Act 1: Seascape from New York

Scene 1

​

Berlin Rathenauplatz: The Chapters

Keep in mind that the first scene would be best viewed on an angle looking down from above. It might be possible to accomplish this by having the audience sit in the balconies, or else by staging the scene on an inclined plane. The stage is filled mostly with the scene of a play. As you will see, the area for the scene must be very large. In the foreground, at the very edge of the stage, perhaps even in the pit or on the ramp, there are a few audience members visible. It should be clear that they are in the play. However, as much as possible, the scene that they are watching must command the attention on stage, so that we are largely watching what they are watching. The sun is below the horizon, but there is still a comparatively pale band of azure over the buildings in the background of modern low-rise apartment buildings, lots of glass and steel painted white, bold cylindrical bannisters on the balconies. The sky above is a deep dark blue but mixed with the yellow streetlight the effect in the corner of the eye is a blackening purple. In the foreground but set back enough so that even those in the front rows can get a pretty good view of the whole scene, a traffic circle: Rathenauplatz, Berlin. Wolf Vostell’s “Two Concrete-Cadillacs in the Form of the Naked Maja.” Yellow streetlight off the grimy, cracked, stained concrete of the sculpture. The front end of one Cadillac from the top of the windshield forward extends at a downward angle out from the concrete encasement. It is exposed except for thin slabs over the windshield and half of the hood and front grill but is nevertheless even more caked in dirt than the rest, like the concrete in a parking garage, tunnel, alleyway, or the space below a bridge frequented by the homeless, covered in indiscriminate dirt. It is angled down, sitting on a kind of ramp so that we are looking down on the windshield, hood, and front grill. Both the ramp and the car on top of it bisects another, vertical block of concrete. Another Cadillac is stood on end in side profile beside it, only its wheels exposed, its whole form on this side otherwise submerged in an arching block of concrete, an aerodynamic sabre, with a long thin divot in the concrete suggesting a futuristic windshield (always somehow less exposed of the people of the future, but more exposed to them) or else an anachronistic one (like an old tank), but already petrified here in any case. At the irregular base of the concrete portion of the sculpture a kind of garden square, or else a graveyard, of many fragments of marble slab sticking up out of the ground. (Images can easily be looked up). It is perhaps the end of a balmy day in winter, getting on toward spring. There is no sign of snow. There is a bit of green in the matted-down grass, but it is mostly yellow and there are brown patches here and there. Cars drive around the traffic circle on a fairly consistent basis, the red of their taillights punctuating the commanding spectrum of dark blues. Occasionally, the tires on a car driving a bit too fast screech from the g-force. On the other side of the traffic circle, in front of the apartment buildings in the background, the green and yellow neon lights of a gas station canopy, the shop below still open on this beautiful Sunday evening at a crossroad between upper-class suburbs.

The next thing you know, a young man walks into the front of the scene and crosses the road from the nearside of the traffic circle to its centre. He is wearing traditional hipster attire of the lower alps: tight jeans, a bomber jacket, and some kind of hat that might have been worn by an official, whether a policeman or a postman, in times gone by. His hair is quite long with wavy curls. He somewhat resembles Al Pacino’s character in Cruising, except he has a moustache. He cuts straight across the road toward the sculpture, heedless of the traffic. A car swerves and honks but he pays little attention to it. He walks straight up to the sculpture and undoes his pants button to take a casual piss. Another car sees him and honks as it drives around the circle. Once he’s finished, he walks around the sculpture in order to then continue the same straight line to the gas station. A minute later he comes out with an armful of beers and walks back to the sculpture. Once there, he sets the beers down around the square of marble slabs, stepping diligently through them to open one of the beers on the sculpture. He is clearly respectful of the sculpture, perhaps only making himself familiar with it in his own way, but he is also a bit of a numbskull. On the first try, a bit of concrete crumbles off the edge of the sculpture. On the second try, the neck of the bottle breaks off. He again steps diligently between the marble slabs for another beer and then back and this time opens it with his lighter. He leans his ass against the hood of the one Cadillac and lights up a cigarette, taking in his surroundings. Soon, a woman with a stroller walks into the scene on the sidewalk around the traffic circle. When the young man notices her, he walks somewhat more hurriedly through the slabs, but this time loses his footing in his haste, making a last leap in order to fall outside of the square of jagged marble, barrel rolling over the lawn but making sure to save the beer and cigarette from spilling or breaking. He doesn’t stop after the fall, just gets up and keeps walking eagerly toward the woman with the stroller. This time he has to jump back to avoid being hit by a car. But, again, he just continues straight on his way. His interaction with the woman is silent, or at least the audience can’t hear anything. Perhaps he doesn’t know German and doesn’t want to assume she speaks English. His lips are moving vaguely, or uncertainly, during the interaction, but he seems to use mostly gestures in communicating to her that he would like her to take his picture in front of the sculpture with his cellphone. She is confused and a bit annoyed, particularly as he is not entirely conscientious with his cigarette smoke and is even so presumptuous as to lean down to say hi to the baby. If only to get him away from the stroller, the woman accepts his phone and gestures for him to pose for the camera in front of the sculpture. He crosses the road and stands in front of it, still and straight. Then he does one with his thumb up in front of his chest, elbow up and out to the side, cigarette in the corner of his smiling mouth. He goes back to retrieve his phone. As the woman quickly moves away, the man makes a slight bow with his hands clasped around his beer and can be heard saying, “Danke danke danke.” The woman murmurs a single “Bitte.” Then the man walks back over to the sculpture and resumes his post.

This next part must be sped up, for it would otherwise be too repetitive and slow and uneventful to hold the attention of the audience before what comes next, and yet it is important for the content and the feel of the drama. As night continues to take the place of the descending day, the young man drains his several beers to the last and even restocks at one point, steering his off-kilter, bleary-eyed frankfurter casing of a self over to the gas station and back. He familiarizes himself with various perspectives onto the sculpture and from it down to the traffic circle and the surrounding suburbs. He lays back on the exposed hood of the one Cadillac and contemplates the stars. He grimaces, grunts, strokes his moustache, sits cross-legged in the grass before the nude, idly picking a few blades as he squints into her beauty laid bare under the streetlights. He lights some tea candles left between and on top of the marble slabs, but only two or three, the results more or less without effect. He perches himself at various points and in various positions atop the sculpture, affording greater proximity to the sky or a better perspective on the dim surroundings. An old man passes by and the young man whistles to gain his attention, waving him over for a drink. They clink bottles and exchange a few words but are rather impenetrable to each other, not only because of the language barrier, and for the rest remain in silent enjoyment of the elements within and without. The old man could be retired, divorced, widowed, and/or married. His motives for pausing here from his walk aren’t necessarily clear. Perhaps he, too, just appreciates another view on the public artwork in its everchanging context, penetrating the specious wall of consistency rung around it by the unending years of traffic. The vehicles change, the people change, the weather changes, the sculpture does a good job of weathering, but all this is too easily drowned out in the ceaseless vehicular drone. The older man is happy there. But he is just as happy when he leaves the young man where he found him. The young man drinks himself drunk and eventually trips over his own shadow onto the soft wet ground, taking this opportune moment to call it a night as he pulls his jacket tight to his balled-up body in the season of still-cool nights and falls asleep sotted, content, and bemused. But before he does, he plays some white noise sounds on his phone to help him fall and stay asleep amid the traffic, which lessens but doesn’t quit.

Curtain (except for the few audience members, who remain without, still in play)

1st Audience member: Who the fuck is this hipster spaz?

2nd Audience member: I don’t know, not my idea of an everyman.

1st Audience member: No. I meant—what’s his name?

2nd Audience member: Oh, yeah, I didn’t mean . . . I mean, interesting choice of character for this role. I think his name is Padraig.

Suddenly the curtain quickly rises again. This scene is better shown from a bit closer up and on a level. For example, the road before the traffic island may no longer be in the scene, only the road as it curves around the far side of the sculpture. It is now morning. Sunny with a few clouds. The traffic is thicker than it’s been up to now, but still moving well. Padraig is still on the grass, but he is now lying on his back with his arms at his sides, straight as a pencil. The sound of a rotating fan still drones into his ear from the phone in the grass beside his head. His hat rests on top of his face. A woman of around the same age, perhaps a bit older, walks into the scene from the roughly the same direction as Padraig at the beginning of the previous one, but cautiously. She does not force her way across but waits for an opening in the traffic, although of course this cannot be directly seen by the audience. She is also perhaps a bit confused at what she is walking into as she approaches Padraig. She makes gestures of uncertainty, stopping to consider how to proceed, or even thinking about something else which she would prefer to be doing right now. She is smartly but casually dressed. She wears a hat and sunglasses. She slowly paces in alternating directions around Padraig’s stock-still prostrate corpse. Then she lightly whistles, similarly to how Padraig whistled for the attention of the old man. Padraig remains stock-still except for the arm by which he removes the hat from his face, returning it then to his side. Next, he sits up (without bending and perhaps without even using his arms, his upper half from the head to the waist remaining as straight as possible). Then he puts the hat on his head and sits cross-legged. He squints as he looks up at the woman, the sun in his face.

Padraig: Hello, it’s you. Top of the morning, Charlotte.

Charlotte: [she speaks English with an accent, perhaps Eastern European] Padraig, have you been here all night?

Padraig: [yawning as he reaches for the phone] Hold on, let me put some music on. Need to wake up properly. Let’s see . . . what’s good? . . . mmm here [puts on Hans Nieswandt’s disco mix of “So Long Frank Lloyd Wright”] . . . hey, beautiful day we’ve got.

Charlotte: [impatient, annoyed] Padraig, what the fuck is going on?

Padraig: [responding in a manner which might be interpreted as avoiding the question in the most ingenuous way possible] Oh . . . [looking around] we were just . . . hrmm . . . I was just . . . I didn’t want to be late and I knew I’d be drinking so I figured I’d just sleep here.

Charlotte: Padraig, none of this makes any sense. I mean, we didn’t have to meet here, at this time. There were places you could have slept.

Padraig: [long-winded] Well, yeah, but this place was on my itinerary. Time is precious, you know. I’ve planned it all out. I don’t have infinite time left. Sleep doesn’t matter so much to me at the moment. Trust me, this was the best way. Very reasonable. Very pragmatic. You might say we’re killing two . . . we’re multitasking. Logistics, metabolics, the whole body . . . the whole brain-body complex . . . I was thinking about you, too. I thought you said it fit into your schedule as well.

Charlotte: Paddy, let me be upfront: the only the reason I met with you is that I need the money. You owe me, like, 800 euros.

Padraig: Really, 800? I have the rent here, but . . .

Charlotte: The rent plus the food you ate and the wine you drank and the fines you incurred for illegal downloads and the cigarettes you smoked when I was gone plus your share of the pill plus the abortion when the pill didn’t work. I need all of it.

Padraig: Shit . . . [ironically] You know Charlotte, I can’t handle all this math until I’ve had a coffee . . .

Charlotte: [extremely impatient] Well you should have gotten up earlier! . . . Listen, I have to go to work. But first I need the money. I don’t expect we’ll ever see each other again. You want your two fucking birds? There’s coffee and a Geldautomat over at the Tankstelle. I don’t mean to be a bitch but can we please just get this over with?

Padraig: [hearing her but only in a very abstracted way as he takes in the surroundings, a kind of faux meditative openness, struggling to take in stride everything occurring within and around him, rather humming than speaking his response as he slowly gets up] Scheiße . . . naja . . . okay . . . keine Scheiße . . . aber wohin . . . geradeaus . . . zumzumzoom . . . to the Tankstelle . . . die Denkscheiße.

[In her impatience, Charlotte grabs him by the hand and almost walks straight into a car, but Padraig stops her. It was very close. She is visibly shaken, but also still visibly irritated by his attempt to calm her down.]

Padraig: [his voice fading as they walk across the road to the gas station] You know, this is kind of perfect . . .

1st Audience member: Okay, this is too much . . .

2nd Audience member: Or, not enough?

​

[During the delivery of these lines, Padraig and Charlotte go into the gas station and come out more or less immediately. Padraig has a coffee in hand and a beer tucked under his armpit on the same side, with a handful of bills in the other hand. He is struggling to manage it all as they approach the road again.]

​

Padraig: [handing her the stack of bills] Why don’t you just count it out for yourself? My hands are full . . . and you know how much it is. [Lighthearted, as if finally waking up in the new sun] I’m not one to take on more than I can handle . . .

Charlotte: [counting out her money, but also suddenly in a different mood now] Well, to be honest, I’m happy I don’t have to go to work now. It’s nice to spend the morning taking in some public art.

Padraig: Yeah, it really does feel kind of perfect to me. A whole artificial ecosystem unto itself circulating around this sculpture: the island, the circle, the road leading up, the road leading away, that gas station . . . I hate traffic circles as much as anybody. And everybody with an opinion on the matter hates traffic circles. I’ve never heard anybody say they liked them. But all that seems to unravel here. A museum-grade experience at a traffic circle. Can’t complain about that. Beautiful . . .

Charlotte: Hmm . . . haha . . .

Padraig: What?

Charlotte: I just had an evil thought. I thought, all it really needs is an accident, maybe a couple bodies.

Padraig: Needs? For what?

Charlotte: I don’t know. That’s all I thought. Maybe that’s where the evil lies.

Padraig: Well, it had me for a body last night. And this other guy.

Charlotte: Another guy slept here with you?

Padraig: Twice.

Charlotte: What?

Padraig: Haha, just kidding. No, I invited this old guy over for a beer.

Charlotte: What did you talk about? He’s from around here?

Padraig: Nothing. I don’t know. I assume so. He was just out for a walk.

Charlotte: I can’t believe you just slept out here on the grass like a fucking homeless person.

Padraig: Why? I’m sure it’s been done before. People have probably driven circles around this thing like they were doing the Hajj. Except maybe they were drunk. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’ve been more than a few accidents.

Charlotte: Some accidental pregnancies, even.

Padraig: Some accidental abortions . . .

Charlotte: Now that’s going too far . . .

Padraig: I’m just exhausting the logical combinations. Want some beer?

​

[Charlotte takes the bottle and drinks. They walk around the sculpture. The traffic is a bit fuller and slower now. A couple of cars have circled around it a few times, although it may be unclear whether this is representative or just for the sake of economy in the staging—that is, it could be that there’s really supposed to be more traffic or it could just be that it’s not flowing through.]

​

Charlotte: The plaque says 1987. I wonder what it was like around here back then, before the wall came down?

Padraig: Do you know anything about the performance? What’s with the marble? Actually, there probably haven’t been any accidents. I don’t see any signs of one.

Charlotte: We’re quite useless, aren’t we?

Padraig: Well, shit. At least we showed up.

​

[They smile at each other and continue to walk in circles around the sculpture in a clockwise direction, i.e. opposite that of the automobile traffic. She puts her arm through the crook of his elbow, his hand in his coat pocket. With the other hand he looks at his phone.]

​

Padraig: Hmm . . . I assumed “Maja” was some kind of goddess. Because of the grammar I think, “The Naked Maja.” But it’s actually after the painting by Goya depicting a naked maja, a type of lower-class Spanish woman.

Charlotte: Oh, haha, I thought you knew.

Padraig: I never read the art books. I just look.

Charlotte: I read the second time. The first is for looking.

Padraig: Yeah, I intend to do that, too, but never get around to it. Somehow it always feels like a misfortune to have to go through a book a second time, and I always want to avoid misfortune, haha.

[Reading from Wikipedia on his phone]

Majo (masc.) or maja (fem.), also manolo and manola, after the most popular names, were people from the lower classes of Spanish society, especially in Madrid, who distinguished themselves by their elaborate outfits and sense of style in dress and manners, as well as by their cheeky behavior. They flourished from the late 18th to early 19th century, and to some extent later. Majos and majas were one of the favorite subjects of some 19th-century Spanish painters.

The majo’s and maja’s outfits were exaggerations of traditional Spanish dress. The style stood in strong contrast to the French styles affected by many of the Spanish elite under the influence of the Enlightenment. Majos were known to pick fights with those they saw as afrancesados ("Frenchified" – fops).

In Spanish, the word possesses derived forms such as chulapo and chulapa, a version of chulo and chula in reference to their saucy attitude, as well as chispero and chispera, among others.

Charlotte: Hmm . . . How would you interpret this, then?

Padraig: Well, normally I wouldn’t. I would prefer to drive . . .

Charlotte: Is it the relevant information, I wonder, or is it something specific to the painting.

Padraig: The “maja” in the Prado and the “maja” here on this traffic circle. The yuppies here driving around their very own bourgeois maja every day on their way to work.

Charlotte: And back. But in the end they are concrete Cadillacs, not majas, or not a maja. And they aren’t really naked either. Or at least the Cadillacs aren’t. Maybe the concrete Cadillacs are.

Padraig: Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve been here but never to the Prado that the traffic circle appeals to me more. Or . . . at least in this case. Maybe not in Goya’s case.

Charlotte: [ironic] Oh, and where do we go from here?

Padraig: The internet.

Charlotte: “Ethereum block in the form of the two concrete Cadillacs.” [They laugh]

Padraig: But do these bastards deserve it? Do they even recognize its existence?

Charlotte: So what if they don’t? Personally, I like the thought that we’re the only ones really paying attention even as all these cars have to notice at least enough to avoid driving into it.

Padraig: Maybe . . . but we’re in Germany. The public recognizes stuff like this here . . . so I hear.

​

[By now the traffic has become noticeably denser. Over the course of the following bit of dialogue, it fairly quickly escalates and takes on a constant, seemingly rather precarious pace. Perhaps the scene could somehow be shifted further back away from the audience so that the stage includes also the nearside of the traffic circle. In any case, it is now clear that it is the same cars driving around in circles because their passengers are holding onto protest flags unfurled in the wind. There is a screeching of tires and a honking of horns. The flags and banners say many different kinds of things, for example: “Nieder mit der Scheiss-impfungen!” “Ich liebe Truckers” “We love a trucker convoy” “Zukunft=Cryptocurrencies” “Truckers geh heim” “Fick mich Vitalik!” “Fick dich Faschist/in!” “Fick dich Scheiß-verkehr” “Fick mich Scheiß-verkehr” “Pflastern die Planet” and whatever else you can come up with that ranges from the vaguely appropriate to the humorous and absurd, and without regard for unity or consistency, or even proper German idiom or grammatical correctness.]

​

Charlotte: Hey, have you noticed that the same cars keep driving around the circle . . . driving in circles around the circle?

Padraig: No, I wasn’t paying attention to the traffic. But it does seem as though we have a couple Vostell heads forming a kind of . . . traffic gauntlet . . . around the sculpture. [to the circling cars] Hey there, brothers!

Charlotte: [reproachful] There are women there too!

Padraig: Everyone!

Charlotte: But I don’t think they’re here for the sculpture. Look at the flags!

Padraig: What do they say? I can barely read them they’re driving so fast. I can see they’re mostly in German. Something about truckers, and shit, and Vitalik Buterin. Where have we come to?

Charlotte: Look at the traffic. How will we ever get off this island?

Padraig: It’s just a little protest. How long can it last?

​

[The traffic racing around the circle reaches a kind of saturation point where no more cars could possibly fit. Scared, Charlotte and Padraig have grabbed hold of each other. Suddenly, a car veers too tightly to the inside and skids into the centre of the circle to avoid an even worse multicar collision, crashing into one side of the sculpture. It barely misses Charlotte and Padraig. The driver appears to have been killed or knocked unconscious. Another car quickly takes its place around the circle.]

​

Charlotte: Padraig! What the hell is going on? We almost died!! What the fuck are we going to do?

Padraig: Quick!! In here. [He leads her to the crashed vehicle, managing to force the door open and to shove the driver over to passenger’s side, which is closer and more exposed to the road, making room for the two of them on the other more protected side. They are tightly embraced in the driver’s seat. The island quickly becomes concealed by dust and exhaust fumes. Other cars are visible at the edge of the scene, waiting for an entrance into the traffic circle.]

Padraig: You know, earlier I was surprised at what you said, about the money. I thought we were meeting to spend the day together. Because I’m supposed to leave soon.

Charlotte: What ever made you think that?

Padraig: I don’t know. Maybe just my wishes.

Charlotte: Well, to be honest, you know when I had that evil thought, I also had another thought of you and I driving around this island in circles with, like, cans on strings trailing behind like we’d just been married. It was only a split second, but I imagined us driving around at a dangerous speed, touching each other with those cans banging around on the pavement behind . . . I guess it was a kind of weird premonition. What are we going to do if they don’t stop?

[By now we can’t see anything of what’s going on inside the traffic circle, but the dialogue is still clearly audible.]

Padraig: My friends are on their way with beer. Maybe they’ll think of something.

Charlotte: You invited your friends? But what about your itinerary? The logistics of your plan, multitasking? And just now you said we were supposed to spend the day together?

Padraig: Yeah, exactly, the itinerary. And I thought you were the artist. What, you don’t know how to look at a sculpture?

[About fifteen or twenty seconds after their outlandish banter comes to stop, it sounds as though they are beginning some kind of sexual act in the front seat of the car. At this point, the two audience members from before get up one after the other.]

1st Audience member: That’s it. I’m out!

2nd Audience member: I’m with you there. Peace! [They exit, making a show of their disapproval]

Curtain

​

​

​

Scene 2

​

​

The scene is a railroad style bar and restaurant in the basement of Grand Central Station, NYC. The room is exceptionally long and exceptionally narrow, most likely much longer and narrower than the stage itself. A bar extends down almost the entire length to one side, from the entrance almost to the very back, where the bathrooms are and where some space has been left for musicians. There is only enough room to sit at the bar. There may be a few stools but no tables or countertops on the other side of the room. Currently, there is a trio playing in the back, consisting of a stand-up bass player, a saxophone player, and a DJ. They are all dressed in beige trench coats and deerstalker hats and wear dark sunglasses. They are very serious and alert in demeanour. The saxophonist and the bass player are exceptionally skillful in their improvisational style of play. Only the DJ’s role is questionable. He manipulates the digital turntables and mixer and fiddles around on three or four laptops, but the only noises that seem to arise from it are static, crackling, high-pitched feedback, and strange boops and bleeps like on an old sonar system, which he perhaps loops, distorts, or filters in order to add a vaguely musical quality to them. On the whole, however, it is difficult to listen to. Train noises also wash in from the bowels of the station. At the beginning, the barroom is empty of patrons except for a few degenerate-looking characters seated at the bar about halfway down the room. There is a youngish, attractive woman who could pass either as an upscale sex-worker or a professional who is perhaps facing a career or midlife crisis. Her clothing is expensive but a bit disheveled. She talks to a good-looking young man sitting beside her, but he seems more intent on the music than on her boisterous rambling. He is perhaps occasionally annoyed by her inconsiderately wild gesticulations. On the other side of the young woman there is an older man who could be senile but retains an air of dignity and independent will. He stares rather vacantly at the mirror behind the bar but appears generally content. He bobs his head very slightly to the music, but otherwise moves only to sip on some cranberry juice. The woman also tries to engage the attention of the bartender. There is only one bartender role, but the actors who play it change every time they go into the back room where the kitchen is. Nobody seems to notice. In fact, as will be seen, they tend to respond quite naturally (so, not quite obliviously), with a few exceptions. The bartenders wear uniforms consisting of white dress shirts with black ties. But they themselves are very differently proportioned, from dwarves who have to hop up on stools to see over the bar to giants who crane their necks down to avoid hitting their heads against the ceiling, from tall skinny women with breasts so large they must wear back braces to little fat boys who have to jump and pull themselves up to sit on the counter in order to interact with the patrons. The bar appears classic, an “institution,” at once cozy and energized, confined but dynamic. And yet it is furnished in an ad-hoc, spontaneous, improvised, scrappy, trashy way—a product of a certain sort of taste, but certainly not to everyone’s taste. The construction should be relatively easy, fun, and inexpensive, although the clean-up might at first seem a daunting task (it’s never so bad, in the end). One may let the following descriptions, however precise, stand as guides and examples, without needing to take them as strict directives: the bar itself should be irregular but continuous as it extends down the length of the bar. It widens and narrows, with only two or three places where it suddenly diverges, in a concave or a convex formation (some of it cantilevered, perhaps), from its broad swoop to the back. Most of this irregularity occurs on the side of the patrons. The space behind the bar is a more or less straight isle up and down which the bartenders move. The bar is made mostly of a single material, such as cardboard, sheet metal, foam insulation, or maybe foldable tables webbed together with cardboard and tinfoil, tacked together by appropriate means. On the wall behind the bar, around the midpoint, there is a liquor cabinet, vaguely neo-gothic in its inspiration. Expanding all around this cabinet’s edges there is a large mirror of irregular cut—whether jagged, rounded, or mixed. It is perhaps cracked in places but held together by transparent tape, and especially around the edges the mirror seems to dissolve in a sharded mosaic. Stickers and paint may be used sparingly on this mirror. Another mirror on the other wall parallels this mirror. In the place of the liquor cabinet, however, there is a collage made of cutouts from various posters or handmade paintings of Hannah Schygulla. Along the length of wall on the patron’s side of the bar, wainscoting of tinfoil, cardboard, black garbage bags taped together, or chain-link fencing extends almost to the ceiling. In the space between—right below the ceiling—there is a kind of gallery display of very small drawings, paintings, or wall-mounted sculptures. They are distributed at intervals in an even line across the wall. The room is lit by old televisions mounted in the ceiling or held in fixtures attached to the walls, their light modified and cast against the mirrors in the bar to produce an inviting, comfortable, fairly even glow. The floor is tiled white and black and the ceiling is covered with punched tin. The audience can see into the bar from just outside the station concourse. Any parts of stage outside a thin margin just outside the bar entrance must be submerged in darkness. Cindy Mulleimer and Harry Bilgewater can be heard approaching the entrance.

Cindy: . . . [responding to Harry] I’m pretty sure it’s pronounced Tin Lizzy. Pretty good example, though. If you listen to what they’re saying, they usually seem to be coming from the losing side of things. All vagabonds and cowboys, lonesome seekers on the edge of one abyss or another.

Harry: The blues.

Cindy: Of course, there’s that influence among others. But it’s so entwined with this context of, like, class issues, the social-political situation in Ireland, folklore, literature, a certain sense of identity issues undergone by the young alienated male—actually, I always found there’s something boyish there.

Harry: Yeah, there is always something kind of desperate and conflicted about it. But kind of punk . . .

Cindy: Yeah yeah—they accumulate these descriptions . . . and that’s why how they pull it off is so surprising, so far from given. Total failure seems the more likely result. So fucking cool! Even when that full-on guitar-fucking mode does tend to provoke a certain sense of ambivalence in me, as a woman, somewhere between repulsion and attraction. [During the delivery of these last lines, the pair walks into the light before the entrance. Harry gradually slows to a stop and starts to appear a bit woozy.]

Harry: Yeah . . . I . . . I think the potential failure you see in it is kind of absorbed or . . . pre-empted . . . by . . . by . . . hold on, suddenly I feel a little nauseous. Must have been that cigarette.

Cindy: Haha, well, if you’re going to quit then you should just quit, man. No sense starting and stopping all the time, giving yourself all those mixed signals.

Harry: Auuughhd . . . [Straightens up and shakes his head a bit to try and jerk himself back into form. Suddenly notices the bar there.] Huh, I didn’t know that there was a bar here. Maybe we should just go in and sit down for a bit.

Cindy: Ha! “Go and sit down for a bit,” he says. At a bar you don’t usually just go and sit down for a bit, do you? [She gets an alert on her phone, pulling it out of her pocket]

Harry: [still struggling, slightly convulsed and wincing] No . . . I guess not . . .

Cindy: Well, by chance—ha! chance, right—anyway, I actually have a coupon for free wings from this place . . . and, now that I think about it, I could go for some chicken wings . . . maybe a beer?

Harry: [suddenly seems in slightly improved condition] Yeah, I think it’s starting to pass. Chicken wings and beer sounds good.

Cindy: Good. We have some time to kill before the meeting. It could be better spent than walking around the basements of this shitty train station. I’m glad we ditched that piece of pseudo-Germanic perversity early. Ha! Academicized anti-academicism, or something like that . . . [pause]. Not a bad looking place! [She pats Harry on the back as they walk up to the close end of the bar and sit down, Cindy waving to the bartender, who gestures “one moment” but doesn’t walk over. After about thirty seconds, the bartender goes into the kitchen and then another bartender comes out thirty seconds later with a large plate of sausages for the group in the middle of the bar before resuming the previous bartender’s position, drying glasses etc.]

Harry: [off-hand remark to fill the brief waiting period] How are your students?

Cindy: Geez, I’ll make the bartender take responsibility for leaving you with the time it took to ask that question. They can be really sadistic sometimes, can’t they? [She makes a low whistle. The bartender makes the same “one moment” gesture as the last but again continues polishing glasses etc.]

Harry: Well, it’s good to know there are others in the same boat as you.

Cindy: More like same shit different pile.

Harry: Haha . . . well, whatever way you want to put it. It’s nice to have evidence that you’re not wholly responsible.

Cindy: Evidence . . . yeah . . . if that’s what you mean by evidence and it’s evidence we need, I think we’re fucked . . . I heard this one girl the other day going on about how the students’ lack of responsibility is your responsibility . . . like we’re running an elementary school or something . . . I don’t need evidence . . . I trust my gut instinct . . . the students are old enough to get no more than they deserve . . .

Harry: A teacher who’s more attentive to nursing their own hangover than to them? [They laugh]

Cindy: If I didn’t have to get up so early to get there in time it wouldn’t be half as bad . . . having to think about other people, who aren’t just people but students, themselves blissfully irresponsible and indifferent, really ruins my whole day. Not because I want to wake up thinking about myself, since in thinking about my responsibilities to them I am thinking about myself . . . in the worst way, and about them in the worst way too. What I mean is that as a teacher, and especially one who teaches in the morning, you wake up each day thinking about yourself and others in the worst way possible. This speaks badly for the whole profession. Not that that it requires compromise, but that it prioritizes it from the get-go. Anyway, how is a toreador supposed to fight a sleeping bull?

Harry: You could try to wake it up first, I guess. But these are more like narcoleptic sheep. Although I’m not sure how blissful their irresponsibility and indifference are.

Cindy: With narcolepsy, I guess it doesn’t matter what they are.

Harry: There’s some kind of animal abuse at work, anyway.

Cindy: Vicious cycle of masochists. Committed masochists rearing reluctant masochists to maturity unto eternity.

Harry: Haha, yeah, not my idea of a world. I hope that’s not somehow representative of the state of the world. They basically want you to throw yourself offside against it . . . the world. I’m not capitulating to that. Still, it’s not their fault for being raw meat. And you have to feel bad about how much the kids are paying for this shit . . .

Cindy: The parents pay now. The kids pay again later. [The bartender goes in the back] God, the service is fucking awful here. Maybe we should leave?

Harry: Give them another minute . . . [pause] But, if we don’t even like it, we’re presumably only in it for the money now ourselves.

Cindy: Definitely not the job security or the intellectual freedom.

Harry: And what’s to like? Nobody could actually like it. Tolerate, maybe. The money’s shitty, too. Aren’t there better ways of making more money? I’m starting to feel like I’ve been sucker-punched . . . maybe it wasn’t the cigarette, after all.

Cindy: Well, maybe we should take this conversation as a kind of cue: we have seen, once and for all, what lies at the bottom of the barrel, and it’s enough to corrupt the whole batch . . . or whatever . . . whatever’s put into it . . .

Harry: You mean let’s finally, finally quit? If that’s what actually comes of this conversation, at least the bartender might have a little bit of redemption for leaving us here to mull it over in the first place. [A different bartender now comes over with a heaping plate of chicken wings and two pints of beer. Just as Cindy and Harry don’t notice how the bartender has changed, they don’t take any notice of the fact that they’re order was never taken. They are at first somewhat confused by their order, but they accept it happily in the end.]

Harry: Goddamn these wings look good.

Cindy: Why did we order so much?

Harry: You always say that but then it’s you who’s polishing it all off in the end. [after a short pause] But why did we get suicide? My eyes are already watering just from the smell.

Cindy: And you always say that before we eat. But then you love it.

Harry: Well, if there’s one thing experience has taught me, it’s that we always have a lot to capitulate to, or—a lot of capitulating to do. [After chugging half the pint] I do feel like Guinness all the sudden. I wasn’t so sure before.

Cindy: Enough with your bastard lunchtime dialectics, let’s eat.

Curtain

​

​

​

Scene 3

​

Berlin Rathenauplatz: The Epilogue

Back at Rathenauplatz, later. The traffic has maintained its density and its pace, flags and banners still streaming. But there are now a couple more cars wrecked on the sculpture in the centre. In addition, there are more people in the centre, including the friends of Padraig, who have brought food and drink. They have rigged up an electric-powered cooking element and even a small hot tub to the batteries of the wrecked cars, arranging these where the crashed cars have offered more protected enclaves. The people in the centre apparently stand in solidarity with the protest convoy speeding around them. Presumably, they have only gotten to the centre of the circle by jumping from the cars speeding around it or even via one of the now-wrecked cars. But the scene has also become mildly orgiastic: in the hot tub, on top of the sculpture, in the wrecked seats of the cars, and even in the cars driving around the circle, as well as in and around those waiting outside of it, people are engaged in various kinds of decadent and debaucherous behaviour. This includes even the wounded, one of them now convalescing in the hot tub with blood stains showing through the bandages covering half their head. Some ambulances have arrived on the scene and one of the paramedics tends to a wounded person, but the paramedics also seem to be swayed by the principle of serious, principled fun, occasionally becoming oblivious to the dangers which periodically erupt to remind all in attendance that their principle has sometimes drastic consequences. Topping it all off, a DJ has set up at the top of the sculpture, the equipment contained on a kind of “Bauchladen” like a street vendor or an organ grinder (see Westbam music videos like those for “C’est la Vie” or “Way Up” for possible stylistic inspiration). The DJ is a late-term pregnant woman with a crazy punk hairdo dyed pink and green and yellow, her swelled breasts ready to feed their copious founts of milk to hungry twins. She has long flowing sausage links draped over her shoulders down to the base of the sculpture. Helicopters fly high overhead, rather passive-aggressively for the moment. All of this must be expressed to the audience at a quick glance. Padraig and Charlotte stand pensively looking at the sculpture atop a wrecked car. Charlotte moves her face in for a closer, “textural” inspection of a part of the sculpture’s surface.

Charlotte: Hmm . . . no, I don’t see it. Maybe it’s my trained eye versus your untrained eye.

Padraig: I sometimes face that problem myself, what is in a way most obvious eluding the most well-trained faculties despite remaining maximally significant.

Charlotte: Back when I considered myself to be in a more experimental phase I considered it a kind of ideal that I would strive to realize and then inevitably surprise myself in diverging from it. I find it difficult to claw my way back there now . . . but, you know, it’s maybe a sense you just need to revive from time to time. Some resist this need, calling it capitulation, or maybe recapitulation [she chuckles]. A sign of immaturity, as if a good dose of immaturity weren’t itself something to be instinctively embraced.

Padraig: What do you call it?

Charlotte: I’d call it . . . [A helicopter flies close down above them, one of the female occupants in serious military dress and demeanour squatting or standing to piss down onto the scene, and drowns out Charlotte’s fuller articulation of the thoughts she’s now harbouring. The following text may be incorporated by any means into the scene:]

Text:

GHENT (in the same mood of self-parody)

The whole of life is a prison sentence, some people say, usually Christians. Not me. Life is a holiday from the great nothing, a vacation from the void—and, like all holidays, it seems interminable.

–B. S. Johnson, What is the Right Thing and Am I Doing It?

Curtain

​

​

​

Scene 4

​

Back in the Grand Central Station bar. Business is picking up after the lull. The scene is now viewed from a little bit closer in. Rather than the bar entrance beginning some way back from the edge of the stage, the edge of the stage now begins already some way into the bar, right from where Cindy and Harry are sitting. This gives us a clearer view of what’s going on in the deeper recesses. Speakers placed behind the audience might project sounds of guests sitting around the entrance, including the clinking of cutlery against plates and the clunking of glasses on the countertop. The band continues to play their free conspiratorial jazz in the back. The bartender works at a quicker pace and has to go into the back more often, hence changing much more frequently. One of the new guests wears a thick layering of all sorts of tattered, soiled rags of clothing, exaggerated to the point of being essentially mummified with them. The face is not very well visible behind it all, but a big scruffy beard emerges around the chin and neck. The legs are wrapped in a raggedy mess of plastic grocery bags. However, the figure wears a clean, crisp tando hat, royal blue felt with a long red father streaming out the back, drinking a frosty martini and doing a stylized mummy dance around the first group of customers. Every once in a while, it appears the attractive woman is trying to seduce him, although he gently rebuffs her advances. She says things like “nice moves,” “you smell good,” “cool guys like you don’t come around here that often,” “I’d love to get a peak underneath these royal robes,” and “that dance set my loins on fire.” Between rebuffs, she dances just a little bit away from him, trying subtly to harmonize their movements by doing a kind of crab dance, “walking like an Egyptian,” etc. At one point she tries to wrap herself up in a long loose scrap of the figure’s mummy clothing. A jet of steam pours out. She cups her mouth around the orifice to suck it in and then staggers back, intoxicated. Then she blows out the steam and starts dancing in an energetic but rather spastic, arrhythmic way.

When the scene opens, the DJ is slowly making his way from the back of the bar toward the entrance. A looped series of beeps, boops, and crackling continues, the other members of the band improvising along. The DJ walks in a kind of tensed, rigid, crouched dance that might be described in the following way: his legs are bent, feet pointed forward with one a half-step in front of the other; his back is hunched but with his shoulders up toward his ears, his upper arms hanging down from the raised shoulders with his forearms held forward and up (parallel to the ground), wrists limp and hands curling down like claws. He holds one forearm at a level slightly above the other and jerkily crosses it over twice in quick succession, keeping them more or less parallel, then alternates, the other arm now crossing over twice in quick succession. As he crosses one arm over the other, he rocks slightly up and down on his bent legs (as already mentioned, one foot half a step out in front of the other). Then, as he is alternating the arms, he takes a step which alternates the positions of the feet (and legs) as well, the foot that was behind now in front of the other. He now keeps his feet planted while crossing his arms and gently springing his knees again, etc. He does this rhythmically, although his form is generally cramped. He looks rather mischievous, with a vaguely sinister grin as well. He is still wearing his sunglasses; the collar on his beige trench coat is popped up.

Also from the opening of the scene, Cindy and Harry are about half way through their giant pile of chicken wings and their beers are empty. Harry gestures and yells to the waiter, who has just come out of the back after another went in. The bartender is already preparing to bring them another round, this time of pilsners.

Harry: Hey David . . . [the bartender signals that he is on his way]

Cindy: How did you know his name?

Harry: I don’t. I just guessed from his appearance. Remember that game we used to play . . .

Cindy: “Name and occupation.” Mmm . . . another round of pilsners. Crisp, clean. I never drink anything else.

Harry: Me neither . . . Except liquor and wine, of course [they laugh].

Cindy: [as the bartender approaches] Hey, is your name really David?

Bartender: Mhmm. Your friend probably read it off of my name tag here. We believe a little bit of extra familiarity goes a long way in this city.

Cindy: Very true, but . . .

Bartender: Don’t think twice about it. It’s the principle here.

Harry: These chicken wings are phenomenal. A little small, maybe, but—

Bartender: Actually, that’s squab.

Cindy: Squab wings?

Bartender: Right from the region.

Harry: Hmm. Never heard of squab wings before. Are they from upstate or something?

Bartender: Uptown, actually.

Cindy: Sounds like it should be expensive. Good thing we have a coupon.

Harry: Do you have some kind of vegetable plate to go along with them?

Bartender: Our chef insists against vegetable platters. But I can recommend the stinging nettle sausages, if it’s something fresh and healthy you’re looking for.

Harry: What the hell kind of a restaurant is this, anyway?

Bartender: Our chef came up with this concept of a philosophical kitchen. An amateur philosophical kitchen, actually. It’s her way of practicing two professions at once. Totally anti-establishment, of course. She says improvisation is the only way to make it in this economy while maintaining an ounce of integrity. She’d go out of her way for it, even if that means to the grave.

Cindy: That’s a bit severe for a chef, don’t you think? A bit severe for a philosopher, actually . . .

Bartender: Well, in the end she’s really neither a chef nor a philosopher. A committed anti-specialist.

Harry: Interesting! But how do you survive in this climate? I mean, New York City is a tough place for this kind of idea . . .

Bartender: People do say that, but once you get over a few humps, it’s not so hard. As long as you stick to the principles that drove you to it in the first place.

Cindy: How long have you been here?

Bartender: This summer it’ll have been three years.

Cindy: Well, what the hell—one order of stinging nettle sausages please.

Bartender: Do you want those in pork, fish, or onion casings? You can also add fish roe.

Harry: What the heck is a fish casing?

Bartender: It’s the roe sack, or sometimes the skin, depending on the availability of edible skins and roe sacks.

Harry: [to Cindy] Some of each?

Cindy: [nods and looks at the bartender] With fish roe.

Bartender: Okay, coming right up.

[The bartender goes into the back and another bartender comes out immediately, this time a woman, with a bucket containing live sea urchins. The waiter stops at the taps to pour two more drinks, this time a couple bloody marys with sprigs of some kind of leafy green. Meanwhile, the step dancing DJ is just passing behind them.]

Harry: What is this song?

Cindy: You don’t know this one? It’s, haha, “Non-manual stimulation of the clitoris,” by Birdie McMahon. [The DJ pauses behind them, rubbing his hands together and snickering.] I thought you were something of a connoisseur of this kind of thing . . .

Harry: No, no. An admirer, or an enthusiast at best. Or, what am I saying—do I need to justify myself for knowing only what I know? I loathe the dictatorial and the proprietary impulses of cultural consumption equally!

Cindy: Wow! Take it easy you hipster spaz.

Harry: I mean, you can’t blame the French for their Frenchness, or the German for their Germanness, so what sense or interest is there in judging the mere enthusiast or—apropos—the amateur, for their limitations?

Cindy: This is a conversation, not a trial, Harry. Besides, it’s in the nature of the game, whose ways and means may be artificially constructed, but just because of that don’t need to be taken so seriously, at least not like some sort of death match.

Harry: Well . . . there are many gaps in existence, and in knowledge, too. In fact, I’m more concerned about what happens when the compulsion to patch over the gaps in knowledge takes over.

Cindy: It’s called “progress” or perhaps “learning.” Anyway, this one you should obviously know. At least you seem to have rightly sensed that. [The DJ has step danced past and now turns to walk back in the opposite direction. The new bartender figure approaches with the drinks and food.]

Harry: I can’t drink any more bloody marys after this one. Three is already too much.

Bartender: Here are your drinks and your fresh sea urchins.

Cindy: Thanks Frieda. Hey, I saw you shelling some oysters back there—

Bartender: Shucking.

Cindy: Right. How much? Money’s a bit tight right now.

Bartender: A dollar a piece.

Cindy: Okay. In that case, we’ll take a dozen.

Bartender: I could tell you’d need an aphrodisiac after gorging yourself on all those fried wings this early in the day! [She goes down the bar and through the back. Another bartender comes out again after a short interval.]

Harry: Nice lady. Hey, what’d you say that song was called again?

Cindy: [taking a sip of here drink] Tastes a bit like the river. “Non-manual stimulation of the clitoris.” You get it?

Harry: [trying his drink] Or maybe piss? No. Why wouldn’t you just say “digital”?

Cindy: [cutting open a sea urchin with a paring knife] Haha, well, that could be the fingers, too. But, actually, it’s a bad play on Kant’s name. “Immanuel Kant,” you get it now? Birdie was interested philosophy, in a musical sense, you know. Fuck! I just got pricked [She washes the guts out in the bucket of water.]

Harry: [taking his turn with the sea urchins as Cindy slurps hers down] I think it’s starting to come back to me now . . . actually, no—what the hell is the musical sense of philosophy? Doesn’t everything just have its own sense?

Cindy: That’s a limited view. Can’t things be transmitted, repeated, or influenced by other platforms, other media?

Harry: Tempting suggestions. Haha, no pricks here [slurps the urchin right out of its shell].

Cindy: It’s a pretty surprising cover. They’ve got such a weird set-up going here. What should we order next?

Harry: Maybe some nettle salad and . . . a couple whiskeys.

Cindy: I’ll take mine on the rocks. [The new bartender is just approaching now—he perhaps has some sort of pronounced physical or mental disablement.]

Harry: Finally, our nettle sausages are coming. It’s really slow today with this new bartender. I hope Frieda gets out of the hospital soon.

Bartender: Here are your Rocky Mountain oysters. More drinks?

Cindy: [suddenly becoming rather severe with him] Hey! These drinks taste kind of like piss and our faces are beginning to swell up. [One sees that their faces have indeed become red and puffy]

Bartender: Hmm. Must be something with the nettle sprigs in your marys. We just got them today, straight out of the park. You’re the first to try them. You must have heard that we’re an amateur philosophical kitchen. Things don’t always go in predictable directions. That’s the cost of the kind of . . . liberation that our chef espouses. Certain hazards are unavoidable. More drinks?

Cindy: Yeah, these are done. We already ordered a couple scotch and sodas, remember, and an order of shrimp balls, too.

Bartender: I’ll be right back with the oysters. Did you enjoy your scotch and sodas?

Harry: As always, top notch. What do you think, Cindy, a couple more?

Cindy: Yes, please! And maybe some of those fried chicken balls with red sauce on special.

Harry: Thanks, Carl.

Bartender: Good to see you two back after so long. [He goes to the back.]

Cindy: Ich muss pinkeln.

Harry: Our clocks must be synced together. Me too!

They go to the bathrooms in the back. Meanwhile, the DJ step dances over again, sits down, and quickly eats a pigeon wing, then gets up again and goes to the back. At the same time, a choppy, grating techno remix composed largely from the sounds produced in the scene thus far—especially from bits of the conversation between Cindy and Harry—is played over the speakers.

Cindy and Harry return to their seats. A new bartender returns at the same time and starts clearing away all the dishes.

Harry: [to the bartender] Hey George, is it okay if we sit here?

Bartender: No problem, I’m just clearing these things away. [Gesturing to the leftovers] Some wings?

Harry: Chicken?

Bartender: Squab.

Cindy: They don’t call me Mülleimer for nothing.

Bartender: And to drink?

Harry: Whatever bilge water you’ve got swilling around back there.

Bartender: A couple malt liquors coming up. [He goes back]

Harry: Ich muss aufs Klo.

Cindy: Our clocks must be synced. [She winks and pats his shoulder flirtatiously. They go to the back together.]

Meanwhile, the DJ returns to their seats, sits down and starts eating chicken wings. At the same time, the chef—a very tall and beautiful woman dressed in a standard chef’s outfit—looks out of the kitchen, seems to spot somebody she knows at the front of the bar, and begins making her way there. When she walks by the old man seated sipping cranberry juice since the beginning of the act, he turns to her and speaks.

Old man: Don’t you just love this infinity effect of parallel mirrors? [We thereby come to realize what has been captivating his attention the whole time.]

Chef: [looking, but without stopping to chat] Specious infinity. [The old man continues to look, but in a more skeptical, “circumspect” manner]

The chef continues making her way to the front of the bar, i.e. of stage. Once she has crept off into the wings or whatever suitable place, the following segments play through speakers placed behind the audience. The first takes place between the chef and her parents and wavers between the endearing and the aggressive. The second is more ironic in tone. The whole thing takes roughly the same amount of time as it does for the DJ to finish off the chicken wings.

Woman’s voice: How’s our favourite little amateur?

Chef: Mom, Dad. Welcome. May all your income be disposable.

Man’s voice: We were just out for a train ride and thought we’d stop by to feast a bit on your amateurism.

Woman’s voice: What are you serving today? A little bit of irresponsibility? Perhaps some indifference?

Chef: Just some hypocrisy with a little bit of generational stupidity and cultural ineffectuality . . .

All three: Hahahahahaha . . . we’ll never change.

Man’s voice: Accretions and enormities all around.

Chef: Change? Never change. Lots of the time people apparently want you to change but also won’t let you. Fuck them. Become more of the same better. Never change. All change into the same. According to Zeno’s paradox everything is always already in motion. Before you were born you were in motion. And before you were conceived. Before you are dead you will be in motion and for a while after.

All three: [the same tempo but different melodies—including that of The Lady of the Night’s aria?] Never change never change never change change change change change change change change change change change change change change change change change change change change change change change [the woman quickly slips in “sleep” without altering the tempo] change change [the man quickly slips in “sleeping” without altering the tempo] change.

Chef: [continuing the same tempo] Never would you like something to eat?

Woman’s voice: No, thank you. We prefer any old trash to your luxurious amateurism.

Man’s voice: Well, so long.

Woman’s voice: Between you and the sun, a specious infinity has already intervened to spoil the broth.

Man’s voice: But don’t be afraid! Fear is a kind of limit provoking nothing. The kind of nothing from which nothing comes.

Woman’s voice: Remain stoic and wild at the same time. Everybody can at least respect that kind of example.

Chef: Mom, dad—may all your income be disposable. So long! [Barely pausing] Oh, hey John! Did you come to fill the hole in your head with some of mine?

Another man’s voice: Rather empty the overfull hole in my head into the overempty hole in your—

Chef: Holy shit! That gives me one hell of an amateurishly philosophical culinary idea.

The chef rushes back to the kitchen and the next segment begins, delivered by a man in what one imagines to be an old-fashioned, theatrical style, but—as is suggested by the uneven pace—spoken at the same time that the words are being written:

Man’s voice: To whom it may concern:

I am restless content! I must confess to sniping the dj. I would have confessed earlier if the last 4 days were not to me less good than 4 seconds.  Sniping the dj is the last thing I remember before blacking out, and the only thing I remember after gulping down the noxious elixir attained by filtering a melted-down vinyl record—it was Luke Slater’s 4 cornered room, I believe, but perhaps it was Duke Ellington, or a mixture of the two—through a cottage-cheese maker’s cloth. Presently, from one second to the next, I might suddenly with deep regret remember the loss of the record until time proposes its own muzzy alteration to my forward-looking senses. As for the seconds lost to me in the clock’s actual ticking, it was expendable and still might return a profit to the hole in my head, and despite it. The dj I cannot ultimately regret having sniped. But certainly I must admit publicly to the incident. I had just returned home drunk, learning of the contest well over an hour after it’d begun. Small chance, I thought, typing in the seed phrase. Sent from many different addresses, a modest but momentarily inadequate sum of ether had accumulated in the wallet holding it at once captive and exposed to the human extraction game. Still, the fees then required to extract it from the wallet remained too high. I had not personally contributed any gas to the tank. But suddenly the fees began to drop before my eyes. I saw my chance. I was already properly crapulent. The dj remained in the crosshairs despite well over an hour of many failed transactions. I didn’t feel any particular pangs of conscience, because an apparent (but, of course, maybe specious) multitude had tried and failed already, in an anonymized game to whose debit or credit, who knows. Only a god or a perhaps a devil of a machine could finally account for it all. Meanwhile, we can each of us do our best to account for ourselves. I was then very late to the contest and I was drunk and under a pall of desperation, having been late to the liquor store as well, but then the dj suddenly came available and so I was now into some rare luck. Downward the fees spiked in an instant. I sniped. I thank you ever-anonymous ones in good sport and sympathize with the feelings of ill potentially lodged in anyone’s skin or spilled in sudden exasperated aspersion onto their blindly present-absent fellows. I will continue to play any game arising more or less conveniently to me in the future even if the recent spike to my luck may be as suddenly somewhat evened out by it. The game is not zero sum. I am on a plane now, having come to here. I don’t even know where it is taking me over this hazy blue expanse. But the plane does have free wifi, for once, to appease the many seeping wounds circling my body like a string of tired lights. How still the clouds are up here, even their detached wisps posed and petrified like statues! Apropos—before I lay back to rest, let me just articulate a parting wish, that all your spikes—upwards or downwards, for I swear by the ongoing motion, or pregnancy thereto, and not the tardy impress of form—may be spurs pricking you on to new adventures.

[At the end of this segment, as the DJ wipes his face and hands off with a couple wet naps after having finished the wings and the conversation played behind the audience comes to an end, Cindy and Harry walk out the doors of their respective bathrooms. Harry gestures comically at his wristwatch as they walk back to their seats together. Upon returning to discover their squab wings have been eaten, Cindy becomes very angry in a comically exaggerated way.]

Cindy: [to Harry] Who, the fuck, has eaten, our, pigeon wings!! [To the bartender, who has changed perhaps two or three times in their absence] Barkeep! [The bartender approaches. Harry maintains the same tone of comically exaggerated anger despite his intention obviously having changed] Another, round, of pigeon, wings, please! My man here, he isn’t, satisfied, yet!! [Still in the same tone, loudly projecting] Say there, honey, how about we, to the back, a little [she winks in a fittingly exaggerated way, yelling in the same tone which has by now been wholly emptied of its original intention to anger] suckyfucky!! [He nods his approval and they go together through the same door in the back. They immediately come back out through different doors. Cindy puts her arm in the crook of Harry’s arm as the stride with elegant buoyancy back to their seats, with the pleasant smiles of sated lovers. Once back at their seats, in a tone of cute, dignified happiness:]

Cindy: Oh, Harry! I feel like I’ve just walked straight through a wall.

Harry: And I’m walking on water!

Cindy: Or through the air!

Harry: See! It’s like I said, you always end up loving suicide.

Cindy: (suddenly with sitcom-type irony) Ha-rry, that’s not what I mean!

Harry: But all the empirical evidence I’ve seen leads me to conclude it’s a top-notch aphrodisiac.

Cindy: Ohh, hmhm, maybe you’re on to something there.

Sudden brief blackout

​

​