Eric Bogosian
"Esque" - A One Minute Play
June 12, 1998.
Two MEN, dressed in sportsjackets, tie-less, are smoking and talking.
CHAR
You're saying, what...?
TIP
That we...
CHAR
Us. The people in this room.
TIP
...have an "understanding"...
CHAR
"in regards to" what?
TIP
...regarding...
CHAR
Whatever.
TIP
...a certain kind of, shall we say, for lack of better term, "relationship"...
CHAR
"Relationship." God.
TIP
Relationship.
CHAR
No, no, no, no. Don't go there. Do not go to that fuckin'-oh-so-well-adjusted and dickless place.
TIP
But that's what we have here.
CHAR
Apples and oranges. No. Never.
TIP
My father told me a story once.
CHAR
Fuck your father. Apples and oranges.
TIP
Concerning a certain type of man, who enters a situation, knowing full well what he's entering.
And with that knowledge, proceeds anyway. Undaunted.
CHAR
Undaunted. In a "relationship."
TIP
Undaunted. Which is to say, lacking fear. Lacking anxiety. Lacking "concern."
CHAR
Unafraid of the consequences. Unafraid of what people might say. "Oh, there goes Mary. Oh, there she
goes with her girlfriend!"
TIP
You could call it a kind of courage.
CHAR
I could call it crap.
TIP
OK. A "guy", let's call him, for a lack of a better term, a "day-laborer", walks into a "place of
employment."
CHAR
Where?
TIP
I forget.
CHAR
Ireland.
TIP
What makes you think of Ireland?
CHAR
I don't know. Labor. Work. Potato famines.
TIP
OK. Ireland. Walks in. His hands are big, cracked, grease in the cracks. Dirt under the thick nails.
Tobacco stains in his beard.
CHAR
He has a beard?
TIP
Big beard. Full of soot and tobacco flakes and red wine-spittle.
CHAR
OK.
TIP
Walks up to this this horse. This plough-horse, this ten-hands-high, Budweiser-barrel-dragging,
mother-fucker horse. Punches it in the eye. Knocks it down.
CHAR
That can be done.
TIP
So that's what you're doing. Punching a horse when you could be riding it.
CHAR
Riding it?
TIP
Like a real man. Like John Wayne.
CHAR
John Wayne was a girl. Everyone knows that.
TIP
What's wrong with being a girl?
BLACKOUT
