Tag: #VirginiaWoolf

The Dalingridge Horror – a play by Alysse Aallyn
(Leonard & Virginia Woolf in the Conservatory at Dalingridge Hall)

VIRGINIA
If only I could trust you.

LEONARD
You can.

VIRGINIA
But these drugs turn my brain to cotton wool. There’s a pattern behind the cotton wool, if only I could find it. Did you know the Duckworths, that incestuous race, were cotton merchants? Coining money from the cotton wool that packs me now. If only I could fight back! But my will is so fragmented. My theory is that we all live so dishonestly, unconsciously, disconnected and detached. You are such a stranger! Everything about you is different. That must be why I married you.

LEONARD
Tell me everything, Virginia. Tell me what you fear, so we can kill it.

VIRGINIA
Where does one begin? Last night I looked in the mirror beneath a pitiless light and suddenly a dreadful animal face showed itself behind me. He bellowed, he stared, his nostrils flared. The pig’s snout broke the mirror until my thighs ached. How could one forget the thrusting of that ugly snout, the snout that meant starvation, pain and death? The purple foaming stain. Somehow it was all my fault. Roars of laughter at my expense. Dream or was it a memory? All that’s left is hopeless sadness. Being dragged down into a pit of absolute despair. Powerlessness. Paralysis. That’s what I remember.

LEONARD
Begin at the beginning.

VIRGINIA
The beginning is insomnia. I lie awake at night listening to a senile old man gasping, croaking vile indecencies. I thought it was Father, having a fit of the horrors. But the nurse said it was only a cat. Or perhaps the beginning was the whooping cough. I think I knew happiness before I became so ill. The grownups laughed with me, not at me. Whooping cough steals the breath – none of us could breathe. The atmosphere was tangled, matted with emotion. All the children came down with it, all of us gasping. Mother ran from bed to bed until her skin was paper thin and the bones stood out. I used to wonder if Mother had traded my life for hers, until I remembered she preferred the boys. Women serve, men are served.

LEONARD
But all of you recovered.

VIRGINIA
They threw me into a tank with Gerald, the alligator. Drowning. I knew I must not sink. Couldn’t get my head above the whirlpool.

LEONARD
Go on.

VIRGINIA
They covered the mirrors when Mother died. I was thirteen. Vanessa was sixteen, Thoby fifteen. Stella was twenty-five, quite grown up. George was twenty-seven, Gerald twenty-four. Adrian was twelve. No one told me what was happening. I was taken to her bed to say good bye but Mother seemed reproachful, so condemning and stern. She said, “Hold yourself straight, little Goat.”

LEONARD
Why were you called Goat?

VIRGINIA
I was Goat because I couldn’t control my purple rages. The others hated that he talked to me and gave me books. He didn’t allow Stella to read Cousine Bette but said it couldn’t harm me, because I had read Gibbons on the fall of Rome.

LEONARD
Did everyone have nicknames?

VIRGINIA
Adrian was Wombat, Nessa was the Saint. Thoby was the Goth because he fought. Mother advised self-control to everyone but Father. My mother had two characters, I think. Her real self, and the Angel in the House. Stifler and the life-giver. And to this day I have the oddest feeling that I’m two people, too.

LEONARD
Are you talking about the poet Coventry Patmore’s Angel in the House?

VIRGINIA
Yes. Wasn’t she so popular? Singing, “Sacrifice. Sacrifice yourself.” I caught her by the throat and killed her. It was self-defense. I had to kill her or she would have killed me.

LEONARD
Your mother died of pneumonia, Virginia. Don’t feel guilty, Children are disgustingly violent, every one of them. It’s a wonder anyone lives to grow up. I’ve decided brute strength is the enemy of thought – that’s why bullies rule and why we must all be pacifists and abjure force, even though it goes against our natures. Tell me, was this “angel” thing why Nessa was called Saint?

VIRGINIA
No. That was because she was too proud to tell a lie. We hid from Father in the garden, and when he demanded, Didn’t we hear me calling? We all said No. Only Nessa said Yes. I told her she was an old fraud.

LEONARD
Goat is the worst name, I think.

VIRGINIA
No, that was Stella! She was the Cow, because she brought the milk.

LEONARD
These nicknames are strangely degrading.

VIRGINIA
I named myself Miss Jan. I so longed to be someone else. Laura was the worst of us but she was called Her Ladyship of the Lake.

LEONARD
How old was Laura and why on earth was she called that?

VIRGINIA
Laura was exactly Gerald’s age. But she was gone by the time mother died. Sent away, because she wouldn’t mind. Father said she was the Giver of the Sword because she forced him to punish her. Then she screamed so he had to punish her more. When Maitland was writing Father’s life he said that everything about Laura would have to be suppressed. Everyone hated Laura.

LEONARD
Why did you hate her?

VIRGINIA
Temper tantrums. We all had temper tantrums, but hers were worse. Father was still having them, but Mother could calm him.

LEONARD
So, Laura went to an asylum?

VIRGINIA
When I was ten. Until then she lived with a governess at the top of the house. At night, we heard her howling like an animal.

LEONARD
Did your parents ever say what exactly was the problem?

VIRGINIA
Mother said she was wicked. Father said she was perverse. Thoby thought she wouldn’t stop touching herself. I read all Father’s letters when I helped Maitland with his book. Father begged Mother to marry him to help with Laura.

LEONARD
But she couldn’t help, could she?

VIRGINIA
Abominable system, family life. It goes from ignorance and indifference to denial and contempt, open attack and ultimate destruction. None of it was Mother’s fault. She was always visiting the poor and making them clothes. I always thought the poor knew how to enjoy themselves better than we do, because we are cooped up, day after day while they walk out freely.

LEONARD
Did you ever visit Laura?

VIRGINIA
Once I went with Stella. Laura spoke only gibberish. The only comprehensible sentence was, “I told him to go away.” I couldn’t go back because that was where I saw the deformed men.

LEONARD
I don’t understand why Stella was The Cow. Wasn’t she a young, beautiful girl?

VIRGINIA
I thought her lovelier than Mother. She was so pale, so white, she looked like cow parsley by moonlight. I don’t think Mother loved her, really. She was Mother’s loyal handmaid. Stella taught us our letters. She was supposed to look after Father when Mother was gone, and Mother was absent a lot.

LEONARD
Where did your mother go?

VIRGINIA
Nursing the sick. Mother loved nursing the sick, she said they were easier than the well. She seemed always so far away, in her mind. When we spoke to her she looked through us as if she didn’t see us. While Mother was gone, Stella stood in for her.

LEONARD
Didn’t Stella have a life of her own?

VIRGINIA
She turned down proposals, I know that. Mother didn’t want her to marry. Cousin Jem was obsessed with her – we children were frightened of him.

LEONARD
Cousin Jem? Wasn’t he the mad cousin?

VIRGINIA
Yes, but before he was locked up, he conceived a passion for Stella. He would run into the house, shouting, while Stella fled up the front stairs. He pursued her, bellowing, right to the nursery where he speared our toast on his swordstick. I thought he looked like a tormented bull. Father said to tell him Stella wasn’t home, but Mother said she could never bar her door to Jem. She said she loved him and he needed us because he was banned from all his clubs. Once he abducted me and Mother.

LEONARD
He abducted you?

VIRGINIA
Yes, funny, I’d forgotten it till just this moment. I suppose that’s how memory works. He took us to his rooms because he wanted me to pose for him. Mother didn’t want to go, but she couldn’t stop him. As he painted, he declaimed his own poetry:

“if all the harm that were done by men
were doubled and doubled and doubled again
squared and raised to the power of ten
there wouldn’t be nearly enough, not near
to keep a small girl for a tenth of a year.”

LEONARD
And you were a small girl.

VIRGINIA
I was. The smallest. I never saw the picture.

LEONARD
How did you get away?

VIRGINIA
Did I get away? I don’t remember. I always stammered when I told him Stella wasn’t home so he knew I was lying. When he grabbed me by the collar I thought of the Ripper Man who had been in all the papers. This is what they must have felt, those women, when they were grabbed by Ripper Man. I’m afraid I wet myself and Nurse was angry. She punished everything I did, but I never listened to her. Nurse claimed all emotions like fear, dread, disgust – come from desiring the wrong food or not moving one’s bowels. Children must accept whatever’s given. If you show a preference, then that’s the very thing you’re not allowed to have. It’s as bad for a girl to cry for what she wants as for a boy to land a blow. Yet we did both, because Nurse was nobody.

LEONARD
Cousin Jem was taken away to the madhouse. That was a good thing, surely.

VIRGINIA
Where he starved himself to death, and that’s what I shall do if ever you lock me up in one of those places.

LEONARD
Go back to your mother’s death.

VIRGINIA
I didn’t know what had happened until I saw the nurses crying. I thought they were pretending and we should laugh at them but everyone pulled a face. I went to kiss Mother but she was cold as iron. I never touch iron without thinking of her. Father caromed off people and walls, seeking anyone to wail against. It was like being shut up in a cage with a wild beast.

LEONARD
My family was rigidly quiet when my father died. Stiff upper lip, get on with it, try harder, everyone must buckle down. That sort of thing.

VIRGINIA
A family is a conspiracy, driven by uncontrollable lusts. I saw a man sitting with mother’s corpse but the others saw no one there. We became unmoored, entering a time of hopeless suspense, muddle, mismanagement, battling the stupidity of those in power. It was as if a finger had been laid upon our lips, sentencing us to a sultry, opaque miasma that choked us and blinded us. Father shouted at Stella if she didn’t stock his writing paper or ordered too much fish. I knew it really was because she couldn’t tell him he was a first-rate writer, as mother always did. Stella had no mind and nobody respected her. Poor father was haunted by fears that he only had a third-class mind.

LEONARD
And did he, do you think?

VIRGINIA
His ego crippled him. Self-assertion is so loathsome. Father began writing The Mausoleum Book. About death. He wailed from the top of the stairs, “We perished, each alone.” Nothing is to be dreaded so much as egotism. Stella tried her best to rescue us. I wasn’t kind to her because she dragged me to the dentist and ordered all my clothes. I couldn’t bear standing for inspection while being stuck with pins. She was made me wear stays for the first time. Then Stella fell in love.

LEONARD
With Jack Waller Hills. Did you like him?

VIRGINIA
I did then, but I realized later he was a terrible old Fascist. He used to say, “the weak are wrongdoers who foul the nets.” I know he meant me, that I was a weak wrongdoer. In the end, he was a typical man who liked to have his way. He always put his great hoof down. But at first, he seemed the only truth-teller we had ever met. I was thirsty for knowledge, and he knew things. He taught me how to sugar trees for moths, how to collect and mount butterflies, how to take pride in killing beautiful things. He told me everything about sex, about “street love”, common love, why it is that women can never walk alone. I was so shocked. I asked, What about honor? He said men never think of honor, that they had women constantly, so all their talk of purity is nonsense. Every man has his whore. Every woman except the cheap ones must be locked up tight. Yet they call women fallen! Men are the whores. It makes no sense to me.

LEONARD
It does sound mad.

VIRGINIA
The night Jack proposed a tramp broken into the garden. Thoby threatened him, shouting at him to go away. We were always frightened of tramps – it seemed they could get in anywhere. I was afraid one had invaded the house and was lurking and leering, waiting to pounce. But it was only Jack. When Father found out about the engagement he tried to stop the wedding but Stella had her own money so he could do nothing. He postponed the wedding until Stella agreed to buy the house next door so that she could still take care of him. During all this Nessa and I were forced to chaperone. You can’t think how awful it is to sit between a couple whispering and trying to touch. I was so angry at Stella I broke my umbrella in half.

LEONARD
Child chaperones? Whatever will they think of next?

VIRGINIA
I know! I often think I’m the only one who isn’t crazy! Stella and Jack convinced the aunts that Nessa and I could accompany them properly to Bognor but immediately we got there they sent us two out into the rain so they could be alone. We were soaked to the skin!

LEONARD
Was there no one who could speak for you?

VIRGINIA
The old aunts were the worst of the lot. They curdled our brains with their falsehoods and their pieties. The wedding was the most horrible ordeal. Nessa and I resolved to be Stoic and show no emotion, as if it were nothing touching us. If ever you show feelings you are treated like a beast at the zoo and will never escape the cage. Thus we were buried beneath obligations, under torrents of uncomfortable clothes, awkward visits and unspeakable rituals. I think we are to be congratulated, you and I, that we sidestepped that whole mess so neatly.

LEONARD
Yes, the registry office is so much better. It’s over so fast. But after the wedding?

VIRGINIA
The happy couple went to Italy, and we were left alone with Father. He was awful to Nessa, how I hated him! He shouted at her as he’d shouted at Stella. But Nessa stood up to him, she was a rock, she didn’t care. That’s when she summoned up her supreme indifference. It’s the bane of all who love her.

LEONARD
But Vanessa had no money of her own.

VIRGINIA
No. If Stella hadn’t given us allowances we would have had to beg Father for every penny. And then Stella and Jack came home early because Stella was ill.

LEONARD
What was wrong with her?

VIRGINIA
Violet Dickinson told me Jack must have hurt her with his violent lovemaking. That he broke her somehow. But Violet was just a spinster, so what could she possibly know? The doctors called it appendicitis but you know what cretins they turned out to be. They couldn’t operate because of the baby – she was pregnant, of course. On the night she died, I was sleeping in her new house – in her dressing room in fact –

LEONARD
You were sleeping in Stella’s dressing room?

VIRGINIA
Yes, I’d been so ill, you see. I always got ill when people went away. But Stella was dying so they sent George to fetch me. George the over-fed pug dog, fat as a louse, beady-eyed as a rat. He wrapped me in Stella’s fur cape and carried me back to Father’s house.

LEONARD
And then?

VIRGINIA
Stella died and Jack was left bereaved. Now we had two widowers wailing. The men in our family hardly waited for the bodies to be buried before turning to their next victim. I remember Jack holding my wrist on one side so tightly he left bruises, and George holding me on the other side. I was trapped, you see, I couldn’t get away. George won so Jack settled on Nessa. They actually wanted to marry! I couldn’t believe it. I told Nessa, you can’t be serious! She said, “So you’re against me too,” and gave me a look that broke my heart. But she knew they couldn’t marry because of the Deceased Wife’s Sister’s Act.

LEONARD
They could have married in France.

VIRGINIA
That’s what they say about everything, that “the French get away with it.” Luckily it all blew over because Nessa was granted a place at the Slade. Then I was quite alone. George pounced immediately and began ordering clothes and jewels to release me into society. I was the sacrificial offering to his violent gusts of passion and his mean little piggy brain.
```
LEONARD
```
And then?
```
VIRGINIA
```
And then Father began to die and I went mad a little. After he died, I went mad a lot.
```
LEONARD
```
Well, it isn’t any wonder, from what I’ve heard. If you are mad then so am I.

VIRGINIA
You can’t think how long I’ve waited for those words!

(she reaches out a hand to him – he clutches it and kisses it)
```
LEONARD
```
Dearest! You will always be my only love!

(they gaze at each other, both trembling with pent-up emotion)

VIRGINIA
But darling, if Dr. Craig consigns me to deepest darkness you will have to marry someone else. You can’t waste your life waiting for me.

LEONARD
That won’t happen. Craig says our future’s what we make of it.

VIRGINIA
Oh, honey mongoose! Let’s make a pact right now to rise above the nay-sayers. You have given me all the best things I have ever had in life, rescued me from the cliff edge again and again. You have been absolutely perfect to me, and I have been disgraceful to you. You work so hard and I do nothing. It’s all my fault. I was mad and angry before I met you and I am madder and angrier right now. I want you to know that I do want to cuddle you but I don’t know how to show it. In spite of my vilest imaginings I’ve always known that I love you and that you love me.

(he leans his face towards her, she awkwardly moves closer and they kiss delicately)

LEONARD
Virginia, I promise not to ever push you any farther than you want to go.

VIRGINIA
Oh honey! And I promise to follow all your rules; early bed, milk for breakfast; just so long as I can always read and write.

(they embrace)
```
LEONARD
```
If ever you cease writing I shall divorce you immediately.
```
VIRGINIA
```
(laughing awkwardly as if she has forgotten how)

It’s a bargain. Oh, darling, shall we really have our own press and print all our own work?

LEONARD
Yes, and some of your friends if they are good enough. You decide.
```
VIRGINIA
```
And can I have a bulldog, too? I’ve always wanted a bulldog pup.
```
LEONARD
```
Certainly, my pet.
```
VIRGINIA
```
And can we live in London? A new house all our own?
```
LEONARD
```
Not London but perhaps some leafy suburb.
```
VIRGINIA
```
Leonard! Suburbs!
```
LEONARD
```
Think of the bulldog, Virginia. He must have a healthful life.
```
VIRGINIA
```
You’re right of course, Leonard. You are always right.
```
LEONARD
```
Bulldogs need a place to roam.
```
VIRGINIA
```
Fresh air and food. Lots of good red steak.
```
LEONARD
```
May I order dinner now, Virginia? Surely, it’s time.

VIRGINIA
Yes, Leonard.

(She clutches his hand fiercely while with his other he rings the bell) CURTAIN – END
July 9, 2024
The Dalingridge Horror – a play by Alysse Aallyn
VIRGINIA
I should never have married you. Women see the worst of men, how cruel they are at home, how they believe in ranks and ceremonies, how they demand praise and management. We bring out what’s bad in each other. We should live separately.

LEONARD
Virginia, I admit I have been a brute. I told you that before you married me. I have faults, vices and beastlinesses. I am lustful, a whorer, a gazer after women, a vicious man who has loved the refinements of vice. I have seen the filth of the brothel, know that it is filth and still I’ve lain with the ugliest whore. I have been selfish, jealous, and cruel. You are the most beautiful, most magical among women. Yet I must have you, and not some inferior female who would enrage me with her inferiority and submission. I am terminally and unconditionally in love with you. God, the happiness I’ve had being with you and talking to you – mind to mind and soul to soul. I don’t care so much for the physical part. You are the best thing I have ever had in my life. I will never be content, now, with second best.

VIRGINIA
And here am I, a failure, childless, no writer and insane. You confessed your sins before we married, but I knew I was insane with a mad sister and a madder uncle and yet I married you.

LEONARD
Tell me the truth. Why did you marry me, the penniless, trembling Jew?

VIRGINIA
Perhaps only because you were my beloved brother Thoby’s best friend. He said, I’ve met a man so violent, so savage, he trembles with contempt for the whole human race. And that was you.

LEONARD
Thoby was so beautiful it was difficult to speak with him of iniquity or despair.

VIRGINIA
Thoby had the kind of beauty that defends itself from caress.

LEONARD
And you’re the same. With such gestures one falls in love for a lifetime.

VIRGINIA
Thoby and I were so close until he went away to that school, where the boys fought and buggered. When he came back he was so different, harsh and cruel. He beat me. I just stood there and let him pound me with his fists, feeling the most awful sadness; why hurt another person? He showed off by abusing me. I refused to surrender the space we used to have, but he said, Girls must give up. That’s what it means to be a girl. It was essential for the fellowship of men that I be kept out. Because you were his greatest friend I hoped the best of him lived on, in you. But you are nothing like him.

LEONARD
The Goth was always a law unto himself. He didn’t acquire friends, he annexed worshippers. You and Vanessa looked so like him our Circle called you “Visigoths.” Misses Virginia and Vanessa Stephens, so beautiful that dogs turned to look at them in the street.

VIRGINIA
Trust me, it’s not that pleasant having dogs turn to look at one in the street. So, you married me, thinking I was like Thoby and you were disappointed.

LEONARD
Virginia, you must stop thinking everything is your fault. We were primed to fall in love because of our friendships, but we actually fell in love because we saw each other’s true selves.

VIRGINIA
I saw how shocked you were when you realized you had married a madwoman.

LEONARD
Life may be an obstacle race but that doesn’t mean one would want the obstacles removed.

VIRGINIA
I should have told you!

LEONARD
Did I tell you my tremor is hereditary? My father had it, too. Should I have confessed that? We didn’t want to talk about our families. We wanted to revel in each other’s hopes and dreams.

VIRGINIA
When we talked, I forgot everything except the joy of our conversation. Originality and freedom, purity and restraint, we discussed it all. Here’s someone who cares, I thought, about the hidden pockets of emotion, someone who wants to work like a steam engine at uncovering the truth. I needed to know that when I weep, I am not the only weeper. You almost persuaded me we could change the world with just our two brains.

LEONARD
Nothing’s more important than the two of us united.

VIRGINIA
Yet somehow here I am, locked up in a madhouse.

LEONARD
Virginia, this isn’t a madhouse and you are not insane. But we need the doctor’s permission for you to leave. We must figure out, the pair of us, how you can assume control. I don’t believe in guilt or apologies. I know what it is to be driven beyond endurance but I know I can avoid the whirlpools if you help me, Virginia. Let me help you learn how to assume control.

VIRGINIA
What’s the use of men talking to women, we’re too different. We must hate and fear each other. Women can’t even step outside their doors with any safety. If you could strip off my skin you would see my nerves gone white with fear of you.

LEONARD
You’re talking to the member of a despised race rooted out as pests wherever we settle. My nerves should be white with fear of your kind. It’s a fetid, sordid world. Yet we two are somehow different. In Ceylon, I took out my gun to put an end to the utter foulness, the stupid blind vindictive foulness of everything. You see, we have that in common.

VIRGINIA
You did? You really tried to shoot yourself?

LEONARD
I thought that the only reason one doesn’t commit suicide is that one is either a selfish coward or already dead and rotten. The one thing that saved me was a vision of you, the beautiful Miss Stephen who wrote like an angel and quoted Plato. I longed to meet you. But I was so afraid of making a fool of myself my very soul and stomach trembled.

VIRGINIA
You stayed alive because of me?

LEONARD
I did. So you must return the favor. Lytton Strachey and I wrote long letters back and forth. He argued against suicide and insisted that I propose.

VIRGINIA
Lytton asked me to marry him once. Thank God, I didn’t. The very idea of his criticisms would have kept me from writing anything.

LEONARD
He understood all that. He said the only person who was right for you was me.

VIRGINIA
But he didn’t know about my spoiled, ruined body.

LEONARD
You have a perfect body!

VIRGINIA
Currently being stuffed like a Strasbourg goose, thanks to you. Strapped down, force fed, shot with drugs.

LEONARD
All because you refuse to eat. Let me order dinner right now and feed it to you. How about that?

VIRGINIA
I’m not hungry. Oh, let me die, Leonard! Let me go! Find a girl who can love you properly! I failed in the bedroom – you made that perfectly clear.

LEONARD
Perhaps copulation is inherently degrading. Really, horseback riding is more pleasurable.

VIRGINIA
But there’s children to look forward to, surely.

LEONARD
I don’t want children and if you really read The Wise Virgins, you’ll know why.

VIRGINIA
But we won’t raise them in a strict Jewish home!

LEONARD
There’s your prejudice again! It wasn’t the Judaism, it was the endless striving for dominance of tiny minds. How I hated it!

VIRGINIA
Father shrieked and screamed that we were sending him to the poorhouse with our expensive household bills. I brought him a catalog of King’s College classes for Ladies but he said he couldn’t spare me because it was my turn to pet him, soothe him, cut his meat! I wanted to write, but I couldn’t keep it private. Once I had a diary with a lock but Thoby stole it, so I pasted my secret pages into a book.

LEONARD
After my father died we really were headed for the poorhouse. My brother had to work to support the family.

VIRGINIA
Don’t you think every family is a lonely caravan, absolutely private, silent and unknown? I see us wedged in together, surrounded by vast space we couldn’t cross. It seemed impossible to break through the dark cloud and shed light on those shrouded, curtained rooms. Censors, visionary figures everywhere admonished us. Father told me no intelligent being had any right to believe in God, but when I was six years old, I dreamed that I was God.

LEONARD
And your mother?

VIRGINIA
Mother said there couldn’t be a God because no just God would have killed the splendid Herbert Duckworth, her first husband. She loved him so. She never told my father she loved him.
```
LEONARD
```
Never?
```
VIRGINIA
```
Never. I wrote stories in which clever, courageous children rescue their families and bring hope to the sick. Do you believe in God, Leonard?

LEONARD
No one believes in God. Virginia, we must refuse to be determined by our pasts. Our parents had too many children to cope but we won’t make the same mistake. Don’t you want to be free, Virginia? With so many mouths to feed, freedom’s never possible.

VIRGINIA
I know you’re only saying that because Dr. Hyslop insists the mad should never propagate.

LEONARD
I swear I’m not. Nessa has children – and with all her lovers looks to spew many more – wouldn’t that be enough for you?

VIRGINIA
(turning away)

Surely loneliness destroys us. Futile and infertile – aren’t those more than adequate reasons for self-murder?

LEONARD
We’ll never be futile, not us. You’ve written a wonderful novel, Virginia. I know you’ll write many more.

VIRGINIA
Received by my family in complete silence.

LEONARD
They’re barely literate. My whole point is that family shouldn’t matter. I’ve freed myself – I never see my mother if I can help it. Remember how upset she was to be excluded from our wedding? Surely an ambitious person’s gaze should widen, take in more?

VIRGINIA
Take in who? Society, like the Countess of Carnarvon? Publishers like Gerald?

LEONARD
How about other modern thinkers, trying to do what we are doing? Finding new ways to be, see, think, do, connect. Roger Fry with his “significant form”. Maynard Keynes with aggregate demand, E. M. Forster’s clever novels. The literary impressionism you attempted in Voyage Out.

VIRGINIA
Forster isn’t clever. He thinks women should be banned from the London Library Board and never allowed on the grass at Cambridge. How on earth can dry, dusty books ever make up for real, live children?

LEONARD
Was your childhood really anything you’d care to revisit, Virginia?

VIRGINIA
Yes, yes, yes. If I could only tell you, or anybody. Oh, the magic summers at St. Ives! Lost, gone forever. Paradise before, catastrophe after. Now whatever it is I want I cannot tell. I was born with extraordinary capacities for feeling, but you say bury my emotions or they will never let me out.

LEONARD
Not bury them, Virginia. Manage them. We need to convince the world that you are fine and well. Let’s get to the bottom of the ideas that torment you. How many years was that paradise of childhood, really? Two or three? We have our whole, long, fruitful lives ahead of us.

VIRGINIA
It was paradise before the deaths began.

LEONARD
There’s no escaping death, Virginia.

VIRGINIA
You intimate that children would drive me mad?

LEONARD
They would certainly stop you working. Can you see a house filled with nannies, nurses, servants, their followers and lovers? Cockney quarrels and endless Bedlam difficulties? You once described your nursery as a cage where you were forced to perform compulsory tricks.

VIRGINIA
And what do you call this damnable house? Cousin Madge says you’re mean and think of nothing but money.

LEONARD
Madge is an idiot. Let’s resolve to cut all idiots on principles of health.

VIRGINIA
If that were only possible! Here I am in George’s house, sentenced to eternally hawking Gerald’s books!

LEONARD
But George isn’t here. And there are other publishers in the world besides Gerald.

VIRGINIA
Worse ones, doubtless. Did you read Gissing, or even Meredith?

LEONARD
Then we’ll publish our books ourselves.

VIRGINIA
(turning to face him)

Could such a thing be possible?

LEONARD
Of course, it is. You know your Women’s Cooperative promotes apprenticeships. I think the Working Man’s College teaches printing.

VIRGINIA
Oh, imagine if that were so! How I’d love to print! I used to bind books, I liked that. The tools were so beautiful. Papers from Italy, leathers from Africa. The smell alone was heavenly.

LEONARD
Don’t these doctors recommend handiwork?

VIRGINIA
Tat-work! Or crochet!

LEONARD
Let’s defeat them, then. Can’t we, together, push the world our way? Or at the very least carve out a tiny corner where we can live and thrive?

VIRGINIA
If only I could trust you.
July 8, 2024
The Dalingridge Horror – a play by Alysse Aallyn

(Curtain. Lights up on Scene 3, CONSULTATION ROOM of DR. CRAIG. LEONARD sits, head in hands.)

DR CRAIG
Glad to see you, Mr. Woolf. I am eager to hear your opinion of the progress of our patient.

LEONARD
Virginia and I have been talking and I must admit she does not sound altogether mad to me.

DR CRAIG
My dear fellow, insanity of the mind merely means whatever derangement disables a person from thinking the thoughts, feeling the feelings and doing the duties of the social body in, for, and by which he lives. Insanity is nothing more than a want of harmony between the individual and his social medium. That individual sadly becomes a social discord of which nothing can be made.

LEONARD
She speaks frequently of her home life where her brothers took advantage of her.

DR CRAIG
You are referring to her delusions. You will have noticed that patients, particularly intelligent ones, are very cunning as they seek to involve their caregivers into sharing their beliefs of persecution and misfortune. It is much better not to allow oneself to re-hash a history that must remain forever uncertain but to forcefully insist on a calming, healthful daily regimen starting now.

LEONARD
Surely, you’ll agree that being resentful of bad treatment hardly constitutes insanity.

DR CRAIG
My dear sir, your wife is under doctors’ care because she tried to take her own life. We are obviously not dealing with a healthy person here. No, taken by themselves, delusions do not necessarily indicate insanity but when they are found in conjunction with broad evidence of failure to conform one’s general conduct to the ordinary rules of life and society such a diagnosis must be made. Clearly such an obligation places great responsibility on the keen insights and experience of professional men rigorously educated to the highest standard and admitted by the demanding qualifications of the Royal Society of Medicine. As a man of the world you must know that is always very common for weaker beings to resent those on whom greater fortune has been showered and to feel their gains are somehow ill-gotten. This resentment stirs up a host of fantasies that must be very firmly rejected. Successful work never leads to this disorder but unsuccessful work shows a very different etiology.

LEONARD
But in the case of Virginia’s upbringing –

DR CRAIG
Mr. Woolf, in every case the instinctive impulses of children must sooner or later clash with the social regime, to the infant’s sorrow and momentary discomfiture. Elders must be recognized as the authority in such matters or chaos would result. Therefore, no airing of childhood wrongs can ever constitute a fruitful line of inquiry.

LEONARD
It seems the situation was so severe that Dr. Savage was consulted at the time –

DR CRAIG
My good fellow, it would be better for you to face the fact that delusions never require any other support than the conviction of the deluded. A man may believe, for example, that his head has been opened, his brains removed and some other substance substituted. That is a very common delusion, I can assure you.

LEONARD
Virginia is an intelligent woman. I believe she must be handled intelligently. I may even say she has a touch of genius. In fact, I believe she is the only true genius I have ever met.

DR CRAIG
Are you arguing that geniuses are in some way above or beyond the law, Mr. Woolf? I certainly hope you are not.

LEONARD
Her family was considered the highest intellectual intelligentsia of their day. It seems obvious to me –

DR CRAIG
What is obvious to me, is that the degree of education and the social status of the person whose conduct is under consideration are indeed important facts, for habits that would be decidedly eccentric in the upper classes may pass unremarked in the lower reaches of society. The sex of the patient is even more critical to diagnosis. Outbursts of emotional weeping in men, for example, are a symptom of grave import but among women occasion no remark. Any woman’s effort to escape her true femininity places her moral hardihood at peril. Imagine some up to date woman adopting a divided skirt under the belief that it is a healthier form of apparel and permits greater freedom of action. Very well. But should she indulge in so subversive a notion as to think that male attire is even more hygienic and to actually carry her belief into practice, the arm of the law will at once reach out to warn her. If the warning is not heeded, society will place her in safekeeping until she has learned to conform to the ideas of the majority. This is the situation in which your wife finds herself at the current time. Before her marriage, I am given to understand that your wife frequented a rather louche artistic bohemia. Now that she is a married woman you have acquired a unique opportunity to place her feet on a more secure footing. I understand you have rejected the possibility of committing her to an asylum but want to give her another chance in the wider world. It is accordingly crucial that you not indulge her in useless analysis of who or what was at fault in her upbringing but encourage her to commit to a fresh new life, with you, where she submits to a healthful pattern which you will lay out for her.

LEONARD
What you say makes a good deal of sense, but Virginia has always had her own ideas about everything. Her reading alone, even from childhood has been voluminous. I think I can say that she’s read everything and everybody.

DR CRAIG
Now I think you are laying your finger on a much likelier culprit in your wife’s hysteria than the boyish behaviors of exuberantly boisterous, youthful males. Most women’s minds are simply not capable of absorbing and processing the histories and theories of men who lived in more pernicious times. As a Cambridge graduate you do not need me to point out which books might be especially dangerous. We may even disagree on which authors have a nihilist or even Bolshevik bent. But if you are committed to keeping your wife out of the asylum you must make it your life work to supervise your wife more closely in future. I understand there is family money?

LEONARD
Some money. We will both need to seek employment.

DR CRAIG
I think you will find your wife far too fragile for the hurly burly of economic exchange. These patients are frequently considered brilliant in conversation. But on inspection this seeming brilliancy will be found in large measure to be due to the unconventional nature of their chatter. Patients such as your wife are often considered more entertaining when ill than when in health for through loss of control they make remarks which the healthy would fear to utter. A sane person is inhibited in both speech and action. I think you must reconcile yourself to having a saner, healthier but possibly duller wife who partakes of a less unsettling society.

LEONARD
But can it ever be right to subject an intelligent person to regimes designed for the mad?

DR CRAIG
My dear sir, there is really no distinction between physical disease and mental disorder. Mrs. Woolf must learn to practice equanimity and you are the best judge of how to assist her in that course. In any given individual where nothing more than exaggerated and uncontrolled normal characteristics may constitute mental disorder, we realize how narrow is the margin between those whom we call the sane and the insane. You are her husband. Have faith in your power to exercise benevolent dominance. It is a husband’s obligation.

LEONARD
But Virginia is so sensitive! I am concerned –

DR CRAIG
I cannot suggest too strongly, my dear sir, that you focus more on your wife’s bowels than on her brains. Constipation is not only a common symptom of the insane, it is the rule rather than the exception. Another symptom which appears early and which stands out in strong relief, is hypersensitivity. To me this is the symptom of all symptoms which may occasion unsoundness of mind.

LEONARD
Virginia becomes so excited when I approach her –

DR CRAIG
I will prescribe Hyoscynamine. It is a wonderful relaxant which has given excellent results in quieting the most difficult patients.

(Lights out.)

July 6, 2024
The Dalingridge Horror – a play by Alysse Aallyn

(LEONARD backs away. Enter DR HYSLOP)

DR HYSLOP
Here you go, Virginia. This will make you more comfortable.

VIRGINIA
I don’t want a hypo! Your drugs are making me ill. Help! Help! Get away from me! Life has destroyed me, I am silenced. I have no stings left.

DR HYSLOP
Virginia, you must rest. You’ve had a tiring journey but everything’s fine now. After a good sleep and a fine dinner, you’ll be right as rain.

VIRGINIA
When I close my eyes I’m attacked and assaulted!

(She tries to thrash but he injects her. He pulls up a chair as she begins to subside. LEONARD sits uneasily)

DR HYSLOP
Your wife’s constitution’s very strong. It’s all that exercise, I’m afraid. Young women of the present day indulge in gymnastic exercises that sadly retard their mammary development. It only makes it worse for her. Now what’s the cause of this current fuss? I could hear her screaming all the way upstairs. The staff was alarmed, I assure you. It’s very bad for them. Loosening the bonds of self-control always results in sexual license among the lower orders.

LEONARD
Hostile fantasies about Sir George.

DR HYSLOP
Don’t encourage her by listening. You can never argue a madman out of his madness, and you will succumb to madness if you try. This degradation is so common among artists, I assure you, especially the moderns. “Imagist” authors use disjointed gibberish the way madmen rave and think themselves quite clever.

LEONARD
Virginia’s mind is free and remarkably fearless. I treasure that. She thinks the chloral is causing her hallucinations.

DR HYSLOP
Sadly, it’s the lack of good blood, I fear, responsible for these behaviors.

LEONARD
Sir, do you refer to my Jewish ancestry?

DR HYSLOP
Not at all, though I think you will admit mixed marriages constitute a special danger. It is the sad mental history of the Stephens family to which I refer – uncle and sister institutionalized with cerebral exaltation and morbid excitement, agnosticism, heresy and even self-murder. Now you find yourself married to a young girl who is comfortable speaking obscenities! It’s all dung and semen among the avant garde. Britain has become a dumping ground of late for the terminally unfit. You were wise to come to me. Did you visit Colby Court as I suggested?

LEONARD
It’s … awful. I can’t imagine Virginia there.

DR HYSLOP
Do you know, once they have settled down they are happy in their own way. Virginia is testing you. I assure you Colby Court is the finest of its kind. It can be uncomfortable to view our loved ones in extremis, and once mental disease takes hold many family members cease to pay calls. It is better thus. I understand Virginia’s sister, for example, is never visited by any family member.

LEONARD
What a tragedy! I couldn’t bear it. You should have seen the beautiful Miss Stephen who agreed to marry me, scintillating with charm and wit.

DR HYSLOP
(comforting him)

Fruit of the poisonous tree.

LEONARD
But isn’t Sir George, her brother, then also poisoned fruit?

DR HYSLOP
Half-brother, my good sir. Not at all. The Duckworths are quite a different line. Obviously, no effort was made to acquaint you with the family lineage before your marriage. It is my belief that the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act and the failure to reform the marriage laws has caused much needless harm. I’m relieved you came to me for advice about propagation. In my view it would be most unwise.

LEONARD
Dr. Savage says childbirth would be the best thing for her.

DR HYSLOP
He was her attending physician and look at the state she’s in. Dr. Savage’s methods are sadly outdated, I regret to say.

LEONARD
I don’t want children but Virginia think she does.

DR HYSLOP
She’ll get over it. The question really is whether she should be certified. You do realize that your wife’s attempt at suicide mandates her certification for the protection of landlords, staff – anyone she encounters is at peril.

LEONARD
We can’t do that. Once she is certified divorce is impossible. Roger Fry is chained to his mad wife forever.

DR HYSLOP
You needn’t divorce, you have grounds for a nullity. Do you contemplate divorce?

LEONARD
Not yet at any rate. But the honeymoon – it was ghastly.

DR HYSLOP
Coitus was completed, I assume? Or not?

LEONARD
Hard to say. On our wedding night Virginia became so excited, dashing about the room I admit I became quite angry shouting at her to lie down. I’m afraid she wet the bed. We’ve tried a few times since but under the circumstances my manhood is severely impaired.

DR HYSLOP
I assume you had all the usual experiences of a man of the world?

LEONARD
Oh, yes. In Ceylon it was all concubines and courtesans. I was very lucky not to contract the syph.

DR HYSLOP
Yes, these hazards are much more common abroad. Your general health is quite good? Apart from the tremor, I mean.

LEONARD
Jews are a hardy race. We can survive anything.

DR HYSLOP
It might be that this young woman is simply too effete for coitus and must remain a natural spinster.

LEONARD
I threw over my career for this marriage. It was a big step.

DR HYSLOP
Civil service, I believe?

LEONARD
I was administrator of Hambantota.

DR HYSLOP
Bully for you! Britain’s colonizing, civilizing impulse is the glory of the world.

LEONARD
Well, I found it a difficult, dangerous and dirty job.

DR HYSLOP
So is caring for the terminally insane. My advice is that once Virginia is calmer you attempt to explain to her that if Dalingridge Hall were not open to her there is nowhere she can go without certification. Convince her that absolute fidelity to our dictates is her only hope of healing her poor brain. Keep your chin up, young fellow. Best not to think about yourself so much. Spend as much time as you can manage in the open air.

LEONARD
I need a job. I must establish a writing career.

DR HYSLOP
Return to the Civil Service, is my advice.

LEONARD
The climate in Ceylon would kill Virginia.

DR HYSLOP
You should discuss certification, annulment and divorce with a specialist solicitor. I can recommend a few names. All this brooding gets one into a funk, don’t you see? Cultivate a sense of proportion.

LEONARD
I’ll try.

July 3, 2024
The Dalingridge Horror – a play by Alysse Aallyn
Following her honeymoon Virginia Woolf attempted suicide and was sent to recover at her half-brother’s estate, Dalingridge Hall.

CHARACTERS

Virginia Woolf: a sensitive young artist having a breakdown

Leonard Woolf: her new husband, nervous, forceful, an “outsider”

Dr. Craig: bluff, elderly, genial, doctor to the wealthy

Dr. Hyslop: a fashionable eugenicist

Two orderlies: rough & tumble Cockneys ALF & BOB (orderlies & doctors played by the same actors)

(Scene 1: Dalingridge Hall, An ostentatious faux British castle with all the updated luxurious mod-cons. A pair of white-coated orderlies maneuver a stretcher into a sickroom.)

ALF
Hold up a mo, let’s have a fag.

BOB
Buckle her in, and then we’ll have a fag.

ALF
Now that’s right stupid, that is. Tie her up, the job is done. No time for a fag then.

BOB
Oh, right. I get you. Where can we stow her? She’s heavy.

ALF
Tall as a man and strong like one, so they say. Prop her up over here. Careful, now, you got me shin!

(They lean the stretcher against the wall facing the audience. Fumble with cigarette packs. ALF sits on the bed.)

BOB
I don’t like her looking at us.

ALF
Oh, she’s well out of it. Off to dreamland. Took the mickey out of her, they did.

BOB
So what’s up with this one? Trying on hats and ordering jewelry too much for her?

ALF
I heard it was her honeymoon what sank her!

BOB
Oh, Lord!

(they both guffaw)

BOB
Wonder it doesn’t happen routine-like, what with the shock and all. I mean, she’s not used to seeing the farm animals getting frisky in the spring. She’s not walking to church with the village lads. She’s not sharing a bed with the brothers and sisters. So everything seems right and proper until the big night and then –

ALF
All hell breaks loose!

(they laugh uproariously)

BOB
So, you seen the husband?

ALF
Oh yes, he was hanging about. Wringing his hands.

BOB
So what’s he look like, then? One of them muscle-bound rowing blues?

ALF
No, no, no. Nervy bloke. Just back from the East where he’d been sorting out the blacks.

BOB
Oh, Lord! Used to carrying a big stick is he?

(they gasp, cough, laugh and fall about)

VIRGINIA

(groggily)

What is this place? What vast forces of good and evil dropped me here? I burn, I shiver. I turn, I tumble, I am stretched. I am nailed like a stoat to the stable door.

ALF
Oh my jugs and jiggers, she’s coming out of it. Look here, you take that end.

BOB
Hold her up, hold her up!

ALF
She’s heavy, I’m telling you. They feed them women up like Strasbourg geese. Look sharp now.

BOB
There’s hell to pay if she’s not buckled in.

(They get her on the bed. Much buckling and strapping.)

VIRGINIA
Who are you? Where am I? I have been diving through seas of horror to come up rotting in dirty ditchwater. Don’t touch me!

(She starts struggling when it’s too late. She’s already buckled in. The men rest, gratified but exhausted.)

ALF
Nothing to fear, my lady. You’re all right now. You’re safe here at Dalingridge Hall.

(His last words reverential)

VIRGINIA
Dalingridge Hall! Now the agony begins, horror has seized me with its fangs! I am turned, I am tumbled, I am stretched and everyone pursuing!

(She starts screaming)

ALF
Hypo! We need a hypo!

(ALF and BOB rush about panicked. Enter LEONARD. Exit orderlies.)

LEONARD
What is it? What’s happened?

VIRGINIA
Dalingridge Hall! They’ve taken me to Dalingridge Hall!

LEONARD
Virginia, your brother Sir George and his wife Lady Margaret have kindly lent us this splendid mansion. They’re staying up in London and have left it all to us. Up to date comfort. Plenty of servants – French chef – the food is magnificent. Eleven bathrooms! Spotless, hygienic, – the nurses are impressed I can tell you.

VIRGINIA
Now this monstrous ugliness is explained. I hear the crack of antlers as if the beasts of the forest are rearing, plunging among the thorns. One has pierced me. One has driven deep within me. You have left me to undergo this squalid humiliation served out like soup by greedy, casual scullions, coarse, ogling, brushing, destroying everything, smearing even our love with impure fingers. “What is this secret sin, this untold tale, that art cannot extract nor penance cleanse?” Don’t you understand? ALL DEATHS ARE ONE DEATH.
```
LEONARD
```
Would you like to see Sir George?

VIRGINIA

George! That obese alligator who used to roll me round my bed of an evening as if I were a minnow shut up in a tank with a frenzied whale. I would rather touch a decaying dogfish than that man’s body.

LEONARD
Hush, Virginia. George is an Adonis, a true man of the world, adored by great ladies and parliamentarians alike.

VIRGINIA
George has the eyes of a sow! Or is it an elephant? Sows look so much like elephants on the Duckworth side of the family. He used to fondle me so I couldn’t read my Greek. The very locusts deform the trees with their lusts.

LEONARD
George claims chastity until hi marriage. That’s more than I managed.

VIRGINIA
What liars men are! George was a pig, snuffling, rolling, grabbing, calling me Beloved. How he tortured both of us, me and Vanessa alike, Greek slaves in the harem promised him by Eton. He smothered us with caresses until Nessa told Dr. Savage and Dr. Savage made him stop. George told Dr. Savage he was only comforting us for the illness of our father.

LEONARD
Virginia, you’re romancing. Dr. Head says longing for adult attention creates a wish-fulfillment leading to ideas like these. He says the only way out is the talking cure.

VIRGINIA
So it’s wish fulfillment that has trapped me in George’s house? Dr. Head is another booby, Leonard. We were right to dismiss him. He knows nothing.

(she grabs him)

Don’t you understand that we are poured to the very edge of the abyss, Leonard, where we shall be broken together into nothingness and flames? Help, help! Get me out of this thing!

LEONARD
Dearest, you threatened to harm yourself, remember? You attempted suicide.

VIRGINIA
You left the veronal unlocked. I thought it was an invitation. My father praised the Duke of Bedford for having the courage to shoot himself. Surely you longed to be rid of me. I’m a bad bargain all around.
```
LEONARD
```
No Virginia, no. I love you. I moved heaven and earth to save you.

VIRGINIA
But I’m already dead, Leonard. I am certainly in hell. Fallen in a duck pond and strangling in duckweed! Quack, quack!

LEONARD
Virginia, why do you reduce me to madness too? If you could only comprehend how insane you sound.

VIRGINIA
You can’t think what a raging furnace it is to me, madness and doctors and being forced. I am bent like a tree under a remorseless gale. The crass blindness that poisons childhood still threatens bitter storms. Children will be trodden under. Speech is false. The demand to submit must always be returned with cries of pain, hate and rage because that’s all they understand.

LEONARD
You were violent, Virginia. You attacked your nurses. Don’t you remember?

VIRGINIA
I was defending myself. They attacked me! Forcing food down my throat. I will go down with my colors flying. Father used to say, “Face the inevitable with eyes wide open.”

LEONARD
You vomited on Lily and you struck Susan with a platter of cold meat. You must eat to gain weight, Virginia. Then the voices will subside, the doctors say. That’s why they’ve ordered a rest cure.

VIRGINIA
Those doctors! My life is a constant fight against doctors’ follies. That cretin, Savage? He’s not fit to be about. Borrowed from another century.

LEONARD
Four doctors and all of them in agreement. You know this, Virginia. You chose Head yourself – because Roger Fry recommended him – Vanessa suggested Craig and I found Hyslop.

VIRGINIA
Really, a doctor is worse than a husband. I’ve given up expecting doctors to listen to reason. If only those pigheaded sawbones could see I speak the sober truth without excuse! Alienists know absolutely nothing. Their vanity is as profound as their ignorance. What does their “treatment” amount to? It is all eating and drinking and being shut up in the dark, sequestered with lunatics.

LEONARD
The food here is delicious. May I bring you some?

VIRGINIA
Once when we travelled by train to St. Ives the lemonade spilled on the sandwiches and turned them into mush but Nurse still made us eat them and I was sick and then I was punished. Leonard, don’t you see that when I am weighted with food I can no longer make the moments flow together. I become an excreter, an excretion. No, of course you don’t see. You’re in a conspiracy, plotting against me. I see your grinning, I know your subterfuge, I hear you sneering behind my back.

LEONARD
Virginia, the people who love you are trying to decide what’s best for you. I’m trying to make the best decisions I can.

VIRGINIA
You’re punishing me for disappointing you. For being a bad wife.

LEONARD
When you’re well, you admit you’ve been mad.

VIRGINIA
My sister wanted to be rid of me. While she threw away our father’s possessions I lay in bed and heard the birds singing Greek.

“What bird so sings, so yet does wail?
Tis the ravished nightingale
Jug, jug, jug, tereu she cries
And still her woes at midnight rise.”

LEONARD
You’re hurting yourself with all this wild talk. No one can understand anything you say.

VIRGINIA
People know very well enough but it’s a secret. King Edward spewed the foulest possible language amongst the azaleas and yet they crowned him. “Swallow, my sister, O Sister Swallow,” I sing. If I become king of the lunatics shall I escape molestation? God, I wish I were dead. I will soon have to jump out of a window.

LEONARD
These violent oscillations, Virginia! If I could only get you to see! A whirlwind brings madness in its wake!

VIRGINIA
How long can any man love a woman without driving her mad? How long can I protect my clean visions from the odious masculine point of view – from the egotism of men? You crack my brain like a thrush cracks a snail – hammer, hammer, hammer.

LEONARD
I am not your enemy, Virginia.

VIRGINIA
Then who else is? Why shouldn’t I be frightened? I wanted to spend my life innocently indifferent among the trees and rivers but instead men expose themselves whenever I step out doors. I saw a woman pinned beneath a car and horses falling in the street. Outside our scullery a man cut his own throat. His jowls were whitened as codfish. The human face is hideous. What are you doing? Don’t touch me!

LEONARD
Trying to loosen your straps. You’re getting excited. Doctor!
July 2, 2024