The Books: “Women of Manhattan” (John Patrick Shanley)

Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:

Next play on the script shelf:

More John Patrick Shanley! The next play is Women of Manhattan

Three friends – Judy, Rhonda, and Billie, sit around in Rhonda’s Upper West Side apartment and talk about their lives. Rhonda just threw her boyfriend out of the apartment. These three women are old friends, they love each other.

I’ll excerpt a bit from the first scene, although one of my favorite lines is from the last scene where Judy explains her night of sex with Duke – actually, the entire exchange is great:

Judy: We went at it like the primordial forms. There were plateaus, upheavals, ditches. We got so deep into this bed it was like dinosaurs wrestling in a tarpit. At one point my tongue had a spasm that made me squawk like a parrot being electrocuted.

Rhonda: Did you have an orgasm?

Judy: I think so.

hahahahahahahaha After all that, and you just “think so”??? Cracks me up.

But here’s a bit from the first scene. They’ve all been sitting around, drinking wine in Rhonda’s apartment. Billie is the only married one. Judy has some of the funniest lines in the play. And even though she uses a word I despise – over and over and over – it seems to be for comic effect. Anyway, it makes me laugh – and I cringe when I hear that word normally. It’s a great monologue.

EXCERPT FROM Women of Manhattan, by John Patrick Shanley

JUDY. What are those big red sneakers doing shambling around on your nice neat floor? Might those be Jerry’s shoes?

RHONDA. Yes. They are Jerry’s shoes.

JUDY. But doesn’t Jerry not live here anymore? Was he not shown the door some time since?

RHONDA. I threw him out. Which you know.

JUDY. I knew you’d thrown him out of the apartment and your life and so on, but I had no idea that you’d thrown him right out of his red sneakers!

RHONDA. Don’t be smart.

JUDY. I wouldn’t know how.

RHONDA. He left the sneakers. Or they fell out of a bag. I don’t know which. But there they are.

BILLIE. Do you really think I spill my guts?

JUDY. Yes, but hold on to them for a minute. [to Rhonda] I came to dinner. I ate dinner. It was passable. A little fatty for my taste, but I don’t think it’s right for a guest to speak out.

RHONDA. You could’ve fooled me.

JUDY. I saw the sneakers when I walked in. Said nothing. The soul of whatever. You’ve said not a word. I know you’re troubled about this character Jerry. That you loved him or were enslaved to something about him or something. I’ve been patient. I’ve lain here like a monk on a cot waiting for you to speak. But all I’ve really gotten is that Billie wants to be in some movie with an awful plot. We’re getting to the shank of the evening. When are you going to unveil your pain?

[A long pause]

BILLIE. All I meant by the movie thing …

JUDY. Billie! Hush!

[Billie complies. A long pause]

RHONDA. I miss him.

JUDY. That’s it?

RHONDA. I miss his smell.

JUDY. He had a smell?

RHONDA. Yes.

JUDY. Do his sneakers contain this smell? Is that why the little devils are still here?

RHONDA. I don’t know. Maybe. I hate those sneakers.

JUDY. Then why don’t you send them back to him?

RHONDA. I don’t know where he is.

JUDY. Why don’t you throw them out?

RHONDA. I don’t know. They’re too nice to throw out.

JUDY. They’re too nice? Please.

RHONDA. I know what you think this is, but it’s not. I don’t keep the sneakers because I love him.

JUDY. Uh-huh.

RHONDA. I didn’t love him. Not in a way that led anywhere. I mean, I loved him but it was like trying to hug a wall. How do you hug a wall?

JUDY. I don’t know.

RHONDA. I guess my big mistake was I revealed myself to him. That’s where I really went wrong. You know, that thing that most people can’t do? That thing that’s supposed to be like the hardest thing to get to with another person? It took me time, but I struggled and strove and succeeded at last in revealing my innermost, my most personal soul to him.

BILLIE. And what is that?

RHONDA. Never you mind.

JUDY. And what did he do?

RHONDA. Nothing. Zip. Nothing. He just sat there with a coke in his hand like he was watching television, waiting for the next thing. Like that was a nice stop on the way to WHAT I CAN’T IMAGINE! The whole thing with him was such a letdown. But why am I surprised? You know? I mean, here I was congratulating myself on being able to show myself, show my naked self to a man. But what’s the achievement? I chose to show myself to a wall. Right? That’s why I was able to do it. He was a wall and I was really alone, showing myself to nobody at all. How much courage does that take? Even when I got it together to throw him out, and I made this speech at him and got all pink in the face and noble as shit. He just said alright and left. What did I delude myself into thinking was going on between us if that’s how he could take it ending? “Alright. Just lemme get my tools together, Rhonda Louise, and I’ll get on to the next thing.” You know how in that one school a thought you’re the only thing real in the world, and everything else is just a dream? All these people and things, the stars in the sky, are just sparks and smoke from your own lonely fire in a big, big night. I always thought what a lotta intellectual nonsense that was until Jerry. I mean, to tell you the naked truth, I’m not even sure there was a Jerry. It seems impossible to me that there was. Sometimes I think I just got overheated, worked myself into a passion and fell in love with that wall right there. It must’ve been! It must’ve been that wall and me, crazy, loving it cause I needed to love. And not a human man. I couldn’t have poured everything out to a really truly human man, and him just stand there, and take it, and give nothing back. It’s not possible. But when I get too far gone in that direction of thinking — and alone here some nights I do — at those times it does me good to look and see these sneakers there sitting on the floor. His sneakers. He was here. It happened.

BILLIE. If that had been me, I would’ve doubted that I existed.

RHONDA. Well, Billie, maybe that’s the difference between us.

JUDY. If that happened to me, I think I would’ve been glad.

RHONDA. How do you come to that?

JUDY. At least something would’ve happened for me to brood over.

RHONDA. You wanna brood?

JUDY. Oh, I brood. But I’d enjoy brooding about something new.

BILLIE. What do you brood about now?

JUDY. We’re not doing me now, we’re doing Rhonda Louise.

RHONDA. Forget that. With me you’re done. What do you brood about?

JUDY. Sex.

BILLIE. Me too!

JUDY. But you’re married.

BILLIE. All the more.

JUDY. Oh, I’m sure. But what I mean is, since you’re married, correct me if I’m wrong, you have sex.

BILLIE. Well, yes I do.

JUDY. Well I don’t. Or anyway I haven’t in a goodly while. So the way I brood about sex is different. It’s darker, more perverse, Scandinavian kind of deep deep festering stew.

BILLIE. God.

JUDY. It’s not really sex at all. It’s too black for that. It’s more like a kind of exquisite exasperation. A sullen, slow, galling exasperation having to do with men.

RHONDA. Why you mad at men?

JUDY. Because they’re all gay.

BILLIE. They are not!

JUDY. They’re all faggots!

RHONDA. Maybe the men you meet.

JUDY. Definitely the men I meet. The men I meet are all faggots! Some of them know they’re faggots, and they’re bad enough. But a lot of them aren’t sure, so they go out with me for clarification. We go back to my place. Maybe we even get to bed before he bursts into tears and starts telling me about his Confusion. He’s all mixed up. I’m like his sister. He’s like my sister! These fucking sensitive guys out there sniffing flowers in their designer sweaters, I could just spit! And there’s only so much you can accomplish alone. At least me. I have a real problem with my ability to fantasize. Because I can only imagine sexual encounters that I feel are plausible. You know, I have to have at least experienced some small bubble of chemistry between me and the guy in order to imagine the rest. These days that limits me to guys I ran into so long ago that they’re too young for me to get really excited about. I lie in bed with my eyes clamped shut trying desperately to age some eighteen year old with a skin problem up to the requisite thirty. And then I see myself lying there in the bed, my face all scrunched up like some numbskull telepath trying to communicate with a dolphin, and I think: The faggots have done this to me! This, anyway, is the course that my brooding sometimes takes.

BILLIE. Well. Hmmm. Well, it’s your own fault, lady.

JUDY. How do you figure that?

RHONDA. Uh-huh.

BILLIE. I meet straight guys all the time.

RHONDA. Me too.

BILLIE. You’re asking for it.

JUDY. I’m asking for fags to come home with me and reveal their fagginess to me?

BILLIE. Basically, yes, that’s what you’re doing.

RHONDA. I agree. In fact, I really agree.

JUDY. I’ll take a piece of pie now.

RHONDA. That’s my pie. Not yet. Billie’s saying something.

BILLIE. What are you wearing?

JUDY. You can see what I’m wearing.

BILLIE. That jacket.

JUDY. What’s wrong with my jacket?

BILLIE. It’s MAN-tailored.

JUDY. That’s right.

RHONDA. And those shoes. E.G. Marshall could be in those shoes.

JUDY. Well, what are you getting at?

RHONDA. Go on, tell her.

BILLIE. Alright. I will. Because I’m her friend. You’re a Fag Hag, Judy! That’s right! You march around with that efficient priss, and you wear a woman’s version of a man’s clothes, and you’re arch … as an arch. Do you think that turns straight guys on?

RHONDA. It makes them nervous.

BILLIE. If you wanna get in a straight man’s pants you’ve gotta make him think he’s getting into yours. I’ve seen how you deal with straight guys. You look them over like you wanna give them an enema.

JUDY. How can you talk to me this way? I’m not a stone! I have feelings!

[Judy cries]

BILLIE. I’m sorry. I forgot. But you see? That’s how it is. You get treated like you ask to be treated. And you ask to be treated like, I don’t know …

RHONDA. Like a fag.

JUDY. What?

BILLIE. I don’t know. No, I know. I just know I’m on thin ice with you with this. The only people who treat you nice are fags cause they think you’re one of them.

JUDY. What about you?

BILLIE. And Rhonda and me treat you nice because we love you. We see through you like you see through us and that’s love.

JUDY. I don’t want to talk about this.

BILLIE. Talk about it.

JUDY. I don’t want to.

RHONDA. Maybe that’s why you should.

JUDY. Oh. I’m so lonely!

RHONDA. Me too.

JUDY. But you miss Jerry. With me it’s not even that. I’m not lonely for anyone, I’m just lonely in myself. I wish I could meet some nice guy, get involved with some nice guy.

RHONDA. There are no nice guys.

JUDY. Then somebody who was screwed up in a way that complemented what’s wrong with me. I wanna be an active heterosexual again! Sounds like volcanoes. “Watch out, Judy’s active. Better evacuate the village.”