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DRAMA
hello dad!
let me taste your voice
the man with all the answers
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Man With All The Answers ...
 "Ummp,
Japanese food. It’s easy, unsituational, n the Wasabi burns your nose like a drug. It feels like the beginning of an orgasm without the fuss of the sex before…"
"Johnny was like. Okay, like some flash of lightening. I kissed him and… He was so pretty to look at, and we had this summer of picking up seashells, and placing them like an island on each other’s backs."
"I wonder why I always end up with the REAL bad guys. It’s so, if there’s a guy an he tells me he’s a terrible fucked up son of a bitch who got beaten as a child and grew up a twisted fucked up son of a bitch I’m thinkin,
I’m okay, I’m the Ice Queen. I will not fall."
These two are meeting, sight unseen, it's an internet thing. They've seen pictures but everyone lies unless you force them to tell the truth. All we've got is their voices: she is
East coast USA, he is North West UK.
Then there's Johnny, but he couldn't be bothered appearing in this short extract, he's saving his
energy, walking about and watching. He might have a word to say, but not just yet.
SUMMER
Do you get out much?
RICHARD
Out? I’ve been outside, I’ve been in the yard, but “Out”, wearing my best bib and tucker? It’s like a memory… I’m not sure if it happened or I just dreamt it.
SUMMER
I got a sense.
RICHARD
How?
SUMMER
You’re so easily impressed, you’re like the little guy off Fantasy Island? Do you stand there with your big smile shouting, “Boss! Da plane! Da plane!” Like boy, it’s only a plane! Like, Richard, I’m only a girl…
RICHARD
Y’know, it’s difficult to explain.
SUMMER
So try…
RICHARD
You put a smile on my face. A strange smile. You know the way people look after the alien bodysnatchers have snatched them and they’re just sort of warm and contented in a glassy-eyed way. It’s that sort of smile.
SUMMER
Right now that’s pretty much how I see you, Richard. Pretty warm but pretty scary.
RICHARD
I want to know all about you. I’ve got a zip folder in my brain full of questions I’m too scared to extract. Favourite colour, favourite pet, music - what’s your favourite music?
SUMMER
Boring. Next.
RICHARD
What’s your favourite dance? When you go dancin, how d’you like to move your body?
SUMMER
For example?
RICHARD
Slammin about in the mosh pit, headbangin, freakin out at a rave, doin the okeykokey at the office do.
SUMMER
Salsa… and the kind that makes you want to fall down cos you hurt so much. Let me just say, I like to be flung around by someone who knows what he’s doing.
RICHARD
I only dance at weddings… funerals and… breakdancing competitions. Mainly I shuffle and try not to spill my beer.
SUMMER
My Romeo. So what don’t you like about yourself?
RICHARD
My inability to impress women I like. They start telling me I’m a lovely person as they back towards the exit. Why is that?
SUMMER
It’s the weird thing. Serious. One thing you would change. One each, appearance then character. You then me. Appearance first cos I’m kinda shallow like that. An besides for character you’ve gonna give me one of these “I’m too much of a perfectionist,” cop out deals. So…
RICHARD
Errr.
SUMMER
Appearance.
RICHARD
Weight. My weight. I could lose some. I could live on rabbit food and forget about roast potatoes. Or I could hold my breath more. I’m sure my body’s full of heavy oxygen. Is that possible? Can breathing make you fat?
SUMMER
Stop.
RICHARD
Sorry.
SUMMER
So we talkin, can’t leave the house, reinforced-bed levels of obesity here?
RICHARD
Pleasantly plump.
SUMMER
Sumo or couch potato?
RICHARD
What’s the difference?
SUMMER
You a fightin fit athlete with breasts the size of small mammals or you my slacker boy Romeo who panics when he loses the remote?
RICHARD
More of the latter.
SUMMER
Hey, that’s not a problem. Girls they don’t like the whole six-pack humungous thing y’know. For sure it’s a visual treat and a swell thing in general to press flesh with an athlete but it’s the whole early morning jog, egg-white omelette thing that gets tiring. I mean, broiled chicken and a protein shake? What kind of a late night snack is that? Romance food is all about the sweetness factor, right? You takin me out for a meal I’m thinkin about the dessert before I’ve even had my hor d’ouerves. So Richard, you breath out and loosen those elasticated sweatpants.
RICHARD
Do you want to hear my fantasy?
SUMMER
Start and I’ll tell you when to stop.
RICHARD
I’m stranded on a desert island - that’s my dream - with hardly a coconut to eat. All the skinny boys die of malnutrition, I get helicoptered out three months later, body like a Mr Supermodel – plus the fact that I’ve developed a taste for eating human flesh-
SUMMER
Stop!
RICHARD
I think it’ll make a good film.
SUMMER
Can I just say, Richard, be chubby but please do not be gross, cos then all my friends will say, look there’s Summer with her very witty but very ugly English boyfriend, isn’t she sweet. I know I sound shallow…
RICHARD
Are you serious?
SUMMER
I’m as serious as a diaper shortage in an Old Folks’ Home.
RICHARD
So.
SUMMER
So.
RICHARD
So. The one thing – how about your appearance?
SUMMER
I think you got a clue with the whole, “I love chocolate!” thing. So, your one thing. Character, personality, lifestyle, life history blackspot. Go…
RICHARD
I can’t think.
SUMMER
That’s your answer? You’re slow of brain?
RICHARD
No. Wait. Life history. My history.
SUMMER
‘Kay. Make it big, important, not “My dog died when I was twelve.”
Pause.
RICHARD
Listen. Once upon a time there was a boy. Born in a barn, lights in the sky. That boy was me, happy like a snowflake in a Nativity play for the first three or four years. But Daddy was a drinker and a gambler and lost his job carpenting. Shouting ensued. Mother father rat a tat tat. Only child huddled up in bed to keep out of the way. If my Daddy was a stick of rock he’d have “Rotten” written down his spine. He stole money, he shouted, he did bad angry things. So there’s me and Mama livin on our own. Next thing I hear Daddy’s died. He’s homeless now, a professional drinker, he died of gangrene of the leg. Amusingly old fashioned but true. The only thing I inherited from him was the weight thing.
SUMMER
More. Carry on.
RICHARD
Adult life. This and that. Tried to get a job. Failed. Tried a million times more. Had a job delivering pizzas, scooting round the traffic on a rusty moped about as powerful as a vacuum cleaner. And there I was working fifty-six hours a week. I say work, it was busy at night, during the day we played Cluedo and danced to pirate radio while we waited for the phone to ring. Then I got made redundant. A manager went to work for another company, offered me a job in a restaurant, asked me if I wanted to be a chef, but they expected me to care about profits and cheese and eventually it was like one of those jobs where you take it for a joke or for a limited period and then suddenly people are like, hey, take this seriously, this is the rest of your life. They point you out at parties. She’s just stood next to the pizza guy. You know the fella that stinks of rancid cheese. Next to him.
SUMMER
That covers a few years.
RICHARD
Since then, decided working for someone else was stupid, going nowhere. Wanted to set myself up in business. Control my own fate, be my own boss. And that was how – cutting out the most important part of the story – I ended up in here.
SUMMER
In here?
RICHARD
In prison.
longer extract available in pdf form->
Download PDF… coming soon...
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