ibi dreams a play (I)

By Richard Chiem - Purple & Gray

characters:

JESSE- male, 22

DELIA- female, 29

RAMONA, female, 21

ABIGAIL- female, 19

IBI, no age

HEADPHONES, male/female, 3 years old

STEREO, male/female, ten years old

HOUSE SPEAKERS

The EYE

you

minor characters and everyone else

ONE

For a moment there is blackness. Cool air. Entering through the lobby and up the stairwell, he walks through his hallway where all the chandeliers and ceiling lights are either turned off or broken and he realizes how late it is. Almost four in the morning again, and where have you been? he’s asking himself this, inside his head, and where have you been, Jesse? I have been a worried sick about you.

The voice that plays in his head has perfect pitch. Strange and coarse and sweet and academic, like a mean girl’s voice. Aggressive like from someone who loves him and knows him, and is furiously angry with him. He misses that too.

Sometimes he leans his head against his front and only door, looking through the eyehole, glass peephole thing on the door and he can almost dream of a thief inside or someone Jesse can destroy when he goes inside. Stealing everything I have! He would scream. Take it then! Take it! (He imagines throwing everything at the burglar to bust his skull open like his record player or his glass plates and glasses or his records except for his favorite records like R.E.M and the Velvet Underground and Fleetwood Mac, things with sentimental value). Sometimes he takes a few minutes with his head on the door, either pretending to see what’s inside his apartment or he turns around and stares up at the high ceiling, where there is a window, like he’s watching a shuttle launch or a diamond like, meteor shower raining down on the city and if no one else is watching, he thinks, he would like to be the only one watching. The one person. Usually there is only black color in the window and no stars. His feet feel slightly elevated in his shoes. Or really drunk and the whiskey from earlier harms the way he’s standing there. It’s really cold outside, in the hallway, he thinks. Leaning his nose against the door, nearly crushing the cartilage. He bangs his head twice like as if knocking.

JESSE

CAN ANYONE HEAR ME?

JESSE

HELLO?

JEESE

I DON’T WANT TO DO THIS ANYMORE! I WANT TO CALL IT OFF!

After a moment the buzzing in his ears goes away and he can hear the air again. More sober, he remembers his headphones, dangling around his neck like a funny noose and he feels the buttons on his MP3 player. Plays a song that he likes to listen to when he’s drunk or sad. He finds his keys and unlocks the door clumsily with noise and trepidation.

JESSE

Let me in.

HEADPHONES

Life is tough and love is rough// For the man who just can’t seem to ever get enough//

Another room in the complex.

A few doors down the hall.

Soundproof walls.

DELIA

moans

RAMONA

moans

Little Boys, by Devendra Banhart, plays from her stereo. There is a broken wine glass on the coffee table and crumbs from crackers and oil from cheese. But who cares? Touching ignores the mess. Delia and Ramona trample their foreheads together to look each other eye to eye, waiting for the other to do something surprising or appearing like foul play.

They love foul play, and horseplay.

The bricks walls of the apartment houses their warmth and acoustics and fine lighting, and marvelous laughter. Fingers explore the other lover’s body for transitioning in textures. They begin whispering about this, as Ramona moves her curious finger nails lower to Delia’s pubic hair and pets her shape, her triangle trembles: Where does the mouth begin to feel like a mouth? Or a navel?

RAMONA

Or your little diamond down here.

DELIA

My little diamond?

RAMONA

Yes. Your little diamond.

DELIA

You know. It used to be coal.

RAMONA

A thousand years ago.

DELIA

Yes. One zero, zero, zero.

(Pondering her life so far)

Sometimes I feel like I’m wasting away.

DELIA

What the fuck am I doing?

They way they stare at the ceiling, often it becomes soothing, like a cool drink laying down. They pass a joint like something fragile. Sometimes Delia likes to make her eyes look at something for a long time without blinking, and sometimes you can see images like video, but real life, because it’s right in front of you. But everything is shaking and light hovers just barely, like everything in living is fragile just barely. Ocean waves are best for this she thinks. A video ocean. Sometimes she can go an eerily long time without blinking.

Most of the time, Delia’s seduction feels like gravity.

Ramona has a look on her face like she needs to chew something particularly meaty. Or to light a match to watch a fire. Her young thin eyebrows seem apathetic and her face leans closer slowly as if practiced. Delia is laying down on top of bare wooden floorboards and Ramona is on top of her.

RAMONA

What would happen you think.

If a person physically, like ate a diamond?

DELIA

You mean ingest it?

RAMONA

Yeah.

RAMONA

What do you think happens inside the body? Something like a perfect diamond, inside the body.

DELIA

There would be pain.

RAMONA

Yeah. Tremendous pain.

DELIA

And like, maybe aches too. Deep secret aches. Messages from the body, telling you something’s wrong. Something that doesn’t belong there.

RAMONA

Hmm

DELIA

What hmm?

Limbs move and exchange.

Delia grabs for Ramona.

RAMONA

(She smiles and they wrestle their forearms, back and forth, like fun rope) Or maybe it belongs there, you know, the diamond? And the body hurts with shocks of pleasure. Like growing pains.

DELIA

moans

RAMONA

Growing pains! (She kisses Delia like pressing a button, pretends the nipple is tied to every, sensitive blood strand in her body and she nibbles her. Circles the aureole with pencil tongues and rhythmic intention. Her fingers carefully drift down lower below the small hairs and sway like gentle and harmonious pizzicato. Like finger plucking. Good finger plucking. Mouths and lips open like moths’ wings, without songs or words but more like brief and courageous noises or whimpers and Ramona watches her lover’s face, like someone watching the face of a clock, and sees pleasure counting the seconds tick slow revolutions and Delia screams)

Do you think you can die? Eating a shiny diamond?

DELIA

moans

yes.

RAMONA

Do you think it would be an awful death?

DELIA

moans

yes

RAMONA

yes

She pushes the sofa farther away knocking down something that sounds like a lampshade and the wooden legs on the sofa, squeaks on the marble floor in the kitchen, and the sound nearly tickles them. Laughter vibrates them. Ramona likes the sound of the word yes and begins to repeat the word yes over and over until Delia can stand no more of it. She says yes, like hello. Yes, like more. Yes, like come here.

C’mere.

RAMONA

yes

RAMONA

yes

STEREO

I see so many// little boys I want to marry//

Somewhere else a dance club.

A few hours before, the younger night.

Everything moves with loud music and footsteps along the marble floor.

Jesse orders a whiskey and dances to the middle of the main floor next to a girl who makes him curious enough to dance.

JESSE