A Play

Morges, Switzerland

ACT TWO

The doctor’s office at 2pm a month later

ACT THREE

The doctor’s office at 5pm another month later

ACT FOUR

A party

SCENE.The doctor’s office in the morning. Nowadays. The office could be in Lausanne, Rome, Paris, Buenos Aires, or San Francisco.

DOCTOR. Sit wherever you’d like to. (The patient takes the chair without looking at the couch. Neither says anything for a few seconds. The patient looks at the lithograph

PATIENT. Nice picture.

DOCTOR. You like it? Are you interested in art?

PATIENT. Nice word.

DOCTOR. What?

PATIENT. Art. If I knew what it was I might be interested in it.

DOCTOR. You don’t know what art is?

PATIENT. No. And as far as I can tell neither does anybody else. One man’s art is another man’s fart. One man’s Mona Lisa is another man’s toilet paper. I love Rigoletto. My kids hate it. They love Rapoletto. I hate it. I love Matisse. You like Calder. Some people like blue. Others like pink. Show me one common characteristic of everybody who call himself an artist and I’ll buy you an ice cream cone.

(pause)

DOCTOR. Maybe art is anything creative.

PATIENT. Maybe. Maybe we all create at every moment, like ourselves for instance. Everything living is always doing something - dreaming, snoring, talking, barking, chewing its cud, writing, painting, playing the trumpet, sitting on a park bench. Who’s to say what’s creative and what’s not. How can any living being not create. Even if it’s just dirty carbon dioxide that blows out of the nose. (The patient speaks very calmly and deliberately. The doctor swivels his chair.)

DOCTOR. Have you ever painted or written music or poetry or the like?

PATIENT. Would that qualify me as any more of a creator than a snail that leaves a silvery trail on a sidewalk?

DOCTOR. Would it?

PATIENT. Would it? Doubt it. When men judge themselves as artists, they tend to forget that they’re the ones making up the rules. (Silence for a few seconds. The patient looks at the bookshelves.) But, I’m not sure I’m here to talk about art.

DOCTOR. Why are you here?

PATIENT. Why is anybody anywhere? Somebody shakes the universe’s big bag of monads and everything ends up somewhere. I’m here, you’re here, your books are here. (Short pause as the patient feels and looks at the chair he’s in.) I like this chair. Where’d you get it by the way?

DOCTOR. I don’t remember.

PATIENT. See. You don’t even know how your own chair got here. But let’s simplify things and say I’m here to please my darling wife. She’s been after me to see one of you guys for years. She’s in the business, too. In fact you must have run into each other at one of your weekend Cub Scout get-togethers. She’s been to so many hypnosis transactional family pathological interactional biodegradable seminars that she should know every psyche-healer in the state. (The doctor flinches slightly.) She thinks that because she likes to talk about problems, problems and more problems, that I should like to talk about problems, problems and more problems.

DOCTOR. Don’t you?

PATIENT. No, except for problems like where can I find a toilet or does a Barbaresco or a Bourgogne go better with dinner.

DOCTOR. So why did you decide to finally come now?

PATIENT. To shut her up. I figured if she saw that coming here does nothing to change me, she’d ease up the pressure. I just got tired of her wanting to analyze the infinite.

DOCTOR. The infinite?

PATIENT. What do you want me to say? The big big? The deep deep? The complex complex? Whatever is happening at any given moment is infinite, right Doctor? You, me, my wife, your secretary, your shoes. Everything can be cut up infinitely and can be pushed back in time to origins that go farther back than numbers can count. Sure we say you, me, secretary, shoe and whatever, but whatever we’re trying to talk about is a lot deeper and bigger and more complex than the poor underpowered words we use to talk about it. Physicists don’t even know what matter is, so how am I supposed to know what a wife is or a shoe is, much less a relation between the two.

(pause)

DOCTOR. So we can’t talk about anything then?

PATIENT. Sure we can. We can talk about anything we want to talk about. Just like we’re doing right now. We can talk about the moon and the stars or the history of China or the color of my underwear, but the cute little fact is you can chew on infinity, but you can’t swallow it. We’re just not saying anything that corresponds to anything real. We’re just... - like you said - talking about anything (laughs softly)

DOCTOR. Why do things have to be real?

PATIENT. They don’t. Obviously. But I don’t like to spend my time talking about unreal things that bore me.

DOCTOR. What doesn’t bore you?

PATIENT. Eating and making love. (Both are silent for ten seconds. The doctor is more antsy than the patient.) I’ll bet you agree with me, don’t you Doctor?

DOCTOR. I’m not here to agree or disagree with you.

PATIENT. So what are you here for, Doctor?

DOCTOR. (Hesitating) I’m here...let’s say I’m here to help you.

PATIENT. No you aren’t. I’ll bet you fifty bucks you’re here to help yourself. Everything anybody does is to help himself. Sure, in helping yourself you sometimes lend a hand to somebody else, but don’t tell me you do things purely for the other guy. You do what you do because you have to do it. If you don’t do it you’ll feel bad, so you do it. But the bottom line is you do what you do because you can’t do anything else. Sure, you can draw up a situation where it looks like there’s a choice involved, but whatever is doing the choosing can choose nothing other than what it chooses.

DOCTOR. Are you sure about this?

PATIENT. Of course not. I hope I’m not stupid enough to be sure about anything. Are you?

DOCTOR. Am I what?

PATIENT. Sure about anything?

DOCTOR. (Hesitating) Well, I think maybe we all don’t understand our subconscious motives for doing things.

PATIENT. Subconscious? Now there’s a word of words. In fact it’s one of my all-time favorites. What’s the dichotomy we’ve got going here? Conscious-subconscious. Is that like marine and submarine? Or mission and submission? As far as I can tell - now you correct me if I’m wrong, Doctor - nobody really understands what consciousness and the conscious are. I remember Husserl trying to make a little sense out it with his "noetic" and "noematic" and his trying to "bracket" everything to get at "essence" etc.,etc., but did he really help things. I remember thinking - back there in my school days - that if consciousness can’t posit itself as its own object, then how can it ever know anything about itself? See what I mean, Doc? The fact is, nobody cares about this stuff anyway. How many people read Husserl? Maybe one in a million. People want to get rich, get laid, stay warm, play bingo, and watch the film stars. Nobody cares about phenomenological gymnastics.

(Brief pause. The Doctor shows he is a little surprised by the patient’s reference to Husserl.)

I mean really, think about it. If your own consciousness - which is really the only one you can hope to know anything about - can’t look at itself, can’t slow down enough to posit itself as its own object, can’t see itself because it is always doing the seeing, then how are we supposed to make any sense out of the whole metaphysical menu. If we can’t make heads or tails of the conscious, how the hell are we supposed make any sense of the subconscious.

(Pause. The doctor fidgets a little.)

Now don’t get me wrong, Doc. I think that we’re all the tender fruit of a few zillion years of evolution or devolution or revolution or whatever you want to call it. The stuff we’re made of obviously has been changing and adapting since the beginning of time - which, I might add, probably has no beginning - such that we have no idea whatsoever what influences influenced us to be the adorable creatures we are today with our tailbones and our livers and our fast cars and our central heating and our portable phones and our brains and five fingers and facial hair and herniated discs and heart attacks and headaches and heartbreaks, but this subconscious or submarine or whatever you want to call it goes back so far that even my dog can’t figure out why she is the way she is. Get my point, Doc?

DOCTOR. (a little taken back by the patient’s use of the word "doc".) I think so, but go on.

PATIENT. It’s like the people who ask me what kind of dog I have. I look at them respectfully and say, "Well, friend, my dog had two parents, and they had two parents, and their parents’ parents had two parents, and their parents’ parents’ parents had two parents etc, etc., and all this goes back for how many millions of years? And you want me to tell you what kind of dog I have." They usually look at me like I’m crazy, but they still want me to tell them what kind of dog I have. They just don’t get it.

(pause)

Listen, I’m starting to bore myself a little. Do mind if we change the subject? And if you’ve got anything to drink, I’m a tad thirsty.

DOCTOR. What would you like?

PATIENT. You got a beer, maybe?

DOCTOR. Sorry, but we never mix alcohol with therapy.

PATIENT. You call this therapy? How about some water?

DOCTOR. What would you call it?

(The doctor opens what must be a refrigerator behind his desk and sets two glasses in front of him and pours from a bottle of mineral water. The patient stands and takes his glass. They both drink)

PATIENT. I don’t know. Maybe swimming...or deep sea fishing...maybe playing. It reminds me of playing...golf. You swing, I swing. We both watch the little ball fly. When it goes in the hole we feel good. When it goes into the forest we get Maaaaaaaaadddd. We write down a little number on a piece of paper which tells us evvvvveryythinnnnggggg (mockingly) we want and need to know. But - hey - I’m not one to quibble about words. If you want to call it "therepy", then we’ll just put our minds together and call it "therapy". But let’s be honest, Doc, if it’s therapy, who’s getting the bigger part of the treatment? Me or you? The patient or the doctor?

(pause)

Let’s look at it a little more closely - at what you get out of it. You fill up your time. You get paid well. You get to feel good about yourself for "helping" your poor sick patients. You get to feel superior - all the time. You’re there, Zeus in his big chair, and we, the patients, are these hapless floundering fish. (The doctor wants to interrupt, but the patient speaks for him.) ...I know, I know...I know that you know that you don’t always have all the answers and that you’re very humble about your knowledge and all that. But let’s face it, Doc... you can’t get around it...you’re the boss here. You’re the one with the keys to the mind and heart. You’re the one who’s read all the books. You’re the one who says when our time’s up. By the way, how much time we got left, Doc?

(The doctor looks at his watch, but the patient doesn’t wait for an answer and finishes his little monologue)

And the patient? What do I get out of it? Sometimes I feel better and sometimes I feel worse. Sometimes I go on with life. Sometimes I jump off a bridge. But I don’t make any money out of the deal and I don’t get to feel superior and I don’t get to decide when the orgasm stops. So that settles it, Doc...(smiling)...You’re the winner. You’re the one who gets the real "treatment". You’re the king and I’m just a piddling pawn on your chessboard.

(Pause. The doctor and the patient look at each. Both have half-smiles on their faces.)

So how much time have we got left, Doc?

DOCTOR. (slowly) Enough time.

PATIENT. Enough for what? But I want to add something to your "conscious-subconscious" fairy tale.

DOCTOR. You what...?

PATIENT. Your conscious-subconscious building block of the psyche. When you talk about the subconscious stuff, what you should probably say is "instinct" or "instinctual" instead. When we earthlings act, my guess is that 99.999% of what we do is instinctual based on those few zillion years of experience that our genes have passed down to us. The dog runs under the table when it hears thunder. I get goose bumps when somebody scratches the blackboard. You get pissed off when your wife flirts with the guy you suspect is trying to - or already is - slipping his hand under her skirt. I get pissed off when my wife buys four new sweaters just like the twenty-nine she already has in her closet. Now are or are these not "instinctual" reactions. Where does the well thought out begin and the instinctual end. Or vice versa. What’s instinct and what’s not? I sure can’t see the difference. Even thinking - who’s to say thinking is not instinctual? I mean does anybody have any idea where a thought comes from?

(pause)

You know, what really gets me is that everybody acts as if these brains of ours just showed up in some form of pristine purity a few years ago, like they were made fresh last week in a factory. But the fact is, our brains are like the Grand Canyon or the Sahara Desert. They’re the result of those zillions of years of rain and wind and hot and cold and criminal neighbors and disloyal spouses and hungry stomachs and somebody trying steal our femur bone or our cave from us. Get the gist, Doc?

(pause)

DOCTOR. I assume so.

(Pause. The patient puts his hand under his chin as if to say he’s tired of talking.)

So how do you see yourself in all this?

PATIENT. My what...?

DOCTOR. Your "self"? How do you see your self?

(pause)

PATIENT. Oh...my sellll...ffffff. Oh that. Well, I guess I see my "self" when I look in the mirror which isn’t very often any more. And then if I look closely I’d say I look like a Cubist painting, just colors and lines which don’t tell me much other than that I need a shave or a haircut.

(pause)

What’s the time situation?

DOCTOR. We’ve got time.

PATIENT. For what?

DOCTOR. To continue.

PATIENT. How about you talking for awhile. Or maybe we should just watch the clock tick until the hundred dollars is up. Is that how much it costs for this? I can’t believe the insurance companies pay for this. But, hey, if they want to take care of you mind doctors, then more power to you.

(silence as neither looks at the other)

DOCTOR. I’m not here to be helped...

PATIENT. (interrupting) Yes you are. We’ve been through this, remember?

DOCTOR. Let’s just say you’re in that chair and I’m in this one.

PATIENT. That’s my point.

(pause)

DOCTOR. (getting more fidgety) Maybe you should tell me more precisely what it was that your wife wanted you to see me about?

PATIENT. I can’t remember. Give me a minute (looking a little bored, but thinking anyway)...Oh, yeah. She says I’m in the fifty-year-old crisis mess. I don’t know if all fifty-year-old crises are the same such that it we can throw all us half-century cows in the same pen. You must be about fifty, so you can tell me if you and I are at least looking at the same stars. (He looks at the doctor to see if he’s a willing participant. The doctor looks a bit puzzled.)

DOCTOR. What do you mean?

PATIENT. It’s true that what I feel today, I didn’t feel ten years ago. It’s mostly about the fact of being some thing or other for life. Suddenly, I look at people - at work - anywhere - and I think that for most of them this is how they’re going to spend their lives. This is it. This is how they spend their beings. This is what they are and not that.The postman delivers letters for forty years. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine giving your life to delivering letters? I don’t care if you’re the King of Siam. What you are is what you are. And that’s it. That’s what you are. Nothing else. You’re the king or you’re the mailman and I don’t care how big your harem is or how many letters you’ve got in your sack. You still can’t be other than what you are. The idea makes me quiver like a fish with a few more minutes to live in a fisherman’s bag.

(The patient stands up and walks around the room. He looks at the plant on the left. He is never in a hurry.)

You get what I mean?

DOCTOR. I think so.

PATIENT. What I mean is that if you’re Picasso you can’t be Michael Jordan. And if you’re Michael Jordan you can’t be my mother. And if you’re my mother you can’t be the postman. And if you’re the postman you can’t be Marilyn Monroe. If you’re Marilyn Monroe you can’t be James Dean. If you’re a dog you can’t be a cat. If you’re sitting here right now you can’t be sitting in the library. If you’re sitting in the library you can’t be sitting on a park bench. Do you get what I’m talking about? (then more to himself than to the doctor) What do I care if you get it or not?

DOCTOR. I think the Existentialists talked about this.

PATIENT. I don’t care if the peanut vendor talked about it. Was anybody listening? I read all the Existentialists back in college and they never made me feel this way.

(pause)

Every second you’re stuck, you’re stuck in what you’re doing or being what you’re being at that moment.

DOCTOR. You haven’t told me what you do for a living.

PATIENT. What difference does it make? I could be Bill Clinton and it wouldn’t change the problem. Maybe the fifty-year-old crisis stuff is because at thirty or forty you haven’t yet realized that your days are numbered. The fact that the road will end hasn’t sunk in. For me, anyway, it’s finally hit home. So what about you, Doc? Do you feel this?

DOCTOR. I’m not sure you’re the one to be asking the questions

PATIENT. Who cares who’s asking the questions and who’s answering them. Do you or don’t you?

(Neither says anything for ten seconds

DOCTOR. Well, yes...sometimes.

PATIENT. Sometimes what?

DOCTOR. We all do.

PATIENT. Do we? Do what?

DOCTOR.Think about what you’re talking about.

PATIENT. But we all think about what we’re thinking about in different ways, so telling me that people think about the same something doesn’t mean that they’re thinking about the same something in the same way, which means their thinking is not the same thinking.

DOCTOR. Might you not be complicating things?

PATIENT. Of course I’m complicating things. That’s because things are complicated. If we want to simplify things then let’s simplify things - you know the way we used to do in physics class: the protons, neutrons, and electrons. Ask a real physicist if protons, neutrons and electrons are really real. He’ll tell you no, but that it’s a working model. Great. But what if I don’t want a working model? What if I want the truth? But there is no truth, right Doc? So we just go about playing whatever game we like at whatever we’re doing and hope we feel good about ourselves. Just look at you. You could have a thousand sessions with me and you’d never really know me because you can’t know me because this little me - like every other me - is too complicated to know. (Here the doctor offers to speak more quickly than usual.)

DOCTOR. But of course I know I can’t really know you. But maybe I can help you be what you want to be.

PATIENT. That’s just the point Doc. I don’t want to be anything. The idea that I have to be something gives me the willies. Not just me, but the idea that everything and everybody in the whole darling universe is what it is and are who they are makes me shudder. Get it, Doc?

DOCTOR. We’ll explore this more next time we see each other.

PATIENT.Let’s not explore it any more because there’s nothing more to explore. What I really want to explore is a cold beer. And since you’re hinting that our hundred dollars is up and that it’s time to say adios, then I say that sounds good. I can’t believe it’s already been an hour. Time flies when you’re having fun.

(The patient rises and looks again at the picture on the wall behind the Doctor’s desk.)

It really is a nice picture. (puts out his hand to shake hands) I’ve enjoyed your company, Doc. How many times am I supposed to come, by the way?

DOCTOR. As many as you like. (They shake hands heartily.)

PATIENT. How many will they pay for?

DOCTOR. That depends on you and me.

PATIENT. So we’re in this together, huh? Same time next week. (The patient leaves, smiling, out the same door he came in. The doctor watches him go. Now alone the doctor stares straight ahead at the audience for a few seconds. Then he slowly takes a pad of paper and starts writing his notes. He writes briefly, then puts his pen down and stares back at the audience.)

SCENE. The same except that the room is a bit darker than in Scene One. It is mid-afternoon and obviously cloudy or rainy outside. There is a plastic bag on the floor next to the patient’s chair.The patient is seated in the doctor’s chair and is amusing himself like a child by swiveling around and around. The doctor enters through the door and is naturally surprised to see the patient both in his office and in his chair.

PATIENT. (rising) The secretary wasn’t there so I let myself in. Sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have.

DOCTOR. No, I don’t think so.

(The patient moves around the desk to shake hands.)

PATIENT. I just wanted to see what the world looked like from your perspective. You know, you’re always trying to get into my mind, so I just thought I’d try to get into yours. (half laughs as he sits in his chair and the doctor goes around to his side of the desk.)

DOCTOR. (a little vexed) Well, there are limits you know...

PATIENT. You’re telling me...That’s what I’ve been trying to say for the last month. And thanks to you I haven’t blown my brains out yet. (laughing) So am I early or are you late?

DOCTOR. I had to see a patient at her home. The traffic was bad.

PATIENT. Where’s the secretary?

DOCTOR. She must have been in the rest room when you came in. She’s at her desk now.

PATIENT. Sorry I let myself in. It won’t happen again. (He gestures toward the CD player) You did say that machine works, didn’t you? I brought you my music. Remember I told you I’d give you a sample or two of the things I want played at my funeral.

DOCTOR. Yes, I remember.

PATIENT. I’ve been thinking about these pieces for about ten years. You know what Nietzsche said: "Life without music would be an error." The longer I live, the more I think music describes life better than words. Having somebody give a speech at the funeral strikes me as a nasty thing to do. For me, that is, the guy in the box.

DOCTOR. We’ve already made it clear that you’re not dead yet.

PATIENT. And we’ve already made it clear that living is the foreplay of dying. (laughs) But we’ve also made it clear that without death life would be meaningless. (laughs again)

DOCTOR. We did?

PATIENT. Well it was something like that, wasn’t it? Like only when death looms does life get inflated with significance. I said that if we lived forever, not only would we have bad teeth and livers, but nothing would matter because nothing would stand out. It was Heidegger’s thing. Dasein’s resoluteness in the face of death. Without the final curtain, there’d be no contrast to light up the picture. If you know you can make love to the same woman every day from now until eternity, things will probably get a little boring. But when you know that today might be your last day, the bed will likely carry you across a couple oceans.

(pause)

DOCTOR. You seem in a good mood today...in spite of the rain.

PATIENT. I’m always in a good mood. Almost always, anyway. It’s the funeral music that keeps me going. Live today, let the music live tomorrow. All the musicians - the composers, that is - that I’ve got lined up for my funeral are dead, but these dead guys can liven up a party like champagne...no, I don’t like champagne...like...like...like death. That’s it - nothing livens up a party like death and a good funeral. All the sudden people who haven’t talked to each other for years start yapping and getting intimate. Nothing unites the world like a little dying. (laughs) And I’m not being morbid, Doc. I’m just telling it like it is. Drop a few bombs somewhere and all of the sudden the whole neighborhood is as tight as a violin string. Life’s real tragedy is that it takes death to make it interesting. If Jesus hadn’t died on that cross, Christianity probably wouldn’t have lasted five minutes. Nobody is as loved as a dead man.

(pause)

DOCTOR. (hand cupping his head like Van Gogh’s Dr. Gachet) You’re rambling, but you might be right about that.

PATIENT. Hell yes, I’m right. The living just get in each other’s way. Only the dead know how to be appreciated.

DOCTOR. (with a hint of melancholy) Do you really believe all this?

PATIENT. Sure. Don’t you? How can you be in the insanity business and not appreciate the fact that the world only makes sense because it’s insane. I mean if the only way the cake of life tastes good is by coating it with the frosting of demise, then we live in a pretty tough world. But you can’t buck the system, I guess.

DOCTOR. I guess you can’t.

PATIENT. But I’ll tell you, I’m not going to let anybody talk at my funeral. Especially some priest or pastor who doesn’t know me from Adam. At the last funeral I went to, the pastor actually admitted he had never met the guy in the coffin. Then he proceeded to give a twenty minute half-ass speech about the guy’s life. His whole discourse was as flat as a day-old pancake. I wanted to take every word that dripped out of the guy’s mouth and spray it with rat poison. Death is bad enough, and then to throw a two-bit funeral on top of it...that’s the final insult. Don’t you think, Doc.

(pause, the doctor silent)

How do you want yours to go, Doc?

DOCTOR. My what?

PATIENT. Your funeral. Your final adios.

DOCTOR. (sighing a bit nervously) I haven’t given it much thought.

PATIENT. You should, you know, if you don’t want to end up like my friend with some stranger babbling inanities about your precious life that’s now dead. You might even be a little older than I am, Doc, (he winks at the audience) so maybe you ought to start thinking about the arrangements and all. The way I see it is, we don’t have a whole lot of control over life, so we at least can try to control our death.

DOCTOR. Aren’t we straying from our subject?

PATIENT. What subject? That’s exactly what I mean about us having so little control over life. Here I am trying to have a nice talk about our funerals and you’re trying to get me to change the subject. (reaches into the bag on the floor next to his chair) Let me at least play some of the music I brought for you...

(The doctor doesn’t say anything as the patient rises and goes over to the CD player on the bookshelf. He fumbles around with the buttons and finally gets the machine to work. We hear, loud but not too loud, the last few minutes of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. All the while, the patient stands by the machine with a dreamy exstasy on his face. The doctor‘s gaze is fixed. The opera ends.)

Can you beat that, Doc? What better way to leave this glorious world than by having your dearly beloved friends listen to that. Nobody said it better than Mozart, right? He only threw in the words so people could sing. Nobody cares what anybody’s saying anyway.

(Pause. The doctor’s gaze is still fixed.)

What’s the matter, Doc? Didn’t you like it? (doesn’t wait for an answer) It all reminds me of a great cleansing...like some gigantic cleaning lady in the sky scrubbing the whole planet with the finest soap money can buy. And you know what else is fantastic about it? It’s that quick ending. Mozart always leaves you wanting more...just like life itself...we always want more, more...

(pause)

Speaking of which, let’s listen to this one. (fumbles in his bag) It’s from Donizetti. You know he wrote something like seventy operas and only four are still listened to. Talk about death. Sixty-six operas dead as doornails. Dust to dust, right Doc? Here today, gone tomorrow. Sixty-six dead and four still living. You know that’s what surprises me the most about people. You get the impression that they live their lives thinking everything will go on forever. I mean the planet is one enormous graveyard and most people are too stupid to realize it. Zillions and zillions of creatures dead under our feet everywhere we walk. Dead...dead...all dead. Life is the great exception, but nobody acts like they know it. And so when somebody dies it’s like a big surprise - the "How could this happen?" look on everybody’s face. But not me, Doc. I’m no sucker...Okay, here it is...

(The patient finally pulls out the CD of Lucia de Lammermor. We hear The Mad Scene - preferably sung by Joan Sutherland. Again he is happy while the doctor doesn’t seem to be. When the music ends, the patient turns off the machine and goes back to his chair.)

Now you had to like that, Doc? Man - or woman, or whatever you want to call us - mingling with the birds. Nature at its best. Fly, fly, fly away friends...

(The doctor doesn’t respond) What more could you ask for, Doc? You’re getting paid to listen to music. How much? A hundred bucks an hour? I’d do that any day. If I had a brain, I’d change jobs tomorrow. (The patient is obviously having fun.) But I don’t - have a brain that is. If I had one, I wouldn’t know what to do with it - wash it, fry it, barbecue it, pet it, massage it, maybe put a little basil and olive oil on it? You know, Doc, that’s what I admire about you guys. You always know what to do. Even if you don’t know what to do, you know what to do. Nothing amazes me more than people who have answers. Any idiot can ask questions. Why this? Wherefore that? What really caused A to knock B’s head off? Questions are a dime a dozen. But answers? Answers are only for the great ones. Like yourself, Doc. Even though you don’t really say anything over there in that nice big chair of yours, I just know by the look on your face and the sign on your door, that you have the answers. You can tell guys who have the answers by the way they dress...can’t you, Doc? I mean look at your corduroy trousers and your black turtleneck. Dead giveaways every time. You know your stuff. You know how to get from the mind to the body and back to the mind again...

(Pause. Then the doctor looks like he wants to say something. He even looks like he might stand up. But he does neither.)

I’m just kidding, Doc. No joke. Just kidding. You and I both know that anybody with any real brains knows that that nobody has the answers. You and I know that if you study history you know that every civilization thinks it has the answers...that is, every epic has its thinkers and every epic’s thinkers think they have the answers and nobody ever stops to think that their answers will eventually be outdated and considered as wrong as the way we think about the way dentists pulled teeth in the Middle Ages...How did they pull teeth back then? Must have hurt, huh?

(pause)

DOCTOR. But just because we don’t have the answers - as you say - doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do our best to try to work things out the best we can.

PATIENT. Truer words were never spoken....The only problem is that our best is never enough....Nature always wins...We die. (laughs)

DOCTOR. You said death was what made life interesting.

PATIENT. You’re right, I did. I told you you had answers. So...so...so we do our best,then we croak. Hey, the world is one big happy birthday party!(gestures with arms wide toward the ceiling)

(pause)

DOCTOR. (slowly) Look...huh...I think we should ask ourselves again why you keep coming to see me.

PATIENT. Didn’t you tell me to come as long as I wanted to and as long as our friends at the insurance company kept forking out the cash. And I’ve got a lot of free time these days and nothing better to do...

DOCTOR. That’s my point. If it’s just because you’ve got nothing better to do, then maybe we should reconsider the situation.

PATIENT. I reconsider the situation every day and I like coming to see you...Now if you don’t like my being here, now that’s another question. (laughs)

DOCTOR. You still haven’t told me what you do for a living.

PATIENT. But I did tell you that it doesn’t make any difference what I do.

DOCTOR. You did. But it might help.

PATIENT. Help what?

DOCTOR. Us. It might help us to get somewhere.

PATIENT. I didn’t know we had an itinerary.

DOCTOR. We don’t.

PATIENT. Shouldn’t we have one, Doc? You must have one with your other patients. Don’t tell me you’re just floating around on a big raft with a little hole in it on the great ocean of life waiting for the day everybody sinks?...Without any itinerary? Come on, Doc. I can’t believe that. You must be trying to take your poor patients to some dry island with a palm tree or two where they can at least sit in the shade for awhile and drink a few sips of rum punch.

(pause)

You must have some idea where you’re taking them.

DOCTOR. Of course I do.

PATIENT. Okay, where?

DOCTOR. (fumbling for his words) I...I...like I said, I just try to do my best to help put them on the right track.

PATIENT. (curtly, as if he’s tiring a bit of the doctor’s stuff) Which track?

DOCTOR. It’s different for each patient.

PATIENT. Is it? And how do we know we’re on the right track?

(pause)

You know, Doc, I’ll bet a hundred tomatoes that the tracks you put your patients on aren’t the same tracks you follow yourself. (The Doctor fidgets, but looks at the patient as if he wants him to go on.) I’ll bet you tell them to do one thing and you yourself do another. Let’s look for an example....(quickly finds one) Let’s say you have a married couple in here and the husband is screwing around behind his lovely wife’s back. She finds out about it and they end up in your office. You’re probably going to tell the man to stay loyal to his wife for - say - six months to try to heal the wound and get the couple back together. (The patient looks at the doctor to see if he approves, more or less, of his analysis. He does not object.In fact, he looks rather astounded as if to imply that that is exactly what he would say.) So you tell the guy to be a good boy and to stop seeing his mistress for six solid months. Now would you do this yourself, Doc? (smiles) I’ll bet those hundred tomatoes that you’d never stay away from your mistress or mistresses for six months. (The doctor wiggles.) You’d never swallow your own medicine. You’d never be able to keep your hand out of the cookie jar for that long...(smiles)...Am I right, Doc?

DOCTOR. I’m not sure we can compare situations.

PATIENT. Of course we can’t. But of course we can. We can compare anything we want to compare and get whatever result we want. We usually have our minds made up anyway before we start comparing. You’re going to compare what you want to compare to get where you want to go. That is, if you have any idea where you want to go. Back to the itinerary stuff...(pause)...So which track are you putting people on?

DOCTOR. Like I said, the one that I think is best for them.

PATIENT. Which is not best for you.

DOCTOR. It may or it may not be.

PATIENT. And do you ever know what is best for anybody?

DOCTOR. No.

PATIENT. That’s what I thought. Nobody does, right Doc? But nobody likes to admit that nobody knows what’s best for anybody, but everybody acts like they got solution after solution.

(pause)

But let’s get back to you and your mistress - or is it mistresses? (The doctor glares a bit.) I’m sure your wife knows something. But you look like the type that won’t admit it because you think you know what’s good for you and for your wife. And you think it’s better for your wife not to know because it would hurt her and all, so you keep it as quiet (he whispers the word "quiet") as a mouse in a room with a cat. And then when she does find out, you say it was just a one shot deal that had no meaning and you say you’re sorry and that it won’t happen again. (doctor glares) You surely don’t haul your wife into couple therapy sessions where the analyst tells you what you tell weary couples, that is, take six months and be perfectly loyal and try to work things out. You don’t do that, do you? Because you know better than to suck on your own straw. I can’t see anything wrong with that, can you? I just wanted to wade my toes in your bath water for awhile...to see how it feels to be you.

(The doctor looks away and starts moving his mouth and tongue like he’s got things stuck between his teeth. He stays silent.)

I got one more song I want to play for you, Doc? Now’s as good a time as any. (He rummages through his bag, goes back to the CD player, and shortly we hear "What a Wonderful World" sung either by Louis Armstrong or the Willie Nelson version. The patient is all smiles as the song plays. When it finishes he doesn’t sit down, but wanders around the stage talking to himself and eventually to the audience. The doctor has stopped moving. He sits like a figure in a wax museum until the end of the act.)

Now that’s what I call a song. They don’t write ‘em like that anymore. A good melody, happiness, love, harmony, friendship, peace. (He gestures to a place where his coffin will be for his funeral.) There I am, sleeping forever in my new home...cheap rent...no heating bills...no phone calls...low maintenance...no lines at the post office. There I am as dead and happy as all my ancestors....How far do they go back? A million? A cool zillion years? Years that numbers can’t count...all of them sleeping in their wonderful world...trees and flowers...the chirping of birds...the tender worms that didn’t get sold for fish bait, swimming through mother earth, tapping at my door, wanting to come in for a cup of tea. But I’m busy, sleeping the sleep of Caesar, Napoleon, Michelangelo, and my Aunt Lettie and Uncle Joe. Sleeping the sleep of those who have a chance to be loved, who are finally out of each other’s way...who don’t steal parking spaces or spouses or overcharge for dental work....(pause) ...And then the singing birds and the flowers and worms and trees will die and will be replaced by other birds and trees and flowers and worms so that the living will forget about the dead and will go on loving our wonderful world....(pause)... Men have eyes that make them blind. They see the trees and birds and the other men, and in so seeing they are blinded to all the rest. Their little eyes that see the forest and their little ears that hear the birds chirping...these little eyes and ears are not really for seeing and hearing, but are for not seeing and not hearing. They make man deaf and blind to all the rest, to the piles and piles of dead under our toes - already dust or becoming dust - that our dear earth carries in her tender loins as she meanders, like a smiling baby, through space. (The patient thinks for a couple seconds.) ... "Space"... "Space"... What a dumb word. It makes it sound like "space" is a place, like a place for a picnic or house or rock concert. But what is "space"? We don’t "fill up" space...Does "space" fill us up? Or are we, in fact, part of "space"? Maybe when we go to the butcher shop tomorrow, we should say, "give me a pound and a half of chopped space?...(pause, then goes back to the CD player.)...Let’s hear it again...(We hear the beginning of "What a Wonderful World". The patient goes and sits down in his chair.)

SCENE.The same, but a month later. It is five o’clock in the afternoon, but we don’t know it because the curtain is drawn over the window.The only light in the office comes from the lamp on the doctor’s desk. The doctor is sleeping on the couch on the right. The patient is in his normal chair, but the chair is facing the couch instead of the desk. The plastic bag is on the floor next to him.The doctor is snoring lightly, but not enough to keep us from hearing the patient...

PATIENT. (looking kindly and tenderly at the doctor as he sleeps) A good man, I guess. But most likely no better or worse than the rest. He was born - through no fault or merit of his own - a half century ago to suck the warm juices from his mother’s breast, to play with the neighbor kids, to go to school and do well enough to land himself a job like this, to marry and make babies himself - through no fault or merit of his own -, to have a house and a car and weekends free...not always free because his patients’ minds were actually more apt to go off on weekends when they had more free time to fill with their painful thoughts and feelings..., to have a mistress here and there...more here than there because his appetite for the flesh rarely waned, but he had a tendency to need fresh flesh so the mistresses came and went like afternoon winds in the desert..., to write a few books and papers about the healing of the human mind...sometimes knowing and sometimes not, that the words would flutter like butterflies from flower to flower then disappear..., to have patients some of whom would throw themselves in front of trains or throw pills down their throats and some of whom would go back to living their regular lives,(short pause) to see time backward and time forward and to realize that what is done cannot be undone and will never happen in another way and what is ahead will also happen in only one way and for awhile and will then stop....

(pause)

...And now to sleep life’s sleep - not death’s selfish eternal hoarding, but life’s brief blissful slumber - and to wake up with me in his office. But this will be our last session, not because I don’t need him anymore or because he doesn’t need me. No, we always will need each other....But because I’m going away to see a few other of my sheep.... I try to spend a little time with each of them....But it’s getting difficult now, there being so many.(The doctor rouses on the couch. He senses there in someone in the room and sits up with a start.)

DOCTOR. (not happy) What are you doing here? I told you not to let yourself in.

PATIENT. I didn’t let myself in. Your secretary politely showed me to the door. I guess she didn’t know you were snoozing.

DOCTOR. (coming to his senses) Well, I had a patient who didn’t show up, so I dozed off. (He rises, goes to the window and pulls the curtain, but it is almost night outside. He doesn’t shake the patient’s hand, but goes straight to the chair behind his desk.) How long have you been sitting there?

PATIENT. Not long, maybe ten minutes.

DOCTOR. Why didn’t you wake me?

PATIENT. You looked so happy...

DOCTOR. I did?

PATIENT. You were emitting a delightful little snore.

DOCTOR. (vexed) You should have awakened me. You’re not here to watch me sleep.

PATIENT. And why is that?

DOCTOR. (looking for a rebuttle) Because...because you’re not. You’re here to...I can’t believe you didn’t wake me up.

PATIENT. Watching people sleep is one of my favorite pastimes. Even humanity’s greatest monsters look like angels when they sleep.

DOCTOR. What’s that supposed to mean?

PATIENT. Nothing, except that watching you sleep was like stepping back into Eden.

DOCTOR. Eden...?

PATIENT. My garden. My little garden where I watch things grow.

DOCTOR. (still vexed) You never told me you had a garden.

PATIENT. No, I didn’t. But it wouldn’t have changed anything.

DOCTOR. For you, nothing would ever change anything.

PATIENT. How perceptive.

DOCTOR. What do you mean?

PATIENT. That nothing can be other than what it is. That you can see into the bottom of the dirty fish bowl.

(pause)

DOCTOR. You know, you think you know everything...

PATIENT. And nothing. But yes, that’s true.

DOCTOR. This is our last session, isn’t it? (patient nods) So I think it’s my turn to tell you a thing or two.

PATIENT. (calmly) Please do. It’s far more amusing to have a little dialogue that all this monologic crap. It’s rather boring doing all the talking. And in case you didn’t know, we are in this together.

DOCTOR. (imitating sarcastically) "In case you didn’t know..." - Who do you think you are? I’ve listened to you for three months and I swear, you think you’re God’s gift to intelligence.

PATIENT. Correction. Take off the apostrophe "s" and "gift to intelligence".

DOCTOR. (thinks) Oh, I see, I’m communing here with divinity.

PATIENT. At last you’ve figured things out. What took you so long?

(pause)

DOCTOR. I can’t believe I’ve been wasting my time with you.

PATIENT. (playfully) We haven’t wasted a second together. Especially you. You’ve been filling your precious hourglass with the wisdom of the ages. You’ve been gracing yourself with the presence of the sacred. You’ve been riding on the great merry-go-round of tautology. You’ve been sitting in your soft royal chair sometimes thinking about me, but mostly thinking about your life, your methods for trying to cure the human mind, your next or your last patient, your plans for the rest of the day, your mistress of the moment, your beleaguered wife, your next publication that will try - like all the others - to convince yourself and your little kingdom of your value. And the money... you’ve been making money, off me of all people? (pause) ""People" is the wrong word, but that’s okay. I’ve been called worse. But in any case, please don’t label our time together "a waste"?

DOCTOR. (angrily) Maybe not a waste for you as you pump your ego like a huge carnival balloon, but a waste for me in that it has kept me from the work of healing minds.

PATIENT. There you go again. Doc, my friend, your goal of mending minds is a most noble one, but please, it’s time we get to the bottom of two muddy holes. First, this business of "the mind". Or call it a "spirit" if you will. Where, I ask, do you get the word from? I surely didn’t give it to you. You and your classmates use it like it was a screwdriver or a pencil or something, a "thing" sitting on a table that you can hold in your hand or stick in your mouth...

For more than two thousand years people have been saying that I am pure mind - pure spirit - and I still haven’t figured out what they mean. And let me tell you, I’ve looked everywhere for this "mind" you all talk about (he starts lifting objects up and looking behind things.) I’ve looked in books, magazines, newspapers...in the mirror, under the table, at the grocery store, in the garbage can, in time, out of time, with thinking, without thinking, with a microscope, with a telescope, in my waking hours, in my dreams. Honestly, I’ve looked everywhere and I still can’t find it.

(pause)

So help me a little, Doc. Could it be like a potato, this mind of yours? You dig it up, wash it, and then you bake it or fry it or boil it....but then, when you eat it, where is it? Is it gone forever? Or will it come back again as a turnip or a lollipop? And if it’s not like a potato, might it be it like a poem? Words, ink, paper, all bouncing around the room like cracked ping-pong balls? But you can’t hold it, you can’t see it, you can’t read it....Maybe it’s like fog lingering in a harbor...then out comes the sun...and pooffff!...it’s gone.

(pause)

If I, the mind of minds, the purest of spirits, can’t figure out what I am, then, I’m sorry to say, you guys are in some serious trouble.

DOCTOR. Why do you complicate everything?

PATIENT. I don’t complicate everything. I simplify. I’m asking a very simple question. What is a mind? (spells it) M-I-N-D?

DOCTOR. It’s you, it’s everything in you, it’s your feelings, your beliefs, your relationships with the world....It’s your heart, your soul, your consciousness, your past, your present, your alpha, your omega...your...your...being.

PATIENT. Now who’s complicating things? I ask a simple little question and what do I get for an answer? I get the Mississippi River streaming out of your mouth. If my mind is my whole being then we’re going to have a little trouble making it dissectible or edible or chewable or whatever. And don’t forget that I’m omnipresent. Even if I was simply "present", it would be bad enough.

DOCTOR. Why do you bother to ask these questions?

PATIENT. Why do you bother to answer them? You’re the one who keeps babbling on about mind and spirit and soul and you don’t have the slightest clue as to what you’re really talking about. Not one of you doctors of the mind has ever found, captured, identified, or clarified a single solitary mind. In my case, I’m just trying to figure out who I am. I’m the one who gets all the hype and press and prayer about my spirituality, my "perfect mind", my "pure" mind, and all this hoopla. I’m just trying make an inch of sense out it all. For a few thousand years I’ve just listened and let things slide, but after so many centuries and so much talk, I decided to go to the horse’s mouth and try to straighten things out.

DOCTOR. Why did you choose this horse?

PATIENT. I could have chosen a thousand others, but, hey, I had to choose somebody. Aren’t you glad I picked you?

DOCTOR. (pause) No.

PATIENT. And besides, you have the look, the education, the well-rounded approach and all that. You’ve been fine. I couldn’t have asked for better. And what’s more, (short pause while he looks the doctor in the eye) do you happen to remember that mountain retreat moonlit night seminar you organized a couple years ago? I think the subject was "Transactional Family Therapy". (Doctor squirms) Well, the woman with whom you were playing footsie at the dinner table and whom you later soused up with champagne and your psychiatric charm, and then so discreetly pulled into bed with you...well, that woman happened to be my wife. (The doctor sits stunned. He turns as white as he can turn.)

You do remember, don’t you?...You must remember....Do you? In fact, I think your little affair went on a bit longer than that weekend.

(pause)

DOCTOR. (shocked, slowly) How... how did you find out?

PATIENT. Come on, Doc, omniscience goes with the omnipresence.

(pause)

DOCTOR. (not looking at the patient) I didn’t know you were...

PATIENT. What? ...married? I’ve been married a few times. But it’s not important that it was my wife. What’s important is that it was somebody’s wife.

(silence)

Don’t worry about me, Doc. Sure, it did piss me off a little to see my divinity slip. You know, I had thought I was her one and only king of kings. But no, you climbed up on the ladder and knocked me off my plastic pedestal. At least for awhile anyway. It took me some time to regain my status. You know the old saying: "Thou shalt have no other Gods before thee." Well, my guess is that I’m not the only one who doesn’t like to play second fiddle....But don’t feel bad, Doc. You did me a favor. You took a piece off the chessboard. Thanks to you, I "X"-ed her off my map. You made things simpler. It’s easier to rule over a smaller kingdom. You get my point?

DOCTOR. (finally looking at the patient, speaking softly) I can’t believe you did this to me.

PATIENT. (interrupting) Look, forget it. I just thought it would be more interesting choosing you. Once I had decided to choose a mind doctor, I figured that I might as well pick the one who picked my wife. You know, it’s always interesting to see who your spouse replaces you with. But really, relax. It doesn’t matter anymore. The two of you saw to that.

(Pause. The doctor stares at nothing.)

(ironically) What surprises me, though, is that a man with your deep understanding of human dilemmas would get involved so easily like that in other people’s lives.

DOCTOR. (rather dreamily) But, I didn’t know...

PATIENT. (interrupting) Don’t give me that "I didn’t know" crap. Of course you didn’t know. And you still don’t know. Nobody ever knows what they’re getting into when they get into a relationship. Do you think I knew beforehand that my wife would screw up every birthday party and vacation holiday when I chose her. Hell no, I didn’t know. Do you think I knew she’d scream at me to shut up while I was vomiting for the tenth time one night with food poisoning. Of course I didn’t know. And she didn’t know I’d pull some of your shenanigans when I got frustrated with her. If people knew their wouldn’t be ninety-nine percent of the relationships there are. The fact is, nobody knows. Nobody ever knows. We all strut or fumble around like we do know, but we don’t....No, I was just surprised that knowing what you know - maybe I should say "not knowing" what you "don’t know"- that’d you be so whimsical about appropriating somebody else’s wife.

(Pause. The doctor is chewing on his fingers.)

Hey, but don’t worry about it, Doc. If it hadn’t been you, it would have been somebody else. It’ all just crumbs on the table.

(pause)

DOCTOR.(in a dreamy mode, but now looking for comfort) Have you...haven’t you ever got yourself involved like this in people’s lives?

PATIENT. Of course I have. If it’s not in one way, it’s in another. We all get involved. We can’t help getting involved. We get involved without even trying to get involved. Look at all the people who have believed in me and who still believe in me. Some of these people’s lives are made better and others are made worse. Some even get destroyed. I have nothing to do with it. People pull me into their business and do all kinds of crazy things. Just by me being who I am, millions of people have been killed, maimed, massacred. And the killers do it in my name.

(Pause. He sits down on the sofa.)

No matter what we do, we all end up wiggling around together in the great web of life.

(Pause. He looks at the doctor, but the doctor doesn’t look at him. He gets up again.)

You know, Doc, we never really know how we’re affecting things. Even I don’t know. The truth is that the web has got more threads than any of us can ever imagine.

(pause, doctor sits lower in his chair)

What shocked me in your case was how you’d stick your claws into my wife’s skin with such skimpy thought about the consequences. And what shocks me about you mind doctors in general is how you jump into people’s lives - or let people jump into your office - as if you really have some idea of what you’re doing. Playing god isn’t easy, let me assure you.

DOCTOR. (looks up to speak, mumbles) Maybe you should reshuffle the cards.

PATIENT. I can’t, but that’s another story. But it does fascinate me how you guys hardly seem to be aware of what you’re doing. You’re like blindfolded surgeons operating in the dark. Yet you keep herding patients into the hospital.

(pause)

I mean, even I decided to just sit back and watch....If I knew what to do, do you think I’d let the world turn like it does? Of course not...

DOCTOR. (slowly, softly) But...but somebody has to help...

PATIENT. Do they? And who’s helping who? Maybe your patients are helping you more than you are helping them. And how do you really know what helping is. You over there playing the almighty might be giving the guy on the couch an inferiority complex. He might end up comparing his poor meager brain to your gigantic cavity of knowledge, and in the end he might feel like a crusty turd in a cow pasture. Or he might become dependent on your pearls of wisdom and won’t be able to fend for himself once you set him free. You might be like a glass of good wine: one glass leads to another and the next thing you know the guy’s a drunk who can’t stand up straight on his own to feet. See what I mean? What I mean is, you just never know...

DOCTOR. (dreamily) Know what?

PATIENT. What you’re doing when you get involved. With anybody. And the longer you stay involved the more you can be changing the landscape. And from what I see with you guys, you stay involved for quite a while.

(pause)

Look at parents and their kids. How many "good" parents end up with screwed up kids? The parents may even do the "right" things, but their right things mixed up with the rest of the kid’s world make for a rotten pie. Maybe if they had done some "wrong" things, the kid might have turned out better. What I’m saying, Doc, is that I’m surprised you guys don’t think about these things.

DOCTOR. (pause, then slowly) We do...

PATIENT. Oh do you? When you plugged my wife in that glorious moonlight, you were really thinking about these things, weren’t you?

DOCTOR. (hesitating) She...she wasn’t a patient.

PATIENT. What difference does it make. We’re all patients...

(pause)

Which brings us to muddy hole number two. You talk about "healing" these minds of yours. I think you’ve got the wrong word, Doc. Nobody gets "healed" in this world. Maybe you can heal a car or a broken leg or crack in a wall, but a whole human being cannot be healed. You know why? Because there’s no standard of good health. There’s no "this is the way a person should be". Believe me, I’ve tried. I’ve checked around. I’ve looked in the Yellow Pages. But there’s no blue print on what a human being should be. And you know why?...Because we’re all in this together and no matter what any of us do, things get screwed up. A mother tries to love her kids, but by loving her kids, the kids get a false impression of what life will be like. She sets them up for heartbreak later down the road. She’s trying to do the right thing, but there’s no guarantee that what she is providing is helping in the end. Like I said before, even the best of us mess things up. Even the healthiest spread disease. Believe me, you can’t win. And as long as you keep thinking you can, you’re deluding yourself. You’re propagating false doctrine.You putting too much salt in the soup.

DOCTOR. (still staring at nothing) But there have to be better ways than others.

PATIENT. And why is that? Where is it written that this is good and that is bad. I never wrote that. You guys did. And what if there aren’t "better ways"? What if all the better ways are just other ways with the same result. Did you ever think about that? What if the world cannot be cured? What if it’s not even sick in the first place?

(pause)

What if, in fact, the living can’t help but get in each other’s way and that only the dead don’t mess things up. And that that’s why we love our dead so much.... Because they create a little space, the same space that we the living can’t help but clutter up.

(ten second pause)

DOCTOR. (slowly, in his own world) And you...(stops) ... You...you’re ...you’re not upset with me about your wife and all...?

PATIENT. No, Doc. Not with you anymore than with anybody else. You’re just another cog in the wheel, another wave on the ocean, another snake in the desert. You’re an all right guy, Doc. When I think of that "mind" of yours, I picture a gentle murky swirl in a slowly flushing toilet.

(pause)

DOCTOR. (slowly, almost otherworldly) But we have...we have...(stops)

PATIENT. We have...

DOCTOR. (interrupting, but now talking to himself) ...birds and flowers and music...

PATIENT. Yes, Doctor...we have.

DOCTOR. (almost in a murmur) And we have...we have...each other...

PATIENT. (gently) Of course we do, Doctor. Of course we do.

(Pause. The doctor puts his arms on his desk and lowers his head into them. The patient looks at him for a few seconds, then turns toward the audience )

That reminds me. I’ve got one more piece for that funeral we were talking about. (He rummages in the bag next to his chair. He takes a CD and walks to the music machine. We hear the choral "Coro a bocca chuisa" from Madame Butterfly. It lasts about three minutes. The patient again looks deeply happy. The doctor doesn’t move. When the music finishes the patient goes over to the doctor and taps him gently on the shoulder . The doctor rouses and raises his head.)

Well, Doc, I think our time is up. It’s been a pleasure. (They shake hands briefly.The patient leaves through the door. The doctor sits staring at the door, then at the audience for a good fifteen seconds. Then he opens a drawer of his desk and very deliberately takes out a shiny revolver. He stares at it for a few seconds, then feels it, turning it round and round in his hands. Then he lays it in front of him on his desk and looks at nothing.)

ACT FOUR

SCENE. A big party, a few months later. Before the curtain rises we hear the jabber of a cocktail party. As the curtain begins to go up the talking gets louder. The stage is absolutely full of people in party dress with imaginary glasses and food in their hands. There are servers serving imaginary drinks and trays of food. The party-goers mingle and drink from their imaginary glasses and make talking noises which are mostly incomprehensible to the audience. This lasts for about a minute during which time it becomes evident that both the PATIENT and the DOCTOR are among the invited guests. One by one all the guests exit to imaginary rooms through doors left, right and rear until only the doctor, the patient and a WOMAN are left on stage. For the rest of the act, a few of the other guests will enter and leave the party like sleepwalkers, silently, but still acting as if they are talking, eating and drinking.

PATIENT. (addressing the woman) The party’s not over, dear. (The woman turns and stares at the two men as a woman would regard a husband and a lover.)

WOMAN. (sharply) With you, it’s been over since the ice age! I was just going out for some air.

PATIENT. (looking briefly at the doctor, then at the woman) What’s wrong with the air in here, darling. It’s getting better all the time... (opens a hand toward the doctor) And look who’s here, darling....Have you had a chance to say hello to one of the community’s more renowned healers of the head....Or should I say "the heart"? Or maybe we should take our geography a little farther south in the direction of the sacred tube?....

WOMAN. Go chew on a tree...

PATIENT. (taking and biting into an imaginary sandwich plucked from an imaginary tray) I’m getting rather full as it is. And as you know, dear, if I ate a tree, I’d have to create another one to keep the world’s perfect balance...like the balance we have in our little triangle here (points an arm at her and the other at the doctor). Pythagoras would be proud of his Daddy.

WOMAN. Can’t you shut up for more than three seconds.

PATIENT. Darling, the great evolutionary ladder left us with mouths which is probably proof that "evolution" is the wrong word.

WOMAN. In your case anyway.

PATIENT.(ignoring the woman and stepping toward the doctor) Fancy meeting you here, Doctor. So nice of you to come. Our lovely hostess, Mother Mary, forgot to tell me she had invited you.

DOCTOR. (obviously squirming a bit, but choosing to attack) I didn’t know you’d stoop to attend such a mundane affair.

PATIENT. You still don’t know me, Doctor, even after all our precious time together. The mundane is all there is. Nobody stoops. Nobody stands. We all just slug along leaving our shiny silver trails.

WOMAN. (To the patient) Maybe we should be slugging along home then. You said a few minutes ago how bored you were.

PATIENT. But darling, that was a few minutes ago, before we - or I, anyway, - discovered the presence of one of the universe’s great healers of the mind. The party’s definitely starting to pick up. (turns to the doctor) Don’t you think so, Doctor? In fact, if you two can get rid of me, you might even find time to sneak out to a car or into a bathroom and light a firecracker or two.

WOMAN. Shut up!

PATIENT. Since when do you mind doctors prefer silence over a thorough oral examination of the profound nature of things?

WOMAN. I’m not sure this is the place...

PATIENT. What better place is there (gestures to the people walking by) for spitting out the truth. Throw a few glasses of wine and champagne past all these rosy lips and...voilà ...truth will scurry skyward like a squirrel up a tree.

DOCTOR. (cynically) I thought you said there was no such thing as truth.

PATIENT. Did I? I must have been having a bad day. Truth is the only thing there is. It’s falsity that doesn’t exist. The false is just a darker shade of the truth. Every lie that’s ever been told has revealed nothing but the truth.

WOMAN. Shut the fuck up! You’re a broken record!

PATIENT. And you, my tenderest lamb, what part of this broken world might you be?

WOMAN. (stepping toward the patient) Can’t you change the music?

DOCTOR. (assuming a dignified air) Yes, can’t you?

PATIENT. Can a mind stop thinking?

WOMAN. You’re hopeless.

PATIENT. Ahh....finally my true nature revealed.

(pause, he takes another tidbit off a tray)

So, doctor, I’ve been curious to ask you....Why didn’t you use that gun the last time I saw you? I thought that with your brain scattered all over your office wall, our great men of science could have preserved your purest heart of hearts. They could have delicately cut it out, dropped it into a wet jar, then dissected it such that for once and for all we would know the essence of true love.

DOCTOR. (angrily, stepping toward the patient) I don’t think this is the time nor the place...

PATIENT. But why not doctor? Is your cute little wife here? Are you afraid the cat might climb out of the bag and put a few scratches on your impeccable reputation?

WOMAN. She’s not here. Just shut up...

PATIENT. And how would you, my swollen tomato, know she’s not here? Have you and our esteemed friend already made those plans for later on? I’m sure there are a couple loose ends that need to be stacked on top of each other. Maybe he wants to give you some new insights into the latest discoveries about "Dysfunctional Family Transactional Symbiotic Pathological Analysis"?

DOCTOR. (walking toward the patient almost as if he’s going to strike him) Have you no sense of propriety? This is supposed to be a party...

PATIENT. (backing up but with no fear) It’s not supposed to be...it is. What better place than a party to heat up the truth? (gestures at the people walking through the room and at the audience) Look at everybody. Everybody’s having fun. And isn’t your idea of fun cracking heads open and rummaging through the garbage?

WOMAN. I thought we’ve been through all this before.

PATIENT. Not together we haven’t. Not all three of us. You and I have. He and I have. I’m sure the two of you have. But not tous les trois, as Napoleon would have said. We haven’t multiplied and added together the sides of our divine triangle.

(pause, the doctor breathes deeply as the patient now moves toward him)

If I’m not mistaken, Doc, one of the great messages in your Bible is responsibility: A man must be responsible - at least feel responsible - for his actions even if he really isn’t. Even if neither you nor I nor Adam nor Eve nor a rain cloud are really responsible, we must pretend we are or else the game is no fun. Am I right? (Doctor doesn’t move) Now, Doc, why don’t you tell me why you dipped into my wife’s golden treasure chest knowing full well that such a thing screws up marriages...in this case mine...ours.

WOMAN. (aside) Maybe we will have some fun.

DOCTOR. (attacking) First, why don’t you - you in your all-mightiness - why don’t you tell us why you did the same thing long before I ever came into the picture. From what I understand, you’re not immune to cutting your ding-dong loose once in a while. You’re hardly God’s gift to fidelity. (the woman snickers)

PATIENT. Pardonez-moi...

DOCTOR. Oh, I forgot. It’s you who gives all the gifts.

PATIENT. And all the inconveniences.

WOMAN. Now you’re talking sense.

PATIENT. I’ve been talking sense for as long as I can remember. It’s just that nobody’s been listening.

DOCTOR. Nobody listens because you keep humming the same idiot song.

PATIENT. How astute...

WOMAN. (looking admiringly at the doctor, then back at the patient) So tell us, my crimsonest rose, tell us how can you accuse him of screwing up, when you have done the same thing?

PATIENT. Excellent idea dear. You and the doctor definitely spit the same saliva. (the patient happily walks about the stage) So I’ll go first. Then, if there’s anything else to say, you two can put a little frosting on the sunken cake. (smiles at his wife and steps toward her) I stepped out on you, my sweetest biscuit, because I had to. Simple as that. I had to. I was going crazy. If I hadn’t dipped my stick into another jar of honey I probably would have grabbed a gun myself and blown the universe to bits.

WOMAN. (aside) I didn’t know he loved me that much.

PATIENT. I did it because it was the only thing to do. Everything I do is the only thing for me to do. And you too. And you too, doctor. You just haven’t figured it out. Everything any of us do is what we have to do. Clouds have to drop rain. Clinton has to drop his pants. Dogs have to bark. Geysers have to go off. Chickens have to lay eggs. Stars have to explode. Suns have to give off light. Babies have to suck. Moons have to orbit. Minds have to think. The dead have to decay. The living have to live. (pause) And this is why I love you both...in spite of everything.

WOMAN. (almost gently) Cut the crap, dear. The air is already too thick as it is.

PATIENT. (rather dreamily) I thought it was finally starting to thin out. I thought maybe for once we could all see past our noses.

DOCTOR. Are there any chairs in here? I’d like to sit down. (A party-goer brings a chair and sets it next to the doctor. He sits calmly and stares at the audience.)

PATIENT. (still dreamy) What keeps us locked in our cages is that we can’t figure this out. As I look back on my children, it was probably little Plato’s fault. Either he or one of his cronies. It was a long time ago. I can’t really remember. But anyway, up until those guys man saw no separation between himself and the rest of the world. Everybody was just scrounging around to survive. Then Plato - or whoever it was - put God on top of the totem pole. Me of all people. Then he put himself in second place. Then the animals. Then plants, dirt, rocks and all the rest. This was the great mistsake. This is what screwed up my original plan.

WOMAN. (sarcastically) You had a plan?

PATIENT. Sure I had a plan. My plan was that things grow and things get eaten. Basta. That was it. Everything would die sooner or later, one way or another. I couldn’t see any reason to keep things around for very long. I knew that in the end there would be no winners. But so what? Who needs winners? Before the Platos of the world came along nobody thought about winning or losing. Nobody thought about good and evil or some phony hierarchy of existence. They thought about eating or being eaten.Then the thinkers started thinking and they decided to take man out of the mix. They said man was different, special, "outside" of nature, just a step away from God’s door. This is where they blew it. This is where they got it all wrong. I’m part of the mix. You’re part of the mix. Everything’s part of the mix. There’s nothing but the mix. All I did was throw out the ball. I just started the game. I’m no different than anything or anybody else. I’m as much a part of nature as moss on a tree. And so are you. (looks lovingly at wife and then at the doctor) And so is he. And so is the Empire State Building. And I love you all, like the tulips in your gardens.

(Pause. Patient wanders the stage and eyes the audience.)

Plato and his friends showed me what the man I had created really was...a liar, a fabricator, a prevaricator. I realized I had given man a bad brain. He took it and gave himself a false status and false qualities. He had to create a universe of freedom, meaning, sense, mind, soul, spirit, sin, guilt, and worst of all...another world. He used that little brain to invent a place called paradise. This world wasn’t enough. He had to fabricate other ones. Heavens and hells and all that crap. He couldn’t be happy with his feet on the ground, his nose in the sweet hair of a beloved, his eyes on the hills and valleys and cornfields. No, he had to look up and scream, "Give me more! This world is not enough!" But there aren’t any other worlds. There is nothing more than what we have right here in this room. All you lovely guests with your beating hearts, twitching livers, wrinkling faces, steaks in your stomachs, cars in your garages, money in your banks, fires in your loins, phones in your pockets, words in your ears, kids in your beds, cancers in your organs, twinkles in your eyes....You are it.

(The woman sits slowly down on the stage next to the doctor. They gently hold hands.They then sit frozen and stare at the audience. The phantom party-goers on the stage are now motionless. An old woman dressed in creamy clothes comes through the back door and smiling, walks to the patient. He kisses her on the cheek.)

Hello, mother. The party has gone well.

HOSTESS. It seems so. As well as can be expected. (She walks to the woman and the doctor and puts a hand on each of their heads. The patient stands behind her with a hand on her shoulder.)

When one of my sons said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do," he knew what he was talking about.

PATIENT. Amen

(We hear in the background the first few lines of Louis Armstrong’s "What a Wonderful World")

Curtain.