And now for the bitter:
Isn't it wonderful how we never recover?
Do me a favor. If you have a home, when you're home, later, avoiding your family, staring at the dog, and they ask you where you've been, please just don't say that you were out somewhere watching someone being clever, watching some smart-mouthed nobody work himself into some dumb-ass frenzy. Please say instead, when you don't say anything because no one asked you, that you saw someone who was trying. I choose the word with care. I'm trying. A trying man. A feeling thing, in a wordy body. Poor Thom's a-trying. Poor Thom is fucking cold. I imagine you people have some experience with the Elizabethans. Some experience with cold...
I may have plans anyway. So forget I said anything. Or imagined you at all. Forget I thought or felt anything...
But so that morning, the messy morning of the messy night, that morning on a walk through a meadow, the boy was attacked by bees. A nest had fallen onto the ground and he had kicked it by accident, his eyes shut because of the sun and maybe some other reason he had. Is it clear I love my little subject, and therefore don't pry too hard into his reasons, his empty head, his stupid little agenda on earth? Anyway, the bees. They swarmed into his eyes and mouth, stung him on every skinny surface. The boy did not, at first, make any sound. The poor thing did not understand. He thought, out in the meadow, that he had done something wrong. He thought that the pain was already in his body and was only coming out then to punish him, that the bees had only happened along later and were trying to help. His body was exploding in painful sores, which the bees were trying to salve, to soothe... Kind of beautiful, if you like that sort of thing. If you like the idea of a little boy desperately spreading stinging bees over his bleeding body. Desperately yelling "Help me, Bees, Help," and putting his little swollen hand into the hive for more.
We've all made similar mistakes. Mistaking the bee for the flower, giving our heart away to the first prick or bitch to come down the trickling river. Anyway, the boy crawled enough away, almost died, lay there until evening, neither crying nor laughing, a thing of nature, in pain among the crickets and frogs...
One night, picture it a winter night, one night in a park, walking off the day's food poisoning, he came upon some vomit, vomited, and then collapsed. He wondered, as he shivered on the freezing ground, covered in stomach fluid, saliva, and bile, if there might be, you know, more to life than this. Nearby, a brightly-lit skating rink. He lay there, in the slush, listening to Christmas music and chirping elegies to reindeer and snow. The shivers of his childhood came, then went, then returned redoubled and stopped. He got up and went over to the rink, leaned on the side. Families glided by. Couples. Call it the Christmas spirit, call it a coincidence, call it whatever you like, but, suddenly, in the bright light and beautiful music, he got sick and collapsed again.
You're a nice-looking crowd. I see we have some couples here tonight. And on came the animals, two by two. Good for you...
I know this wasn't much, but, let it be enough. Do. (Spoken normally and quietly,) Boo. (Brief pause.) Isn't it great to be alive?
-Excerpt from Will Eno's Thom Pain (Based On Nothing)
My husband and I saw this monologue, done exceedingly well, for our first date. If you ever get the chance to see it, do.
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