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Authors: Heather McGowan
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other hand I could leave it for you to learn I could let you actually have a thought on your own which would be novel enough and not unnoble of me. Yes, an escapist play if by escapist we mean the futile attempt by men to escape the anguish of existence. O suffering mankind your lives of twilight, pale generations, you wingless! The fading! Unhappy mortals, shadows in time, flickering dreams but not to worry for there’s a wedding at the end, happily ever after and all that.
Shyly, Duncan Peaks raises his hand.
Right, there’s one.
Simon Puck stands on his chair, croaks.
There’s two, now sit down before you break your skull. Who else will volunteer?
Silence.
Owen leans down to Brickie, plants hands on his desktop . . . You? Wouldn’t you like to be a god?
Brickie tips back in his chair . . . Am already.
Legend in your own mind, perhaps . . . a comedian, this Owen . . . But I can provide an audience.
20
A Maggot enters the washroom. The audience consists of a girl at the basin
consulting her program for last-minute substitutions.
MAGGONE
So this is what they teach in America, is it? Photographs of boys?
Rudely, the Maggot doesn’t wait for a response, but stops downstage for a
brief soliloquy before she goes.
MAGGONE
I have longed for a certain warmth since my days in Italy when I took to a boy named Marco. If I had the time now and did not have to rush back down to stalk the row of baths checking that girls scrub behind their ears but nowhere else well I would tell you of this boy named Marco his Vespa skittering chickens in the Piazza Nettuna as we raced for the hills.
Enter the Widow, aknit.
MAGGONE
Do you have Vespas in France, Genevieve?
ARAIGNY
I do not know what they drive now,
les gosses
, for I have not been back in such a time. Twenty years ago Paris made boys like your Marco with difficult lips and questions, hands at their eyebrows and through their hair, I remember a Jean-Pierre, I recall Sebastian, a Luc, Hubert. Heaven knows what has become of them now but I hitched up skirts to reveal showy garters, danced on tables, ran all night.
MAGGONE
(sniffing)
How very Weimar.
DEVON
(entering)
Genevieve, if I had the time now and did not have to rush away to illustrate the finer points of the color wheel, well I would tell you of a boy called Pablo. In the city of Madrid we painted together, he took me under a sheet when it rained well I don’t want to tell you at the risk of boasting but he fell for me in broken sentences.
A large hook yanks the art teacher o fstage.
ARAIGNY
In Paris I drank alcohol disguised as licorice, cursed hegemony, the status quo, belittled foreign governments for preferring intrusion to insight. I cried Revolution, if you please, let’s overthrow the state. I had some youth, some youth was mine.
MAGGONE
Oh those days. Dear Marco I penned in the best Italian I had, Dear Marco you must know that until my time in Rome, I had felt the loss of some forgotten beauty.
ARAIGNY
That sounds poetic, you must read Molière.
MAGGONE
Yes, I was nineteen. Please don’t interrupt. The loss of some forgotten beauty Marco bedazzler sphinx I think on you in my Sussex bedsit where I eat lentils under a cobweb I can’t bring down you are a monument wonder my constant heart you delighted me.
21
At night the boys arrive. Hopping, bowed legs caught by their trousers. Shadows in time. Tripping on the moonlit field, falling but never landing. In his life of twilight, Paul hops too, Y-fronts bright against the dusk. They know she is American, they angle for better light. They are naked, they are nude. She tries to capture their pale generations. Paint a wolf, watch it bite. Betts and Araigny entangled on the hockey pitch, beast with two backs. Real boys in greek surroundings. Mother, an odalisque. Fading. The guide suggests, Use more blue. Have a sense of proportion. Then alarm. Pillow trembling. Difficult to know a dream without the alarm. Stealing through the sleeping dorms.
Shyly, Duncan Peaks raises his hand.
Right, there’s one.
Simon Puck stands on his chair, croaks.
There’s two, now sit down before you break your skull. Who else will volunteer?
Silence.
Owen leans down to Brickie, plants hands on his desktop . . . You? Wouldn’t you like to be a god?
Brickie tips back in his chair . . . Am already.
Legend in your own mind, perhaps . . . a comedian, this Owen . . . But I can provide an audience.
20
A Maggot enters the washroom. The audience consists of a girl at the basin
consulting her program for last-minute substitutions.
MAGGONE
So this is what they teach in America, is it? Photographs of boys?
Rudely, the Maggot doesn’t wait for a response, but stops downstage for a
brief soliloquy before she goes.
MAGGONE
I have longed for a certain warmth since my days in Italy when I took to a boy named Marco. If I had the time now and did not have to rush back down to stalk the row of baths checking that girls scrub behind their ears but nowhere else well I would tell you of this boy named Marco his Vespa skittering chickens in the Piazza Nettuna as we raced for the hills.
Enter the Widow, aknit.
MAGGONE
Do you have Vespas in France, Genevieve?
ARAIGNY
I do not know what they drive now,
les gosses
, for I have not been back in such a time. Twenty years ago Paris made boys like your Marco with difficult lips and questions, hands at their eyebrows and through their hair, I remember a Jean-Pierre, I recall Sebastian, a Luc, Hubert. Heaven knows what has become of them now but I hitched up skirts to reveal showy garters, danced on tables, ran all night.
MAGGONE
(sniffing)
How very Weimar.
DEVON
(entering)
Genevieve, if I had the time now and did not have to rush away to illustrate the finer points of the color wheel, well I would tell you of a boy called Pablo. In the city of Madrid we painted together, he took me under a sheet when it rained well I don’t want to tell you at the risk of boasting but he fell for me in broken sentences.
A large hook yanks the art teacher o fstage.
ARAIGNY
In Paris I drank alcohol disguised as licorice, cursed hegemony, the status quo, belittled foreign governments for preferring intrusion to insight. I cried Revolution, if you please, let’s overthrow the state. I had some youth, some youth was mine.
MAGGONE
Oh those days. Dear Marco I penned in the best Italian I had, Dear Marco you must know that until my time in Rome, I had felt the loss of some forgotten beauty.
ARAIGNY
That sounds poetic, you must read Molière.
MAGGONE
Yes, I was nineteen. Please don’t interrupt. The loss of some forgotten beauty Marco bedazzler sphinx I think on you in my Sussex bedsit where I eat lentils under a cobweb I can’t bring down you are a monument wonder my constant heart you delighted me.
21
At night the boys arrive. Hopping, bowed legs caught by their trousers. Shadows in time. Tripping on the moonlit field, falling but never landing. In his life of twilight, Paul hops too, Y-fronts bright against the dusk. They know she is American, they angle for better light. They are naked, they are nude. She tries to capture their pale generations. Paint a wolf, watch it bite. Betts and Araigny entangled on the hockey pitch, beast with two backs. Real boys in greek surroundings. Mother, an odalisque. Fading. The guide suggests, Use more blue. Have a sense of proportion. Then alarm. Pillow trembling. Difficult to know a dream without the alarm. Stealing through the sleeping dorms.
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