Bathroom Monologue: Regarding Mr. Floyd, OR, Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2, Take 2

[The bar has been painted lime green, with an additional unique color to each booth. Our booth is virgin cherry pink. At the center of the booth sits DARKLOSS SOULRIPPER VON ALUCARDIA, wearing a cloak made of living bats with their wings sewn together. DARKLOSS and HIS BATS are sharing a single margarita. To DARKLOSS’s left sits MEGATRAN, a Chinese knockoff of Megatron made from blue plastic instead of white. To DARKLOSS’s right sits SAMID, wearing a pink tuxedo and pink reading glasses, scrutinizing over the liner notes in what we presume is the last compact disc case in existence.]

Samid: "We don’t need no education. We don’t need no thought control. No dark sarcasm in the classroom." What the hell is this?

Darkloss: Who needs education? Addition, subtraction, history - it's all useless. With grammar like that, of course you don't need no education.

Megatran: Double negatives are the standard in French.

Samid: Unfortunately not in English.

Megatran: Any linguistic form used reliably is grammatically correct. If they keep using double negatives, they're correct.

Samid: Firstly, if I start calling "first aid" by the name "bacterial infection," I've done something incorrect and unhelpful to everyone else who's using the terms correctly. "Do you want me to get you some bacterial infection for your gaping leg wound?"

Megatran: I don’t get infections.

Samid: Secondly, if Mr. Floyd was trying to make a point to me about not needing an education, failing to use the correct grammar you get from an education doesn't help his case.

Megatran: That's part of his point. He's expressing his argument without conforming to your educational standards.

Samid: So he's failing to use correct grammar in defense of his failing English class. Again, his argument isn't working on me. Maybe it’s all that dark sarcasm I learned at university.

Darkloss: But he's not trying to convince you. The song is directed to kids.

Samid: Directly spoken at educators.

Megatran: Using the direction at educators to make its point which is directed to kids.

[SAMID feeds the liner notes to DARKLOSS’s cape.]

Samid: Oh, well if he's so juvenile that he's attacking one group to win over another, no wonder he doesn't need no education. He’s a child.

Megatran: I don't think Pink Floyd was a person. It's just the band name.

Samid: Again, mucking up the conventions of language. He needs yes education.

Darkloss: Needs yes...?

[DARKLOSS tries to read the liner notes, but HIS BATS will not yield them. He looks in confusion to SAMID.]

Samid: If "needs no education" works, then "needs yes education" works.

Megatran: Nobody says that.

Samid: Nobody intelligent says "needs no education," because they can speak with adult grammar and because they recognize that education is important. I can find data on incomes and schooling levels if you want. Maybe set them to petulant verse.

Darkloss: I don’t see how you can take this much umbrage with Pink Floyd’s lyrics and still listen to Bob Dylan.

[MEGATRAN hides its faceplate in its robot hands.]

Megatran: Please don’t let this level of lyrical scrutiny spread to any other music. I don’t believe the institution can withstand it.

Samid: Oh, stop that.

Megatran: Why?

Samid: Because these things have to close on a clever line. If you don’t rebut in sidesplitting fashion in the next three seconds, the whole thing’s been for naught.

[MEGATRAN hesitates. They sit there.]

Bathroom Monologue: Black Hulk

[Once again at the booth. MEGATRAN, a Chinese knockoff of Megatron made from blue plastic instead of white, sits on the center, using a flame jet from its index finger to warm a plate of nachos, from which everyone at the table is eating. GRUFF STOVER sits to MEGATRAN’s right, MEGATRAN’s giant cannon slung over GRUFF’s shoulder. GRUFF strokes it possessively. SAMID sits to MEGATRAN’s left, wearing a chainmail bikini. ARYANA sits to SAMID’s left, in a pink tuxedo.]

Gruff: Why’s The Incredible Hulk got to be white?

Samid: He’s green.

Megatran: All the newspapers say he’s white when he turns back into a person.

Aryana: How come it’s white? The only people who are actually white are albinos, and we don’t call them white. I’m kind of sandy.

Gruff: Why can’t The Incredible Hulk be black?

Samid: Because he’s green.

Gruff: When he’s a normal person, he could be black. You don’t know.

Aryana: They say he’s a physicist. David Banner or something.

Gruff: There aren’t any black physicists? What about Neil deGrasse Tyson?

Samid: I really don’t think he’s the Hulk.

Ayrana: I thought he was an astronomer.

Gruff: The Incredible Hulk is not an astronomer.

Megatran: Neil deGrasse Tyson is an astrophysicist.

Gruff: He could have been bombarded by astro-rays. That made the Fantastic Four. If it can make The Thing, why can’t it make The Incredible Hulk?

Megatran: Because Neil deGrasse Tyson’s job is on the ground. He has never gone into space.

Gruff: You don’t know that. He could have gone to space, got hit by giant green rays, then covered it up. That’s why you don’t know he went to space. The point being if some white Banner can be the Hulk just because of his physics project, why can’t Tyson by the Hulk because of his?

Samid: Under that logic, I could be Hulk and have covered it up.

Gruff: No you couldn’t.

Samid: Why?

Aryana: You’re not black.

[SAMID gapes at ARYANA. GRUFF snaps his fingers victoriously.]

Gruff: See? Woman’s got it.

Samid: How?

Aryana: Because sometimes a lady knows when to jump on a side. [She raises a fist] Hulk smash puny logic.

Samid: Logic is tumbling away from us.

Aryana: In fact, I’m willing to suppose something. [She looks to Gruff] There is only one black man who can’t possibly be the Hulk.

[GRUFF nods]

Gruff: Damn straight.

Samid: Who?

Megatran: Neil deGrasse Tyson?

Aryana: No. Barack Obama.

[GRUFF snaps his fingers victoriously once again]

Gruff: Lady has it.

Samid: And how do we come to this?

Aryana and Gruff: [in unison] Because he’s Superman.

Bathroom Monologue: Is there a High Road?

[The bar hums as people mill out. Some patrons search for their debit cards, while most grumble about how terrible tonight’s open mic was. DARKLOSS VON ALUCARDIA SOULRIPPER sits in the middle of the usual booth, dressed tonight in a trendy fishnet shirt. DARKLOSS is writing on a yellow legal pad. GARY sits to DARKLOSS’s right, wearing a designer t-shirt and jeans that are designed to look like no thought went into them. SAMID sits to GARY’S right, wearing a designer t-shirt and jeans that are designed to look like no thought went into them and give them impression he likes trendy music. AESLING THE SUCCUBUS sits to DARKLOSS’s left wearing one of the flowing white harem dresses from a DRACULA REMAKE that she got for surprisingly little on eBay.]

Darkloss: What about romantic relationships? [He does not look up when asking this question.]

Samid: Highroad? Anything to do with the differences between the genders.

Gary: Lowroad? Talk about anything to do with sex.

Aesling: Say ‘fucking.’ Anything to do with ‘fucking.’ It’ll demean them more.

Darkloss: [Reading as he writes] Lowroad: anything to do with fucking.

[DARKLOSS writes all of this down, including his next question. He appears to be taking dictation of the entire conversation.]

Samid: Do you have a race, ethnicity or nationality?

Gary: I’ve got this. Lowroad: make fun of those who are not your race, ethnicity or nationality. And highroad? Make fun of yours.

Aesling: Is “You Might be a Redneck If” highbrow? I think both roads are pretty dumb here.

Samid: It’s highroad. The alternative is a white guy saying, “You Might be Hispanic If.”

Aesling: I guess you’re not going to find Hegel in stand-up.

[THE PLANET PLUTO orbits over to the table. Though it is an oblate spheroid, it has a designer t-shirt tacked to its equator, one that still has the discount tag attached. It pauses to listen.]

Pluto: What are we doing here?

Aesling: We’re making a how-to list on stand-up comedy.

Gary: The really obvious, generic stuff that fills up almost all of it.

Pluto: You guys saw? That chick sucked tonight.

Aesling: Shut up. We already did the difference between the genders.

Samid: Just had a child? Lowroad: talk about taking care of it for the first time and how this blows your mind, overwhelms you or whatever.

Darkloss: Highroad? Act like it’s just a nuisance or doesn’t matter. Cool-Dad it.

[DARKLOSS resumes writing. PLUTO wedges into the booth next to AESLING and across from SAMID.]

Gary: Do you smoke? Low road: bitch about not being able to smoke anywhere you want.

Samid: What’s highroad?

Pluto: Anecdotes about when you were high?

Samid: Making fun of yourself is a played but viable topic.

Gary: Make fun of yourself. Low road: your habits, job, relationships…

[There is an awkward silence.]

Aesling: The problem with this is the absence of a high road.

Darkloss: I’m putting it down tentatively.

Pluto: What about current events and politics?

Gary: Oh, Samid and I got this one while the open mic comedians were on. Lowroad? He, she, they or it is some variation of “dumb” or “mean.”

Samid: Highroad? Same as the low road, but sound angrier.

Gary: It’s only a perceived highroad.

Samid: But they’re all only perceived highroad, and we think seeming angry might even transcend stand-up. You can go from Lenny Bruce milking indignation all the way to Noam Chomsky being the world’s most quoted intellectual.

Gary: We also did pop culture.

Samid: Have you seen a movie, TV show, book, website, piece of technology and/or celebrity lately?

Gary: It’s actually all low road. Just slander it. This thing’s fans are dumb. It’s dumb. Reading is boring. Nothing on TV is ever good. Too many kids on Facebook. I’m on Facebook and it’s annoying.

Pluto: [To AESLING.] They’re like a tag team.

[AESLING does not appear interested in PLUTO’s advances.]

Aesling: I think there’s highroad here.

Gary: What?

Aesling: Admit you revel in that stuff. Bill Hicks only ripped on Cops after he confessed to watching it all the time. Everything’s dumb and you love it. That’s class.

Samid: For the classless.

Darkloss: If we’re doing Hicks, what about religion?

Aesling: Religion has to be in there. Not only is it the most popular topic, but stand-up comedy has become religion for atheists. They get to stand on an elevated platform above a paying congregation that comes to listen to what they want to hear, cheers at the pauses and gets thrown out of the building if they disagree too much.

Gary: Hey.

Samid: I like it. Instead of communion wine, there’s a two-drink minimum. Lowroad? Point out something implausible that happened in the Bible. It’s amazing how many guys think they’re the first to say Noah’s Ark couldn’t happen. That was clever, when Mark Twain did it in 1910.

Pluto: What’s highroad? Pointing out something shitty that a Christian did?

Aesling: I’m uncomfortable with the highroad being the eighteen thousandth pedophile priest joke.

Samid: We could say the high road is an original thought.

Darkloss: [Reading as he writes] Highroad: Sam Kinison.

[When everyone turns on him, he pulls the paper towards himself]

Darkloss: I have the pen. Fuck you. He made fun of his beliefs. That’s balls, that’s highroad.

Aesling: I’m pretty sure he didn’t believe all—

Samid: This can’t go for all religions. Islam does not get the same treatment as Christianity.

Gary: Because we’ve never heard of it before and we’re afraid you’ll blow us up.

Samid: That right there? The lowroad.

Darkloss: [Not looking up from the pad.] There we go. Islam. Lowroad? Essentially anything Gary has to say.

Samid: While highroad is pointing out that not all Muslims are terrorists, then making a bunch of jokes relating to terrorism anyway.

Aesling: And their mistreatment of women.

Samid: I’m picking up the check, dammit.

Aesling: I was actually talking about Gary and Aryana. Or are we still not talking about them?

[Gary looks down. There is another awkward silence. One that will lasts several months until the next time one of these Strange Company things happens again.]

Bathroom Monologue: Guilty By Nature

[MEGATRAN, a Chinese knockoff of Megatron made from blue plastic instead of white, sits on the right side of the booth. ARYANA sits on the left side wearing a tanned hide pantsuit and nursing a margarita. GRUFF STOVER sits in the center of the booth, his back to the window, wearing a grey sweatshirt and admiring MEGATRAN’s giant plastic cannon.]

Megatran: I'm not a very nice person by nature. It's only by forcing myself to seem nice that I can make it through the day.

Aryana: You're guilty by nature?

Megatran: My mother was Jewish.

[GRUFF looks inside the cannon. His voice echoes out.]

Gruff: I don’t believe that.

Aryana: I think you're nice.

Megatran: I'm really not. I'm judging people constantly. I took a night class in acting just to figure out how to look at people with sympathy. Before that I just stared.

Aryana: You're kidding.

Megatran: I'm not! I love people, but I don't love much about them. They drive me insane, but I want the best for them. The best is a nicer me.

Gruff: Being nice is overrated.

Megatran: I'm a writer. I cannot wait for the day I'm overrated. That means sales and torrents of praise.

Gruff: Torrents of unwarranted praise.

Megatran: And I'm unwarrantedly nice. [Points his non-gun hand at GRUFF] You've been trying to poke holes in my feelings all morning and I'm still giving you a ride to the airport. The least I can get out of it is wealth and legions of fans who should know better.

Gruff: I think you can get less.

Megatran: [Points at GRUFF again] That! Right there!

Aryana: What?

Megatran: When he said that? I judged his smugness, his posture and his crooked teeth.

[GRUFF sits up a little straighter. He purses his lips self-consciously.]

Aryana: Oh you did not.

Megatran: I did. Now he's doing the close-your-mouth thing when somebody reminds you your teeth might be bad. Everybody does it. It's neurotic.

[ARYANA nods. The table hesitates. Then ARYANA closes her lips, hiding her teeth. MEGATRAN stares at ARYANA for a moment, then looks sympathetic.]

Bathroom Monologue: Socrates Vs. The Pigs

[SAMID sits on one side of the booth, wearing a lemon yellow tuxedo. THE PLANETOID PLUTO levitates on the opposite side of the booth, one of its poles poking out from the neck of a blue YALE hoody. MEGATRAN, a Chinese knockoff of Megatron made from blue plastic instead of white, sits at the center of the booth, its back blocking the window. MEGATRAN’s arm cannon sits in the center of the table with fondue bubbling inside. The friends casually dip things into the cannon and eat them during conversation. The fondue glows orange with off-brand energon.]

Pluto: So the Mills thing about pigs fighting Socrates? Can you explain it to me again?

Samid: [Puts head in his hands] God help me.

Megatran: Is this about Mills’s claim contradicting utilitarianism? Because it doesn’t.

Samid: I know he said it didn’t. But that’s not the problem.

Pluto: The pigs are.

[UZ MAROON, the waitress, appears to overhear the thing about swine and stops beside the table. She is wearing a blue and pink stewardess costume including a flight cap.]

Uz: What is this about pigs?

Samid: There is a claim in philosophy that being an unhappy Socrates is better than being a happy pig. The pig is a derogatory stand-in for fools.

Pluto: Which is good, because the pig doesn’t have a choice about becoming Socrates. He’s a pig. He doesn’t even get to choose if he becomes bacon or sausage.

[UZ MAROON does the sane thing and leaves in search of paying customers.]

Megatran: The pig or fool just goes for physical pleasure. What they mean is that it’s better to go for intellectual pleasure.

Samid: Which is actually a front.

Megatran: For what?

Samid: Even before neuroscience we knew the mind and body were inseparable. There is no such thing as a totally physical or mental pleasure. Your mind always registers and processes physical pleasures, and your body chemistry enhances any deep thought by releasing hormones and endorphins. You couldn’t recognize physical pleasures without your mind, and your mind wouldn’t be here if not for your body.

Pluto: A brain alone doesn’t last long on the sidewalk.

[UZ MAROON passes by the table and makes a comment, not breaking her stride.]

Uz: The brain looks a little like a pig. It’s the wrinkles.

Megatran: But intellectual pleasure is superior. It’s the higher pleasure.

Pluto: Isn’t that a front for you saying you like this better and so it’s better?

Samid: Because there is no totally physical or mental pleasure, the division is false. It hinges upon an erroneous dualism.

Pluto: Philosophy loves dualism.

[UZ MAROON passes by the table again and makes another comment, not breaking her stride. She grins at Pluto as she does it this time.]

Uz: You need two sides to start a disagreement.

[PLUTO orbits flirtatiously.]

Pluto: And there’s not much philosophy without disagreements.

Megatran: There are things that are more mental than physical. Fucking and contemplating physics are distinctly different.

Pluto: But why is one inherently better? Why isn’t it just you liking it better?

Samid: Because Mills thought for a living.

Pluto: Sick burn!

Megatran: That’s not true. The higher pleasure leads not only to its own ends, but helps complete or fully completes other pleasures as well. That’s why intellectual pursuits comply with utilitarianism – they’re more useful.

[PLUTO revolves a bit, looking for UZ MAROON. She is nowhere in sight.]

Pluto: So fucking while contemplating physics is a high pleasure?

Samid: Except most intellectual pleasures have never been objectively measured. You’re going on your biased memories of what’s been pleasant or successful.

Megatran: There’s history. The clock, the car and the theory of gravity didn’t come from grabbing ass at a bar or playing videogames until noon.

Pluto: But I have had a lot of sex in cars, so they contributed to the greater good!

Samid: Firstly, that presupposes you aren’t exercising your mental faculties interacting with those women and playing those videogames. Newton came up with gravity while doing drugs with a cult.

Megatran: The discovery was still intellectual!

Samid: That’s because the intellectual is inseparable from the physical. Even the dumbest bastard in this pub is going to think today. You’re stuck on an erroneous dualism.

[UZ MAROON walks by the table and pauses beside PLUTO. The two look at MEGATRAN with apparent pity.]

Pluto: Don’t blame him. He’s an evil robot. He was programmed that way.

Megatran: Don’t pity me! I could crush you, and I cooked lunch in the thing attached to my arm.

Uz: Aw. You’re an unhappy pig!

Megatran: I’m a thinker!

Samid: You think, but like all thinking people, you are bound to reflect on the same things over and over with similar ends. I do it too.

Megatran: Of course you do. That’s why you think everyone else does. But some of us think more than others and we’re better for it.

Samid: Having any consistent value or belief means resting on the same conclusions. Just by positing that an unhappy Socrates was superior to a happy fool, Mills was precluding thought and coming to a permanent conclusion. So is you declaring that thinking is always better. That’s how dogma is born.

Pluto: Dogma, and books by philosophy professors.

Samid: Its mental masturbation, which ironically leads to anger and depressed dispositions. And because they’re thinking redundantly, they’re indulging in nothing more than a physical pleasure that they only think is intellectual. And that makes them unhappy pigs.

Uz: Philosophy makes unhappy pigs?

Samid: If you don’t do something. But that would require the physical.

Pluto: [Orbiting at MEGATRAN] What if he dunks your head in the fondue pot?

Samid: If he thinks about it as well as does it? He probably wins the debate.

[MEGATRAN looks at the fondue pot. SAMID excuses himself and goes to the bathroom. UZ MAROON sits down and asks for PLUTO's number.]

Bathroom Monologue: A Beat Passes

[SAMID sits in the booth by the window, wearing a pink tuxedo. A GIANT BLACK CAT sits next to SAMID, drinking from a saucer of milk; she is the only one who has ordered anything yet. GARY sits across from SAMID, wearing a banana yellow tuxedo that is mildly crumpled. ARYANA sits very close to GARY but is looking away from him, wearing nothing noteworthy to anybody who hasn’t slept with her recently. A beat passes.]

Samid: But I don’t understand, Aryana. She’s almost a hundred years old. Alzheimer’s has eaten almost all her brain. Why do you have to be so cruel to her?

Aryana: It’s not cruel. It’s time she stopped believing that crap.

Samid: She can’t believe anything for more than ten minutes. Can’t you show your mom a little more sensitivity?

Aryana: I’m not letting her delude herself. She needs to face the truth.

[A beat passes.]

Giant Black Cat: Why?

Aryana: Because it’s the truth.

[GARY mumbles something.]

Aryana: What was that?

[A beat passes. ARYANA pushes GARY.]

Arayna: What did you say?

Gary: I asked, when did you start caring about the truth?

Aryana: How dare you?

Gary: Oh please. You’ve got heels on that change your legs, butt and height. You’re wearing stockings despite spending two hours shaving your legs this morning. You’ve got a corset on under the jacket, a wonder bra, blush, eye shadow, and contacts that make your eyes look green instead of blue. Since when have you cared so deeply about the truth?

[A beat passes.]

Samid: How do you know she shaved her legs this morning?

[ARYANA and GARY look away, in opposite directions.]

Samid: Ohhh.

[A beat passes.]

Samid: So that’s where you’ve been all this time, Gary? You and… [SAMID trails off]

Giant Black Cat: Ew.

[GARY does not look at SAMID. A beat passes.]

Samid: Great. Now no one’s talking to each other.

Giant Black Cat: We could talk.

Samid: About what?

[A beat passes.]

Bathroom Monologues: My Muslim Bruthaz

[The restaurant is mostly empty. Green and red streamers are strewn about and Christmas lights are still up on the windows. SAMID sits on one side of the booth in a pink tuxedo and red Santa hat. ARYANA sits on the other side in a chainmail pantsuit and red Santa hat.]

Aryana: "Muzlims."

Samid: It’s actually moose-lahms.

Aryana: Moose-lambs?

Samid: Moose, like the animal. The second syllable is less important, but it’s kind of an ‘a’ sound, with a really soft hint of ‘h.’ Muslim. It was translated into language poorly. Muslims judge how familiar you are with their culture by how you pronounce it.

Aryana: …We spelled their name wrong?

Samid: Both syllables.

Aryana: No wonder we have bad relations with them.

Samid: And then there’s when it’s right to say Muslim or Islam…

Bathroom Monologue: Materialism is the ideal that there are no ideals

[XINHUA sits on one side of the booth in a pink tuxedo. He looks identical to GARY, even in skin tone and the fold of his eyes, yet he has that vague Asianness about him that white people cannot articulate but makes them think he is secretly a ninja. SAMID sits to his left in a pink tuxedo. The planetoid PLUTO, shrunken to the size of a basketball, levitates near the window part of the booth, wearing a “WHERE IS GARY?” t-shirt. CHESTER A. ARTHUR sits alone on the other side of the booth, wearing his usual finery.]

Former President Arthur: The new president is a pragmatist. Look at that stimulus bill. The man gets things done.

Xinhua: My colon gets things done. Just because you do things doesn’t mean you suddenly stop thinking and having ideals. You do things because you’re working towards some idea.

Pluto: Idealism is bound for failure. It deals with what you want rather than what is; it deals with a world that doesn’t exist. Unrealistic nonsense.

Samid: This again. Materialists insult idealism for referring to a world that doesn’t exist, and they have to because their philosophy insults itself by referring to a world that does. Materialism itself is the pettiest idealism: the ideal that there are no ideals. It negates itself even as it insists that we ignore right and wrong, ought and should, let babies starve, the sicker grow weak and wars be fought.

Former President Arthur: Most wars are fought for ideas.

Xinhua: I’m pretty sure wars have been waged for materials. Let me call Africa and get back to you.

Former President Arthur: Only because they had ideas of what to do with those materials.

Samid: Stockpiling disproves that. People build up wealth they have no plans to use.

Xinhua: Because of conscious or unconscious ideas of comfort and security in having those materials. Again, idealism.

Pluto: You realize in arguing for idealism you’ve just said all bank robbers and strip miners are idealists?

Samid: There shouldn’t be a conflict between the two forces. We have ideas about materials. Pragmatism can be put to work for better things, but a world run on it will see high suicide rates. You’ll go insane if all you are is practical.

Pluto: You’ll also eat with greater reliability.

Former President Arthur: Ideals will not feed babies or cure the sick, but they will tell you that you should.

Samid: Without the imaginative compulsion, there is no use for pragmatism, just as there is no use to be effective at anything unless you first admit the appeal of doing it. To pretend that anyone is not made up of some parts pragmatic and some parts idealistic is unpragmatic.

Former President Arthur: If you sincerely believed in the merits of pragmatism, you would not have made your case on such abstract and therefore idealistic grounds. Evidence wins the hearts of a hundred men before one can read the caption.

Samid: You, sir, are a formidable opponent.

Former President Arthur: Thank you, my boy. Now can someone tell me why Gary’s been replaced by a Chinaman?

Bathroom Monologue: Grocer Chat

[GARY sits on one end of the booth in a pink tuxedo. GRUFF STOVER sits on the other side of the booth in red and green flannel. ARYANA between them, back to the window, wearing a chain mail pant suit. GRUFF pushes a bowl of fruit towards GARY. A chair is pulled up to the front of the booth, but no one sits there. His is an absence that weighs upon us all.]

Gary: No.

Gruff: You have to eat healthy.

Gary: The experience of teeth biting into a banana is like that of sinking your boots into thick mud.

Gruff: You’ve been impossible since you took up poetry.

Aryana: Try an apple.

Gary: Don’t kid me. Snow White went down to an apple. Apples kill.

Gruff: It’s like you’re morally opposed to fruit.

Gary: My colon is. It’s not my fault media has conditioned me to not to eat things that fall dead off of trees. Between fairy tale poisons and razor blades hidden in rinds, fruit isn’t trustworthy.

Aryana: He has a point. There’s no haunted candy.

Gruff: Maybe America would lose weight if there were more stories about evil. Butterfingers.

Gary: I doubt that would do it.

Aryana: Also, Gary’s British.

Gruff: Venomous Mars Bars, then.

Bathroom Monologue: Constant Change

[GARY and SAMID sit on one side of the booth, both wearing bright pink tuxedos. ARYANA sits opposite to them in a powder blue chainmail business suit. Her tie is made of folded steel. GRUFF STOVER sits beside her, leaning against the window, wearing tactical camouflage that disguises his body as part of the setting. Only GRUFF’s head is visible.]

Gary: If you don’t experiment, nothing changes.

Samid: I disagree. If you don’t experiment, you have less information with which to change things. Experimentation helps you shape change.

Gary: I think the dinosaurs didn’t experiment on giant rocks, and meteors still changed them out of existence.

Gruff: I don’t think funding rock research would have shaped that annihilation much.

Aryana: The meteor theory is bunk. Disease killed them off.

Samid: If we don’t experiment, we’ll never find which of those two theories are more valid.

Gruff: So people won’t be able to change their opinions.

Gary: Oh, people have always been able to change their opinions without information. That’s what daytime talk shows are for.

Bathroom Monologue: Casper the Friendly Director

[The booth exists not in a bar today, but on the surface of Pluto. GARY sits alone on his side of the booth, wearing an astronaut’s suit. SPIDER, in a spandex superhero costume, and DARKLOSS SOULRIPPER VON ALUCARDIA, in a smoking jacket, sit on the opposite side of the booth. The exposure does not seem to bother the superhero, the vampire or the planet.]

Gary: It’s a dark cartoon. Casper the Dead Child.
Pluto: It’s Casper the Friendly Ghost!
Gary: He’s the ghost of a child. How do you think that happened? It’s bleak.
Darkloss: It’d make Hitchcock cry.
Spider: I always thought Casper looked like Hitchcock. Pot-belly, round-faced, and something about the eyes.
Pluto: Maybe he is the ghost of Alfred Hitchcock, who secretly died as a boy.
Darkloss: That’s why he was so emotionless in all those movie trailers and intros. He was actually a husk.
Pluto: A borderline zombie.
Spider: It’s an attitude that makes handling diva actresses a lot easier.
Gary: Plus, look at all the movies he did with Jimmy Stewart. Don’t exactly need an ace director to get that to work.
Pluto: Then it’s settled. Casper is the ghost of the true Alfred Hitchcock.
Gary: That sounds surprisingly less bleak than any of the components that brought us to that conclusion would have made me think.
Spider: I wonder who the little witch he hangs around with is…

Bathroom Monologue: Admiring Gruff’s rifle

[Three of them sit at the bar. Well, two are sitting. PLUTO, in miniature form, floats above the left-most bar stool. DARKLOSS SOULRIPPER VON ALUCARDIA sits on the right-most bar stool, in a cloak so massive we can’t even be sure it’s him, since we’re looking from behind. In the middle sits GRUFF STOVER, wearing a Kevlar bodysuit. GRUFF’s long-barreled bolt-action rifle sits against the bar, on his right. All three are admiring the rifle.]

Gruff: Oh, about a mile and a half away in good weather.

Darkloss: Damn.

Pluto: And you can live with that?

Gruff: I can live with the five mistresses, the penthouse and the premium Netflix plan one job a year sustains.

Darkloss: Why five mistresses?

Gruff: Same reason I have Netflix.

Pluto: I want to high five you so badly right now.

Darkloss: No hands and you aren’t a planet.

Pluto: It’s hard.

Bathroom Monologue: Utters and Cans

[GARY sits on one side of the booth in a lime green tuxedo, minus the bowtie. SAMID sits to his right in a banana yellow tuxedo, wearing two bowties, one banana yellow, one lime green. ARYANA sits on the opposite side of the booth in a chainmail tuxedo. A miniature version of the planetoid PLUTO floats in an ambient purple light between ARYANA and SAMID. GRANDPA sits at the head of the booth in a chair he stole from the bar, wearing overalls and lobster bib.]

Samid: It can’t have been that bad.
Gary: Her orgasm couldn’t have been faker if it had come out of a can.
Aryana: You should hold off for some good religious sex. Nothing like a bar next to a Catholic church the day after Lent. Nobody fakes anything when they’re that desperate.
Samid: You go to church? I thought you were a polytheist.
Aryana: I made out with a preacher and caught mono. His tongue was very convincing.
Pluto: There you go, Gary. Make out with a preacher.
Gary: I don’t want to be converted that way.
Grandpa: Back in my day if you had a cowgirl fetish you banged a girl in chaps and a hat. These days if you’ve got a cowgirl fetish she’s probably got utters and only exists on deviantart.
Samid: What would we do without you, grandpa?
Grandpa: Burn in a Hell of centaur fetishes and estimations of celestial mass!
Pluto: I miss being a planet…

Bathroom Monologue: Some jokes are below even me

[GARY sits on a chair at the head of the booth in a purple pinstripe suit; SPIDER sits on one side of the booth in a spandex superhero costume; GRUFF STOVER sits next to SPIDER, wearing desert camouflage; and AJA the GIANT FLOATING EYEBALL floats on the other side of the booth, alone. AJA has pink eye.]

Gary: It all comes down to the same: life sucks, and then you die!
Aja: Are you sure that's all? I'm pretty sure I had a turkey club somewhere in there.
Gary: The turkey club is overshadowed by the mass of disappointments in the rest of your life.
Aja: I don’t think you’ve had this turkey club.
Spider: And sex.
Stover: I like sex.
Gary: I like getting it, but the pursuit takes forever. It’s a lopsided venture: days of romancing and paying for dinner for five minutes in the sack.
Spider: Five minutes?
Stover: I think we’ve figured out why you haven’t been enjoying it.
Gary: I get bored. I walked out on it once to make a sandwich.
Aja: A turkey club?
Gary: Fried egg sandwich, actually. I suddenly really wanted one.
Spider: Well there. Sex and a sandwich in an hour.
Gary: Half hour, actually.
Stover: Neither accounted for in your philosophy of life sucking and dying, Horatio.
Aja: Sucking can count in-
Aja, Gary and Stover: No.

Bathroom Monolouge: Do the trains run on time from southern Mongolia?

[DARKLOSS SOULRIPPER VON ALUCARDIA sits on one side of the booth wearing a three-piece grey suit and a giant, sentient red cape, the ends of which are chewing on the upholstery. ARYANA sits on the opposite side of the booth wearing a chain-mail bikini that can be neither practical nor comfortable. GRUFF STOVER sits to her left in desert camouflage. SAMID sits to his left, wearing a spandex superhero costume that looks identical to SPIDER’s, and thus leaves one with the epistemological question of how we know it is SAMID.]
Darkloss: It’s semantically deceptive. Light has little or no substance and certainly can’t cut, so the blade can’t be made of light. “Sabre” specifically refers to a class of swords with one cutting edge and one dull edge, but the lightsabre’s entire surface cleaves. So you see it’s neither made of light, nor is it a sabre.
Aryana: Why do you hate fun?
Darkloss: I don’t…
Samidider: Why can I tell you spell saber with an “re” just by listening to you?
Stover: And why does that make me want to hit you?
Aryana: Why do bad things happen to good people?
Stover: If all matter is indestructible and uncreatable, merely constant, then where did it come from?
Samidider: Who is your favorite president, what is the worst thing he ever did in office, and how do you reconcile yourself?
Aryana: Why didn’t my father stay?
Samidider: Is “why” a real question, or a mutation of speech habits that survived on such luck that it utterly disproves natural selection even as it proves its mechanisms?
Stover: If a train leaves Beijing at 1:00 A.M. GMT, and a second train traveling at twice the speed of Train A departs from northern Mongolia, how long does a third train departing from southern Sweden…
[DARKLOSS flees from the table screaming]
Aryana: It was about time.
[The remaining three nod and return to eating their strawberry frosted shredded mini-wheats.]
Stover: By the way, Spider. Good questions. You been reading?
Samidider: Only doujinshi.
Aryana: Those have come a long way.

Bathroom Monologue: Dumb Things Break People Up

[GARY sits in the booth, wearing a pink tuxedo. ??? sits across from him in a black pantsuit. They are both read faced. Neither has touched their drinks.]
???: Why do you always turn everything into a joke?
Gary: I don't. Most things can stay the way they are. But some things, like this? They deserve it. I've been trying to get you to just crack a smile for years and you're still a saggy, frowny bitch. That? That I want to make into a joke.
???: That's not funny!
Gary: And neither are you. My point exactly.
???: You have to take some things seriously. Be an adult.
Gary: I don’t see a lot of eleven-year-old stand-up comics. It seems to me that humor is an adult thing. Crying? Getting pissy? Those are the things a two-year old does.
???: Laughter isn’t going to pay the bills! You can’t just laugh this off.
Gary: You can’t fight this off, either. We’re fighting right now and all I want to do is walk out the door. People who laugh together want to stay together.
???: That’s typical of you.
Gary: And that’s typical of everybody else. Seriousness is the cliché. At least I’m original.
[GARY looks out the window. ??? exits. After a moment, GARY looks around.]
Gary: When is everyone else going to get here?

Bathroom Monologue: Next, Giant Scorpions

Stu: Get up.
Spider: I was just chased for twelve miles by giant wolves. I never want to get up again.
Stu: You have to. Giant snakes are attacking the house.
Spider: What are the odds?
Stu: It happened, so 100%.
Spider: Is that how it works?
Stu: Well, there are two ways of looking at probability. You could form an algorithm out of all the cases of people being chased by giant wolves and then by giant snakes, and take into account habitats and how the two problems might be linked such that you have a probability quotient of something like zero point one three to the negative thousandth power percent. Or you can take into account that something does or does not happen, and thus has a zero or one hundred percent chance of happening.
Spider: Interesting. But now my hair is on fire.
Stu: We should go.

Bathroom Monologue: Noun Challenge with Strange Company

[ARYANA sits along the bar in an impractical chainmail bikini guaranteed to piss off feminists; THE INSULTINGLY BLAND SCOTT sits to her left in a t-shirt and jeans; THE JOKER sits to his left in a red vest and slops, sipping an empty martini glass; SPIDER sits to his left in a spandex superhero costume, eyeing THE JOKER warily, even though his mask has no eyeholes.]

Scott: So I thought Ledger stole the movie.
Joker: I liked Eckhart better. More believable.
Spider: And really, it’s too broad a film with too much quality work in the lighting, soundtrack and performances of the whole cast, even in bit roles, for it to be able to be stolen by a single performance.
Scott: But he was so awesome! His laugh gave me the creeps, and he made Nicholson look like a--
Joker: [Glaring at Scott] Listen, you market-tested middle-American pea brain, if you don’t shut up about him I will puncture your larynx with a plastic cocktail sword. [Looking at Spider] If he’s good, I’ll do it with a penknife.
Spider: I always thought Mark Hamill had the best laugh.
Joker: Me too. Had real panache.
Aryana: [Leaning forward to look at Joker] What are you doing here?
Joker: Infringing copyrights, mostly.
Aryana: Oh.
Spider: But he’s wearing a red vest as to avoid being too similar and getting us sued.
Scott: Top work.
Joker: Did you know that my sidekick was drugging me?
Spider: Where is she?
Joker: Hospitalized. Took a chunk of volcanic pumice to the forehead after the tragedy at the Kentucky Derby.

Bathroom Monologue: The Bough Breaks

[GARY and SAMID sit on opposite sides of the booth, each in banana yellow tuxedos, both reading menus; AJA the GIANT FLOATING EYEBALL levitates beside SAMID, wearing a central retinal artery knotted like a bowtie, reading the menu over his shoulder; ARYANA in platemail, sitting on the windowseat beside GARY, trying to make out the chalkboard house specials; and GRUFF STOVER, inexplicably shrunken to six inches in height, with a miniature rifle and plastic cocktail sword across his lap, sitting on ARYANA’S armored shoulder. All are silent for a minute.]
Samid: If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there, does it make a noise?
Aryana: Yes, because your hypothetical only exists in our minds, and in my mind it made a noise.
Aja: If not, why did the birds fly away?
Stover: It invariably causes a massive disturbance that results in the vibrations that we identify as noise. It’s a technicality to say it’s not noise.
Gary: Pretty much like calling a piano not a piano just because you don’ see it falling out a third storey window.
[All look out the window. A beat passes. They resume reading the menus.]

Bathroom Monologue: Hot House Honey

[GRUFF STOVER sits on one side of the booth in camo gear with a sniper rifle over one shoulder; DARKLOSS SOULRIPPER VON ALUCARDIA sits across from GRUFF in Renaissance-era clothing and a massive, puffy cape; GARY sits next to DARKLOSS, almost falling out of the booth thanks to the cape. GRUFF is making a point and waving his fork.]

Gruff: She's a hot house flower. Won't last in the real world.
Gary: What the Hell is that?
Darkloss: The analogy of the hot house flower is something or someone who can't survive outside a special environment. The flower can't thrive in the wild. It will wilt. It's not really strong in humanless nature. Same goes for certain people, especially the innocent and naïve. They either change or die in the real world. There's no defense for them. They have to change.
Gary: We build a Hell of a lot of hot houses, don't we?
Gruff: Yeah, but--
Gary: If we do it for flowers we like, shouldn't we shell out for decent people?
Gruff: It's not a matter of money.
Darkloss: Then what?
Gary: Just be nice to them? That seems easier than building green houses. And I like nice people better than flowers. In fact, they're kind of the people I buy flowers for.
Darkloss: Them, and the really naughty people.
Gary: Can we grow those in greenhouses, too?