(This is a play about love. This is still a love story. This is a love story. In the end, it's nothing more than a love story.)
(It begins with a song.)
SHE: Beautiful princess.
How does she do it?
Nobody knows.
(The sky cracks open, the supermoon starts getting close, and the lovers in their cars are parked at the edges of the city, watching it get close, but then it gets closer, and it gets even closer than that, and before they can do anything about it, the lovers are crushed by the weight of the moon, and they get to die the way all lovers want to die, under the weight of the moon.)
SHE: This is what happened when I was just small, when the moon was shaped like a cow, and everyone used to call it moo.
HE (suddenly, as if for the very first time, is her favorite psychiatrist): Mm, hm, that's interesting in a very disturbed kind of way, in a way that makes me think you are disturbed, just enough to make me fall in love with you.
SHE: And you fall in love with all of your patients, don't you, doctor?
HE: For a time, yes, oh, yes, there always comes a time, and it only lasts for a time.
SHE: How long?
HE: Fourteen months.
SHE: Oh, that's too long, I don't have that kind of time.
HE: Who does? I know, I know, sweet child, and that's why life is so unbearable for people who are me.
(And suddenly, without warning, he turns into the thing he is afraid of, the man who can't get over anything, the man who is lost who everyone makes fun of, because he doesn't commit to anything except for the idea of love, and because of that, he never stops any of his lovers from doing things that will make them feel trapped, and as a result, everyone goes away and he is alone on a Friday night.)
HE: I don't want to go on about it too much, I think I look young, but sometimes my own skin frightens me, when it is scrunched up.
SHE: When is it scrunched up, exactly? I need you to be more specific or the treatment is just not going to work.
HE: I am usually scrunched up most drastically when I am pulling at the skin of my stomach over the ridges of my entirely fashionable women's jeans. Don't they make me look young?
SHE: I wouldn't say anything to upset you, because I know how you get when you're upset, so I'll just say you look tall, you often look very tall.
HE: But I'm not that tall. It's true, though, that I've almost always dated women who are shorter than me.
SHE: Yes? Yes? Do go on.
HE: I once dated someone who was 23 years shorter than me.
SHE: Aha.
HE: I mean inches. I really meant to say inches.
SHE: Perhaps you did, and perhaps you don't realize just how terribly short that is.
HE: It was impossible.
(And just as suddenly, he is transformed by the song--which we've almost forgotten by now--and moved to the ocean, where he sleeps at the edges every night and is transformed into something not at all like he used to be.)
(And now, like in the best of the action-adventure-slasher films, when he speaks, vampires and seamonsters leave his mouth, and it's quite clear that something else is afoot, besides the feet, and the angry moocow of a moon is watching, because it's apparent that he's already halfway to somewhere else, and something got lost, but he can't remember what it was.)
SHE: This is exactly why vampire movies are my favorite. We live in a bloody time. It's nothing we don't already know, and nothing we can do anything about, apparently, except do what we do to take care of the victims, and the victims always look like our own children when their pictures are on the news. Which is why I can't watch the news. If we blew out the candles in the city, all we would see is the light of the moon, and it might reveal how hungry for blood we all really are. I think we're lost, and I think we know the answers, but there are no real heroes left to try to make them work. It can't happen on its own, it needs us to work, and we're too tired. So if you, good sir, would take the time to muster the courage to open my neck with your teeth, you might find the way to my heart. But it can't happen here, there's too much light, and no one is looking at what's underneath this light. But I have a feeling you know. It can't happen here, but it can happen. But you need a spell, and you need the right smell, and you need to know exactly what you're doing, so you need a little practice. Everyone who's awake at this time of night understands that there is a perfect gothic lover out there waiting, and one of them looks like you, and one of them looks like me, and we need to practice.
(In this play, everything is true, and what she says is true, but she didn't hear the brass bell calling him to the ceremony, and he's already still somewhere by the sea, making new charms in the dark by the sea, telling himself that she lost him a long time ago, but everything he tells himself is turning out to be wrong, so he really should just let himself be wrong long enough to stumble into something right, and that's when the adventures really start.)
(This was just practice, the next time they'll have to wear their real costumes, the ones made of leather and steel and something with flowers, just to make it honest. Because it's a love story about flowers at the end of the day.)
(And the moon shuts him up, utterly.)
(It begins with a song.)
SHE: Beautiful princess.
How does she do it?
Nobody knows.
(The sky cracks open, the supermoon starts getting close, and the lovers in their cars are parked at the edges of the city, watching it get close, but then it gets closer, and it gets even closer than that, and before they can do anything about it, the lovers are crushed by the weight of the moon, and they get to die the way all lovers want to die, under the weight of the moon.)
SHE: This is what happened when I was just small, when the moon was shaped like a cow, and everyone used to call it moo.
HE (suddenly, as if for the very first time, is her favorite psychiatrist): Mm, hm, that's interesting in a very disturbed kind of way, in a way that makes me think you are disturbed, just enough to make me fall in love with you.
SHE: And you fall in love with all of your patients, don't you, doctor?
HE: For a time, yes, oh, yes, there always comes a time, and it only lasts for a time.
SHE: How long?
HE: Fourteen months.
SHE: Oh, that's too long, I don't have that kind of time.
HE: Who does? I know, I know, sweet child, and that's why life is so unbearable for people who are me.
(And suddenly, without warning, he turns into the thing he is afraid of, the man who can't get over anything, the man who is lost who everyone makes fun of, because he doesn't commit to anything except for the idea of love, and because of that, he never stops any of his lovers from doing things that will make them feel trapped, and as a result, everyone goes away and he is alone on a Friday night.)
HE: I don't want to go on about it too much, I think I look young, but sometimes my own skin frightens me, when it is scrunched up.
SHE: When is it scrunched up, exactly? I need you to be more specific or the treatment is just not going to work.
HE: I am usually scrunched up most drastically when I am pulling at the skin of my stomach over the ridges of my entirely fashionable women's jeans. Don't they make me look young?
SHE: I wouldn't say anything to upset you, because I know how you get when you're upset, so I'll just say you look tall, you often look very tall.
HE: But I'm not that tall. It's true, though, that I've almost always dated women who are shorter than me.
SHE: Yes? Yes? Do go on.
HE: I once dated someone who was 23 years shorter than me.
SHE: Aha.
HE: I mean inches. I really meant to say inches.
SHE: Perhaps you did, and perhaps you don't realize just how terribly short that is.
HE: It was impossible.
(And just as suddenly, he is transformed by the song--which we've almost forgotten by now--and moved to the ocean, where he sleeps at the edges every night and is transformed into something not at all like he used to be.)
(And now, like in the best of the action-adventure-slasher films, when he speaks, vampires and seamonsters leave his mouth, and it's quite clear that something else is afoot, besides the feet, and the angry moocow of a moon is watching, because it's apparent that he's already halfway to somewhere else, and something got lost, but he can't remember what it was.)
SHE: This is exactly why vampire movies are my favorite. We live in a bloody time. It's nothing we don't already know, and nothing we can do anything about, apparently, except do what we do to take care of the victims, and the victims always look like our own children when their pictures are on the news. Which is why I can't watch the news. If we blew out the candles in the city, all we would see is the light of the moon, and it might reveal how hungry for blood we all really are. I think we're lost, and I think we know the answers, but there are no real heroes left to try to make them work. It can't happen on its own, it needs us to work, and we're too tired. So if you, good sir, would take the time to muster the courage to open my neck with your teeth, you might find the way to my heart. But it can't happen here, there's too much light, and no one is looking at what's underneath this light. But I have a feeling you know. It can't happen here, but it can happen. But you need a spell, and you need the right smell, and you need to know exactly what you're doing, so you need a little practice. Everyone who's awake at this time of night understands that there is a perfect gothic lover out there waiting, and one of them looks like you, and one of them looks like me, and we need to practice.
(In this play, everything is true, and what she says is true, but she didn't hear the brass bell calling him to the ceremony, and he's already still somewhere by the sea, making new charms in the dark by the sea, telling himself that she lost him a long time ago, but everything he tells himself is turning out to be wrong, so he really should just let himself be wrong long enough to stumble into something right, and that's when the adventures really start.)
(This was just practice, the next time they'll have to wear their real costumes, the ones made of leather and steel and something with flowers, just to make it honest. Because it's a love story about flowers at the end of the day.)
(And the moon shuts him up, utterly.)
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