Bring It

Common Grounds in Lexington is a warm, brick environment with great coffee.  There is a main room with cafe tables and chairs and then two little rooms that have furniture more like what you find in a living room.  There is artwork on all of the walls and much if it is really nice.  The day I went, there were a lot of students at work.  There is also a piano in a corner whose exterior has been artfully decorated with paint.  It's on High St.  It's great.

A:  Did you bring it?
B:  What?  Oh, yeah, yeah.  Of course I did.
A:  Where is it?
B:  Uh...
A:  Did you fucking forget it?
B:  No, no, I got it . . . I just -
A:  Did you lose my -
B:  No!
A:  Marshall, I am going to kick your ass from here to Main Street if you don't soon produce my blouse.
B:  I don't have the blouse.

A:  What?!
She explodes into beating pounding fists on his cowering back and shoulders.
A: You sonofabitch you sonofabitch yousonofa SON OF A SON OF A FUCKING WHORE BITCH.
B:  Aah aah ah!!!  Okay!  Enough.
He uses his actual strength and shoves her off.  She is flung to the wall where she sinks to her butt.
B:  Now, I am bigger than you and stronger than you and I am not afraid to hit a girl.
A:  Well, I am not afraid to kick a guy in his tiny balls.
B:  That was unnecessary.  And untrue.
A is silent.
B:  Now, do I have your attention?
A:  No.
B:  Good.  Your blouse has been confiscated.
A:  Excuse me?
B:  Taken.
A:  Taken.
B:  Yes, I didn't lose it, it's been taken.
A:  By whom?
B:  I'm not sure, but I think some Sig Eps.
A:  Marshall, when's the last time you had your balls kicked?
B:  I'm taking that as rhetorical.
A:  Well, it is rhetorical and only relevant if you've forgotten the pain associated with ball-kickage.
B:  Sit down.  You're not going to kick me in the balls and you know it.
A:  I might.
B:  Shut it, Berry.
A:  Berry?
B:  Bunny?  What's your name?
A:  Bambi!
B:  Bambi!  I knew it was something -
A:  Get back to the blouse!
B:  Shh!  Okay.  It was in my room, it had not been laundered, and when I got home from the soccer game last night, it was gone.
A:  What do I have to do to get it back.
B:  I think you're going to have to admit that you slept with me.
Pause.
Bambi throws up.
B:  That was dramatic.
She wipes her mouth and stands up.
B:  Do you want some water?
A:  Do you have some?
B:  Yeah.
He hands her a bottle of water from his back-pack.
She takes a swig and hands it back.
B:  No thanks, it's yours.  I'm trying not to take this too hard.
A:  Take it hard, Marshall.  It's hard.
B:  What -
A:  I don't like you.  Not in that way.
B:  You seduced me remember?
A:  No that was eight cans of Busch Light that seduced you.  And I want my freaking blouse back.
B:  Yeah, well I want my T-shirt back.  The one you snuck off in.
Bambi takes a neatly folded T-shirt out of her purse and throws it at him.
A:  It's washed.
B:  Thanks.
She leaves.
He smells the T-shirt.


**  Note:  This bit of dialogue was created using an exercise by Arthur Kopit from the book The Playwright's Workout.  I asked my students to do the exercise and decided to do one myself.  I messed it up because I didn't follow rule #2, but it's what I got and I will make another one someday.
Here are Arthur's guidelines (simplified):
"The short play you about to write only has two characters, called A and B . . .   I do not mean that A and B are their real names . . . It simply means that you, the writer, do not know what your characters' actual names are when you begin.  In fact, it's possible you may not even know them when you're done.
Rule 1
You are to write a short, two character play, but you are not to know what your characters' names are when you begin!  In fact, you shouldn't even know their gender, or age, or where all this is taking place, or even what time of day it is. . . you must know absolutely nothing about these characters or the play itself when you begin.
With one exception:  the first line.  You do know the first line, and the first line is:
A:  (To B.)  Did you bring it?
And you take it from there, writing on until the scene seems to you to be done.


Rule 2.
Whatever the "it" is that A is referring to, it must not be identified by name in the course of the scene.
...
And what exactly is the purpose of all this?  For those of you haven't figured it out by now, it's to explore your intuition.  I want you to see what happens when you write from instinct, not logic or conscious design."