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4000 MILES
By Amy Herzog
LEO
So we were in Kansas, because – even though that was way out of the way we wanted to
hit the center of the country, preferably around the fourth of July for maximum
earnestness slash unacknowledged irony factor. The timing worked out so it was July 3rd
and we were approaching Gypsum, our small town America of choice, one bar, one diner,
seventeen churches or whatever. And we were going west to east, so, wind at our backs.
The wind comes out of the south in the summer, but more like the southwest, so in a way
going west to east was a pussy move on our parts, but we kind of wanted to do the
opposite of the historical – like American is east to west, so we were going the opposite
way, also we lived out west, so. It was more honest to start there.
Western Kansas is like ass flat, the cliché, so you’re basically just riding the wind and if
you pedal even a little bit in a low gear you hit fifteen mph no problem. Fifteen mph is a
slow speed in a car, but on a bike it’s pretty good, it’s pretty good. So it’s morning and
the sun’s pretty low; between the low sun and the flat ride and the good wind it’s the
perfect time to take shadow pictures. That means you take a picture of your own shadow
while you’re riding, totally a staple of the cross country bike trip, gotta have the shadow
picture, and with our huge packs and panniers we were gonna have especially dope
shadow pictures. Micah thinks he’s a really good photographer, he thinks he has talent,
so he’s doing a lot of bullshit with shutter speed and framing and what have you and
we’re both taking shadow pictures and we hear a truck coming behind us, or I hear it, I
assume Micah does, I think he does because we both hug the shoulder a little bit, still
taking our shadow shots, and the truck gets louder and closer and passes us and I see it’s
a Tyson truck full of fucking crates of screaming chickens packed together and there are
feathers flying out of the truck bed like some kind of I don’t know what kind of
metaphor, and I scream up to Micah who did I mention was in front of me, “look at that
fucking slave poultry!” And he looks back at me, he has his left hand on his handlebar
and his right hand still on his bullshit professional camera and he looks back at me and
he’s laughing and he starts to say something but the truck bed separates from the cab and
flies backward and takes him off the road.
___________
4000 MILES
By Amy Herzog
LEO
Before the ambulance came this PR lady from Tyson came. I didn’t realize I was still
holding my camera. She was like, “I’m sorry sir, but I have to confiscate your camera.”
She has to yell it for me to hear her over all these maimed and freaked out birds. I was
like “my best friend is under three thousand chickens.” She was like, “I understand
you’re upset, but this will be easier for both of us if you just give me your camera now.”
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I was like, “I couldn’t get to him, he’s buried under there, where is the fucking ambulance?” And
she was like “I’m going to ask you one more time” and I threw my camera on the ground.
So what I don’t have is these pictures from Wyoming, we did these stupid corny timer
shots at the top of the Continental Divide, in front of the sign that says the altitude and all
that shit, there was still snow up there in June. He caught a fish in Yellowstone, with his
bare hands, he stood really still and reached in and…I had a picture of him holding up
this fish longer than his head and neck. Oh and we dipped our back tires in the Pacific,
that’s another corny thing you do, because then you’re supposed to dip your front tires in
the Atlantic when you get there. Which I have not done yet, incidentally, don’t know
why. And I got a little video of him dipping his back tire and pretending to fall off this
rock into the sea because he was a fucking clown, you know, he was a gifted physical
comedian, he could have done that for real.
And then there are all the pictures of him I don’t remember taking, and maybe losing
those is worse than losing the ones I do.
It took them about forty five minutes to get him out, and the funny thing was he hadn’t
sustained any trauma to his head or anything but he had been face down in the mud with
hundreds of pounds of weight on him and he had suffocated.
So the part that everyone’s pissed at me about is that after I filled out all the paperwork at
the police station and called his mom and my mom I got back on my bike and kept riding.
______________
THE WHALE
By Sam D. Hunter
CHARLIE
His namemy partner's name, it was Alan.
(pause)
It sounds strange, but he was actually a student of mine. He was only a couple years younger
than me, he had gone back to school after his mission. His parents were trying to get him to
marry someone from the church, I think he barely knew her. But he was gonna go through with
ituntil he met me. It was ridiculous, he was the engaged son of a Mormon bishop, I had a wife
and kid at home. But we justcouldn't stand to be apart. So, on the same exact night, we left our
lives and started a new one together. It was awful, we both felt so awful about it, but it was also
kind ofromantic. You really want me to keep going?
I thought he'd be able to get over all this religious stuff, but... It got worse and worse, to the point
where every time we'd drive by that church he'd start to hyperventilate. And I'd thinkwhat the hell
is in there? Why does that stupid building have so much power over him?
(pause)
His parents had abandoned him, refused to talk to him at all. But one night, about ten years ago,
his father showed up at our apartment and he looked at Alan and he said, "I've written a sermon
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for you. You have to come tomorrow, because the sermon is for you." I told Alan not to go, but...
The next morning he came home after the service, and he was justhollow. I asked him what the
sermon was about, he wouldn't tell me. Whatever it was it took him over, and he juststopped
everything. He stopped bathing, he stopped eating, he stopped sleeping. And a few months later,
he was gone.
_______
THE WHALE
By Sam D. Hunter
ELDER THOMAS
He just. .. He didn't care. About anything. We'd go out every day, and we'd go from door to door,
and no one would listen, and he didn't even care. I tried to talk to him about different sections of
town we could go to, different ways to engage them, different ways to help these people. And
he'd listen to me, and nod, and smile, and blah blah blah. But you could tell, if we spent a year
there ministering and hadn't helped one single person, he wouldn't have cared. He was
justgoing through the motions.
And one day, we were out in this little farming community north of town, and we weren't helping
anyone, and he kept complaining about being hungry, and how hot it was out that day, and I just
lost it. I went nuts.
(pause)
I left that same night. He told me his parents would sue me. That I'd go to jail. All I wanted to do
was finish this mission, I just wanted to help one person in a meaningful way. So, I just got on a
bus. I found this church, someone in the ward had an empty room they offered to rent it to me, I
still have a few thousand dollars left in my checking account. I didn't even tell them my real
nameI found this nametag in the common room.
_______
BAD JEWS
by Josh Harmon
LIAM
Daphna? You're shedding again! Fucking "Daphna." Can we just Her name is Diana. Diana. I
know she wishes she were this like barbed wire hopping, Uzitoting Israeli warlock superhero:
Daphna; but actually, Diana Feygenbaum grew up in Schnecksville, Pennsylvania, in an armpit
town doing swim team badly and hysterically sobbing when she didn't get picked to be
cheerleader, in her closet, with the door closed that's a true story, by the way, and her
screenname, when we were younger, her like AIM screenname, ok, was PrincessDiana88.
She's as Israeli as Martin van fucking Buren, but she thinks because our grandfather survived
the holocaust and because her disgustingly hideous hair probably grows the same as it did for all
the other women in the history of our family who actually suffered, that somehow means she's
suffered too, but the truth is, PrincessDiana88 has suffered about as much as, as, as this
fucking, this pillow.
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No! I'm not done. Why is everyone I'm not saying anything that isn't true. Why is everyone
pretending like Daphna is like, this like, lovely, gorgeous, bighearted girl? Uhm, she's not. You
want to play pretend, you play pretend, but I'm done. I am fucking done fucking pretending,
because the truth is, I am horrified. She is horrifying. Just listen to her, every other word that
comes out of her mouth is some unbelievably offensive insult that we're supposed to pretend not
to hear? I'm not deaf. And the most offensive thing of all, do you want to know the most
The most astonishingly offensive thing of all is the fact that she actually believes, in her heart of
hearts, she is the only one Poppy meant something to. Because she's like, Super Jew. But you
know what? Jonah and I lost our grandfather too. Our grandfather. But to her, she can't even
fathom that I have things too that I remember?
__________
BAD JEWS
by Josh Harmon
LIAM
But watch tomorrow, when she's parading around shiva like this little rabbi in the making, you
watch, anytime there's a prayer or praying or prayerlike anything, she'll get this look on her face,
like, I'm above all of you, like, I'm on this spiritual enlightenment plane way above everyone else,
like Poppy's death hits me more or hurts me more or means more to me because I'm reading
some shit in Hebrew which I would put money on the fact that she doesn't even know what half
that shit means but it's like, there is probably 4% of her that genuinely feels this whatever
connection to the actual religious religion part of her religion but I guarantee as soon as I come
around or Jonah comes around, that connection instantaneously gets amped up like ten times
more, and her little talmudic personality grows in 2 seconds like those sponges you put in water,
and she becomes this little uberJew who like lords her newfound and dare I say it? Yes, I
dare temporary and potentially passing religious fanaticism over everyone, like after her trip to
Israel last summer, all we heard about at Thanksgiving was this fucking Army boyfriend she had
now from some town where you have to say "cccccchh" to pronounce it, so she pronounced it
like sixteen hundred times, this guy who is so Jewish and so great and he wants to marry her
and she's going to make aliyah and live in Jerusalem shoving shofars in her hideous unused
vagina until the whatever arrives and it's like, I bet this guy fucked her once, when he was drunk,
by accident, and woke up the next morning and was like, uhhhh MISTAKE, but she woke up and
thought, BOYFRIEND! and because he's Israeli, and Jewish, that somehow makes him superior
even though the dude probably doesn't even know her name and I'd bet money he never did and
it's so fucking pathetic it makes my skin crawl, not even crawl, like, it makes my skin slide
completely off me, detach itself from my body and pool up in a slimy slithering puddle at my feet
and I just want to grab her by the back of her hideous fucking Jew hair and smash her face into a
puddle of my molten dead skin and let her breathe that in for an hour or two. The fucking bitch.
__________
THE DISTANCE FROM HERE
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by Neil Labute
DARRELL:
Catch this.
Hey man, you kill many kids when you were over there?
Fuckin’ retards.
That wasn’t a war, anyway, not like the Persian Gulf. My dad told me a bunch ‘a shit they did over
in Saudi…. you wouldn’t believe some ‘a the stuff. He told me one time just to make a point, he
was there ten months or so, I think and he said that, this is true, the nicest thing that happened
when he was there, he was up in a helicopter and flying out to some base or somewhere, and
they ran right into this flock of birds. Yeah, these, like, giant birds they got near Kuwait or some
place like that, big fucking birds just migrating or who knows what, but they went ripping right
through ‘em at about a hundred fifty miles an hour… feathers, blood, all sorts ‘a shit on
everybody! He and around six or ten of the guys with him, just covered in bird guts! They barely
landed the chopper thing, that’s what he said. And they hardly get on the ground, at this outpost
they’re going to, and they get attacked by these fucking ragheads! that’s what they called the
Iraqi guys, “ragheads” really nasty shit, too. I guess, hand to hand stuff and they go into it
already wearing all this crap on ’em! Big chunks of these, like, white birds…. he said it really
scared the fuck outta the Iraqis and they took off running. Seriously. I’m not shitting ya. He said
they must’ve killed thirty or so of these birds and that was the best thing that happened while he
was there. So, you can pretty much imagine the kind ‘a fucking ordeal he went through. Not a
holiday, anyway, some port on the South China Sea.
Dad don’t talk about it much, not when I see him, but he did tell me that he still feels bad about
those birds. Bunch ‘a birds, who gives a fuck?
______
THE PILLOWMAN
by Martin McDonagh
MICHAL:
Ohhh. See what that one, the “Swear to me on your life you didn’t kill those three kids,” yeah, I
was kind of playing a trick on ya. Sorry Katurian.
I know it was wrong. Really. But it was very interesting. The little boy was just like you said it’d
be. I chopped his toes off and he didn’t scream at all. He just sat there looking at them. He
seemed very surprised. I suppose you would be at that age. His name was Aaron. He had a
funny little hat on, kept going on about his mum. God, he bled a lot. You wouldn’t’ve thought
there’d be that much blood in such a little boy. Then he stopped bleeding and went blue. Poor
thing. I feel quite bad now, he seemed quite nice. “Can I go home to my mummy, now, please?”
But the girl was a pain in the arse. Kept bawling her eyes out. And she wouldn’t eat them. She
wouldn’t eat the applemen, and I’d spent ages making them. It’s really hard to get the razor
blades inside. You don’t say how to make them in the story, do ya? I checked. So, anyway, I had
to force ‘em down her. It only took took. Not being mean, but at least that shut her up.
It’s really hard to get out of your clothes isn’t it, blood? (Pause)
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You’ll see. (Pause)
Katurian?
I’ll wash it out for ya, if you want. I’m getting quite good at it.
____________
THE PILLOWMAN
by Martin McDonagh
ARIEL:
Oh really? Well, y’know, I’ll tell you what there is about me. There is an overwhelming, and there
is an allpervading, hatred…. a hatred… of people like you. Of people who lay even the littlest
finger… on children. I wake up with it. It wakes me up. It rides on the bus with me to work. It
whispers to me, “they will not get away with it.” I come in early. I make sure all the bindings are
clean and the electrodes are in the right order so we won’t… waste… time. I admit it, sometimes
I use excessive force. And sometimes I use excessive force on an entirely innocent individual.
But I’ll tell you this. If an entirely innocent individual leaves this room for the outside world, they’re
not gonna contemplate even raising their voice to a little kid again, just in case I fucking hear ‘em
and drag ‘em in here for another load of excessive fucking force. Now, is this kind of behavior in
an officer of the law in some way questionable morally? Of course it fucking is! But you know
what? I don’t fucking care! ‘Cos, when I’m an old man, you know what? Little kids are gonna
follow me around and they’re gonna know my name and what I stood for, and they’re gonna give
me some of their sweets in thanks, and I’m gonna take those sweets and thank them and tell
them to get home safe, and I’m gonna be happy. Not because of the sweets, I don’t really like
sweets, but because I’d know… I’d know in my heart, that if I hadn’t been there, not all of them
would have been there. Because I’m a good policeman. Not necessarily good in the sense of
being able to solve lots of stuff, because I’m not, but good in the sense of I stand for something. I
stand for something. I stand on the right side. The child’s side. The opposite side to you. And so,
naturally, when I hear that a child has been killed in a fashion…. in a fashion such as this “Little
Jesus” thing… you know what? I would torture you to death just for writing a story like that, let
alone acting it out! So y’know what? (Takes out from the cabinet a large, grimlooking battery
and electrodes).... Fuck what your mum and dad did to you and your brother. Fuck it. I’d’ve
tortured the fuck out of them if I had them here, just like I’m gonna torture the fuck out of you now
too. ‘Cos two wrongs do not make a right. Two wrongs do not make a right. So kneel down over
here, please, so I can connect you to this battery.
_________
THE ALIENS
by Annie Baker
KJ:
It was with this like 16yearold chick at an Allman Brothers show. And I was totally tweaked out
just to like kiss her but then she tried to give me a blow job in a PortOPotty and my like little
hairless dick like didn’t respond and I was totally humiliated.
And then I dates this like younger girl when I was in high school, she was like a freshman and I
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was a senior and I think I kind of fucked with her head. We had sex and like now looking back I’m
not sure that she was like totally ready, you know? Then I fuckin’ cheated on her with this girl at a
chess championship and we like had mindblowing sex or whatever, me and the chess girl, and
then I made the mistake of like coming back home and like TELLING her or whatever to like get it
off my chest and right after I told her she like crumpled in this little like… (he makes a vague
gesture and waits for the word to come)... heap on the ground and she like cried and cried but
she stayed with me and then I broke up with her anyway right before I went off to UVM.
So yeah.
__________
IN THE NEXT ROOM (OR THE VIBRATOR PLAY)
By Sarah Ruhl
LEO
It was a terrible shock.
I had been studying in Florence for the year. They are exacting masters over there the line must
be just so the proportion just so there is no freedom you sharpen your pencil with a knife, as
Leonardo sharpened his pencil. It was heaven. Not to have freedom. No freedom in art, but in life,
life! The peaches there tasted like peaches, the rain like rain. I met the women in question in
Florence. A very beautiful woman. (I know No one ever said: I fell in love with a woman in Italy a
very ugly woman.) But she was beautiful. Perhaps not classically, but nevermind… We met at
the Uffizi. She was looking at the sculptures with no embarrassment, no embarrassment at all. I
painted her face all summer. When she kissed she kissed with her whole body, not like the
American women who kiss only with their lips.
You are perhaps shocked, Doctor, that I kissed her before marriage. I am a devotee of nature
and I wished to avoid the fate of my boyhood friend. On his wedding night he was repulsed by his
wife’s body. He said, when she disrobed for the first time, he saw something monstrous. What,
what? I asked. She had body hair, he said, down there! Like a beast! You see, he had seen the
female form only in marble statues no body hair! You are a scientist, that must amuse you.
His marriage went unconsummated for three years and was then anulled. I did not wish such a
fate for myself, and so, while lips were willing and free and soft, I kissed them. Oh yes, I kissed
them.
She did not come from a good family and her English was not very good but I did not care. Her
soul lept out of her eyes. When I painted her I felt I could paint souls. Her soul hovered, just here,
and I could see it.
_____________
IN THE NEXT ROOM (OR THE VIBRATOR PLAY)
By Sarah Ruhl
LEO
I love this time of afternoon, when the world is becoming dark, and you can see outside your
window lights in the neighboring windows coming on. One yellow one almost white little
squares of light, other people’s lives sheltered against the night, so hopeful. Ridiculous, isn’t it,
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to have so much hope, to think a little square of light could blot out the darkness any yet
another comes on and see
Lookthere another window lit golden the rest of the house dark an incomplete painting. I love
incomplete paintings why do painters always insist upon finishing paintings? It’s unaccountable
life is not like that!
And the ones Michelangelo never finished do you know about them? ghosts of lines hovering in
the background. Have you ever seen Virgin and Child with the Angels?
Oh you must go, and upon arrival, you must go directly to see that painting the incomplete lines
of God they cannot be filled in because they would be too beautiful, they would shock the
senses, and so they are almost there women or angels exchanging confidences coming into
being. A woman who is twothirds done is nearer to God! A young woman on the verge of
knowing herself is the most attractive thing on this earth to a man for this very reason.
___________
MAPLE AND VINE
by Jordan Harrison
DEAN
First of all, welcome. Welcome to the SDO.
I bet you’re all feeling pretty anxious.
“Am I going to use the right words.”
“Am I going to walk the right way.”
I mean gosh, you’ve just taken a pretty huge step, right?
The first thing to remember is that all of us were newcomers at one point.
The other thing to remember – and this one really helped me –
The other thing to remember is that the 1950s weren’t in black and white.
It sounds silly, but it’s easy to think like that. All we’ve seen is the photographs. Old
TV shows. But people in the ‘50s had yellow shirts and red sneakers just like you
and me. They had blue eyes and brown eyes. So the main thing is to remember that
you can live in color. You don’t have to go around trying to act like someone in an
old photo. I mean anyway you can’t, because they’re a photo, and you’re…you.
That’s what this place is for. So you can feel like you again.
I’m sure you all have a lot of questions.
“What do I wear?” “How do I talk?”
“How do I explain this to the kids?”
Ellen and I will help you answer all of these perfectly normal questions.
Everyone, this is my lovely wife Ellen.
__________
MAPLE AND VINE
9
by Jordan Harrison
DEAN
It wasn’t that the modern world was too fast, or too noisy.
In a way, it was too quiet.
Let me explain. In the 21st century, everything’s pretty easy, right? You have your
drivethru espresso. Your drivethru pharmacy. Or why go to the store when you
can get it online? You hardly have to see anyone – except for all those people you’ve
never even met who enter your life through your computer, pulling you every
which way. There is no real society, no community. And a lot of people mistake
that for freedom.
In the ‘50s it’s different. In the ‘50s you have to go places. You have to talk to
people. You pick up the phone to make a call and there’s an operator on the other
end and you say “Good morning.” Or say you want to find something out, you go
down to the library and Mrs. Shinn looks it up in the Dewey Decimals. There’s a
separate store for meat, and fish, and fruit, and a gent behind each counter who
knows your name. A man brings the milk every morning.
In the modern world, I used to make it through half the day without talking to a
single soul. I used to have it so easy. And now, looking back – I realize how lonely I
was.
_____________
THE JACKSONIAN
By Beth Henley
PERCH
Oh God, God, God. Things have gotten they are going down the hill. She’s divorcing me. Susan.
She is. (He inhales nitrous oxide) I can see why. I tried to adjust to the professional life be a
good husband and father. I seem like a friendly man. But I stopped going along with the program.
Phil Boone but before that other things chloroform before that… Phil Boonse had a smell like
dead skin and garbage. Came in with an impacted third molar. He was hurting, throbbing. Whole
side of his mouth swollen with fever, infection. Didn’t like showing his weakness. Started in
claiming to be in on bombing the Negro church in Meridian. Bragged he lit the match. I thought I’d
give him some ether to help remove the pain of extraction. He kept removing the mask, kept
talking, telling me it was time to dynamite the synagogue, go blow up the rabbi’s house. I
prepared a shot of Sodium Pentothal because he needed to go under the wire. I take in some of
the nitrous oxide to lighten my mood. (He snorts cocaine) And I pulled out all of his teeth! The
molars, the fangs, central and lateral incisors. I’m used to blood on my hands, on my smock. A
lot of blood comes from the mouth. It’s full of veins. My secretary, Miss Burwell, helped me clean
up. I explained it was an emergency. The teeth were life threatening and had to be extracted or
Mr. Boone’s chances of survival were some percent that wasn’t much. I couldn’t stop laughing.
She never came back, Miss Burwell. Although she did call Mrs. Boone to come pick up her
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husband. It took a while for the lawyers and dentist examiners to get their ducks in a row. Now
things have gotten bad. I’ve been hoping for some deus ex machina. Allowing the winds of
oblivion to prevail. Oblivion. Has a good smell. Smells like chloroform. Ever tried it? Chloroform?
____________
BOOM
by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb
JULES
I only lived there till I was five. Kansas. Then we moved.
My mom, two sisters and me did. My dad stayed. Sort of. I mean, I was five so I don’t really know
the actual details, you know, he, um, well he stayed in Kansas. But left. In a way, I guess. More
like sucked up. And then dropped. Into a field.
He wasn’t really happy. Before. Hated being a weatherman. I think he hated Kansas. I
remember that much. My 5yearold intuitive sense of…grief.
Anyway, we moved to Florida. Which, at least in my opinion, was much nicer than Kansas. For
a while. Until, well, until my sister decided to run outdoors in a hurricane right when a palm
tree decided that it couldn’t stay in the ground anymore, and my mom, other sister and I moved
to Kenya. “Let’s start fresh! Let’s get away from it all” my mom said. Although the “all” we
were getting away from apparently didn’t include malaria, and the fevers that malaria causes and
the hallucinations that the fever causes and the hyenas that wait outside of medical tents ready
to pounce on weak young flesh staggering out in a dream, and soon my mom and I moved here,
where we’ve lived ever since. Except for my mom, who couldn’t have picked a worse time to go
on a tour of unreinforced masonry in California. And here I am.
Where are you from?
______________
BOOM
by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb
JULES
Hello there. Hello hello hello. One two three four,
you’re all there.
I can’t believe it. I mean, I can. My data. My sweet, handsome, accurate data. But then I was
surrounded by all that naysaying and negativity.
Scientists are such doubters. “Show me proof”, “Did you think of this? Did you factor this?” I
mean, sure you gotta question but, come on, stop being jealous and take a leap once in a while!
But guess who’s right now, Professor Vandikamp? Who’s your favorite coauthor now? Have
another Diet Coke ‘cause hello, Vindication!
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Bittersweet, of course. I mean this is pretty severe. And terrible. Devastating. Mmm… We
should have a ceremony, you know, light a candle. Remember the favorite things that are
gone. Ice cream. What do you miss, Jo?
___________
BOOM
by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb
JULES
You suck happiness from a room. Like a vacuum that never loses suction. You’re mean.
You’re atmospherically unpleasant. And you’re physically abusive.
I reject your phobia. I don’t think you care enough about anything to really be a bigot. You just
like to say bad words.
What you do believe in? What do you love? Is there anything that lights your candle or are you
just Lady Scoffington of Hate Manor! Hi, I’m Lady Scoffington and I turn gold to shit and in my
spare time I chisel words onto precious little tablets and waxywane about all the scoffy
faggy hatefulness!
Write write write write write write write run to door boom motherfucker motherfucker write write
write write write write write.
For someone who says they want to die all the time, you’re not very good at it. Running into a
door? Clearly not effective.
Almost grabbing the car battery, almost drinking formaldahyde, throwing debris in the air but
collapsing out of the way before you get hit by it. And seriously, putting your arm in a fish tank is a
pathetic way to end your days.
_____________
CIVILIZATION
By Jason Grote
DAVID
I suppose I should just get right to the difficult part, which is basically.
I was.
Engaging in autoerotic asphyxiation, which, I’m assuming everyone knows what that is, but it’s
important for me to explain it out loud so that I myself hear the words, because an important part
of this is for me to humiliate myself in front of you.
Further humiliate myself, I should say.
What I was doing was choking myself with a belt and masturbating.
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I had done this a few times already.
Probably fewer than ten, over the course of the past eight months or so.
I would space it out, partially because I was aware of how dangerous it was, and I had this sense
that I really did not want to die this way, but also because I wanted to keep it special, like a
special occasion.
I was worried that it would be, that it would be subject to the law of diminishing returns and that I
eventually would start doing it every day, or worse, I would start engaging in some sort of more
extreme behavior or something.
I wish I could say that there was some kind of more profound connection here, some sort of
Frenchsounding idea where having an orgasm in the immediate proximity of death would make
the experience more meaningful, but the truth of it is it just felt good.
______
CIVILIZATION
By Jason Grote
DAVID
The actual details of that Sunday are not particularily exceptional.
I was doing this, autoerotic asphyxiation, I lost consciousness, I was out for a short period of
time, my roommate found me and assumed it was a suicide attempt, she called 911, I am lucky
to have escaped without significant brain damage, I have no medical insurance, I now have
exorbitant hospital bills, thus I am compelled to take whatever work I can get, including a
partiularly lucrative national commerical that is part of an ad campaign I believe to be racist and
stupid, and also everyone I know thinks that I am depressed and that I attempted suicide, I don’t
know if I’m depressed or not, but I don’t think I am.
I have to admit that I take some sort of perverse pleasure in the fact that everyone I know
assumes this, and that they’re afraid to ask me the details, and the more silent I remain about it,
the more they seem to embellish the story in their own minds. I suppose it offers a sort of
palliative to my shame.
I imagine that whatever the stories in people’s heads are, they are infinitely more tender
and...noble? No, not noble, but poignant, more tender and poignant than the actual real story,
which is plainly just stupid.
I am not sure exactly what kind of life I ever imagined for myself, but it obviously was not as
stupid as this. How could it have been?
Anyway in the hospital I covalesced for a few days.
I watched a lot of television.
Prior to that event I did not know that hospitals billed you for the use of their televisions.
I probably would have tried to watch things that were better.
After these few days it was decided that I was sufficiently whatever enough to be discharged and
I decided to walk home, partially because I knew that the next chapter of my life was going to be
very much about saving whatever money I could, and partially because it was sunny day and I
just felt like walking and I’d like to say that I had some sort of epiphany, some kind of glorious
realization about the beauty of the world or the finite nature of our lives or something to that
13
effect, but no.
I did not, and do not, feel anything in particular since that event except perhaps for a vague
unease.
______
CIVILIZATION
By Jason Grote
DAVID
But I will say this, that everything I saw in that walk home, everything I laid eyes on in that first
chapter of the new life I never asked for, on the other side of the unwanted divider between life
before the event and life after the event it was all extraordinarily vivid, almost garish.
Walking home, I noticed all of the things in the gutters and at the outer edges othe lawns, those
stripes of lawn between the sidewalk and the curb, whatever you call them.
All the things I saw, paper cups, plastic shopping bags, cigarette butts, runoff from sprinklers,
ants, weeds growing through cracks in the concrete, all of them seemed blindly, alarmingly lucid.
I stood staring at this one small accumulation of trash behind the right rear tire of an old tan
Chrysler New Yorker that was parked on the street.
I remember the full inventory of stuff: an empty can that once held either an energy drink or malt
liquor, I couldn’t tell which, and a few more cigarette buts and a plastic doll’s arm.
The arm was brown and furry and covered in part of a purple robe.
I knew that it belonged to Splinter, the rat who mentored the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
I stared at this pile of objects for what felt like close to ten minutes, while I began to feel
selfconscious, like I would be noticed and people would become angry with me, or they could
call the police.
And so I moved on.
________
THE SMALL
by Anne Washburn
DUNCAN
As long as someone, somewhere, is thinking about the ending of the world, it won’t. There’s a
scientific explanation, having to do with very complicated physics, about the importance, even
the necessity, of being unexpected. I know it’s a math somewhere; I’ve observed it in my life:
what you anticipate and or reply upon, will not occur.
There are monks somewhere – there are civilians, too, obviously, everywhere, in some part of
the world it’s 3am and where it’s 3am to 4am there are humans awake and thinking dark
thoughts which will inevitably include the apocalypse.
But there is also the ocean. The dark dark ocean. And 3am to 4am passes over it for several
hours unpopulated. There’s the occasional ocean liner, with its fair share of nocturnal angst, the
occasional native outrigger with a dark man in it heavy with foreboding. But there’s a gap, there
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can be gaps, there can be coincidences, snowstorms lightning showers, periods of unreal rest
where for a millisecond no one is thinking about the end, and in that moment, it occurs. That’s
why there are monks, that’s why there are monasteries, before that there were people in caves,
in the desert – there are still people in caves, in deserts, some organized, some impromptu,
hermits, but that’s dying out as a way of life, and we should all be concerned about that.
The dark, the doom, the rending, the sorrow of it, the joy of it the overall, the overall – what’s that
word?
Shit.
What’s that word?
I’m thinking, it’s specific. Not regal. No. Oh:
Splendor.
We’ll see crazy colors. Colors will break open and there will be new colors inside of them. We
will see animals from other planets. And new music. For a moment everything will be so new
that we’ll understand how limited our palate – of color, sound, form – was before this moment.
All of those things where we’re like well this is so different from that. Heavy Metal is entirely
different from stuff worked up with a harp and a caterpillar is nothing like a rhino in that moment
we’ll understand that what everything that used to be miles apart (He holds his hands out, a solid
foot and a half apart.) is actually this (Torques his hand: forefinger and middle only a few
centimeters apart.) close from each other, in relation to all of this – (He spreads out his arms as
far as they go.). Our minds are gonna boggle, and then they’ll end.
________
NIGHTNIGHT
by Lucas Hnath
TOM
She says 6 months is a long time,
I say it’s not that long,
she says you don’t need to go,
and I say I do
she says why
I say to fix the space station
she says why
I say because it’s broken
and she says “why is that important, why do you?”
15
I say, if I don’t go they’ll think I’m useless,
they’ll think I’m and someone else will get my slot on this mission,
and I won’t get the slot I normally get, they’ll give it to
acts like this mission’s no big deal and I said you’re wrong, it is a big deal,
and she said, I know you think it’s a big deal but it’s not a big deal,
not as big a deal as you think, because people don’t care,
not as much as you think they do no one cares about astronauts and what astronauts do,
She said, no one even knows the names of astronauts, no one knows who you are
except for the first ones, the first ever astronauts and the ones who went to the moon
and the ones that get blown up in space shuttle explosions
and I said they’ll know who I am, and they’ll know my name,
and they’ll know because someday, if I keep going the way I’m going,
I’ll be one of the first ones who goes to Mars
when the time comes to when we can go to Mars, when we and she says,
she tells me if I go on this mission, this 6 month mission were about to go on
she says that if I go on this mission,
then when I come back she’ll be gone and
but it’s my job, this is what I do,
__________
NIGHTNIGHT
by Lucas Hnath
ALEX
Sometimes I
don’t think you like me
like me better than he likes me
he hates me.
You don’t hate me,
but you don’t like me.
but if you’re neutral with me
but better than neutral with him
then I might have a problem, I might
I know something,
I know something that you and him are trying to keep secret from
an’ if I say something about it,
16
and if nobody believes me,
then I look like the bad guy,
I look like the difficult one,
but I know I’m right,
and if I tell them what I saw,
they would not believe
I am not difficult
I am not.
I am very easy, and I
He’s a mess
Screwing up
and you know it
and I know you know it, he’s not handling this mission well,
he’s not
I have seen him working,
then stop,
and for a long time
just stop, his eyes closed,
and you see him eyes closed,
and you nudge back, nudge him awake, and
down there, they do not know about this,
but I know,
and you know,
but you haven’t told them.
______
NIGHTNIGHT
by Lucas Hnath
TOM
I sleep all night now, but when I sleep, it’s all
nightmares
terrible nightmares,
nightmares about the space walk
17
that’s happening in 3 days
2 days
that’s happening tomorrow
every night, same nightmare.
where I’m out there
in the suit
and the tether breaks.
In the dream, I never see how it breaks
or why it breaks,
but that’s what happens,
every time: the tether breaks,
and I try to grab onto the edge of the ship
but I miss
and I just keep going
farther and farther from the space craft.
And my suit is equipped with a nitrogen blast.
And I fire it and hope it sends me back in the direction of the space craft.
But every time it either doesn’t fire
or it misfires
or it fires but it fires me in the wrong direction.
And so I keep floating because there’s nothing to stop me.
But I have my radio,
and I have about 45 minutes of oxygen left in my primary tank,
and I can hear mission control and they can hear me.
and the people on earth, in mission control,
they can patch me through to
maybe a girlfriend or something.
And I try calling but she doesn’t pick up.
So I try calling one of the other girlfriends,
but she’s not home.
And I ask mission control to play me a song or something,
but in the dream, they don’t have any of the music that I like,
and so I sit in silence and look around
and I can see the stars,
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and the stars look different because
all I have is a thin visor between me and the stars
and I can see what starlight really looks like
and real starlight is all sorts of colors like red and purple and blue.
And when my 45 minutes of oxygen run out,
I have a choice: I can let them run out
or I can switch to me secondary tank,
and that will give me another 2 hours
and I can use that extra time to call my mother and say goodbye
or I could just keep drifting off and looking at the stars,
but whether or not I switch to those secondary tanks,
either way,
eventually, the oxygen will run out.
And when it runs out, it runs out gradually.
And when it runs out, I start to feel myself fading,
my vision becomes hazy,
and the one sun looks like two blurry suns.
And I look at our space craft,
and the space craft now looks like a tiny white speck,
a small point of light, way far away,
but a “far away” that seems sort of close
and easy to get to,
except I’m too tired to try,
and that feels good,
because that’s how the brain tells you to feel
in moments like that,
that’s how and I feel sleepy,
and I feel slow,
and I feel hazy,
and I feel nice.
And then my brain shuts off.
And soon after,
so do I.
And then
that’s when I wake up.
_________
LOBBY HERO
by Kenneth Longergan
WILLIAM
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My brother’s fucked up. He’s always been a fuckup. Always been selfish. Always been wild and
selfish: you know the type. Living like a spirit or what have you, while everybody else is trying to
work. You know the type? I mean I don’t know, man. Sometimes you just have to wash your
hands of a person. Because you just get no recompense. You know that I mean there, Jeff? You
must know what I mean. You’ve seen something of the world. I’ve never seen anything of the
world. I’ve been working for the security firms since I was 16 years old. Do you know I’m the
youngest captain in the history of this firm? But I’m square, man. You know? I’m square. I’m no
fun.
And I will bust your ass, all you guys, if you mess up on my shifts, because I don’t let people
mess up on my shifts. That’s how I got to be the youngest captain in the history of this fucking no
account security firm. I can’t believe some of the people they hire, man. Can you? I man Did you
happen to see that article in The New York Times about security companies in New York City?
Guys with long prison records, rapists, murders, anybody at all who can sign his name they stick
a gun on his waist and set him up to protect somebody. You want to explain that insanity to me? I
personally got rid of three guys they had working for this company, man, because these guys
were just outandout criminals. You can’t just hire anybody who looks like he can manhandle a
person, you know?
______
LOBBY HERO
by Kenneth Longergan
JEFF
Yeah. It’s actually a really amazing story. Ship hits an old mine at 2 o’clock in the morning, 233
guys trapped below decks. Everybody jumps overboard except my old man. He finds a
blowtorch, goes below decks in the pitch dark, the ship is goin’ like this (makes a steep incline
with his hands) these guys are screamin’ for their lives, there’s water comin’ up to his elbows…
two minutes before the ship goes down he cuts open the bulkhead, everybody gets out. 23 guys
he saved, not one of ‘em drowned.
Yeah: I know it is impressive, because my whole like I gotta hear this fuckin’ story. Several times
a year as you can probably imagine, over and over and over again. Every year when I was a kid
they had this big gettogether in New Jersey; they send flowers, cards, whiskey, cigars, all these
old guys and their wives and kids and grandkids who they never woulda had all cryin’ and kissin’
my old man and makin’ speeches about what a great guy he is. And I’m like, Yeah, that’s
because you only gotta see the guy once a year, for like three and a half hours at a time. Any of
you morons tried living with this guy for two days you’d throw him in the fucking ocean and drown
him yourself. Asshole. Maybe if my ship woulda blown up I woulda got a better start in life.
Anyway, so naturally when I got kicked out the guy won’t even talk to me. And I don’t mean for a
few days. I mean he never talked to me again. He don’t want my mother talking to me, I got
nowhere to live, I bum around like a ….bum. I gotta move in with Markty, which is totally
humiliating. My old man dies, thank God I can’t get a job, I try to work up a little stake playing
poker, I turn around I got the Goddamn loan sharks comin’ after me, I gotta borrow five thousand
dollars from my brother to keep me from getting my legs broken. I date this girl, it turns out she
used to be a prostitute. So ok, nobody’s perfect. Then it turns out she’s still a prostitute, only now
20
she does it “on the side,” whatever the hell that means. I break up with her, I’m scared I’m gonna
get AIDS, I can’t meet anybody
And then, William, then, I come to you, William, and with your beautiful generosity, you give me
this job, you take a little interest in me, and look at me now: I’m payin’ my own rent to Marty,
buyin’ my own groceries. I’m lookin’ around for my own place, which’ll be the first time i had my
own home in 6 years. My own little living room where I can sit and watch TV: a nice little kitchen I
can cook my own meals in… Invite a girl over for dinner and be the only one there with here. And
I’m a healthy happy member of the work force for 9 months straight come Friday. And I’ll tell you
something else, man, my spirit is OK. I don’t have a broken spirit. I just want to stick it out here
for at least a year, so I can really get that under my belt just for my own just psychologically.
______
LOBBY HERO
by Kenneth Longergan
BILL
I see a little girl wearin’ a police uniform. OK? I see a little girl from the neighborhood who some
moron told her she could be a cop. But she’s not a cop right now. But if somebody takes a shot
at her, or somebody else’s life depends on her, they’re not gonna know she’s not a cop. They’re
gonna think she knows what she’s doing. She walks around the corner where somebody’s tryin’
to rob somebody or rape somebody or kill somebody, they’re not gonna know she’s a little girl in
a cop suit: they’re gonna see a badge and a uniform and a gun and they’re gonna blow a hole
through her fuckin’ head. Somebody runs up to her and asks her to help ’em she’s not gonna
help ‘em, she’s gonna look around and say “where’s Bill? Where’s Bill?” that’s me: I’m Bill. Now,
I could tell that girl likes me. It’s only natural. I’m her partner, I’m a big strong father figure,
whatever, gotta lot of experience, gotta lotta confidence, I’m know what I’m fuckin’ doin and
that’s attractive to a woman, it’s attractive to anybody. So she’s attracted to me. That’s OK.
She’s human. I’m human. But maybe part of what I’m doin’, part of buildin’ her confidence is
makin’ her feel like I’m interested in her too. Maybe that makes her feel impressive. Maybe her
feel cocky., makes her feel like she’s got somethin’ on the ball. Makes her feel like she’s really a
cop. Now, do I need you tellin’ her I’m upstairs havin’ sex with somebody on my shift so she can
think I’m some kind of fuckin’ maniac who’s just messin’ with her head, so she can lose all her
confidence in me and consequently all her confidence in herself? Because of your big fuckin’
flappin’ fuckin’ mouth? And then go out and get herself killed? Or me? Or somebody else? This
is not a game. We’re not doormen. We’re policemen. Yeah, I know, we’re terrible and everything,
but we’re playin’ with our lives, and the lives of the people we’re supposed to protect. So I don’t
appreciate the fun I guess you’re havin’ at my expense and more importantly at her expense,
while you’re sittin’ around here twiddlin’ your fuckin’ thumbs and waiting for, uh, William to come
around and make his rounds so you can go to sleep. OK?