Week 47, Day 325- "Barflies At The Beach"

“Barflies At The Beach”

Written by Joe Janes

12/9/09

325 of 365

CAST

Woody, 50s

Aretha, 50s

Jimmy, 20s

(Lights up on Jimmy, Woody and Aretha setting up for a day at the beach. Jimmy wears shorts and a tank top. Woody unashamedly wears Speedos. Aretha wears a one piece with frilly fringe on the bottom half. Aretha is laying out a towel as Woody opens up a cooler and breaks out some beer.)

ARETHA

Finally. A day at the beach with my family.

(She and Woody share a quick kiss. She starts putting on sun tan lotion.)

JIMMY

I don’t get the big deal. It’s water. We have water at home.

WOODY

It’s good to get outdoors, Jimmy. Get some fresh air; take a dip in the lake.

JIMMY

Smells like dead fish.

WOODY

It’s supposed to smell that way. It’s a good smell.

JIMMY

You say so. That water don’t look right. Water’s supposed to be blue.

WOODY

Stop being such a wussy bag.

ARETHA

Really, Jimmy. Can’t you just enjoy yourself for once? Nobody has to work. You don’t have to go in the water, if you don’t want to. Just drink beer and sit in the sun.

JIMMY

There ain’t no sun.

ARETHA

Of course there’s a sun. Just behind the clouds right now, is all.

WOODY (handing Jimmy a beer)

Here you go, Jimmy. Let’s let Aretha soak up some clouds while the men go step in the water.

JIMMY

I don’t know, Woody.

WOODY

Just a little ways. No dunking or nothing. I saw it on TV. At these resorts in exotic places like Florida. Rich dudes stand in the ocean and drink pina coladas.

JIMMY

I’ll go as far as the water.

WOODY

That’s a start.

(They head down to the edge of the stage, which is also the edge of the water.)

JIMMY

I used to like coming to the beach, when I was a kid.

WOODY

Still the same beach.

JIMMY

Naw. It’s different. Smaller. More litter, less shells.

WOODY

You just got bigger. Come on. Let’s walk in just a bit.

(Woody steps into the water, off the edge of the stage.)

WOODY (continuing)

Whoa. Bit of a drop there. Careful. Let me hold your beer.

JIMMY

I don’t need you to hold my beer.

(Jimmy steps in.)

JIMMY (continuing)

Christ that’s cold.

(Woody has stepped out farther than Jimmy.)

WOODY

It feels good. It’s like touching nature.

JIMMY

It’s like touching nature in a bad place. There’s dead fish floating in the waves.

(If possible, Woody has found a chair to stand on.)

WOODY

Hey, Jimmy. Come on out here. I found a sand bar.

JIMMY

I’m fine, right here.

WOODY

Come on, boy. Belly up to the sand bar with your dad.

(Jimmy reluctantly moves towards the sand bar. He trips and goes under, but pops back up.)

JIMMY

Crap that’s cold!

(He hurries to the sand bar.)

WOODY

There you go. A good dunk will get you used to it.

JIMMY

I think I got lake water in my beer.

WOODY

The alcohol will kill the germs. And what it doesn’t kill will toughen you up.

JIMMY

It tastes awful.

WOODY

Here. Trade me, you puss.

JIMMY

It’s okay.

WOODY

I said trade me. I don’t want to hear you whining. (They trade. Woody takes a big old swig.) Aw, that tastes just dandy. Like drinking nature.

JIMMY

Dad, what are we doing here?

WOODY

Aw, Jimmy. I’ve got something to tell you. Man-to-man. Your mother and I are splitting up.

JIMMY

Aretha!

ARETHA

What?

JIMMY

Dad says you two are splitting up.

ARETHA

Oh, Woody, take the sock out of your trunks and shove it in your mouth.

JIMMY

So, you’re not splitting up.

ARETHA

No.

WOODY

I’m just trying to get some kind of reaction out of you, son. All you do is be all Mr. Negative about things. You’re a one-note Nancy. You seem unable to have a good time or do anything other than be terminally perturbed.

JIMMY

Just not happy about things, is all.

WOODY

You need a gal, like Aretha. But not Aretha, because she’s your mom.

JIMMY

What I need is to move away.

WOODY

Elyria, Ohio is a great place to stake your claim in the world. It’s done me good. As it did for my dad and his dad before him.

JIMMY

My life’s just not going anywhere. I need to get to someplace where more stuff is happening.

WOODY

Cleveland?

JIMMY

I was thinking Chicago.

WOODY

What the hell would you do in Chicago?

JIMMY

I don’t know. But I’d find something.

WOODY

It would be a shame if you left. Look, this is going to sound like I’m making it up after I tried to tell you Aretha and I were splitting up, but you know her doctor appointment the other day. We told you it was for a pap smear.

JIMMY

I remember, because I didn’t ask.

WOODY

Your mother has cancer.

JIMMY

What kind of cancer?

WOODY

Oh, you know. Woman cancer. Cancer of the coochie. She didn’t want you to know.

JIMMY

Aretha!

ARETHA

What?

JIMMY

How’s your vagina?

ARETHA

Fine, thank you. How’s yours?

(Woody laughs.)

WOODY

Good one, Aretha! Look, she doesn’t know yet. The doctors only told me.

JIMMY

They told you, but not her.

WOODY

Not easy news to get, Jimmy. What if I told you your dingle was rotting off? How would you like that?

JIMMY

I’d want to know. Mom! Dad says you have cancer.

ARETHA

Woody! Stop lying to the boy. I don’t have cancer.

WOODY

All right, son. She doesn’t have cancer. Yet. But look at her lying out in the sun like a drying piece of girlie jerky. She’ll get cancer soon enough.

JIMMY

Dad. I need to move on. After high school, all my friends moved or became people I no longer wanted to hang out with. There’s got to be more to life than working and drinking.

WOODY

There is. It’s called fucking. Get yourself a girlfriend.

JIMMY

I’ll be sure to look for one in Chicago.

WOODY

Look, I’m not like most dads, right?

JIMMY

That’s absolutely right.

WOODY

We’ve always been more than father and son. We’ve been best buds. You’re my best friend, Jimmy. What the hell would I do without you?

JIMMY

I’m just talking about moving, not dying. We can still be close. We’ll always be close.

WOODY

It’ll take some getting used to.

JIMMY

If I stay, I’ll be unhappy. You don’t want me to be unhappy, do you?

WOODY

Sure, I can live with that.

JIMMY

Well, I can’t.

ARETHA

Let the boy move to Chicago, Woody! Give us a reason to come visit him.

(Jimmy shrugs at his dad.)

WOODY

Give your old man a hug.

JIMMY

You’re practically naked.

(Woody grabs him, thrust his hips into him and gives him a big bear hug,)

WOODY

I’m going to miss you, son.

JIMMY

I’ll miss you, too. Can we go back to the beach? I think I’m standing on a severed hand.

(Blackout.)

Week 24, Day 168 - "New Blood"

“New Blood”
Written by Joe Janes
7/5/09
168 of 365

CAST
Mr. Brown, 50s
Lillie, 18


(Lights up on a park bench in the downtown square of a small town in Ohio. Seated on the far end of the bench is LILLIE, 18, casually and conservatively dressed. Sitting on the other end is MR. BROWN, late 50’s. He wears a sports coat, khakis, a blue button down shirt and a Looney Tunes necktie. He is holding a manila envelope. She looks pensive.)

MR. BROWN

Did you hear what I said?

LILLIE

Yes. Yes, I heard.

MR. BROWN

I know that’s not what you expected to hear, Lillie.

LILLIE

Mr. Brown, you lied to me.

MR. BROWN

I have it right here. I was hoping you’d come to your own conclusions…think about what’s best for everybody.

LILLIE

I have good grades. A scholarship. I can’t throw that away.

MR. BROWN

You’re smart. Smart as a whip. You think things through. People like you, students and teachers. You’re a good egg. We need you here, Lillie.

LILLIE

But it’s what I want, Mr. Brown.

MR. BROWN

Hoo, boy. I have seen and heard this so many times. Not from you. Over the years as the high school guidance counselor. I was the same way, too, at your age. It was all about me and what I wanted. No thought to the community. It’s like rats jumping off a sinking ship. That’s why I wanted you to meet me here.

LILLIE

In beautiful downtown nowhere, Ohio.

MR. BROWN

It’s a joke to you. It’s a joke to all you young people. I guess I don’t blame you. But you can change it.

LILLIE

This place is dead. It even smells like old people.

MR. BROWN

You see this?

(He points to the armrest in the middle of the park bench.)

LILLIE

It’s an armrest. So?

MR. BROWN

An armrest. On a park bench? Do you really think that’s necessary? Know why it’s really here?

LILLIE

To rest one’s weary arm.

MR. BROWN

So homeless people don’t bunk on it. Wouldn’t want to offend the little old ladies with such an unwholesome sight. Especially right here near the courthouse. It wasn’t always like this. Not so long ago, and I know I sound like an old fart saying all this, that plumbing and heating
supply store over there used to be a movie theater. That’s why their sign looks like a marquee. I took my wife there when she was your age. You know that flea market on the weekends out on Route 2. It used to be a drive-in. Took my wife there, too. We didn’t watch too many movies there, though.

LILLIE

Thanks for the walk down memory lane and the horrible image of you and your wife now burned into my brain. I guess I’ll have to send in my own college applications.

MR. BROWN

I’ll send it in Lillie. You can even walk with me over to the post office and watch me do it. But, please, just listen to me for a second. This town used to be alive. Since the gypsum plant closed and the Wal-Mart opened, the downtown barely has a pulse. Look at you, young and alive and full of dreams. We need you here. This town needs you to breathe life into it. This town needs to dream. People didn’t used to leave. They’d marry after high school and settle down and raise a family. I sit in my office every day and I see bright young people leave and never come back. Used to be you’d leave to go join the military, but you came back. You came back and got a job at a factory or at the hardware store or the grocery store. If you went to college, you came back with a degree and you put up a shingle as a lawyer or a doctor. Or whatever. No one comes back anymore. They leave and they never come back. The class sizes get smaller and smaller every year. What religion are you?

LILLIE

Catholic, maybe?

MR. BROWN

Catholic, maybe? I’m Episcopalian. Go every Sunday with my wife to St. Thomas. I help out, too, as an usher. Me and Virgil Turkington are the ushers. And every Sunday, it surprises me that he shows up because he’s just so damn old. When I was a kid, it would be packed. Last Easter, there was barely a dozen people. No one in that church was under thirty. Maybe even forty. They don’t even have a regular reverend anymore. They send in some woman from Cleveland once a week. A woman. Nothing wrong with that, just a little weird is all.

LILLIE

Some people stay. Not everyone wants to go to college, like me. Tom Heinemann, Lori Letterhos, Steve Gurtz. They’re all staying.

MR. BROWN

Not exactly the pick of the litter. In fact, any self-respecting hound would have eaten them at birth.

LILLIE

They’re not that bad.

MR. BROWN

We’ll see. But the ones who stay, don’t have a choice. They usually turn out becoming cops or criminals. Mostly the latter.

LILLIE

Mr. Brown. I’m sorry. I know this town is important to you. If I stay here, I’ll die. I’ll be like my mother. The walking dead in homemade Christmas sweaters.

MR. BROWN

How about this? This college is five states away. How about sticking closer to home? Go to State. You could commute.

LILLIE

Have you met my mother? Five states away is still too close.

MR. BROWN (standing up)

I’ll mail your application, Lillie, but will you at least think about what I said. Maybe after you graduate college, maybe even after a few years of being a doctor, you’ll come back here. Share your gifts with us. Bring us some children to play around here, again.

LILLIE

I’ll think about it. I will. But if I stay here, now, it will be like a death sentence.

MR. BROWN

Yeah. I suppose it would.

(He exits. Lights fade.)