Goldberg Street (15 page)

Miller:
I'll live without him very well.

Sam:
How late you stayin’ in?

Jim:
How late you need me?

Sam:
Can you stay ‘til six?

Miller:
How is he looking?

Fox:
Fine.

Jim:
You need me?

Sam:
Yeah.

Jim:
Alright.

Miller:
I'll bet he is.

Jim:
You done.

Miller
(
Rising
)
:
What do I owe you?

Jim:
Dollar.

Miller:
. . . Gone to fucking
Maui
every goddamn month . . . how much?

Jim:
One dollar. (
Pause
.)

Miller:
A dollar for a shine?

Jim:
Yessuh! (
Pause
.) Thass a
spit
shine!

(
Pause
. Miller
digs in his pocket and starts to pay
.)

Miller
(
To
Sam): Did you find that guy's wallet?

Sam:
Shit. No sir. You have a good day now.

Miller
(
Exiting
,
to
Fox): Yeah. I heard you went down there . . .

Sam:
How much he give you?

Jim:
Twenny cent.

Sam:
Sonofabitch . . .

(
Pause
. Jim
goes back to work on uninhabited shoes
.)

Jim:
Yeah. They was down on Fifty-seven Street down there.

Sam:
Who?

Jim:
You
know. Richard . . . everybody . . .

Sam:
Uh-huh.

Jim:
This stuff don't come off.

Sam:
You use some Brillo on it?

Jim:
That won't help.

Sam:
No?

Jim:
Uh-uh. (
Pause
.)

Sam:
You try it.

Jim:
I will.

Sam:
Did you find that fellow's billfold?

Jim:
Shit.

Sam:
Well did you?

(Customer
enters
.)

Customer:
Shoeshine.

Sam:
You get up there! (Customer
takes seat
,
picks up paper
.) Yessuh. Thass right. Thass for you! (
Starts on
shoes
.
To
Jim.) ‘Cause if you found that thing you best had tell me.

Jim:
No, I didn't find nothin’.

Customer:
What did you lose?

Sam:
He lost his wallet somewhere in here.

Customer
(
Producing cigarette
)
:
Do you have a match?

Sam:
Yessuh, I surely do. (
Lights
Customer‘
s
cigarette
.
Pause
.
To
Jim.) ‘Cause you know if I found it I'd tell you.

Jim:
I know you would.

Sam:
You know I would.

Customer:
I got a spot of paint or something on the toe.

Sam:
Yessuh, I see it.

Jim:
. . . Yeah, they was all down there drinkin’ . . .

Sam:
Uh-huh. If them people come back here, you best tell the truth.

Jim:
I tole the truth.

Sam:
Uh-huh.

Jim:
I tole the truth.

Sam:
We gonna see.

Jim:
Well man I tole you what the truth was, so you just think what you want.

Sam:
I will.

Jim:
How late you say you want me to stay today?

Sam:
Thass up to you—I'm stayin’ to six.

Jim:
I'll stay too.

Sam:
Yeah, you do what you want.

Jim:
Shit.

Sam:
Fine pair of shoes you got here.

Customer:
Thank you.

Jim:
I'm gettin’ to the red.

Sam:
You call me ‘fore you do ‘em.

Jim:
Yes I will. (
To self.
) . . . She said we fucked ‘em up . . .

Sam:
Huh?

Jim:
Yeah. I'm glad I wasn't here.

Sam:
Well, don't you worry. She be back.

Jim:
Uh-huh. (
Pause
.) How I know
you
didn't find it.

Sam:
Shit, I found it man, how come I'm askin’ you?

Jim:
Uh-huh.

Litko: A Dramatic Monologue

Litko: A Dramatic Monologue
was written as a companion piece for
The Duck Variations
in its 1973 Chicago premiere at the Body Politic, and featured Jim Brett directed by David Mamet.

Character:
Litko

Litko:
(At rise Litko is discovered addressing the audience. Litko speaks.) Do we understand each other?

His demeanor and, in fact, his line ("Do we understand each other?") go far in helping to create a bond between Litko and his audience. Unbutton coat. Litko speaks: Let us dispense with formality, and get down to theatrical cliches.

The audience smiles appreciatively at his candid behavior.

Thanks, gang. Pause.

“I wonder if they realize the technical proficiency and purely traditional dramatic training necessary to establish the actor's comfort in a setting ostensibly devoid of qualities.” Paper, mister?

“You can't go out there, Litko,” he says to the audience. “Billy Brenneer and the
Lazy 1’
boys'll cut you down like a muskrat.” Many members of the audience wonder if they really know what a muskrat is. Litko assures them it is not important. “It is not important.” That's easy for him to say.

A pause (or silence) ensues, broken only by sporadic coughing and the line “broken only by sporadic coughing and the line.”

It becomes obvious to both parties to the theatrical
event
, that a crux has been reached. Progression of some sort is clearly indicated.

A new character seems unlikely.

Introduction of further vocabulary is certainly within the limits of accepted tradition.

The appearance of a goofy prop or two . . . (don't hold your breath).

The re-occurrence of World War One . . . ?

Police brutality?

The news that some wild animal has escaped from a nearby zoo, and is believed hiding
right here in this theater
! (I'm spelling that “E,” “R.”) (At this point I shall go and look—or pretend to look—you're grownups, judge for yourselves—at several places around the stage where this alleged animal might hide.) (But Litko does not move.) Which might just raise a question as to the responsibility of the dramatic artist to his audience. (What sophistry!) I will now
deliver myself of the following: one of a number of previously prepared and memorized speeches:

“I love you. I have always loved you. I shall love you as long as there courses in my veins-and, to be realistic, in
your
veins—blood.” Let us recapitulate. (Why? because it
feels
so good.) A while ago a person unknown to you . . .

“Of course,” Litko allows, “some of you,” addressing the audience directly—what high style!—"do know this person,” indicating himself, “in another guise, or in different guises. But,” he says, “I sincerely hope,” leaving for the audience to decide for itself or themselves the veracity of the aforementioned hope, and whether the said hope is that of the character (that is to say, the
playwright
) or of the actor; and, if
of
the actor, of him truly, or but under the somewhat—let us face the facts—extenuating circumstances in which we now find him, and, just a bit further, if we really got the time for this diversion . . .

“I sincerely hope . . . “ or, from another tack:

“In response to a tacit yet undeniable inquiry into the sincerity of my hope . . . “ and

“As to the current employment of that which, believe me, can be taken as my true capacity for sincerity . . . “ let us leave no stone unturned, though: “For those who desire the identity of him the sincerity of whose hope has, of late, so clearly manifest itself, let me reply.” (No one indicates a reluctance to let him reply.)

Litko confronts his audience: “Hi, gang.”

Some, apparently, would appreciate a reply. Or do not care. Or are asleep.

Is a show of hands indicated? (In certain circumstances, yes.)

Why, then, does Litko not reply?

Has he been “struck dumb"?

Shall he lapse into song? Or dance? Or mixed-media? Or some more purely visual form of art? Has he the training? Has he the inclination? Has he the time? Is God dead? (No, I know, that's nothing to joke about.) This is no life for a grown man, Litko says, on the verge of great frenzy. (Emotion is freeing to look at, but tiresome to indulge in.) “A
funny thing happened to me,” Litko says, humor dripping from each word and gesture.

“Really now, seriously, folks, I have the sorry task of informing you that—yes, you guessed it—the theater is dead” (Oh no.)

“—innocence, your eight-year-old foster child, Scooter, along with a busload of his classmates enroute to the zoo, Beethoven, LaFollette, and countless other individuals and institutions of varying worth.” (All of this, of course, having taken place over a period of years, and astonishing only in the aggregate.)

“What can we salvage of this carnage?” Litko asks, imaginary tears coursing down his all-too-real cheeks, “Hope for the future? The odd wristwatch?”

(Wait a second, please.)

“How old are you, Trigger?”

(While my imaginary horse is counting, folks, and in the final seconds of our time together here I'd like to say, on behalf of myself, the author, the director, our wonderful stagehands-seriously, don't they do a great job?—our house crew,
their
families, and the many, many men and women who provide them with the services and goods so necessary for the support of life: keep your peeker up.)

Anybody out there from Kankakee!?

In Old Vermont

Characters:
Roger
,
Maud

Roger:
Do you remember when we were in Vermont that time?

Maud:
Of course.

Roger:
Do you remember that?

Maud:
Yes. (
Pause
.) The sky.

Roger:
The sky. Yes.

Maud:
Cold. The cold. The evenings. Sitting.

Roger:
“Old, old, old New England.”

Maud:
Fire.

Roger:
The fire. Oh, yes.

Maud:
I like the mornings. Do you know why?

Roger:
Why?

Maud:
It will become warm.

Also, in the evenings. When the sun goes down. In afternoons.

In winter. When the sun goes down.

It becomes warm. In afternoon. The sun shines.

All the snow is bright.

The cold protects us.

It can warm us.

In the winter.

In the snow.

Like skating on the ice.

The shock comes.

With the fissure. Falling. (
Pause
.)

For moments.

For one moment. When you know that you are cold. (
Pause
.)

Then it seeps in.

When the cold comes it is warm.

As if you'd wet the bed.

The rabbits turn. They turn to white.

I like it in the winter. For we . . . For we are
protected
. (
Pause
.)

You hear?

THEN WE ARE ALONE!

IN A VACATION HOME. WE'RE WAITING!

FOR THE
WHAT
? THE SPIRIT.

Indians could come. Where would we hide? Where would we go then? We'd not made provisions. It is much too late.

We could have cut a cellar in the ground or made a secret room between the logs, or in the roof.

A deep, deep cellar down. Beneath the rug.
They'd
never find it!

Do not tell me that. Not if you tamped it down. Not if you tamped the dirt down.
Trampled
it and fit the logs in. Covered with an Oriental rug in red.

They'd stomp, they'd stomp, they'd all try to search out our hiding place.

But they could not. They couldn't
find
it.

So don't tell me that.

If we had built it. If we'd built it. If we'd took the time. But no!

The shock of when they come.

The tommyhawk.

The genitals hacked off.

The cold and roasting flesh.

Your own hands severed and your eyes like boils.

Like fevered boils, like ponds. Like flying geese.

Our screams mean nothing.

Far above the summer scene.

The hot. The sickly heat.

The fire. Burning down.

The wings.

The flapping of the windowshade:

The upturned lamp.

A candle guttered.

Someone finds a bag of salt.

That they had overturned.

(
A long pause
.)

In old Vermont.

All Men Are Whores: An Inquiry

All Men Are Whores
was first presented in February, 1977 at the Yale Cabaret with the following cast directed by David Mamet: Patti LuPone, Kevin Kline, and Sam Tsoutsovas.

Characters:
Sam
,
Kevin
,
Patti

One

Sam:
Our concept of time is predicated upon our understanding of death.

Time passes solely because death ends time. Our understanding of death is arrived at, in the main, because of the nature of sexual reproduction.

Organisms which reproduce through fission do not “die.”

The stream of life, the continuation of the germ plasm, is unbroken.

Clearly.

Just as it is in the case of man.

But much less apparently so in our case. For we are sentient.

We are conscious of ourselves, and conscious of the schism in our sexuality.

And so we perceive time. (
Pause
.) And so we will do anything for some affection.

Two

Kevin:
I saw her in the Art Institute four years ago. I saw her from the back, her neck, she sat up. Near the Oriental art. The horses. She faced down away from me her hair was dark, she had a cotton suit on.

I looked at her a long time at her back. I thought that if you walk away from her you'll always wish you had (I knew that I would think about her).

In the way she faced away from me I couldn't see her.

I went over to the case in front of her. (
Pause
.)

She had been out in the sun.

Hello. She looked at me. I stood there. I saw that she was reading she had put her book aside.

A long time. (
Pause
.)

She put her hand on my arm she smelled, I don't know,
like musk, faint brushing hair on her neck, back, wisps . . .

Slowly, in the cloakroom, in the hall I said that I just live a little way from here.

She put her head down on my shoulder in the taxicab, I wondered how can someone be so light, she took my chin and kissed me, she put my hand underneath her dress and rubbed my hand against her.

I just live on the second floor, she nodded, we went up.

I took her jacket, take me in the bedroom, she said.

She was like an otter, she was sleek. (
Pause
.)

I'm glad we met, I said, you make me feel good.

What, was I asleep, she said? (
Pause
.)

Please. What time is it?

I helped her find her things I took her face to kiss her.

Please, I have to go, she told me.

Are You married, I said, no. Oh. Will you call me?

Yes.

You have the number?

Are you in the book, she said? (
Pause
.)

Yes.

Good . . . (
Pause
.)

When I saw her on the bus a month ago, Hello, I said.

I'll bet that you don't remember me. (
Pause
.)

Have you been here this whole time? (
Pause
.) Have you been here all this time?

Three

Sam:
If we could reproduce like paramecia do you think that we would not?

When the secrets of the age were clear to him he took it like a man, which is to say as one who has no choice.

Four

Patti:
He said he thought of me with great affection, still. He had this fantasy where he came over and he knew something was wrong, he came in I was in the kitchen here there was this huge, ah, I don't know, a maniac, he'd hurt me, he had hurt my face, he bruised me, I had bruises on my breasts, I had become all helpless, I thought I was going to die and I was whimpering when he came in he saw what the man was doing, and he filled with rage, he tore him off of me and threw him on the floor and killed him.

He says, “You should not be let to live,” he did vile things to him, I don't know, he kicked him in the testicles, or put his eyes out. (
Pause
.)

Because he'd hurt me and this filled him with such rage the man should not be let to live. Because he thought of me with great affection still.

Five

Kevin:
Oh. (
Pause
.) Those cool forearms on my shoulder.

Her blue shirt was tied around her waist.

I licked her armpits.

Sweat. Her shirt. She kept her shirt on, I unbuttoned it and kissed her breasts. (Our bellies got so slippery.)

That morning, when she woke up, at the sink, her pants, her cotton pants, she washed her hair out at the sink, and when she took her shirt off I came up behind and held onto her breasts and she told me to wait, she would be done, wait, when she got the soap off.

We sat on the porch. (
Pause
.) Please make love to me.

Please tell me that you'd like for me to do things to you.

In my dream I dreamt you would. (
Pause
.) I always dreamt you would. I knew you would.

Six

Sam:
I like a nice ass.

I like a nice ass and legs. (
Pause
.)

The ass is the top of the legs.

Seven

Patti:
He said that what he thought that beauty was, that
beauty
was the striving, the unconscious striving of the germ plasm to find a mate who would, when coupled with itself, improve the race. (
Pause
.)

He thought that those things we found beautiful were those which would improve the race. (Is that right? Yes. Alright.)

So, What, I said, big titties and firm thighs and things for bearing in the fields? Right? He told me no. That we were overpopulated and we now need something else.

And those things which we need form our ideas of what's beautiful.

Oh. Yes, I said, I see: conditioning. Ideas someone places in your mind. Like advertising. No, he said. You cannot step outside the culture: Those who educate you, someone taught them, too.

You see?

I did not see, no, but this turned me on. Please kiss me, I said.

They were educated, too, he said. (No, wait.)

(Alright.)

We strive . . . we strive . . .

To
what
, I said?

We strive . . . our loins . . . we're driven . . . (As a race, I said, or individuals?)

A race.

(A woman of my age would never ask a man to her
apartment for an after-dinner drink unless she wanted him. He surely knows this.)

Wait, do you like Tolstoy, he said?

No. I do not like Tolstoy.

No? Why?

Oh. (
Sighs
.) I don't know.

Many reasons—(
Pause
.)

We find those things beautiful, he said, we feel may improve us.

(Our unconscious longings.)

(I was wet, but now I'm not.)

Yes. Do you read a lot, he asked me?

Yes. I read.

Oh, really, what?

Things. Books.

A long pause came here. You have lovely eyes he said. (
Pause
.) Thank you.

Yes. He said. I like your breasts. Thank you, I said, they're rather small.

I like that, he said. Do you? Yes.

I ran my right hand through his hair.

He sat there for a moment then moved by me on the couch.

Uh . . .
listen
, he said . . .

Yes?

Eight

Kevin:
I hate your family.

You know, I think there
are
no interesting restaurants.
She
would suck me off in taxicabs. (I feel she would.) I think a man could lose his life with her.

Offstage Voice:
Our small cabals.

Kevin:
I think her fingers taste of gun oil.

Offstage Voice:
Jive mesmery of musk and fish . . .

Kevin:
I think she smells like musk and cordite. We should be down in the West Side by the docks with Browning automatics.

She's a cannibal and who the fuck knows
what
she does. (
Pause
.)

Who have
you
killed?

Eh? When they drop the atom bomb, are you going to make me
soup
????

I want to see tattoos, and fuck you with your eyeshadow. I mean it.

Offstage Voice:
Harlotry and necromancy. (
Pause
.)

Kevin:
I mean it.

Nine

Patti:
I want to tie you to the bed, he said.

Okay, I said.

I want to lick all over you he said, I told him yes, I'd like that.

Would you. Yes. I said.

I want to chain you face down and to bite you all around your pussy.

Okay, I told him. Don't hurt me, though.

He said he wouldn't, but he asked me could he be a little rough.

I told him sure, just if he didn't hurt me.

He told me that he might just have to be a little rough.

Don't be too rough, I asked him, and he said he'd try not to, but sometimes he thought that it was a good idea for someone to be rough.

Alright, I said, just so long as they are gentle, too. It doesn't matter what you called it just so long as you don't hurt another person.

No, he said, but sometimes just a little pain could be erotic.

Did I think so?

I told him what? What do you mean? You tell me what you want to do, whatever, it's okay or not, but we can talk about it.

I want you to feel good and I want to feel good, too, I want to get out, too, to get off.

You know that I like you.

I told you I like you.

Take your clothes off, he said. Okay, I said.

Now
, he told me. Okay, I said, you take yours off, too.

No, he said, I only want to watch, okay.

He told me that he thought I had a lovely body, which was nice.

I told him he should take his clothes off and he said, alright, he would in a minute.

It's alright, I told him. It's alright.

I want to hit you, he said. No, you don't, I said.

I
do
, though, he said.

No, you don't, I said. You know you don't.

I
do
, though, he said.

No, you don't. Come here. Come here. And then I, him, we went, over to the couch and sat down there and I held him a while, we sat there, and I got the blanket later on and put it over us and fell asleep.

Ten

Sam:
At the Art Institute. The French Impressionists.

Some salesman from Ohio.

I said, Hello, do you like Mary Cassatt?

He said he thought so, was this one of hers.

I looked. Yes.

He sat. We talked.

He comes in every two weeks. For some company.

I smiled. Let's take a walk.

Oh, he said, sure, if you don't mind. rd like to see the North Side.

We walked by the lake, down by the Yacht Club (he'd been in the navy).

Such a fine day . . .

We went back to my . . . he said Oh, do you
live
around here . . . ? my apartment and we drank a bit.

He told me that the kind (that he was looking) that the sort of a relationship that he was looking for would take a long, long time to, I don't know, to ferment. He said that he thought that people shouldn't go to bed together for some (a certain) measured time, a month, three months . . . in which to get to know each other well.

He told me that he wanted to be friends with me. He felt we could be close. (These things take time.) Eleven-thirty.

I said, my friend, look: you think (you may think . . . ) you want some lasting . . .
I
don't know . . . some lasting something. (Nothing lasts forever . . . ) (I don't know what it is that you want.) But now, tonight, for my
own
self, what I want is to get laid. Thank you. Call me.

Then I took a shower and went out.

Eleven

Kevin:
It seemed I had discovered a capacity for being happy with a woman.

When my possession of this talent had occurred to me I rejoiced that I would not be lonely anymore, but move from one affair to yet another learning from each woman with whom I spent time, and living through the periods of my romantic re-alignments with both grace and happy resignation.

Lately, though, I find I am confused. I realize, I think, that one can only learn from these encounters if one makes some sort of compact with the person with whom one is spending time. (
Pause
.)

These contracts, these avowals of desire, of (let us face the facts)
compulsion
. (
Pause
.) They may
increase
desire
(or our capacity for such) but limit our ability to act with our newfound and
pro
found emotional resources. (
Pause
.)

How can this end, other than in great resentment of one's current partner? (
Pause
.)

Quite frankly, how?

Twelve

Patti:
We built our fires on the beach, and every night we sat by them and talked and ate our food, and we made love and slept.

As fall came we moved back into the dunes. (
Pause
.)

Later, we went further. To the woods; but walked or fished or searched for clams or driftwood in the mornings and the afternoons. And as we walked we saw the charred-out fires we had built, each in a different place, and said “do you remember that night?” (
Pause
.)

“The night we had that fire? What we ate, and how we touched each other? (
Pause
.) Do you remember?”

Or later, walking in the dunes I'd come across a hill into a gully when the sand had blown—the place was changed, of course, but something still remained. The logs, the angles they had fallen in . . . It wouldn't be the same when spring came. Traces of our camp would be obliterated by the winter and the shore itself would change. (We thought as we lived back in the trees.) (
Pause
.)