Sexual Perversity in Chicago and the Duck Variations

by David Mamet

  But a finite puzzle. Whose true solution lies, perhaps, in transcending the rules themselves . . . (Pause.) . . . and pounding of the fucking pieces into places where they DO NOT FIT AT ALL.

  Pause.

  Those of us who have seen the hands of the Master Magician move a bit too slowly do have a rough time from time to time.

  Pause.

  Some things persist. (Pause.)

  “Loss” is always possible . . .

  Pause.

  Phone rings.

  DEBORAH: I'll take it in the other room. (Exits.)

  DAN and BERNARD‘S office. Closing up. DAN and BERNARD are securing the office at the end of a day.

  BERNIE: So what are we doing tomorrow, we going to the beach?

  DANNY: I'm seeing Deborah.

  BERNIE: Yeah? You getting serious? I mean she seemed like a hell of a girl, huh? The little I saw of her. Not too this, not too that . . . very kind of . . . what? (Pause.) Well, what the fuck. I only saw her for a minute. I mean first impressions of this kind are often misleading, huh? So what can you tell from seeing a broad one, two, ten times. You're seeing a lot of this broad. You getting serious? But what the fuck, that's your business. Right?

  DANNY: Umm.

  BERNIE: So what are you guys going to do, maybe . . . what? Go to the zoo, or shopping? . . . She looked very intellectual.

  DANNY: Um.

  BERNIE: That's not always a bad thing.

  DANNY: No.

  BERNIE: I mean what the fuck, a guy wants to get it on with some broad on a more or less stable basis, who is to say him no. (Pause.) A lot of these broads, you know, you just don't know. You know? I mean what with where they've been and all. I mean a young woman in today's society . . . time she's twenty two-three. You don't know where the fuck she's been. (Pause.) I'm just talking to you, you understand.

  DAN‘S apartment, DAN and DEB are in bed.

  DANNY: So tell me.

  DEBORAH: What?

  DANNY: Everything. Tell me the truth about everything. Menstruation. I know you're holding out on me.

  DEBORAH: It would be hard on me if it got out.

  DANNY: I swear.

  DEBORAH: It's under our conscious control.

  DANNY: I knew it!

  DEBORAH: We just do it to drive you crazy with the mess.

  DANNY: I just knew it . . .

  DEBORAH: Now you tell me some.

  DANNY: Name it.

  DEBORAH: What does it feel like to have a penis?

  DANNY: Strange. Very strange and wonderful.

  DEBORAH: Do you miss having tits?

  DANNY: To be completely frank with you, that is the stupidest question I ever heard. What man in his right mind would want tits?

  DEBORAH: You're right, of course. (Pause.) Ask me if I like the taste of come.

  DANNY: Do you like the taste of come?

  DEBORAH: Do I like the taste of come?

  DANNY: Yes.

  DEBORAH: Dan, I love the taste of come. It tastes like everything . . . good . . . just . . . coming out of your cock . . . the Junior Prom . . . an autumn afternoon. . . .

  DANNY: It doesn't taste a little bit like Chlorox?

  DEBORAH: It smells like Chlorox. It tastes like the Junior Prom. (Pause.) See what you cheat yourself of?

  DANNY: Yes.

  DEBORAH: Faggot. (Pause.)

  DANNY: Do you ever fantasize about making love with other women?

  DEBORAH: Do you fantasize when we make love? (Pause.) The last time we made love, I fantasized about other women.

  DANNY: The last time I masturbated I kept thinking about my left hand.

  DEBORAH: Did you?

  DANNY: Yes.

  DEBORAH: Did you?

  DANNY: Yes.

  Pause.

  I love making love with you.

  DEBORAH: I love making love with you. (Pause.)

  DANNY: I love you.

  DEBORAH: Does it frighten you to say that?

  DANNY: Yes.

  DEBORAH: It's only words. I don't think you should be frightened by words.

  Nursery School, JOAN is lecturing two toddlers.

  JOAN: What are you doing? Where are you going? What are you doing? You stay right there. Now. What were the two of you doing? I'm just asking a simple question. There's nothing to be ashamed of. (Pause.) I can wait. (Pause.) Were you playing “Doctor"? (Pause.) “Doctor.” Don't play dumb with me, just answer the question. (You know, that attitude is going to get you in a lot of trouble someday.) Were you playing with each other's genitals? Each other's . . . “pee-pees"? . . . whatever you call them at home, that's what I'm asking (and don't play dumb, because I saw what you were doing, so just own up to it). (Pause.) All right... no. No, stop that, there's no reason for tears . . . it's perfectly . . . natural. But ... there's a time and a place for everything. Now .. . no, it's all right. Come on. Come on, we're all going in the other room, and we're going to wash our hands. And then Miss Webber is going to call our parents.

  The Toy Department at Marshall Field's. BERNARD and DAN are shopping for a gift.

  DANNY: Whose birthday?

  BERNIE: My nephew Bobby.

  DANNY: How old is he now?

  BERNIE: Going to be . . . six. Will you look at that?

  DANNY: What?

  BERNIE: They got a fucking fruit at the games counter. I can't believe this. In the midst of the toy department. At the games counter, talking to the kids all day long . . . a fairy.

  DANNY: Yeah.

  BERNIE: You know, one of those motherfuckers grabbed me when I was Bobby's age.

  DANNY: Where?

  BERNIE: At the movies, where else? We're all wondering what this old guy is doing at the cartoons, and he sits down at the end of the row, and halfway through he reaches over and grabs my joint. Reaches over another guy and grabs me by the joint.

  DANNY: Was he rough?

  BERNIE: What?

  DANNY: I mean, was he rough about it?

  BERNIE: Rough? (Pause.) I mean . . . (Pause.) Rough? What difference how he grabbed me? I mean, he's a guy.

  DANNY: Yeah.

  BERNIE: And I'm a guy. (Pause.) But at the time I was only a kid, for chrissakes. (Pause.)

  DANNY: You ever do that stuff when you were kids?

  BERNIE: What stuff?

  DANNY: You know. Stuff with other kids.

  BERNIE: Teasing? Like teasing the girls? Looking up their panties and so on?

  DANNY: No, I mean when you were really young kids. Fooling around with the other kids . . . the other boys.

  BERNIE: Fooling around? You mean like “messing” around with other boys?

  DANNY: Fuck no. I didn't mean that. I just meant . . . you know.

  BERNIE: (Pause): You mean fooling around! Sure, who didn't.

  DANNY: Yeah.

  BERNIE: Shit, we all used to fuck around.

  DANNY: Right.

  BERNIE: Even when we were little, shit. I mean you learn when you're young, right?

  DANNY: Right.

  BERNIE: And what you learn, that's what you know. Am I right?

  DANNY: One Hundred Percent. It's all in your . . .

  BERNIE: Head.

  DANNY: . .. approach. (Pause.)

  BERNIE: It's in your what?

  DANNY: Approach?

  BERNIE: Right.

  DANNY: You know how to approach these things and you'll always be all right.

  BERNIE: You don't learn right when you're young, those cocksuckers ruin your life.

  DANNY: Who? (Pause.)

  BERNIE: Anybody. (Pause.) Ruin it quicker'n you can turn around.

  DANNY: Take you and that guy in the movies, for instance.

  BERNIE: What do you mean?

  DANNY: Just that if you'd been a little older . . .

  BERNIE: Yeah?

  DANNY: Or maybe the guy, if he'd been a little . . . younger . . .

  BERNIE: What are you fucking talking about?

  DANNY: I'm saying that if the circumstance
s . . .

  BERNIE: What fucking circumstances? Some faggot queer got the hots for my joint at the cartoons.

  DANNY: I'm not talking about extenuating circumstances, I only mean the circumstances of what happened.

  BERNIE: And what exactly are you saying about them?

  DANNY: All I'm saying . . .

  BERNIE: . . . this happened years ago . . .

  DANNY: . . . is that it could possibly have been damaging to you. (Pause.)

  BERNIE: Yeah?

  DANNY: . . . as a total Human Being.

  BERNIE: Damn right.

  DANNY: . . . and you're just lucky that it didn't.

  BERNIE: Well, what the fuck, I was only a kid.

  DANNY: Sure.

  BERNIE: A kid laughs these things off. You forget, you go on living . . . what the fuck, huh?

  DEB and JOAN ‘S apartment. Late at night. They are lounging.

  JOAN: Let's face it. He would prematurely ejaculate. There's no nicer way to say it. And the sooner he would come the guiltier he would feel and the sooner he would come. Because in some ways, of course, he was doing it to punish me. And he was doing a hell of a job of it.

  So one day I said to him “Look, I'm in bed to make love with you, and you're in bed to make love with me. So why don't we just relax, and I'll be with you, and you be with me, and whenever you want to come is fine.” (Pause.) But he still kept prematurely ejaculating. (Pause.) Although he did seem happier about it. (Pause.)

  Tableau.

  DEBORAH: We have any tuna fish?

  JOAN: I think I ate it. (Tableau.)

  The Health Club. BERNARD in the gym talking to imaginary buddies.

  BERNIE: So the kid asks me “Bernie, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The broad this, the broad that, blah blah blah.” Right? So I tell him, “Dan, Dan, you think I don't know what you're feeling, I don't know what you're going through? You think about the broad, you this, you that, you think I don't know that?” So he tells me, “Bernie,” he says, “I think I love her.” (Pause.) Twenty-eight years old.

  So I tell him, “Dan, Dan, I can advise, I can counsel, I can speak to you out of my experience . . . but in the final analysis, you are on your own. (Pause.) If you want my opinion, however, you are pussy-whipped.” (I call ‘em like I see ‘em. I wouldn't say it if it wasn't so.) So what does he know at that age, huh? Sell his soul for a little eating pussy, and who can blame him. But mark my words: one, two more weeks, he'll do the right thing by the broad. (Pause.) And drop her like a fucking hot potato.

  JOAN and DEB are out to lunch.

  JOAN: . . . and, of course, there exists the very real possibility that the whole thing is nothing other than a mistake of rather large magnitude, and that it never was supposed to work out.

  DEBORAH: Do you really believe that?

  JOAN: I don't know. I really don't know. I think I do. Well, look at your divorce rate. Look at the incidence of homosexuality . . . the number of violent, sex-connected crimes (this dressing is for shit) . . . all the antisocial behavior that chooses sex as its form of expression. Eh?

  DEBORAH: I don't know.

  JOAN: . . . physical and mental mutilations we perpetrate on each other, day in, day out . . . trying to fit ourselves to a pattern we can neither understand (although we pretend to) nor truly afford to investigate (although we pretend to). (Pause.) Come on, disagree with me.

  DEBORAH: I disagree with you.

  JOAN: It's a dirty joke, Deborah, the whole godforsaken business.

  DEBORAH: I disagree with you.

  JOAN: That's your right. Are you going to eat your roll? (DEB shakes her head.) Then perhaps I could have it. (Takes roll.) This roll is excellent.

  DEBORAH: I'm moving in with Danny.

  JOAN: I give you two months.

  DAN and BERNARD‘S office, DAN is filing. BERNARD is talking on the phone.

  BERNIE: . . . so then she brings the dog in. “What's the pooch for?” I say. “Shut up and watch,” she says. “You might learn something.” . . . at the Laugh-Inn. (Pause.) They're open all night. (Pause.) No, they don't. (Pause.) I'm telling you they're open all night.

  DANNY: They're open all night, Bern.

  BERNIE (to phone): I'm sorry. (To DAN) What?

  DANNY: They're open all night.

  BERNIE: Yeah. (To phone) They're open all night. (Pause.) A guy in the office. So then she gets down on the carpet with the dog . . .

  DANNY: You want me to do these 11-13's?

  BERNIE (to DAN): Yeah. (To phone) So I'm just watching at this point. (Pause.) I'm getting to that. So the fucking dog, and may I be struck dead by lightning, his eyes light up, and he starts to grin. . . . (Pause.) . . . a fox terrier.

  DAN and DEB are moving DEB out of her apartment. JOAN is in the background.

  DANNY: You have very interesting taste in music.

  DEBORAH: A lot of them are Joan's.

  DANNY: I'm sorry. . . . uh . . . (To JOAN) uh, which of these are yours? You want to separate them?

  JOAN: Well, they aren't going to separate themselves, now, are they?

  DANNY: No, I don't suppose they are. Why don't you separate them, Joan? (Pause.)

  DEBORAH: Danny has a sauna in his building.

  JOAN: How nice . . . sweating . . . Do you use your sauna often, Danny?

  DANNY: I use the sauna from time to time. I'm fortunate in being blessed with the ability to sweat in the everyday course of events.

  DEBORAH (to JOAN): What are we going to do about the television?

  JOAN: Do you want to take it?

  DANNY: I have a television.

  JOAN: Let me just pay you for your half of it.

  DEBORAH: You could send me a check.

  JOAN: I could give you a check. You're not going to California for god's sake.

  DEBORAH: I can pick it up next week.

  JOAN: When?

  DEBORAH: Whenever is convenient.

  JOAN: Can you come by Tuesday night? . . . (To DAN) Can she come by Tuesday night?

  DANNY: That's very good. That's very funny. Now could you find it in your heart to take the table lamp and shove it up your ass?

  JOAN: Ah, that's very telling. On your instructions, I'm supposed to rend and torture myself anally. Is that what you like? Does Deborah know about this? You're moving out, move out.

  DANNY: She's moving out.

  JOAN: Well, move her out, then and the hell with you. (Pause. To DEB) I hope you're very happy.

  BERNARD is at the office declaiming to some coworkers.

  BERNIE: Equal Rights Amendment? Equal Rights Amendment? I'll give you the fucking Equal Rights Amendment. Nobody ever wrote me no fucking amendments. Special interest groups, okay . . . but who's kidding who here, huh? (Pause.) We got baby seals dying in Alaska and we're writing amendments for broads? I mean, I'm a big fan of society . . . but this bites the big one. I'm sorry.

  DAN and DEB‘S apartment. The morning. They are each getting ready for work.

  DANNY: Do we have any shampoo?

  DEBORAH: I don't know.

  DANNY: You wash your hair at least twice a day. Shampoo is a staple item of your existence. Of course you know.

  DEBORAH: All right. I do. Know.

  DANNY: Do we have any shampoo?

  DEBORAH: I don't know. Is your hair dirty?

  DANNY: Does my hair look dirty?

  DEBORAH: Does it feel dirty? (Pause.) It looks dirty.

  DANNY: It feels greasy. I hate it when my hair feels greasy.

  DEBORAH: Well, I'm not going to look. If you want to know if there's any shampoo, you go look for it.

  DANNY: You don't have to look. You know very well if there's any shampoo or not. You're making me be ridiculous about this. (Pause.) You wash yourself too much anyway. If you really used all that shit they tell you in Cosmopolitan (and you do) you'd be washing yourself from morning till night. Pouring derivatives on yourself all day long.

  DEBORAH: Will you love me when I'm old?
>
  DANNY: If you can manage to look eighteen, yes.

  DEBORAH: Now, that's very telling.

  DANNY: You think so?

  DEBORAH: Yes.

  DANNY: I'm going to wash my hair. Is there any shampoo?

  DEBORAH: Yes. And no.

  DANNY: Now what's that supposed to mean?

  DEBORAH: Everything. And nothing. (Pause.) Would you get my hose?

  DANNY: No. Where does this come from? This whole fucking behavior. You're making it up. “Get my hose.” You want your hose, I'll get your hose. Here's your fucking hose. (Rummages in dresser.) Where's your hose? (Pause.) What do they call them, anyway? Nobody says “hose.”

  DEBORAH: Pantyhose.

  DANNY: Where are they?

  DEBORAH: Get me some out of the laundry bag.

  DANNY: You're going to wear dirty hose?

  DEBORAH: I think I'm out of clean ones.

  DANNY: So you're going downtown in dirty hose?

  DEBORAH: Do you want me walking around with a naked la-la?

  DANNY: If it makes you happy, Deb. I'm on the side of whatever makes you happy.

  DEB retrieves dirty hose from bag and starts changing into them.

  DANNY: You make me very horny.

  DEBORAH: It's the idea of the dirty panties, Dan. You're sick.

  DANNY: I love your breasts.

  DEBORAH: “Thank you.” (Pause.) Is that right?

  DANNY: Fuck you.

  DEBORAH: No hard feelings.

  DANNY: Who said there were?

  DEBORAH: You know there are.

  DANNY: Then why say there aren't?

  DAN‘S office, DAN is talking to an imaginary coworker.

  DANNY: . . no, wait a second. Wait a second. I want to tell you this. I know what you're saying, and I'm telling you I don't like you badmouthing the guy, who happens to be a friend of mine. So just let me tell my story, okay?

  So the other day we're up on six and it's past five and I'm late, and I'm having some troubles with my chick (this chick I've been seeing) and I push the button and the elevator doesn't come, and it doesn't come, and it doesn't come, so I lean back and I kick the shit out of it three or four times (I was really hot). And he, he puts his arm around my shoulder and he calms me down and he says, “Dan, Dan . . . don't go looking for affection from inanimate objects.” (Pause.) Huh? (Pause.) So I don't want to hear you badmouthing Bernie Litko.