I was staring at a bar graph on the computer screen and all I could think of was how my collar was kind of itchy. My toes felt all bunched together at the front of my shoe. I couldn’t stand the way my toes were all touching each other. They felt hot. My waistband was pressing against my abdomen and I kept pulling it away from my skin. I had a private office, so I saw no harm in taking my shoes off. That felt better. Then I pulled my socks off and propped my feet up on the desk. I started to rub each of my toes, giving each one a nice twist between my index finger and thumb. My trousers dug into my stomach more as I bent forwards manipulating my digits, so I undid my top button. I felt a little better and looked at the bar graph again. The bars on the screen looked like little towers. I pictured tiny people or animals living in them, opening secret doors and windows, waving to me. I’d been feeling increasingly aimless and odd lately. I was having an internal rebellion. At five o’clock, I left the office having achieved nothing once again.

After work I went to visit Celeste in the hospital. I had bought her a candy bar in the gift shop, but I knew I’d probably end up eating it. Celeste didn’t eat. When we were first married, she ate lots. She had shelves of cook books. She used to make candy. Beautiful candy. She made marshmallows. I didn’t even know you could make marshmallows until Celeste made them one night. They were pink and yellow. She had flavoured the pink ones with rose water and the yellow ones with lemon extract. I thought she was a wonder. She was expansive and maudlin. She was carnal. Now she looked like a shriveled, mummified saint.

“Hi, Celeste. How are you?” I asked.

“Did you bring me a candy bar?” she asked.

“Yeah, it’s a Mounds bar. You know, the one with coconut.”

“Eat it and tell me how it tastes.” This was one of the few things that sparked her interest anymore. Her features looked axe-hewn, all sharp angles and beaky nose as she peered at the chocolate bar with a crow’s gaze, head turned to the side, a beady eye fixed on the prize.

“Why don’t you try a little, Celeste? Just suck a bit of it. It’s good.” I unwrapped it and held it close to her nose. Her face was impassive, like a cigar store Indian.

“You know I can’t do that. Please, eat it for me. It’s all I’m allowed.”

“It’s all you allow yourself to have. You’re the one creating these rules.”

“Please, just tell me how it tastes.” I knew I was going to give in and yet every time I did, I felt as if I’d failed her. My eating the chocolate was always some dubious and morbid victory for her in her drive to eliminate herself. I took a bite of the bar, chewed it slowly and swallowed.

“It’s chewy. The coconut forms a sweet chewy mass, made up of little shreds. The flavour is mild and tropical, like sun-tan oil. The chocolate melts into the coconut adding a dark rich taste that makes me think of sandalwood.”

“Tell me more.”

“It coats my mouth. I can still taste it.”

“I shouldn’t ask you to do this. I don’t deserve it. I don’t know why you bother to visit me. You have so many important things to do.” I felt as if she was playing a game with me, but I was never sure what it was.

I spoke with her doctor before I left. He told me her heart was being eaten, digested by her hungry body. It wouldn’t be long, maybe a few weeks until she was gone.

That evening, I sat in the kitchen looking at photographs of Celeste. Ten years ago she’d been lush. Her hair had been full and curly, her skin oily and smooth. I don’t know what happened. She’d turned in the other direction. She lost interest in herself, in being alive. She became tired of wanting and eating.

“I feel wrong. Like I’m oozing all over the place. My flesh is out of control,” she’d say. I’d come home sometimes to find her smacking her arms and legs with a wooden spoon. She wouldn’t sleep in our bed anymore. Instead she slept on a plank in the laundry room. She would eat only a thin porridge once a day. No clinic or therapist helped. Over the years, I had let go of the old Celeste and accepted this fate. I’d found comfort in the simplicity of my work, but now even that was coming apart.

I had to do a presentation for a Burger King conference the next day. I was demonstrating ways of cutting costs through effective scheduling. I stood on a podium before a group of suited up men and women, pointing to various charts.

“So by minimizing hours, entitlement to holiday pay can be eliminated, creating a minimum ten percent increase in net profits. The increase is illustrated on this pie chart here.” I stared at the pie chart before me and thought about a cherry pie. Not a canned cherry pie, but a real cherry pie filled with purplish-black cherries oozing dark juices. “The cherry skins pop and squish out the flesh of the fruit. The flavour is simultaneously acidic and alkaline, sweet and tangy.” The audience members looked at me with puzzled expressions. “Pardon me. Wrong speech,” I said. There was some chuckling and shifting of seats and I continued with my talk.

When I was done, I left the conference centre and headed for the hospital. Celeste lay under the pale blue blankets, her body like carefully laid out twigs, barely discernable. “I brought a mango today,” I said. Celeste squinted at me.

“The light is too bright. I don’t care about the mango.” Her head had been shaved on one side and an IV was dripping fluid into a vein on her skull. “I’m tired of senses. I just want to rest. There’s too much information. I’m filled with information.”

“Well, what do you want?”

“Don’t you get it? I don’t want to want anything. Go home and do something nice for yourself.” She closed her eyes. I sat by her for the next two hours doing nothing. She didn’t move or speak when I kissed her goodbye, but I know she was awake.

When I got home that night, I packed all my books into boxes I’d gotten at the liquor store. I’d been slowly packing up all my possessions for months. When Celeste was hospitalized, I lost interest in our home. I began to pack up all the knick-knacks and art, all the unnecessary things. Celeste had chosen and purchased all the festoonery in our home. Before we’d met, I’d been living in a furnished apartment. It had been decorated with drab, beige and brown furniture, covered in scratchy upholstery. Paintings of badly executed landscapes and schooners decorated the walls. I was indifferent to my surroundings, being primarily interested in function. Now that Celeste was gone, I was moving towards a functional existence again.

I opened a can of mini ravioli and sat at the kitchen table. I ate it straight out of the can while looking at some recent reports from the chemists. I shoveled raviolis into my mouth, barely tasting them. Then I continued to pack my belongings. Soon I would be down to practically nothing. My goal was to have one bowl, a knife, fork, and spoon, two outfits of clothing, and a sleeping bag.

The next day, I went to the office to work on the report. It was Sunday, so no one was there. I sat at my desk, staring at a series of facts and figures. When x amount of wood pulp is added to bun dough, y amount of flavouring is required. I thought about my years at the company. I’d taken the job when Celeste had started to get really sick, about seven years ago. I’d been a mildly successful poet before. This was where my pleasure in the sparse and the efficient came from: the economy of poetry. All the specialists and medical treatments Celeste required cost money and my sporadic earnings couldn’t pay the bills, so I took this job. I found it therapeutic. The model of economy I pursued in my work was a tangible and comforting goal. It had cast Celeste’s self denial in a different light.

I continued to grind away at the report, but a nagging sensation kept tugging at me. I needed to loosen up. I stood and stepped back from the desk. I began to turn my torso from side to side, allowing my arms to swing freely and slap against my trunk. I thought about music. When was the last time I’d listened to music? I thought about what Celeste had said, “Go home and do something nice for yourself,” and I turned on the radio, scanning the band for something familiar, something lively. Ella Fitzgerald’s voice sailed out from the speakers like a sonic ripple rising from a silver bell. The way you wear your hat. The way you sip your tea. The memory of all that. No, no, they can’t take that away from me. The way your smile just beams. The way you sing off key. The way you haunt my dreams. No, no, they can’t take that away from me. I saw Celeste: Celeste eating ice-cream, Celeste crying at the movies, Celeste making me pull her finger. I swear I’d never wanted her to be any different. I turned off the radio, shoved the report into my briefcase and left the office. I headed for the hospital.

“I brought you some flowers,” I said, showing Celeste the bouquet of sweet, yellow tea-roses I’d bought.

“I don’t want them. They’re a waste, dying as we speak. Dropping petals. Rotting.” She turned her head away from the flowers.

“Would you like me to bring you a stick or a rock next time? Maybe an old, dry bone?”

“Yeah, bring me some hair from an old locket. Bring me a used dryer sheet. Bring me a company report,” she said. Her voice was quiet and hoarse. She was still funny, still sharp, even now.

“You know, I still love you,” I said.

“Yeah, I know, but it’s too late. I can’t turn back. Even if I changed my mind right now, the result would be the same.”

“No, it wouldn’t.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, it’s never too late. We’re all going to die. No one knows when. Why don’t you just smell these flowers?” I held the flowers beneath her nose. She inhaled.

“Sweet… Soft… I love tea roses. I love wild roses. The little ones with open dusty pink petals.” She opened her eyes and looked at me. “You have to go now.”

“But, why?”

“You’re hurting me. The roses are hurting me. Please get out.” She was shuddering. Her bird-like bones rustled the sheets.

“It hurts to live. Do you think I don’t hurt watching you? You act as if you’re so unimportant, but you expect everyone to watch as you destroy yourself. It hurts to look at you. You act like a saint, but you’re selfish.”

“I know I’m selfish. I’m bad. That’s why I live this way.”

“Everyone is bad. I’m not letting you off the hook. We’re all bad, but we keep living and trying. It hurts to want, but we all keep wanting.”

Celeste glared at me, her shuddering had intensified. Her teeth were chattering. She pushed the button on the wall, by her bed.

“It’s okay to be wrong. You are no better or worse than anyone else,” I said. A nurse came into the room just then.

“You rang? Do you need something?” she asked. Celeste turned her head towards me.

“Get him out of here. He’s upsetting me. I think he’s drunk. He might be dangerous.” The nurse turned to me and gave me a sympathetic look.

“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to go.”

“No.” I sat on a chair by Celeste’s bed and gripped its armrests. “I won’t leave. This is my wife. She’s dying. You’ll have to force me.”

“Your wife has a weak heart. You could kill her by behaving this way. Do you understand?” The nurse offered me her hand. “Let it go.”

“She’s dying anyhow. I just want her to really live for a little longer. She hasn’t been truly alive in years. I haven’t been truly alive in years. We need to be with each other. I know I can change her mind. I know…” I slumped down, rendered mute by my own sobbing.

“Go home and get some sleep, Mr. Krenshaw. Come back tomorrow.” The nurse took my hand and led me to the door. Celeste lay on the bed, shaking her head from side to side.

“It’s all my fault. I’m bad. I wreck everything.” She lay there, reciting her endless litany of self importance.

“Get over yourself!” I barked over my shoulder. “Get over yourself and start living!”

When I arrived home that night, I finished packing up my belongings. The Salvation Army was coming the next day to pick them all up. I got my old backpack and tent out. I had an army kit of utensils and a tin cup and bowl. I had sturdy shoes and weather-proof clothing. I was ready. The new tenants would be moving into the house in two days. I slept that night on the floor of the empty house.

The next morning I bathed, put on my gear and headed for the office. I knocked on the boss’ door when I arrived. I had the report in my hand.

“Enter!” I stepped into his office, which looked exactly like mine, decorated in cheap, modern Ikea furniture. He sat before me, scanning reams of statistics.

“I’ve finished the report,” I said, placing it on his desk. “I’m afraid I won’t be coming back after today. I resign.”

“What do you mean? You have to give sufficient notice. You can’t just leave. I know you’ve been under a lot of stress lately. Why don’t you take some time off?” He looked at the pack on my back, the tent hanging from its bottom, the pot dangling from its side. “Going camping?”

“Yeah. Going camping.”

“Well, we’ll talk about this later.”

“Sure. Later.”

“I’ll call you in a few days.”

“Right. I’ve gotta go,” I said, turning to leave. I left his office and headed for the hospital. I thought of the report I’d handed him and chuckled. It was poetry: poems about candy bars, roses, cherry pies, and cigar store Indians. I’d doodled pictures of little creatures living in bar graphs beneath the poems. On the way to the hospital I stopped in a small grocery store and bought a bag of pastel coloured marshmallows.

When I arrived at the hospital, I was informed by Celeste’s doctor that her condition had worsened. Her heart wasn’t supplying her brain with enough oxygen. She was slipping away. I entered her room. Tubes ran into her nostrils, her chest, and the vein on her head.

“I’m here,” I said. “I quit my job. I’m going to start writing again.” Celeste couldn’t speak anymore, but I noticed a slight motion of her arm. She raised a bony thumb up. “You’re happy about that?” She nodded slightly. “Good. Let me tell you about the marshmallows.”

I pitched my tent in a hidden corner of a residential park that night. The air smelled rich, like wet leaves and earth. Small nocturnal animals scuttled and chittered around me. I would stay with Celeste until she died and then move on.

And the danger of rattlesnakes

As redwings take flight

There is no sign, just a turn-off. The weedy car track bumps down, down; a line of fat eucalyptus trunks with peeling plates of bark pulls my nose along. Their sweet fragrance pushes away the sweaty highway that now hangs outside and somewhere above, and raucous thoughts of my new romance back home dissipate. Like totems, the row gives a gentle greeting. Welcome to this planet of strange plants and rituals. Welcome to beginner’s mind. Welcome to Green Gulch Zen Center.

I smile, anticipating my rendezvous with nine other women from across the States, all approaching middle age, all wanting to practice both brush calligraphy and Zen, and all needing a retreat. But we have other reasons, too, for seeking peace. Drug troubles with a son. Respite from caring for a quadriplegic child. Time away from grief. I have come primed for a sea change. Jenny Groat, our teacher, is the strong dock we all expect to moor onto. As calm as windless water, she is a short woman with pixie hair, a Roman nose, disciplined back and avant-garde careers behind her as a dancer, choreographer and painter. Now dancing with brush hairs, she is a lay Buddhist and eloquent teacher. I want a contemplative, creative life like hers. My pulse taps. I just might find the path I want to follow here.

As a visitor, I stay in the wooden guesthouse, an octagonal treasure encircled with skylights and sliding rice-paper shoji, all capped with a slanting cedar-shake roof. Its artistry unfolds like the flavours of steeping tea. Jenny tells how it was built in Japan, without nails, each piece interlocking in perfect harmony. It was then taken apart and resurrected here by a fringe of California redwoods. I circulate around the upstairs balcony, note every corner has a subtle pattern of parallel ribs with no other purpose than to please the eye. Every window has a vista. I fall asleep to the sound of crickets and woody smell of the stove. I awaken the next day to fresh bouquets in waist-high pots and to the smell of baking bread.

A short walk away is the community’s heart, its zendo. It is a windowless box of corrugated metal, a remodeled cattle barn built over a now-underground stream, a magnet for heat.

Soon, my days are flowing with the valley’s exotic rhythms: art and Zen, bells and light, inside and out.

I begin joining the monks and nuns and abbot in their zazen, but confess I never get up for the first meditation of the day, when the temple bell resounds at 3 a.m. Instead, I come in for the session after breakfast, shyly sit on my hard, round black zafu, cup right hand in left and strain my gaze sideways. I make out an altar dressed with embroidered red satin, gold swirls and scrolls, a smiling Buddha and offerings of fruit and flowers. Incense hangs around the room like thick velvet drapery. Serious students of soto Zen are opposite me, just sitting, opening the hand of thought, eyes cast down as they follow their breath, hour after hour. They are visiting an interior land. My ankles whine, tighten and tingle from sitting for so long in the lotus position, and I stumble when the jikijitsu sounds the gong and begins a walking meditation, kinhin, around the perimeter of the room.

By full morning light, I am in a classroom with double-storey windows and a backdrop of ancient red cedars. I sit alert and mindful, holding my ink stick just as upright as Jenny’s back, circling it over the grey ink stone, the pungent musk of gums and burnt pine fill my nose and thoughts. My brush makes no sound, leaving a lush track of black letters and ensos on my paper. Nothing is to be done without purpose. What are you practicing? echoes Jenny’s voice inside my head.

In the bleaching afternoons, I go outside to roam the gulch that is a patchwork of farms and native plants that reach up to a hill on the east and step down to Muir Beach and, finally, the Pacific on the west. I suck in the landscape and walk, not with the measured steps of kinhin but the freedom of a hiker, following paths more earthbound and less serene.

In the floodplains of Redwood Creek, I discover the lands where silent monks tend the squash and lettuce and potatoes eaten for lunch. I amble among acres of brilliant garden flowers, raised for sale, that shiver with thousands of bees. I follow dusty hoof-beaten tracks pushed like trenches into the surrounding ranchlands, where chaparral and crisscrossing slopes of bunchgrass are laced with wildflowers. Each day is mindfully executed in haiku.

The last day of my retreat comes too quickly. I do my after-lunch zazen, then emerge for a final crossing of the valley. I feel the exciting tension of being in rattlesnake country, as I decide to climb the hill and sit in the shade of an abandoned teahouse set on prehistoric bones of rock. The fields below me pulse with creation. Somehow, creatures sense Green Gulch is a sanctuary, that Buddhists do not harm sentient beings. And so they gather.

I can only smile as I return. A breeze encircles me in a mist of touch. As I pass them, I hear the long-horned cattle ripping roots out of the soil, and the puny sound of their tinny bells. The land clicks with insects, and drifts of praying mantids whir around my waist. A bush rabbit starts; a dusty toad backs under hoof-toughened grazing grasses, introduced long ago by Spanish settlers. The smells of sage and the fragrant, sticky scent of coyote brush dance lightly into my nose.

Suddenly, the Dragon Bell resounds.

A flood of redwings takes flight in alarm. From their cramped bunkers and the gardens, the zazen students begin to gather. I set my pace to join them to enter the zendo, one last time for now.

My mind and body, a minute before marveling at the blue clarity of the sky, have trouble adjusting to the dark, thick air now pushing in around me. My still posture seems wooden after a day of striding. There are no sounds; the buzz of creation has been left with the shoes outside the doorway. I find my cushion. Slowly, I settle in to a place now familiar and wait for the gong. I focus to empty my mind; I count my breaths.

But instead of a void, I hear a voice - my own. Outside is where life is. This is not the path for me. My heart is clearly speaking. The inside path is not for me.

In the years since, I still find calm through meditation, although it takes the form of drawing and walking. I still can embrace without reservation the Buddhist precepts of kindness, mindfulness and useful work. Beginner’s mind with its belief in many possibilities still seems a way to wisdom. But I embed myself in nature and want to discover each day as a new lover. Looking back, I know the seekers at Green Gulch understood comfort and beauty and pleasure - they served it to us as their visitors - but they denied the guesthouse and the wild to themselves. My gaze, I decided then and believe now, is not meant to be downwards or inwards, but locked on life itself.

Paper boats sail between marijuana flavoured apple trees
faceless boy paper routes
ride past GRAD ‘97 etched in beer filled mountains

Familiar blue truck outside Dairy Treat
preacher girl deals down tumbleweed main-street
must be 8pm already

We pluck cherries, bodies swelling with juice
bursting the snake skin with our teeth, sucking their flesh
sugary nectar fills our throats and dyes our chins magenta

Fumbling of hot naked bodies in a urine-stained bandshell
infants march out of slippery vaginas of girls like me
circular marchings to motherhood

Standing on Giants Head Mountain
pulled to plant my seed
pluck my husband, suck his flesh

Wedge myself into a Mary Jane apple tree,
legs spread wide
nearly dead by 8pm

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.

With steeled resolve, I approach the beast. I soon encounter a series of long climbs. Ha! I laugh to myself; this is what I am worried about? I’m not even close to resorting to my newly acquired granny gear despite the fact that I’m riding atop a hundred pounds of bike and bags. Granted, the pace is slow but it is steady. I am smiling, humming even at the thought of easily reaching the summit. I should have known better!

The sun suddenly turns traitor against me. The warm, caressing rays mutate into white hot blades scratching down my back. I remove my helmet trying to release its suffocating grip. How clever that ball of fury in the sky is, waiting until I hit the final Wall of the ascent before unleashing its wrath. I try not to think about the searing pain in my legs and the burning sun on my back as I inch upwards. Instead, I focus on methodically ticking over the granny gear one pedal stroke at a time. I can hear Monashee laughing now as it plays with my mind. Around every bend, my hopes of seeing the “summit sign” are repeatedly dashed, then, just when I think all hope is lost, something catches my eye.

At first, all I can make out is one of those red, reflective triangles like the ones you see on the backs of slow moving tractors; only this is attached to what appears to be a small box with wheels. I steadily close in on it and see that it indeed is a homemade wooden trailer overflowing with someone’s entire collection of worldly possessions. Who would leave all this on the side of the road? Perhaps the hapless traveller is just another of Monashee’s victims. Perhaps I will be next. But before I can ponder that thought, I see something incredible; the trailer is moving - uphill! This sight only further confuses me as I approach, for I cannot see the source of its locomotion.

I tell myself that someone must be riding one of those low profile recumbent bicycles, since there isn’t a bicycle or rider visible from my downhill vantage point. When I finally reach the trailer, I see that it is attached to a 20-year-old mountain bike by a giant U-bolt around the seat post. That’s when I meet him. A tiny thin man, nearly parallel with the road, pushing his bike with his arms outstretched overhead. He turns to me with a toothless grin. We both decide it’s a good time to take a break.

Without a word, he wheels the bike and trailer off the shoulder of the road, but before I say anything, he quickly clumps away in his untied army boots to grab a large rock to chock under one of the trailer wheels to prevent it from rolling back down the hill. We sit for a moment to catch our breaths. Darren removes his grimy, well-worn baseball cap to wipe the sweat off his balding head. Looking like he is about to drop dead at any moment, he then brandishes the world’s biggest, gummiest smiles on his face as he rolls a cigarette. I smile back out of pity. Obviously he is a simple man, oblivious to the mammoth monster that we are currently trying to slay. I look at him in his denim coveralls and at the wooden albatross clutching onto his archaic bike and see that he is completely ill-equipped to do any battle. Yet here he is - here we are. What makes me better than him? Conceit turns to shame which turns to respect as he casually tells me that this isn’t his first time over the Monashees. In fact, this is an annual trek he makes from Kamloops to Edmonton! I look at Darren, then at myself and finally at the mountain and understand that yes, appearances are very deceiving.