CASE: Matthew stinks like hell. Exactly like hell. It’s very distracting, how sweaty he is and stuff like how he’ll dig out a bit of food thats stuck in his teeth and take it out and look at it and then put it back in his mouth and chew it some more. And he talks about stuff and i can’t pay attention.

Matthew: You’re thinking about something fucking stupid and you’re thinking its profound, right little sister?

Case: I am NOT your sister

But all the same, it makes me feel bad that i’m thinking about bathroom floors. It’s not that he’s psychic or anything, he’s just real accusatory.

Like this one time, Matthew and me were in Wal Mart and he was speaking in monologues, reading them off these index cards he’d brought — in front of the security cameras. He says he’s going to get all the tapes and shuffle them into a fifty hour reel of people examining cheap bustiers and crap ass rifles with this one guy who keeps showing up and shouting like he wrote a new bible. The shouting guy is him. And I say "Fuck you." And I mean,

Matthew: "Fuck you for deciding to cast yourself as the one intelligent being in the universe spouting profundity to be isolated and admired." Case, You don’t get it. Security cameras don’t even record sound. It would make me me look stupid. Its a joke. Irony.

Case: Or this one time when Matthew and me were driving out up to reach the Canada border to make a couple of exhcanges and we’ll probably make ok money off the whole thing. we’re in this rental car and Matthew is going through this whole box of twinkies, squeezing them and just sucking the frosting out of them and just throwing them out the window. And I say, "Could you stop wasting the twinkies?"

Matthew: And I say to Case, "Nope. (beat. Matthew licks his fingers) Wouldn’t you just like to take a girl out into the fields out there and dig out a hole in one of those bales of hay and just hold her in your lap and it would smell so good and warm, like, forever?

Case: I paid for those twinkies. And it would itch. And sometimes hay bales start to compost and then they rot and burn.

Matthew: She always expects I’m gonna fight back or something. It’s generally much more effective to wait till the air goes dead. (beat. Matthew looks offstage as though Case might reenter. She does not.)

Yeah, she gets real made when I do that.

Not that dualistic theories aren’t outdated. I’ll give you that. But I used to have this sneaking suspicion that there were exactly two kinds of people, Lone Rangers and people who let people call them Tonto, right? Those who are absorbed and those who are hopelessly, feebly absorbant. Case made me certain of it. Theres me, and theres Case. There’s people who take all the air out of the room, and there’s people who’ll reach right down into their lungs, pull out their breath and hand it to you. You don’t even have to ask.

There was this one time that I accidentilly burned down Case’s house. I’d only meant to set the living room carpet on fire — its polyester, and polyester is really interesting when it burns — and I was rolling a litle bit, so the warmth feels kind of pleasant at first. And then, it gets out of control, and thats where the accident steps in, and — Case kept snakes as pets, and about a thousand crickets, to feed to the snakes. And we’re standing outside on the sidewalk and the house is burning and it looks like all of the crickets were all bright orange, and jumping to freedom. And I say, "It looks like all of the crickets are all bright orange, and jumping to freedom." And Case turns and looks at me. And she beats the shit out of me. She’s wearing steel toed boots, right? And she stands over me on the sidewalk and her house is burning and blood is trickeling out of the side of my mouth and into the grass and she thinks "That’ll show you, fucker, that’ll show you." But you know, considering all the years of shit I gave her, its not even close. But I figure, you can either be a person every single person in the room is looking at, or you can be just this big gelatinous watery eyeball, waiting to get stuff stuck in it. She kicked me here (point to gut) and here (point to chest) and here (point to temple). Like she thought it would get me back for every thoguht she’s thought she ought not think about anything but me. me and my left incisor.

• September 12, 2003 - No Shame Iowa City
  

  Performed by Dan Fairchild & Denise Dooley.

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