The Shooting Gallery
LEROY. DONKEY (A room in an abandoned building in a big city) GEORGE: Uh. Hi. Are you Leroy and Electron? LEROY: Yeah? Where does a nice young future doctor meet a scuz like Benny? GEORGE: Uh. The corner of 72nd and 19th. Hunh, I was just hanging around there around noon waiting for someone to ask me if I wanted something. Benny asked me. LEROY: He said there were four of you. GEORGE: Yeah. (He ducks out of the room and returns with the others) LEROY: So who's got the money, and who's going first? JOE: I didn't know if you would change the needles, I hear it's not so good if you don't, so I took the liberty to bring four syringes. Is that all right? LEROY: We run a clean act here, punk! You afraid if we maybe shoot a black man with a syringe, then you, you'd start turning black? A little color would help out, son. Beats sitting on a hot beach for hours and hours, now don't it? JOE: Sure. LEROY: So who's first? Let's move. (pause) Come-on. This ain't the dentists for god's sake. GEORGEI O.k., where do I go? LEROY: Where I lead you. (He exits with GEORGE. There's laughter in the bathroom) MARTHA: I think I should have gone with George, to watch. MARY: Needles make me sick. I don't feel too well. JOE: Hey, come-on. We're going to get-out-there tonight! Party-up! LEROY: (entering) Hey, son, keep your volume low. We don't need national exposure. One of you sweet ladies? MARY: Go on, Martha. MARTHA: Is George all done? Where is he? LEROY: He'll be flying-out in a moment. (He takes MARTHA back and brings GEORGE out) JOE: Does it hurt? GEORGE: Not too bad. MARY: The needle doesn't hurt? GEORGE: A little. MARY: How come you're holding your arm? GEORGE: I'm putting pressure there so it won't bleed. Don't be so paranoid. Electron guaranteed that this is unreal shit. Straight from the Orient. JOE: Shit, I hope it's not too strong. I hope we don't o.d. GEORGE: You're scaring Mary, man. Just calm down. I'm GEORGE: Don't tell him that. LEROY: That's cool. You're virgins, eh? Hey babe, you a virgin too? Ha ha! GEORGE: I'm going to sit down for a second. (LEROY exits and brings out MARTHA) LEROY: So? Come on, it's a fifty-fifty chance. JOE: You sure? I'll go if you want. MARY: No. I'll go. (He ushers her back) MARTHA: How are you feeling. George? GEORGE: Ah, all right. A little dizzy. Kind of relaxed. JOE: Shit. Don't start analyzing your high, enjoy it. Every time we get fucked-up you sit around describing what's happening to you. GEORGE: Joe, you're a fucking imbecile. (LEROY enters) JOEI How pure is this stuff? LEROY: Pure enough. MARTHA: My arm's sore. JOE: Maybe he missed your vein. LEROY: Electron never misses the main line, son. (pause) The first time to take a needle in your arm your arm's going to get sore. Hey babe, did it hurt the first time you got fucked? Ha Ha! It's like that. It hurts, but it sure feels nice. (MARY comes out, LEROY takes JOE back) LEROY: I'll hold your hand, would You feel better if I MARY: That was horrible. I almost threw-up on that guy in there. I thought he'd probably kill me if I did. God, the taste of vomit's still in my mouth. I don't know if I should go ahead and do it or try to swallow it back. MARTHA: I feel good. GEORGE: I feel good, but it's not really stony. I mean, if I wanted to I'm sure I could function. I've got four joints of that shit from Thailand, do you want to fire one off? MARY: Do you think that would be all right? GEORGE: We'll offer it around. MARTHA: Fire it off. (He lights it. LEROY comes out) LEROY: It's not good enough to feel good, you have to feel strange? (MARTHA passes it to LEROY) Good shit. (He hands it to TOILET) Give these winos a real buzz, eh. (GEORGE pulls out the rest of the joints and lights each and passes them around. JOE comes out, reaches for a joint- blood drips from his arm, he drops the joint and covers his wound. CHAIR picks the joint up. ELECTRON comes out and joins in the smoking) ELECTRON: This is heavy shit. You got any you want to part with. GEORGE: That's the last of it. ELECTRON: Well it's good shit, man. Hey Leroy, we should hit it. LEROY: Yeah. Hey look at the winos. They're getting out there. Better than ripple, right man? Ha! CHAIR: Thank you. LEROY: Thank you shit. Ha ha! ELECTRON: We're supposed to meet the ladies at ten, slick. Yeah. (They exit and close the door behind them and then immediately knock on the door claiming they are the police) MARY: The police, shit! MARTHA: Shit! GEORGE: Um, um, here, move this chair here over there. (He leads CHAIR across the room) Help me, god-damn it! (MARY and MARTHA go to COUCH PART ONE and CoucH PART TWO and lead them to a location . JOE places HAT RACK and TABLE. TOILET remains where he is) MARTHA: Shit! (GEORGE opens the door nonchalantly. LEROY is now DONKEY and ELECTRON is now ELEPHANT) GEORGE: Two animals which must have escaped from the zoo, or a laboratory, or some other kind of confinement. DONKEY: So where's this good shit, man? JOE: Give him a joint, George. GEORGE: Sure! Give a joint to a donkey! ELEPHANT: What is the toilet doing in the livingroom! (Everyone turns and looks at TOILET, he stands) TOILET: I don't understand it, and I allow this nonunderstanding because of the event itself, something swells up inside me, and for a moment I am touched with the realization that I have become Saint Thomas Aquinas. But the person within me, the true me, who knows about a new world Saint Thomas could not have even imagined, calls out in the hours just after waking. I do not part my curtains for I am afraid of exposing both personages. The person inside me reacts negatively to Saint Thomas. Fortunately Saint Thomas is compassionate. I will not tear myself apart. This person inside me asks me: "Tell me Saint Thomas Aquinas, if all life on Earth has a soul, a spirit, given them by God, then what about the new life-forms being invented in genetic laboratories? Does this life, this man-made life, also contain a soul and spirit? If so, then man is equal to God in His creative ability, and so God is a man. If not, then it's apparent that if man can invent life from organic materials, then man will be able to, in the future, invent a soul and spirit to go along with that invented body. My conclusion, Saint Thomas, is that God is a man, a human being, and that human beings are future Gods." (DONKEY grabs TOILET by the arm) DONKEY: It doesn't matter what you say, you belong in here. (He leads TOILET into the bathroom) GEORGE: (standing on CHAIR) It's not difficult to rid one's self of the police. (pause) Women want to be raped. MARTHA: Bullshit. GEORGE: It's in their blood, it's in their heads, it's in the way they walk. MARTHA: Bullshit. GEORGE: (stepping down) Women want to be raped. MARTHA: Rape me, George! ELEPHANT: (To audience) There's something wrong with the plunger. DONKEY: I examined the plunger, fat-ass! ELEPHANT: You're the ass! (LEROY throws-off the donkey head and speaks direct to the audience) LEROY: I would like you all to know that the portrayal of those heroin pushers as blacks is actually a slander to blacks. I'd like to ask the author why he chose this part to be played by blacks. Don't you think we deserve some satisfaction from the author? Where are you? (He strains to look out into the audience) He's not even in the audience! Shit! (CHAIR gets up and walks to a corner and urinates then returns to his position) JOE: You are a donkey and he is an elephant because that is the curse God has chosen for you. DONKEY: And your curse is that you're a white, middle-class American. GEORGE: The salt of the earth. MARY: I've always been afraid to take off my clothes. I'm repulsed by just the thought of a naked body, especially mine. JOE: Go to a psychiatrist! (ELEPHANT takes JOE aside) ELEPHANT: I've got this little game I used to play. JOE: Yeah? ELEPHANT: It's easy, limited skills necessary, let's just say you're learning something about the culture of elephants. JOE: How does it go? ELEPHANT: Here, put out your right hand, it's like this, here, make a fist, right, now shke your arm three times and stop. Now, that's a rock, it means that if I held out two fingers, which means scissors, you'd have won. JOE: Why? ELEPHANT: Because a rock crushes the scissors, just like I can crush you, that's the game I'm playing really, I crush you because I'm an elephant. See? JOE: I'm not supposed to die tonight! MARTHA: He's right, you know. The function of night--which doesn't specifically mean darkness because on Earth there are places where daylight lasts for several days--is to produce a certain mood in organic matter. I will specifically address the moods night brings out of human beings. There are three of them: melancholy, excitement, and suffering. Excitement because we usually have sexual encounters at night. Melancholy because our sight is impaired, we become enclosed, we feel repressed. Suffering because pains are more acute at night and bad memories resurface and echo. (The actors walk-off the stage. There's a scream. ELEPHANT comes back on stage and goes into the bathroom. He walks out ahead of the TOILET) ELEPHANT: (to audience) It's only the toilet. (ELEPHANT exits. TOILET stands) TOILET: The idea is, that if jokes don't work, and I've got some coming up that are awful, that I should forget them, and improvise. That's the idea. The problem is, is that I'm horrible at improvisation. I haven't even heard a good joke lately, I've been too busy memorizing this bullshit. And it's not working. I'm beginning to believe that regurgitating lines written by an author is a load of shit. The best theatre I've ever seen the audience has never been exposed to, it happens in rehearsals, in early rehearsals, when the director is through giving-out notes and he finds a piece of his blocking doesn't work, so he asks us actors to walk around like we think it should be, that's when there's excitement in theatre, it's raw, it's beyond real because it's actual, there shouldn't be directors, they're all aloof and act big, they're failed actors is what they are, so they become directors and push actors around, it's a lot of shit. The audience is the only reality. Shit. The audience just pretends I regurgitate these lines. Actually I do, yeah, this is supposed to be theatre, everything I'm saying now has been written, every ncvment I make has been directed. It isn't funny anymore, huh? I say "bullshit", and the audience doesn't know if I'm making up a line or if it's written by some author and its inflection directed by some director. If I walk off the stage right now, it's because I was directed to - the movement is memorized. (He exits). |