DON: I could if you said what you mean.
DICK: I mean just what I say.
DON: But what you say makes no more sense than—than hieroglyphics make sense to a man that knows just English.
DICK: Well—like I said, I was joking. Even if they did do your play and it was wildly successful and you had the East River penthouse and a big room with mirrors, those crazy green eyes of yours would scare me away. They’d scare anybody away.
DON: My eyes would stop looking crazy, if I stopped being lonely.
DICK: Wanda, Wanda, where are you wandering, Wanda? Don, give me a little percussion: clap your hands together, I’ve got to work.
[Don claps his hands together.]
DICK: Faster, with some kind of rhythm. Oom-pah-pah, oom-pah-pah. Get it?
DON: What’s it for?
DICK: I’m working out the choreography for my audition for Simon Godchaux’s show.
DON: I don’t understand what that is.
DICK: Simon Godshaux is casting a dance company for a coast-to-coast tour and it’s my kind of dancing, savage, masculine dancing.
DON: Savage—masculine—dancing.
DICK: I’m going to audition for him soon’s I get back to New York. I’m going to do an Indian warrior dance. That’s what I’m working out now.
DON: Miriam says you auditioned for him last weekend in Boston.
DICK: I just had an interview with him. Told him what I was doing. He promised me an audition. Oh, he asked me to go sailing with him, but when I told him I wasn’t that good a swimmer, I think he knew what I meant. —Where you going?
[Don has started away; Dick continues his dancing, muttering oom-pah-pah to himself. Miriam, a girl about twenty-six, comes up to the platform.]
MIRIAM: Where’s Don?
DICK: He ran away.
MIRIAM: Why? What for?
DICK: I don’t know.
MIRIAM: Did you hurt his feelings?
DICK: No. Why should I?
MIRIAM: He’s sensitive.
DICK: I think he’s nuts.
MIRIAM: Don’t you like him?
DICK: When he’s in a good humor. But lately he acts peculiar.
MIRIAM: With you?
DICK: Yes.
MIRIAM: I thought so.
DICK: What do you mean?
MIRIAM: He’s in love.
DICK: With me?
MIRIAM: Apparently.
DICK: I didn’t know he was queer. So that’s it, huh?
MIRIAM: Yes.
DICK: These summer colonies are full of queers. It’s kind of depressing. Seen Wanda?
MIRIAM: I passed her on the beach. She was hunting clams.
DICK: I need her portable. I’m working out the choreography for a warrior dance.
MIRIAM: Does she have suitable records?
DICK: I think I could use that thing of Bartok’s for practice.
MIRIAM: Dick, be nice to Don.
DICK: I’m not queer.
MIRIAM: Maybe not, but you can be kind. It doesn’t hurt to be kind.
DICK: How can a girl be sympathetic toward something like that?
MIRIAM: Love is love no matter what form it takes. And I’ve been in love. Hopelessly like he is with you.
DICK: You mean with another girl?
MIRIAM: No, of course not. With a boy.
DICK: Well, it’s too messy. I can’t be bothered with it. Oom-pah-pah, oom-pah-pah!
MIRIAM: I’m tired of this beach life. It doesn’t seem real anymore. It’s too removed from the world. I don’t read papers. I don’t listen in to the radio even.
DICK: That’s what I like, being cut off from the world. Oom-pah-pah. Oom-pah-pah!
MIRIAM: I did like it here for a while. But now I’m fed up with it. Each day is too much like the others. They’re like a string of gold beads. Monotonously bright. I want to break it and spill them all on the ground.
DICK: Oom-pah-pah!
MIRIAM: Do you think you have much talent as a dancer?
DICK: Of course. Or I wouldn’t be working.
MIRIAM: I don’t think you have. You’re fairly good, you have a beautiful body. But I don’t think you’ll ever get anywhere. I think you’ll go oom-pah-pah for a few more years and then go—Blah! Like that! You won’t have anything left.
DICK: What have you got against me, Miriam?
MIRIAM: You’re totally selfish and a terrible fool. I can’t understand why he loves you. He has a great deal of talent. He has a future if he doesn’t waste himself on something useless like you. [Pause.] You know what I think.
DICK: No. What?
MIRIAM: I think you’re homosexual, too.
DICK: You’re wrong.
MIRIAM: Wanda says you won’t go to bed with her.
DICK: I don’t go to bed with people.
MIRIAM: How old are you?
DICK: Twenty-two.
MIRIAM: Then you must have desires.
DICK: Not for copulation. I’m under-sexed I suppose.
MIRIAM: Then it couldn’t possibly hurt you.
DICK: What?
MIRIAM: Being nice to Don.
DICK: My God. Do you go around procuring lovers for Don?
MIRIAM: I hate to see misery in people I like and admire. People with true possibilities.
DICK: Well, count me out. I can’t be interested.
MIRIAM: I know that you’re queer.
DICK: I’m not. I tell you I’m normal.
MIRIAM: So is a duck’s egg. Don’s your best bet. You’re wasting your time with people like Libra and men like Godchaux. They aren’t capable of caring for you enough to sacrifice anything for you. They’ll want you, take you, use you and throw you back to the dogs. You know where you’ll end up? On Forty-Second Street in pants like ballet tights.
DICK: I tell you I’m perfectly normal.
MIRIAM: Okay. Tell me. But I don’t believe you, darling. [She starts away.]
DICK: Oom-pah-pah! Hey, Miriam! Tell Wanda to bring her portable up here.
MIRIAM: Go tell her yourself.
DICK: All right. Shit. Looks like I’ll have to. [He walks off.]
MIRIAM [moves off left calling]: Don! Don!
[Don returns.]
MIRIAM: Dick says you ran away. What did you do that for?
DON: I don’t know.
MIRIAM: He said something that hurt you?
DON: No.
MIRIAM: Why don’t you transfer your interest to a more responsive object?
DON: You know better than to ask me that.
MIRIAM: This is my last afternoon on the beach.
DON: Leaving?
MIRIAM: On the Boston boat. Come away with me, Don. You’ll find somebody in town.
DON: Do people of my kind have to be bitches, Miriam? Do we have to hop from one affair to another like slippery little rocks across a creek?
MIRIAM: Yes. Till you find the one that you don’t slip on, and that gets you over the creek.
DON: I can’t stand that any longer. It makes me feel cheap and disgusting.
MIRIAM: Your work could take you above it.
DON: No, I’m afraid it doesn’t.
MIRIAM: Get away from him, Don.
DON: Oh, I will, when I have to. —Miriam?
MIRIAM: Yes?
DON: Am I alive? Do I appear to be living?
MIRIAM: Of course.
DON: The sun’s so bright today it makes me feel like a shadow. All of my life begins to seem like a shadow. But I am alive, aren’t I?
MIRIAM: Of course you’re alive.
DON: Touch me! Do I feel solid?
MIRIAM: Perfectly solid, Don.
DON: Thanks. I didn’t know.
MIRI
AM: There is your shadow.
DON: It’s reassuring. It should be reassuring. I thought perhaps the sun had begun to shine right through me. What makes desire? Desire for a face or a body? Why does flesh in certain forms become an obsession with you? Why does it darken your mind?
MIRIAM: Because you have passion. Put it into your work.
DON: I’ve put it into my work, but I’m still not satisfied.
MIRIAM: Then love someone who can love you. Transfer your longing to someone who could return it.
DON: Oh, it’s too hard for me. I’ve given myself to people I don’t care for but as soon as I love—then I lose all my character. I seem to dissolve. Love makes some people charming but it makes me dull. I haven’t thought of anything to say for several hours. He was here dancing. I supplied the rhythm, we didn’t have Wanda’s portable. So I just sat here in the corner beating my hands together with a silly, squinting grin on my face while he danced. He danced and danced. Isn’t the sunlight blinding? —Is there something about today that seems funny to you?
MIRIAM: It seems like yesterday or the day before.
DON: Yes. They’re all alike here, all the days, but they have a cumulative effect, like equal blows on a rock, each alike but one finally cracking it open, making it fall to pieces.
MIRIAM: Who is the rock? You?
DON: I suppose I’m flattering myself. I’m dull as a rock but not as strong as a rock.
MIRIAM: You’re probably stronger than you think. I don’t think you’re going to fall to pieces. Not unless you let yourself.
DON: Then what shall I do to prevent it?
MIRIAM: Get out from under whatever is striking against you.
DON: Not till I’m sure that it’s useless. A miracle might happen. I might suddenly find my tongue in his presence and pour my heart out—and he might suddenly stop dancing for a minute.
MIRIAM: Do you think so?
DON: No. [He turns with a slow tired smile.] No, I don’t.
MIRIAM: Then get away quick while you can, you little fool, don’t stay any longer. Take the Boston boat this afternoon.
DON: Christ. I’ve been empty so long. I’ve got to have something to fill me.
MIRIAM: Your work.
DON: No, no, no, no! I want love.
MIRIAM: Then go where love can be given. Don’t go for water to an empty well.
DON: I had to, I couldn’t help it. How do you know that it’s empty.
MIRIAM: You know it yourself. You said so.
DON: Today seems funny to me.
MIRIAM: How?
DON: I’m conscious of my whole life stretching behind me. I feel the weight of every single day. A weight and a vagueness, too. A tremendous vagueness. I think that I’ve been traveling through fog. But look how brilliant it is! Did you ever blow soap bubbles? No, I—I am looking back at everything. I remember single days, hours. None of them was ever complete in itself. They were all expectant. You know what I mean? They had their faces all turned one way, toward the future, as though— [Pause.]
MIRIAM: As though?
DON: As though a parade was coming, was going to pass. Well, I’ve stood here waiting so long that my neck’s getting stiff from craning in one direction, toward the distant calliope’s sound that doesn’t get any closer. Is it imaginary? I see it all in my head.
MIRIAM: Then you don’t have to actually see it, it’s better in your head, a vision’s less apt to be disappointing.
DON: No, no, I want to see the real thing, experience it in the flesh. I don’t, I haven’t, but I can describe it as if I did. The elephants are roped together with strings of pearls, the stately camels, they’re ornamented, too, purple velvet trappings, brocaded, tasseled, the cleverly trained monkeys, they have on crimson silk jackets with golden bells. The bells clatter, there’s a fanfare of trumpets. But it’s all in my head, none of it’s actually come by and my neck’s getting stiffer. Fat people are moving in front of me, blocking my view. I squeeze between. They complain, they shove. One of them’s stepped on my foot so hard it’ll ache for hours.
MIRIAM: I’d give it up, then.
DON: Yes, I suspect you’re right, it was just a false report, a rumor without foundation, a beautiful myth. Or maybe the route was changed. The elephants may have revolted against their drivers, possibly trampled them, even as they turned at some intersection not expected. See it? Slowly—ponderously with—beautiful, massive grace they’ve turned away from the route that was planned in advance, and the others have followed suit, they’ve all gone up a back street, just distant enough so I can’t even be sure that I hear the music.
MIRIAM: You think the parade is love?
DON: What else is brilliant enough to make a parade?
MIRIAM: Perhaps your vision, your work.
DON: My work is a child’s excitement.
MIRIAM: Don, I’m disappointed in you. I thought you had a—
[The sea booms. Miriam looks squinting up at the racing blue-and-white sky, sun-dazzled.]
MIRIAM: —a more distinguished kind of a mind than you’re—
[The sea booms.]
MIRIAM: —something less ordinary than—
[Don picks up the books that she carried out to the beach.]
DON: I have a very ordinary mind, honey. I couldn’t read this: Hegel. What is Hegel to me and what am I to Hegel? [He tosses the book off the platform.] Kant? Couldn’t read the first sentence without washing down a couple of aspirins with a double shot of booze. Marx, hell, who wants to—Miriam, you’re a—
MIRIAM: What am I, Don? In your opinion?
DON: Oh, you’re you, whatever that is, and I’m me, whatever that is. . . .
MIRIAM: I’m more interested in what you could be than what you are at this moment.
DON: Don’t you know that it can be unbearably dull to have people try to uplift you with inspirational claptrap about what you could be? Who is what he could be? I say fuck it, all that.
MIRIAM: You don’t remember your first week here: I was the first person you met here and you were the first one I met here and we—
[The sea booms.]
MIRIAM: —We had such lovely, quiet evenings together, reading Rilke and— [She looks squinting up again at the sky.]
DON: Do you know what I like even better than Rilke? Movie fan magazines with pictures of young actors in them, actors that look like Dick because they’re posing for pictures and are made up and flatteringly lighted. That’s my choice literature, honey. Oh, I’ve read—
MIRIAM: You listened to me reading to you for hours, and weren’t bored for a moment.
DON: Then, yes, then, but I’ve caught on fire since then, I have a belly full of burning sawdust in me now . . .
[The sea booms. Don looks up squinting fiercely at the sky.]
DON: —Honestly, Miriam, honey. Dick would be more interested in Kant, Hegel and Marx than I could be now, honey.
MIRIAM: Stop calling me, honey, it’s—
DON: What you’re angry about, what disturbs you, honey, is that we’re now discussing something we didn’t dare mention before, a thing that you think is rotten, decadent.
MIRIAM: I said stop calling me “honey”! I will not be patronized by you, now that I know you! I WON’T be!
DON: —Oh, Miriam—
[The sea booms; they both squint up at the sky.]
DON: —There is such a thing as great loneliness of the flesh and great longing to satisfy it, and the awful thing is that its satisfaction depends on the beautiful young Narcissans of the world such as—
MIRIAM: All right. But there’s also such a thing as—
[The sea booms.]
MIRIAM: —the great white-plumed horses racing across the sky and the child’s excitement of saying, doing, making . . .
DON: Love is something that’s done and made
too, and sometimes even said, too.
MIRIAM: But choose your object! The right one! —I’d been foolish enough to hope that— You see, I liked you.
DON: Until you found out I was “gay”?
MIRIAM: That doesn’t bother me, hell, I knew that right away, well, almost right away, at least the first time I saw you looking at Dick which was the first day I met you. That’s got nothing to do with the quality of your mind. I wanted you to have some rare, some—exceptional—something . . .
DON: Well, I do.
MIRIAM: You show no sign of it when you, you—you equate love! with—your lech for that gorgeous, graceful—moron that— [She springs up and walks about kicking sand.] —What do you think you’ve got that’s exceptional? Rare?
DON: My capacity for making a sad, sorry sack of myself: publicly, interminably.
MIRIAM: Your self-pity is absolutely—boundless, you make me sick with it, damn you. You say “love”? About what you feel for—
DON: You admitted that he was gorgeous and graceful. Can’t you admit that I am a sensual person?
MIRIAM: I thought I’d noticed something better about you.
DON: Stop kicking sand, the wind blows it in my face. Sit back down here with me. I wish I could love you. I wish that you could love me.
[They both start to cry at the same instant, laughing an instant later.]
MIRIAM [suddenly springing up]: Get up, the mail-plane, do you want to be brained by a mailsack?
DON: Yes.
[She seizes his hand and pulls him off the platform.]
MIRIAM: Stand back further, sometimes they miss.
[The helicopter motor fades.]
DON: It wasn’t the mail plane, honey.
MIRIAM: Did you know it wasn’t?
DON: The mail copter’s rotors are red, white and blue.
MIRIAM: You weren’t looking up so how’d you know?
[Don shrugs.]
MIRIAM: Indifferent, were you?
DON: There have been days when I’ve been more concerned with continuing my solitary struggle for survival.
MIRIAM: An orgy of masochism, that’s you today, maybe always . . .
DON: Oh, you’re full of psychiatric—clichés . . . how much did your folks pay that shrink you went to?
MIRIAM: A dollar a minute which made fifty dollars a session and they insisted on a Freudian. I wanted a Jungian, but Jung isn’t Jewish.
The Traveling Companion & Other Plays Page 17
