Thom Pain

by Will Eno

  Brief pause.

  Well, while we’re waiting. So, a horse walks into a bar. The bartender says, “Why the long face?” And the horse says, “I’m dying of AIDS. And I guess I feel a little sorry for myself.” So the bartender says, “My God, that’s awful. I’m so sorry.”

  Brief pause.

  I’m forgetting some part of it. But you get the point, you see the hilarity. It’s funny because it’s true.

  Brief pause.

  What a nice crowd. I see no difference, really. In a world filled with difference, sickening disheartening difference, I see none. Between the you and the me. You all seem so wonderful and I seem so wonderful, and so I make no distinction, I see no separation, no unbridgeable distance between us, wonderful us. Or none worth remarking, since the thought of you disgusts me so much. The thought of you doesn’t disgust me that much. In fact, you’re all so wonderful, I’d like to take you home, leave you there, and then go somewhere else. No, seriously. The truth? I don’t care either way. That’s not true. I do care, either way.

  I’m the type of person you might not hear from for sometime, but then, suddenly, one day, bang, you never hear from me again.

  We’re all roughly this way, yeah? Roughly.

  Noting a woman in the audience.

  Except you. You’re different. I really love your difference, it’s so wonderful and lovely and different. (He moves closer to her, perhaps kneeling or stepping off-stage.) Where are you from, I wonder, or, did wonder, about two seconds ago. (He retreats.) But now that’s over, we’re through. Sorry. See you around. You can throw my things away. I would change the locks if I were you. (Solemnly.) Bye now.

  Reality is funny, sometimes. Not to me.

  Let’s talk a little about love.

  Brief pause. Perhaps looking at the woman to whom he was just speaking, as if waiting for her to begin the conversation.

  I see. Fine. I’ll begin. Do you like magic? I do. It’s fairly new, this love of mine, of magic. I made serious inroads into a woman, once, doing card tricks with a deck that only had one card left in it. “Pick a card,” I’d say. She would lick her lips, touch herself or me, maybe we’d laugh, maybe not. She wasn’t from here. So I had to speak to her in the international language of love: English. But we had some laughs – two. No, three. We had an understanding, though neither of us knew what it was. But we were pretty compatible, for a while there, what with our – the different sexual organs. Anyway, here we are together – eating, sleeping, holding each other. The jargon of romance is almost unbearably precise: Going steady, Seeing each other, Going out. It takes a serious dose of shaking, vision loss, and a year of staying in, to understand the beauty of those terms, the pain and wonder in the words. Anyway, this was us, a couple, partners, un-apart. Whispers like you’ve never heard.

  “You’ve changed,” she said, the night we met. She had watchful eyes, sober sometimes, a natural sort of animal guardedness I thought I recognized. Sometimes you meet someone who you know right away is made up of trillions of different cells, and, she was one of these. A quivering thing, a good vocabulary, nice legs, pretty eyes, the backside. Apologies for the dirty language. But it’s all dirty language, if you look at it right.

  As for our story, if you’re lost at all, you’re not alone. Don’t think I’m somewhere out ahead, somewhere anywhere, with a plan. I’m right here beside you, or hiding behind you, like you, in terrible pain, trying to make sense of my life. I’m just kidding – you probably are alone. Or, I don’t know. Where are we, exactly, I wonder, in your estimation, in mine.

  Earth is always an answer.

  We’re on planet Earth, a planet in a solar system, one of a trillion solar systems in our galaxy, which is one of a billion galaxies in the Universe. And you think you’re pretty special. Math. There’s a lot of zeroes out there. What can one man do? Nothing, really. Or I don’t know. I’ve been taking vitamin supplements. A – no, yeah – A. B. D. Zinc. Actually, zinc is a mineral. You don’t care. C. E. Did I say B? I don’t care.

  Do me a favor. If you have a home, when you’re home, later, avoiding your family, staring at the dog, and they ask you where you’ve been, please just don’t say that you were out somewhere watching someone being clever, watching some smart-mouthed nobody work himself into some dumbass frenzy. Please say instead, when you don’t say anything because no one asked you, that you saw someone who was trying. I choose the word with care. I’m trying. A trying man. A feeling thing, in a wordy body. Poor Thom’s a-trying. Poor Thom is fucking cold. I imagine you people have some experience with the Elizabethans. Or some experience with cold. Or maybe a memorable splinter?

  Anyway.

  So, the child – no, the woman. Let me linger with my woman a little longer. She still had her tonsils, her appendix, her wisdom teeth, all the beautiful useless extra things. This, plus the holes, the holes in her body, in her childhood, the missing things, the blind spots. Altogether, with the pluses and the minuses, a very complete woman. (Brief pause.) I loved her so much. So beautiful, my God. She had – (He moves to one side of the stage, perhaps in front of a curtain, into darkness – perhaps seeking a quiet private place from which to speak great intimate truths. Speaks as if to the stage manager in the booth.) Could I have a little light over here? (He waits. No light comes up. He returns to exactly where he stood before, and begins again, exactly as before.) I loved her so much. So beautiful, my God. She had everything. She had fleas, which I think I gave her, and, moles and birthmarks that she came up with on her own. A healthy give and take. We were very close. She felt, wrongly, that she could tell me anything. I think of her in the evenings. Should I hear a plangent honking and raise my eyes to descry in the darkening sky a vee of geese, heading north or south, I take my pulse and remember those –

  To the woman in the audience to whom THOM spoke, earlier. At a very low volume.

  Again, I have to say, I really like your individuality. All kindness and light and loyalty. Or, so I imagine. (Moves toward her, perhaps at some point stepping off-stage and out of the light. He is, at times, aware of the audience, and is at times self-conscious about having this conversation.) Maybe you could meet me, later on? After? I don’t know where I’ll be, so maybe don’t bother. Unless you’d like to. We’ll get a drink. Who knows. Depending on how terrible your life is, I could be a good move for you. Maybe I didn’t have to say all that. (He returns to the stage.) And I may have plans anyway. So forget I said anything. Or imagined you at all. Forget I thought or felt anything.

  (Returning to general audience.) So, the woman. Of our story. No, let’s forget the woman for a little while, if we could. Let me jump around here. Thanks. Let’s get back to the inner child. The crippled kid with the electrocuted dog. Did I say his face was disfigured? Even if I hadn’t, can you picture the face of a little boy in your mind, without disfiguring it anyway? Can you picture anything without it falling apart? Can you picture even a simple square without it going sideways and wrong and triangular? (Very brief pause. “Noticing” that an audience member is experiencing the mental image of a square going sideways in his or her mind.) Like that. I’m not sure you can. Anyway, let’s forge ahead, despite our obvious flaws. I’m speaking to the obviously flawed among us. And, as well, to those of us whose deformations are more private. (To a person in third or fourth row, to whom THOM has not yet spoken.) Hello, sir.

  So, the boy. Becoming a man, in the puddle. Or, no, we’re farther along than that.

  It’s late. He comes home, a dark house. Walks up the stairs, supperless. Something is amiss. Some real thing is amiss. Though who could put a finger on it, in it, who could see it and state it plainly, the trouble in the bone-quiet nights in the tidy house on Garden Street? Having seen the boy, the only-child, make his way from room to room, in search of anything to mother or sister him? I dare say no one. The personality forms in the dark. This is possibly a very good point. The worldview arises at night, without witness. The boy’s did, as he grew, changed, away from peo
ple, in the bathroom, in the rain, down halls in everyday familial places. I dare say… no I don’t. I do know they didn’t pat his head. They didn’t muss up his hair and say, Good Boy. He comes and goes, untouched, his childhood running out, as he becomes a foreigner, an immigrant to the place where he was born.

  To a man wearing a regular and common shirt in the audience.

  I have that same shirt.

  Anyway. That night, the night of the stormy day that was his dead dog’s last, that night he had, with his brutal new haircut, a wet dream, or, nocturnal emission, if you like. Who knows what he dreamt of. Some inscrutably human thing, no doubt. Something out of the vocabulary and wilderness of a little boy at night. Maybe of a woman bending over, knees-deep in muddy water, a scribbled picture of a scribbled feeling. Or maybe of some fuzzy uneducated image of a girl, saying a word he liked. “Voucher.” Or, “Ankles.” Whispering one of those funny little words that only refer to words, like “Such.” Maybe he just felt some felicific little twinge, a nice little physical feeling in the night, and came, without language. His little bed and the little sheets with airplanes on them are covered in semen and freshly badly-cut hair. What a mysterious scene. And somewhere in the same night another youth bleeds between her legs, staring out a window, wondering whom to tell, wondering what to tell them. What a mystery. The onset of the breeding years. Growth. The cancers are almost all in place. Nature laughs last, ladies and gentlemen, laughs hardest and best and last, deep into the night, at you. (Gently, softly, solemnly.) But, think of it all. What a paradise, as I have said. What a surprise to have a body.

  Meaning, across the world, hardly anyone sleeps. How could they? Every night spent in the body is a fitful night. Fighting gravity, and losing. Night after fitful night spent fighting everything.

  But so that morning, the messy morning of the messy night, that morning on a walk through a meadow, the boy was attacked by bees. A nest had fallen onto the ground and he had kicked it by accident, his eyes shut because of the sun and maybe some other reason he had. (A momentary departure from the story:) Is it clear I love my little subject, and therefore don’t pry too hard into his reasons, his empty head, his stupid little agenda on earth? Anyway, the bees. They swarmed into his eyes and mouth, stung him on every skinny surface. The boy did not, at first, make any sound. The poor thing did not understand. He thought, out in the meadow, that he had done something wrong. He thought that the pain was already in his body and was only coming out then to punish him, that the bees had only happened along later and were trying to help. His body was exploding in painful sores, which the bees were trying to salve, to soothe. This, according to him. He really didn’t understand things. Kind of beautiful, if you like that sort of thing. If you like the idea of a little boy desperately spreading stinging bees over his bleeding body. Desperately yelling “Help me, Bees, Help,” and putting his little swollen hand into the hive for more.

  Pause.

  We’ve all made similar mistakes. Mistaking the bee for the flower, giving our heart away to the first prick or bitch to come down the trickling river. Anyway, the boy crawled enough away, almost died, lay there until evening, neither crying nor laughing, a thing of nature, in pain among the crickets and frogs.

  Pause.

  So that’s the bee incident.

  Pause.

  I have an incredibly rich interior life.

  A long pause. Thirty seconds, a minute. THOM PAIN regards the audience. Perhaps he stares for a moment at the woman in the audience to whom he has been speaking. He does almost nothing, just stands there, living his rich interior life.

  Yeah.

  Brief pause.

  You really are very forgiving. To let me get lost like this. No one else lets me do anything. Everyone else always has these little tips, different ideas about ways I could be. “Hey, what about a haircut? Must you be exactly that tall? Maybe you could talk different. Why are you looking east? Brush your teeth. Change. I hate how you breathe.” (Brief pause.)

  On the last couple lines above, THOM PAIN has perhaps inadvertently shown how others have treated him, how the world has felt to him. He tries to move into a gentle and more forgiving mode.

  So, comparatively, you really are a nice group. So easygoing, watching so gently. Looking out at you all, I am struck by the sort of –

  He fixes on a woman in the audience.

  Is that – Sarah? Is it you? I can’t believe it.

  Almost immediately.

  Mary?

  He moves a few steps.

  Next, I’m going to do this:

  He pulls out a handkerchief and blows his nose. As he’s putting it away, he sees something in its folds that gives him an idea.

  Behold. Consider. Use your head and imagine this is a brain. Or, the mind. There it is, in the skull of a boy still in the womb, battleship gray and growing, folding over on itself, turning, as he kicks his way into the world. Amazing. A little boy learns to crawl, the nerves firing, his mind relying on his hands and knees. A less-little boy is introduced to a stranger, is embarrassed, his brain sending blood to his face, his mind telling him, “Look down, little boy. Hurt inside. Be shy.” And so on and on. Until an old man sits in a chair, the hearing gone, the eyes gone, the body almost gone – but the brain still going, or the mind, insisting on itself, making itself heard, causing trouble. There, the brain, the mind, in a chair, in a field, or under stars, in the bright sun of Egypt, Beantown, Whoville, all the while all the while fighting, revising, planning its next defeat. Or a man stands before you, age unimportant, the mouth moving, big things going badly, but a million little things going right – the brain is doing its job. But, the mind, another story. It’s a monster. They don’t know, the doctors, the distinguished authors. But, oh, the memories up there. Her fine hand on your shoulder, on the steps of a museum. The dog at play, with a caterpillar. Insomnia, nausea, ocean waves. The taste of mascara, the feeling of night, how the world can sound. Such a feeling life, such sensation, yes? Then pile the words on top. And watch them seep down. Think of it. The brain and the mind. All that up there. Married, happily or not. Imagine.

  Pause.

  Or just think about snot. Mucus. Imagine that this is a handkerchief. And that I just blew my nose into it.

  He balls up the handkerchief and, with a magician’s flourish, puts it back in his pocket.

  To backtrack: you worry, you have anxiety, the blood vessels constrict, the handkerchief crumples, it’s a headache, a migraine, a blow to the head, and now you try to live. It all seems so useless, so unusable. The house that you live in, the oceans, the mountains, the peace-keeping forces. The restaurants and anniversaries, the factories and gardens, useless. Fuck it all, kill it and burn it all down, you say, if you have a little headache.

  So maybe I have a little headache. Maybe I was born with a little headache. Maybe this is all. Just some wrong pressure somewhere. I’m speaking softly for a reason. I guess because I hope that you… I don’t know.

  Pause.

  Let’s go over the enormous and informative ground we’ve covered so far. We were talking – or, I guess I was talking – about a little girl – a little boy I guess it was – who got stung by a bee and used to have a dog. Then, about falling in love – remember? We all went back in time. Or, I did. Then I took out a handkerchief, tried to use my imagination on you. I think that brings us up to now.

  Pause.

  Okay. Did the raffle, did the joke about the horse. Oh, I know. Another joke. Why is an old lady like a tiny motorcycle? (He waits for a moment, to see if anyone has an answer.) Well, of course, she isn’t, she isn’t at all. You should be disgusted with yourself for even for a second trying to think of how she might be. I’m disgusted with myself. And this makes me, you know, act out. Lash out. (Quietly.) Or lash in.

  But, to continue. The woman, my darling, from earlier. One fine week, we woke to cold sores tearing through our lips. Picture that we lay in bed: me, confused and not unhappy; her, thinking thoughts I nev
er knew, never will. We were so full of life, each other. “Love cankers all.” A pun – Thank you. She had beautiful eyes – I must have looked. And I bet she smiled, or tried to, through the cracking pain, the dryness I caused in her.

  It was more complicated than this, our love. Plus, I lied about all of it. But it was a while back, all some time ago – maybe this morning. Or even longer back, early this morning. The poem of the wee-most hours. The old stars twinkle over the scene. No one else in sight. Bony stray dogs roam the street. Stars and dogs circle our house, us asleep in love, or wide awake. One or the other.

  It makes you stop and think. These timeless times. How long does everything take? How long did I kiss her, the time I lost track of time, my lips red with life, saying nothing, covering her in me, in my saliva? And how long did our little hero, who I’m getting sick of, lay there in the meadow drooling, in bed, or, in the park, which we’ll get to? Long enough, I should think. Long enough to learn something.

  But back to the cold sores. After all my efforts at communication, something had passed between us. Would that I might provoke in you a similar mark, a little growth, a blemish of real life. Don’t think that I think I will. (To a particular man or woman in the audience.) Any thoughts? Feelings? (Immediately, but somehow gently.) I’m sure. (To audience.) Anyway. The woman and the man, myself. Good good times. Except for all of our unfixable problems, everything was perfect. Epic romance in the aisles of all-night stores. Unaloneness, at last, the stupid clouds lift. Kissing in the morning, pissing together in the roomy handicapped bathrooms of the emptier museums. A million little weddings. My life to this point was mishaps. I was just accidents and wrong roads before her. But, then, the lost was found. Happiness. Perfection, with an asterisk. Yes, she found my desire a little unruly, a little dire, too much of an emergency. And I don’t know how well the family ghosts got along. But in the intermingling of our – well, not intermingling, exactly. I don’t know. (Brief pause. Sadly, solemnly.) We’ve all probably had the roughly same experience. Yes?