allegro

GOD/DESS
It will never stop, Jake. Never, ever stop.

DAVID
Stop it, Im not going to say his lines!

GOD/DESS
(Magically pulls a knife.)
Goodbye, Jake.
DAVID
No!
(DAVID tries to wrestle the knife from her to stop the suicide attempt.)

This doesnt have to be so dramatic!

(The GOD/DESS looks at him with her own rage and turns the knife on him. He fights with her. He gets the knife and tosses it, manages to pin the GOD/DESS to the floor.)

Stop, this wont win me! Look, I dont know how to make it work, ok? He has my soul, you have my heart. I dont win here.

(She slowly stops struggling.)

It would be easy if I never met you, but I did, so now you have me. Damn it, I love you, but youre always going to be the other woman.

(DAVID kisses her, and then gets up. She stays on the floor.)

Im sorry. Ill always be fucking sorry.

(Pause.)

I wont let you go either. I cant.
Ive wondered for so long what was so special about you. Its the biggest mystery of my life. Forget my special noble struggle. Why should I, why should anyone walk into audition rooms begging for jobs that Ill take even if they dont pay? For years! This past week Ive gotten struck with ideas for plots and dialogue every single night, for scenes in plays and characters in plays and I write it all down when I know the loss of sleep is making me sick. I work with such difficult people on this show and I always understand them even if I hate them. I take crappy jobs because the hours are flexible enough to do more work for free that leaves me too exhausted for the terrible work that pays me. I go without meals, without stable relationships, for those painful long calls like tonight that steal all the time I could spent meeting people, or cooking, or finally learning something I can do easily. People can assure me that the professionals dont suffer like this for long, what with rules and unions and protections, but I know that even if I never got there, I could never stop this. And whats terrifying is I have no idea why. No, I do, but I dont. I find myself volunteering to get physically broken setting up heavy sets and ridiculous light plots with people who are all there getting broken because they love it. They are lifting wood and metal and equipment for love. That makes no sense. But when it gets where its going it makes things possible. Theres something about using electricity for art, with carpentry for art, and painting for art, and telling stories for art, and being other people for art, and dancing for art, and organizing for art, and singing for art, and lifting for art, and sewing fabric for art, and sorting colored plastic sheets for art, all this creation thats all one thing at once. I live lives that are better, or that are worse, or just different in the spaces that I change for this art. And its never just me, and it never can be just me. I do my part, and other people do their parts and we make each other better at this thing that isnt what Im doing or what shes doing, its what we are doing together with him and her and them. And the people are different, and this passion infects you, and you meet people who couldnt be anywhere else, like Laura, and, and like Frank. I can love my part in it, but I will always love the whole thing more. I feel morealive, we all feel so alive making something like life that isnt exactly, and that doesnt make sense either. Everybody gets it, and no one knows why. We are there for each other because we cant explain it. We are there because we love it, and we make it together, and once is never ever enough. We all love you and never understand. I love you and I will never understand. If I did, I could leave you. Maybe. Then I could find something else to love like you. But I dont understand.

And I never want to.

GOD/DESS
You do love me, dont you?

DAVID
Always. And nothing will ever get solved. Let me be. But dont leave me.