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monoblogue
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Julia - from Emily Post's Guide to Vision Quests by Cybele May
The Explanation
from Scene Eight
Character: Julia, a young wife. (20-40)
Synopsis: Julia has run off with no notice to her husband. She starts by running away from him, but ends up hitchhiking and getting dumped in the middle of the desert and stumbles into a military firing range where she meets a sympathetic MP.
JULIA
I don’t even remember. It’s weird, but whatever it was, I can’t even remember. I don’t even know if we had a fight. I remember going to a party together. Came home, and I woke up in the middle of the night and just had to leave. But it wasn’t him.
(Pause.)
I was at a party, at my sister-in-laws ... she’s goes with this Chumash fellow, keeps his old ways when it suits him. Anyway, she’s got her place all dolled up, candles all over the place. The Winter Solstice, come to think of it. Only ten or twelve of us there. It’s a small town, anyway, so that’s considered a big party. Banging pots till the sun goes down, then whooping it up. I’d had a bit to drink, so I went to use the ... facilities. She’s got the bathroom all dolled up too, filled the tub up with water and she’s colored the water pink and there are floating candles in it with rose petals. Candles, candles everywhere. Dripping into puddles of wax on the floor. I gotta pee like you wouldn’t believe, on account of the drink. But when I go to the toilet, she’s got candles floating in there too. And I just stared at it. I froze. I didn’t know what to do.
(Frustrated)
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know. Now we weren’t rich growing up, and I’ll tell you, but my mother was a stickler for manners. She had rules. We grew up saying, “thank you, ma’am” and “if you please, sir.” It was all Emily Post. She said that if I followed the rules, I’d never feel out of control. But there wasn’t nothing in that book to cover something like that. It shot through my head, I mean, I ran every scenario through my head – I wrote letters in my head and sent them off to the universe, asking Miss Manners for help. Trying to think what she’d say. But nothing came back. I just waited and waited. Just standing there.
(Senses the audience’s confusion.)
There were candles floating in the toilet. What was I supposed to do? I could just sit down and do my business, but I figured they’d burn my ass ... and then clog the pipes when I flushed – I could fish them out and then do my business and then put them back in, but would that insult the host by calling attention to the problem in the first place – or I could pee in the sink.
(Pause.)
Mason came looking for me. I could hear him outside the door, asking his sister where I was. But I didn’t say nothing. He came to the door, knocked. I didn’t answer. He kept knocking on the door. And ... I started crying. I told him to go away. And for some reason ... I don’t know, either he was pissed ‘cause I told him to go away or he was worried – or scared that I was sick or something. He yelled something and broke down the door.
(JULIA wrinkles her nose and smiles.)
I wet myself.
(Pause.)
I peed my pants. I just stood there with my back to my husband, in the middle of the candlelit bathroom on the shortest day of the year and I urinated on my sister-in-law’s floor.
Not knowing what to say to Mason, of course, I passed out ... into the puddle.
:::
posted by Cybele
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