In addition to working full-time without sleep, I'm currently at work on two projects: a prequel to Here Come the Alligators entitled A Tantrum of Clowns and Upside Down Moon or Bali Shag Night, a one act full length that takes place during the sexual revolution.
Moments after shooting his son in the foyer with a pistol.
QUINN I’m sorry, Benjamin, I thought you were your Mother.
MORGAN I hope you don’t mind, Pabbo, but I discussed it with Janet’s father, the symphony conductor. He wants to adapt your castration tale into a Three-Act-Opera with singing genitals that die at the guillotine.
QUINN Hey kids...
MORGAN “The grisliest finale since Don Giovanni!” is what he said.
QUINN All right! We're done talking about Daddy’s penis!
DOROTHY When I look at your father, all I see are the things I haven’t done, all the things too late to do. And when he looks at me, I search into his eyes and see an iceberg, shifting out, sinking down... and my fault that he’s sinking. All my fault.
MORGAN Do you know how hard it is for me to stand here and say something like “alcoholism is a legitimate biological condition”? All I can think of are those memories of Mammo staggering through my room past midnight, gnawing up her skirt, limbs pounding to Joe Cocker, knocking me out of my crib...
BEN She knocked you out of your crib because you were four years old. It was time to get out of the crib.
MORGAN Up yours.
BEN And back again.
BEN I’m only twenty-three. I still haven’t, I don’t know... climbed Everest.
QUINN You want to be one of those people that climbed Everest so they could brag about the time that they climbed Everest?
BEN I’ve never been arrested for streaking.
QUINN Better not to call attention to what God didn’t give you.
BEN Or listened to Pink Floyd synchronized to The Wizard of Oz.
QUINN We’ll do that when we get home.
QUINN I'd let Bill Clinton fuck me.
DOROTHY Pass the crepes.
QUINN Bill, but not Hilary. Am I the only one? Let's have a show of hands. No one? Great. So then what does that make me?
MORGAN Uncharitable. Poor, poor Hilary. Look at the woman face. She’s more frigid than Aunt Magda.
DOROTHY Well after all, a woman doesn’t always marry into what she likes.
QUINN That’s right kids. Take note of this: the sex only improves with someone you’re driven to kill. Listen for us around, oh, a quarter till midnight? That’s me molesting your mother in her sleep.
DOROTHY With your girth, honey, I’m likely to sleep all the way through it.
DOROTHY Your problem, Quinn, is that you’re unwilling to submit to change. These are the facts: your children have left. I’ve had a post-menopausal breakdown and do not know who I am anymore. Our canary is died last week. Our croquet mallets have been stolen and every day, a two-year old boy with downs syndrome sneaks through our backyard and lights things on fire. The way I see it, you and that pyromaniac kid have a lot in common, Quinn. Everyone except for you seems to be in the process of... I can't think of any way other way of putting it... of finding themselves... and you’re set on punishing us for it! Well, I think that’s silly and I’m not going to let you do that. You want to shoot me, fine. But as long as I’m alive, I will do what I want. Because if I’m to survive this marriage it's imperative that I learn how to keep you from crushing my soul.
QUINN You haven’t got a soul. No, I take that back. You did and you aborted it. Don’t you see, there’s no use trying to find yourself anymore, Dorothy?! You’re too old for that! We’re both too old for that. Now is the time for us to rest, to watch things grow...
DOROTHY I disagree.
QUINN Well then Cheers! To our children! Finding themselves. They’re in for a lot of pain.
ABE How do you take a slogan like “Make Love, Not War” and apply it to trying to change the most violent civilization to come out of human history? Any asshole can say they’re fed up with coercion and control nowadays, that they want to change the entire nature of the institution. But look around, baby: It’s 1973. The war isn’t over. What does that mean? What do all these fat baldies mean when they call us a bunch of “horned-up, cakewalking vigilantes”? Have they got a point? Are we just reinforcing the stupidity and motivational bankruptcy of every youth-upheaval that’s taken place in this country in the last five, six years? Or are we standing for something real, something true? Something more specific than a mass-movement, something more practical than the sharing, shifting and reshaping of an entire establishment...
RALPH Are you a real woman?
MIKAELA (Hooking the heel of her stiletto to her shoulder strap.)
Peel me away and see for yourself.
CYBELE Descartes had a name for this. “Le Petit Mort”, he called it. “A Little Death”. Maybe I’m confusing my cross-references again. I can't remember, was he a mathematician? Doesn’t matter. “Le Petit Mort”. The part after the lovemaking where two souls part ways and hold each other through the afterlife. They lie together, naked, in opulent anguish... sharing secrets, anticipations, uncertainties... what are you uncertain about, Abe?
MIKAELA It’s a shame how mortified we are of our own bodies. We’re instructed to loathe them, desert them and only give in until they’re on the brink of emergency… to use our skin as an asylum for our secrets, nightmares, our dangerous recollections… there’s nothing at stake tonight, no reason to be nervous, you see. I can tell you’re a sensitive person. You should never be ashamed of that.
CYBELE How would it make you feel? Someone else. Touching me.
ABE What do you want me to say?
CYBELE I want you to say that you’ll fight to keep me, Abe...
ABE You’re better off putting all these thoughts in a journal.
CYBELE … that the thought of me with someone else would make you homicidal! I am tired of playing Tinkerbell to a bunch of half-baked revolutionaries! Tired of this goddamn children’s crusade! Tired of all of it, Abe! When we met, all this banging around wooden spoons, Bonnie and Clyde stuff sort of made me hot. But look at us, just look at us now! What are we still doing in the middle of it? I don’t think any of us ever expected we’d be at this for another hundred years, ending up in jail and ruining our lives! And what I'd like to know, what I'd really like to know, Abe, is why the man I’m having a child with is off fucking strangers on rooftops instead of me? Tell me what establishment is being tested here?
(Pause. This is difficult.)
Or am I the establishment. Are you testing me.
ABE I’m going home.
CYBELE You’re a bastard! You walk away from me and I’ll wring your neck right now, I will! TELL ME WHAT I’VE DONE NOW! TELL ME!
ABE You’ve made growing up look like something I never want to do.
ABE So back to this question of changing the nature of institution, what that means or rather, can we do it? Or will we be chasing one gun-and-butter war after another, because we let it happen. Will our children and their children will live indoctrinated by the powers that be because we let it happen. Or will life in this country will be unlivable, because we let it happen. Our time is now, Bali Shags. No more upheavals. Personal freedom is our permanent revolution. Armor away...
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