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AGNES: Money first.
MAN: How much?
AGNES: Fifty is the minimum. If you want extra it will be a hundred and fifty.
MAN: Extra?
AGNES: Touching and positions.
Pause
MAN: Ok, let’s go for that.
He gives her money from wallet, which she puts in a small pocketbook by the bed. Pause.
AGNES: My name is Pamela.
MAN: Sure.
AGNES: Do you want me to strip?
MAN: No. He appears irritated. Just, um, just sit here for a moment first.
They sit on the bed. He looks at her, waits a moment, and starts rummaging through his backpack. He pulls out a yellowed and tattered paperback, and opens it to a marked page. He hands her the book.
Here. Read this.
AGNES: Ok. From where?
MAN: From here. He points.
She Reads “Domination in Black” by Wallace Stevens, she trips over some pronunciations. He has his eyes closed the entire time, listening intently. The first time she misses a word, she asks him. He says the right word.
It’s ok. Don’t worry about the words. Just keep going.
She finishes. Pause. She reaches over to him suggestively.
AGNES: Now what if I just—
MAN: irritated No. Stop. We’ll find another one to read. Pause. What do you think about love?
AGNES: What?
MAN: frustrated Never mind. Forget I said that.
He nervously flips through the pages. He gets up from the bed, walks around. He looks through the mirror and back at AGNES.
MAN: Is this a double-sided mirror?
AGNES: What?
MAN: Can people see us?
AGNES: nervous No. We are alone.
MAN: Sure. He returns to the bed.
AGNES: I’m sorry. This just seems a little strange.
MAN: What? You don’t like Wallace Stevens?
AGNES: flustered No. I mean, you paid. Shouldn’t we –
MAN: No. We shouldn’t. Not yet. Please, start again.
He hands her the book and closes his eyes. She takes the book and re-reads the first line.
Stop. There it is. That’s why I was doing it. You see, that was the moment. You are a woman. I know you are there. I close my eyes, and I hear the poetry, spoken by a woman. The words are beautiful. The woman is beautiful. But when I close my eyes, whose beauty is it? Yours or the poem’s? It blends.
Pause.
AGNES: slightly angry What do you want?
MAN: calm What do I want?
AGNES: Yes. Am I going to be reading poetry all night? This is ridiculous. What is it that you want?
MAN: I want to write.
AGNES: she lets her accent slip Just what the world needs, another writer. Look pal, if you want to write about girls like me, Dostoevsky was about two hundred years ahead –
MAN: lost in thought No, you are mistaken. I want to write stories, just to have them read by a woman, not for the story itself. All literature has just been for the story itself, or worse, the ideas. I want merely to have my stories read by a woman... in a red dress. Yes, I write for red dresses. I want that same beautiful woman to let me paint her. I want her to be in the same room as I, and I want to watch her open a wire cage and pull out the brightest red and green parrot on her finger. I want to have this parrot in my stories too. Nights will be long and tireless. [breaking into verse] We will say when the song shall end,/ long enough for the paint to dry,/ the paint of flesh and feather,/ and my black ink, racing in wild, close-eyed fervor to dry/ and we will laugh, the woman, parrot and I.
AGNES: What are you talking about?
MAN: We’ll laugh because we will know the indistinguishability between the paint and the ink, the ink and the flesh, and the flesh and the laugh. He pauses. That is not your real accent, is it, how you were speaking earlier?
AGNES: No.
MAN: And you read Dostoevsky?
AGNES: Yes.
MAN: pensively Oh.
AGNES: Look, whatever. What you are saying doesn’t make any sense. You are starting to freak me out, honestly.
MAN: no longer cheery And why is that Pamela? Because I’m not following the protocol? Because I came in here, not refusing to acknowledge the truth – that we do not know each other, and you want nothing to do with my body. You are freaking out because a stranger does not want to insert his genitals into yours and for one brief moment give himself the mental satisfaction that he is succeeding in the ritual of sex, or, perhaps if he is really honest, tricking himself into thinking he has love, or does not need it, partaking in a basic lesson in friction in a circumstance where it is at least economically acceptable by way of monetary transaction? This is freaking you out, Pamela? That for one moment when you are presenting yourself to me as a good or a service (I can’t really figure out which one) I insist on viewing you as a woman rather than an object? You’re mad because I don’t want you to be an object, Pamela? Is that it?
AGNES: Look man, I just –
MAN: And here I am just trying to have a conversation with someone, trying to maintain some level of honesty, trying to find a moment of humanity amongst people wearing blinders, masks, a world of facades where I merely want to embrace some inkling of sincerity.
AGNES: You’re crazy.
MAN: Yes, but at least I have been talking crazy talk in my real accent.
Pause
AGNES: Look, I’m sorry. You’re not crazy. I’m just not... used to that kind of stuff. So we’re not going to –
MAN shakes his head.
Pause
AGNES: Sorry, I just wanted to make sure. Pause. So, what were you saying about the paintings?
MAN: The paintings?
AGNES: Yeah, ink and paint and parrots or something.
MAN: Oh, right, the fundamental problem. It’s easier to see by looking at the painting of a woman. When you are painting, there are correct lines and incorrect lines. When an incorrect line is made, it is painted over again and again until the correct line is found, which remains visible. So what is a finished painting really? One to be seen as all correct lines, or one not to be seen as incorrect lines that are erased and covered up? Both types exist in the painting, but what is it really—what we see or what we don’t? The incorrect lines, the erased lines, they have as much to do with the painting as the correct ones. Well then you can look at color. The parrot is red, the woman’s dress is red, but is the parrot dress-colored or is the dress parrot-colored? It’s easy to not see the difference ultimately between the paint of the flesh and the paint of the feathers, to see it all as paint. But what about the paint and the ink of my stories – both mediums of art, of the woman, read by the woman, they are understood as of the woman. And what about her laugh? Let’s say she laughs while I am painting her, a laugh that comes from one of my stories which she reads – the scenario can be understood in terms of that too. Where does it stop?
AGNES: What does that matter if it is a red parrot or a red dress?
MAN: It matters a lot. It’s perspective. It’s the most important thing. Look, we can’t actually say anything about anything, all we can say is our own subjective perspective, and if it all works, if everything can be looked at in terms of everything else, where do we stop? It’s the difference, which may not be as big as we think, between loving a woman and loving the painting of her. It all comes back to the fundamental problem with love.
AGNES: And what’s that?
MAN: That if we really want to love infinitely, we should love every atom of the universe the same. Look, what I’m saying is that it’s wonderful that there is an infinite amount, or rather, anti-amount of guiding factors when it comes to perception. The difference is that there ultimately is no difference. Red Parrot, red dress. Just like your red dress.
AGNES: My dress is white.
MAN: It looks red to me.
AGNES: It’s the light.
MAN: hmm. Does red light on a white dress make the dress red? I guess it is both red and white. He closes his eyes. And now it’s black.
AGNES: Are you on drugs, man?
MAN: What? I don’t think you’re getting it. You want me to put this in terms of math for you?
AGNES: Sure.
MAN: Ok so they say it is impossible to draw a triangle without drawing three straight lines; like, you can’t draw it by using only one straight line.
AGNES: Yeah
MAN: But let’s say you just take a line and let it go on to infinity. You know, that happens all the time, people talking about lines going on forever and ever.
AGNES: Ok
MAN: Yeah, but people don’t understand what that means, what it really means to go on forever and ever. I mean, if you’re going to have something continuing to infinity, eventually after so much space, you are going to moving outside of space. Meters, miles, light-years, they can’t be measured in terms of numbers anymore because eventually there will be no more numbers left. If we are really talking about things in terms of infinity, you are going to reach a point where you start counting in letters, or pieces of fruit, or emotions, and eventually, far enough down the road, to maintain integrity in the idea of infinity, the only way for that straight line to continue will be for it to make itself into a triangle, and on and on it will go, past numbers, past things, past ideas even.
AGNES: So everything is infinite?
MAN: Everything...as infinite as you want it to be at least.
AGNES: Ok, make my hand infinite.
MAN: Alright, hold it out in front of you and look at it.
She does.
I’m going to bring you in before I take you out. So, what do you see? Four fingers, your thumb, and your palm. The lines that run across and tickle when they are touched. On the surface there is the oil that your body generates which may be slightly acidic, and according to the Bronsted-Lowry definition of an acid, you’ve got some extra hydrogen ions that would like to go somewhere else, that want to stray, mix with someone else’s oil perhaps. Beneath the oil you’ve got your epidermis, and your dermis, made up of skin cells, fat, and then you’ve got muscle, various veins and vessels, and bone. There are millions of germs on your hand, living, dying, fighting, eating each other, having sex. Your hand is already a drama. All these things are made of atoms, and each atom has subatomic particles, protons, neutrons, electrons. And each of these is made of quarks, crazy things jumping and flying around at rates and in paths that no one can really determine. You have trillions upon trillions of them in your hand, more in your hand then there are stars in the entire universe, and these quarks may even be made of something, string-like objects, elastic bands that make no sense whatsoever because they break just about every physical law there is to break, being in two places at once, splitting apart, coming together, acting in a manner that would seem to suggest parallel dimensions would have to exist. Not to mention the fact that your hand is experiencing the force of gravity, which, as an object of matter contributes as well, even if it is only a little bit, in the impression the earth makes in the fabric of space-time; it helps in generating the very gravity that holds it down; your hand is not only your hand, it’s the forces on your hand. It gets better. We haven’t even broken out of science yet. I mean, if you really want to look at your hand, you want to see the infinite nature of it, would that not involve both looking at the hand and not looking at the hand? Concentrate on what you see, so that you can get an idea of what you don’t. Consider this: somewhere, on this planet, in a place where you do not speak the language, an entire field is covered with dew. Across the world perhaps, where the sun has not yet risen, there is a narwhal that has never been seen by a human. It is swimming right now, while you are looking at your hand. It breaks through the surface of the water, penetrating it first with its long tusk, and gives a scream of freedom as it fills its lungs with the icy air. Now, the thing is, in terms of perspective, would the narwhal still exist if you had not looked at your hand? Look, we’re all made of energy. Everything fundamentally is energy; even solid things are just stored energy: the sun, you, me, narwhals, and paint. It’s all the same. But we’re still not there. So many things about this hand have yet to be considered. We are still looking at your hand in terms of things that exist, but what about things that don’t exist? Think of how your dreams relate to this hand. All kinds of nonsense, unicorns, magic kingdoms, your second grade teacher giving remedial alchemy lessons to a banana, lobsters doing yoga. If you are thinking about it, and looking at your hand, some kind of a connection is established, it exists, just outside the realm of rationality, which is only half the picture. You’ve got to embrace the infinity that’s there and the infinity that isn’t. Absurdity is only a recognition of infinity.
AGNES: Wow. That’s fairly incredible. Pause. I must say, this is a type of penetration I haven’t experienced.
She laughs uneasily.
Sorry, that was inappropriate. Pause. What’s your name?
MAN: I’m not going to tell you my name. Why would I need to do that?
AGNES: Look, Pamela is not my real name. I want to tell you my real one.
He laughs to himself.
Pause.
AGNES: What’s so funny?
MAN: What? Oh, nothing really. It’s just – isn’t it supposed to be such that you don’t want me to know your name, and shouldn’t you not care about mine?
AGNES: Yeah, but we seem over that. Pause. So, the fundamental problem of love, huh?
MAN: Yeah.
AGNES: That there is some kind of relation between everything, that if infinity exists we should love everything the same.
MAN: irritated and a little tired Yes, yes.
AGNES: And that’s the way to freedom.
MAN: What?
AGNES: True freedom, no masks. A universe of rapture in every glance; it does exist. The grand problem is then how to love it all.
MAN: Look, you’re right, this is a little silly, I should probably get going. I’m sorry for wasting your –
AGNES: No, please, stay. I understand now. The woman, the painting of the woman, the bird on her finger, and the screeching peacock from the poem I read a while ago, the screeching peacock and the narwhal’s scream of freedom, which is our freedom. It’s all the same. It’s just energy.
MAN: You look a little pale.
AGNES: Don’t go. Please....please, I want you to stay. Tell me about yourself.
MAN: I’m not going to do that. There’s no need to. I’m a stranger, you’re a stranger. It’s just another label. This whole thing, this evening, it doesn’t mean anything. This is it, this is freedom: I’m whomever you want me to be.
He attempts to exit.
AGNES: Well then why did you come here? You came to me, remember? To ask a prostitute how to love.
MAN: Who else was I going to ask?
AGNES: My name is Agnes. I’m nineteen. I was born in Denmark and I used to study dance. I just – it seems stupid... I just want you to know that, regardless of what you tell me.
MAN: Goodbye.
AGNES: Stop, will you! You’re crazy, you really are, brilliant perhaps, but that doesn’t mean you can talk to me like that and just leave, like, like an asshole! Pause. She is exasperated, Look, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. You just – you really got to me, like you’re the first person to see me in a long time. And now, you want to leave, like every other client. This is crazy, but you’ve said a lot of crazy stuff, let me say something.
MAN: Ok.
AGNES: Do you...like me?
MAN: No.
AGNES: I’m sorry, I just—
MAN: Yes.
AGNES: What?
MAN: No.
AGNES: What are you doing?
MAN: Yes.
AGNES: You’re not making any sense.
MAN: No.
AGNES: Stop that. Just answer the—
MAN: Yes.
AGNES: Do you like me?
MAN: No.
AGNES: Do you like me?
MAN: Yes.
AGNES: Yes or no?
MAN: No.
AGNES: Yes or no?!
MAN: Yes.
AGNES: I don’t understand you. What are you trying to do? Are you trying to tell me something?
MAN: No.
AGNES: she grabs him by the shoulders. Should I love you?
MAN: Yes.
AGNES: Really?
MAN: No.
AGNES: Ugh! Damn you!
She stops, thinks, and kisses him.
MAN: There. Now we’ve broken free. Not that we’ve broken through one system and created our own, we’ve abandoned systems altogether. That moment of frustration set you free from depending on only yes or no. Infinity is both yes and no at the same time. Love me, love me now, Agnes. Love me so much that you don’t love me.
AGNES: I...I’m a prostitute, and you haven’t even told me your name. I don’t believe in love at first sight.
MAN: Agnes. Please, love at first sight is for idiots. This is love before first sight. When I love the paintings, art, even and especially the things that don’t make sense, the even sound of footsteps, the way the grass bends and I don’t have reason for it, I see the blending. In loving these things, as far as I’m concerned, we were never not loving each other.
Pause.
Would you like to know my name?
AGNES: Maybe later. I want to read another poem.
