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.
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