Ravenhill Plays: 1: Shopping and F***ing; Faust is Dead; Handbag; Some Explicit Polaroids (Contemporary Dramatists) (17 page)

Pete
     You reckon?

Alain
     I trust Donny.

Pete
     Dufus hickety-hick sticksville retard.

Alain
picks up the camcorder
.

Alain
     Please. How do I . . . ?

Pete
     What are you doing with that?

Alain
     I make a record.

Pete
     Of Donny?

Alain
     Of you. Of Donny. The cutting. ‘Got it all on tape. Guys cutting guys.’

Pete
     He’s not gonna show most probably, you know?

Alain
     I’ve got it.

Alain
has now worked the camcorder out and is pointing it at
Pete
.

Pete
     Hey, it’s not like the guy is gonna show.

Alain
     Smile. You’re on TV.

A knock at the door.
Alain
points camcorder at door and indicates that
Pete
should answer it
.

Alain
     Please . . .

Pete
     Could be anyone. Could be my dad.

Alain
     Please . . .

Pete
     Could be my dad’s guys.

Alain
exits to answer door.
Pete
collects handgun from bag and waits. Enter
Alain
and
Donny
.
Pete
lowers gun
.

Donny
     Hey. How you doing?

Pete
     Oh, I’m . . . yeah . . . happy, happy, happy.

Pete
puts the gun away
.

Donny
     Okay. You filming me?

Alain
     That’s right.

Donny
     Is that for the network or a local thing?

Pete
     It’s nothing, Donny.

Donny
     Oh.

Pete
     It’s for personal use.

Donny
     Okay.

I’ve never been on TV.

Pete
     You gotta have the face.

Donny
     I got the face.

You don’t like my face?

Pete
     You’ve got a pretty face, Donny.

Donny
     I knew we were gonna get along. I tried to picture what you’d be like, the both of you. Like a picture in my head. I couldn’t get it so clear but all I could see was that you had kind smiles and kind eyes and we were getting on real well.

Pete
     That’s nice. Isn’t that nice what Donny is saying?

Alain
     If you keep him in the light.

Donny
     Is this right? Do I look good here?

Alain
     That’s beautiful.

Donny
     I knew I’d feel at home and I do. This feels like home already. Like you’re Mom and Dad and brothers and sisters and all, just rolled into one.

Pete
     Well, how about that?

Alain
     Tell us about yourself, Donny.

Donny
     There’s not much to say.

Pete
     You’re doing fine so far.

Alain
     Tell us about yourself.

Donny
     You want me sitting down?

Alain
     Whatever you want.

Pete
     That’s a detail. It’s not relevant.

Alain
     Take your shirt off.

Donny
     Okay.

Pete
     Here.

Pete
removes
Donny
’s shirt
.

Donny
     You ready now?

Alain
     Oh yes.

Donny
     My name is Donny and I cut myself.

I had a big smile when I was a kid and my tongue was always red and my lips were always red and my teeth were always red. That was on account of my mom.

See, she worked nights in the store and so I’d go there after school, hang out with my mom ’til like six in the morning and every hour or so she’d say:

‘Donny, you want something?’

‘Yes, Mom. I’m thirsty.’

‘What you want, Donny?’

‘Want a slushie, Mommy.’

‘Well, you help yourself, Donny, you go right ahead and you take whatever you want.’

And I’d go right up to the slushie machine, press that cardboard cup in the hole . . . and I always had cherry.

Never even gave anything else a try, because it was always cherry I wanted. Wasn’t so much as curious about the other choices.

So, six, seven, eight cherry slushies every night your teeth and you tongue and your mouth get pretty red.

Got so some guys called me Red Mouth Donny and some guys who didn’t know me so well just called me Red. Which I liked.

Then one day, the slushie machine was taken away. Some guy from the company just took it away. I think maybe the owner of the store hadn’t kept up the payments, but he wasn’t letting on.

And I felt so bad and no one could tell me why and by this time I wasn’t a kid any more. I was like eleven, twelve years of age, but that hit me so bad.

And I started to cuss the teachers and the cussing led to fighting with the teachers and that’s when Momma said she couldn’t cope with me any more and I had to move away from her.

Saw her a few times at the hospital because they wanted to study us on account of some professor who had a theory that it was something in all those slushies that made me angry with the teachers and something in the fluorescent light in the store that gave Momma her cancer.

I reckon that’s not true and those things just happened to us and that maybe if I get to ask Jesus one day he’ll let me know. Jesus had quite a few cuts too by the end and I reckon he understands why I do this to myself.

I like Jesus, although I never met him. But I believe it’s possible.

. . . Is that what you wanted?

Pete
     How many cuts you got there, Donny?

Donny
     I never counted them.

Pete
     You never counted them?

Donny
     I never did.

Pete
     You wanna compare?

Donny
     I reckon.

Pete
     Let’s see who’s got the most.

He takes off his shirt
.

What do you think about that?

Donny
     You sure have got some beauties.

Pete
     But who’s got the best? Who’s the winner here, Donny?

Donny
     Well, I don’t know.

Pete
     Who would you say has the most cuts here?

Alain
     It’s the same.

Pete
     Oh no. Gotta be a winner. That’s what it’s all about. Winners and losers. Has to be a winner. Has to be a loser. Okay?

Alain
     Maybe Donny.

Pete
     Yeah?

Alain
     Donny has the most cuts.

Donny
     Well, thank you.

Pete
     Donny, I am so proud of you.

Donny
     Thank you.

Pete
     You wanna cut now? You wanna do that?

Donny
     Sure. I can cut any time.

Pete
     Alright. Let’s . . . I cut first, as I lost before. Okay?

Donny
     Sure.

Pete
cuts across his chest
.

Pete
     You getting this?

Alain
     Got it all on tape.

What do you feel?

Pete
     Pure. Clear. True.

(
Hands blade to
Donny
.) Now you. See you win this one.

Donny
     I like to win. Winning’s good.

Pete
     Winning’s good.

Donny
     And I know the way. I got the way.

Donny
cuts his jugular. Collapses
.

Pete
     Oh shit, man. Shit.

Alain
puts the camcorder down quickly and he and
Pete
rush to
Donny
.

Alain
     Stop the blood. Stop the blood.

Donny
is writhing. They try unsuccessfully to staunch the blood.

Donny
dies
.

Everyone very still. Long long pause.

Alain
moves away from the body
.

Alain
     Of course, as we look back it will become easier to name the exact date.

Or we may never be able to say exactly. Perhaps we will never agree a fixed point. A moment.

There will be different theories.

/ But in principle we will agree.

Pete
     Quiet, please. I need some quiet.

Alain
     At some point, at a moment at the end of the twentieth century, reality ended.

Reality finished and simulation began.

Pete
     Jesus. Will you . . . ?

Anyone ever tell you you talk too much?

Pause
.

Alain
     For myself, I would suggest fifteen hundred hours on the thirteenth of August 1987.

Others may offer their own alternatives. A few hours, a few days either side. So be it.

But there is a line, a divide and at some point (let’s take my point, fifteen / hundred hours, August thirteenth 1987 as a working model), at this point, although few of us noticed, or sensed that the change was taking place, it happened.

Pete
     No. Stop.

Stop now.

Why do you have to?

Oh yeah . . . blah blah blah.

Alain
     Reality died. It ended.

And we began to live this dream, this lie, this new simulated existence.

Pete
     Reality just arrived.

Alain
     Some examples?

Before, in the old world, there was an event, a moment, which was followed by analysis, by the writing of history. / Event – analysis – history.

Pete
     Look at him.

Alain
     And now?

We analyse, we project, we predict – CNN, talk radio – we anticipate an event before it takes place: the fall of a wall / in Berlin, a war in the Gulf.

Pete
     Look at what I’m showing you.

Alain
     And the event itself is just a shadow, a reflection of our analysis.

Pete
     Look, just look at him.

See?

This happened. We were there. It was real.

This isn’t eyeballs in a shoebox. The Japanese cannibal.

There’s no ketchup.

This is Donny.

Donny is dead. Donny is here and Donny is dead.

Did you think this was gonna happen?

Did you know?

You had any idea, it was your duty to jump in there, to intervene.

Why didn’t you intervene?

He didn’t have the experience, I guess.

Because if he’s used the home page a few times . . . If he’d just read the advice.

Chest, legs, stomach are fine. If you wanna do a vein, then always cut across rather then up and seek medical assistance immediately afterwards.

And don’t ever do the jugular.

He should have known that.

He shouldn’t have gone for the jugular.

I guess he was just keen to prove that he was for real, you know?

Alain
kneels by the body
.

Alain
     What we gonna do with him?

Pete
     Jeez, I dunno.

Alain
     A person, you know, there is so much.

So much skin and bone.

And brains and eyes.

What do you do with a person with no life in them?

Pete
     I guess you bury them in the desert.

Chop them up, boil them, but those guys always seem to get found out.

Hey, they have a whole crate of ice in the yard out there.

We fill the bath with ice and we put him in the bath until we figure out what we’re gonna do.

Alain
cradles
Donny
’s body
.

Alain
     Donny, you’re gonna be okay.

Pete
     Donny, you’re gonna chill.

I haven’t got this [
disc
] and held on to it all this time for some . . . kid who doesn’t know how to use a blade to fuck it all up for me, okay?

Chorus
     Donny knew. Donny knew what he was gonna do.

He told me:

‘I’m heading out now for a real meeting. Had enough of just communicating with all you guys in a virtual kind of way. Had enough of it all just being pictures. See, some guys out there want me to make it real. So, I’m gonna meet them. Motel room and I’m gonna make it real. Totally real. I’m gonna go for my jugular.’

And you know something? He made every TV show, every talk show. Ricki and Oprah both got the same show: ‘Death on the Net’.

And Stevie, he already has a song about it. Which he has performed unplugged and is now showing three times an hour on MTV.

Which seems to say to me that maybe Donny wasn’t so pathetic after all and he knew what was happening in his life and figured out a way to make something good come from it.