"Take" - a dialogue by Douglas Ohmans 1972 CHARACTERS: Lee Ness Lee, a well-dressed hippie, is walking along a treadmill, talking in his thoughts to Ness, and hearing her answer. Lee - Happi-ness, this afternoon sidewalk is like a corridor. Ness - Quiet, Lee, to avoid fat people. Lee - Fatness, "catness!" I don't avoid anyone, sweet and sour baby. Ness - Lee, I can't live without you. Lee - Ness, you are with me now. How? Ness - Last night our border was plasticine. You're still there. Lee - I wish I were. This milieu is falling apart. Ness - Stay awhile, Lee. San Francisco isn't so bad. Lee - Here comes a Wily now, Ness. Ness - Relax, masterly hippie, the bricks haven't started flying yet and I need your love so bad, just like a dog that's going mad. Lee - Never Ness, did I feel so good about you. Your hair hung in tresses. I blessed your dress for being off you. Ness - It was over there, crumpled in a heap. And now you're wearing your shiny shoes. Lee - Will shiny shoes, good Ness, deter the aggressor? Ness - You know I don't know what is planned for you. Lee - Dearness, beneath this blue sky and yellow sun, amongst these uniformed technicians, I could use your touch. Ness - We're beyond that today, little one. Would you prefer to leave? Lee - Don't tremble, friend. Ness - And you? How far can you stride in your shirt collar? Lee - There are others to neutralize my progress, Ness. Ness - Take. Lee - We're bunching up, so it seems. Ness - Do you like thin denim, Lee? Do you believe in worn cotton? Lee - My shiny left shoe just trod on broken glass. Someone threw a coke bottle. Ness - Gently the fellow trampled a pebble underfoot. Lee - When you said that, baby, I thought of a flag. Ness - Lee, when you return will you measure my back? Lee - Within the defended city a wall caved in. Hunks of mortar still dried and hardened. Ness - Walk and try to dream, my hippie. The crack of the thunder is so wet. ============================================================================= "Dionysus Crucified" 1969 (c) J. Doug Ohmans Scene One: a mime Throughout the scene, there is the sound of a sleeping man's deep breathing. The set consists of two vertical pipes, about eight feet tall and a foot apart, joined at top and bottom. Irwin and Amanda walk heavily onstage, holding hands but not speaking to one another. They trudge back and forth stage front, turning away from each other when they reverse direction. Dion appears, and explores the dimensions of the stage, but he is ignorant of Irwin and Amanda. Dion discovers the pipes: he grasps one in each hand and bends them apart. He climbs through the opening thus created, and sees Amanda. He goes toward her but she turns to Irwin. Amanda points at Dion, who is now on the other side of the prop. Irwin sees the bent pipes, not Dion, and cautiously approaches them. Amanda motions to him to climb through the opening, but he is not willing to. Instead, Irwin and Amanda hoist the prop onto their shoulders, and stagger under the burden of the yoke. Irwin and Amanda leave the stage, followed by Dion. Scene Two Dion is seated at a telephone. He dials a number: Dion - Irwin! Dion. Yes, fine. How are you? How is Amanda? Well, tell her I miss you both. I even dreamed of you last night. Yes. All three of us were camping on a desert. It was night-time and extremely cold, so I had gone to bring some wood. In the darkness I lost my way, and when I called I couldn't hear you answer. Then I saw our campfire far away. I walked toward it but it grew no larger. I panicked finally and began to run and was running still when I tripped on your abandoned gear. The fire was nearly out, and you and Amanda were gone. I climbed into my bedroll and slept with my lips in the sand. No. Neither do I. When I awoke this morning, though, I half expected to see desert out the window. Irwin, there's the doorbell. Have a safe journey, and hurry home. Good-bye. The Agent enters, with drawn revolver. Agent - Hello Dion, would you come along with me, please? Dion - What? Who are you? Agent - Never mind "who are you". Come along. Dion - No sir, I refuse. Agent - "No sir, I refuse"! Listen, lad, my patience may run out. Dion - Fuck your patience! Get out of here. Agent - Did you say "Fuck your patience. Get out of here"? Dion - Yes, now get out. Agent - I'll leave when I'm finished. However, you are making it difficult for me, or, rather, for yourself. Dion - Who are you? What do you want? Agent - I want to arrest you. Dion - For what crime, damn it. Agent - DON'T PLAY EGO-GAMES WITH ME, YOUNG FELLOW! Now, did you or did you not say I should fuck my patience? Dion - No. Anyway, that was *after* you broke in here with your silly gun. Agent - Up against the wall, Dion. (He executes Dion, and drags off the body) Irwin and Amanda enter Irwin - I told you he called long distance yesterday. I didn't tell you about his dream, because I thought you'd worry. Amanda - What was it? Irwin - He said he dreamed we were out camping, and we abandoned him to die on the desert. Amanda - Why was he walking on the tracks? Irwin - I don't know. Maybe he lost his way. Amanda - But he should have heard our train from a distance. He should have stepped off the tracks. Irwin and Amanda exit. ============================================================================= VISITING DAVID 1970 (c) J. Doug Ohmans SET - The set is a prison cell-block. Seven barred cell doors slide on a lower and upper rail which is eight door widths long, the eighth opening being a corridor around to the audience. A long common room with tables, benches and a shower stall separates the audience from the prisoners, who are in their cells as the play opens. CHARACTERS - Prisoners: DION ILLNITCH, 19, in black pajamas. RICHARD DOPE, 29. JERRY PEWTER, 26, red hair. RING GARDNER, 31, saint with ringworm. JESSE OWENDS, 31, Black. JOYCE BLACK, 26. JOHN HAMMER, 24. Captors: LESTER RILES, 19, with a tattoo. THE SHERIFF, 45, Lester's father. STATE TROOPER, 22, with Mace. LESTER: (slides open the door from the eighth opening and thereby shuts Dion's cell) Watch out, boy, I know Judo! DION: Eat it, Lester! JOHN: (by the shower stall at the other end of the common room) We are not prisoners, my love, but captives of our imprisoners. JERRY: Hey Hammer, say a few words for our audience! (John slams the side wall of his cell with both hands.) STATE TROOPER: (rushes forward from the audience and sprays Mace into the shower stall) You fuckers think your pretty fucking funny fucker! RING: Ah, he burned my hand! SHERIFF: (walks angrily into the common room) What's that you said, Gardner? RICHARD: (sings) "I just want to get it together, Forever and ever and ever." JESSE: He didn't say nothing, Officer. SHERIFF: That's better, men. JOYCE: Hey Sheriff, bring us some cards. (The Sheriff lets Jesse, Ring, Jerry and Joyce into the common room to play cards.) JESSE: (tentatively) Eight.... Ouch! Burned again, shit. JERRY: Everyone eat it. Five! JOYCE: You asked for it. Six! DION: Hey Lester! Where are you! What did you dumb fascists do with last night's storyteller? RING: I'm sorry, Jesse; seven. LESTER: (appearing near the audience) Hello prisoners. He says to clean out your cells one hundred percent. SHERIFF: That's right. I want you to scrub the ceilings, dust under the bars, and keep your fucking soap out of the cans. (He exits.) JERRY: (to the audience) You see, one of the prisoners had reported that he felt he was being screwed because of all the insects and the filth. So my solution is to hand a can of perfume to Joyce, who rushes into his cell and sprays John through one of the holes in the wall. JOHN: You crazy fucker! Agh, at least it's not Mace. Auch, a "tattoo", Ouch! Cut it God damn out, you freak. RING: (washing his hands in the shower stall with burning water) Who has the soap? DION: Plug up the holes with soap and hair! Hey sheriff, I don't feel like working today. JOYCE: The funny thing I can't understand is how they expect us to dispose of this shitty dust. JOHN: This is a terrible place and I want out now. From here, through the window, you are a patch of grass, a tree, and an occasional car passing by. So I stare for hours instead at the wall of glass bricks, through which the still sun casts the most fascinating stacks of images, like columns of color TV sets. One refraction appears as photographs of faces kissing, another as police and hippie scenes, a third as my father on his golf course. Through other translucent bricks I can watch the pathetic Wanderer and his Shadow, or see the Fucker split pain in two. Come in, I'd like to share it with you. My crime was called "loitering", and possession of a deadly weapon, a hammer. My defense: that a hammer is just...a tool, that a weapon inflicts physical mutilation while a tool cements social solidarity. Speak, Hammer! STATE TROOPER: (as if struck by a hammer) "Yeeaugh, what was that flying son of a bitch?" (His voice recedes into the distance.) RICHARD: O.K., prisoners can leave, but don't open your cell doors more than 10.2857 inches at a time. DION: (gleefully) Did you hear him howl? Did you hear him howl? JESSE: Let's get out of here before he does. (All the prisoners leave the cell-block, but find approach-avoidance equilibrium in the corridor to the audience, where they stay until the audience leaves.)