what I did? I
sold CRYSTAL METH on the STREETS of COMPTON, CALIFORNIA.
DRAKE:
Wow.
TYRONE:
I made good money too. Never got caught. Till one day some of my – associates –
had a disagreement with me. You want to know how I got this? [shows scar on
thumb.]
DRAKE:
How?
TYRONE:
Shoot-out. A car pulls up to my residence. I am outside, finishing a
TRANSACTION, and all I hear is:
BANG!
[leans
in to Dennis.]
WooSH!
[extends
arm past Dennis’ left ear.]
WooSH!
[extends
other arm past Dennis’ right ear.]
DENNIS:
Oh, my God.
TYRONE:
And that day I had a revelation.
DRAKE:
Like in Pulp Fiction.
TYRONE:
EXACTLY. I realized that God sent this to me as a WARNING. I was throwing my
life away. And for what? All for STUPID people. I got to tell you: I grew up in
the GHETTO. And you know what I’ve come to find? I come to find that some of
the most PREJUDICED people I knew were black people! Now IMAGINE that for a
while.
DRAKE:
I can.
TYRONE:
Right? You know what I’m saying! So I got the – HELL out of there. Moved down
here. Now I have been a CUSTODIAN for the past twelve years. And no one fires
shots at me. The police never hassle me. May be once or twice I get a few guys
trying to act TOUGH but I set them straight. Because I have GOD on my side now.
So by extension the Police and the Neighbourhood look out for me as well. Just
because you know: I make my presence KNOWN. So they all know T ain’t going to
BULLSHIT them.
[both
laugh, then he laughs demonstratively.]
TYRONE:
And you know what? I LOVE my JOB. Because this trash: [indicates full plastic
bags.] They do not JUDGE me. They do not CONTRADICT me. They do not try to TAKE
ADVANTAGE of me. We get along. And it’s the same thing. Every. Day. Straight
and narrow. [Emphatic pause.] All these young people running around these days,
with their SMART PHONES and their XBOX and their NETFLIX: they’re poisoning
their minds with junk! [Drake knods.] They are! Me: I am just content to be
here and to do God’s work. But they think All of this is so New! It’s so
FLASHY! But you know: [leans in, hand on Dennis’ shoulder.] There is Nothing
New [turns to Drake] under the Sun!
DRAKE:
Arguably.
TYRONE:
There isn’t. The same hoodrats I knew back in Compton. They still THERE! Only
now it’s their KIDS that has to make the CHOICE. And it’s the Same Choice that
every single man woman and child needs to make. Which path will you take? The
path of Good? Or the path of…
DRAKE:
Evil.
[Extends
arms meaningfully.]
TYRONE:
Get in where you fit in. You two look like a pair of intellectual individuals.
[crossed arms.] I would hate to see it go to waste! I’ve seen it happen. Do you
know what the word “entertainment” means?
DRAKE:
Vaguely. You mean its etymology?
TYRONE:
ENTERTAINMENT is some thing that ENTERS INSIDE of you. And it TAINTS you.
ENTER-TAINT. And then what?
DRAKE:
Ment?
TYRONE:
Ment. As in: Statement. Predicament. So ENTERTAINMENT is what? It ENTERS into
you, TAINTS you, and LEAVES a.
DRAKE:
A ment?
TYRONE:
A STATEMENT. That’s right! Or a predicament. Or any other root that you wish to
append to that particular suffix.
DRAKE:
Hm.
TYRONE:
Get in where you fit in. I hope you do. Because you look like you could fit in
with some spiritual people.
[Tyrone
walks away, backwards, hands at mouth-level. Exits.]
DRAKE:
That guy’s so cool.
DENNIS:
[breathless.] Yeah.
DRAKE:
You know: you are a great listener. And that makes you a Great Friend. I could
all ways tell that Dominic was only listening passive-aggressively. But you
listen. You’ll have a lot to talk about if you ever return to the team. Just
don’t let their bull-shit stifle you.
DENNIS:
I’ll get in where I fit in.
DRAKE:
Yes. And that reminds me of the end of my lecture.
DENNIS:
Go right ahead.
DRAKE:
I began by saying that it puzzled me. Of all the people that might have
sabotaged me, only MacBeth could have done that.
DENNIS:
I see.
DRAKE:
Only he could have come close enough.
DENNIS:
Right.
DRAKE:
Because he was SUPPOSED to be close to me.
DENNIS:
Right.
DRAKE:
In King Arthur’s time it would be called “chivalry”. In ours: Bro Code.
DENNIS:
Loyalty in both cases.
DRAKE:
Precisely. You understand. You pledge yourself to your friends. To uphold their
values as your own. To think that all this time he harboured all of this
RESENTMENT. But he lacked the courage to defend it outwardly. So he pretended
towards my friendship just so he could sabotage me when I needed him most.
DENNIS:
Sorry.
DRAKE:
I wish he were too. And may be so. May be he resents himself above all others.
He burns bridges like they’re cigarettes, and then he tries to salvage them
like re-fries. Hm. But that’s not even the issue. The issue was: Ariana. She
needed some one better than that. I all ways sought a Higher, Deeper love with
Women than he did. No woman ever met my standards, because I just barely even
met them. I mean the standards. Not the women.
[Dennis
knods.]
DRAKE:
For years we would argue. And I thought that when he lorded his debauchery over
me it was out of pity. That he wanted me to lose my virginity. That the closer
I came to it the more excited he would get. It was not so. His excitement was
not mine. It was the antithesis of mine. He can never level with me, for the
“love” he sought – what he would like to call his love – was the same love that
I’d revoked. A selfish love. The love that Ariana too had revoked before she
met him. But that she yielded to under persuasion.
DENNIS:
I’m sorry to hear that.
DRAKE:
So is she. At last. It matters not now. What does matter is: I wondered why of
all the people he – the one who’d hate it most to have to be betrayed – would
be the LAST one to betray me. But he did. And I internalized his vengeance like
poison. Just like she had. With her help. And against her wishes and her own
best interest.
DENNIS:
I’m sorry.
DRAKE:
It matters not now. She confessed her love and I apologized and gave her my
forgiveness. And now here I realise some thing.
DENNIS:
Yes?
DRAKE:
All of this time I thought that may be they were right. That may be I’d hurt
him long ago and that he was entitled to his vengeance. But no. He had hurt
himself. If he wanted to prove it, he did not do so by betraying me. I mean:
not that I’d hurt him. But that he had hurt himself. I value loyalty even
moreso now, but not because he ever pretended towards it and not like he ever
taught me a lesson. No. I value it because it’s one of a number of ways in
which I truly surpass him.
DENNIS:
That I can vouch for.
DRAKE:
And so it makes sense that this happened. I all ways saw it coming, deep down.
He would be the FIRST person to betray me. And not the last. Why? Because he of
all people understood the pain the most. But in addition to that he understood
least of all one critical thing. One that I had all ways honored at the expense
of my own heart.
DENNIS:
What was that?
DRAKE:
You know. If not in words. You hear me if not my words.
[Waits.]
Friendship.
Dm.A.A.
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