THE NEXT LEVEL DOWN: ACT V, SCENE THREE.

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.

THE NEXT LEVEL DOWN: ACT V, SCENE TWO.

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.

ULTIMATUM:

I have absolutely no tolerance for any one who does not regard his neighbour as he regards himself. It is not up to you to decide the value of others nor the extent of their entitlement. That is up to them; you have only to accommodate them. If you are operating towards any private end that does not serve the common good nor preserve the well-being of others, then you must be made to stop. No one is entitled to the fruits of his own actions. To act is a privilege; to live is a right, and that right is Universal. Since you cannot hoard it as your own solitary property, neither can you hoard any thing that is necessary towards it. Every thing belongs to every one. One never "goes out and gets it", and to think of "working FOR it" is insane. Why would you respect the person who works for objects? What does he intend to DO with them? And how can you trust him? Such a maniac is dangerous. He does not see within the eyes of every human fellow the unassailable Godhead. And that is not a person I can cohabitate this planet with. I shudder to wonder at what such sociopaths would do to other people. They are worse than savages, inflicting harm without recrimination, blaming others for their own self-interest. It is as much your concern that I get what I want as it is that you get what YOU want; you shall trivialize neither my relationships nor your effect UPON them with accusations of selfishness, as though I were not entitled to the fulfillment of my own desires. It is not, after all, an impossible enterprise. Daily people strive after what they want. Why don't they simply find the courage to WAIT for it? To let it come? Only because they must contend with thieves who steal it in some narcissistic frenzy. Every thing belongs to whoever needs it at that moment. Why should I agree to the dogma of thieves and bullies? My only focus ever was to help others. The few thieves and bullies endangered those same people that I had aspired to help. Be careful now that you do not repeat their lies.

Dm.A.A.

THE NEXT LEVEL DOWN: ACT V, SCENE ONE.

Act Five.

Scene One: Grand Avenue. Outside a bar.

HOMELESS MAN (SALVADOR):

Traditional gender roles dictate that men are supposed to be masculine and that women are supposed to be feminine. There was no conspiracy underlying this. It was simply a cosmic trend. Women received feminine energy and men received masculine energy. The balance was maintained, albeit precariously, through the observation of traditional roles.

As time progressed the balance eroded. The masculine became overvalued and the feminine was repressed. However there was a balancing tendency manifest in the fact that a minority of the male population adopted feminine roles. These men were estranged from both their male brethren and the majority of females who felt no need to have men in their lives who would simply mirror their own submissive tendencies. Yet a minority of unconventionally masculine women loved these men, for these masculine women saw value in the femininity that they themselves lacked. These same women all so modeled their own masculinity after adult father figures, observing the masculine tradition with humility and respect.

The contemporary crisis mirrors a cosmic crisis. Women are now receiving masculine energy and men are receiving feminine energy. Women are becoming men, and they are doing so collectively, not individually as before. They have severed ties with the masculine tradition, and so they are behaving like adolescent boys: in short, patriarchal bastards.

Patriarchy is not to be confused with the masculine tradition. Patriarchy is simply an unintegrated and immature form of masculine energy. In Spanish the term is "machismo".

The concept of Equality is a masculine concept. Its antithesis is Inequality. The former is Ordered and Leveling; the latter is Chaotic and Subtle. Only by balancing equality with inequality can the genders coexist harmoniously. To presume entirely upon either Equality OR Inequality can only produce disaster.

Inequality, once vilified a priori and with cruelty, becomes by avenue of repression the very Devil that it was accused of being to begin with. This proves nothing except for the raw power of ignorant repression.

When women behave like patriarchal bastards, their demands for equality are most easily met by patriarchal bastards. The male of macho persuasion need only to compromise his machismo a tiny bit in order to level with a modern woman. He can then treat her with all the roughness with which he wants himself to be treated, and thereby an unstable but nonetheless mutual confluence is established.

Equality becomes most difficult to the sensitive man. It is insufficient to treat women the way that they wish to be treated; they expect you to KNOW what they want, only because you are a man. The presupposition is that all men want the same things. It would thus follow in theory that if a man is sufficiently egalitarian to meet social standards then he will automatically accommodate the desires of any woman by simply treating her how he himself wishes to be treated. Underlying this is the final conceit that how any man wishes to be treated is in fact how any woman would want to be treated. This is Equality.

But not all people wish to be treated the same way. Not all of them even want to be Equals! The sensitive man wants to be seen as a nurturing, compassionate, and yielding being. He wants to reward women for their own sensitivities by offering them the opportunity to be nurturing, compassionate, and yielding. Yet modern woman hates to be regarded as possessing such feminine virtues, which she regards (falsely) as a demeaning regression.

[Enter DRAKE.]

DRAKE: Hey, I remember you. We met last time.

SAL: Yep. Did you have the chance to read the passage on display in the Christian Science Reading Room?

DRAKE: In passing. I know I’ve read it before.

SAL: They changed it. You will want to check again.

DRAKE: That I might. Wasn’t your name Salvador?

SAL: Yes. Saviour.

DRAKE: Like Xavier.

SAL: Yes. But in an other language.

DRAKE: That makes perfect sense. I dreamt about you.

SAL: Oh, really? How was the dream?

DRAKE: Terrifying. But not because of you. You actually made some sense in it.

SAL: Well that I do tend to do. And yes: I frequent the dreams of many of my fellow travelers.

[An other homeless man passes. Sal waves in camaraderie.]

SAL: How’s it going?

OTHER: Can’t complain boss.

SAL: All right well if you can’t then don’t.

[they share a laugh. This piques our hero’s curiosity.]

DRAKE: You know: I’ve all ways wondered about that. That saying: Can’t complain.

SAL: Yes, Sir.

DRAKE: Does it mean that he WOULD complain if he COULD, but he thinks he can’t? Or that he has nothing to complain about?

SAL: Probably some combination of the two, differing in relation to the speaker.

DRAKE: Do you mind? Since you do not seem all too skeptical to entertain this superstition: I want to guess your astrological sign.

SAL: Go right ahead.

DRAKE: Aries.

SAL: No.

DRAKE: Leo??

SAL: No.

DRAKE: Okay tell me.

SAL: You get one more guess. The law of threes.

DRAKE: You are a Cancer.

SAL: Yep.

DRAKE: I saw it. I knew it was probably some thing Cardinal. And young. But water came to mind all of a sudden after Fire.

SAL: Funny how that happens. What about you?

DRAKE: I am not a Cancer.

SAL: But you ARE a water-sign, I’m guessing.

DRAKE: I’m a Pisces.

SAL: Oh, well good for you.

DRAKE: I guess. Only since it is the age of Pisces still.

SAL: Until the age of Aquarius comes in.

DRAKE: Yes.

SAL: Which all ready happened.

DRAKE: Really?

SAL: Yeah. Last… month, I think?

DRAKE: I thought it was not supposed to happen for an other hundred and some years.

SAL: Nope. Last Christmas it happened.

DRAKE: During Capricorn season?

SAL: I believe so.

DRAKE: Funny. [pause.] You know Kreg was a Cancer?

SAL: That I do.

DRAKE: How is he? I’ve been by his spot a few times and I never see him.

SAL: Well Kreg had to go to rehab. We’ve not seen him for a long while. He should be out soon though. Then he might try to get into the school here.

DRAKE: It’s a big deal, right? The Catholic University. People from all over the country come to study here. And yet few of the locals seem to know just what a big deal it is.

SAL: Kreg could get in if he finds his focus.

DRAKE: Yeah. This guy’s a trip though. Ever since he met Satan out on a camping trip.

SAL: Kreg will recover. He has a thick skin.

DRAKE: He is a Cancer, after all.

SAL: Exactly. [laughs.]

DRAKE: So Kreg’s still drinking?

SAL: OH yeah.

DRAKE: I’m so sorry. He once told me that you left a cup of beer beside him and he got caught with it.

SAL: That was him. I wouldn’t carry beer around with me.

DRAKE: I know. It makes sense now. He has a drinking problem.

SAL: Course: I wouldn’t want you to presume.

DRAKE: It matters not. Kreg’s karma is his karma. That’s all there is to it.

SAL: Yep.

DRAKE: You know: I once got kicked out of this place here. They thought that I was Kreg. With my long hair and all.

SAL: Oh, really? [laughs.]

DRAKE: I figured out what happened. Having seen how homeless people here get treated.

SAL: Well it certainly leaves room for improvement.

DRAKE: Yep. A total overhaul. But you know: I remember that night I last saw you with him. When it rained. You seemed so outspoken. And yet he was curled up at the foot of the building. Fighting his daemons.

SAL: I had a lot of anger back then. There were plenty of those frequencies all throughout Escondido.

DRAKE: I know. I just remember how much he then would have resembled a crab. Though I did not know yet that he was a Cancer.

SAL: Funny.

DRAKE: It still serves as evidence, I think. For the Sun-sign’s validity. Even after the fact, observing how crablike he was, though I’d not noticed it in words before then. But any way: I wouldn’t doubt it nowadays at either rate.

SAL: Some things require faith in reason. Others only require faith.

DRAKE: True that. Some say that Scorpio is the most powerful of the twelve signs.

SAL: Do you believe that?

DRAKE: No. I saw a video once of two hoodlums. It was called “Urban Astrology”. This dark fellow – I know it’s politically incorrect but I don’t care – was talking about how Cancer is the most powerful sign. And how our nation is a Cancer. And he said that with this weird insinuating tone. And went on to point out the Fourth of July. Our birthday, ostensibly.

SAL: At least when we celebrate it.

DRAKE: Yeah. Just symbolically. Like Jesus being a Capricorn.

SAL: Well Christ was an Aries.

DRAKE: Probably. Any way: that guy made his statement all right. I mean the black guy. Not Jesus. Though him too. He kept looking in the camera with this morbid gaze that they so often have who grew up on the streets. And he’s like: “IF you celebrate it. I don’t.”

[Sal laughs. Drake chuckles and grins.]

DRAKE: So Kreg will be fine. He’s on the path. He found it so damned funny when I found him and I told him about how this owner here kicked me out. Just like this one time that there were these Marines at that other bar down the way. One of them had P.T.S.D. He kept staring at me. So I stared back. You know, Rupert Sheldrake – all so incidentally a Cancer – said that you could prove the sense of being-stared-at scientifically. He wrote a book on it.

SAL: Good man.

DRAKE: GREAT man. He showed up Krishnamurti too. He was the only one I saw to do it. Every one else must have either been too lit. Or not lit enough.

SAL: Drugs are a gamble. Certainly.

DRAKE: They make one impressionable. [Pause.] I only hope that Kreg recovers. You know: alcoholism is a strange disease. Alan Watts distinguished it from “problem drinking”. I agree with him. It seems like some people are problem drinkers that would not be problems were they alcoholics. Yeah. My father was that way. He’d drink just little enough as to keep his pride intact. So you could never get him to admit to all the stupid awful things he did after he’d downed a few.

SAL: I’m sorry to hear that.

DRAKE: It’s fine. I’m a Russian. Our whole cultural history is either one big attempt to either rationalize alcoholism, to combat it, or to atone for it. Reductionistic as it might be to suggest that.

SAL: Alcohol really IS a killer. Though when there is little else to live for.

DRAKE: Yeah.

SAL: Then God has to step in.

DRAKE: Like Jung said. When he founded Alcoholics Anonymous. I still think of Jung each time I hear them meeting in Grape Day Park.

SAL: Grape Day Park has a problem with police harassing homeless.

DRAKE: For illegal camping?

SAL: They are not supposed to do that. It’s against the law. But the police are ordered to remove us any way. Until I come in and I ask them if it’s legal. And they must confess that they don’t know.

DRAKE: “No one has access to the Law.” Kafka. An other Cancer.

SAL: Yep.

DRAKE: That reminds me: I was telling you a story. I hope that you did not drop that topic on purpose.

SAL: No. I love to listen to people tell their stories. It’s the only way one learns.

DRAKE: Well: I kept looking back at that drunk with the morbid eyes. At the bar. Not the Urban thing. And his buddy sitting right next to me – muscular, macho fellow – told me to quit staring at his friend like I was about to rape him or some thing.

SAL: That’s ridiculous.

DRAKE: An earlier, less jaded version of me would have walked away, my innocence intact, but still concerned about what I had done. This present incarnation though knew better than to take them seriously. I’d been at enough bars. I understand bar logic. It’s random flux and nothing more. The only shame is in living that style of life perpetually. Never sober. All ways irresponsible. [Pause.] But even being innocent was not so bad. Because I never questioned the sheer power of intention.

SAL: It is all that matters.

DRAKE: Truly. When I found Kreg and I told him that story he told me that that macho guy had a small penis.

[Sal laughs.]

DRAKE: He said it quite professionally. Like he was explaining cause and effect. “You see: when some one says some thing like that it is because he has a small penis.” I have to say: I applaud Kreg. Though I can’t vouch for his musical taste. His taste in literature was splendid. He read Nietzsche and Camus. A lot of homeless do. And whilst inebriated Kreg was a pure poet and a loyal friend.

[Appears a young man, homeless and paranoid, with gang tattoos.]

SAL: How’s it going?

YOUTH: Good boss. [He looks to be the antithesis of this.]

SAL: Have a seat.

YOUTH: All right. I’ve got to take a piss first.

SAL: Well why don’t you use the restroom in there?

YOUTH: You think they’ll let me?

SAL: Can’t hurt to try.

YOUTH: I don’t know man.

DRAKE: Hey. There’s one next to the European Deli right across the way.

YOUTH: Oh, yeah?

DRAKE: Yeah. You can all ways use that one. TECHNICALLY it is only for customers. But you can sneak in unnoticed usually.

YOUTH: I’ma use this one. THANKS though.

[He exits.]

SAL: He’s a good kid.

DRAKE: He looked like an example of that anxiety you were talking about.

SAL: Well: being homeless will do that to you.

DRAKE: He seemed rather frazzled.

SAL: He used to run around with gangs. Bad company corrupts character.

DRAKE: Definitely.

I can’t help him?

SAL: No. He has to help himself.

DRAKE: It gets overwhelming you know. Being a Pisces.

SAL: Well of course it does. You are experiencing presently the undoing of two thousand years of Pineal insulation.

DRAKE: So my Third Eye is taking time to adjust?

SAL: Exactly.

DRAKE: It’s just hard. With so much pain everywhere. I once met a girl here who told me if I wanted to then I could feel across the country.

SAL: Empathy is a mistake. It won’t help you.

DRAKE: I beg your pardon?

SAL: It won’t. You have to be compassionate, yes. But empathy will only drag you down to the lower frequencies. You really do not need that in your psyche right now. Not when you’re adjusting to the new paradigm.

DRAKE: I suppose that it makes sense. [Pause.] But I hope you do not mind: I have to say something. That you reminded me of some one that I knew. And she seemed at first to view empathy as some sort of weakness. She would speak about it like she had some switch. Like she could turn it off.

SAL: She was a woman, wasn’t she? [grins knowingly.]

DRAKE: Why would that matter?

SAL: It’s the cosmos. It mixed up all the frequencies. All of the women are receiving all the masculine frequencies and all the men are getting all the feminine ones.

DRAKE: That… explains a lot in fact.

SAL: You see it everywhere. It’s what men get for thousands of years of patriarchy.

DRAKE: As poetically just as that sounds, it sucks. I mean: I probably was not even a man all of those other lifetimes.

SAL: No. It’s possible you were a woman. At least several times. That’s supposing that you have an old soul. Unless you have a new soul and you’ve only seen the male side.

DRAKE: [Pause.] I believe I have an Old Soul.

SAL: [Stares smilingly at Drake.] Yes. I think so, too.

DRAKE: So I am here to heal people.

SAL: Heal them, yes. But empathy won’t do you any good.

DRAKE: That reminds me. Ultimately we did empathise. I saw her at the hospital. And we had a heart-to-heart.

SAL: This hospital here?

DRAKE: No. A safer one.

SAL: Oh. Good.

DRAKE: And she no longer treated sensitivity like it was weakness.

SAL: It can be. Depending upon how one uses it.

DRAKE: It is not so in my case. Though she told me long ago, on a good day, what you told me, basically: that as an introvert I should protect my self. That my internal world should be a paradise, and not a battlefield.

SAL: She is wise then.

DRAKE: Yes. That she is. Though I must say she wasn’t all ways so. She never took advice, I noticed.

SAL: Well. There you have those masculine vibrations. Women don’t know how to handle them. They’re all a mess.

DRAKE: All amiss. All the misses are amiss.

SAL: Indeed. Women have to learn to take advice from men. We have millennia of experience in this role.

DRAKE: I would suppose that we have much to learn as well. As nurturers. May be I can teach my brethren how to care.

SAL: Just don’t care too much. Leading by example has its limits.

DRAKE: Yes. And caring too much gets me into trouble.

SAL: Stay out of trouble, man. This too shall pass.

DRAKE: That makes me think of Kreg. And you. First time I saw you without Kreg, after we met: you said you’d found a job. You wanted to renounce the homeless way of life. You’d found too much selfishness.

SAL: Well you find selfishness every where nowadays. It is the Age of Black Time.

DRAKE: The Kali Yuga, yes. But the people who hired and fed you. Clothed you. You said they were good.

SAL: They were. But I could not abandon my homeless brethren. Their cause is my cause. The city all but tries to kill us off.

DRAKE: That’s terrible.

SAL: We shall survive. We all ways do.

DRAKE: [Pause.] I found a job.

SAL: Good for you.

DRAKE: It’s a step. Up a staircase that I know not where it leads.

SAL: So long as you are moving forward. That’s what matters. And so long as you are moving upward.

DRAKE: That’s the only way that stairs go.

SAL: Unless you take the wrong one.

DRAKE: Or you turn around.

SAL: Or unless it’s an escalator going down.

DRAKE: But you can beat that.

I appreciate what you are doing. Trying to reform the system, one man at a time.

SAL: “Army of One”.

DRAKE: Yes. When you told me about that it stuck with me. Most people talk about changing the system from the outside or the inside. To me, there’s no difference. We’re all inside it. And we’re all outside it. It is every where and nowhere. Simultaneously. There is no system. But there is nothing BUT the system. All that matters: what I do.

SAL: That’s all you have to answer for. At the end of the day.

DRAKE: And from the moment that the day begins. Yes.

[The young man returns.]

YOUTH: You got a cigarette, boss?

[Sal presents a cigarette ritualistically.]

YOUTH: THANKS.

[to Drake:] Is it cool if I sit down here?

DRAKE: Absolutely.

SAL: Drake’s a friend. Don’t worry.

DRAKE: What’s your name?

YOUTH: No offense but: I don’t usually give out my name.

DRAKE: Understandable and understood.

SAL: It’s okay: Drake is a friend.

YOUTH: [Pause.] My name’s Elijah.

DRAKE: Mucho gusto Elijah.

[Enter owner of bar.]

OWNER: Hey. Did you piss all over my floors?

ELIJAH: No, boss. That wasn’t me.

OWNER: Well you were the last one in there. And I came in to find an enormous puddle of urine right around the toilet bowl.

ELIJAH: Sorry to hear that.

OWNER: Here: you go inside and you clean that up.

[Hands towel. Elijah and owner exit.]

DRAKE: It probably wasn’t him.

SAL: I agree. But people want to find some one to blame.

DRAKE: I guess it really is easiest that way.

SAL: You can’t blame THEM either. Man’s got a business to run.

DRAKE: Still: that puddle was probably there hitherto. We will never know. All that we know is that the manager decided, if he doesn’t do so after every visit some one pays to the restroom, to check PECULIARLY at that VERY instant. Like he was expecting it. Or just waiting for an excuse to blame the homeless and make our friend here clean it up. Like he knew about the mess all along, all most.

[Elijah returns.]

ELIJAH: That was fucked up. I didn’t even do nothin.

SAL: Turn the other cheek, brother. You handled that well. Pride goes before the fall.

[Pause.]

SAL: Well. I’m all out of smokes. Time to get some more.

ELIJAH: All right boss. Hurry back.

[Sal exits.]

DRAKE: You play music, Elijah?

ELIJAH: Yeah. I play.

DRAKE: What do you play?

ELIJAH: Just whatever you know.

DRAKE: I see. [Pause.] Well. Let’s see what the Oracle has to say about today.

DRAKE: We have to consider this possibility: that sexuality and love are not conspiracies made by the Other. That rather it is we that, in our lack of love, obscure the world in a haze of paranoia and formalize our hatred via the revision of a bureaucratic and oppressive system.

ELIJAH: PREACH!

DRAKE: That women and men need not await the day that they are equal. That that day is here and now. That one has only to walk through the mirage of statistical abstraction. And that then every thing we do together is spontaneously an act of Equality.

ELIJAH: CHURCH, boss.

DRAKE: And that while it might seem presumptuous to say as merely one individual belonging to but one of the groups, one must, in order to find equality, make such a presumption that these truths are available to all. And whilst such egalitarianism might appear to be a foregone conclusion, it is necessarily so, for only by finding the confidence to believe in it a priori can one render its reality a posteriori.

ELIJAH: Uhh, yeah. Words.

DRAKE: But this leap of faith is divine. For once performed one looks upon the unenlightened world, and what had hitherto been "sexism" is seen to have been none other than neo-liberalism. A circular road to hell paved with well-meaning intentions.

ELIJAH: Church...

DRAKE: And far from being-cyclical, one has broken out of a common circle. While the world continues to spin in the loop.

[Sal returns.]

ELIJAH: That was quick.

DRAKE: Oh, yeah. He’s good at that. [Pause.] And so am I.

Dm.A.A.