A million little (unfinished) pieces.

I’ve had this unique hobby for quite some time now. I write the first two pages of a play, click save, and never look at it ever again. I had quite the collection on my last laptop until it was stolen at the beginning of my senior year. Tragically, I can’t remember what 90% of those plays were (going to be) about, and I will never have the opportunity to reflect fondly upon them—as little electronic, time capsules containing traces of whichever personal crises I happened to be experiencing at the time. I’m not sure if there it or ever will be a market for plays that document the mild challenges and extreme angst of an upper-middle class, male, university student. But if there is, whoever stole my computer is sitting on a gold mine.
As I was saving one of the stories that (I hope) will eventually be on this blog, I actually found one of the plays that I saved on this computer. I read it and—true to the above disclaimer—it was about some college dude who sat in his apartment and bitched to himself and his imaginary friend about how lonely and neurotic he was. Nonetheless, I found myself feeling slightly proud of it. So here’s the beginning of one of my plays that will never be finished. It’s to add a little something to my page until I actually get stories up.
A little background: the main character has developed a peculiar habit of working out his problems by holding imaginary conversations with various characters. The main character that he talks to is a mental representation of a girl that he liked in high school. That’s who he’s interacting with in this scene…and, for the record, I had written this way before I had watched any battlestar.

DAMIEN is sitting on a lazyboy in the center of the stage. Next to him is a small table with an ashtray and a lamp. The previous day, his friends threw him a surprise party, and now there are half inflated, red balloons scattered around his apartment. He lights a cigarette while fixating on the balloons.

DAMIEN
Daydreams are “what ifs…”; “what ifs…” are the helium to your balloonical noggin, and the level of your floating is a function of your helium production—how many “what ifs” you have and what not. Refuse to accept helium and experience an unfulfilling low altitude—the altitude at which little kids swat the crap out of you. Or worse yet, have so little “what if” in your sagging, graspable rubber skin that you become land-bound and without any kind of static charge…unless your rubber happens to still be stretched enough to hold a charge, in which case, you become a magnet for dirt and leaves and dead moths and other such magical treasures. The alternative, of course, is that you suck in a bit too much helium and become a complete airhead. And I say that with the utmost respect because my definition of airhead doesn’t necessitate idiocy—no, no mine is—in the name of not straying from a proposed metaphor—a person who is so inflated with possibilities and ideas that they soar right past the more level headed balloons into the oblivion. To the well-regulated balloons that float at a safe height above land, this seems very romantic and lofty—pun intended—but what they fail to realize is that there comes a certain height at which the pressure of all that helium exceeds atmospheric pressure. I’m not quite sure what happens at that point. I’ve heard that, once you’ve reached this light-headed height, one of two things might happen. Either some esoteric physical, chemical, cranial process of diffusion takes place that allows the balloon to reach an equilibrium and sail at the highest of altitudes until it starts to lose helium, or the pressure discrepancy causes it to pop—without glory and inaudibly.

KAITLYN enters.

KAITLYN
Maybe this is what’s causing your hair to fall out.

DAMIEN
What smoking? Balloons?

KAITLYN
No. This.

DAMIEN
You? How ironic. The problem is trying to solve itself.

KAITLYN
Maybe you’re trying to solve it in the only way you know how. Maybe you need to take a lesson from your own crackpot philosophizing and release a little helium.

DAMIEN
Please. You know just as well as I do that that metaphor is so flawed and hole ridden—

KAITLYN
Then why did you take the time to create it—

DAMIEN
First of all, balloons have no say in the amount of helium they’re given, and most balloons that are being filled with helium are filled up to a point where they potentially could reach that critical altitude. What really keeps them grounded is a length of ribbon. I don’t think that there’s such a thing as a balloon filled with such a perfect amount that it floats at a comfortable safe levels. There are also a lot of problems with the situational comparison as well.

KAITLYN
Then why did you create it?

DAMIEN
[pause]I don’t fucking know…to keep my writing skills sharp.

KAITLYN
For what? For that moment in the future when you finally decide to buckle-down and write something? Is that the reason for your “flawed” imaginings?

DAMIEN
Yes. Yes, that’s exactly it.

KAITLYN
Ok. How are you going to be able to use metaphors?

DAMIEN
What do you mean?

KAITLYN
How are you going to employ a device that is inherently imperfect?

DAMIEN
I’ll do it, I will—I employed your mom last night.

[Pause]

KAITLYN
Call your friends.

DAMIEN
No.

KAITLYN
Connect.

DAMIEN
No. I can’t.

KAITLYN
Why not? Isn’t that the first step?

DAMIEN
No, the first step is getting my mind right. I need to release the excessive thinking. I need to pull myself out of my daydreaming. With a clear head I should—I will be able to engage the world with ease.

KAITLYN
So, why haven’t you done it yet?

DAMIEN
It takes time. It requires figuring. You know, some people just had the genetics and upbringing that allowed them to be in a nice lucid state. I on the other hand—I have untangling to do, and it gets less easy each step that I take into adulthood.

KAITLYN
I think I understand. Bad balloon metaphors alone are going to save you from your ways.

DAMIEN
No, that’s not what I’m say—

KAITLYN
Creating metaphors that place you as a victim of your own higher thinking is going to motivate you to change your life—

DAMIEN
Bullshit. That’s not what I said—

KAITLYN
Yes. Yes it is. Helium is creativity and you have so damn much of it that you tragically find yourself floating way beyond the average balloon. That way it’s easier to justify your loneliness. You know it’s true, because it’s coming out of my mouth.

DAMIEN
…You’re right. And that’s why I’m going to have to do this: Avada Cadavra!

KAITLYN exits. DAMIEN sits alone gumpily.

DAMIEN
As if still speaking to KAITLYN.
What about you? Assuming you and the balloon came from the same daydreaming system…isn’t it fair to say that these—that daydreaming, that introspection is doing me some good. Aren’t you evidence enough that something is being untangled. Wiring perhaps? Up there.

Silence. DAMIEN lights another cigarette and begins dramatically acting out one of his daydreams. Throughout the narration bears and robots enter the stage and accompany DAMIEN in the telling of the story.

DAMIEN
And now, a dramatic retelling of the great Robo-Feely Bear War as sponsored by the Church of Scientology, Popular Electronics Magazine, and the Carl Rogers Humanism Foundation of Minnesota. The years preceding the Ambivalent Era were the years of the feely bears. Great, towering land mammals of ambiguous intelligence but firm moral grounding. Twas not a morality rooted in fear, but a morality—of love, culture, art, spirituality, and individuality (yet simultaneously togetherness)—that was biologically secure. That’s to say, the majestic Feely Bears had evolved in such a way that this was their inherent, incorruptible nature. But, alas, these warm fuzzies would soon be forced to defy their evolved disposition—enter the robots! The robots were cold, logical. They saw the externality of the world and nothing more. They were incapable of superimposing any sense of culture or spirituality as the Feely Bears were so adept at doing. To them love and morality were a hallucination of the most impractical kind. Capitalizing on the Bears’ good nature, the robots simply walked right into the heart of Feely Bear civilization…and observed. They sat and observed for years and years. The bears had no understanding—no concept of cold calculations, of sizing up for the sake of conquering…to them the robots were another one of the world’s delightful mysteries. New curious objects in which to assign meaning. The robots, on the other hand, had even less understanding of what was being done to them—of the love and meaning that they were being given…This is the tragedy. Not the war that would come, but these years before the war—

JAMIE enters DAMIEN’S apartment. Bears and robots exit.

JAMIE
Laughing. Damien. Who the hell are you talking to and what in God’s name are you tripping on right now?!



And that’s that. It was going somewhere, I swear.