ON THE ROOFTOP OF THE SUN STREET, TWO PEOPLE ARE SITTING AROUND SEPARATELY BUT TOGETHER, NEAR EVIDENCE OF UNCOMPLETED ACTIONS: UNUSED BUT UNFURLED CONDOMS A STREWN AROUND HALF-SMOKED AND BURNING CIGARETTES.
A - if only I’d done it.
B - “if only I did it’ corrects one, without looking.
A - if only I’d done it, then I wouldn’t be here now, being corrected by a fucking pedantic cretin.
B - that’s better. can you pass me a cigarette?
PAUSE
B - it’s not like you’re smoking any of them.
SHORTER PAUSE
A - they’re keeping me warm
B - don’t be an arse.
THROWS CIGARETTE IN GENERAL DIRECTION OF OTHER PERSON
LEANS FORWARD TO PICK UP THE CIGARETTE AND SMOKES IT DELICIOUSLY
A - you’re always nicking my fags.
B - you only light them to watch them burn, it’s a waste.
A - that’s not strictly true, sometimes I throw them down at the road in the vain hope of setting an ascot lady’s hat alight. anyway, they’re bad for your health. if I’m going to die, I’m going to go my way. none of that cancer for me. a hot bullet to the forehead to stop me thinking, or I might do an elliot smith and stab myself twice in the chest, once in the heart, to stop me hurting.
B, ON REFLECTION, - you don’t have the balls.
A - no, I don’t have the inclination, it’s different.
B - whatever, I want to die in hospital, I love them, I’ve met the nicest people in hospital, they were nothing like you. they smoked because they liked smoking, the taste, the swirls of smoke, and the irony of long periods of convalescence after bouts of treatments that make you worse, not better.
A - people go there to die.
B - sometimes I visit them, pretending a friend is hurt. I sneak in to watch the sick and dying and recovering. it makes me feel happier to be alive. it makes me feel human. not like the fetid sack of meat huffing away at a cigarette that I am now. there is none of the normal there, most are sick and needy, or dying, some others pretend to care. they fix them up physiologically and dump them on the street. PAUSE Or don’t fix them up and dump their bodies on their friends.
A - stop being so autobiographical. I’ve heard enough about your love life.
B - I’m sorry. I can’t help reducing everything to symbols, to reduce and to link. to change my mind, to change your mind.
A - hospitals are still disgusting. you’ve done nothing but prove your humanity, but prove your hatred of everything else.
B - I was suggesting my awe of everything else, I mean look around us now what do you see but the sublime and ineffable beauty of everything.
A - I see a cold wind, people stealing from others, clouds coming towards us, and a potential for the perfect act.
B - shit, are we just repeating one of Cave’s songs?
A -
"When will you ever learn
That what happens there beyond the glass
Is simply none of your concern?
God has given you but one heart
You are not a home for the hearts of your brothers
And God does not care for your benevolence
Anymore than he cares for the lack of it in others
Nor does he care for you to sit
At windows in judgement of the world He created
While sorrows pile up around you
Ugly, useless and over-inflated"
A, SNEERING, - I thought you knew. I thought that was the game we were playing.
sitter’s dinge