Entry #21 - Monologue #1
A friend of mine, Chris—who taught the acting class—asked me if I would write a monologue for a performance piece he was planning on doing for the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. This is what I came up with…
Actor faces the audience with a bowl of water in front of him on a table as though it is a sink and in front of his face, an imaginary mirror. He washes his face and hands.
Actor: What the fuck am I doing here?
How did I end up so far from where I started, or even from what I thought I’d be?
How did my hands end up so filthy?
Six years ago, I was in a private college engaging in discourse on the trajectory of human civilization. Now I’m living in the bane of it.
I wake up every morning to row after row of abrasively white painted brick and a morning serenade from the moron tabernacle ass choir singing the praises of last night’s mystery meat.
The first sign of decline should’ve been when the intelligent, sympathetic co-ed in my bed was replaced by a stripper who seemed more aroused by the needle in her arm than any other penetration that she was experiencing at the time.
The seven DEA agents who kicked in my door seemed almost an appropriate crescendo.
You don’t realize, watching Court TV, just what it must feel like to be standing in front of a fascist in a black robe who’s been authorized to determine the course of the next five to ten years of your life. It’s something that I never wanted to learn…too late for that.
To be denied self-surrender, cuffed in front of my family and friends and hauled away—the thought of it makes me nauseous…I think my gums are bleeding.
Two months in the county awaiting designation. What a nightmare.
My second day in, I woke up to three guys standing over me…”You a skinner?”
“A what”
“A skinner.”
“Huh?”
“A sex offender.”
“What? No, I’m in here on a drug charge.”
“That guard out there said you were a skinner.”
“No, I’m awaiting a Fed transfer.”
Thank God that one of them had the good sense to realize that sex crimes are almost never prosecuted on a federal level. I thought for sure that they were about to give me a “blanket party”.
A month on the road. The rickety rusty 747 of Con Air. Shackles on my hands and feet. 5 AM transfers. Dark corridors under the finest maximum security facilities this draconian dystopia has to offer. I felt like shit traveling through a sewage pipe.
At least I can see the sun here. Week after week. Month after month. Nothing distinguishes one day from another. In retrospect, it seems that I just got here, but I know that with time in front of me this won’t be the case.
I’m getting my first wrinkles. Hope I’m not aging myself out of the dating pool. I’m the portrait of Dorian Grey’s fucking Anatomy. Drying up. I hope the world “felon” doesn’t scare them off. This is not who I am. Further down the pigeon hole…
15 months in.
2 years since my arrest.
Perhaps this has saved my life.
But this shame just won’t wash away…