CAST

WHITE A 17-year-old female character dressed in mainly stark bright white.

RED The same/similar female character at 17 ½ and wearing mainly dark maroon or blood red.

BLUE The same/similar female character at 18 and wearing mainly bright medium blue.

SETTING

The interior of a sterile white bathroom. Only a toilet, a bathtub, and a bathmat are present.

The bathroom is downstage centre. The toilet is facing the audience; to the left of the toilet, the long edge of the bathtub faces the audience; on the floor, towards the left edge of the bathtub, is a bathroom mat. WHITE is sitting on the toilet facing the audience. RED is sitting on the edge of the bathtub with one leg crossed over the other. RED is also facing the audience. BLUE is sitting on the bathmat, turned with her left side facing the audience. The spotlight fades up on WHITE.

WHITE Everything is born white. Snow, snowballs, snowflakes all beautiful white. Snowmen in their pure white skin like porcelain babies. Beautiful porcelain dolls so white, clean, and fragile. Fragile like a pretty lily flower you see in the spring. A white lily that waits for the perfect, clear day to smile. To smile is to be happy, and happiness is definitely white.

You know what makes me happy?

(beat)

A deep warm bath overflowing with white bubbles. The steam rises in little white wisps, and the bubbles grow into jiggling castles. The castles breaking into floating icebergs, as I slowly slide in. The white magnolia scent calms my mind. The bubbles stick to me as I slip back out of the water, popping and snapping on my skin like thousands of fairy kisses.

WHITE stands up and takes a step towards the audience. She starts to fiddle with her hair and appears to put on make-up; looking at the audience as if they were a mirror.

WHITE My love. My first true love. My heart feels huge, as big as the world! It is white and clean; clear and open to give love forever too you. Your hair, your face, your ears, your nose, your neck…I love it all!

I see you in everything that I do, you’re always right there with me. Everything I hear is you, everything I speak is you, and everything I think is you.

I know you love me too. Your beautiful light blue eyes express it. Your large warm hands gesture it. Your soft upturned lips whisper it. This feeling is much too strong to just be me. I know you love me. I feel it, I see it, I hear it, I know it, every time I am with you, my love.

WHITE steps back and sits on the toilet facing the audience once again.

My love, my white love, my true love. I know lots of people are down on love, but it is truly the most exquisite, and beautiful, and pleasing human experience to exist. Just the thought of another being sharing my life, my passions, and my problems melts the icy negativity that doubt breeds.

(beat)

When I sit next to you on the loveseat, the light plays on your skin and makes you glow. You glow white, every part of you is beautiful white. Except your lips, those are red, red as an apple, as a cinnamon heart, as a rose.

Once I see how red your lips are, I can feel heat rush into mine. I know that they are red too, love has ignited them.

Closer and closer our two points of red, among all the white, draw. This is the first time, the first kiss, and the closest we have ever been. Closer, closer, closer…

The spotlight on WHITE fades, and reappears on RED.

RED Romance. A tiny kiss here, a little ass squeeze there. Both can leave you with a red flush of embarrassment and excitement. The smallest of touches can lead to lingering pats. Lingering pats, well, we all know where those can lead. As many a girl confesses, one thing just leads to another sometimes.

(beat)

Only the prudish speak of the act as ‘another.’ For everybody else it is sex. No pretty words to hide what I mean, sex. Ohhh, yes, every innocent and beautiful relationship has a dirty shadow. Lust and sex. Both things we are taught to hide in the darkest recesses of our minds, and to never breathe life into vocally. ‘How can something so pure as love, turn into something so bodily and carnal as lust and sex?’ Well, let’s just say love is like a hill, and lust gets the so-called ball of sex rolling down it. It’s inevitable; the laws of mortal physics demand it. Once you give it a little shove, the whole red field opens up right in front of you. That imbedded animal need of another physical body to complete our own. That red sightless creature desire passed down from forever and forever.

In some centuries it is celebrated, and in others it is abominated.

(beat)

Right now, I am celebrating.

RED glowers towards WHITE.

RED Ohhh, yes sweetie, sex is a big part of everything. Life, relationships, status, business, money, and you. Even if you didn’t go looking for it in the first place, it will still find you. Sex bears power. If you have it you can flaunt it, and shame people who don’t or can’t. Kingdoms have fallen, empires lost, and presidencies questioned due to sexual imbalances.

(beat)

It’s like a clique that people either embrace with everything they have, or try to hide at all costs. A clique who’s disciples start with a kiss, then a hand over a swollen breast, then a tugging off of clothes, then a warming of bodies, and finally the red insertion of one into another. Once that red has penetrated your pure white flesh, there is no going back.

RED stands up and walks towards WHITE. RED has a large paintbrush with red paint on in her hands. After the end of each of the following lines, she paints a large red line onto WHITE’s clothes.

RED Sex. Red.

Breast. Red.

Screw. Red.

Tongue. Red.

Fuck. Red.

Vagina. Red.

I love you. Red.

Penis. Red.

Do me. Red.

More. Red.

You would if you loved me. Red.

Ok. Red.

Just a quickie. Red.

Now? Red.

I am so horny though. Red.

But…. Red.

RED stops painting WHITE and returns to her seat on the edge of the bathtub. She sits with her head in her hands looking out towards the audience.

RED Love, lust, sex, myself, passion, promise, all of these things get a little stirred right about now. Sex and commitment go hand in hand surely. It is a physical promise between two people.

But when does commitment grow into something more?

(beat)

You don’t own me, what makes you think you do? I am not yours, I am mine.

‘I know that’ you tell me apologetically.

I forgive and forget. We have shared too much to throw all of it away. We have shared love, we have shared life, and we have shared sex. It just wouldn’t be right to give up on something so significant as this. It wouldn’t be right.

(beat)

Red roses, red boxes of chocolate, red lipstick, and red candles at a dinner table hail I love you. Every action and every word says it over and over.

I love you, I love you, I love you!

RED turns sadly towards WHITE.

RED But it is only a platitude. He says it so truthfully, to make it all ok.

(beat)

‘Don’t go out with your friends, stay with me. I love you.’

(beat)

‘It’s only raining a little bit; you can walk to my house. You want to see me don’t you? I love you.’

(beat)

‘I know you’re eating supper with your family, but I am bored. Come over quick. I love you.’

(beat)

Once you see through the white glare of love, the red head of uncertainty emerges. Uncertainty, the number one killer of love.

(beat)

But maybe I am being rash; I am just over thinking things again. After all, he did say he loved me.

RED sighs and stands up. (beat)

RED ‘Come on babe, your parents aren’t home…and I have a condom.’

What if they come back, what if they catch us? They’ll kill me.

‘Come on babe, don’t you love me?’

Ok, yes I do.

(beat)

‘It doesn’t matter if my friends are in the next room, princess, we can do it quietly. You can be quiet can’t you?’

I don’t know, I don’t feel…

‘Beautiful, they won’t hear. You just have to be real quiet. Don’t you love me?’

Yes, yes I do.

(beat)

‘I hear the kitchen table is a great place, lets do it on the kitchen table.’

But, I don’t think it’ll be very comfy…

‘Come on, sweets, try something new. Don’t you love me?’

Yes I do.

(beat)

‘Bitch, why do I always have to ask for sex! Don’t you love me?’

I do.

(beat)

‘Whore! Do you make a habit of asking other guys to fuck you?

Shit, don’t you love me? Come here and fuck me!’

I didn’t, I didn’t, I don’t! I don’t! I hate you!

(beat)

Why do you treat me like this? What did I do? How can I fix it? I thought that you loved me? Don’t you love me? I didn’t do that? I love you. I didn’t mean I hate you, it just slipped out. I love you. Where are you? I want to talk? Please talk to me? I love you. I ‘m sorry, it was my fault, I am sorry. Please forgive me, I was stupid. I love you. Please…

Lights blink off of RED and blink up on to BLUE.

BLUE is sitting on the bathmat on the floor with her left side facing the audience.

BLUE Stop. Everything stop.

(beat)

Everything has stopped. I can’t move, I can’t go anywhere. I am trapped here, right here. I can’t do anything about it. Help, why can’t I move? I try and try, and cry and cry. Nothing. Nothing is out there. Nothing is in here, in me. Only a stain lives in me now, but me is concealed …no, hiding …no, me is lost somewhere inside. I envy me; she gets to vanish from the ocean of tears. A blue sea that scours my body with hurt, and fills my lungs and eyes with salt.

(sighs heavily) (beat)

I don’t care anymore; I don’t have enough energy to care. I am drained, like the blue water in a bathtub. Slowly disappearing. There I go swirling, swirling down the drain. I sink into the blue ocean, and then I fall again as blue rain. Blue rain that gathers and grows, until all I can see is blue. Like a starless twilight, I go from blue to black.

BLUE turns to face the audience, and a large bruise over her right eye becomes visible.

BLUE I want to wash it off.

BLUE scrubs at the bruise on her face.

BLUE has a pair of scissors, and starts to snip little pieces of her blue shirt off to reveal black cloth underneath it. She continues to cut her shirt throughout the following monologue.

I want to be clean again; I need to wash this off. I have to get this reminder off, my token of stupidity. Everyone will see it and know exactly why it’s here. A perverse tag on a building. One that marks me as a stupid bitch, a whore, a stupid, useless, ugly girl.

(beat)

I need a hot bath, with lots of white bubbles. White soap, lots of white soap will clean this off. I wish I were white again, clean and white again. White clean flesh, so easily stained by the promises of red and the coldness of blue. Love and dismissal. Blood and bruises. Will the bubbles clean me, make me new again? White again? Can they, will they?

Or will there always be some filth hiding inside? Something dark that will contaminate everything ahead.

(beat)

How do I disinfect a part of my mind, without bleaching it all away?

BLUE takes one final snip out of her shirt, which reveals a tiny patch of white cloth underneath. A concentrated white spotlight flicks up onto the white patch of cloth. All lights fade and silence prevails.

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