Quantum Theory Says This is the Future
Sam Backlund-Clapp
Spotlight Pictures (?) presents a pitch for a screenplay
or perhaps some type of live theater.
Title (working): I never wanted to be your…WEEKEND LOVER!
Act 1, scene 1
The way xx xxxxxx xx felt like sex. Sex in itself. But even before that, the way we were just talking, the way we communicated with each other, was also like sex. It was like sex but also attending a funeral but also grocery shopping in pleasant silence. X xxxxx xxx’x xxxxxx xxx xxxx xxx xxx xx xxx looking at me, face so close to mine X xxxxx xxx xxx xx xxx xxxxxxx xxxxx. The way he was looking at me was also xxxx xxx. And then the actual xxx xxxx xxxx xxxxxx xx xxxxxxxxx, it felt transformative, it felt like being reborn.
Act 1, scene 2
On a set of concrete steps leading out of the kitchen, or the hallway maybe. Blood everywhere, and I had a beer but now it’s gone. Maybe one of them took it, damage control. Blood everywhere and it’s getting on the bag of frozen peas someone got out for me, wrapped in a towel now so grotesquely discolored I can’t tell it’s original shade. It’s sopping. And it’s dried down my face and my neck, pooled in parts of my clavicle too. Because she’s in pre-med she’s the only one around who could tell if it was broken. She said no, but they weren’t convinced at first. They said right after it happened there was a second where they thought I might actually be dead, flat on my face and the red starting to pool. I don’t even remember what it was she used, if she threw it or not, but it hit me hard. And when I woke up it wasn’t even the pain that was the shock but the screaming. The screaming, and the horrible things she was saying, what she was calling me even though it’s all true. But I’m on the steps now, unresponsive. Thousand-yard stare to nowhere as one of them shines a flashlight beside my eyes to check for a concussion. The two people I want to see the most aren’t here, they went to go buy more cigarettes. They left me here, in this kitchen. The rest of them are arguing, they’re angry. One of them wants to drive me to the ER. The rest are trying to be sensitive, because the wound is fresh again, but at least out East they say what they really mean. Did she know she’d be here? Fucking brought her to this party, did she know? I’m smacking mosquitoes, again. There’s an empty tennis court over there. Everything is always the same. We’re always living the same nights over and over.
Act 4, scene 7
Soft clinking of champagne flutes. My veil, with its colorful floral embroidery. Everyone is laughing and full and some of them are drunk, mostly to cope with the too many sex jokes. But we can’t help it that we’ve always been so sexually charged. And she’s up there, with the mic, telling the story. Or I guess just a story. The one about the ring, the week after I left, and how hard those years were after I went to the South. It’s warm, because it’s always summer. And we’re right on the river. I argued and argued in my youth about how I’d never do the country club wedding, but here we are. One thing he always knew how to do was feed my words right back to me till I choked.
Act -2, scene 2
Before any of this, before the big change. I used to write about how I respected him, but really I think I just didn’t know how to wrap my head around the fact that I was just afraid. Once I started calling it what it was it felt like it was too late, like I’d missed the last metro home. Every night ending the same way, flat on my back and slightly in pain, extremely winded, completely numb. He found ways to evade my requests, my questions. He’d nod in the moment and forget thirty seconds later. Don’t call me that, I’d say. Can you calm down a bit?, I’d say. Or, slower please. I’m too tired. I’m too hungover I’m on my period I saw a weird movie and now I’m not in the mood I’m too drunk. They were all just words, in one ear and then gone.
It doesn’t matter anymore. I’m not scared of anything now and I’m not in love with anyone, and nothing can hurt me, at least not yet.