Another play. If you only have time to read one of them, scroll down and read the Oct. 1st post.

Alex and Bey sit at the table in an apartment's kitchen. It's a dirty kitchen.

Alex: Death comes with immediacy. We are slaves to the idea of time that leads you to death.

Bey: I got a pomegranate yesterday. It's my new favorite fruit.

Alex: And then time is manufactured by society and injected into you at the same time that the myth of cohesive consciousness is injected into your sense of self. The lies at the center of our lives.

Bey: your time is absolute, and so's mine. Different, maybe, though.

Alex: Are you hungry?

Bey: you live from one moment to the next, lusting after each one, slaughtering and dismissing the present.

Alex: Yeah, and you?

Bey: humble immortality, this moment here and forever.

Alex: You're delusional.

Bey: beer and cigarettes, for example. The only worthwhile investment, right? Gone in a night. The present, baby.

Alex: consume. Yes, master, consume.

Bey: It's the only thing you can have any power over—the present, your mouth.

Alex: You eat what you are fed. Do you like Oreos, Bey? Gorditas?

Bey: hey, capitalism is delicious.

Alex: That logic feeds the system

Bey: You don't understand me, not yet. It's not logic, Alex. Fuck logic. It's hedonism, the only meaning we can find in postcapitalism is in hedonism. Be a glutton.

Alex: Anything produced on an assembly line will taste like plastic to me. Let's get tacos.

Bey: You're a hypocrite.

Alex: We all are. We've had this discussion.

Bey: sure, sure. Where do we get tacos? There's no Mexican food on Thayer street, remember?

Alex: There's no Mexican food in providence, as far as I know.

Bey: I've got rice and beans. And they're free to you, cheap to me.

Alex: Let's do it. What you got to throw in there?

Bey: Tofu, peppers—let's make a stirfry with it.

Alex: Fine. You’re in charge. Can I help?

Bey: It's sort of a one man kitchen, we'd be bumping asses. Here, cut this pepper for me. Hands her a pepper

Bey: Singing
Red beans and Rice
Red beans and Rice
Ah could eat a plate twice.

Bey: You know why you can't buy beans and rice on Thayer street or anywhere like that?

Alex: I know what I think, but what do you want to say bout it?

Bey: It's because it'd be a terrible business move, at least in America. You'd haveta sell it cheap, because it's rice and beans, and then everyone would buy it because it's delicious. It's really all the food anyone needs, right? so then they wouldn't buy the other shit, the stuff you can make a profit on.

Alex: I thought it was cause the bougey (As in bourgeoisie) brown kids were too good for beans an rice.

Bey: This product is actually too good to be sold under capitalism. It's my favorite food in the world. It's sustainable. It'll always be delicious

Alex: whenever you make it.

Bey: granted. I've got some experience with the beans and rice.

Alex: It won't be your favorite food when you're thirtyfive with kids.

Bey: And I'll be well on my way to death, right?

Alex: and you'll be working a desk job.

Bey: aw, hell no.

Alex: And you'll be living each day like yesterday and tomorrow

Bey: you think life ends at twenty five, don't you? Well, when I'm thirtyfive, forty, I'll be living my life, whatever it is, man. I hope it doesn't suck. And if it does, I'll change it.

Alex: What, just pick up and leave a family and a job?

Bey: Whatever the situation calls for. Hopefully my family won't be that bad.

Alex: Families can be bad, man.

Bey: That's why I'm not going to marry you. Or even sleep with you, by the way. Just so you know.

Alex: You make it sound like that's your decision

Bey: When we were first hanging out, you were singing a different tune.

Alex: Whatever. Pig.

Bey: You like mushrooms, right?

Alex: no.

Bey: Well, I just put a lot in there. You've got terrible taste in food, by the way.

Alex: I just don't like mushrooms, or cheese.

Bey: Now, there's your problem. Two foods that you can always add to food and it'll increase the deliciousness, guaranteed. Mushrooms are like islands of juicy flavor in food, like an oasis in a desert of rice and beans.

Alex: Whatever. I'll pick them out.

Bey: It's just an excuse not to eat all of your food.

Alex: Come on.

Bey: I'm just looking out for you. I hate eating disorders. Actually, I don't mind them in the abstract, but you? you should be above that.

Alex: You don't know what it feels like, you don't know how deep it runs.

Bey: Sure, I don't. Food is really fundamental to my worldview, you know that. We live to eat.

Alex: And that's why an eating disorder is so hard to overcome, because it was born in a fundamental rejection of your worth as a human being. A denial of existence.

Bey: That makes some sense to me. Don't think I’m not empathic about it, it's the worst thing and it's not your fault.

Alex: But you don't realize how men feed it, and you don't do anything about it.

Bey: what do you want me to do? Men are almost entirely sexual beings. And they'll find attractive whatever society has taught them to find attractive.

Alex: whatever. I'm eating fine these days.

Bey: Good. Here, let's eat this.

They set out the pot on the table, scrounge for a few cleanish plates

Alex: Do you have any juice?

Bey: Tang.

Alex: I'll have water.

Bey: here's the hot sauce.

They eat in silence for a time, Bey eating quickly and with relish (hot sauce, actually), Alex eating at a slightly slower than normal pace, drinking a lot of water. At one point, Alex gets up to refill the Brita filter.

Bey: Can I have your mushrooms?

Alex: Here you go. I think I'm sick, though.

Bey: me, too. Who is healthy at college? I get sick at the beginning of the semester, and then just stay vaguely unhealthy all the way through.

Alex: The torpor of daily life, classes. Also, dorms are cesspools of the nasty.

Bey: delicious nastiness...freshmen...

Alex: what?

Bey: I said nothing. mumbling again.
They eat

Alex: I was walking down the street today, and I realized something.

Bey: Momentous. Groundbreaking. What did you realize?

Alex: How much bad genetics we are burdened with. Most people should not be allowed to breed, that's the problem these days.

Bey: Really. And who is to decide who gets the right to breed?

Alex: I would, or anyone else who isn't blind. It isn't that hard.

Bey: Would I be able to breed?

Alex: Maybe. Sorta.

Bey: I thought it wasn't that hard.

Alex: Alright, you'd be allowed to breed. But not with me.

Bey: I wasn't asking. See, though? It gets harder to make that call when you know someone better. Which means that your initial decision is meaningless.

Alex: I'm a pretty good judge of character. You can tell a lot about someone from looking at them

Bey: Not enough to deny them the right to spread their seed

Alex: We're talking about pure genetics, here. Just cause someone is a nice person doesn't mean that their kids won't be wrecks. People can barely hold it together themselves, and then they have kids and almost always fuck it up. Each generation gets progressively more fucked up and crazy.

Bey: I think you're contradicting yourself, but I wasn't really listening hard enough.

Alex: You can tell, anyway. I can. Most people suck, Bey. Look at the masses of Americans. You can't find any redeeming quality. Look at mass media. These people lap that shit up. Reality television? Have you been to the movie theater recently?

Bey: People eat what they're given. Most people recognize that mass entertainment is drivel, but it's entertaining nonetheless. It's what our culture is selling to them, and, as products of our culture, they'll buy it.

Alex: And you don't think that this is a situation that should be changed?

Bey: It is whatever it is. Most people are at least well-intentioned, most people are able to keep themselves to themselves.

Alex: Well, they're always all up in my face, I don't know about you. You're too forgiving. These people are tools

Bey: Sure, they're being used by the power structure of society. And we are, too. We have a privliged position on that power structure, to the point we can ignore it or be disdainful of it, but we will help reproduce it in the next generation to come.

Alex: It's our decision, it's our lives, we can challenge it if we want.

Bey: And how are you going to do that? Revolution?

Alex: Art. And sterilizing rednecks.

Bey: Art? You're so delusional. Art is great, but all it effects is art. The masses won't see your art. You do art to change the way art is done, which has the potential to change some of the ideas that society operates on. But you're talking about sweeping political change. You're talking about a massive program of eugenics, here.

Alex: you're right. What we need is a dictatorship. Democracy is as flawed as the masses are.

Bey: We have something close to a dictatorship already. A small elite of assholes run the country, and there's no democracy about it. So we can choose one of two names on the ballot? big fucking deal, right? how did those names get on the ballot? It's like an election where Saddam Hussain gets a hundred percent of the vote.

Alex: But it depends on the quality of decision that gets made. we need a different dictatorship. One with balls.

Bey: mmm...balls...

Alex: What?

Bey: Being facetious. I think that we do a bad job listening to each other, Alex. We have the same fucking argument every time we hang out

Alex: That's probably true. I don't really listen to anyone but myself. It's not a bad thing, it just is.

Bey: Yeah. It must be fun to be the center of your world.

Alex: One should be the center of one's own world. We don't have anything except ourselves.
Bey gets up from the table, takes his plate and Alex's plate to the sink, puts away the extra food, and begins to do the dishes. Alex sits there.

Alex: Do you have dessert?

Bey: Fudgesickeles. Want one?

Alex: naw. Too cold. You should keep chocolate around.

Bey: Alright, I buy chocolate. Then I have chocolate around, and so I eat it. And then it's gone in a day, and I've eaten a bunch of chocolate, and I'm not really ahead of where I started. It's not worth the effort.

Alex: What're you doing tonight?

Bey: I'm just going to work, till bout 11, then I think I'll go over to David's and have a beer or something. You?

Alex: I've got to finish my sculpture tonight. I'll be up all night

Bey: as every night.

Alex: Well, I'm out, then. Thanks for the dinner, Bey

Bey: Any time.

Alex leaves. Bey turns to the sink and begins to do dishes. Fade out.

   [ POSTED BY Jed @ 1:25 PM ] [ ]