6 Aug 2015

PROMPT:  I was the youngest ...

Lynne Kaufman, playwright

Drake, 59, sits with Percy, 45, watching football on TV.
DRAKE
I wasn’t the youngest, I was the smallest, Percy.
PERCY
There must have been girls smaller than you.
DRAKE
Nope.
PERCY
Jeez.  Did you get picked on?
DRAKE
Everyday.  Probably why I had a lot of friends who were girls.  Girls my age didn’t care that I was short.  They didn’t pick on me.
PERCY
In high school, we all had friends who were girls.
DRAKE
You didn’t have any friends who were young women!
PERCY
I hung out with lots of girls.
DRAKE
But they weren’t friends.  They were potential conquests.
PERCY
Well... sure.
DRAKE
And that’s why you’ve been married three times.
PERCY
Why?!
DRAKE
Because you never make friends with women.  They are objects to be conquered.
PERCY
Don’t tell me you don’t notice when a pretty girl enters the room.
DRAKE
I notice!  I just don’t start figuring out how to hit on her.
PERCY
I’ve seen you glancing at cleavage.
DRAKE
I like cleavage.  I like breasts!  But I like brains better!
PERCY
Better than boobs!?
DRAKE
Much better than breasts.
Silence.
PERCY
Drake, you are weird.
DRAKE
From first grade on, I had women friends.
PERCY
First grade?
DRAKE
Colleen Epperson.  She was only slightly taller and she could run just as fast as I could.  In third grade, it was Judy Bender.  When I went to soccer games in junior high school and high school, I dragged along a cheering section that was made up of my mom and my sisters and some of our female friends.
PERCY
You’re gay, right?
DRAKE
I am one of the straightest men you will ever meet, I just think that women are the superior sex.
Silence.
PERCY
I don’t know how to make friends with women.
DRAKE
Look them in the eyes... and talk to them like they are regular human beings, because that’s what they are.
PERCY
You can’t talk about sports!
DRAKE
With some you can, but if all you’re interested in, in life, is sports, maybe the problem is that you’re just a boring human being, and that’s why you’ve been married three times and have so few friends.
PERCY
I like sports a lot.
DRAKE
Good!  Me too!  But I also like art and history.  I listen to the news and go to plays and read books, and I’m just generally interested in other people’s lives.
PERCY
You’re a playwright, you have to interested in that junk.
DRAKE
I write plays because people and their problems interest me.  I want to understand how they think and what they feel.  Writing is my way of dealing with my emotions by understanding other people’s emotions.
PERCY
That sound so weird.
DRAKE
It is weird.
Silence.
PERCY
So I have to be... friends with gir... with women?
DRAKE
You don’t have to.  You can lead a sad, lonely life as a lonely, old man.
Silence.
End of play.