Not Her Best Moments

Not Her Best Moments

[WOMAN#1 begins on her back. Center (stage) right.

WOMAN#2 begins standing at her piano. Center (stage).

WOMAN#3 begins face down, at her breakfast place setting.

Her hands still holding the plastic silverware. Center (stage) left.

WOMAN#4 begins among scattered photos and albums. (Stage) left.

WOMAN#5 begins at her kitchen table. (Stage) right.

Liberally.]

WOMAN#3:

I found myself, naked-

WOMAN#1:

Writhing beneath him. I found myself nailed to the headboard, the sacrifice of our marriage-

WOMAN#4:

I found myself lying next to him, he’s sleeping. I’m trying to wake him, I’m screaming, screaming-

WOMAN#2:

They have killed the sun. We have now found our place-

WOMAN #5:

I’ll admit it wasn’t one of my best moments but at least I can say that I did it all for love, however absurd that sounds…

WOMAN#1:

[Sits up]

He was having a hard time of it. Used to come home from the bar late at night and just need to hold me. He used to cry, clutching my sweater between his fingers. The first time, I didn’t know what to do. I’d never seen him cry before. And he was a big guy. It’s hard to imagine those that are bigger and stronger than us to be vulnerable y’know? It broke my heart. I held his head in my hands and pressed my lips to his, feeling his tears fall over my cheeks. I tried to give him my strength.

I take his head in my hands and see desperation growing there like a virus. He turned his sails towards the oblivion of Wonderland and disabled the anchor, no stopping, no turning back. His hands become clumsy, his breath rotten with the stale stench of late nights spent awake, caressing a bottle of his latest forged nirvana.

I take his head in my hands. The night air is cold in my throat. His breath stings my nostrils. The weight of his body presses into my lungs as he mounts me, suffocating me, his attempts to love me; my attempts at screams bury themselves deep inside my guts.

WOMAN#4:

No!

WOMAN#3:

Stop!

WOMAN#1:

You’re hurting me.

His body on top of me is heavy, slick with sweat, pressing into my lungs. He enters me, heaving and grunting. I place both of my hands on his chest and push against him with all my strength. I beat my fist into him, but he just pins my arms underneath me, pulling them from the sockets, he doesn’t

WOMAN#3:

Stop!

WOMAN#4:

No!

WOMAN#1:

Doesn’t know that he’s hurting me.

Suffocating me, the night burns in my lungs as I suck in the last bits of air my body can reach towards. My vision begins to blur, I feel my limbs, my body becoming heavy. Thoughts on repeat. Slick with sweat. He presses his body deeper and deeper into mine. Heaving sighs of a love that once sent shivers down my spine.

WOMAN#5:

I love you baby, oh I want you so bad.

WOMAN#1:

He is so gone, so lost in his own body that he doesn’t even realize that the body beneath him is growing cold, no longer belonging to me. It’s just a memory vessel, strewn with reminders of love. A wedding ring,

WOMAN#4:

No!

WOMAN#1:

The watch he bought me for my birthday,

WOMAN#5:

Stop!

WOMAN#1

Anniversary presents.

WOMAN#5:

I love you baby.

WOMAN#1:

I want to say it back but your tears have choked me out, my body is growing cold, love. Oh baby, you took my breath away.

WOMAN#5:

[Turns to WOMAN#3]

I love you, baby.

WOMAN#3:

Ow.

[Slams silverware into table]

Ow.

[Slams silverware into table]

Ow.

Time moves slower here in Wonderland.

Words fill my mouth, exploding like pomegranate seeds,

between my teeth.

I allowed myself to be swallowed

By the carnivorous mouth of the rabbit hole,

teeth tearing my body to pieces.

My body mingles between the fibers of the continental breakfast napkins,

pooling onto the 40$ a night carpet.

Slow halt of blood in my veins.

I never wanted to die, babe,

my threats are empty,

you know that.

You know that

I just like the feeling of falling

falling in love,

falling off the earth,

falling out of conscious.

My life has become a roadside spectacle.

I live by the seat of my pants

I never knew that we would both end up on our knees.

WOMAN#5:

I gaze at you and ask you what I can do to help

but I am not equipped to handle what direction your pain takes today.

You pulled all the teeth from your mouth

preparing for your verbal breakdown.

You moved too fast for me,

so I experienced our lives through the ever changing pictures on your post cards.

One sentence

scrawled on the back,

words too busy to breathe…

WOMAN#3:

“Wish you were here.”

I never meant for it to be this way.

All I wanted was to be able to bear my soul.

WOMAN#5:

All I wanted was for you look at me, with that empty smile,

like you want nothing more than to be a building on my skyline.

But we’ve got some issues to work through.

There’s a field of land mines scattered in the hallway between the living room and the kitchen and I’ve been tip-toeing to breakfast every morning.

Look into your big, blue water stained eyes and sigh.

Ask you,

what form does your pain take today?

WOMAN#2:

It’s hard to say.

Hard to say

Hard to say

What do I hate most about myself today?

WOMAN#4:

I spend most of my time at work sitting down, hoping that no one will notice how big my ass is getting. But by the time I reach my house every afternoon I’ve become so paranoid that all that sitting is just gonna make my ass fatter and fatter, so I run up and down the stairs of my apartment building, chugging water and eating nothing but protein bars.

WOMAN#3:

When I use the bathroom, I’m so afraid that someone will hear me that once I sat in the stall for an hour waiting to be alone.

WOMAN#2

I found myself naked

In front of the bathroom mirror
but did I like what I saw?

In the mirror, in the mirror
When I was ready to bear my soul

Who is the fairest of them all?

WOMAN#1:

I wake up 20 minutes before my husband every morning so that I can put my face on before he wakes up.

WOMAN#1 & 4

Nobody, not even my own family has seen me without make-up on

WOMAN#1

For the last 20 years.

WOMAN#3:

I was so afraid that if I wasn’t smart enough, I’d never make any friends. So I studied and I studied until I realized I was studying alone. I 23 years old, and I’ve never been out to a bar with friends, never had a birthday party.

ALL WOMEN:

I live in extremes.

WOMAN#2:

I’m too tall.

I’m too fat.

I’m too smart for my own good.

My own good?

It’s hard to say

What do I hate most about myself today?

ALL WOMEN:

It’s hard to say

What do I hate most about myself today?

[With different inflection. In separate meters.]

What do I hate most about myself today?

WOMAN#4:

I am the wrong woman.

Things were never right, so I guess I’m not surprised.

He never actually wanted me.

I am

                             the consolation prize.

I am

                             the next best thing.

And I was so in love with him I pretended like

I was

                             her,

                             the one he fantasized about.

I’d say things I thought she’d say

I’d act the way I thought she’d act.

I tried so hard to change his mind

to get him to love me.

When he looked at me he saw so many faces but he never saw mine.

WOMAN#5:

She told me that love was endless.

Said we’d

                         take every opportunity to celebrate our lives.

That we

                         would always say, “I love you.”

Not only when we had smiles on our faces and butterflies in our bellies

but when we were angry,

and frustrated,

and fighting

because it always means the same thing,

no matter what.

WOMAN#4:

He was always honest, that was one of the things I loved most about him.

He’d never lie to me, even if it meant hurting me, he was always honest. I guess it helped me grow my skin. He was always so sure. If I had a problem he had an answer. He had the whole world figured out. But I was still learning. I was still growing. He became alien to me. He became the unmovable. This honest man of answers became stone in front of my eyes. There was no talking to him, no reasoning with him. He had the whole world figured out. He knew all his lines, memorized all the motions. As I changed I grew away from him. My skin was now a barrier blocking him out.

We didn’t talk,

We didn’t touch.

WOMAN #5:

One day she was

just gone.

No note,

just gone.

Months later I got a call from the police. I’d forgotten she’d put me down as her emergency contact. They’d found her in a hotel room off route 66 with her wrist slit all the way up her forearms.

Suicide.

WOMAN#4:

I’ve never felt so invisible.

WOMAN#5:

It’s like she never even saw me.

WOMAN#4:

He has become the unmovable

WOMAN#1:

I wake up, naked, buried between the sheets of his spent passion. My body aches but my breath has been restored. I pad toward the closet, pull out my overnight bag.

[Begins to wipe off stage make-up]

WOMAN#2:

I never thought I would be able to leave you

WOMAN#1:

But I cannot continue to be a building on your skyline. I will not be a martyr for love.

WOMAN#3:

[Unravels her bandages]

I am not your sacrificial lamb.

WOMAN#2:

You are not the object of my strength

WOMAN#4:

No!

WOMAN#3:

Stop!

ALL WOMEN:

I live in extremes.

WOMAN#3:

Constantly searching for my center path.

ALL WOMEN:

I am my own object of strength.

WOMAN #5:

I’ll admit it wasn’t one of my best moments but at least I can say that I did it all for love, however absurd that sounds…