by David Mamet
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 profound 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.)
Where we moved back. (Pause.)
Where we retired. (Pause.)
“Do you remember that night?” we would say . . .
Thirteen
Sam: Where were you? You weren't there. You know what it means to me when you're late. There's going to come a time when this is life and death, these assignations.
You never fulfill my instructions. You don't.
Do you think that I care?
Do you know what I care about? Loyalty.
Do you think that I care for six minutes?
Eh? What do you think I am? Don't you see . . . ?
There's going to come a time when this is life and death.
There are things going on, there are things going on in this country you cannot be imprecise. You cannot . . . ! (Pause.)
And it just takes you ages to leave anywhere. (And you can't keep your fucking mouth shut.) Do you think that I care for appearances? What I care for (What I care for miss) (yes) is survival. Survival.
(You're so secure . . . )
What do you know? You don't know what life is. You know nothing.
Fourteen
Kevin: He brought the coffee, it was very good. I lit a cigarette, I looked at her. She smiled.
I have something for you, she said.
Oh, what?
A thing . . . something. She took a package from her purse, she gave it to me. She smiled.
Shall I open it? Yes, open it.
She's bought me a gold lighter. (Pause.)
It's lovely, I said. (Pause.) You shouldn't have.
She'd had it engraved with my name. And then “I love you,” and her name. It's lovely, I said.
Do you like it?
Yes, I said, you shouldn't have.
She smiled. (Pause.) You don't like it.
No, I like it very much, it's lovely.
No. You don't.
I do.
No.
Yes, I do, I told her. (Pause.) You shouldn't have though.
No? (Pause.) Why? (Pause.) Why? (Pause.)
Look, I told her. We are friends (are we friends?).
What do you mean “friends"? What?
We are friends, I want to be your friend, I said. (Pause.)
What does this mean, she asked me.
Please, not now, I said.
No. Now. Now, please, what does this mean? (Pause.)
Look, I told her.
No, she said. Don't tell me this. (Pause.) No, don't do this.
Keep your voice down.
I don't care. (Pause.) I don't care . . .
He came back and he stopped and asked if we'd like some more coffee . . .
No, she said, don't tell me this. (Pause.) No. She started crying.
Are you alright, I said? What? (Pause.) No. Would you like something? Something? What? I don't know, can I get you something? (Do we have to do this here?) (Pause.) Would you like to leave? (Pause.) Shall we leave?
Leave me alone. She got up, he came over to pull out her chair but she was gone. I sat there. (Pause.)
He asked me if I'd care for something else. (Pause.) Some more coffee . . . (Pause.) What? No. (Pause.) Yes.
“I love you.” (Pause.) I lit a cigarette.
Fifteen
Patti: Come here come here.
I know what you want.
You don't have to say it.
I know.
You don't have to say you want it.
I know.
I know; you don't want it. I know.
But come here.
It's alright.
I'm here.
Come on.
No.
Come on.
Yes.
Come here.
You lie down, now.
That's alright.
You lie down.
Good.
That's good.
Good.
Now be quiet. You be quiet now.
I know.
Now I am going to make you feel good.
I know.
You be quiet, now. That's alright.
I know what you want. (Pause.)
You don't have to tell me that you want it.
That's alright.
You just be still now.
That's alright. (Pause.)
Good.
Sixteen
Sam: The problems of the universe. We are programmed to love our loved ones, all our paramours, our wives, our husbands. (Pause.) We are programmed to love our race. To help our race survive.
This is a chemic fiat, and what does it have, I ask you, what, to do with metaphysics? Neither are there metaphysics, no. But only more increasingly occult degrees of understanding—hidden, though, only because of our interminable arrogance—Our race-conceit. (Is it true?) We are the stuff that rocks are made of and cannot be broken of the habit of an intuition of some specialness—(Pause.)
We are the fish.
When it all comes to chemicals.
Where are our mothers, now? Where are they? In the moment of our death, or birth, of orgasm or hunger?
When it all comes down to carbon, or to hydrogen?
In cities where we kill for comfort—for a moment of reprieve from our adulterated lives—for fellow-feeling. (Pause.) (I have eyelashes, too . . . )
Some night when you have been up half the night alone when you have read instructions on the phone book, eh?
Then, when the walls scream. Eh?
Who'd sell our soul just to be ratified, in taxicabs, in some resort, along the cradle, by a touch (a friend, our mother . . . ) who would make the world go. (Pause.)
One moment of release.
Psychic reprieve.
(Oh, God, what are we doing here?)
We are uprooted.
We have no connection. (Pause.)
We beat each other by the docks or dressed in jackboots and in uniforms, and preen in passing windows just like everyone.
Our life is garbage.
We take comfort in our work and cruelty. We love the manicurist and the nurse for they hold hands with us. Where is our mother now? We woo with condoms and a ferry ride; the world around us crumples into chemicals, we stand intractable, and wait for someone competent to take us ‘cross the street. (Pause.)
Where are our preceptors now? Or at the moment of death, and would you not do all you can, forsaking anything, for one swift moment of surcease? (The battered bodies, news photographers, pulp analyses, (Pause.) crimson sheets . . . )