Rough Sleep – a play by Alysse Aallyn

Back in DREAM LAB – CORSO calling with baton and headphones)

CORSO

Children! Come back! Playtime is over! Wake up, children! Don’t get lost in NeverNeverLand!

(CORSO conducts Flight of the Valkyrie. JAZZ and CHASE are sucked apart to opposite sides of the stage.  Lowlights come up on Dream Lab. CHASE falls back on his recliner. Other students thrashing and moaning. JAZZ falls to floor, CHASE struggles to her side to help her up) 

JAZZ

(Retching)

I think I saw death.

CHASE

And I saw the face of evil.

CORSO

(Appearing with a roll of paper towels and a bucket of water bottles – lights up all the way, music down)

Rough sleep?

CHASE

Yeah. But was worth it.

CORSO

I’m talking to Miss Suzino. Gave yourself a bloody nose there, sport.

(CORSO hands out bottles of water)

JAZZ

 (feels her face)

I did? Is it my blood?

KOO

I’m definitely going to throw up.

CORSO

First times are always the worst times. Care for a basin?

KOO

No, I want a bathroom.

(Staggers off futon, SOLIZ reaches out to her)

SOLIZ

I’ll help her.

(They lurch off behind Ladies Locker)

CORSO

Any more foreheads require mopping? Allow me to audition my Florence Nightingale impersonation. I’ve been universally praised for my bedside manner.

JAZZ

(Mopping herself)

Maybe I’m the one who died.

CORSO

Forget the safe word?

RAD

There’s a safe word?  Now he tells us.

CHASE

How about “Stop”. Or “No”?

CORSO

The problem with that is behind the fear lies the wish.

CHASE

Behind the wish lies the demon. So there is no safe word.

CORSO

How about “I quit”?  Is that what you’re trying to say, Mr. Quinn?

CHASE

You first.

CORSO

(They glare at each other. Horrible retching noises from locker room)

Now, now, now. Just when we were getting along so well.

(ZANE has stood up and is lurching around as if sleepwalking.)

CORSO

Mr. Braden, assist your colleague back to his launching pad.

(RAD stands up, goes to ZANE, wakes him, and leads him to his futon to sit.  SOLIZbrings a green-faced KOO out of the Ladies’)

RAD

My name is Borden.

CORSO

Now wasn’t that fun? Good times. Upchucking can hardly be an unusual experience for you, Miss Loflin. 

SOLIZ

Don’t give her so much next time. She’s little. She can’t get the same dose as everyone else.

CORSO

I wish the guinea pigs would stop wrestling with me for control of this experiment. I make the decisions around here. The doctor knows what he’s doing.

SOLIZ

Sorry.

CORSO

Now I posit the ultimate question.  Anybody “fly”?  Did we achieve liftoff?

SOLIZ

I think I fell. It seemed so real. Maybe it was only a dream.

CORSO

Only a tear in the fabric the universe, a burp from the hippocampus, a haiku from the collective unconscious, an oracle of future empowerment? Speak to us, Miss D’Accosta. Tell us everything.

SOLIZ

 (Stands up to act out events she describes)

I was in the elevator at Hadleigh – for some reason I was in a big hurry.  I remember looking at my watch but my watch had stopped.  It was an analog watch without any hands. The elevator opened on the top floor and I rushed out.  All these people were staring at me and they started to laugh. I realized I was naked. I couldn’t get back in the elevator – the doors had melted. The floors were melting and the whole building lurched to one side.  I panicked. I was thrown against people and I hate people touching me but I was helpless. No soulmates, just a gang. I’m scared of gangs. They were herding me. But there was the window so I jumped right through, thinking, maybe I can fly. I felt the glass tearing apart my body. At first I felt this great release.  A sense of excitement. Like I can do anything I want, like I got away with it. I was trying to move my arms and legs – it seemed like slo-mo – so I pumped and pumped – moving more frantically – but I knew all along it wouldn’t work. It doesn’t work with swimming. You’ve got to find the peaceful center but there was no peaceful center.  So I fell – knowing you’d be disappointed and maybe flunk me but hoping my crushed body could tell the scientists something.  That second before I hit I was – it was the most disgusting feeling – suspended, staring at the chalk outline where I my corpse would be.  I remember thinking, “I hope we get a second chance” but all I heard was laughter. Others were getting it. Others were doing it. Splat! Face-first into the pavement. I felt my face pushed into my brain, my spine crumbling – body turning inside out, I became “the visible woman” with her organs on the outside. That was right before my organs exploded like water balloons and there was nothing left.   I was completely gone and so there was nothing left to go to heaven, no welcoming light, no happy faces. Just sadness and loss; a night of blackout drinking.  That couldn’t have been an out of body experience. It was more like a nightmare. Right? 

(SOLIZ’s face is sweaty, anxious. CORSO, hand to chin, considering)

CORSO

A classic shame dream. You felt humiliated by your naked body – a very nice body I might add – as if by some unwilling revelation of your essential self. A common anxiety dream, I assure you.  Hampered by cultural imperatives your attempted  “escape” was disguised as self-punishment; you  “looked down”, ergo tumbled and fell. Almost Greek in its simplicity.  I especially liked the note about the handless watch.  Very Dali-esque.

RAD

 I’m all for naked dreams.

JAZZ

Our naked selves aren’t our essential selves.

CORSO

(Looking at her very displeased. Those guinea pigs again)

How so, Miss Suzino?

JAZZ

I mean, everyone’s naked body is alike.  Choices reveal our essential selves.

CORSO

Spoken like a fashion major. How jejeune.

CHASE

I know what she means. It’s why people get tattoos.

CORSO

Says a tattooed denizen of the underclass.

ZANE

Everybody’s naked body is not alike! I wish!

RAD

(Trying so hard to be ZANE’s buddy)

Right! I mean, if only!

JAZZ

I mean generally.

CORSO

We split hairs.  Nevertheless you expose the dangers of word selection, Miss D’Accosta. Forget “flying”. Who went elsewhere? Absolutely elsewhere?  Just tell me that.

(ZANE reacts visibly.)

CHASE

I did!

(Waving his whole arm like a five year old)

Me, me, me!

CORSO

(Repressively)

I think Mr. Pettigrew is trying to speak.