by James Reston
MIKE: I have several kids by a former marriage.
RUTH: Hey, how come you never told me about that?
MIKE: If you remember, dear, we did discuss it.
RALPH: Can I just edge in here, I mean, ha-ha, I don’t want to interrupt a little marital tiff or anything, but, ha-ha, you know. (To NORMAN) And how about you sir, do you have any children?
NORMAN: I don’t have any children. I’m not married.
RALPH: Well, sir, I would guess, am I right, I would guess that you are the oldest person staying here. I only mean that in the sense of responsibility. Am I right?
MIKE: The guy that actually lives here is older, but he’s not here right now.
RALPH: No, he’s lecturing, right? I remember, ha-ha. Now I’d just like to ask you the following question. Have you ever heard of a teaching program called the World Volumes Encyclopedia?
DICK: Hey, are you selling encyclopedias?
RUTH: Hey, yeah, are you trying to sell us a set of encyclopedias?
RALPH: I’d like to make it very clear that I am not authorized to sell any product, I’m merely doing market research.
MIKE: Jesus Christ, he’s not even selling the fucking things. You go and write to the central offices and you wait for a whole year to hear from them and when they finally decide to send a guy around he’s not even authorized to sell you a set. I’m not hanging around here listening to a guy that isn’t even authorized to sell the World Volumes Encyclopedia while millions of women and children are dying out there in Vietnam.
MIKE grabs the banner and starts huzzahing as OTHERS follow him out the door, DICK and NORMAN stay behind with RALPH, who is yelling after them.
RALPH: Hey, hey, listen, I can sell you a set if you want one. (HE turns to DICK and NORMAN) Hey, do you guys really want to buy a set of encyclopedias? I can sell you a set. I got a number of deals and there’s a special discount for government employees.
DICK (To NORMAN): You going?
NORMAN: Yes, I’ve been reading a lot about it lately.
DICK: You want to come with me?
NORMAN: Well, yeah, if you don’t have any other plans.
DICK: O.K., hold on a minute. (HE goes out the hall door)
RALPH: Hey, who are all you people?
NORMAN: We just live here.
RALPH: I go to college. I don’t really come from Buffalo. I live in town. I’m trying to earn some money in my spare time. Are you guys really government employees?
NORMAN: I’m a graduate student.
RALPH: Yeah, well, I didn’t want to say anything, but I didn’t really think you guys were government employees. What are you studying?
NORMAN: Mathematics.
RALPH: I wanted to study mathematics. My father said he wouldn’t pay so I’m studying law. Boy, do I hate law. I’m living at home. Do you guys all live here together?
NORMAN: Yes.
RALPH: And . . . and the girls, too?
NORMAN: Yes.
RALPH: Oh, boy, what a life, huh? I’m gonna get me a car pretty soon. I’m saving up. The thing is, I’m not really doing too well selling encyclopedias. I can’t pull it off. I wish I could figure out why. I’ve been thinking about it and I think maybe it’s because I can’t give the sales pitch credibility. That’s pretty bad if I’m gonna be a lawyer because a lot of the time you have to defend people you know are guilty. The thing is, these encyclopedias are really shitty, (HE blushes) Sorry. I mean, you know, they’re not very good.
DICK reenters. HE is carefully groomed, dressed in a pea jacket and well-laundered jeans. HE wears a large, orange Dayglo peace button.
DICK: You ready?
RALPH: You going out?
DICK: Listen, if you’re gonna eat anything, lay off the hamburgers, O.K.?
DICK and NORMAN start out.
NORMAN: I don’t see why he has to go saying he’s dead. I mean, that’s only for him to have a physical. It’s pretty easy to fail a physical. I’ve heard of guys that pretend . . .
DICK and NORMAN are gone.
RALPH (Alone, looks at the open door): Hey!
Blackout.
Scene 3
A few hours later, KATHY is sitting in the kitchen, upset. RUTH comes in the front door. SHE has just returned from the march.
RUTH: Bob here?
KATHY: No.
RUTH: Hey, what’s wrong. You want some coffee?
KATHY: Please. (RUTH takes off her coat and starts making coffee) How was it?
RUTH: Weren’t you there?
KATHY: No.
RUTH: I thought you and Bob were coming. You were on the bus and everything. I got lost when the cops charged. Boy, they really got some of those guys. Fucking pigs.
KATHY: When we got there he said he didn’t feel like marching.
RUTH: Why not?
KATHY: Oh, Ruthie, I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. You devote two years to a guy and what does he give you? He never even told me about the letter. Drafted, and he didn’t even tell me.
RUTH: He’s not drafted. The letter’s for the physical. All he has to do is act queer. They’re not gonna take a queer musician.
KATHY: That’s what I told him on the bus. He wouldn’t even listen until I called him Job.
RUTH: What?
KATHY: He said he was dead. “Bob is dead.”
RUTH: Bullshit, he’s putting you on.
KATHY: That’s what I mean. Me. He’s even putting me on. Ungrateful bastard. The things I’ve done for him, Ruthie. Shit, I sound just like my mother. You know what I mean. I’m not complaining, but you know, you get tired of giving all the time and nothing’s coming back. You know what I told him? I said he was the first guy I ever had an orgasm with. I mean, it really made him feel good. Now I gotta live with it. How can you explain something like that.
RUTH: Hey, no shitting around, did he really say he was gonna join?
KATHY: Ruthie, I’m telling you, he’s serious. You know what he told me? He thinks the whole antiwar movement is a goddamn force. I mean, Jesus, I really thought we were relating on that one. It’s not like I’m asking the guy to go burn himself or anything but, I mean, he knows how I feel about the war and he’s just doing it to be shitty. There’s something behind it, I know that. He’s like reaching out, trying to relate to me on the personal level by rejecting me but, like, I don’t know how to break through. He says he’s gonna study engineering in the army and then when he gets out he’s gonna get some kind of plastic job and marry a plastic wife and live in a plastic house in some plastic suburb and have two point seven children. Oh, shit, Ruth, it’s all too much. He went to a cowboy film.
RUTH: Well, you know, that’s how it is.
KATHY: But Ruth, it’s not like a fantasy scene. I know the guy. He’ll go through with it. I mean, he really thinks he’s serious. He doesn’t see it’s all part of a communication thing between him and me.
RUTH: I don’t know. Like, maybe he’s really serious. Mike’s got this thing about physics. His tutor says he’s a genius. O.K., maybe he is, like what do I know about physics? The thing is, he’s gonna end up working for his old man in the lumber business. It’s all laid out from the start. You have to fit in.
KATHY: You don’t want him to do that, do you? If the guy is into physics you’ve gotta really stand behind him and make it all happen for him.
RUTH: I don’t know. You have some kids and everything. I mean it’s not like you can’t have a meaningful life if you get married and have kids.
KATHY: Wow, I don’t believe you really mean that.
RUTH: Look, Kathy, I don’t want Mike to saw wood for the rest of his life, but what can I do about it? Why shouldn’t he get into wood? Like, what if he does physics for the rest of his life and he’s a genius and ends up head of department at some asshole university; you find out one day he’s being financed by the C.I.A.
KATHY: These guys. They think they don’t need you, so you go away and they freak out. Mike is a really brilliant guy. I mea
n, we all know that. You could really do things for him if you tried. You should’ve seen Bob when I first met him.
RUTH: I did.
KATHY: He used to compose all this really shitty music and like when he did something good he didn’t even know it. You had to keep telling him yes, it’s good, it’s really great. A whole year it took for him to believe it. He’s writing some fantastic stuff now, ever since, you know, I told him he was the first guy.
RUTH: Yeah, and look at him now.
KATHY (Upset again): You think you’re really relating like crazy and then, I don’t know, it’s a whole new scene. It’s like you don’t even know him anymore.
RUTH: Maybe you ought to stop relating so hard.
KATHY: You don’t know him, Ruth. I really know the guy and he needs me.
RUTH: Yeah, but maybe you ought to lay off for a while.
MIKE bursts in through the front door.
MIKE: Holy shit, where were you?
RUTH: I got lost and came home.
MIKE: Christ, it was horrible. We got stopped by this line of cops. Me and Cootie were right up front so I told him we should get everyone to join hands and stand still. We’re standing there and this one pig starts running toward Cootie and you know how he gets when he sees pigs and he always gets diarrhea. I don’t know, he should have said something, but he got the urge so bad he started to run, you know, trying to find a toilet, and this dumb pig thought he was trying to resist arrest.
KATHY: Is he all right?
MIKE: They took him to the hospital. He’s, I don’t know, they said he’ll be all right. He got it in the back.
COOTIE walks in.
COOTIE: Boy, what a shitty march. You had to go and get separated with all the eats. I could’ve really used a marmalade and chunky peanut butter.
RUTH: Hey, did you know, Bob really wants to join the army? He’s not even gonna try and get out. He didn’t even go to the march.
COOTIE: He didn’t miss much.
KATHY: He went to a goddamn cowboy film.
COOTIE: Hey, is that the one with Kirk Douglas and Gina Lollobrigida and Curt Jurgens and Orson Welles and Tom Courtenay and . . .
KATHY: You guys are really something. You don’t give a shit what happens to him. I thought we were, like, all together here. Smug bastards. I’ll tell you something.
COOTIE: What’s that, Kathy?
KATHY: You’re no better than the people fighting this war. (SHE storms out of the room down the hall)
MIKE: She’s pretty cut up, huh?
RUTH: She thinks he’s serious.
MIKE: Isn’t he?
COOTIE starts jumping and singing, punctuating each note with a leap. HE snarls the song.
COOTIE:
We shall over cu—u—um,
We shall over cu—u—um,
We shall overcome some day—ay-ay-ay-ay
Oh, oh, oh, deep in my heart
I do believe.
We shall over . . .
MIKE: Shut up, Mel.
COOTIE: If Bob’s really serious, we gotta stop the war quick so he doesn’t get sent over there to get killed by an antipersonnel bullet.
DICK comes in, livid.
DICK: Fucking Norman is fucking out of his fucking mind. That’s the last time I ever take him with me. (HE takes a bottle of milk from the icebox, kills it, and places it on the stack)
MIKE: Hey, what’s the matter, Dick, didn’t you get yourself some left-wing ass?
COOTIE: Don’t be ashamed, sonny. If she’s waiting out there in the hallway, bring her in and show us the goods.
DICK: Norman had a fucking gun with him. He took a fucking revolver to the march.
MIKE: Is he a good shot?
DICK: I’m not shitting around. We’re sitting on the bus and he’s telling me he’s reading Ho Chi Minh on guerrilla war and he doesn’t think marches are effective. So he says he’s gonna use the marchers like an indigenous population and start a guerrilla war against the cops. I mean, I thought he was just fucking around. You know Norman. Then he pulls out this fucking revolver right there on the bus, people looking and everything, and he says he’s gonna get a few cops and would I help him create a diversion. He’s out of his fucking mind.
MIKE: How many’d he get?
DICK: Fuck you.
COOTIE: He got the girl, huh?
DICK: Where’s Kathy and Bob?
RUTH: Bob’s not here.
DICK: Kathy here?
RUTH: Leave her alone. She’s upset.
COOTIE: Yeah, I wouldn’t try to lay her just yet, ’cause she’s still going with Bob.
DICK walks out down the hall.
MIKE: That was a pretty stupid thing to say.
COOTIE: Just came out.
RUTH: Who cares? Everyone knows what dirty Dicky’s up to. Except maybe Bob.
MIKE: And maybe Kathy.
RUTH: Kathy knows.
COOTIE: Do you think a guy could become a homosexual just by willpower? Could someone learn to like guys?
A knock on the front door.
RUTH: It’s open.
In walks LUCKY, the downstairs neighbor, led by MR. WILLIS, the landlord.
WILLIS: Lucky tells me there’s been a lotta noise up here. Is that right?
MIKE: Sorry, Mr. Willis, we had a little outburst up here. It’s my fault. I just got a letter my sister had a baby.
COOTIE: We were celebrating.
WILLIS: That’s all right, but keep it down. Lucky here was saying how you woke his wife up. She’s a very ill person. I don’t want any more complaints.
MIKE: Don’t you worry about that, Mr. Willis, I’ll take it on myself to keep this place really quiet.
LUCKY: Listen, I told you kids once before, and I’m not telling you again. You gotta get rid of those galvanized aluminum garbage cans in the yard and get plastic ones like everyone else.
RUTH (Angry): I don’t see why we can’t keep the ones . . .
MIKE: Ruth, now calm down, Ruth. I’m sorry, Lucky, but Ruth’s pretty upset. Her father’s fallen ill and they don’t know for sure if it’s . . . you know.
LUCKY: You got the galvanized aluminum ones out there. You’ll have to get rid of the galvanized aluminum ones and get plastic.
WILLIS: I’ll take care of the rest, Lucky. Thank you for bringing this particular grievance to my attention.
LUCKY: I’ll give you till Monday, then I want to see plastic out there. (HE leaves through front door)
WILLIS: Whew, I hope I seen the last of that loony today. Nothin’ but complaints day and night. The guy was born with a hair across his ass. So who’s gonna give the landlord a little coffee?
RUTH makes a move to get it.
WILLIS: Thanks, sweetheart. Brother, what a day, what a stinker of a day. Where’s Bobby?
MIKE: He’s dead.
WILLIS: Dead? He’s dead? You guys really kill me, you guys. You got a whole sense of humor like nothin’ else. Dead, huh? Smart kid, Bobby. Hey, you been to the march?
COOTIE: Yep.
WILLIS: Great march. I watched it on Channel 8 in color. Brother, clothes you guys wear come out really good on color TV. You know, that guy Lucky can be a lotta trouble. He got a mind, like, you know, the size of a pinhead, you know what I mean? Just one sugar, sweetheart.
MIKE: You want the rent?
WILLIS: Rent, schment. I come to see how you guys are getting along and you talk to me about rent. How many landlords care, tell me that? One in a million, I can tellya. Hey, you decided whatya gonna do when you get out of college?
COOTIE: I’m gonna be a homosexual.
WILLIS: A homo. . . . You guys really slay me, you guys. What a sense of humor. You know, I’d give ten’a my other tenants for any one of you guys. You kids are the future of America, I mean that deeply, not too much milk, beautiful. Yeah, you kids live a great life up here. I got tenants complaining all the time about the way you kids carry on, and I’ll tell ya something, you wanna know why they complain? ’Cause they’d give
the last piece of hair on their heads to live like you kids are living.
RUTH: How’s Mrs. Willis?
WILLIS: Huh? Oh, yeah, great, just great. Well, just between you and me and the wall she’s gettin’ to be a pain in the ass. She wants me to get rid of you, too. Why? I ask her. She don’t like the way you live. O.K., I say, if you know so much, how do they live? She don’t know and she don’t wanna know. I try to tell her, you know, about the wild parties and stuff and taking drugs to have all new sensations in the body and the orgies with six or seven of you all at once. You should see her eyes light up. Same thing with all the tenants. When they hear what it’s really like up here they go all funny. They’d pay me a hunnerd dollars to hear more, but they ain’t got the nerve to ask. “Get rid of them.” That’s all I hear. Wamme to tell you something?
MIKE: If you got something to say you didn’t ought to hold back.
WILLIS: Tremendous. You kids are tremendous. Listen. When the neighbors try to tellya about when they was young don’t believe it. It’s a lotta bull, and I should know. When we was young it was so boring you fell asleep when you was twenty and you never woke up again. You hear them stories Lucky tells about the war? Crap. He’s sittin’ down there holdin’ his dick watchin’ Doris Day on television. He’d give his left nut to know what’s happenin’ up here. This is the best cup of coffee I’ve had all day. I got a theory about it. It’s when the head and the stomach don’t talk to each other no more. That’s when everything goes to hell. I’m gettin’ so I don’t know what I want half the time. I got these dreams, really crazy dreams. I got this one where I’m in a clearing, you know, it’s right in the middle of the jungle and there’s this tribe of Africans, I mean, like I don’t know if they’re Africans but they’re livin’ in the jungle and they’re black so I figure they must be Africans. They got this skin. It’s, you know, black, but really black. This maybe sounds kinda screwy, but it’s really beautiful this skin. It’s a dream, remember. I’m not sayin’ black skin is beautiful, if you see what I mean. I’m in charge of the whole works in this jungle and I got it all organized so the men live in one hut and the women live in another hut and there’s a big sort of square in between where nobody’s allowed after lights-out. They live like this all their life. There’s no marryin’ or anything. I’m a kind of witch doctor and I got this tribe believing . . . well, you know, they’re just, like, Africans, and they don’t know you gotta have a man and a woman to make babies, and I got ’em thinkin’ you get babies when the moon shines down a girl’s thing and hits the inside of her womb. And I got this whole ceremony where a girl comes to me when she wants a baby and I tell her she gotta wait until it gets dark and the moon comes up. Then I tie her to a plank, face up, and tilt the plank so her thing is facing the moon and then I go to the hut with the guys inside and get one of them to jerk off on a leaf, you know, one of them tropical leafs that’s really big. Then I roll this leaf up like it’s a tube and I sneak across the square holding this leaf in my hand all rolled up, until I get to the girl. She’s lying there in the moonlight all black and shiny and her thing is opened right up ’cause she thinks . . . and I got this tube full of jis in my hand, and I’m coming closer so I can smell everything and . . . (Comes out of it) Jesus, what am I saying? I’m going crazy. It’s just a dream, what I’m telling you.
