Incident 2: PILLS
Time: 8-9 minutes
Characters include GUY (-), DUDE (A), CHORAGOS (=), CHORISTER (^), and HAT GUY (Jim.). During this incident, HAT GUY plays music. When CHORAGOS talks, CHORISTER should sing dramatically, and vice versa.
GUY and DUDE enter, set up chairs. GUY sits down, DUDE is standing. GUY has a paperback copy of Moby-Dick and a saxophone.
In darkness, the CHORISTER and CHORAGOS will intone syllables in a drone, perhaps a monotone.
(GUY turns on the light as he says his first line.)
-(very drowsy) I feel like I haven’t slept since April.
A. What happened?
(The following section is read in a very dramatic style, possibly with improvised melodies. GUY plays the sax. DUDE should occasionally throw in "Sure" or "Cool." If the musicians like, they can abruptly cut the music each time someone other than CHORAGOS or CHORISTER talks.)
-I had this dream. (yawns, closes eyes)
^I was back at college.
A man was using party fliers to decorate a wall.
I walked around and found outdated posters for his plan.
I noticed one from an event
that took place many years ago. I thought I’d been
to it as a student, but I could not be sure.
=How many of my student days are lost!
As important as they were, all I retain are scratchy memories.
As a freshman—the choices I made that first month of my first year have changed everything.
The person I am is quite different from the person I planned to be.
^My first thought when I woke up was:
"I’ll use my diaries and books of to-do lists
to reconstruct exactly what happened
each day of my first month at school.
I’ll see how each relationship and each bold plan developed."
Because if I could understand how these choices came about,
I might have a better handle on my life right now.
A. That’s very true. About choices. The thing that gives a choice its power is its "pastness." The fact that it is a cause, no longer an effect.
-Where d’you get this from?
A. It’s what you just said!
-Choices affect my life? Thank you.
A. Therefore, since all choices are equally "non-present," any choice is as powerful as any other. If you understood the effects of the choices you made in the past, the circumstances and all, you could make choices now that would directly counteract them.
-That’s not true at all. (pause)
A. No, this is really a powerful—
-Hold on, give me a second to wake up. (beat) If a choice was made under unique circumstances, which most choices are, it may be impossible to negate the choice. If I cut off my arm, I carried out that act under the circumstances of me having that arm. Afterwards, I don’t have that arm, so I can’t make any choices under the circumstances of having that arm. And really, though I’m disappointed to realize this, I can’t very well replicate the circumstances of my college days. There is a certain level of naïveté that is both irretrievable and annoying.
A. Yes, but if you understand those circumstances, you can recreate them through other choices. Like you are the one responsible for your past, and by extension your present.
-Yes, but there is a difference between making choices in light of the past, and making choices that interact directly with the past in some pseudo-mystical way. Nostalgia accomplishes nothing.
A. If I became a heavy drinker years ago because I decided it made me look tough, and I decided today that it made me look pathetic, I’d lose my craving for alcohol, right?
-That depends.
A. (takes book) If I had a cyst removed from my forearm three years ago, which I did, I could make a decision now that would cancel out my original decision to have surgery, right?
-No!
(DUDE shoves book up sleeve. Both characters should ignore the business with the book. GUY examines "cyst.")
-Remarkable insight.
A. I’ve had a lot of time for introspection. Anyway, if I make a decision in the present on the basis of the past, once the decision passes into the past it’s an equal factor in the makeup of the present. (looks at arm) At the time they said it was benign.
(DUDE removes book from sleeve. GUY examines newly healed arm.)
- Try something else! Like don’t you regret (beat) your decision not to have become a multi-millionaire?
A. One decision that disturbs me was that I moved to the East Coast after graduation. I should have moved to (pause) Romania.
-Excellent!
(HAT MAN in Tyrolean cap strolls past.)
Jim. (Tips hat, speaks cordially) Cum îti vei gãti!
-This is amazing! I don’t understand but my mind feels like it’s on fire but this is too cool! The birds are singing. So can you explain this? I mean, isn’t this like some science fiction thing? Where since you moved to Romania you never visited—
(HAT MAN, standing at the edge of the light, turns, pulls out a submachine gun, and levels it at the pair.)
Jim. (shouting as a command) Asa vei prânzi!
(GUY and DUDE raise their hands. GUY drops his hand for a moment and turns out the lamp. Exeunt.)
The HAT MAN said, in Romanian, "As you bake! So shall you eat!" I don’t know the correct pronunciation.