Scene: Her Ex-Boyfriend
ALAN and MARCIA step up to a line at a popular coffee counter.
ALAN looks over his shoulder.
ALAN: Hey, look -- you see that guy? With the tan jacket? See him? He's been following me for four days.
MARCIA: Mmm...
ALAN: It's so fucking bizarre. I saw him at the downtown library, at the Lemming Ledge, at Rosy's...he follows me everywhere. He waits for me to leave home. He might even call me sometimes; I've been getting these hang-ups...
MARCIA: Can I tell you something?
ALAN: What?
MARCIA: Promise not to get mad?
ALAN: Huh?
MARCIA: He's my ex-boyfriend.
ALAN: Oh my god. Aw, jeez. What a fucking loser. Just what I need, another psychotic obsessive dweeb in my life.
MARCIA: He's not psychotic.
ALAN: Oh, just deeply disturbed?
MARCIA: He is not.
ALAN: He follows me; he calls me up to see if I'm at home.
MARCIA: I asked him to.
ALAN: You what?
MARCIA: Look, you wouldn't understand.
ALAN: You may be right about that.
MARCIA: If you were a woman you would want to take safety precautions as well.
ALAN: Safety pre--
MARCIA: I had to make sure you're the kind of person who's safe to be with. I simply had him follow you to make sure you're not already sleeping with someone, or dealing drugs, or involved with any sort of crime -- anything like that.
ALAN: Ho-ho-ho-ho-hold on a minute: None of that is your business, Marcia.
MARCIA: How can you say that?
ALAN: How...
MARCIA: If I'm going to be intimate with a person, you bet it's my business whether they're a criminal, or whether they're already...morally compromised.
ALAN: I'm...stunned. I mean, this is unfathomable. I mean, him following me is an invasion of privacy. You see? And just because we date doesn't mean you have the right to dig into every little crevice of my life like a fucking KGB agent.
MARCIA: It's just a routine check. Jesus.
ALAN: Furthermore, I'm...what kind of a relationship do you have with this guy? He's your ex but he does this kind of thing for you? How long have you guys been broken up?
MARCIA: Oh, that's really none of your business.
ALAN: But... but it's your business what I do with every second of my life?
MARCIA: The past isn't relevant. The present is. I'm not delving into your personal history.
ALAN: I don't think that's a meaningful distinction.
MARCIA: Although your fling with Johanna last April was pretty tawdry.
ALAN: Oh, now wait a minute here. That's totally unfair. That was a friend of a friend, who needed... some companionship.
MARCIA: Well, for your information, I don't need that kind of companionship.
ALAN: I never thought you did. I...we've been dating for two weeks; I've never tried to sleep with you. I'm totally serious about this. I mean, I'm really interested in you; this isn't some transitory little--
MARCIA: I find it hard to believe that you're really sincere.
ALAN: I am! How can you question that? What have I done to suggest--
MARCIA: Alan, if you're really sincere, you're going to have to let me get to know you.
ALAN: (pause) Fine, you know, I mean...okay. Look, as long as he doesn't directly get in the way. And the past has no relevance, so it's off limits.
MARCIA: Oh? When it sheds light on what's going on right now, I'd say there's relevance.
ALAN: Right, but otherwise. I mean, when it has no relevance...
MARCIA: Then I don't care.
ALAN: Uh...
MARCIA: (gestures) Order for us.
ALAN: Hi. Um, two mochas. For here.
MARCIA: Yeah.
Scene: What're You Doing Here?
ANDY stands at a magazine rack.
JOE walks by with his friend ALAN.
JOE: Well hey, Andy.
ANDY: Hey.
JOE: (pause) What, you're not at home finding a cure for cancer?
ANDY: Uh, no.
JOE: Well, I'm surprised. Here in the mall? Instead of sitting around at home cloning sheep? Cloning Hitler?
ANDY: I'm reading, Joe.
JOE: Oh? What're you reading? Scientific American? Masturbator's Anonymous?
ANDY: Uh, Rolling Stone.
JOE: What, you finished solving all the problems in the universe -- now it's time for a little R and R?
ANDY: Joe...
JOE: I'm disappointed. I heard there was a homeless pigeon somewhere. I thought you might find a cure for it.
ANDY: Joe...
JOE: Andy.
ANDY: Would you mind...?
JOE: Oh, excuse me. I guess I forgot: you're busy unravelling the mysteries of the universe.
ANDY: Look...
JOE: The world just doesn't have enough problems for you. Sorry, I forgot your extraordinary mission. Your Great Scheme for Humankind.
ANDY: Ugh.
JOE: People like me just can't appreciate you. I guess I'm not godlike enough for the likes of you.
ANDY: (pause) Is there something you want?
JOE: Is there something I want?
ANDY: Yeah.
JOE: What, like an autograph? A private conference with your big toe?
ANDY: I really...
JOE: An opportunity to suck your halo?
ANDY: Alright, this is pointless.
JOE: Hey, sorry I bore you, Prince Andy, I guess I'm just not at your ecological level.
ANDY: Excuse me. (exits)
JOE: Superior Beings must have it rough, huh?
ALAN: What a fucking snob.
JOE: (calling after ANDY) Oh, and hey, Andy... you might want to check out Bertucci's -- I hear they have some fine low-fat tofu cigars
Scene: I'd Be Happy With Anyone
SUE and DEB are in an Orange Julius.
SUE: Melissa McCarthy used to work here; she said movie stars came in all the time.
DEB: Here?
SUE: Uh huh. The young ones, especially. But also lots of older stars whose careers were sort of, I dunno, winding down. But mostly the young ones.
DEB: That's hard to believe.
SUE: Seriously.
DEB: A hot dog stand? At a mall in Montabello?
SUE: If you were a celebrity, wouldn't you come here?
DEB: I doubt it.
SUE: No, think about it: you spend all your life around agents and studio execs, around the press, lawyers. You get so sick of the superficiality...you're desperate to find real, ordinary people.
DEB: Hm.
SUE: I mean, all the bullshit, the kissing ass. It suffocates you -- like everything in the National Inquirer is suddenly real, and there's nowhere to hide from all your crazed fans, and everyone wants a piece of you.
DEB: God...
SUE: So where do you go to find real people? Some ordinary, out-of-the-way place, away from all the glamor, excetra.
DEB: Okay.
SUE: I mean, it's places like this where important celebrities come to meet people. Especially when they're -- you know...
DEB: What?
SUE: Well, when they're on the prowl.
DEB: You think so?
SUE: Definitely. It makes perfect sense. And Melissa's met lots of them. She met Johnny Depp.
DEB: Really?
SUE: At this very spot. Wouldn't that be so cool? A raging mega-star comes in to meet real people, and you just happen to be sitting right there, minding your own business, living your ordinary, real life, and suddenly... whoosh.
DEB: I dunno.
SUE: What do you mean?
DEB: I think if a celebrity came in and tried to pick up on me...
SUE: (pause) Oh, come on.
DEB: No.
SUE: You can't be serious.
DEB: I am.
SUE: You'd turn him down?
DEB: I think, I mean: I don't need all that kinda life. I just want someone nice. Who loves me. Someone I can just chill with, you know? I'd be happy with anyone, so I don't need someone all famous and rich.
SUE: (pause) You are truly a degenerate.
DEB: Why?
SUE: You're resigned to mediocrity. Life, life should be one giant orgasm. No, Deb, you're lying: you're just trying to sound all "let's hear it for the little guy."
DEB: No, I'm just saying, what's really important in a relationship you can get with any decent guy who happens to love you. He doesn't--
SUE: Oh, please.
DEB: I'm ser...okay, whatever.
SUE: Admit it, Deb: if the drummer from Primus walked in, your head would spin.
DEB: The drummer from...okay, well, sure that's--
SUE: And if he came up, and if he said, You know, I've been watching you shop and stuff, and keeping my distance but admiring you for like the past hour, and I've decided I can't live without you, but now you have to decide right this very instant whether you'll spend the rest of your life with me. You'd say Yes.
DEB: I'd consider it.
SUE: Admit it: You would say yes.
DEB: I'd--
SUE: Just admit it, dammit.
DEB: (pause) I'd say, Yes.
SUE: Ordinary people, my ass. You're such a liar.
Scene: The Shopping Impaired
ALAN and MARCIA stand in front of a store.
MARCIA: Alan, you have no idea how to shop.
ALAN: What do you mean?
MARCIA: You have no sense of shopping strategy. Deal-making, making choices. Perceiving people's commercial sensibilities so that the gifts you choose for them can be what they want, and what they need.
ALAN: I guess you're right.
MARCIA: How did you never learn to shop? Is it some sort of innate impairment?
ALAN: God, does it really matter? I mean, I never learned to hang glide, either. If it doesn't seem important, I don't bother.
MARCIA: What? People have to shop constantly. And quality shopping requires keen intuitions about human nature, as well as a subtle grasp of market dynamics, a detailed understanding of all kinds of commercial trends that're really far more complicated than, say, weather patterns, or animal behavior.
ALAN: All right, forget it. Now I'm completely discouraged.
MARCIA: I'm serious. If you can't shop successfully, it says something pretty terrible about your ability to understand and please other people. Suppose you're shopping for a woman, and you think--
ALAN: Wait a minute, I'm trying to find something for my older brother.
MARCIA: He's in your own family! You should know everything about him.
ALAN: Huh? No, why? What for? I don't think he even wants me to.
MARCIA: Your family's not very close, is it? That's really crippling. People's whole emotional structure is based on early formative experiences.
ALAN: (pause) Sometimes I think, what's the point in shopping? Buying gifts? Anything you can buy at a mall like this is some kind of mass-produced junk: none of it's unique. The same thing I'll end up buying for my older brother, someone in Kansas City will buy for their dad; someone else in Rhode Island will buy for their son; someone else in...do you get me? It's all so generic, and it makes people seem so the same. If people really thought about the gifts people buy for them, they'd be insulted.
MARCIA: No.
ALAN: Well, I dunno.
MARCIA: No. No, that's just what you think.
Scene: I Don't Know What
ANDY stands outside a theatre.
ALAN exits the theatre, spots him, and walks over.
ALAN: How'd it go?
ANDY: (shrugs) Mm.
ALAN: Did you hear anything?
ANDY: I sat down right next to them: I heard everything.
ALAN: So what's the deal?
ANDY: Well, first, the girl --
ALAN: Marcia.
ANDY: Marcia said you were her cousin.
ALAN: What?
ANDY: Were you really a Jehovah's Witness?
ALAN: What?
ANDY: That's what she said. You just left a Jehovah's Witness seminary, and now you're trying to start a normal life so you need constant support.
ALAN: Jesus.
ANDY: He seemed to believe it.
ALAN: What did they act like?
ANDY: They touched a lot. Kissed a few times.
ALAN: (pause) I don't believe it. Why is she doing this?
ANDY: Was it...true about the horrible seesaw accident?
ALAN: What?
ANDY: You're not impotent?
ALAN: No! Why does she lie? Why do people ever do this? If she wants to date him, why doesn't she just tell me?
ANDY: Is it true that you can't shop on your own?
ALAN: I guess, I dunno.
ANDY: I'm sorry. I'm sorry to be the one to have to tell you all this.
ALAN: No one's ever lied to me like this before. I mean, except my family.
ANDY: Then are you sure you're not related? Just kidding.
ALAN: I don't know what to do.
ANDY: Get used to it, brother. Hey, she's coming this way. I'm outta here. (exits)
ALAN: What should I do...?
Scene: Is It Educational?
ALAN sits with MARCIA.
ALAN: The first thing I ask about any relationship, you know, is: Will it be educational? Is there anything I can learn from her?
MARCIA: Of course there is.
ALAN: Well, no, it depends on--
MARCIA: At the very least you can learn what it's like to be a woman. No matter who she is.
ALAN: Well, apart from that.
MARCIA: That doesn't matter to you? That's not very sympathetic. You're not interested in women's perspective on life?
ALAN: No, I am, but I mean, learning in terms of other things.
MARCIA: What other things?
ALAN: Intellectual things.
MARCIA: Oh, being a woman is anti-intellectual? Women are irrational, or something?
ALAN: No, I mean, information.
MARCIA: You don't want a relationship. You want to read an encyclopaedia. Relationships are about experience, Alan, about making meaningful contact with other people, not about harvesting information.
ALAN: Well, I mean also cultural things.
MARCIA: Women aren't part of culture?
ALAN: I didn't say that.
MARCIA: That's what you implied.
ALAN: Um...
MARCIA: The notion that you can't learn something from every woman on the planet is really arrogant. You think that males automatically know everything about women's experience?
ALAN: Uh, Marcia...
MARCIA: You don't know what it's like to have periods: to have cycles in unison with nature. Your bond with the world around you is so frail it's pathetic.
ALAN: All I was trying to say--
MARCIA: You think I care? I'm sick of being patronized by egotistical men. I don't think I can go twenty-four hours without some obnoxious, self-worshipping macho prick insulting me because of my sexuality.
ALAN: I didn't do that.
MARCIA: Oh, yes you did.
ALAN: (rises) This...this is pointless.
MARCIA: Oh, I'm not educational enough for you? (ALAN exits) I'd really like to know why all men are such cowards.
Scene: Jesus Christ
SUE and DEB stand at a magazine rack.
SUE: Oh, God, look at this picture of Assia.
DEB: Wow.
SUE: Every time I see her she looks more extra-terrestrial.
DEB: What?
SUE: Remember when she was doing the Cher thing?
DEB: Yeah...
SUE: Then she cut her hair off...
DEB: Uh huh.
SUE: Then she stopped smiling in public...
DEB: Yeah...
SUE: Now it's like she doesn't use mascara.
DEB: (pause) Yeah...
SUE: And here she is with these funky glasses. They look like insect eyes.
DEB: It's kinda cool.
SUE: What? She doesn't even look human.
DEB: So what?
SUE: How could any guy date her?
DEB: Do guys look for humans?
SUE: They must look for something.
JOE and ALAN step up to the magazine rack.
JOE glances repeatedly at DEB, then speaks.
JOE: (to DEB) Hey. (pause) Hey. (pause) Are you listening to me?
DEB: What?
JOE: I said "Hey." (pause) Okay, whatever. (JOE walks up to SUE.) Hey.
SUE: Hey, what's up?
JOE: Nothing. What're you doing?
SUE: Nothing.
JOE: Yeah?
SUE: Uh huh.
JOE: Hey, who's that? (JOE points at the magazine.)
SUE: Oh, it's Assia. A famous model.
JOE: I know who she is. (pause) She looks like you.
SUE: Really?
JOE: Yeah.
SUE: How?
JOE: I dunno...the face.
SUE: Really?
JOE: Yeah.
SUE: The face?
JOE: I dunno, the hair. (pause) Hey, do you want to go out? Get a hot dog or something? See a movie?
SUE: Mm...
JOE: They got ten movies showing over there.
SUE: I dunno...
JOE: You don't know?
SUE: I dunno, it's... (looks at her watch)
JOE: What? Excuse me. Am I -- what? -- am I not good enough for you? You got something better to do? What, you gotta go home, watch fucking Bay Watch?
SUE: What?
JOE: What're you going to do if you say `No'? Solve all the problems in the universe? Unravel the mysteries of humankind?
SUE: Look, I'm not--
JOE: Fuck, what've you got to lose?
SUE: (pause) Well, what's playing?
JOE: They've got ten movies playing over there at one time.
SUE: I'm kind of hungry.
JOE: I'll buy you some popcorn.
SUE: You know, there's an Orange Julius. I feel like a hot dog.
JOE: Oh, come on.
SUE: Oh...what?
JOE: No one goes there. It's shit. Look, what do you want? A feast? I'm saying I'll buy you some popcorn. I'll take you to the movies. I really enjoy your company. You're an interesting woman.
SUE: Well, Assia's in that new movie. I've been waiting to see it.
JOE: Aw, come on. That's shit. What do you want to see that for? Look, let's decide when we get there. (JOE and SUE exit.)
ALAN stares at DEB.
ALAN: So, uh...you want to?
DEB: Do I want to what?
ALAN: What my buddy was just saying.
DEB: Uh, you have to ask. You have to put out some effort.
ALAN: I am asking.
DEB: Lookit: if you can't even communicate with me...this isn't worth it.
ALAN: Huh? Jesus. What's wrong?
DEB: (pause) Nothing. You want to go, or what?
ALAN: Christ. We haven't even kissed, and you're already bitching.
DEB: Look...let's just go.
ALAN: Oh. Oh, okay. If you insist. Jesus Christ.
Scene: The Last Good Moment of Your Life
KELLY, eight months pregnant, stands in front of
a magazine rack. PETER sidles up to her, reading
a foreign language newspaper.
PETER: When are you planning on releasing it?
KELLY: What? (He gestures to her belly.) Oh. In about a month.
PETER: It's a good thing men can't get pregnant.
KELLY: Why?
PETER: Cause if they ejaculated when they were pregnant, the fetus would launch across the room and take out a window, or something.
KELLY: Well, childbirth would shatter the penis. There's no way a baby could fit out of that tiny opening.
PETER: Yeah, that might require practise. Like, letting littler things inside the penis to sort of stretch it out.
KELLY: Like...mice, or ducklings, or...kittens.
PETER: Yeah. Well, I dunno, that sounds bizarre. I was thinking about inanimate objects, like kumquats, then plums, then oranges...
KELLY: Then watermelons.
PETER: That's a big baby.
KELLY: (shrugs) Well...
PETER: I mean, the penis is a tender creature.
KELLY: I dunno...
PETER: No, really. I mean, think about your nose. You can snort cocaine with it, but cocaine is powder. Do you think you could snort gravel with it? Or tennis balls?
KELLY: But tennis balls don't get you high.
PETER: Okay, that's right, but--
KELLY: Penises are basically bludgeoning devices. And I heard in a class I took that nearly all of the nerves in the penis are concentrated in the tip, so basically the penis is a numb rod with sensitive point.
PETER: I find that degrading.
KELLY: Do you consider your penis some sort of elevated being?
PETER: Honestly, heterosexual women crave peni. From time to time.
KELLY: What do you notice about the fake ones women use?
PETER: I don't want to get into this. We were talking about the miracle of chi--
KELLY: They're much longer than real ones.
PETER: We were talking about the miracle of childbirth, and I was about to tell you how I think that birth traumatizes everyone, and how I think women ought to be compelled by law to give birth while immersed in warm water.
KELLY: And in public, right?
PETER: Well, no, not in public. That's gross.
KELLY: Oh, it threatens you? Why, because your body is capable of so little in comparison to women's bodies? Because you men can never be sure, really sure, that you're the father (unless you keep your woman imprisoned)?
PETER: Are you being hostile? My god.
KELLY: Giving birth is a wonderful thing that you can't do. That's all I'm saying.
PETER: Oh, I'm sure it'd be wonderful blowing water out of my nose all over my body, but I sure as hell wouldn't trade this to become an elephant.
KELLY: Anything that can't give birth -- in a certain way -- is always going to be alone. That kind of contact, that kind of closeness to another being, can never be matched.
PETER: (feigns distraction) I'm hungry.
KELLY: What a male response.
PETER: I think I'm going to go eat some scrambled eggs. Or maybe some veal. Or caviar.
KELLY: Do you ever realize how much of your life is escapism or denial?
PETER: God, I would hate to have someone as bleak as you for a mother. if I could transmit a message to your kid, I'd say: when your mom gives birth, and all those pain killers are floating around, and some of the drugs drift into your body: I'm sorry. That'll be the last good moment of your life.
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