A bathtub play.

I've talked about it a lot. Hell, by now most ya'all probably getting sick of hearing about it, and truly, I'm just getting started.

I first hear of a bathtub play only a couple years ago. It was a foreign play. Russian, or Turkish, or something. I'd heard of Kitchen plays, and Dining Room plays, and Living room plays. Bedroom plays. Never before then had I heard of bathrub plays.

Since then, they've sort of become a thing. I'm reading one now called Harlowe.  I'm not far into it yet, but so far, it's pretty good. What's fascinating to me, is the idea of telling a story that is character, dialogue, and character driven. Not a lot of action you can get from that specific a setting. The power is in the words. And boy do I love some well placed words. Sometimes I even get lucky, and place a few good ones myself.

I've been writing plays for, well, close to a couple decades now. Minus the huge amount of time I took off, and stopped writing all together. Since 2016 though, I've been back at it in full force.  It's been good.  I love it.  I love everything about it. I love crafting stories. I love how characters step into my imagination, and start talking to me. Telling me secrets. Unfolding their mysteries, and asking me to share them with others. And that's kind of exactly what happens. The best, only way to explain it. I'm sure it's different for anybody who writes...but that's how it is for me. The characters visit me. We have...

well...

I was going to say conversations, but that's wrong. We don't really converse...but we do have communications. These people. All of them. Male, female, gay, straight, they become alive in my head, and they tell me things, and I write them down. They are alive to me...but...

also...

They are not alive at all.  Of course. They are imagination. And I tell the stories, and then they are silent. Until the story is told them, they scream. Oh how they scream. They need to be heard.

Not Chloe though. Chloe is different.

So I found out a few years ago that a Bathtub Play was a thing, and almost instantly it was a thing that I had to do. I loved the challenge of it. The idea. The quest for words, in a single defined, isolated, intimate environment. It was a thing I had to do, but...

Well I know how to write a play, but I didn't know how...in...huh...

I didn't have a story. I couldn't come up with one. A story. How do you tell a story with very little action? How do you tell a story that doesn't physically travel? How do you get from point a to point z when point a and z are the exact same place. How can a character take a journey, without going anywhere?

I know there are more esoteric answers, but none that I had, or have, much experience with. So I was stuck. A strong desire to tell a story, but having no story to tell. So I did what I do. I put it on the back burner. Never once forgetting about it, but giving it no priority. I'd talk about it on occassion. Tell people about this little idea...desire...that I had, but always indicating that it would happen whenever. I had an idea with no story to back it. I had the case, with nothing inside.

I talked long about it one night with another writer friend of mine. We hung out, and chatted all sorts of things. Writing a bathtub play among those things. We half joked about sitting in a tub together, and brainstorming this idea. We never did that...but we did push the idea, of pushing each other to write this play. And then we didn't.

I did what any other writer would do. I wrote other plays. Other stories. I worked with other creators on making those stories happen. It was fun, and exciting, and fulfilling, and a positive reminder of all the reasons I do what I do. What I will always do, until my body or brain stop working. I am never going to stop being a storyteller, until I stop breathing altogether. I can't not do it. It is what's inside of me. It's the thing I do, that I can share with the world.

I did it again this year. I told another story. It was a fun story. A story that I really enjoyed telling, and really enjoyed the telling of with the people I got to tell it with. Soon after that, it happenend.

That brain explosion that sometimes happens. I wasn't even really thinking of my Bathtub play. I was thinking of something else entirely, but then, there it was. Not fully formed, but fully formulated. I knew the structure. I knew the course. I knew how to tell a story in a bathtub, and I knew what that story was.

I know what that story is.

Two characters. Zach, and Chloe. I won't tell much more. Not here. Not now. Spoils the surprise and all that jazz...and I think there are some surprises. There is a course. There is a flow. There is a front, and back, and everything in between.

And then something happenend. I started writing it. The deeper I got, the more it became apparent. This is more Chloe's story than I originally though, which surprised me, because it was always her story. She's the goddamn title character.

CHLOE AT 3:08

And she has come into my mind, like all of the other characters before her, in various forms, and guises. She comes to me and asks me to tell her story, as all the others before her, except...

Not screaming.

She is laughing.
She is crying.
She is tired, and triumphant.
She is full of mystery.

She is woman. Female. Feminine.
She is mystery.
She is taunting me.

With things I could guess at. Things I may even guess right. Isn't that what imagination is for? To create a scenario, and guess our way out of it? To wonder ultimately what would I do if...

And that is the problem I've encountered. I always wonder what I would do, and Chloe is not me. She is, I think, the farthest from me, that any character I've written previously has ever been. Because she is truly, completely, not male.

And so I thought to myself, I should talk to my female friends. I am INSANELY fortunate that I have many of them. I should present to them questions, and conversation, that would give me insight into this character. Maybe one...or all of them can help me know why Chloe is whispering instead of screaming. Laughing instead of begging. Maybe they can tell the truth of her, that I can't find inside of me.

I thought I should seek more and better sources.

And then because I am who I am, I thought back to my conversation with my female playwrite friend, and how we talked about having that bathtub play conversation, while taking a bath together, and I continued thinking, (because I never really stop thinking), why not combine all those things. Ask my friends those questions, while taking a bath about it. This gives me other writer insight.

I'll not get into it much, but at the top of the play Zach, and Chloe are perfect strangers. How uncomfortable must that be?

Why not try to find out?

I threw this idea out on facebook.  I've had some response, and this may be something that happens.  It's an (at least to me) interesting idea. This forced intimacy, that may or may not contribute to a deeper kind of intimacy. That kind that can only come from open conversation. In an unusual situation. One of my friends called it a hairbrained idea, and I love that. It may be a bad idea. Hell, it may be a terrible idea. Some of my best ideas have been. Course I'll never know unless I try. If you'd like to be part of this hairbrained idea with me, please let me know. I am not looking for any particular age, or type, or anything. I'm looking for stories, and...

Perspective. Decidedly and ultimately female perspective. A way of looking at things, that I am absolutely incapable of doing, because of my Y chromosome.

Wether this happens, or doesn't, the play will. The play is the thing. The thing inside my head. Chloe is in there, and she wants out. I will let her out, but...I think...

She'll be happier, she'll be...more... if you help me.

Hi again.

It's been a while.  Let's see if I remember how to do this.

Words words words, and all that jazz. The stream of consciousness flows into the river of digression. I used to write, in order to sort out the pieces of the puzzle in my head.  See if I could somehow discover, or translate the bigger picture from the tiny fragments. I thought of it as therapy.

Yet here I am, all this time later, and still fucked up as I ever was. So obviously the therapy didn't work.  I still write.  Other forms. Different mediums. Just closed a play, but this particular vomit of venacular won't go into that.  That one's for later.  Maybe tomorrow.  Maybe not.

I quit smoking almost a year ago.  That's gone well.  I'm still quit, so I guess that's a thing, but damn if I didn't feed the pain of it with crisco, and put on about 30 pounds.  Now I'm working to get rid of that...but this post isn't about that either.

So what is this post about?

Fucked if I know. 

Except I do.

Except for a guy who knows more than a few words, I sure am shit at using them when it comes to putting what's in my head, in to some digital coherence that only 6 people ever will read anyway.

And even though I know that this will accomplish nothing, mean nothing, and achieve nothing, I do it anyway. Oh well. Isn't that the nihilistic truth of all things?  But even if it does mean nothing, does it really mean nothing, if it means something to me? Is there value in the takeaway that even if there is some residual pain, loss, emptiness, there was at some point at least a joy that preceeded it. Perhaps the value is where we place the perception. Do I remember and celebrate the joy that once was? Or the emptiness that remains now with it's loss? Is there some way to place both on the scale and see which side weighs out?

Does it even matter?

Is it really better to have loved and lost...and all that jazz?

I find myself a bit quixotic in my little emotional adventures. Tilting at emotional windmills, that would be giants, if they were real. I seem to find myself in known quandries, of known quantities, of no means to no ends that cannot possibly end well, and diving in with full knowledge of inevitable outcome, willingly paying the cost for a few moments of...I dunno...

Reality.

I am the one thing in life I can control.

Except maybe I can't.

I'm willing to wait for it.

Except I know that the wait is eternal, and will never bear fruit.

And I do it anyway.

Because I can't not.

And my god how I love. I love. I love.
And before I even let myself begin, I know the price of it. I do. I know.  I know the end before it begins, and I begin anyway.

I will let my heart be broken every day.  I will sleep alone, with the memory of every her, who could never be.

My heart has broken.
My heart is broken.
My heart will be broken a thousand times more, and I will fucking cherish every one.  And every name.

And every fantasy, and every dream, and you and you and you have scratched your name into a piece of me that will turn to dust with my skin and bones.

And that moment you gave me.
It is in me.
And I'm selfish.
You can never have it back.
And I will always wish for more moments. I will always want more. I am insatiable...

But that one is with me.
And I am grateful.

Thank you.

Thank you for that kiss in the dark.
Thank you for that secret touch.
Thank you for that single moment of vulerability...because...

even though the lights are on now,
and reality has returned,
and that moment has passed,
and we are once again all the things we have to pretend to be...

You let me see you.
and taste you
and get the sense of you that maybe you don't share with many people...

but I am one

and you are one

and we

Well...

We will never be one...

and now we chase the giant windmill
the noble quest
the endless search

For the next heartbreak.