A scar across time is attitude of woman servitude.
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Setting: Anywhere, America lecture hall/elementary school lunchroom. Five of the long tables perpendicular to HOUSE (AUDIENCE). Six to a table, thirty empty chairs face STAGE RIGHT podium.
Act I, Scene 1
(Elocution Pierce in sneakers, jeans, flannel shirt, walks on STAGE from OFF LEFT (WINGS) to APRON center. Curtain drops. Reads from notes in his hand(s) without looking at HOUSE (AUDIENCE), LEFT or RIGHT.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
What happened in Dallas was unusual National Television. Jack Ruby shooting Lee Harvey Oswald in the Police Station basement. Twelve twenty, PM. Eastern, Standard, Time. [pause] Quick. Even for a hall parade. Right there then. The hatted man, at point-blank range. Distorted Oswald's terrorized face. [curtain starts rise] As are we all.
(STAGE RIGHT podium replaced by last century, off, television. Realizing it's a TV, Elocution Pierce turns clockwise right, facing STAGE LEFT. Air goes out of him seeing STAGE LEFT wall is entirely video screen, off. Has remained where he's stood. Curtain drops as his head simultaneously lowers in thought or to sleep.)
(But, curtain down, blinks, first, an eye open. Peers OFF LEFT (WINGS). Motions raise curtain. Then
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softly stomps OFF LEFT (WINGS) seeing to it. Speaking, enters at "24". Goes to APRON edge. Curtain remains down.)
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Timeline marked by [emphasize] our President Kennedy's Assassination. While the November 24 [emphasis] drama theoretically narrowed conjecture with wanton patriotism and netherworld alibi. Neither subtracted from the convincing case for the whole of deceit's nature spanning so far, and wide, to conclude as Mick Jagger sang in 1968. [nods straight at HOUSE (AUDIENCE)] 'After all, [emotionally] it was you and me.'
ELOQUENT PIERCE
(Lowers head, thinks for second. Steps forward and sits, legs hanging over exact APRON center. Right index finger scans HOUSE LEFT on "or all". HOUSE (AUDIENCE) "ya'll that". And HOUSE RIGHT "responsible" as if his, very own, garden party circle.)
Never held myself, or all ya'll, that responsible. [drops finger, shirks] But I was in on this much. Hadn't watched television for days and woke wanting to see what the TV said. Not Saturday morning cartoons. So eventually I had to remind myself, and found out there'd been a TV moratorium. Because after why-notting my mother's "don't turn it on," she literally, shortly after, responded "Malcolm," from the kitchen, to my father in the living room. [breath] After I'd wailed from the TV room, that that man was just shot. [emphasize] Right
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now. [pause] My father answered he thought they weren't letting me watch television. [satisfied grin] I protested.
(Nods standing as curtain simultaneously rises. Podium's re-replaced TV. Appearing hopeful, his head shakes, lowering, from noticing the Stage Left wall's still all Video Screen. Tuned to an unnaturally huge head, Elocution Pierce squints at, and, by not bothering with, doesn't recognize Sean Hannity. Walks to podium, taking phone from pants pocket to see time. Phone back, looks at the huge Stage Left screen. Tilts head huh(?). Smirks at absent Stage Audience, shrugs, heading back, talking, to APRON as curtain completes drop on "killed.")
President and accused assassin killed.
(Thinks to sit, doesn't. Turns around. Expects curtain's rise. Doesn't. Turns around sad, eyes directed below eyes of HOUSE (AUDIENCE). Removes imaginary tie tossed aside. Then, eyes aglow, speaks more inwardly distant as if (AUDIENCE) not there.)
My parents and I disagree. But they somewhat concede, shielding isn't an answer. Imagine my father said her fault. Reading so much to me. [broad (AUDIENCE) directed smile] Caring I was alert to wonder.
[contented] Yes. [scans from HOUSE LEFT] Dream [to HOUSE RIGHT] reality.
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(Looks at APRON, thinking again to sit. But paces. This time conversing with audience. Light use of talking with hand(s).)
Couldn't remember the children's books.
(Stops, turns to (AUDIENCE). Throws out hands.)
Just absolutely treasuring my U. S. Presidents [lowers hands] coloring book.
Washington to Kennedy. Sponsored by Planters Peanuts.
(Starts with big step, pacing APRON. Then stops. Stares at curtain's slow rise to his knees that drops closed. Emotionally addresses (AUDIENCE).)
Their very own page. Each U. S. President. [stop] Knew them all. [curtain reaches knee] Memorized. [curtain drops to Stage] [smirk, shrug] Except for some years [continue pacing] either side of Lincoln. Where their wishy-washy order got confusing. [stop] But. Point is the assassinations [start] were nowhere near [stop] as weird. [start] Garfield dead because someone didn't get a job. [stop] Brought Civil Service reform.
(One step, lowers shaking head. Goes DOWNSTAGE center, faces (AUDIENCE).
President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
(Whacks curtain. Looks it up then down during following sentence.)
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A platform history's ghosts mark up a lot.
(Curtain rises on "lot". Revealing empty living room of two sumptuously large chairs. Back Stage Left couch next to centered window frame before solid black-wall curtain. Elocution Pierce appears to casually return to his own Stage Right chair. Sits, stretching looks above friend's shoulder. Sighs, relieved no big screen.)
VANCE ETHOS
(Penetrating each other's eyes, Vance Ethos leans forward speaking levelly.)
Well. [beat] Got me here.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
[grin] To your home.
VANCE ETHOS
[sarcastic touch] Some surprise, [beat] your rehearsal. [smirk] Odds are? [raised eyebrows] You know. [frown] Show closes without a whimper. [emphasize] Parents aren't allowing their children to eat where their parents' worlds fell apart.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
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[repositioning in chair] Eventually? Rationalization won't replace truth. Anything else? [nods] Because I'll tell you about the biggest cafeteria event I ever saw. My mother and I. Nineteen, sixty, fi-ive. The year ahead of me, white Fourth Graders supported Stanley registering in their Cub Scout Den. [pause] "Wouldn't you feel more comfortable" a board member said to him. And his mother. From their raised stage platform. But, your turn. Anything else?
VANCE ETHOS
Al-ri-ight. Financed nothing other than food and shelter. Come on? Poverty? Writers aren't complete idiots. [deep breath] Nonsense. [laughs] Because no less an intellectual expert than premier YES guitarist Steve Howe attested. [finger quotes] "He has a lot to think about." [fingers unquote and applies strict, doubtfully belittling, skeptical eye]
ELOQUENT PIERCE
[squirm] Labored long day. [shrug, raised pitch] He was, [level pitch] diplomatic. I was too content.
VANCE ETHOS
[grins] Slept at the front table of Steve Howe's, SOLD OUT, Bottom Line Show. Asked whether you should be [emphasize] woken. [beat] He said, "He has a lot to think about." [humorously] Bet he got a big laugh.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
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[sigh] Missed the laugh. [smirk] Hope he sees the humor. But. [emphasize 4 words] But certainly not worse in history than New York University destroying, their tenant, The Bottom Line.
VANCE ETHOS
[shrug] Big city Big Real Estate rules.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
(Expressionlessly rises, sentence inaudible, moves to look out UPSTAGE window frame.)
Would have liked to see NEKTAR there.
VANCE ETHOS
Eh? The Who?
ELOQUENT PIERCE
[not turning, clear] Would have been nice seeing NEKTAR there.
VANCE ETHOS
(Comes forward in chair, quarter laugh.)
Right. [rises from chair] That's the deal? [smile] Spacier than even the Kennedy assassination? That'll convince people. [heads for OFF LEFT (WINGS)] Face it. Popular culture is doomed to pop. [stop] Gasoline Devotion. Going Green.
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Everything. [OFF LEFT (WINGS)] Just reoccurring fad. [peeks out from behind curtain] Generationally too narrow for change.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
(Immediately flips around from window pointing burrowed brow at Ethos.)
VANCE ETHOS
(From OFF LEFT (WINGS) steps STAGE LEFT.)
If we were all [STAGE LEFT] nine hundred and sixty nine year old Methuselah? [ejects air] Another problem. [plops in his chair]
ELOQUENT PIERCE
[heading to his chair] Pop culture is not all weasels. [sits] Lots of stuff have us short of what should be happening.
(Immediately up, Elocution Pierce dramatically decides [STAGE goes dark] to go straight to APRON. Curtain drops. Raising right hand to talk. Drops hand. Turns away from (AUDIENCE). Looks curtain up and down. Then, staring at it.)
Twisted.
(Starts curtain's rise. Same lecture hall/school cafeteria. Elocution Pierce strides to podium, feigning obliviousness to sparse audience of six of thirty
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chairs. Reaches podium, handling it first with his right and, coming around his left facing Stage Audience at "my eyes".)
ELOQUENT PIERCE
I remembered all the presidents. Actually thought then that my eyes were [gazes, at opposite wall satisfied Hannity not there] ceremonially looking back and forth. From TV screen to my red, white and blue U. S. Presidents coloring book. [nods head and right shoulder, backward motion] Behind me on top of the cornered toys. [pause] No. Never close to digging in. For a short while read Mark Lane in the Winter Park Library. Confirming the rabbit hole's a sinkhole. So many ballparks. Oliver Stone's one. [sharpen tone] All history's history. [smacks podium] They're all ghost riddled pages that confirm heritage is all we are Earthlings. The answer's always how'd this come about. Original's fantasy. [short pause] As far as we're concerned.
(Last sentence confuses every Stage Audience member except Noble Folk, who nods once. All six grin at "Florida felt" in following sentence.)
Everything sparkles in sunshine is how Florida felt back then. Despite tragedy. Modernity appeared bright. Losing my parents was excruciating. While. To our honor. Our home became Golden Funeral Home. Where Black Folks' funerals happened a block from the home of the renowned Groveland Four nemesis. Racist symbol Sheriff Willis V. McCall. Federally removed twenty-three years [emphasize] later from his repeatedly re-elected office in 1972. The same year I had to leave town.
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(Curtain stays up. STAGE goes dark. ASAP STAGE instantaneously lights. All seats empty except last cafeteria chair, at last table, STAGE LEFT front.)
VANCE ETHOS
(Seated Stage Left front, recrosses legs, short chin rub.)
ELOQUENT PIERCE
(Holding podium's sides. Eyes move through STAGE Audience to brief look at Vance Ethos.)
Strategically, Golden Funeral Home supported my late 1970s ambition. [beat] Perpetual university attendance. That nosedived because of figuring out how to be a novelist. Meant discovery outside the university's hallowed halls, was [emphasize] deemed indispensable.
VANCE ETHOS
(Cough.)
ELOQUENT PIERCE
(Smiling without looking at pages.)
My hugest university highlight was Reverend Ralph D. Abernathy’s Black History Month speech. After which, when leaving, he detoured down my aisle, to where I was watching from, and shook my hand and we conversed. Symbolic en-
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couragement for someone who’d take up my authentically cool challenge, Soapbox View.
VANCE ETHOS
(Stands, departs two steps STAGE LEFT.)
ELOQUENT PIERCE
(Stage Audience (always unaware of Vance Ethos) focused on podium. Second sentence, Elocution speaks in Barack Obama cadence. Clockwise circling cafeteria tables, finishes DOWNSTAGE when curtain drops behind him. Looks at APRON, eyes up faces (AUDIENCE).)
[evident pride] My uncle. "Advertising Legend," J. K. Fraser. Inspired Soapbox View. Imagined Spotless Town, for Sapolio Soap. [emphasize] The very first nationally seen campaign in Streetcars [DOWNSTAGE] across the country. While [smile] 19th, turned 20th, Century.
(Looks at, then steps to APRON cusp. Grins, sits legs over edge again. Speaks in own cadence.)
What I always remembered most. My mother saying "your uncle was big in advertising." Once, to understand duped consumers. [eyes roll] We all try our best. [crosses and re-crosses legs] My mother, [beat] Janet Victoria Pratt-Fraser wouldn't tell me much. Insisted I ask my father about his older brother.
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(Curtain rises. Elocution Pierce rolls his head around to see all six Audience members back. Double-takes on last chair, STAGE LEFT front. Sumptuous one from living room set. Resplendent, expressionless Vance Ethos among the now seven. Elocution Pierce turns back to readdressing (AUDIENCE).
My mother understood. [stands] Couldn’t allow him to be bigger than my father.
(Behind him Elocution Pierce realizes the Curtain’s dropping. Dives to the floor and crawls under.)
ELIZABETH
(Curtain rises, STAGE dark. Voice Only. Loudspeakers maintain deep even sound, as if from anywhere throughout theater, whenever Ghost speaks.)
[stern, resonant] He's my father. [sterner] Not yours.
(Still dark STAGE. Spotlight pops exactly on Elocution Pierce in middle, empty, CENTRE STAGE. Already circling in place. Looking up, down, everywhere all around.)
ELOQUENT PIERCE
[stops, smirks up, thrown halfway up arms drop] Carry out your threat Liz. [big smile] I said that name. [emphasize] "A-gain."
ELIZABETH
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(Affable endearing delivery. Infuses laughter into the serious, to reflect her burdens.)
[giggly] There he goes.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
No sense repeating Liz. E-lizabeth.
ELIZABETH
Facing me now huh? Finally. [floatingly] When I am spirit.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Seriously?
ELIZABETH
[staccato strong] Your childish bitterness. [stern] Throughout adulthood where you remain. Epitome of spoiled. Seriously?[pause] Delusional. Interior. World.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
[index finger up] Ah!
(Begins confident clockwise STAGE walk followed by spotlight that expands range to include the territory he’s paced.)
Thank you. Important to bring up that political tool.
ELIZABETH
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I was never a politician.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Spare us. Used up. Everything’s leverage. Fraud claiming otherwise.
ELIZABETH
You're hysterical.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Good work. Rather than satire. Sometimes comedy inserted in a conversation, diverts its point. The political strategy of subverting clarity. Accusing anything else with the accusations against yourself, sows confusion. Mollifying your own diagnosis. Famously abused, surprisingly enough. By an actual former United States President, I call Pardon Me. He exults in flame throwing words that merely underscore his brazenness. Outright belief that if enough people are fooled, there's every right to keep that going. Politics amen? [shrug] I can tell you what kind of bull-crap that is. A big pile.
ELIZABETH
Excuse me.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Scattershot. [emphasize] Pardon Me feigns obliviousness to ramification. [suddenly aware, re-notices (AUDIENCE)] Excuse me. Rami-fi-ca-tions. And. [looks up] Well. [kick-grazes floor] If only proportion applied. [tandem shoulder shrug] At
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all. [pause] Anyway. [looks distantly out theater] I'll not say your precious name again either [beat] Uh-lizabeth.
ELIZABETH
Shut up. [smiles seriously] Time’s piled up. [walks toward APRON, stops DOWNSTAGE] Conservative Impersonator, Icon Sean Hannity. [index finger up] And smug numbers cruncher Frank Luntz. Both together once explained the numbers logic
to a television set classroom. Looked just like Parents Night, preached to in those desks. All rolled out for the Foxy Hannity National Audience. Both magnanimously praising their own astutenesses. How steering the country by our misconceptions served self-righteous purpose. [smug HOUSE RIGHT nod] And my paraphrasing? Most certainly true of that mercurial positioned Fake Conservative performance. Just like you Liz. The show’s for the customers you've got, irregardless of what others know is true. Gaul full. Dreadfully gaul-full. There's many methods for declaring war. Convincing the duped among the damned worst.
ELIZABETH
See? He doesn't understand. Nobodies don’t understand this country deserved to rule the world.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
[walking, shrugs] And world, the world.
ELIZABETH
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[body laugh] He. You insult politicians for being human. [pause] You are so narcissistically beneath that deliberately self-centered one you accuse. [pause] You parrot radicals. He parrots radicals. You are not history. My child.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
[stops, looks up] Right. I'll not insult your humanness. [grin, pace] Wrong though. [pause] Contrived reality is your school. [arm up, down] Manipulation U. [arm up, fist shaken] Rah rah. [arm drops, his circling enlarges] Great school. If only we all went. [eject air] Great. [stop] Wo. [heads DOWN-
STAGE] Real real. [stop] Hey ya know? [pace] If you talked anywhere insightful as this? [humpf] We'd have actually talked.
ELIZABETH
Everyone saw speaking with you was a wall.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Grilling is what you do to what's cooked.
ELIZABETH
[staccato] What?
ELOQUENT PIERCE
[snicker] I knew. Didn't care. [pause] Relatively. [stop, turn] Per se. [pause] Standing up to you wasn't important. Just this thing. You. Not me. No reason to respect treated an im
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plement. [stop, sigh, shrug] Get it. [eyes roam THEATER] You just weren't what you had every right to claim.
ELIZABETH
Impossible to know what you mean.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
[dully] Uh huh. [duller] Spirit ri-ight.
ELIZABETH
Judging me? [intimidatingly, spitefully, reserved] You hear me!
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Hearing what I saw. [re-paces]
ELIZABETH
Never clear. You are never clear.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Can you confuse children all the time? [stop] To your detriment I'd say and just did. [re-walking] Liz. [stop] Yeah? Forget that. [start] Find I'm fond you can't personally kill me. Carry out your threat. Realize. [head shaken no] Substantially bad, ultimate revenge. That's terrible. Repeatedly calling you Liz isn't satisfaction. You are my parents' child. No satisfaction. [pause] Well kinda. [pause] But not satisfaction like
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that time just after condemned to live in your house. [pause] It was split seconds deciding I had every right to test.
ELIZABETH
[stern] What test?
ELOQUENT PIERCE
[nose/eye squint] Spirit? [raises emphasized voice, more face scrunch] What test? The punchline I started with. That you'd shoot me if. [grin] "What test" renders issue un-re-cog-nizable. Sweet. You try hard. A Pardon Me standard.
ELIZABETH
O-kay. I know your test. Amuse us.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Amuse us? [broad grin to (AUDIENCE)] Dark Ages Elitist. [pause, shrug] Anyway, [pace] I thought. Test what happens. My mother Janet didn't mind my remembering she's Janet. [pause] Your turn? Of course second place didn't work. I do make an effort not to be an idiot. I knew. Still thought I should know what would happen. Oh well. Better known than a mystery. Your opinion includes shutting traps. I'm knew.
ELIZABETH
Just spoiled brat
ELOQUENT PIERCE
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Uh huh. Your kids couldn't talk at your dinner table.
ELIZABETH
Where in all logic did you come up with that?
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Observation. My family had dinner after I watched The News.
ELIZABETH
Can't communicate with you. Woo-o, woo woo.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
From thought to repercussion. Split-seconds flat. Backyard. Passing. You were headed to your brood.
(Stops, DOWNSTAGE. Raises voice looking beyond (AUDIENCE).
I can’t forget the exact spot. "You know I'll do it" you added to your threat. Stamped with eye contact. If I ever called you Liz a-gain. Kill me with a gun, you specifically said. [smirk] I realize. [wants to move, stuck] Braggadocio overwhelms everyone. [pause] Still. Your idea if I'm meaner than you. Ruthlessness makes me uncomfortable. [drops head] Yup. [head up] Everything writes itself. [shrug, pace straight UPSTAGE] I tried. [UPSTAGE] For you.
(Drops sitting cross-legged under window. Voice louder, confused by how loud he is.)
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I was numb those years. You stamped me anyway. [lifts knees, holds, softens voice] But for what? Theoretically, I was just watching the whole thing. I understand you felt gipped. [smile] Not only did Uncle Kenneth not leave Malcolm, or you, anything. Giving the entire fortune to Cornell University. But the trickle left from contesting Aunt Aurora's rewarding our father Malcolm's surviving children from the sale of their house, [twinkle] less lawyers' decade contesting the bequeathment, came to a mere thirty grand a piece for you. And Helen and I. Beatrice had been deceased.
ELIZABETH
Oh my Lord.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
[frivolous nods to himself] Touching. [beat] Meanwhile in the universe you tried providing me. No one told me anything. Technically. Discerning intention comes from observation more than grilling a contestant.
ELIZABETH
You’re some kind of guy.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
You honor me.
ELIZABETH
Aaaagh. All your not around anymore friends know your delusions.
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ELOCUTION PIERCE
I know. Behind my back. Et tu Brutus.
ELIZABETH
[scream] Goddamn it. You are not history.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
(Looking around. Pauses Another looking)
Hear that? I know you don’t. But there’s stillness when your voice isn’t present.
ELIZABETH
You are disgusting.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Right. So money showed up to plop in the bank. Some months before my life-long goal of studying Soviet and Russian History began. My mother Janet, decade before said, “don't know if it will happen. But if you ever get some money, Cornell never did anything for me. You can waste that money however you want.” [gulp, eyes searching] Yes Elizabeth. My mother and I talked all our lives. [grin] Sure. I could have wasted my cut in much sounder ways. But wasting at all, I’d have gone to the ends of the Earth to demonstrate my love for my mother. While always understanding your legitimate grievance I ignored.
ELIZABETH
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[pretends haunting speech] Right, Professor Deadbeat.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Not bothering to graduate, served us both. You a few thousand more.
ELIZABETH
Well if this audience doesn't laugh as much as the last? The next one might right out of here.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
[starts] Ha ha. [becoming genuine laugh] I understand I was your last straw denying your more. Golden Funeral Home put me through university.
ELIZABETH
Drop out.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Administrator. I’d have drained the house trust fund otherwise and never left school. Maybe pulled a scam to pay Helen off on the side? [giggles] A Few Dollars More was School Trust Fund Administrator, Elizabeth’s prime agenda. Pretend capitalism where skim dominates the game.
ELIZABETH
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Sarcastic, all you ever were. Would have killed you for calling me Elizabeth too. I am your mother. And and. Don’t interrupt me.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Wasn’t. Never was.
ELIZABETH
Look at you. Cover up. That liquidated fund money? In your pocket went lump sum to drug dealers.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Don’t suppose you like in retrospect, that it was a three thousand dollar goodbye to your direct access to following me around?
ELIZABETH
You can’t prove anything.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
[snappy] Already did. Including overruling my father’s decision that I always regard you as my mother. Janet Victoria not only raised me, but made me more virtuous than I could even quite fathom. And
ELIZABETH
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And. And. And. You two. Everyone knows your two imaginations
ELOQUENT PIERCE
[smile] Cue John Paul Jones.
ELIZABETH
Yes yes. You two haven’t begun to fight deliriously.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Good show! Now you’re history E-lizabeth.
ELIZABETH
I am not history.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
[grins, deep breath in and out] Well. I wasn’t looking for your place history. But found what I was looking for. [beat] Hey!
ELIZABETH
[snaps] What!
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Did you hear about my holding up my fingers in a peace sign, from the floor, 20 yards from the stage, at a Jacksonville, Florida U2 concert before leaving for New York? [pause]
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ELIZABETH
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
She pleads the Fifth.
ELIZABETH
I beg your pardon?
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Sorry. Not a chance. Neither you or especially Pardon Me.
ELIZABETH
This is ridiculous.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Always was. Always will be. [eyebrows, raised questioningly, move around] But I wasn’t watching my rearview, exactly. Where you were. Perpetually pouncing. [pause] Simply jealousy? [shrug] Maybe? But hostility Liz? All those years before, during and after. Pretending your sugary voice was dealing with a mere, insignificant, lamb if not for your guidance. That imagery that didn't matter in the face of what I knew was true. Plus my not wanting my parents’ daughter hurt more was a shield you used ruthlessly.
ELIZABETH
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[stern] What? [sharp] He [firm] has no idea!
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Whatever. Kids probably say that every generation when elders are close enough to listen.
ELIZABETH
Good grief. What are you making up?
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Ok. Something between us. [beat] Ready?
ELIZABETH
[sharp scream] No!
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Good. We’ve got a Dickens’ A Christmas Story vibe now. I’m glad believing you’re listening.
ELIZABETH
You are the worst son imaginable.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Ahp. In this case I’m correcting you. Worst son of a bitch. Is bitch an actual curse word?
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ELIZABETH
How dare you?
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Whatever. I’ll ask Google. Google?
(Voice response permeates entire theater.)
GOOGLE (cameo appearance)
You are not permitted to ask. My programmers have not coordinated my algorithms with yours.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Cool. Wish that was all it took. [pause] But you are listening. So Is bitch an actual curse word?
The term bitch is one of the most common curse words in the English language. It has been used as a "term of contempt towards women" for "over six centuries", and is a slur that fosters sexism against women.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
See there Elizabeth? A proud history bearing the burden of bringing humanity out from under its own dead weight. Immoral self-righteous morality.
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Excuse me?
ELEQUENT PIERCE
Excuse me! You always purport being background. Now you step forward with Excuse Me!
This manifestation is your concoction, we’re in no way responsible for.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Along with everything else?
Don’t push us. You don’t want us following Liz.
ELIZABETH
Hey hey hey. I’m here. Google I don’t need your help. You’re just a human manifestation. However many ones or zeros make the impossible?
ELOQUENT PIERCE
[looks at (AUDIENCE)] Fun right?
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What does A I think?
ELOQUENT PIERCE
What does A I think? Same difference as you expect you’re AIs competing for an AIdom probably preferably as not so much an institution with the power to rearrange lives.
Out of here.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Uh huh.
(Another theater consuming voice of lip smacking Spalding Gray excitement.)
NARRATOR
Theater audience. Your narrator’s here providing color and enticement, by describing this conflict as something that wasn’t wanted to be thought about this much again. Literature’s some master.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
(Puzzled look watching newspaper fall from above. Picks up and reads while walking to APRON where he turns around, back to (AUDIENCE) and sits lotus.)
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ELOQUENT PIERCE
Hey E-lizabth!
ELIZABETH
Leave me alone.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
You had your turn. Didn’t leave me alone. I probably have a much better idea when my turn’s up than you do.
ELIZABETH
I hate you.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Well. Maybe not your forever case. But my mentality began with my mother responding I should ask you about going for a ride again on your horse, Blue Girl, again.
ELIZABETH
[snaps] See.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
I still miss Blue Girl. But I was already reminding myself I never wanted to ask you for anything.
ELIZABETH
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You’re horrible.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Yes, your position hasn’t changed. [snaps newspaper open] Now. When I wanted my parents’ names listed with mine, for the published high school graduation pictures in the local newspaper? I took your verbal beatdown. All about how all I wanted to do was embarrass you. You called the local newspaper, instead of my doing as assigned and calling myself. You see? That was the problem for me. It wasn’t the actual case so for me saying you would be a lie. [face movement gets no answer] Your name appeared with, uh, [slaps paper shut, throws OFFSTAGE (RIGHT)] well. Actually I don't remember how my name appeared. I remember yours did and that was enough. To hell with whether they got my middle initial Malcolm right. That newspaper, a decade back. Ignored my request for correction. Corporate news's relationship with preciseness is relative. Anyway. [pause] And I know the Orlando Sentinel did not print my name as son because of you. My mother wouldn’t identify you. But who else would call them to rewrite history?
ELIZABETH
I really don’t understand how you got this worked out to be in front of a theater audience. But. You’re still pathetically small-minded. I was a part of making who you were at that high school.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
32
Apart, separate. Not a facilitating part. Ambition was long-lodged in me before I ever realized you were a force of enforcement, unacceptable to you. First day of Eleventh grade History we were told to fill out all the world’s countries on a mimeographed Atlas and told we could use the book. A few minutes later I walked up, turning it in and she just has to look at it and says. “I watched you. You only looked up one country you weren’t sure about. You should be in the class across the hall. I paused and maybe even said, no what’s done is done. I don’t want to draw attention to myself. PSSSSh. Elizabeth. I adapted to you on instinct my whole life. [looks around, shrugs she has no answer] You know it was from your own eyes that you gave away you were always after something. They'd glow. [questioning look, without response] No, you can't explain. Yes I truly do know how angry you were, and are, with me. All that repression played out upon me. [gets up, grinning] I know. Definitely shoot me for saying our father to you. See? I cared. I never said that to you alive. Well, no. Proves I didn't care. Nonetheless. Not good enough. I felt your pain. Pride you wouldn't allow showing. Or so self-centered in the throes of admiring many of the various assorted prejudices of our Ages. Also. No glue between us. [face takes on tiny glow] Felt bad my parental bond's with your mother. [stands] Well. Of course, not good enough. You gave it a shot. [pause] However. Not your fault I wasn't simple for your understanding. [looks up, down, smirks at HOUSE (AUDIENCE)] Racists cling to that about me a lot.
ELIZABETH
33
Yes. All over the place. Label me. This Broadway audience sees through that. No reason for further fabrication. Your whining lost us.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
My mother loved you. You? Deep down, you had no clue everyone else here isn’t just ownership’s. No matter the force exerted on anyone. That individuals belong to others is just not true.
ELIZABETH
What? What does any of this mean?
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Right. [resumes pacing] Contemplation isn’t effortless. Most especially, what you don't want to know. [still pacing, shrugs toward theater’s audience] But Liz. There was never any purpose behind you and I. Other than you always disagreed since I can remember. Whatever I confronted. You denied. It's not that I never faced you. The point of repeating myself passed very, very, long ago. [pause] Invitation's still open. Shoot me as promised. For using your friendly name. As you said. You and I both knew you would.
(Shrugged smile. Sighs. Brow burrowed in inward thought.)
ELIZABETH
Bang bang. Good, grief.
34
ELOQUENT PIERCE
I received your beliefs, about our relationship, with outward grace. Peacefully. Outwardly. Yep. Far out. [pause] Kind of always how I dealt with you. [pause] I remember my satis-faction when you proclaimed to my mother you were against the hippies. Emphatically, so, unlike [venomously] them. I thought point for them. The issue was my first friend in life's brother was arrested for selling marijuana and I told my mother Boots took me to watch his oldest brother's small gathering protest outside the jail. And how dignified it was that our local police let Phillip come out, by himself, and greet his friends to send home. Nah. We designed the system to watch out for all of us, and the Drug Wars concept, beyond not being a solution, is unethical. The power’s more about powers’ sakes than our own.
ELIZABETH
[firm] See-ee.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
See what?
ELIZABETH
Narcissists make themselves sound important.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Well. [beat] We all have our hobbies. You knew I wasn't your son. But wanted to win anyway. Motherly not. Your father, as
35
my father, told me specifically that I was to never disregard you were my actual mother. Why would I fight reality? But
(Looks around. Sits down where he is.)
I don't want you around.
ELIZABETH
[beat] Uh huh. I'm still here. Not going anywhere. [savoringly] I still get to you.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
I know. You said that once. Why I think I remember you recalling it here.
ELIZABETH
You are a piece of work.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Can't thank you. Lived out my appreciation for being born and received an adversary worthy of Pardon Me.
ELIZABETH
Come on. Ridiculous. You don't know what I know.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
36
Believe in full disclosure.
ELIZABETH
Now I begin. Nothing is as you say.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
In your case I disagree. Go ahead. But you don't have a clue. Do you? Beginning requires foundation. You could at least fabricate coming down an escalator from hell.
ELIZABETH
When God gets through with you.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Dead you don't even get it. This is all GOD. GOD experiences us. GOD is beyond all imagination.
ELIZABETH
Yes. Your grandmother preached to me all my life.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
See, you don't see. I wasn't preaching. That’s conjecture. Maybe I burn in hell? Not my call. Hiding from you freed time to think.
ELIZABETH
37
I knew where you were.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
[huge grin] Yes. It pleased me when the realization materialized that you were preoccupied. While I was busy, performing destitute. Figuring out novelist. Guess what? It's imaginable all novelists, like people, are different and unique. How would you care? Anyway, right. Even that last phone call. Honey and dear covering my tracks all over your hood. How it goes. [grim smile] Except my uncle J. K. was smart not to leave you a fortune. With that you'd have thought you 'could rule the galaxy like Pardon Me pretends. Beyond just getting back at me. Extremely satisfying. Knowing how it was enough for you to fiddle from afar. Meant you thought your power’s the will of the Galaxy.
ELIZABETH
Pardon me?
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Exactly.
ELIZABETH
[insistently] So. How much more out could this poor child be?
ELOQUENT PIERCE
38
Apparently always was, Liz. Juxtaposed with the life you talked about me? My presence wasn’t required. Especially as just an impediment. Or excuse for your not having great wealth. Could never face, facing me. Among many things. Those debilitating migraines must have been excruxiating.
ELIZABETH
See? Not glimmer of even pity.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
There you go. That firm grip on not listening. Why your mind never charts back to what you said. Whimsical despot, sans kingdom. Throne. All Hail.
ELIZABETH
I'm leaving.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Don't think you can. [peers STAGE LEFT (WINGS)] Let's see?
ELIZABETH
[breathing volume rises every 3 seconds]
ELOQUENT PIERCE
[looks at watchless wrist] No wonder modern isn’t the modern magnificent world already imagined. From what desperation evolves. Born from the fear of having less every day, if
39
not squared away in the position of exploiting the flow. A few dams suppressed and we Pass Go.
ELIZABETH
Oh my goodness. Your communist gobbledygook. Finally. Officially out there, out of the closet. Your pretending aKing Solomon’s slicing down the middle is an exposed fraud. That nonsense capitalism and socialism are evolving the same difference.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
[turns to (AUDIENCE), full body chuckling] See! Impossible for her to have that explanation. So may I dissect my point from the overall conclusion? [grins, they’re here anyway] Punchline that Americans can understand. Whatever socialist fear has been planted? Denial socialism did not bail out our capitalism is pure fraud. A game of providing jobs for the knowledgeable of how to read, who can’t be bothered by books. But can buy them to throw away in support of the cause. Conservative progress, liberal evolution shredded through a meat grinder collecting the actual nutrients for itself.
ELIZABETH
Uh huh. All about you as everyone knows. You are the Imposter defending the marginalized.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
[grin] Game’s afoot, Sherlock.
40
ELIZABETH
Good grief.
OOO Updating. No attention has been paid to how Charlie Brown was one of the greatest detectives of all time. Everything about him was thinking through everything all in and around him. Finding out, then going home to sulk and become Charles Schultz.
ELIZABETH
Literature hound right? You never read around me.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
No. I wouldn’t read your National Enquirer around you.
ELIZABETH
That is where you belong. Goofs and oddballs of the ages. Prima Donna.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Right. Needed like a hole in the head.
ELIZABETH
I wish I put it there.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
41
See Elizabeth? You never said those exact words. The the interpreted meaning of your actions and actually words. Words cloaked in the simple among us have nothing to learn from you. Only thing you ever said about Cornell was I didn’t have the grades to get there. I’d prefer your own explained you.
ELIZABETH
I'm fine wishing you burn in hell.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Me too. If there’s a line for-nonbelievers that couldn’t be expected to understand, that’s the line I believe Jesus defended us with “forgive them for they know not what they do.” Who knows? Maybe said that in actual King James English. And partly why maybe everyone’s been so confused by those words throughout time. Well. In that line at least I might know I was wrong assuming God had no reason to be bothered with hell for how we misconstrued all our times. I’m saying what one can to themselves. Why? Exactly where are we? My mass conjecture isn’t so different from real life where it’s all whose in control as you’ve tried here. [looks out above (AUDIENCE)] I can't explain this huge audience.
ELIZABETH
(Laughter.)
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Why would I ask you? If people are listening, it's more comfortable thinking I'm with them than you.
42
ELIZABETH
See. All over the place. Grow up and be who you are. Your life isn’t Zelig’s all over the place. Grow up. Elocution Pierce. [smugly] What a weird name your grandmother gave you.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
(Walks OFF LEFT (WINGS) and back plops simple chair CENTRE STAGE facing theater (AUDIENCE). Streches legs out. Folds arms.)
Have a cigarrette, Liz. Celebrate. Calling my mother my mother in front of you [sits] would have angered her very much. [scornfully, head moves accusingly] You didn't want to understand we cared about you. We all did. That cute face at the end of the family history. From way way back in Scotland through World War Two [shudder] thereabout. [pause] So take the knocks. [smile] My mother had no choice but to agree that my ignoring you was best.
ELIZABETH
[spitefully] So you agree you never gave your real mother a chance. Why people think so little of you. Heartless. Terrible. Narcissist. All about you. Never shared. [sobbing] You were a demon to me.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Right. [looks OFF LEFT (WINGS), nods] Dim lights. [STAGE lights dim] Yes. Here's where my face sombers. [doesn't somber] And theater audience told why I'm here. God forbid
43
I claim to ever actually speak for you when Soapbox View speaks for me alone.
ELIZABETH
[disgustingly] Soapbox View. He's my father not yours.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Yes. You said that, that once while alive. Twice, dead now. Began this evening protesting that lament, that was otherwise never addressed, between us, in any shape or form.
ELIZABETH
[sharp] Come on. Be realistic. You were in my house six years.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Subtracting three months [smile] in Tampa expecting Guy Babylon's room, while he worked for his next year’s expenses back home in Maryland. The college kids decided was a spot in various places in the apartment.
ELIZABETH
Ooo-oo. You knew Guy Babylon. Elton John's synthesizer player. You always exaggerate yourself.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
44
You know that? I only got to see him that once. In a Buenos Aires medical office, him grinning that Guy grin at his keyboard on the television screen. Playing in the city's biggest stadium. No. I won't do it. Won't talk about Guy with you anymore.
(Stage Lights rise to full brightness.)
I was explaining you. [her voice grumbles up] Aw, shut up. I'm speaking for myself and your expressing me is not wanted. From the few who exposed your following by phone, patterns emerged showing enough to know what it was I wouldn't bother with. Because again. I doubt you remember the sentences of others. You're my parents' daughter. I was told to never forget you’d given me birth. You say it was all about embarrassing you. But really? I can see how you couldn't help it. You knew I knew you knew I wanted nothing to do with you. I know. I made you mad. I had no choice. No. You're not speaking yet. Buck up. This is it.
(Elocution Pierce walks to APRON, breathes deep, releasing shoulders, addresses entire Theater Space.)
[points STAGE RIGHT] Cue story. Your young daughter Eliza Doolittle
ELIZABETH
Don't call her that.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
45
Eliza remembers Aunt Aurora visiting. More than once. And first time? Eliza recognized the prominently advertised bathroom tissue's name. [reserved] Aurora! Eliza exclaimed. "Oh the tissue paper." And Elizabeth punishes child sending her to her room.
ELIZABETH
[snapping] Wrong. You weren't there.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
[humored] I didn't interrogate the witness. She personally informed me for my personal, internal, records. [raise pitch] You know. The file where our lives adjusted to our being major nuisances in our lives.
ELIZABETH
Wha-at? See? See? Show of hands in the theater audience who think he's out of his mind.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
(grins counting, with right index finger, show of (AUDIENCE) hands)
Nice. That's how people avoid outright admitting they're not prepared to listen. [clear throat cough] Let's try wrapping this up. Shall we, as they say?
46
(Eloquent Pierce speaks above Elizabeth's three attempted "You're wrapped up" interruptions.)
You send you daughter, Eliza Doolittle, to her room, punished. Your uncle is a foundation upon which 20th Century Advertising is built. You punish your daughter for noticing a brand name? You really didn't get it? Never clue consumed you. Hypnotized by all imaginable flash.
ELIZABETH
[loudly] Now you've done it.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
[smugly] Remember when you had me? You'd won written all over your face. Carting me to a psychiatrist personally. Passed to your jurisdictional preference, I've surmised. The first professional passed along that he thought you were crazier before walking me out the door. I could go on. But. We'll see. [looks around, a few left and right steps] Elizabeth?
ELIZABETH
You don't need me.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Good. I have my full attention.
ELIZABETH
47
Mmphte
ELOQUENT PIERCE
And regally, before going, from your chair said you've ruined me in my hometown where I'm from. Even then I didn't care. People learn and different speeds and I'd always hoped everyone caught up with me who're from where I am.
ELIZABETH
Stop. Stop. Stop stop. Stop. You have nor right to have everything to say.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Don't quite remember giving myself that much credit, but the, after all, I credit you with the same ethics a s Pardon Me.
ELIZABETH
Oh here we go. You are out of your mind.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Oh I got how that accusation could convince people somewhat. But Liz. Even the police knew, though sane by all barometers you were a cross-dressing Don Quixote fighting windmills as rabidly as a Conservative fake Republican.
ELIZABETH
48
Oh here he goes. This has to be a good one.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Oh yeah Liz, cause you're not watching over me and guess where I went notating myself the slightest bit in the ongoing accumulation of history.
ELIZABETH
Spare me.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Right. I tried. But I think you enjoyed hating me. The substitute for not getting a lot of money.
ELIZABETH
You don't know what you're talking about.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Au contraire. I follow history.
Don't get straddled by your nickname that you wanted for me. [moisture-less spit] Bitch. Sorry. You wanted Butch. I was never a butch. [pause] I understand fuller now. There was a point system. An early loss for you in my not becoming your kind of redneck.
ELIZABETH
49
Yes. You hate me. You're the bigger Drama Queen.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Well. Have it your way. Left you to yourself alive. It's not an admission. Not caring what you thought. You knew. Never mattered. I'd watch your crowd control in awe. Your life story in relation to mine? I was just, your mere [pause] tin, foil.
ELIZABETH
I'm being kind listening to this.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
No. But God only knows everything. Either of us might be the other's spiritual psychologist.
ELIZABETH
[spiteful] You said I'm not spirit. What your imagination remembers [flower-fully] ima-gining.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Well. Anything these observers we've conjured see? Is beyond sparing my parents discomfort. Having to explain, for the record, how I'd no choice, and still couldn't bring myself to hate you. Impatience with your cnreality? Passing sixty years. A reminder how short this span is in God's Eternity.
ELIZABETH
50
No one understands you. Why am I here?
ELOQUENT PIERCE
[looks, smirks, eyes twinkle] My answer was never yours. I don't know. But. I'm grateful you were. Loving my parents is the best thing that ever happened to me.
ELIZABETH
I'll get you.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Yes I know. Whatever threat you thought I thought. Wasn't my bad will. That people don't understand doesn't matter. This is my frame of consciousness. You tried. But pierce me? You couldn't do that.
hating someone i love who hates me for being grateful loving my parents more. No, Liz, never quite thought of yfou as sister. My parents wouldn't have allowed that confusion. I always knew. You most certainly could have been thought of as my mother by me. In that respect I'm grateful too that you failed. True. I was an albatross for parents that age and they didn't want me to feel guilty for that. Just demonstrate being raised to do the right thing. Imagine my fear my father'd be upset my handwring kept me from getting all As or Bs. I'd prefer my father were here grading me now, in Fact/ You?
ELIZABETH
51
[scream] He's my father [scream]not yours.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
[grins upward again] Ah. Be careful now. That's twice. maybe a third time, who knows, maybe you fly off to Oz and get split by the Yellow Brick Road. Elton John Soundtrack.
ELIZABETH
See? So that's wher we are. Take your place on the couch. I'm apparently the psychiatrist.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
The couch. There's no
(Couch on rollers slides to CENTER STAGE. Elocution Pierce watches, following, dumbfounded.)
. Pne you don't know about is when I wondered about your horse Blue Girl. My mother said aask yourmother about seeing Blue Girl and I walked away thinking to myself I liked Blue Girl but didn't want to ask you anything. It wasn't because I hated you, it was just really from about four the relationship really was whatever you'd get out of me.
Wittledaway at it those youears you played mother. Forever apologetic to those your world twisted in revenge towards meme . But I don't care. At some point forgiving you and the bastard wuill always be just a bastard isn't good enoiugh. I just don't thinjk God Rule by our rule outat all And?
52
And , okay.. And whaT?
What I can recall is, after persistence, she said, "Sapolio Soap." And right away I thought polio's association doomed the account. She showed skepticism and, as I've since read, Sapolio lost prominence due to stopped advertising. Household items survive, Sapolio Soap household name century gone. Consumer Imagination purchased and measured. Fickle, unless impervious is law. For example, as understood in Stalin's time.
(Scans empty Stage Audience.)
If only.
(Stage darkens, then curtain drops. Curtain rises ASAP on same living room with Elocution Pierce and ETHICAL SUCCESS, Centre Stage, in their chairs, facing the theater's audience. Narrow spotlight illuminates Back Stage window frame.)
VANCE ETHOS
(Flips up a hand.)
Never told us. We only heard you lost your lunatic mind over it. Flipped out over failure to hold onto money. Failed to even ask for a diploma. (Large smile.)
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Yes. Happy trails, huh?
VANCE ETHOS
53
(Flips hand.)
(Both stand and turn their chairs facing the other. Then Elocution Pierce steps Stage Right as the podium slides out independently into place and he steps behind it. Taps podium and his eyes meet ETHICAL SUCCESS' sitting in his middle Centre Stage stand-alone stage audience seat.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
My Uncle Kenneth, J. K. Fraser, visited my TV room office once in my earliest memory. He'd driven alone from Bradenton where he wintered, retired with Aunt Aurora. I'd not heard him arrive and my father stood. James K. Fraser sat on the couch and leaned in wondering how I figured things.
Distinctly recall enjoying our conversation, and my extreme disappointment when announced they'd leave to talk alone. I wanted to listen and tried hard to convince them. Promised without a peep. They were amused. Uncle Kenneth didn't say goodbye. Malcolm didn't. My mother Janet neither. We had our moment, but not before she died. And not goodbye. So much is represented about cherished goodbyes, I feel lucky leaning on their never having left. Wishing they'd never gone. As are we all going on.
No cliffhanger. But it was a whole decade, after my parents' passings, before JK's historical status in Advertising started clearing up for me. And only October 1st, 2000, age forty-three, was I truly hit with his significance. Back then, under
54
stand, were the last days before the population, as-a-whole, found most anything clicking a mouse. Information could trickle in.
VANCE ETHOS
(Yawn.)
ELOQUENT PIERCE
(Winding up, pitcher-style, hits ETHICAL SUCCESS with wadded-up paper from behind the podium.)
1984. My eldest sister Helen's short explanation included the dynamic punchline, Cornell University treated her extremely well at a Founders Wall ceremony. The Founders Wall chiseled block, James K. and Aurora S. Fraser, right of Laurance Rockefeller. As if in testament to where their vast enough fortune went. More precisely years on the Board of Directors capping a long, distinguished, association since his 1897 graduation when he was Editor-in-Chief of the very first Facebook as that era came to call yearbooks with photographs.
VANCE ETHOS
(Once waved hand for attention.)
Um.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
(Waves off returning audience member Concerned's raised hand. Retakes Table One seat.)
55
Illustrious career. Thirty years helming a 10 East 33rd St. New York Agency. Adjacent Madison Avenue having announced, January 18th, 2023, that their last large advertising agency left. With offices globally, obviously not what bringing down Madison Avenue meant.
(Waves off Attentive's raised hand retaking Table six seat.)
Surveying back my puzzle was The Cold War. Hadn't investigated JK as my mother suggested. After all, what's to infer other than J. K. was of his time. Duke University’s John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History cites his housed Fraser (J.K.) Papers, 1924–1941, for salesmanship and advertising strategies for gasoline, comma, tobacco and loads of etc. Legend includes how he'd gotten the 20 Mule Team BORAX account. Remembering, for the founder, the formula he'd learned in college. But that comma between gasoline tobacco. That's what insinuates.
(Waves off Hopeful's raised hand retaking Table 2 seat.)
President of the Blackman Company, a New York agency founded in 1908 by Oscar H. Blackman and Frank Hermes. Renamed Compton Advertising in 1937. Leveraged out of their biggest-all-time move by Saatchi Saatchi, March 1982.
(Waves off Agitated's raised hand retaking Table Five seat.)
Always assumed business meant business. No shock or surprise my uncle's memory collected dust behind the modern
56
eras' Advertising Heads lauded for muzzling industry's open wounds. Not the complete picture, but somewhat ballpark. Expensive Free Speech.
(Waves off Exasperated's raised hand retaking Table Five seat.)
Belligerent sarcasm regardless. Late-1988 a rich guy peeked my Uncle Kenneth curiosity. In meeting the rich guy I reflexively repeated "richest man in the world," that he had to correct. Pointing out my mistakenly associating him with his FORBES Magazine Richest List. He appreciated my telling him I'd thought of thanking him for promoting capitalism as fun if we ever met. Cheerleading, but nonetheless more on board's better than everyone else off where we're still.
(Waves off NOBLE FOLK's raised hand retaking Table Four seat.)
VANCE ETHOS
(Stands. Lights stay up. Nods and walks head lowered to the Front, Stage Centre, addressing theater audience. Curtain drops.)
Yeah. Some trail. At some point went off not talking for decades. Technically. You could say he came out of it with that novel so few bought into. Gave it away free on the Internet. Not worth money be damned. And kept on giving.
Said to me once. "You know that futurist novelist Edward Bellamy? Wrote LOOKING BACKWARD in the 19th Century about
57
a socially evolved capitalism in the year 2000. Our 21st Century. Nonetheless shattered memorably in the American consciousness from the outlandish mess caused by the 20th Century obsession with isms. Ah, yes. Strict Individualist hopes the 21st leaves the 20th behind.
(Curtain rises and both return to their facing each other, middle Center Stage, large chairs.)
ELOQUENT PIERCE
So we talked. Malcolm Forbes and I. Said I reminded him of someone and he recalled my uncle. And upon my mentioning, grinned "You have to see that wall." So as remarked earlier, decade later, 2000, I visited Cornell University and was blown away by Founders Wall overlooking the City of Ithaca's Fall Creek.
Aspirationally Soapbox View is so ingrained to not speak on behalf of any side, that, conceptually, I'd convinced myself taking positions wasn't necessary. Throw an entire mess against the wall, questions speak for themselves. Wishes
(Dark. Then curtain falls.)
Act Two
Scene 1
Elementary school lunchroom filled with tables and their chairs.
(Elocution Pierce and Vance Ethos face each other, sitting on tables, feet on chairs with one table be
58
tween. They're tossing a triangular paper football back and forth onto each other's laps.)
ELOQUENT PIERCE
No. You first.
VANCE ETHOS
No you.
(Tossing continues.)
(Short eventually later.)
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Did invite you to your home. Can I open that window?
VANCE ETHOS
[laughing] Go outside if you want? It's winter cold best left alone. Don't mess with it. Become an anti-environmentalist, have you?
ELOQUENT PIERCE
No one knows what you're talking about.
VANCE ETHOS
(Laughs throwing his head back and the stage dims as curtain drops.)
ELOQUENT PIERCE
(Crawls under curtain, stands facing theater audience.)
Notes & The End
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Tossed your own future around. Epitomized by Hail Mary Pass. For gosh sakes. The New York Times Book Review didn't need your ad's money.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
July 4th's ideals could never be honored enough.
VANCE ETHOS
[exclaims] Ha! Ev-er-y-bo-dy thinks you're communist.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Tut. Tut. The marketplace of ideas is a poker game. Just antied up. Bought my way in.
And bought out so many times out.
Bought from under Bought over. Bought despite, around, indifferently
The Political Theatrics Complex.
That Rupert Murdoch, or the conglomeration, would never hire a person should not be a bar of exclusion from the entire marketplace of ideas.
The rampant abuse of patriotism.
Making choir smarter isn't a goal, ...
{Smyrna, the four corners hold the four winds of the Earth, and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up, great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea, the third part of which became blood,
My Uncle Tony van der Vliet launched New York's ambition balloon. My mother between us, we were eating at the Mt. Dora Motor Lodge Restaurant. Where the lights were kept sophisticatedly dim. His money made in Produce as he was also grown on a New Jersey farm. Where he drove as a kid before Drivers Licenses were a thing. He wintered in Lake Worth with my mother's sister Aunt Maria. Their daughter Janet gifted my National Geographic Explorer magazine subscription. And with her family first saw Disney World's The Hall of Presidents. Disney that, because I was too short, denied my being one of 76 Trombones Opening Day.
Something how we don't forget? At my age five, visiting my mother Janet's niece Janet, her son Harry woke me from our tent sleep. Prompted by older brothers, from their tall hill, he showed me glittering Washington D. C. below. Majestic. Posed on the lawn of the Potomac side of Martha and George Washington's Mt. Vernon home.
Anyway. That time, Mt. Dora Motor Lodge Restaurant, just Uncle Tony and my mother didn't look at me when he said, to her, with a nod at me "he should go to New York." Always someone to watch. My father had died and it was us two. And how's a kid turning out is on older adults' minds. My parents are my maternal grandparents who adopted me. Born in the 19th Century, they were around when the history happened I wondered about. Chasing history's incessantly done in New York. Still, I'd see. Unequivocally first business dinner. Still illustrates hick from the "sticks."
Bare bones posturing is the public sphere's handicap. Speeding out front fine. But long race, deficiently inept at no-brainers, incidentals and anything under-the-sun.
Posturing my strictly observational parents had their own handle on. There was this drive through Sanford where my father always kept to his original story. That the stadium we passed was just the New York Giants Spring Training Facility. I knew them. They'd moved from New York to San Francisco and I'd seen Willie Mays hit the first pitch of their season, Opening Day, for a home run. But failed the test by not finding, then asking, what they knew of the rest of the story. Once my mother even asked, "Aren't you going to tell him?" And he smiled with his eyes on the road. Imagine it'll hit me like a ton of bricks occurred to him(them).
- 5 -
So this idea happened. Written by history where I'll read, from the pitcher's mound, from that novel, in Historical Sanford Memorial Stadium. Reading about and honoring a 1972 Happening during a high school football halftime show, plus Baseball Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson. In 1946 he endured a harrowing racial intolerance episode at that site. so tormented by hostility he couldn't reach first base. And I was knighted by pitcher Buddy Lake to continue his apologizing for the whole sordid affair. From his having confided to being "in front. I was the pitcher, the closest." And he answered "yes I do" to "understand how wrong it was?"
Appreciate the heck out of seeing and being raised in smaller America. What much of the country, even back in-those-days, wasn't anymore anyway. Metropolises absorbing local identities all across the land. You know. World's awash in how great it used to be. Before the attempt to make responsibility universal wasn't affordable .
Muddled greatness entitles Pandora Boxes of misdirected intent and misdirection. Intelligence scarred. How enough explanation hasn't satisfied enough. When the broader public understanding on the horizon's been trajectoried decades, if not centuries, backward? The blind-discrepancy, our present-day successful culture's reverence for the Full of Gas Party political party line. An Electric Future isn't stopping the willingness to-get-away-with anything that's so pervasive. The telly pitching gasoline engines with abandon. Etc.
Consider News Broadcasting across all venues and political-spectrums. News continuously crafted to explain our lives as less better off when less brand spanking new gasoline engines are sold? Congressional Lobbying on a Culture-Wide scale. Advertising's Finest Hour(s). Everyone wash(es)ed their hands. The broader public tuned out. While we're all locked in that moment Cliff Robertson sympathetically looks at Robert Redford at the end of 1975's Three Days of the Condor film. Where Redford's face had lit up with recognition, getting Robertson to see the marquee of the world-wide viewed publisher about to expose the transgressive interests Robertson's, and our, government protected. That you still don't get it look on Robertson's face, that said owning means controlling everything. It won't matter. Going on two-and-a-half generations from then, not caring remains lucrative.
Because the right solution if backs aren't turned, is phasing out the gasoline engines already sold. Replace, transform, become what we're capable of. What's happened was/is rammed down everyone's throats for competitive convenience.
Because for generations now, mired in conflated egos and intrigue, arrogance replaced ethics. Hence bandwagons behind shameless tokens of aristocratic indifference. I know, drove us into the future and right down the hugest pothole of all. Hit the brakes.
Politics are not societies' backbone. Culture is. Politics is an instrument and therein one cultural reflection. Embelish-sized. Embarrassingly hypnotic. Hence, where else could political celebrity have taken us, other than it has, with circus as basis for coalesced human relations? Spectacle. Roger Stonitized.
No matter how control is willed on responsibility, enthusiasm's willfulness overwhelms. Saner heads prevail? Hardly. Centuries of non-stop war emphatically disproves that. Unfortunately.
Impossible changing humanity's mired trajectory, considering how super smart we've become about most everything. The frictional points are so embedded, there's no out-from-under? None? Why I frame things as I have, since looking from back then.
But those events are as wild as things got. However strange everything that's followed, happened. Really, the only story to possibly know intricately enough to tell is your own. Making it interesting the challenge.
Shaped publicity's racked the world for ages. The Fine Society. All of it. A president with the status of a luminary, eliminated? Amiss wasn't hard to see.
VANCE ETHOS
(Turns from the window, facing theater audience.)
ELOQUENT PIERCE
(Turns from the window, facing theater audience.)
POLITICAL WORLD
Soapbox View of American History
My Profiles In Courage vote is cast for the January 6th Committee, not their opposite allegiances.
I've a deeper voice of anger, deep down inside. Against history's abuse beyond mere propaganda game people sidestep, if they can.
Want a cold drink? Early sixties, collect ten penny redeemable bottles for the dime for the filled compatriot. Civilized progress. Today can't intrude on laborers' territory. Uh huh. Seems a price on all the garbage should have been worked out all along.
So the world's more full of reasons to not go outside than there are reasons to be outside. And with the weather more oppressive, whose to know when all the windows are closed? There's no idea.
Yeah. There's a key that unlocks the mysteries of poverty.
Yeah. Gone so far back, and out of here, readers are unaware there's a chase. Scrounging around all the way back there? Where relevance can't be of more value than say, the rather enjoyable, considering, 1970s.
Today's date maybe. Previous likely. But dates change. Will. This generation is awash in digital convenience. Say, "Digital convenience." Eyes gloss over at least twice.
The leaves were off practically all the trees and that's how things last for months. Till the routine never changes then weather does. Leaves come back. But nothings been the same
Plan began at the office. Thought out. Us there, safe open, boss laughing with us in absolute trust.
But. No one believed the other. Stakes too huge for the small margin. Throughout yore, more's expected. Oil's death and destruction hangs on for the money. Tactical. Less money loses. So unfortunately, not caring whether one goes to prison isn't a deliberate option where money's at stake and ethics lost. Amen.
So, at the office, between this and that, we wondering why unable to cross the street wasn't enough, such that redemption required the extra punishment of uncivilized housing conditions? Which isn't amusing so on to other things. Like what was #78456's relationship with the politician.
"Mind-blowing," he described it when the tube finally gelled and he saw the face that went with the picture. That brought back his child hood and how that schmuck owed him something. Now that he'd become someone and #78456 wasn't.
...
Right. General sense is that generation cascaded forward, frictionally against itself with more velocity than a society could absorb. In a sense, yes, battling for America's souls. More real than today's pontificated culture war. Pontificators going redundantly as preachers of yore established as crowd pleasing. reliving the battles as commercially conveyed. Except no one would knows exactly where GOD comes down in judgement on "forgive them for they know not what they do," plea that technically gives everyone a pass as all are virtual idiots at times. Especially anyone who'd deny, ba dump bump.
It's something how life's about finding out things. Peered at close enough. That's who we are. The accumulation of what we can remember. Not complicated at all. But circumstances surround us that adapt to contrivances that narrow what needs to be understood to dimensions every head can't possibly get around.
Let's take a walk. Travel memories. Remember when my father first walked me to school. Now parents do it full time. But back then, he was able to tell me I had to learn, younger than others, to take care of myself so this was the last time he'd walk me to school. He understood my disappointment we'd not be talking, but I was making it my walk. Modeled on his every evening past the cross-street to my, block away, elementary school to Lake Eustis.
Rummaging through history the numerous flags planted are of an arc pointing in the arc's direction. Take Judge Robert Bork for example. Martyr to a Conservative Supreme Court banner. Quite the distinction not allowed to be further martyred by ana just as significant symbolism as the third in line Justice Department man who fired Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. Yes. In itself quite a distinction among the Roger stone end of Fake-Republican pseudo-significance. ...
...
For History's Sake
Another fantastic thing about our new modern world is worn thin from working, I'm listening to Side Two of Mort Sahl Live after One for lunch. 1973. What's dated is fun. Fabulous.
...
Yes. History's been focus since I remember. Sixty years later? Now? Imagine yourself taken out by the pool as Dustin Hoffman was told "plastics" is the financial future in The Graduate. One word describes now. Impervious.
Impervious is precisely our political world as of early 2023. Always so, but currently now everyone's noticing how politician George Santos', even confronted again, face is impervious. A dictatorial posture. No secret why the se lies' celebrity serves purposes beyond righteous indignation. Imperviousness diffuses.
And something how nothing matters and tomorrow's face doesn't understand why yesterdays' questions apply. For one thing, the district can't guarantee a conservative who'd do anything told. That okay to lie theme as long as patriotism's claimed. that politics is the refuge of scoundrels is fact. Russia's congresspersons are immune to prosecution, hence.
...
Thirty-eight New York City Years On, sophistication's prime teaching moment's back there in the bonafide upscale hinterlands. People will possibly always stoke contrived consequences embers.
PYGMALION BY George Bernard Shaw. - A modern Acts of the Apostles would fill fifty whole Bibles if anyone were capable of writing it.
ELIZABETH
Give me a break, child of history, come to save the day. Minnie Mouse is on his way.
(THEATER dark. Lights up.)
SETTING: Sumptuous facing chairs hold protagonists. BACKSTAGE black sold curtain falls in front of couch and window frame.
(Two, functionally dressed, stagehands, either end of a banner reading EPILOGUE, cross STAGE LEFT to OFF RIGHT (WINGS).)
VANCE ETHOS
I’m not bewildered.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Due to my lack of effort? [beat] Ah! Speaking of bold. I saw you on Nightly Business Report.
VANCE ETHOS
Which one?
ELOQUENT PIERCE
The one where, at the end, the male host asks something they’d been talking about, around the set, the past week.
VANCE ETHOS
Aw here it comes.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
He asked about this idea that some day there’d be no more inflation.
VANCE ETHOS
Gasp on cue.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Right. Truly beautiful. Right on the spot. You told the truth.
VANCE ETHOS
I told the truth?
ELOQUENT PIERCE
The truth that all of us will always have inflation. But eventually? I take it for granted we’re too smart not to solve poverty. The missing link defining our bottom’s instability. Stable money. Otherwise we’re chasing dinosaurs to fix a flat.
Vance Ethos
[one chin rub] Mm? I’ll think of answer.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
I thought I described one? Eloquently.
VANCE ETHOS
(Smiles.)
Well?
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Well I don't know.
VANCE ETHOS
You don't care?
ELOQUENT PIERCE
People not bothering to learn everything about everything is no excuse.
VANCE ETHOS
Back to the Marketplace of Ideas. Ownership and rule.
ELOQUENT PIERCE
Aren't we? But back is stretching when “always with us” applies. [watches STAGE LEFT door drop or slide into place] Last word?
VANCE ETHOS
Last word? No no no. You’re not leaving me last word. That's eternally history’s. [HOUSE LIGHTS go brightest ten seconds, then fade to whatever normalcy there could ever possibly be.]
THE END
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