Chapter 11 warm-up

Setting: Two strangers on a bench in Central Park.
Characters: Eve, a dancer; sober and contemplative.
                   Richard, a dirtbag; boisterous and choleric.
Richard: (sits down, puts hands to his eyes) God damn it. Women. Am I right? (Sees he's seated
                next to a woman, only temporarily flustered. He puts his hands back to eyes.)
Richard: I was just pepper-sprayed is what happened. Totally unwarranted. I thought a
               nonverbal agreement had been met.
Eve: Clearly you were mistaken. (Continues looking down and away.)
Richard: Now just because a woman says she wants nothing to do with me, that I look like a quote
               date-rape specialist, that she would rather be subjected to hours of William Buckley's
               "Firing Line" program than be near me any longer, is that really an indication that she
                doesn't wish to mate with me. You have to admit, this women's lib shit is getting out
                of hand; political correctness gone mad, etc.
Eve: God. You really are a presumptuous little shit, aren't you. (Continues to look away.)
Richard: (Hands at his sides.) Listen, all I'm saying is that is eugenics all that bad? Shouldn't we be
               able to have this discussion like adults. Freedom of speech!
Eve: Personally, I'm past the point of debate when it comes to the views of neo-nazis. And the liberals
        who naively sympathize with your disingenuous and fraudulent calls for free speech is reductive
        and disregards the immediacy and urgency, the primacy really, of free protest coexisting
        alongside views like yours that clearly have violence as an end goal; it's bigotry that easily
        grows arms and fists and triggers. The violence of the oppressed and the violence of the
        oppressors aren't equal, and in fact aren't in the same sphere.
Richard: I'll be honest: I stopped listening. Your views are probably valid, if a bit undeveloped,
              incomplete. None of that matters. You're a social justice warrior, and for some my
              subset of mouth breathing colleagues have deemed that wanting to make the world a
              better place through collective struggle as a thing to look down upon and be belittled
              merely because no one wants to mate with us, and our silly nihilism is easier than
              engaging in reality. (He rubs his eyes again. Looks over at Eve as she continues to look
              away.)
Richard: Would you want to mate with me? I'm terribly out of shape and it would be a hideous
               display of the cruelty of heterosexuality.
Eve: (Gets up. Her shiny tap shoes are visible. She closes her eyes, delicate classical music
         starts playing. She begins to dance expertly but out of step with the music playing.)
         Misandry is excusable. Nay, sublime. And vital. (Still dancing.) It's not a cure but I'm not
         if a cure is foreseeable, outside of radicalization.
Curtain closes.

Try this 8.12

      Outside at a protest, with people spread all over in the background, in the foreground stand three people facing each other in the cold. One is a small woman, twenties, dark blonde hair wrapped in a bun, with large headphones on, wires connecting to her phone, carrying a large gray backpack on her back and a microphone boom held under her left arm; her face is unseen, her back to us. Directly across from her, five feet away, to her right, is a middle aged father-looking type, literally dressed exactly like my dad: loose fitting jeans, athletic shoes even though he's clearly not exercising, a lifeless, fashionless brown jacket zipped up to the neck, collar down and a beat up baseball hat and unneeded sunglasses; he is facing the girl. In between these two stands a man looking dazed (and confused) facing us, his face bloodied and gashed, his left eye swelling slightly; half a foot taller than either companion, he is wearing khaki cargo pants, a hooded sweatshirt, a stretched fanny pack drooping around his fat waist and an unkempt red t-shirt with, in white lettering, the very literal and reactionary phrase "Trump is my president." All along the insides of this third man's cargo pants are the large, dark, wet stains of what can only be construed as urine.
      Speculation is, in this case easy. I know the situation all too well. "Normies" and Trump supporters who've never attended a rally (other than a weekend klan meeting/safe space) or protest, come to these events with their usual male bravado yet unshaken, ready to cause trouble. This Trumper had such intentions of disturbing peaceful protesters. What he doesn't know is that the people attending this protest are not all snowflake resistance liberals who love Hillary. No, a lot of them are veteran anarchists who have been burning limos and punching nazis half their lives; they are anti-fascists and they will not hesitate to kick your ass. So this terribly confused Trump supporter hassles some liberal kids, pushes a few of them around, grabbing them by their hoods and backpacks, babbling about terrorists and George Soros probably and the anti-fascists, dressed in all black, their uniform, get word of this disturbance. They rush to these kid's defense and start wailing on this fanny pack-wearing dirtbag, I mean really laying in punches hard to this guy's face and to his stomach. He collapses and a dark wetness starts growing on the inside track of his pants. This grown man, outside of his Trump rally safe space, is peeing his pants he's so scared of getting knocked on by a few twenty-something radicals. Now surrounded by two media professionals, one girl, one man of a similar middle age, the Trumper is relaying his side of events, clearly lying and clearly trying to pretend he didn't piss himself like a pre-schooler. This is what happens when a closed-off mind, fed on a diet of bigotry and misogyny, conspiracy theories and the minds of other idiots who don't leave the basement, finally arrives at the real world for the first time. My advice: go back to the fake world you know, old man; trust me when I say, the new world has no place for your kind and the debates are now over.