Written by Louis Thomas
Illustrated by Anonymous
Partly inspired by a Miranda July short story of the same name.
Transitions are indicated with hyphens but will be facilitated by music and lighting.
Women enter the stage from stage left; she taps the button on the security alarm and holds. She waits for a moment and then seats herself across the stage at a desk covered by paper, with a framed picture of the pope. A moment passes as she orders her thoughts, when the sound of a key in the lock becomes audible, another person enters through the door but does not press the button on the security alarm:
Sam: Oh Yes, Hiya!
Esme: hi! oh wait Sam can you press —
Security alarm starts to blare, filling the stage with piercing sirens.
Sam: Oh fuck!
Esme: SAM!
Sam: HOW DO I TURN IT OFF?!
Esme: JUST PRESS THE BUTTON WITH THE HOUSE ON IT, I TOLD–
There is an attempt
Sam: WHAT?
Esme: THE HOUSE, THE HOUSE
Sam: looks stunned, scrabbling with the alarm
Esme: SAM THE HOUSE (gestures a roof over her head, whilst standing up from her desk, spilling paper over the floor)
Esme: HOUSE
Sam: HOUSE, HOUSE (presses button) ITS NOT WORKING
Esme: HOLD IT DOWN (shouting from her hands and knees trying to reorder her papers)
Sam: I AM (starts punching the security alarm)
Esme: STOP IT!
Coming over, pushing Sam out of the way, and holding down the button
Sam and Esme eye up each other, Esme is visibly put out, Sam looks sheepish for a moment
Sam: HOW ARE YOU?
Esme: JUST WAIT I CANT HEAR YOU
Sam: (mouthing) How are you?
Esme: WAIT
Sam waits then begins to laugh.
Sam: (laughing) I LOVE THIS SONG!
Begins to dance a jaggedy, techno esq dance in time with the pulses of the siren
Esme: WHAT?!?
Sam: I LOVE THIS SONG! (Dancing still, Esme begins to smile, Sam takes her hands trying to get her to dance, unsuccessfully)
Alarm cuts off mid dance move
Sam: thank fuck
Esme: quite the entrance
Sam: sorry, sorry, I know you told me, I thought you were joking when you said you’d installed a security system. (Sam wraps her arms around Esme)
Esme: that would be an odd joke
Sam: (enjoying hug) hmmm
Esme: You never read my text messages
Sam: that’s because I can’t read at all, aren’t security systems for people with things worth stealing?
Esme: (releasing herself from hug) I’m not worried about the robber, I’m just trying to be safe
Sam: (laughing at Esme’s turn of phrase) the robber? What about the killer?/
Esme: and by the way there is a lot of things worth stealing in this flat
Sam: too true, you live in the poshest place I’ve ever seen, (Taking in the room) no one is coming to get you, it’s a very safe area, though you could maybe tone down the gold of it all.
Esme: I’m not worried about someone getting in
Sam: your worried about someone getting out?!
Esme: yes. No. Stop it!
Esme turns her attention back to the papers on the floor,
Sam: is that the pope?
a sound begins to play, and the lights change to focus on Sam —–
Sam Monologue 1:
Looking into the pope’s face, stroking it lightly.
I’m horny, which is frustrating because me being horny is Esme’s least favourite thing about me. Sometimes she looks at me like I’m a zoo animal. Like when we used to go dancing
Dance demonstration, making friends
I’d love to sidle up to people, get in there, feel the warmth and when I look over, Esme pulls one of these
Dance demonstration, peering, judging by leaning forward, then snapping back to the slow, awkward, horrific sidestep
All the energy I used to put into being good at stuff now just goes into being horny. I’m as poor as ever, I don’t have a real job, and I’m gagging at the bit. Which is a ridiculous combination because it’s a very poor thing to feel. To need something like that, or to have to want something before getting it. Esme doesn’t do that.
She could never live so precariously, because she’s rich, and rich people have a complete incapacity to live in the present.
Its in the way they talk
(Whilst saying these lines Sam mimes tying a noose around her neck)
“And what school were you at? Oh really, Westminster, is really very good, my friend Mimi went there, oh yes, she was terribly naughty boarder ahuh ahuh”
or
“what are you doing after this? Any plans for the next few years, well of course I have signed my contract with blagblah already, oh yes Venezweelah is great this time of year, terribly slow trains, but really rewarding work”
(And hangs)
After leaving home I lost my friends, they misunderstood my feeling that there must be a better life than on our the estate, as me thinking I was better than them, and I don’t and I’m not.
It’s not having poor mates that makes me horny, I do think about other things, but I can’t talk about anything else, having a body is like the only thing me and Esme have in common.
—-
Sam: how did you lose your virginity?
Esme: oh, its weird
Sam: It can’t be that weird, I’ve heard it all
Esme: well
Sam: Yes? (leaning over and grabbing Esme’s hands)
Esme: When I was like 12 or 13, I got my first period
Sam: so far so normal
Esme: yeah, well, I wasn’t ready, I don’t know why but I really hated pads, they made me feel heavy, like I was wearing a nappy again, so mummy told me to start using tampons which would have been great, except I couldn’t fit them in
Sam: oh la la
Esme: something about my haemin being too thick
Sam: oh no
Esme: So, my mum took me to the doctor, and they said that my haemin was too thick –
Sam: no
Esme: and that it needed to be removed, surgically
Sam: no
Esme: so I guess, I lost my virginity then, in the strict sense, to that doctor, when she surgically removed my haemin
Sam: Fantastic!
Esme: medically deflowered.
Sam: I suppose that’s why you’re a lesbian
Esme: I’m not sure that’s how it works
Sam: I think I broke my haemin with a makeup brush, It didn’t hurt though so maybe I never had one.
Esme: I know a girl who broke hers whilst horse riding, and when that horse died, she had a spontaneous orgasm.
Sam: I cannot do anything with anecdotes about horse riding
Esme: Classist
Sam: I don’t think that counts as loosing your virginity
Esme: do you think that one day you’ll have a spontaneous orgasm at a Sephora?
Sam: no, maybe a Boots but not a Sephora. Did they let you keep it?
Esme: what?
Sam: the haemin?
Esme: ew! No!
———- This transition needs to be facilitated by the same sound that indicates the ghost’s presence
Esme monologue 1:
I’m haunted. I’m being haunted. Every time she appears it feels like déjà vu, or like when you walk into a familiar smell and its disorienting, because you can’t remember what you’re remembering. It’s more than nostalgia. Its concrete. I can remember her from before, I’m always alone, and when it’s over, I am left with a warmth like love. But also, like fear. Like I’ve wet myself. My whole body shakes.
I don’t know for how long we’ve owned this flat. I don’t know whose ghost this is. I’ve seen her again, just the back of her head, moving from the front door to the window. The alarm was meant to keep her out, or in, I don’t know. Sometimes I think she looks like me, and then sometimes she looks like my uncle.
I constantly wonder if I’ve made her up, like with Sam, like how Sam doesn’t feel real, but Sam is real, Sam’s too strange, too sweet to come from my mind alone. She’s always talking, saying things that distract me, make me forget, stuff like:
Sam: you know the other day I saw this drawing of a white cat that had been poured into a glass and the kid who drew it had called it “meowlk”
Esme: or like
Sam: the name Emerald Fennel, is just two shades of green
Esme: Or like, (To Sam) Sam, you remember that girl, Zoe, we went to uni with, the one who just won that award
Sam: yes, she was cool, I liked her book about Nun Suicide, a bit weird but good
Esme: I think she’s awful
Sam: Well yeah, she once referred to me as “rags to riches” when we got the same grade, but I thought she was okay, misunderstood
Esme: I think she had a little bit of evil in her
Sam: Oh yeah?
Esme: like a bit of green glass lodged in her heart
Sam: oh god! Bit harsh es
Esme: no, it’s a relief really, knowing that being awful wasn’t her fault, she just had evil in her, it must happen all the time.
Sam: you remind me of her a bit you know, not the evil part, you’re both writers
Esme: you’re just saying that because we have similar hair
Sam: No! it’s the talent
Esme: I’m not like her, I don’t work that hard
Sam: you do sometimes
Esme: yeah, I do sometimes
Sam: sometimes making something leads to nothing, doesn’t make it bad
Esme: I already have “nothing”
Sam: you have me
Esme:
We met soon after I first saw it, whilst working at the bookshop on campus. Sam had charmed her way into the job no doubt, my uncle owned the store. She ignored me because of that for a long time, until she quit. It was a Thursday and this customer had come in, asking after books on techno feudalism, he looked completely normal, but had an awful BO smell, which I didn’t think was enough reason to raise any alarm bells, but it really was intense, it wrapped around every shelf we had, the pages would crinkle with revulsion if they could.
He was looking at the books on techno feudalism, whilst Sam was filing orders upstairs, when he fell over, straight down like a plank, onto his face. I was frozen. Sam ran over, brushing past me and started talking to him, asking if he could feel his left arm, looking back at me for reassurance, looking at me.
The thing was that he wasn’t having a stroke, he was licking the floor like a dog. Lick lick licking and then looking up at Sam for a few seconds and then Lick Lick Lick. I started to really worry then, that maybe this man wasn’t well, dangerous even, so I dialled 999 under the desk. Sam was swearing when he started saying, “don’t call me sir, call me dog, you need to get a collar for me before I escape” and Sam really couldn’t stand that. She came up to me, hung up my call for the ambulance. She said, “if he stands up with a boner I’m going to fucking quit”, and so she did. We became friends after that; it was easier for her to be around me when she didn’t live off my uncle’s money.
——- back to opening
Sam: Esme, is this the pope?
Esme: yes, that is the pope
Sam: is that a suit of armour?
Esme: yes, that is a suit of armour
Sam: I think I had a nightmare in a place like this
Esme: well, since I live here for free, I am not making many complaints about her interior design choices
Sam: I wish I had a dead aunt
Esme: You do have a dead aunt
Sam: She’s no good, she was broke
Esme: christ Sam, how’s work?
Sam: I hate it and I wish I would die
Esme: I remember you saying that you loved it and wished you would live
Sam: true, actually something very exciting is happening at the pub, they’re building a pizza oven in the —
Floorboards creaking loudly, eery wind sound, Sam drops photo of the Pope.
Sam: What was that?
Esme: uh
Sam: that’s one mean draft. Does that happen often?
Esme: yes
Sam: but we’re in a block of flats
Esme: it happens when something pisses her off
Sam: her?
Esme: the ghost
Sam: the ghost. why would my pub building a pizza oven piss the ghost off?
Esme: Its not always as clear as that, I think she reacts to energies, you have an intense energy, she was very conservative.
Sam: (concerned) Esme?
Esme: (defiant) Sam?
Sound of the wind continues blending into phone ringing sound
Sam monologue 2:
Phone picks up when Sam speaks
When we were at uni, I would call her straight after I’d had sex, about these boys I’d bring to my halls, like this guy Pablo, who was awful and wouldn’t stop talking about this film he had made, really self-obsessed, it was a film about a man who had a talking penis, like the hole where the wee comes out would be moving and telling him to do things, I have no idea what,but it must have been pretty existential because he would get all melancholy when he was telling me about it, and couldn’t really get it up, which is fine and normal, but he had these huge hands, hands as big as a Guinness world record book, and so he just fingered me with his thumb, thumbing me like this (making a cup like shape with her hand) like I was a puppet
Esme: Right
Sam: she would say, or like this other time with Harry, who’s willy was so big, that he said he didn’t really enjoy sex because when he got hard he started to feel faint, since all the blood has rushed from his head to his dick
Esme: I see
Sam: she would say, or that time when I went for a pint with this guy Oscar and he said really quietly, (mumbling) “its really small by the way”, and I said what? And he said “oh don’t worry about it”, and I said “did you just say its really small by the way”, and he squirmed in a way I really liked, but when we did it he said he wanted to make me bleed, which I didn’t like, so I kicked him out was quite mean, mean about the size of his penis. Esme liked ones like that, when I was mean as I spoke, I could hear her breath speeding up, getting heavier, sharper, until she’d finished herself off, until she’d come, and then I would just listen to her breath for a bit, and say, “I love you” and then she’d hang up.
Receiver puts down
—
Esme monologue 2:(‘knock’ made with a click of the tongue)
It started like a knock on the door, which is what I imagine anxiety is like for most people, you walk around your day as normal and if you have something on your mind it might knock on the door once or twice, knock like a postman. Then maybe the next stage is when you have something that needs to be done, like an exam or a confrontational conversation, so the knocking increases, knock, knock, knock, like an impatient postman, which isn’t nice but motivates you to get the thing out of the way. Then there’s more of that knock knock knock knock and then there’s what I have, where the knocking stops being knocking and becomes more like a thrum, a constant carousel of the same worry coming back and back and back again like a rolling drum beat. When it started, I made garlands to hang around my bed that said “hello ghostie”, “I mean you no harm ghostie”, but it didn’t work, acknowledging I could hear her knocking just made it louder, the ghost didn’t go away, she kept slamming doors, moving my things, changing the pope’s face in his picture. I have all this family going back for centuries, and they’ve left me completely alone with all their history, and all their money, their stuff. I can’t stand it. Sam’s here because, maybe, the ghost will like her better. Take her instead of me. I’ve often dreamt of Sam dying, and how it would ruin my life, and the absolute serenity I’d feel if it did.
—
Sam: I wanted to show you this song, doesn’t it sound like your alarm
Esme: so it does
Sam manoeuvres herself over to Esme, dancing, first playfully, lifting up her hair. Moving down Esme’s body slowly, it starts to feel sensual, Esme is not into it, shrugging her off, as Sam descends, leaving Sam knelt centre stage.
Esme: No! Don’t be so transparent Sam, you’re going to piss of the ghost again, she’s a Catholic.
Sam: (toying with a note of spite) you’re insane.
Sam scoffs unconvincingly, as Esme leaves stage right, Sam puts her hand down her pants, feeling herself, singing gently with the music…
until off stage a door slams, and there is another gust of wind, the ghost meddling with things in the house. Sam sits up, looking terrified, freeing her hand from her pants, looking over her shoulders for the ghostly presence in the room
Sam: (In disbelief, picking up the photo of the pope next to her) no!
