Characters
NORMAD
Any gender, older than young, haggard and wearing tattered clothing; their hair is an absolute mess.
V LLOYD
Man, mid forties, classy/sophisticated type, he wears white shoes and a mustache.
*Italics are used when Normad is talking to themselves/audience.
Scene I: Trash Life
(NORMAD and V LLOYD are staring each other down in an alley, near dumpsters.)
NORMAD
I instantly didn’t trust him. No, not this one. His seemed like the sort with morals that could sway. He wore serial killer shoes and clothes that looked ordered. He had an air of mania, the upswing-ing redemption of proactive depression. Keep it controlled, on his terms; he didn’t want the real. Nobody wants the real; it comes in too hot. I knew his type. I know everyone’s type…enough to know we all fit one. Nothing can ever be different or new, except the random.
(Normad sifts through trash.)
NORMAD
He was going to ask me what I was doing here. Fair. I often wondered myself.
V LLOYD
Why are you here?
NORMAD
I’m on vacation…
V LLOYD
You don’t say.
NORMAD
I did already, and isn’t everyone?
V LLOYD
On vacation? I am, but then, I earned it. Many sacrifices, many gold stars, endless plastic exchanges.
NORMAD
A life can be boiled down in a pile of peanuts.
V LLOYD
Life isn’t peanuts, friend.
NORMAD
It’s pretty nutty though.
V LLOYD
Peanuts are the only things that you can boil and they stay exactly the same, in no way altered…not like eggs. Have you tried them both? It’s uncanny of peanuts. Eggs I get. They’re totally altered. Cabbage? Also turns different. But peanuts? No. Why go through the whole boiling process to have them turn out so similar? It makes no sense. Or does it?
NORMAD
Not sure. I don’t frequent the circus.
V LLOYD
But you’re here, you’re in it, right now. This is the spectacle we seek. Freaks for days.
NORMAD
I am one of them, but not the them.
V LLOYD
Who do you think the them is?
NORMAD
Who’s to say?
V LLOYD
Why do you say that?
NORMAD
Because I should.
V LLOYD
A mild answer, but it’s probably more about ethics than you realize. Of course ethics was my major in college—I minored in majorities. They both play a major part in my minor adult life…You go to school? I’ve been schooled, but I think it meant I was supposed to be insulted. Jokes on them though: you can’t insult someone who insults himself first. (notices Normad’s mind drifting) You seem like you know something, some things; you’ve obviously been places. I’ve been places too (wracking brain) I really can’t place the places, at this time and place…how bout we say the places we’ve been at the same time and see if we match! Okay? Okay, ready…go!
(*Say simultaneously*)
*V LLOYD*
Europe! Asia! Africa!
*NORMAD*
Northeast Dumpster Fire!
V LLOYD
Smart ass…
NORMAD
Sorry, I’ve never been there.
V LLOYD
I bet…and I do bet often, on things that can’t lose. You should try it. Just bet on something that will never fail…
NORMAD
It’s gonna be red-seven every time.
V LLOYD
I was thinking something beyond the casino floor.
NORMAD
Nothing will ever change my luck or ever increase my odds.
V LLOYD
Would be tough to increase your odd—ness.
NORMAD
What are you after?
V LLOYD
Where you’ve been, who you’ve been?
NORMAD
I was once successful, now I ride the success of others.
V LLOYD
Those who can’t do, teach. Never liked that one because those that do, wouldn’t be able to teach without first learning how to do. Of course, from there, yes the teachers get the one-uppery, the humiliating sting of the surpassing youth—that’s gotta burn…but at least legacy is involved, so life was less of a total waste. This is also why people procreate. You have the teachers, those who are taught, and then there are the naturals. There is no expression for them. Eh. You either got it, or you don’t. You were born to play, ya natural you! I guess there are a couple. There’s an expression for everything. Life is never too complex to sum up simply in a few words. Ask a fortune cookie. Still seems embarrassing that so much could be so peanut-boiled down though.
(Normad looks around for, presumably, a sundial.)
NORMAD
Watch the time but the hour never comes. I’ve been all these places before. Is there anything else? Another sidle, the others….the space with the other sides. The them waits.
(Normad lies on the ground.)
NORMAD
Never trust the credibility of what you’re experiencing—hearing, seeing, doing. All could be deception. The narrator could be crazy, and so could you.
V LLOYD
So, you don’t often bet, do you Normad?
NORMAD (sits up)
How do you…?
V LLOYD
Everybody knows who you are. Everyone except you.
(Normad looks annoyed, then stares off at their foot.)
NORMAD
My toenail is about to fall off; I guess from nail polish that I never bothered to take off. I didn’t bother because I don’t care, about anything, in case there was still any confusion about that. I now suffer the effects of my inaction, as we all must. Do nothing but things keep happening. That happens, but not hard enough, often enough, to make me change. I ended up tying together the nail with a piece of dental floss and a hope strand, but I feel it coming off again…it’s going down and so am I. I’m losing my whiskers, myself, my myopia. My liver is a patient coffin, my lungs…the dregs of sawdust.
V LLOYD
Are you okay there?
NORMAD
OK is two empty letters, trapped in a meaningless alphabet, created by those who had vision, who thought we could do better than we were doing.
V LLOYD
OK’s not even in sequential alphabetical order so that would be extra meaningless, eh?
(Normad’s distracted again.)
V LLOYD
Do you have friends?
NORMAD
My best friend is a piece of driftwood I found at a deserted beach-like trash heap. I call him Sticky. He gets it, for the most part. I mean, we get along alright. Sometimes I stare and I wonder if he’s becoming unreliably unrelatable, just like them all. I barely wake up and I never remember falling asleep. Passing through it all but I must still be alive, or so says Sticky. But not the others: the them. I try to avoid these them. They spring up though, following as a reminder, begging me to consume, comply, engage, as if that’s all there is to it.
(Normad gets up to scavenge for food.)
V LLOYD
I see…so this conversation is still transpiring or…?
NORMAD
I just told you about him.
V LLOYD
I was thinking along the lines of things that aren’t made out of wood. Maybe something with a pulse?
NORMAD
My serial killer had observed my scavenging, in body and in mind. Sometimes it upsets people, but who are they? I prevent waste, cause no harm. They buy, buying-in to the nothing when they’re told to, a triumph for disposability, preserved without preservation—lots of packaging—is what I’m getting at. I only feed myself. They feed darkness, but it’s hard to see that, cause it’s so dark and all.
V LLOYD
Why are you here?
NORMAD
Where else would I be?
V LLOYD
You have your usual spots and this isn’t them.
NORMAD
You know stuff.
V LLOYD
Enough to be charming, yet creepy. I’ve got at least one of those words covered…
NORMAD
Thought I would make a change today, with this spot…maybe with everything.
V LLOYD
Something will always change…and always for the worse, because you’re always getting older. That’s just a reality. The greatest times were youth, and not your first outings either, with school and friends; it’s those memories you can’t remember, those throughout fully content infancy days.
(Normad stops at trash hunting and almost listens.)
V LLOYD
Whata cruel joke for the forgotten times to be the best ones…
NORMAD
I should go now.
V LLOYD
Can I buy you a sandwich?
NORMAD
That sounds too luxury for my filth.
V LLOYD (grabbing Normad by shoulders)
Today you will live! And you will live for something! And you will want to! And there will be a sandwich!
(Lights out. They walk, sit down.)
Scene II: The Wurst Diner
(Lights up. Normad and V Lloyd sit in a brightly-lit restaurant.)
NORMAD
This restaurant is cold, in temp and mind. Artificial air perks me in an unsettling way. Not into it. I prefer a consensual perking. This must be how the them live.
(Normad looks around nervously.)
NORMAD
I should have left by now. Anyone reasonable woulda, but I’m not reasonable. Which is all pretty relative anyways. We create their rules for ourselves, enforce them and follow, but we’re the ones who decide what normal is, even if it isn’t.
(Normad looks up at V Lloyd.)
NORMAD
This fellow ghost having some regard for me is bizarrely fresh. It stirs me, or is that the future acid reflux? Was I having sympathy pains again? The physical is 90% metaphysical. Super meta. I think someone made that up. Someone makes up everything there is to explain. Regardless, he seemed to need a friend. What a sucker.
V LLOYD
I have a proposition for you.
NORMAD
Creepy opening, no doubt about that.
(Normad smiles and nods, slumps over, then consensually perks up.)
NORMAD
Here it comes, the perpetual grossness.
V LLOYD
Pardon…?
NORMAD
I don’t do those…propositions.
V LLOYD
You don’t do much of anything do you?
NORMAD
Not if I can help it.
V LLOYD
Do you think you help anyone?
NORMAD
Not anymore.
V LLOYD
What about yourself?
NORMAD
Is that rhetorical? Was that rhetorical? No, there’s nowhere good to go from here…only heartbreaking acceptance.
V LLOYD
I don’t accept that. The more you resist, the more it hurts—that’s what’s great about it. And that applies to political activism too. And assaulty stuff. (Beat.) Do you find yourself either looking at everything and thinking nothing or—
NORMAD (head down)
Looking at nothing and thinking everything.
V LLOYD
Well that’s gotta mean something.
(Normad spaces out and shrugs.)
V LLOYD
Do you like liverwurst? And don’t say it’s the worst.
NORMAD
It’s not the best…
V LLOYD
No fear, I would never clever-wordsmith-you like that. I could never dreammm of achieving that level of clever. Never level of clever. Never clever level…that’s really not easy…but why would I ever say that? In that exact way? Oh words…
NORMAD
Ummm…
V LLOYD
So, you do?
NORMAD
Hmm?
V LLOYD
Do you like the worst of the liver, or, as many would deem it—I being one of these manys—the best of the liver? The best of course being the wurst. Simple query.
(V Lloyd gets up and walks near offstage.)
V LLOYD
Do you eat food?
NORMAD
I’m a human, aren’t I? No really, I’m curious.
(V Lloyd nods at Normad. A hand reaches out from offstage to present sandwich. V. Lloyd gropes blindly, intensely staring at Normad until he finally grasps the plate.)
V LLOYD
I’m not sure. The them has been gripping people a lot lately. Haven’t you noticed?
NORMAD
I choose not to notice things.
NORMAD
I have noticed though. How could you not? He’s talking about the them. I thought he was one.
V LLOYD
You’re completely right in saying that it’s a choice—to notice things. You choose not to see what disrupts the cogs, as if something or someone could control the very experience of you consciously existing.
(V Lloyd takes a bite of his sandwich and looks away from Normad.)
V LLOYD
It’s just verbal coating and you seek the main source. Silver dropplings. Bronze delights. Crimson treatlings. I shall use that bit….bite.
(V Lloyd bites sandwich, then looks distracted.)
V LLOYD
You do know more than you think.
NORMAD (looking down)
I don’t think so.
(V Lloyd lifts their chin up.)
V LLOYD
Eat defeat.
(He takes an angry bite and Normad looks back down.)
V LLOYD
You hear me? You get it? You understand?!
(Normad pauses before taking a bite of their sandwich.)
NORMAD
Liverwurst is not the worst. Let’s just leave it at that.
V LLOYD
Did you observe how I don’t even have to order here? This waitress reads my mind because she’s one of the them, the no ones who have been gripped. It’s difficult to tell though. What you think?
NORMAD
I treasure the moments I have free of thinking.
(They stare at each other.)
V LLOYD
What are you trying to forget?
NORMAD
Nothing I can’t remember.
V LLOYD
I know there’s more.
NORMAD
There’s always more.
(Normad takes a bite, painfully slow.)
NORMAD
I was happy once. That will do terrible things to a person.
V LLOYD
Can’t be so bad. You’ve made it here. You’re still moving, you’re still a good…one.
NORMAD
I’m scum.
V LLOYD
I find most to be scum. Disingenuous, self-fulfilling, scum buckets. I enjoy realness—yours, even if it’s like this. It’s refreshing to hear it but not to feel it. You exude pathetic and you don’t pretend you’re more than you are. That’s rare. Fine things are rare, that’s why everyone loves them. They’re rare because everyone likes them and takes them. Or maybe they were rare originally and that is what people find likeable.
NORMAD
Everyone wants to be more than they are but no one is anything.
V LLOYD
Exactly! Sort of. Brilliant!…mostly. Painless tragedy, unfazed apathy! Untrained nihilism! Unhinged bleakness! It’s all very excellent!
(Normad does not react.)
V LLOYD
I wish I could live you somehow. Just having this (motions a circle around the two of them) can’t be enough for a merry go round ride on this universal trip. People get cut off before they know knowing.
(He grabs Normad’s hand. Normad does not resist.)
NORMAD
If you want to kill me at the end of this sandwich, I won’t try to stop you. I only ask that it be painful, so at least I might feel something, before I feel nothing.
(V Lloyd chuckles.)
(Normad stares at V Lloyd. Normad slowly puts their head down in their hands, holding back a sob.)
V LLOYD
You’re the poster child for misery. Never saw anyone that wished they were an abortion. *Ad Lib*
NORMAD (interrupts)
I want to go now.
(Normad gets up and starts to walk away.)
V LLOYD
But your sandwich…
NORMAD
I prefer dumpster and sticky.
V LLOYD
You simply must eat…to live—r. This liver is the flux of the soul—if that’s a thing. Would it kill for you to liver it up a little? Would you like a delivery of the wurst? You gotta live—r in the moment.
(Normad gets up to leave. V Lloyd grabs Normad.)
V LLOYD
Eating is always a good choice. It’s what people do who want to live—r.
NORMAD
I’m tired of eating. Tired of choices. Tired of livering. Tired of everything.
(Normad walks away.)
V LLOYD
In an enlightened way though, right?
(Normad crosses to other side of stage. V Lloyd gives a peculiar look to Normad.)
V LLOYD
You think you can leave this?
(Normad leaves.)
NORMAD
I walked out less hungry but with less inside me. His parting look was so peculiar I almost wanted to return. I didn’t, of course, I don’t do things like that, not anymore. It remains as clear as eyes full of crystal dancing and circles written in chalk dust that: we really didn’t know each other.
V LLOYD
We’re not the them.
NORMAD
Believe me, believe him, believe anything, but don’t trust the THEM.
V LLOYD
We’re the us!
NORMAD
Life is made up of stories remembered, retold; they cut through the living with what they may hold, chaos flukes that burn through forgettable fog of soul, and they remain empty, unknown, without strife. In both story and life, no matter how we play: nothing much happens, there’s nothing much to say.
End of play.
✶✶✶✶
Allison Saft is a creative artist from writing and performance, to music and art. She has a BA in English/Theatre and a MA in Writing for Performance. She wrote, directed, and acted in the 2017 and 2019 New Works short-play series at the Manhattan Repertory Theatre in New York City. Allison has been published in Literary Orphans, Emanations : 2 + 2 = 5, Silver Birch Press, Poetry Nation, Sensible Reason, and others. She is also an active political activist and inactive philosopher. She hopes her writing may act as a vehicle for social change or internal exploration, or at the very least, be read.
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