The Americans (2004)

It's September 11th. Again.

In honor of the day, I'm going to post the full text of a play of mine from 2004. This is the closest I ever came to writing about September 11th. In a roundabout way.

Obviously, this is a script I wrote when I was a whole lot younger, so all caveats apply.

The Americans

(Dark stage. Dim light up on D, on a small platform upstage center. He is a young man, probably mid-twenties. D is gripping a piece of white, lined paper.

He is dressed casually. The sort of clothes that a person puts on to do his laundry or take a nap.

The light crescendos and then fades on him as he speaks.)

I live alone. I am a young man. I write poetry in my room. Yesterday, I wrote a poem so beautiful that the walls rose from the floor, carrying the roof with them to the sky and above me, together, the remnants of my room rotated in a golden light, and suddenly exploded into wood and plaster rain.

(In the darkness, an explosion and the sounds of debris, sirens, confused language. The sounds slowly fade as the lights rise on T, stage right. T is the same age as D, more or less. He is wearing business casual clothes, maybe khakis, a blue shirt and a tie. He is holding a cup of coffee.

He is covered in white dust. He stands in a little white plaster rubble.)

Yesterday afternoon I was having my coffee. It was lunchtime. This is the way of my life. I have my rituals. I was just standing there, with my day happening as it will…and...I saw a golden light in the sky. Not a flying saucer. I’m not making this up. I know you know that. I know everyone knows. But I hear myself sometimes and… you know. It sounds like… well…like I’m talking about spacemen and LSD. I’m only telling you this because I think that’s why you’re here and why I’m here. I don’t say these things to make myself seem important. I don’t know how to explain it. I don’t see things. I’m not the type of person that looks up and sees Holy Ghosts and crying angels. But I’m also not in the business of lying to myself or anyone else. It was like I suddenly was very much awake, and hadn’t been all week.

(Lights fade on T and then rise stage left, on F. He stands on a small raised platform (lower than D) which becomes, before him, three steps, down onto the stage. These steps are covered in splinters and chunks of wood. He is unkempt, in a bathrobe, pajama bottoms and a white T-shirt. He is the same age as D and T.)

I was asleep. I was sleeping for once. I get so tired. It’s a long day everyday. A very long life. There are good things, of course. But not all of them are good. What could that mean? I don’t know. I was just tired and was finally sleeping. From the living room, Rebecca called out that the windows were broken. The entire place was in shambles. I wandered to the front room. And I said, “What the hell do you want?”

(Lights rise on T.)

I was covered in white plaster because it, in fact, fell from the sky.

(pause)

I know how I sound, but can you deny there was white plaster? You were standing in it too. Or maybe you were. I’ll try not to assume you know exactly what I mean. But, even if you were in Idaho, you have a television. It was everywhere.

There were splinters in the furniture and splinters in the walls. The front room windows were shattered. What happened? I thought. “What the hell do you want?” is what I said. It was probably not the right thing to say but there we are. There I was. She said

(Lights rise on D.)

“There was an explosion and everything flew into the room. “

And I said that it was terrible or some such nonsense. I am always saying things like that. Before I think about them. Obvious tripe. She was still angry with me. From the night before.

How did this happen? What did just happen? I know it was...beautiful. It felt beautiful.

(pause)

All I did was finish it. Just to get it done. Like I had a hundred times. “A morning like any other morning.” Then the wood went North and the plaster went South. For reasons no one understands under heaven.

(pause)

I was left sitting at my desk. The poem was still there. It hadn’t actually exploded; it had simply created the explosion. I didn’t move. I was unharmed. I looked down at the paper.

(pause)

The poem stared back at me.

(pause)

We stared at each other.

(pause)

The man regarded his poem.

(pause)

I would have laughed but I didn’t dare. Part of me was amazed. But most of me was not. Which is, in retrospect, amazing.

Ever read a book that says “It was a morning like any other morning?” Well that’s what I’m going to say too. I was just reading the tabloid Republican news and sneaking out of a Starbucks. I often sneak into and out of Starbucks because I don’t want my friends to know I’m not a hard-case socialist about frappucinos. Anyways, it’s right downstairs from my work, which, I’m not proud to admit, is in licensing. I’ll spare myself the indignity of describing my day job and cut to the chase: The city streets were covered, I was covered...we were all covered in white. I had the sip-top on my drink, so the first thing I did was take a sip of it. A sort of silent film gesture.

(He blows the powder off the top of his coffee and takes a sip.)

What else is a person supposed to do? Kneel and look at the sky?

I sat there holding my breath. I don’t know how long. Five minutes, two hours. I realized, after a moment, that my hands were gripping the side of the desk, thumbs torqued in hard. Once I finally took a breath I think the poem did too.

(pause)

Then I breathed again and it breathed. And then I did it again, just to see. We both were breathing in the open outdoor air. And I started to cry. Just a little. A very little. The impulse to cry… and then I stopped. A jumble of mumbles.

Everyone in the neighborhood could hear Rebecca screaming at me. It was always this way. I would not respond the way she expected, and then try to appear more sincere which is the quickest way to appear insincere and she would accuse me of this or that. I would be remote and she would throw a pillow. It was unlike her to act this way she told me. I bring out the worst in her. She has a PhD. She’s Doctor Becky. Doctors don’t throw pillows I guess. Not usually. At least that’s how she insisted things were and I had neither the reason nor will to doubt her.

It’s shocking how things remained mundane. In fact, I barely even felt a panic. More like mild surprise. Oh dear, I seemed to think, what the hell is going on? I knew that I would either go numb or panic eventually, but I didn’t want to be too hasty. Numb or panic would come with or without my help. In all things this is true. A work crisis, my mother calls…it all passes if you just stand there. In the meantime, I was just looking around… waiting for my cue.

The front windows had been destroyed by an act of God, neither of us was insured and still it was a pillow fight. What else?

This poem could breathe, just like me. It could rise and talk and breathe.

(pause)

It was evolving. It would soon be growing hands and feet. Growing facial hair and hitting puberty, all backwards. Everything at once. It would soon be fiddling with my matchbooks and asking me questions about the world. It would be an adult before I had even moved out of my one-bedroom apartment, surpassing me in grace and dignity and poise and wisdom. I hated it for that. I hated the poem.

(pause)

That’s why I wanted to cry I think.

(pause)

But I didn’t give it the satisfaction.

Rebecca fell to the floor, having run out of things to throw at me. There was glass everywhere. It was quite a sight. I thought to say “Honey, don’t cut your feet.” But I didn’t say anything. She was wearing jeans and shoes…so I guess it wasn’t a crisis. I rarely say anything that I think. My first thought was to protect her, but it wasn’t my first action. So what, in the end, does it matter?

I couldn’t really tell if any of it mattered. I mean, it did matter… but I want to make something very clear. I don’t really care about my life. I care insofar as I resist death as this sort of natural impulse…and I’ve been known to read books about the Nixon administration for fun, but I never, even when I was very young and full of hopes and dreams, thought of my life as particularly unique. It was never my goal to be unique or outstanding. I can barely register any event as actually happening. That’s the problem with me, and probably with the whole lot of my generation. We were all raised with a sense of irony as the largest evidence that evolution ever took place. Cynicism was now the only alternative to being a complete tool, and a sense of despairing detachment was a pre-requisite for even watching television. So now that something truly strange and immense was happening all I could think to do was smile and say “What the hell?”

(pause)

What the hell indeed.

I said to myself that I should look up from the poem. Maybe if I looked away, the poem would disappear. I debated whether or not I wanted that to happen. But I didn’t look up. Not then. I was sure if I did, I would see a city full of people staring up at the source of this massive intrusion, this cataclysm of type face.

I can’t imagine anything more calamitous than Rebecca falling apart. She is incredibly lovely. Tiny black glasses, and curly black hair. She’s Italian and Jewish, but her skin looks very pale because of her dark hair and red lips. She curls into sundresses and blue jeans and falls asleep. She is not an adventure, I think. She is a good book. She is a novel that you love to read. She is a cold weather sunbeam. She should not cry. Not ever.

I wish that I could have turned around and said to anyone “Did you see that? Did you see what I did?” But that would mean a roommate or a girlfriend or... a concerned old woman with a big black dog. A friend, even, who just happened to be there, sleeping on my couch.

(pause)

I write these things to keep me company. There are people that live down the hall, but I never see them. I knew I would probably never get the chance now. I think they were blown into the Park. I really am still not sure what I gained and what I lost by writing it. It’s not very American to write poetry.

Not everyone was sharing my subdued response... and as people around me began to respond in their rightfully hyperbolic fashions, I felt a little patriotic. We were all in it together. Lunch hour crowds and what not. All in it together. Like an ad for the Army. The man from whom I bought my morning paper was literally kneeling in the middle of the sidewalk, covered in white dust. Standing in an Alabaster City.

So she was crying, and kneeling on the floor. She was kneeling in what seemed like a few splinters and what was left of our windows. My sunbeam. My Becky. And I thought “Ok…I’m going to have a cigarette.”

(F moves from his perch and steps down the steps. He takes the block in, mildly.)

So I opened the front door, trying not to let the cat out, wandered to the front stoop…and just sat down. I looked up and down Nineteenth Street and realized our plight was not uncommon. There was panic and there were pieces of wood. I threw a butt in my lips, tried acrobatically to light a match in the wind, and finally…finally…got the damn thing going. I could hear Rebecca inside. She wasn’t crying anymore. I was gone.

The poem said: “I can tell you’re not so lonely now.” It said, “Don’t overestimate yourself. Everyone will know me, not you. No one will care who made me, they will only know that I have been made.”

I saw the seminary across the street. Priests in training, gay ones, Episcopalians. I saw the handsome Frenchmen from the bake shop on the corner. Everyone was bleeding. Not much, but they were. Death by a scratched face.

There were people kneeling and crying. It was all white like the inside of a pillow. Businessmen mostly. Everyone got on his cell phone. Not an airwave was spared. Connections to the inside world, to find out what the television said. Thank God for the televisions, somewhere in space.

My poem was called, is called “The Americans.”

The Americans were bleeding from splinters. The Americans of the City.

The Americans were calling their wives and husbands. Trying to see what they should do next.

“The Americans” had covered this city in dust. Something grand had happened. Something to do with particles. Something to do with ashes.

I was smoking like a chimney and someone wandered past. He looked at me, this nondescript man. He lived nearby. He looked like a Musician. Something about his hair. Grey and full and shoulder length. Otherwise he was in shorts and a green shirt. Anyone in the world, as they say. He didn’t have to ask. I gave him a smoke.

(F offers up a cigarette.)

I started to walk. There was nothing else to do.

(T begins to move about in his confined area, taking things in.)

I stood up. A moment of clarity. I needed to see clearly.

(D rises and looks out over the city.)

I avoided each person on the ground. I tried not to listen to the cell phone people. I didn’t want to know. Not yet.

He took the matches. I couldn’t get him lit. It wasn’t a proud moment.

I started to weave up…wandering around the big holes and the tourist attractions. The whole thing had a calming effect on me, in the same way that commuting didn’t. Routine makes me vaguely nervous about what I’m becoming. This was, at least, something different. The famous statues and pillared banks. All white. I was heading toward the East Side so I could start walking North. No reason. Just the easiest route. I might have been enjoying the madness, but I was still addicted to the path of least resistance.

As I stood, I saw that it was not the sort of day that makes a boy delight to be outdoors. The sky was fading; it was not high noon. What time was it? The clock on my wall had disappeared. Late lunch time, maybe. Not such a blue sky, not so many white clouds. The sun was there, yellow…but everything was not illuminated.

There was a little ruby on the end of the musician’s cigarette. Mine was gray. He had a sense of aesthetics I’m sure. He clicked the filter with his thumb like a metronome, kept it red. Was he nervous? Has something gone wrong? He had some scrapes on his face. Becky had just called her mother. I could hear them, talking fast.

The city was evaporating. Divided by color. Brown and White. Never the two shall meet. People were confused. I didn’t blame them. They didn’t know that it was only words and that in all likelihood nothing had happened at all. I mean, sure I know now that something did happen. In fact, it’s the only thing anyone ever talks about anymore. But in my heart and mind it’s still just so many words. I’ll contend to my death that more good than harm is always done by a word or two. But harm does happen. Damage gets done.

I kept getting turned around downtown. I’d step certain places and white clouds would poof up and blind me. Then, other places would act like normal solid ground. I would be sure I was walking south and find myself further North. It was absurd…why would I want to walk North anymore than South? At that point…why walk at all? Why not go back into Starbucks and watch the world blow up?

My apartment was on the first floor, right next to the stoop. I could hear her at first…the little way she makes noise. She wasn’t talking about me at all…it was the explosion and the splinters. She turned on the TV and then I couldn’t hear her anymore. She was still on the phone… and she wasn’t any louder than the TV. But once the evil box is on, I basically can’t hear it either. It’s just a warble of bubbles. I turned to the Musician. He said “What do you think happened?” I pretended not to hear him. A lot of people were hurt, clearly. Could we prevent the second attack of splinters? Probably not. What had caused it? A person? Pigeons? I guess my point is… he had nothing to say really and just wanted to chatter because he was smoking with me. I just looked straight past him.

(pause)

Fuck him, honestly. If you’ve got nothing to say, don’t say anything.

A part of me wanted to leave, but it was just a passing thought. Even now, the situation eludes me.

(D sits back down.)

I sat on the side of my bed for a while, the way I used to when I’d just gotten home from school. I sat there and stared into the open air and I felt very much the same way. I envisioned Barrett Tebbey, the suburban style bully who was the poorest and fattest kid in school. What year did I know him? Third Grade. I used to sit on the corner of my bed and consider him often. The big, fat, poor prick. I want to pity him now. I’m not so much older and wiser, but I’m at least a bit older and a bit wiser. But no. Sitting there, I still hated him.

(pause)

So many words float through my head. And they cannot hurt anyone. Not in there.

(T stops moving and faces the audience.)

I couldn’t find my way, I kept getting clouded and twisted, and there were places I could barely breathe. This wasn’t at all what I had planned for my day. I’m telling you, very little prepares a person. If the world blows up on you someday, you’ll see. You’ll look around grinning like an idiot. Just like I did. But if it happens in your lifetime that your entire life doesn’t flash before your eyes prematurely, let me tell you: it’s a ridiculous thing to have happen. I wish it only on the daring.

I understand that’s a contradiction. I mean, what have I got to say that’s any more valid than him? I’m just the guy on the corner. The guy on the stoop. The guy who wears the same t-shirt everyday. I’m that guy. But still… at least, at the time, I had the good grace to keep my mouth shut. That’s a skill I use with strangers that I fail utterly to use with the people I love.

I was thinking about who was out there in the mess I’d made. Pregnant women. All the pregnant women. It was pregnancy season at the time. You know the time. Maybe you have one pregnant friend, one couple who is expecting… and the whole world seems to blow up like a giant womb. Now… all those expecting mothers were being given seats on buses and led inside where it was safe by kind strangers. And people were saying “Ma’am do you need anything?” and everyone would be shaking their heads. They would say of me: “Whoever did this hates women and children.” They would say “What kind of monster…”

My whole life flashed before my eyes.

(It… does so.)

Huh.

(pause)

I remember seeing my first car in almost every memory. I loved that car. It was a good car, but a bit on the ailing side. It made this sound for about five months that would drown out any music or thought in your head. I loved that sound. I can promise you, for all the concerns about global warming, I would rather drive than fucking walk. Fucking walking. Legs are just there to screw with you.

After the musician realized I wasn’t going to talk to him, there was a strange pause. Should he just move on wordlessly? He did, though, eventually say “goodbye.” How kind. Rebecca hung up the phone and put her face up to what was once the window. She wanted to talk to me. I told her to come outside. That it was safe and I was already outside. I didn’t hear anything for a few minutes. Then, she came out.

The freaks began to come out. What struck me is who, exactly, was declaring the end of the world. The biggest one was this rather plaintive woman. Short blonde hair, black stretch pants, all paste-faced. She looked like a little league mom. You know? And she was helping people up and just saying “Pray, ok? Remember to pray.” The way you’d tell a kid not to forget his lunchbox. She was saying it to everyone pouring out the buildings. “Pray, ok? Remember to pray.”

“What sort of Godless, heartless cruel monster would make all these pregnant women...these helpless children...who would dare?” I could almost hear them.

(pause)

All I wanted was to write a poem that was... good. Good enough. Acceptable.

Rebecca was quiet for a long time. She was probably waiting for me to stand up.

(F makes a little room for her in the rubble.)

Finally, after what felt like years, she sat down. She took one of my cigarettes, taking one out of the pack in that careful way, using all her fingers… as if the cigarettes were heavy and bulky.

I thought about my hometown church. United Church of Christ. We’d had a lesbian minister… and then someone decided to make an issue of it. Someone a lot like the little league Mom I’m sure. It’s funny because no one cared, but the minister did. She quit only a few months afterwards. This fucking woman. “Remember to pray.” I needed to get away from her. Maybe it was the end of the world, but I wasn’t about to find that kind of religion. Not that kind. I’ll admit that a part of me wished I were having an epiphany. But…well…no luck.

She asked me what we should do. I asked what the news had said. She said that there was no explanation given, and that there had been a helicopter shot of the city. She described it to me and I nodded. I only half heard her. I was looking at her cheek. It was very white. A man was running down the street holding a red cloth on his calf. Why was I noticing this?

Where was my moment? My transcendent moment.

Nothing will ever save me from what I’ve done. I know that now. Once you have found your poem, your great work, you will chase it until you can’t stand up. It’s like your first crush… you’ll never get over it. You’ll never match it. That face will always be there whenever someone says “no” or even “yes.” You will hear that same face say, “Why do you do these things to yourself? It will never make you happy.” You can raise your arms and shout, you can lift your feet from the ground and bounce like a marionette, you can pull out your hair and wear a skull cap. After it’s all said and done… you’ve made a certain amount of noise. And the form of the noise… that’s all you get to choose. And that, as they say, is that.

Rebecca and I looked out at the street together. I put my hand over towards her leg, but she didn’t move and didn’t seem to care. I think she was still angry with me. I don’t blame her. She kept smoking, all lips and fingers.

No lightening of my heels. No moment of doubt. I hoped that the reason I felt nothing remarkable going on in my heart was that it was basically a massive and unexplained inconvenience. And that if something divine or cataclysmic was truly happening…I would just sort of tell the difference. I didn’t want to think of myself as petty. I mean, I might be petty, but who says “What a petty man I am?” Unless they’re in a play.

We were not like we used to be. A few weeks before this…all this horseshit had started… we felt like being quiet wasn’t indicative of anything but rest. Now we were quiet in the way that corpses are quiet. We weren’t “silent,” though. There was sound. Our jeans rubbed the concrete. My shoes scraped against the stone stairs, hers made little clops like a tap dancer. The sound of breathing out and sucking in. The crunch that she made as she nudged the splinters. I felt like something needed to be done about it. But not by me. Not by Becky, either.

I wished I could call my mother in Massachusetts and say ‘Turn on the news.’ To tell her that it was me, and that it had always been me, poised for greatness. If I was going to be a noisy gong, without the love of my peers, at least my mother could have been counted on for a dose of encouragement. “My, my” she would have said “You sure did it this time.”

I can’t really say that I’m a person of profound faith. I’m not profound in any way that I can think of. I was just hungry, and my coffee was starting to look unappealing. It was dusty, and some of the powder had sunk in through the top… taking the form of non-dairy creamer. I wanted a sandwich. And I wanted to punch the soccer mom.

I tried to call my mother. The line was dead. A noisy gong sounded in the distance.

I’m not proud of quite a few things I’ve done. No one knows about those things… which means they never go away. They are stored inside me and they just sit there, happening. Over and over. No movement… nothing but these hidden artifacts. As I looked out over this tiny block… the city just barely obstructed by itself and its trees… I realized that once obstructed… out of sight and out of senses… I didn’t believe in anything. Including myself. And since I was never seen and heard… not honestly anyway… who could I be? And how could I be loved?

There are no vacuums. If there is no air… there are particles. Dark matter, strings of energy, time passing… no vacuums. Until then, I had felt like I didn’t exist. That my words were solitary and would always be simply for me… even if I had an invisible audience in my head… looking over my shoulder… wondering what I’d say next. Judging me harshly or applauding me kindly. But I still felt so lonely… because the false people all had my face. It was only me, egging myself on. Telling myself that I would be all right. But no… there was never nothing. The line between myself and myself was never dead.

It occurred to me that I was missing all the good parts, as I was trying to explain myself to myself. There was probably something masterfully strange happening just a block up and I was missing it grinning like a ninny and remembering my childhood. I mean, for the love of Pete, something truly amazing was happening and whatever it was… I was sure it would be in the paper or on CNN. I was sure that somewhere, like in Iowa or something, toads were falling from the sky. That somewhere a child was born with three heads and each spoke Hebrew, Latin and Italian. Which plague is white dust? Which plague is confusion?

I had always thought of writing poetry as a sort of talking to myself. After all, besides that one poem I had published, no one ever read these things. Like other people sit and watch the box or chat with their friends about the day as it goes by. I had these moments where I would work things out. Try to communicate. I thought it was only with myself. Now, I’m not so sure. I think we are all filters for something. That, if we do it correctly, find this odd code… we are simply speaking to what is behind us. What made us. All that dark matter and space dust. It can hear. It has to hear. It’s made of vibrations.

Rebecca said: “I’m going inside.” She has very white cheeks and very red lips. I want to nibble on her for a second. That’s why I’m with her. That impulse. She is pretty girl, a sharp girl, and I envision her as a plucky heroine in her own cartoon. I imagine her hurling the nuclear weapons into the sun. She said, “I’m going inside.” That’s where I’d like her to go, of course. So I could go back to silently hating the air and all its partners.

I wondered if we would all be getting cancer from it. Or something new. I read a New York Times article about a scientist that wrote a journal of his death from a strain of something nasty he’d created. That it took about a month, and he was quarantined. Imagine that. Would they quarantine us? Like in that movie. Like in all those movies about epidemics and killer bees. Imagine that.

I wanted her to go inside, but I didn’t say that. I asked her to wait. I said “Wait a second, will you?” Like she was rushing around. Like I was being rushed. I said to Rebecca that she should just wait a second. I don’t know why I said that because I did want her to leave. “Just hold on,” I said. “I have something to tell you.”

So… I guess what I’m trying to say about the vibrations. About how things can hear… is that my room blowing up… there isn’t a better way to put that…that my room exploded is no less ridiculous than bothering to write alone. That all these things are the same. A world of unexplained phenomena. Like why we talk to ourselves. Why do we bother? Why do we even move from when we’re born? What are we trying to achieve? Am I making sense?

Then for whatever reason… I tried to tell her… anything. Painted myself into a corner with that one. Take my advice: Never say “I have something to tell you” without a very good back up plan. What was it Beckett said? “Advice to adulterers: Never confess.”

I suspect that, instead of all this…you just want to hear about the Poem. About “The Americans.” I can tell. I can see it.

Imagine that all this bone dust, and all these people, and the fucking horseshit about Jesus Christ coming to judge us and the ideas of zombie movies and monster factories in Hollywood…imagine if I became this star of it all. That in this movie, the movie of the plague of chalk, I was Zombie #1 just irradiating the entire world. This all had only just happened. Who knew what the actual effect would be.

(pause)

But to be honest. I didn’t’ feel funny. I mean… it just smelled like my grandmother’s basement. Like paint and plaster. That’s all it seemed to be. Imagine that. What fucking airplane dropped all this dry wall?

I waffled for a moment, as one would. Something to tell her. What a thing to say. I gathered up my best bullshit and said: “I just want to tell you that I’m all right.”

(pause)

Can you believe that? “I’m all right.” What a fuckwit I am.

But maybe a section. A part of it. Or I could tell you what inspired it.

(pause)

Something like that.

(pause)

We can all get to the bottom of this. We’ll get there. Together. I could do that. I’m almost willing. But you see…I don’t have it. And I don’t remember it. It’s gone.

If you can believe it…that’s the first moment I was actually curious. I had thought “What the hell is going on…” but I didn’t really think anyone would tell me. Or that I was going to find out. Or that there was any real way of knowing. Then, for some reason, I decided that I actually gave a flame what this was all about. I thought about just asking someone. Just saying “What’s on the news.” One of the cell phone people or the people who were praying. Who are really, if you think about it, doing exactly the same thing.

I don’t remember it. Not really. I remember a few things. I remember that first line was:

“I am a young man. I write poetry in my room.”

My wandering turned into walking. I didn’t feel like being in a clown-show anymore. I wanted to go that way or this way. No matter which way… it was important to go in a direction. I was curious. Like Alice or some non-sense. I didn’t even realize I was doing it. I had just picked up a little momentum. Like when I’m late getting back from lunch. Quicker steps, walking headfirst. I was the curious cat. So of course, I expected to be killed.

She said that she knew I was. She said “You’re always all right.” Which was just the stupidest thing she’d ever said. Because before that moment, I swear on my grave, that she had never even implied that I was all right. In the time I’d known her. I was all wrong. Not just in arguments. I was mixed up, nothing for it, backwards, split in half, and she was just bearing with me. It was insane, come to think of it. I remember when I asked her, a few years ago, if she would take me back. She made me promise to see a therapist. I promised I would and never did. So much for faith in me. I think my favorite words in the English language are: “I love you anyway.”

It’s gone and I’ll never get it back. I can remember a few lines. About Lucifer and Lucinda, these characters in my head. About the backs of their white legs. About dancing in Philadelphia. About how to learn to spell. Lines like you write. Things from a pen. Things that have no place in conversation or in your life. You know, poems. Poetry. Pointless notices that you’ve seen something…been someone… crumbled under the weight and sifted through the sand. But what strikes me is that it was backwards, nothing for it. The poem was split up nonsense to anyone with eyes. It was nonsense.

I ran, therefore, headfirst into a young woman. That inevitable moment. This tall girl with red hair and a sundress on. And she was rubbing her eyes and crying. And get this…she was standing there…clicking her heels together like Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. She was saying over and over that she couldn’t find her bag. It was somewhere in the street. I actually hit her shoulder with my forehead. And she stopped, and looked at me, and she said “Watch out asshole.”

But think about it: what is more potent than nonsense?

I didn’t want to stop and say anything. I thought about saying something, but I stopped. I started and stopped. I looked at her and then kept walking past her. She shouted things at me. “You asshole!” Something really bright like that. “Go back to Kansas, you mad carrot!” I shouted over my shoulder. Just something to say really. The whole affair was humiliating. Took about 30 seconds.

Some gay priests wandered out the seminary with bullhorns, leading seminary students to safety. They were inches from Becky and me, and they were being brought to safety. We were just talking. I probably should have followed them. She stopped only for a moment to notice them, her eyes on the bullhorn and the crowd, and she pulled her attention back to me. She wanted some answers from me. Her theory was, I’m certain, that I was in shock. I was not. I am never in shock. I’m dead inside. Why couldn’t she wake the fuck up and see that?

An ambulance roared by me. I was getting numb. I kept walking. I wanted more coffee. I wanted to talk to my mom. I wanted to go back and kiss that foul-mouthed red-head. Just because it happens that way in movies. You kiss a screaming someone and they go limp and love you for it. Of course, I would never do that. Just what I thought about. As I walked. And wandered. And clipped my shoulders on passing fat men in suits.

I am not in shock, I said. I’m fine. And why do you always ask me for things when you know that I can’t give them to you? What do you expect from a nice boy like me? Sympathy and love? Much luck, I said. You have love from me. You have it. That’s the best you can get. Not enough, I know. But that’s all.

There is one line, between them. Between the two. And they are talking. Lucifer and Lucinda. And she whispers something to him. In the big blue way that bad poetry lines are whispered. And she says:

She said

“Do you think, in the time when we never met, that we were happy?”

And I told her I was happy. I said it with all the bile in my stomach. I am happy, I said. Even when you’re dragging me home by the feet, or when I’m slurping down coffee caked with non-dairy creamer. I’m one big happy bastard.

Lucifer and Lucinda are my epic characters. Every single person within the sound of my voice has a story they are telling themselves as they live their lives. And make no mistake, everyone outside of my voice is the same way. They ask themselves the grand questions that they’re embarrassed to ask anyone else. Because at the center of it is the story of their little life. My story is the one about the man who aspires for greatness. Yours maybe the girl who is looking for a man who won’t hurt her twice, or the story of the unfinished novel and all the distractions of work. You think of yourself as the hero of this unimportant epic.

For a while, as I was walking up the east side of the city, in that mazelike region without street numbers… there was a guy like me… about my age… just like me… walking up the other side of the street. Pretty much a parallel. He wasn’t walking very fast, but sometimes I fell behind him, and other times he fell behind me. But I could see him out of the corner of my eye. I think it went on from just about where we hit First Street. Right after the maze. He was keeping pace. I was keeping pace.

I was being tough on her, but she could take it. She’s tougher than me. Twice as tough. Three times. You should see her fight. She’s a professional.

I thought maybe I was dead for a moment. Just for a few blocks. That I was this reflection of myself. It was hard to see him clearly with all that powder all over him. I thought maybe he was me, with his black hair pushing out from underneath the sugar. I thought I was watching myself walk… seeing what happened just before I died. Maybe this was my life flashing before my eyes, backwards. Fucking strange things crossed my mind, I promise you. That was just one.

Who are you? What hero are you?

She started in on a speech. Some kind of speech about what I’m like and why I say things. That kind. The sort that never goes well. She kept saying I should come in the house, and I couldn’t really think of why.

Imagine he is run over by a bus, I was thinking. Or if he just disappears. Or if he just stops and looks and…you know…points at me. “I am the Ghost of Christmas YET TO COME.” You know. That sort of thing.

What is the story you’re telling? How do you tell it? Do you tell it? Or do you show it?

He started to creep me the fuck out, so I walked faster and faster. Tried to lose him. But he was keeping pace. When he got too far ahead of me it occurred to me I might lose him…lag behind. You think I was going to let that happen? Not I. Not I.

She said…

“You honestly believe that, at the center of it all, is how you see things. And the rest of us are just... foils.”

The whole time she was talking she was in the doorway. She didn’t really look at me. I mean, she had the speech down cold. Gave it to me a hundred times. About my selfishness and how it was all this show. That I was putting on a show whenever I felt cornered. That she knew I wasn’t really this miserable man. She didn’t look at me. Outside of our tiny kingdom, the city was a disaster. We both knew it. But we couldn’t say a word.

The part that people forget about in their quest for immortality and all that nonsense is that, for a moment, you will have your proverbial moment in the sun. Your fifteen minutes. Hell…your half-an-hour. And what, then, do you do? What do you do with the rest of that time? Until you drop off the earth and are never seen again?

I could see the Avenue from my side of the street, and there were gurneys and EMTs. People were hunched down on the sidewalk, people on the phone. The priests were clearing out, my neighbors, such as they were, dropped in and out of view. My leg was itching and I looked down at it. Maybe a little glass. I couldn’t tell.

Suddenly my arm got this pain. Probably nerves. I remember that clearly because I touched the center of my chest a few times out of habit. Checking for a heart attack. Everything could be one. Anything. Any feeling, the oncoming heart attack.

(pause)

I’m too young to die. I promise you.

My mother says that in the end we will all see each other. That we are all going to the same place. So why worry, she said. Search all you like, she would say. We all wind up the same.

The same old song garbled through the white noise. Becky was describing me to myself. Who I am. How I am.

I wondered if the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come would have a heart attack. If he did, I’d know to lie down and prepare. I looked for him, trying to look into the future… weird thoughts. What the fuck? I look back on it and think that I must have been totally bonkers. But I still looked for him, for that reason. He was gone. Ah well. Dashed hopes and all that jazz.

But we don’t wind up the same. Maybe after we “wind up,” AFTER the end. We’re the same. But we die differently, live differently. We are all going to be invisible when it’s over, and our lives will probably just disappear. Or be hidden behind the curtain. Here today, gone tomorrow. Everything we could have been and everything we were. Platitudes. I’m the master of platitudes. I make myself tired.

(pause)

But the fact is… whatever it was I was going to do…I think I already did it. And I’m a young man. What next? You see?

(pause)

The poem was the thing I was going to do. To write. I looked at it, breathing at me… and I tried to make it grand: “A genius at 25” or something like that. But no dice. I was lying. Like a writer should.

When I looked for Casper the Friendly Ghost, I saw that he wasn’t the only one that cleared out. The streets were getting empty. Shops were closed, the dust was blowing unfettered by bodies and other nonsense. It had the run of the streets. I was, except for the few stragglers, mostly alone. The further I walked, towards or away from the crash site or bomb or disaster area… whatever I deemed it at the time… things were quieting down. Including me. I think. I knew, of course, that even being out was idiocy. I should go home. Anyone with any sense would have run indoors. That’s what people do. They run for it.

I said she was right about me. She probably was.

I once wrote a poem about a girl. About standing on the beach in New Jersey, with a girl who I loved, and she didn’t love me. We spent time together, usually because I was adept at working myself into her life…and she must have known. But frankly, she was never going to love me. I wrote it about nighttime at the ocean, and the jetty, and how it was all black. Simple things. I said that she would never know that I was her foul-mouthed Romeo. Some piece of purple prose. I was younger than I am now. If you can believe that. I wanted to be big. Important. Homeric. You know…Superman in sneakers.

(pause)

But I never stood with this girl on the beach. I’ve never been to the Jersey Shore at night. I kissed a few girls, but all of them tasted like salt.

I said, “Did you happen to notice, Doctor, that the city is fucking doomed? And all you can think about is Me? Is that your priority? My health? Give it up, darling. At this point, I’m no better off that you are.” All that loving me proved is that she had bad taste. Bad, bad taste.

All I could taste was ashes and chalk. All I could smell.

She was wearing my T-Shirt. She was standing above me, thinking. Someone screamed off-stage left. Or something like screaming. I heard something fall down.

(pause)

I wanted to smoke another cigarette. So much for my health. I took one out of the pack and said “You want one? We could both die. It’s a love-suicide.” She didn’t think that was funny. She said she loved me. I said “If you loved me you wouldn’t make it my problem.”

I wonder if anyone ever loved me and never told me. I still wonder. I wonder if I could have made that person happy.

I walked and walked. Away. I was walking away. There were fewer and fewer people. I hit about fourteenth street. I was coming up on Union Square. No one was out. Not even skateboarders playing hooky. Even NYU students had the grace to go indoors. Even them. But I could also see that the dust was thinning out. There was still dust, but it seemed to be blowing around and not so central. Sort of like the eye of the proverbial hurricane. And I started to grin. I don’t know why. I smiled. Thinking about it…I guess I sort of cracked right then. But it felt good.

Ever been happy? Really very happy with big white teeth? Smiling like in a commercial? Talking to a friend, feeling young and alive and full of happy yellow sunshine?

(pause)

I haven’t. I often wonder what makes people feel that way. I mean, why they would want to. Because when you feel that way, you stop. You stop moving, doing, working. You are nothing but a moment of satisfaction. You barely exist.

She laughed at me. And she said, “Go to hell,” while laughing, like they do in commercials. With her head thrown back. She walked back inside, laughing at me. And as she did, I screamed at her. “Is that the best you can come up with? Go to Hell? Is that why you cry while we’re having sex? Just to make me feel like I should apologize? I apologize. I’m sorry you have to love me. If that’s what you want, I’m sorry. What do you want from me? I love you too. Not enough for you, I know, but that’s all I can do.”

I had come to it. The quiet part of it. I don’t remember when I realized it. It was just a little bit north of the park. Maybe ten blocks. At the time, I didn’t know. Now…of course… everyone knows.

Can you imagine saying something like that to someone you love? Of course you can. Who else do you say things like that to?

The city was quiet right below a building surrounded by parking lots, just behind a private park. Just below and streaming in all directions from the building there were little marks and scratches… and then further out, I’m sure…white dust. I could tell. There was a hole in the building, but nothing else. No one was there. No one looked up. I felt calm. Ever felt calm before? I thought I had too, until I did.

I never want to be so resigned. Happy and resigned. This is it, I’ll think. ‘I’ve done it. I’ve found it.’

(pause)

I don’t want that. To be finished. You write one thing and then you write another thing. And you go to work at your day job and they hate you there, and they smile at you anyway and they think “When will this man quit?” or “Why does he work here?” but they don’t say anything and neither do you. You look around at the way the world works, this country, this city. You hear people talk about the fall of Democracy and the two-party system and the widening wealth gap and the royal family and the Supreme Court. You wonder what you could possibly do to change it. If you should try to change it? You say to yourself each day that it’s not impossible. You say, “I can change this.” But you’re no fool. You read. You know better. You know from Steinbeck that you can’t keep the fields from turning to salt. You know from that poetry teacher in high school that you are only trying to make yourself feel better by dragging your bones along the scuttle and rocks. You know from Emily Dickinson that you should never leave your home. You know from Shakespeare that it’s all a mess of arms and limbs and swords and ghosts and there is no point in trying to make sense of it…that it’s just a show for someone else. You know from history that you are not in the ruling class and you know from Edgar Allen Poe that you will be quiet and lie down one day, penniless, never knowing what became of you.

(pause)

You know what I am talking about. The unchanging world. American to the core. Resigned and hateful, hopeful and defeated. The hand wave as a grand gesture. Nothing at all…except grand. It is grand. But it’s nothing. Nothing at all.

(pause)

You don’t have to read the poem. Not if you understand that. Not if you know, in fact, why I wrote it. Because I didn’t want to wind up satisfied and accepting. I didn’t want to lie down with my arms folded and say “There is nothing I can do. Let the sun crash into the earth.” What I want is to say “This is how I change things… by offering this up. I offer it up.” And up it went.

(pause)

That’s why I wrote it. That’s why I write all of them. But this one… it exploded. And that was really not my intention. My idea. But that’s the risk you take, I guess. When you make offerings.

(pause)

I remember, though, at that moment… the most dreadful part was that there was nothing I could do. That it was a complete moment, a finished thought. The thing had happened. It was over. And all I was doing was sitting there. What else could I ever do again that would create such a thing. And it wasn’t me…it was “The Americans.”

(pause)

Was this the feeling of satisfaction? Of completion? If it is… it’s like someone takes your heart right out of your mouth.

In the quiet, as Becky gathered her thoughts… I felt like I was being eroded. Something like that. Is that the right word? Eroded.

Being calm…truly calm…it was like breathing with your eyes closed. Which I’m told happens all the time. Whenever you’re asleep, or when you blink. But when was the last time you were awake in the city and just closed your eyes? It’s just like that.

(He does so for a moment.)

What I didn’t know is that whenever you close your eyes and breathe, even unconsciously, you’re trusting the air will be there. You can’t see anything but the inside of your eyes. You are trusting that there are more senses. You are just silent in thought.

(pause)

But my eyes weren’t closed. This building had a hole in it.

I waited forever. I had said all I could say, and that was of course, nothing at all. She said:

“Is this is going to get any worse before it gets better?”

Then she laughed again. She said it didn’t suit me to act like Marlon Brando and shrug around like Woody Allen. She laughed and laughed. I sat back down, of course. What else could I do? I didn’t even realize that I’d stood up.

I knew I had come to it. The center. I smiled again. Like I’d just seen the ocean.

So as you can see… I felt broken wide open. Like my heart was all over the place, bleeding on my hands. That sort of nonsense. The images you consider. Even after saying things like that, I think I shouldn’t have said them. Things that make people roll their eyes.

She didn’t know me. She didn’t even know me. I think it hit me, right in the chest. But I can’t tell, because I didn’t feel it. It was happening just below my chin, some little ache. I felt something... what was it?

I didn’t want to feel that way. I looked over at the poem, this mess of crap that flew out by accident. I felt like tearing it to pieces. And when I reached for it, it just lifted up… wind or something. That’s what makes sense. I think the damn thing jumped. I think it was trying to get away.

And then he fell.

And then I fell…I just fell.

It was like falling out of the sky. I realized that all this time, Becky had been dating the person I pretended to be for about six months. That guy you put on when you’re still trying to get sex out of the relationship. Back before your balls go dead and you prefer television. Have you ever read anything that said that you love makes you a better man? I think that’s true. I just don’t think it lasts very long.

I didn’t even realize what I was doing. I forgot there were no walls to my apartment. And when it jumped, I leaned forward and I just lost my footing and looked out towards the street. It wasn’t that far, but it’s farther than I wanted to fall. I said to myself that it was going to hurt… and I felt that panic in my chest as my hands just went wild…and I fell. Directly down…with the poem just in front of me, gently curving its way through the air to the street. I hit the ground first, of course…being so much heavier than paper.

From the hole, this man fell. It wasn’t a long drop, but it was long enough. Long enough to look like it hurt.

I landed on my arm, legs up. And yes, in accordance with the laws of nerves and pavement, it did hurt. The poem hit just after me. It was fine. It was made of wood.

I watched him drop the way you watch a bag caught in the updraft flitter around. The way you watch a leaf.

I spit a little, shook myself. Couldn’t get up.

He wasn’t dead. Good news there. Maybe he would look up.

And then… I realized someone could see me. All at once. Just like that. A hidden impulse, the shared mind... I was in someone’s view. I could almost see myself through his eyes.

I raised up my arms.

I saw movement.

I said “Hey! HEY!” It was the only thing I could think of.

He shouted at me.

I waved my arms in the air. Needed him to see me.

I turned to see him. Covered in white plaster.

He was looking at me. I didn’t move for a moment or two. Neither did he.

I felt like I was about to be arrested. But there was no one else to blame.

Everywhere was a mild disaster. Something terrible had happened. Or maybe it wasn’t terrible. I couldn’t tell. I wasn’t hurt. Someone probably was. Someone on a bridge. Someone in the middle of an intersection.

I was clutching my shoulder… in a pile of dust. Just looking at this guy. He stopped waving his arms. I felt majestic and marginal.

I wanted to jump into the air and shout “I found you! I know what you did!” I didn’t do that. Out of respect for anyone that might have been hurt.

I wanted to scream out apologies. Tell him my name. Beg for his forgiveness.

(pause)

Or proclaim it all my doing. Proclaim that I was the fiery art, the Lover, Priest and Janitor of the Great City. Or cry. Or be left alone. I wished he was gone. Or had never appeared at all.

He was flat on his face.

He waited for a long time.

Where were the other people?

Where were the sounds of firemen and ambulances?

What were we supposed to say?

This was everything. The moment I had waited for.

I felt so far away.

I was lonely. So I wrote this poem.

But here I was.

And there he was.

What could I do?

Please say something.

I put my arms down.

Please hide me in your basement.

He looked to be about my age.

Please.

What would you have done?

(pause)

We stayed like that for a very long time. I don’t know how long.

What can be said? He looked at me and I looked at him. The buildings, the wood and the smoke, the mist... it was no where. Summoned away.

He looked at me and I looked at him. There he was.

There he was.

He was no one.

He was everything.

Is that all there is to it?

Forget everything. People. A person.

How lonely he was.

Please take me to your house.

I turned to walk away. I don’t know why. I just wanted to get out of there.

He turned to go. And I knew that he realized how little mention I deserved.

The cause was so small. The culprit just a person. Some man in a T-Shirt. Trying to pay rent.

I realized it wasn’t all gone for him. That nothing had been summoned away for him. That I was something of a disappointment.

What was I thinking? It looked like he’d just dropped something. This was a big accident. Nothing… nothing had happened. At all.

I was no different than anyone else. This has also happened to me.

Who the fuck was he, anyway? Just standing there in the accident he’d left. And he needed ME? How could anyone that needs me... just me... be any better or worse than I am?

(pause)

Disaster. The great social equalizer.

I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think.

But then I saw that there was something else. He was reaching out for something. One hand, his good hand…was reaching out for something.

I knew what would happen. I tried to say something, but I was out of voice…unprepared.

So I turned around. There was a little blood coming out of his mouth. I could see that as I walked closer.

I wanted to move. To reach out, but I broke my shoulder and two ribs. Didn’t break my legs, but they hurt. Everything hurt. My mouth was bleeding.

And I walked towards him. I had walked this far. Disappointing as he was… he was reaching for something.

His eyes were on the paper. On “The Americans.” And I reached out for it. I didn’t want him to … I don’t know. To overlook me.

I could tell, the closer I got…that he was in pain. A lot of pain. He had fallen from the window.

And I tried to say something. I kept thinking “brother…brother.” Is that strange? I kept thinking that word.

And just then…I was in front of him. And I looked down. He was reaching for a single sheet of paper.

I could see he knew I was hurt.

And I leaned down.

It was horrible. Horrible.

And picked it up. In my left hand. This hand.

You can’t imagine.

I flew up into the sky. Something hit me and I flew into the air. I felt that I might burst… as it got colder and colder and I flew higher and higher. I had no time to react so I just thought. “Well…now I’m in the air.” No time to breathe.

Lying there…looking upwards…I realized that this man was gone. And he took the poem with him.

And I could see my house from there. I really could.

Would he explode? Would he turn into that inevitable arc of gravity and plummet, like a bullet?

I kept flying. There were airplanes everywhere. I waved at a frightened little girl. What were all these big iron sticks doing up here? I was flying. Amazing. You couldn’t imagine.

I couldn’t even see him anymore. And after a minute, I didn’t know if I needed to.

What were all those satellites for? What were the clouds keeping in? What was the air used for this high up if there was no one to breathe it? Why weren’t their any birds?

I wanted to cry, but I didn’t. I wanted to laugh. That seemed more like it would happen… but it didn’t come. I wanted to tear the poem into a thousand pieces. But as you can see… I didn’t. I couldn’t.

I kept flying. Until I arrived here. At last. Right here. That’s how I came to be telling you about all of this. Here I am, at the highest possible place. Here I am. Hello. Did you know that’s where we were? Well… I’m surprised you don’t all have nosebleed here.

(pause)

I’m surprised I don’t either. But there I am. Up here in the sky. Where, I guess, I am going to have to stay. Happy. I guess that’s the word. Happy and far away The comfort is that from here, I can see what’s coming. The bird’s eye view.. And better yet, I don’t have to do anything about it. Not a goddamn thing.

I think I know where he went. He went … away. Wouldn’t that be nice? To go somewhere else? Somewhere that was, above all things, away?

(pause)

I had one moment, and that’s where I have to stay. But he went away. Where else, in the world would anyone rather be? I wondered if he would die up there, out there? But I supposed… I suppose you get used to it. I suppose we’re adaptable creatures. Even there. Even so far above the fray.

It was then I realized that something was wrong. Something terrible. Whoever it was I had intended to be, whoever I had built inside my mind, the person I had announced to the world at a very young age had been slowly dying for years. And sitting there, smoking and watching the world explode into tiny knives, with my lover laughing at me inside… I felt very quiet. A noisy gong. Sound and fury. All that jazz. I knew she wasn’t going to leave me. And I was not intending to move from this spot...not ever: it all was too, too clear. Nothing was ever going to happen again. I had stopped. I had grown into the worst possible version of myself... this silent man. This silent, immobile person.

(pause)

It would be hours before I said a word. Becky went in and out of the apartment. The phone was ringing. Priests appeared and reappeared... briefcases were dropped all over the street. Paper flew by, made of wood, just like the splinters. I couldn’t move. What was I supposed to do? I felt no love, no uncertainty, no questions...not even the smallest recognition crossed my face. The honest answer: I was not in shock. I was not hurt. I was not hiding. I was, in fact, just sitting there. Watching this all happen and seeing that if I were to stand up and wave my arms, or run to the rescue, or declare my passions or decide that it was all worth it or worthless... I would wind up the same man. The same man forever. Changed and cornered.

(pause)

After a while, Becky came back out and put her hand on my shoulder. I saw it there, didn’t feel it. She knew me. She loved me. I would be lying if I said that I didn’t love her as much as I could allow myself. And she said: “Do you want something for your leg?” There was a little trickle on my ankle... probably a splinter. A little glass. Blood seeped out onto the pavement. Into my shoes and socks. Something left over from the incident. Some days, to tell you the truth, it still sort of hurts.

(pause)

Even today.

(pause)

I looked up and said: “No. That’s been there for days.”

(pause)

Of course, it hadn’t. She knew and I knew. In the end, though... that’s what
I told her.

THE END

On Theatre and Politics - Matthew Freeman

About Me

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

The Americans (2004)

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