These plays are protected by common-law copyright. If you want to perform one or more, please email me: wstott@mail.utexas.edu.
NEARER THE BONE
WOMAN [holding manuscript]: This is terrible!
MAN [entering hurriedly]: What? The whole thing?
W: God, yes! You’ve said it all before, and said it better.
M: I thought it was a breakthrough.
W: “Breakdown” is more like it! The writing is . . .
M: Is . . .?
W: What—you were glued to the door till I read it?
M: Yeah! You bet! This is kind of important, huh? The first thing I’ve written in two years.
W: And the world’s been holding its breath?
M [nods]: Wondering if I’d write anything again, now that I’m getting married.
W: You’ve been married twice already, sweetie.
M: Not to someone in my field: a bright mind, up to date in the literature.
W: An equal.
M: Well, I’ve got a few years on you, a few books.
W: A competitor.
M: Well, someone who can understand what I’m doing.
W: What you’re doing here [gestures to manuscript] is what you did in Nearer the Bone.
M [“say it isn’t so”]: No!
W: It’s your first book all over again, but in horrible, clunky prose.
M [overcome; head in hands]: Ohh!
W: I’m sorry, babe. You know how much I wanted it to be great.
M: I’m still writing, rewriting, my goddamn dissertation! You think people’ll realize it?
W: If they can read it. What amazes me—I mean, I can see why you’d want to quote Althusser and Gayatri Spivak and the rest, just to show you’ve kept up the last twenty years—but what amazes me is how bad the writing is, quite apart from their postmodern jargon. Gayatri says we must greet the Other with [quotes from manuscript] “an ethically instantiated deconstructive embrace.” Love it! “An ethically instantiated deconstructive embrace.” That’s the real McCoy. I bet you can dance to it. [She does so, saying] “An ethically instantiated deconstructive embrace.” It’s a tapdance. See?
M: So I quote too much the fashionable lefties?
W: I’d say yes, except . . .
M: Except?
W: Are you open to hearing this, hon?
M [“how bad can it be?”]: Well, yeah.
W: I’m not sure your writing is any better. “Ethically instantiated deconstructive embrace.” Just think what the author of Nearer the Bone would do with a pomposity like that. “Come on, Gayatri, if you want to give poor people a hug, tell them so they know!” That was what I loved in The Bone: the writer wasn’t afraid to say anything. Not only did the Emperor have no clothes, but he smelled like he hadn’t wiped himself.
M [quietly]: Oh, God.
W: I’ve told you that book was a revelation. I was a sixteen-year-old ballet dancer, bulimically thin, with so much kohl around the eyes they looked like flashlights. And I met this divinity student who went loopy over me. He was sweet and fierce, with a beard like from the Old Testament. He worried about my “purity” in way I knew even then was sick-o. Anyhow, he said that to understand him I had to read the book that changed his life: Nearer the Bone. So I read his ratty, falling-apart paperback with underlinings on every page. I finished it shaking with tears. I never saw him again—mailed him back the book; said, “Thank you, it changed my life, too.” I dropped out of ballet, graduated high school, and went to college, determined I’d become what you are. I imagined you were—I don’t know—about seventy at the time, with a halo of white hair because you were so wise and good. I thought maybe we’d meet when I’d written my dissertation and you were on your deathbed, and I’d say, “What I am is thanks to you.”
M: When you were a grad student, I was forty, living in a motel, and drunk every day by noon.
W: “Abandoned by your bride.” Wife Number Two.
M: Already knowing I’d never write anything as good as what I’d written.
W: Why do you say that? You say it and I feel sick.
M [gesturing to manuscript]: You got the evidence there! It’s Nearer the Bone, only not so good.
W: In one way it’s better than The Bone. You may not like this, but it’s got humility, something The Bone never has. The man who wrote this [referring to manuscript] has been hurt by life. He doesn’t suffer fools gladly, but he suffers them; he has pity—something the young pop-off Bone-writer totally lacked.
M: I was blind lucky in my twenties. I thought, “Hey, there’re no teaching jobs; this’ll never be published; screw it—I’m going to say whatever I feel like, have fun.” And I wrote the most outrageous things I could think of—told everybody to get down on all fours with the animals, become the Christians they pretend to be, give up angst and ambition—and people loved it. They didn’t do it, but they loved it.
W: I did it. The divinity student did it. Or we tried to. Nobody could do it all the way, but even people who only thought about doing it were changed a little.
M: I don’t have any more outrageousness. I used up my lifetime supply.
W: You don’t have to be outrageous. You don’t have to be anything. Just be yourself and have fun.
M: That doesn’t help me. I don’t know what “myself” is. I’ve never known. When I go down the winding stairs to talk to the little man at my center, there’s no one there. I’m a series of gestures and opinions. And remarks. Oscar Wilde: "The first duty in life is to assume a pose. What the second is, no one has yet discovered." I have to assume a self, a pose, to write. As you saw, I wrote that [pointing to manuscript] as a poststructuralist know-it-all.
W: Well, you succeeded.
[He looks at her.]
W: It’s unreadable.
M: And doesn’t say anything new.
W: What self wrote The Bone? I fell in love with him long before we met.
M: The “young pop-off”?
W: Well, he’s adorable, but I loved also the fanatical scrubber—I don’t know what else to call him—who worked at the words to make them clear and strong.
M [a grunt of recognition; then quietly]: Yeah. He was great. That wasn’t me. That was Kathleen.
W [astonished]: Your wife?
M [nods]: Sad to say. I’ve never told anybody. [Gesturing to manuscript] No reason to pretend anymore. She began typing my stuff in grad school. When she didn’t understand something, she’d ask me what it meant and put it in different words. Later she began redoing every sentence. At first I protested, till I saw how much better she made them. She rewrote the dissertation, then revised it into The Bone.
[Pause.]
W: I . . . I don’t know what to say.
M: So I notice.
W: I thought she had her hands full with the three children.
M: She did. She said the writing kept her sane. She wasn’t writing, of course; she was rewriting. The content was there.
W: I know, but a lot of The Bone’s magic is in the style.
M: A lot of the style is hers. She would have told Gayatri to can the fancy words and hug poor people.
[Pause]
M: You’re shocked because you fell in love with a man who wasn’t there.
W: Or with a man and his wife. What happened then?
M: When?
W: When the book was published, what happened between you two?
M: I got fifteen minutes of fame, got tenure at thirty, and we moved to the suburbs.
W: More than fifteen minutes. I remember seeing you and Eva Gabor on the Tonight Show.
M: That was the fifteen minutes.
W: Why wasn’t there another Bone—Bone II?
M: I wrote Everyday Enchantments and---
W: The other book, I know. But they didn’t have the sparkle The Bone had.
[Slight pause]
M: I wrote them.
W [realizing]: Without Kathleen. She was too busy?
M: No. After a while she was too depressed, before the suicide. At first she wanted to be in on the writing. I didn’t let her. I thought I could do it alone. Famous Guru-de-rooty-toot-toot.
W [involuntary]: It killed her!
M [he’s considered this]: No, I don’t think so.
W: I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t mean that.
M: That’s okay. I’ve thought about it, believe me. If she’d been writing, it might have kept her alive longer.
W: She could have written her own stuff!
M: I told her. She said she didn’t have the training, had nothing to say. I think she was so depressed she couldn’t see outside it. We didn’t even know to call it depression then.
W: You poor guy. All those kids.
M [this hits him]: I didn’t behave well about that! Jesus, what a mess I made. God!
W: Well, they’re turning out fine.
M: No thanks to me.
W: No, you’ve have a lot to do with it.
M: It’s my sister. She was a saint—still is.
W: Kathleen commits suicide, and then what?
M [moved]: Everything goes to pieces! I come in late at night—you know, Big Name out impressing new faculty—and the lights are out and I get in bed and reach to touch her. [suddenly loud] Ahhgg, God! I wish I could stop my hand from getting there! Her arm feels like the rim of a sink, cold and hard.
W [embracing him, quiet, “it’s all right”]: Sweetheart, baby.
M: I scream! And Craig and Johanna come in! And I’m trying to push them out and cover [breaks down] . . . And of course we can’t stay in that house. [Child’s voice] “What’s wrong with Mummy? You’re gonna smother her face.” So we’re in a hotel, and the kids miss their mamma and the house. They hate the nannies; my students say they’ll babysit and don’t show; I call the city and they talk foster care. “How about a homemaker?” I say. “Can’t do it: you’re in a hotel.” “You want me to take the kids back to . . .?” We visit my sister one weekend-—[Sobs] And she takes a look at me and says, “The kids are staying here.” And that’s where they stay! [Weeps]
W [comforting him]: They’re with you summers and vacations, and you visit them a lot.
M [dismissive]: Yeah, yeah.
W: They love you.
M: They’re terrified of me, at least Craig and Johanna are. They blame me for her death and breaking up the family. Look, I’ve bombed as a husband, a father, and now a writer. Or then a writer!
W: Honey, don’t---
M [continuing]: And I can live with it—not that I have a choice. I can live with it, but I wonder [sobbing] what am I going to do . . . with the rest of my life?
W [squeezing him, laughing sympathetically]: Honey! Darling man. I thought I was the only one with Big Basic Fears.
[He struggles against her embrace.]
W: No, let me hug you. Relax, dodo. Nothing to write now.
M [bitter, quiet]: Ha.
W: The books are closed, the computer crashed, I ate the paper and pencils. You’ve had kids, you lucky boob. You want me to do without. How about the rest of my life? What am I going to show when I face the end?
M: I just want you---
W: Hush! I know: I can have a kid or two if I want; you just promise not to be much of a father.
M: No, no! I’ll be the best father I can. I’m just telling you my track record stinks.
W: Well, you’re a man now, not a boy. Maybe you’d be a great father.
M: Especially since I don’t have to waste time writing.
W: Right! You can be Mr. Mom.
M: But I want to write!
W: Then you’ll write.
M: But I can’t write.
W: Then you won’t write.
M: No, [gesturing toward manuscript] I can’t write!
W: Well, it’s true I’m not crazy about your writing in loco postmodernist. Why don’t you write as you?
M: I told you: I don’t know what me is!
W: Well, for starters, I suggest you’re not Gayatri Spivak.
[M smirks.]
M: Yeah. Okay. . . You’re damn terrific to put up with . . .
W: With?
M: I could say “me”; I could say “these surprises, disappointments, doubts, weaknesses.”
W: I never thought you were perfect.
M [chuckles]: I did! And you did, too. The old man with a halo of white hair.
W: Oh, he was perfect, but he was in a book. It’s easy to be perfect in a book.
M: I’m so happy I’ve told you this! I was afraid I might never to tell anybody. I feel like I lifted a mountain off my shoulders.
W: And dumped it onto me.
M [laughs]: And dumped it onto you, right! But it’s stuff you’ve got to know, baby; I want you to know. God, it’s wonderful to feel free. [Does a bit of a dance] I’m light as a feather.
W: Since we’re so deep in truth-telling, how about wife number two?
M: Number two, number two—perfect name for her (that’s cheesy: sorry). Ninah! We lasted 45 days. At the end of a week I wondered why I’d married her.
W: She was gorgeous.
M: Absolutely. To look upon her was to weep. But you have to talk to a spouse, and after she and I agreed she was beautiful and I wasn’t too old for her (though I was) we had nothing to say. Once again, my writing was a problem. I was writing an important article (ha-ha; it seemed important then), and she felt it took too much of my life and “energy.” She was an actress, and she thought art was always in the moment, spontaneous. “There are action painters,” she said. “Why not action writers?” Twenty pages of writing—she said I ought to be able to do that in a couple of hours with a Macintosh and no looking back. I said there were writers like that, but not me, alas. I finished the article, despite her complaints about being neglected. She’d come into the office naked, with a flower in her pubic hair, and say, [dramatically] “How can you forego this?”
W: I trust you didn’t forego it all the time.
M: No, no. I’d read Lady Chatterley’s Lover --
[W laughs]
M:—her favorite book. Anyhow, when the article was done, we had a party celebrating our marriage and introducing my friends. In the middle of it, she brought the article into the living room, held it up in both hands, and said, “My husband has just completed this for a very prestigious journal.” People knew I was writing it, so they joked and cheered. Ninah said, “Here’s what it’s worth.” And then, as though bowing at a shrine, she placed it on the floor, stepped forward, her feet on either side of it, pulled up her skirt, and peed.
W [gaffaws]: No!
M [laughing]: It hurt at the time, but she had the right idea. That’s what I’m going to do with that [pointing to manuscript]. Hose it down! [Laughing, he unzips his fly.]
W [laughing, catching him]: You nut! Listen! Wait!
[M throws the manuscript on the floor. They are struggling happily. He turns his back to the manuscript as he undoes his belt.]
M: I think this calls for Number Two. [He waggles his fanny over the manuscript.]
W [copying him]: Hey, that’s right! Exorcise it with a pile of shit.
M: Shit to shit!
W: Double-bubble, toil and trouble!
[They are dancing and laughing when he suddenly stops.]
M: But what am I going to write?
W [firmly]: You’re going to hang around and see what happens. You’re going to take off your pants and dance. You’re not going to agonize about things you can’t do anything about.
[Pause; he considers.]
M: Sounds good. [Hugs her.] I know I can’t do it, but it sounds good. [Twists her around in his arms in a shuffling dance as the lights dim.]
THE APPEAL
TEACHER: Yes, come in.
STUDENT: I wasn’t sure you heard me.
T: Yes. You’re . . . ?
S: Eric. From your Social Disturbances course. I called yesterday.
T: Yes. Hello. Sit down, please. We’re both in a hurry, Mr. Cooper, so forgive my not making small talk. I reread your exam, and it’s a C. Thoroughly, deeply unremarkable. Acceptable. Average. That being so, and your earlier grades being C, B-, and C+, there’s no way your final grade can be other than C.
S: Well [lets breath out], I’ve decided I can’t accept that. I worked very hard in the course -- I’ve got my notes here; I can show you -- much harder than I usually do when I get a good grade. I enjoyed it. I mean, I was learning stuff I didn’t know. But I need the grade, Ms. Peters. You’re my last chance. I told you on the phone, if I don’t get a B, at least a B, I don’t graduate next week, and I can’t stay in Business because my G.P.A. is seven one-hundreths of a point low, so I’ll have to take an extra semester to raise it, so I can apply for readmission to Business and graduate the next semester.
T: Mr. Cooper, I’m not responsible for the arcane ways of our business college. I am equally not responsible for the quality of your work in my class.
S: It’s unfair! Two extra semesters because of seven one-hundreths of a point.
T: I agree. There’s at least one lesson for you in this.
S: Don’t major in Business!
T: Well, that. You couldn’t graduate in something else?
S: I don’t have the hours!
T: Even with an extra semester?
[brief pause]
S: You’re going to make me do it?
T: I’m not making you, Mr. Cooper. I didn’t get a C in the course.
S: But that’s just what you say! The grade . . . It’s just your opinion.
T: Of course. I told you that the first week. The class wasn’t mathematics or first-year German. “The Literature of Social Disturbance.” There weren’t right and wrong answers, only plausibly argued answers.
S: I know girls who didn’t come to class, didn’t do the reading, borrowed notes, and got B’s or A’s.
T: Girls?
S: Women.
T: Men too?
S: No, just gir--- women.
T [after a pause]: Life isn’t fair, Mr. Fisher. I trust you haven’t waited till college to find that out. I don’t judge which students deserve which grades, only the work that does.
S: Well, shit! Excuse me: I don’t mean that. Look, Ms. Peters, I work 30 hours a week staying in school. Sometimes I come to class so tired I don’t know where I am; all I can do is sleep. But I didn’t sleep in your class. I was really interested, and I wrote it down, the discussion.
T: You didn’t add much to our discussions.
S: I didn’t know what to say! I’m in Business. In Business you don’t think the same way. You just tell the teachers what they said. You’re not supposed to have ideas. Just bubble in the boxes on the test.
T: You don’t write essays?
[S shakes his head.]
T: That explains the quality of your writing.
S: I haven’t had to write anything since freshman year.
T: You shouldn’t be proud of that, Mr. Cooper.
S [surprised]: I’m not pro---
T: I was being ironic. I’m sure they don’t do that in the business school either; I apologize. It’s not your fault this University hasn’t made you learn to write better. But it is your fault that you’ve been taking a full load -- I checked with the registrar -- while, as you now tell me, you were working 30 hours a week. That was plain dumb. A B, two C’s, and a Credit -- not a bad record for someone whose best energies are elsewhere. [Pause.] What do you do 30 hours a week?
S: I work in a bank . . . teller.
T: The main lesson you should learn from this unhappy experience, Mr. Fisher -- do you know what it is?
S: Not take so many courses -- but I’d never get out of school if I go half time!
T: That’s not the main lesson. The main lesson is, you should have come to see me early in the course, not after the final exam. You should have told me you had to make a B, so I could have worked with you to get it. We should have had this talk ten weeks ago. Right?
S: I thought I was doing okay.
T: C, B-, C+: that’s cutting it pretty close if you need a B in the course.
S: The final can count half the grade. I thought I was learning what you wanted.
[Pause]
T: You need a B.
S: Or better.
T: Don’t push, Mr. Fisher. How about the other course you got a C in -- Business 357?
S: What about it?
T: Why don’t you ask Dr. Emmons to raise your grade?
S: He wouldn’t!
T: And why wouldn’t he, Mr. Cooper?
S: They don’t do that in Business -- because you get number grades.
T: Ah, the blessèd bubble-in sheet! And your number was on the bad side of the bell curve. So you don’t even make an appeal to your department’s teacher. You come right to me because we liberal arts types have no standards.
S: I’m not saying that. But you’re more . . . flexible.
T: The kind word would be “humane,” Mr. Fisher. I belong to the humanities. I must say it makes me furious that I’m called upon to clean up a mess made by the idiotic rules of another college.
S: Seven one-hundreds of---
T: That’s not what’s idiotic, Mr. Fisher! Learn what you should be angry about. You didn’t flunk any course this semester and yet you can’t graduate. If someone passes his courses, he should graduate. How can the University “fight grade inflation,” as it says it wants to, if C’s won’t graduate you?
S: Yeah.
T: I’m tired of this. You’re supposed to take the unreasonableness of authority and the grades you get like a man.
S: Why should I?
T: I don’t think you should. We Americans are too obedient; that was the subtext of our course. But the fact that I approve of your complaining doesn’t mean I have to respond to it.
[Pause. Then S takes a pistol from his pocket and puts it on the table between them.]
T [quiet]: My God.
S: A “concealed weapon.”
T: Where’d you get it?
S: The guard’s locker in the bank.
T: Is it loaded?
S: Probably.
T: You haven’t checked?
S: I don’t know how to check--except shoot it.
[pause]
S: That changes the discussion: you don’t have anything to say.
T: I can report you to the police.
S: Yeah.
T: I can tell you I’ll raise your grade and then report you.
S: Sure. And I can blow my brains out. [He makes the pistol rotate on the table by putting his index finger against the barrel and moving it in a circle.]
T [alarmed]: Wait!
[S draws back his hands, holding them up in a sign of inoffensiveness.]
S: Look, I don’t want anything for nothing. If I get an extension in the course, I’ll write an extra paper to raise my grade. That’s reasonable.
T: You won’t graduate now.
S: No, I graduate in August. I pay $100, instead of for a whole semester, two semesters.
T: And what about the pistol?
S: We forget the pistol. I put it back in the locker.
T: I want the bullets out of it. [Reaches for it.] May I?
[S makes no objection.]
T: Thank you.
[Picks up pistol, stands, looks at pistol, manipulating it in both hands, fails to open it, then points it at S.]
T: Maybe no bullets, maybe some. I found the safety; it’s off. So I encourage you to consider this a live weapon and come with me to campus police.
S: No, thanks.
T: I’ll go myself.
S: I don’t think so. [Stands.] In fact I’ll stop you.
T: How?
S: Call your bluff. [Moves toward her.] You won’t shoot.
T: Stay back! Stay away.
S: I’m not afraid. You’re chickenshit. You can’t bear to give a low grade to someone who looks you in the eye. How you gonna to kill him? [Shouts.] Come on! I’m in your face, dyke! Shoot! Shoot!
[S’s chest is almost touching the gun barrel; he could have deflected the pistol long since. T, who can’t bring herself to fire, sobs and turns her head away, then back. S’s calm freezes her there. Slowly S raises a hand and takes the pistol from her.]
S: Thank you. It has bullets. [Expertly breaks open the pistol, tosses a bullet aside (it falls on the floor), closes the pistol, cocks it.] Lived with guns all my life. [Points it at T.] Don’t be scared. I’m a humanist, too. [Points the pistol at the center of his chest and fires; falls, the pistol dropping from his hand.]
T [screams, drops to the floor beside S, fumbling for his wound.]
S: That’s fine. . . . Nevermind. . . . Sorry I needed your help.
[He passes out, the pain leaving his face.]
[Blackout]
IN THE STEPPES OF CENTRAL ASIA
[Before the curtain rises, Alexander Borodin’s “In the Steppes of Central Asia” plays for three minutes, until the soft passage after the climax. Borodin’s piece, which takes about seven minutes, will continue and repeat throughout the play. The Woman is standing, hands on hips, head down. The Man enters with a newspaper.]
MAN: Three U.S. diplomats killed in a car wreck in Bosnia. [He glances at her; she doesn’t move.] Whatcha doing? [She doesn’t immediately reply.] Huh?
WOMAN: Thinking. [She doesn’t move. Pause.]
M: Pretty heavy work first thing in the morning. Whatcha thinking?
W: Oh. I’m understanding why music is so much more satisfactory than writing.
M: Wow! Is it?
W [gesturing to the sound in the air]: Obviously.
M: Well, yeah, that’s nice . . .
W: It’s more than nice: it’s essential. It gives me courage to go on! [Passionate; moving about] And I can have it anytime I want. I don’t have to open a book and try to remember what I knew and felt when I left off. Or, worse, have to start at zero and learn a whole new world. It’s here; it’s right away; it’s telling me everything I need to know.
M: Wow. I guess so. But . . .
W: But?
M: Well . . . it’s not telling you stuff you can tell anybody else.
W: Hmm?
M: Well, you can say what the music makes you feel -- empty spaces, loneliness, dignity, whatever -- but you can’t duplicate the experience for someone else.
W: What do you mean? I can sing it. [Sings along with the music. After a moment, M joins in. They do a dance that ends with him bowing to her.]
M: That was fun, but different from the music.
W: How?
M: It was happier. We turned it into a Scout camping song. [Sings along with the music to show what he means.]
W: I was bucking up my spirits. I can make it sadder--oh, boy. [Sings sadly.]
M: It’s still different. It’s lovely, but it’s your interpretation.
W: The record is the conductor’s interpretation.
M: That’s right. You’re right. But that’s what I’m trying to get across. There isn’t one . . . right . . . interpretation.
W: So?
M: So that means you don’t have anything you can hand over to someone else about the music. You have to say “Here it is” and sing it or play it on the CD.
W: So?
M: So it’s not like literature. You can’t say “The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as---”
W: I’ve never understood that line: “The quality of mercy is not strained.” Does that mean mercy doesn’t sweat, doesn’t strain itself? Or does it mean mercy isn’t run through a strainer like mashed potatoes?
M: God! I don’t know. Let me pick another . . . Ah! “Yet better thus and known to be condemned, than still condemned and flattered.”
[Pause]
W: Okay.
M: Okay.
W: You were saying?
M: I was saying that’s a line you could tell people, and they could think about it, and they’d have exactly what Shakespeare said without your interpreting it or saying how it made you feel.
W: Why is that better?
M [weakening]: I don’t know that it’s better, frankly. It just means the message can get across without a performer.
W: Let me ask you something, sweetie. And you don’t need to tell me the truth because we both know what the truth is. Which do you do more: read “great” books or listen to “great” music?
[Pause]
M: The music is repeating.
W: Because I need to work up my nerve. [As though he’s answered her question] Thank you, yes: you listen to great music infinitely more than you read great books.
M: I---
W [continuing]: I tried to drag you to Othello last year---
M: Hey, that’s unfair!
W [continuing]: And you said---
M [continuing]: I’d read the play, I’d seen the movie -- two versions: Welles and Olivier---
W: You said you’d have to be horsewhipped to see it again.
M: Well, it’s too painful, goddamn it! [Laughing] Nobody with any feelings needs to see it more than once. That asshole black man, jeez! Making problems for himself.
W: Or King Lear?
M [laughing]: I don’t need King Lear either! How often do you have to see how sick and evil people are? And their eyes torn out: “foul jelly” -- ugh! That’s why the poor bastard English teachers are so unhappy: they teach King Lear every year and have to look at it again.
W: Or Proust, Balzac, Dickens, Kafka, Mann, Faulkner -- how many times have you read them?
M: Well, I haven’t read all of any of them!
W: Even once?
M: Even once.
W: Why, you can tell the truth!
M: Well, when the fate of Western Civilization’s at stake . . .
W: When did you last read a book by any of them?
M: If I admit I haven’t done it in a decade, will that satisfy you?
W: Not in a decade. Yet you can listen to music like this [gestures to the air] over and over.
M: I guess I can.
W: Yes! And you know why?
M: Because you put it on “repeat”?
W: Because music is mainly about emotion, and we are almost always ready to feel something. As Richard says. But since there aren’t any new emotions, we accept something like music that rapidly brings us the old ones. Writing, on the other hand, is mainly about information we grasp intellectually. Our intellects are insatiably drawn to “new” information.
M [following her]: Which is why we don’t read the old books.
W [completing his sentence]: Again! We may read them once because the information in them is new once. Like your newspaper.
M: Are you trying to spoil the newspaper for me---
W: No!
M [continuing]: ---because it won’t work.
W: I know: you’re the Man of the Moment! Always up to the minute, thanks to an hour a day with the Times. [Grabbing, laughing] Gimme a section.
M: Hey! I thought you were the Earth Mother, throbbing with the immemorial emotions of mankind.
W: Don’t be sexist.
M: So as I understand it, you and philosopher Richard are dividing life into the perennial emotions, on the one hand, symbolized by the music, and the incidents of the day, on the other, symbolized by the newspaper and the diplomats dead in Bosnia.
W [shaking her section of the paper]: Leaving the matter of gender out of account, since Richard and I there different.
M: Conspicuously--he being three inches shorter and having more hair. But aren’t you also leaving out of the account the plain of our discussion?
W: Which is?
M: Personal! Emotional and intellectual.
W [Suddenly softer]: I always take it for granted. We get along splendidly on that level--those levels--I’m delighted to say, fuzzy friend. [She caresses him.] But, oh God, there are other things I want. Unfortunately! Like between my legs. [Pause] Darling, I want to have an affair.
[M is dumbfounded.]
W [Comforting him]: Which is to say, I am having an affair.
[M still doesn’t react.]
W: With Richard. [Gently.] See? [As she’s exiting] If you want to, we can discuss it over breakfast.
[Lights dim on M, holding the newspaper.]
