NAXOS’ BAR. A FASHIONABLE BAR IN TOWN.

CHARACTERS

ARIADNA
MAN

MAN: Hello

ARIADNA: …

MAN: Do you smoke?

ARIADNA: …

MAN: Do you come here very often?

ARIADNA: …

MAN: Don’t you speak?

ARIADNA: What do you want?

MAN: I can make you happy, you know.

ARIADNA: You?

MAN: Yes, come with me.

ARIADNA: To your bed…

MAN: …Well… If you put it that way…

ARIADNA: How am I supposed to put it?

MAN: You look lonely. I can keep you company.

ARIADNA: Between the sheets.

MAN: …I love the way you say it… Yes, I can make you have a wonderful night.

ARIADNA: I hate nights.

MAN: Let’s wait for sunrise.

ARIADNA: I hate sunrises.

MAN: Why don’t we have a drink, we laugh and have fun?

ARIADNA: Your way of conceiving fun bores me.

MAN: What’s your name?

ARIADNA: I couldn’t care less about all names in this world.

MAN: Yours must be beautiful, just like you: (HE CARESSES HER LEG)

ARIADNA: And yours disgusting, just like you: (SHE PUSHES AWAY HIS HAND)

MAN: I’m only trying to be nice to you.

ARIADNA: I don’t like your pleasantries.

MAN: That’s because you don’t know them well: (HE TOUCHES HER BREASTS)

ARIADNA: (PUSHING AWAY HIS HAND) They repel me anyhow.

MAN: Wow! I love your temperament. (HE KISSES HER)

ARIADNA: (SHE SLAPS HIM)

MAN: (HE KISSES HER AGAIN)

ARIADNA: (SHE SLAPS HIM AGAIN)

MAN: How funny! I’m mad about you… I want to get to know you better…

ARIADNA: Get to know me better? Look at me: this is me. This is my head; you know what a head is? It’s an organ that makes a constant hideous noise. You must believe it’s used for thinking but no, don’t believe so. It’s not used for thinking but for making noise. This is the heart; you know what the heart is? Do you know it’s a beating organ? Its constant ta-ta-ta-ta-ta reminds me I’m alive because sometimes I forget. Does it happen to you too? It’s horrible to have noisy and beating organs inside the body. These are my hands. Look at them closely. Notice how they suffer from amnesia, they don’t know what to do. This is my chest, divided in two. It doesn’t work. I don’t even know why I have it. The stomach is destroyed. It was pushed so hard that it burst. Kidneys, liver, bladder and all those things inside; they are there, waiting for the time to pass by. This is my sex. I assume you know quite well how uncomfortable it could be. Sometimes it betrays me. And, well the legs and the feet are the basis of all the rest. My tongue is acid, look at it. And that’s it, there’s no more. I am useless; useless because on top of everything else I carry with me an unbearable suffering. Does it hurt to you? Have you ever experienced the feeling of feeling? If you think it is something that comes and goes you are mistaken, because it isn’t. Suffering doesn’t come and go it remains, always. You are born with it, it’s innate. You might think you suffer because of a loss, or you might think you suffer for abandonment, or even think you suffer for not being capable of changing things, for being incapable of cutting into pieces your disgrace. But that is not the case. Once you suffer reasons stop mattering; you can feel it, name it the way you want, but suffering is suffering and that’s it.

MAN: …mmh…are you a poet? How thrilling! Really, listen…what was your name again? Let’s go together. That way you can keep on reciting your poetry to me… keep on talking about your body…

ARIADNA: For how long?

MAN: What do you mean how long?

ARIADNA: Minutes, you can only give me a few minutes. You know what you are? You are a cheap guy, you are not willing to give, to share nothing other than a few minutes. Minutes are nothing, they come and go. Watch, listen how they go away. Minutes are nothing, and that is what you want to give me: nothing. In that case you’d better leave.

MAN: Hey, you know what? You are sort of… I don’t know, you are making me nervous. (HE COUGHS). Why do you say those things about me? What did I do to you? It affects me you know. I feel bad you see? (HE COUGHS). You made me feel really bad… You are sick, really. There’s some people that… What’s wrong with you? (HE COUGHS AND LEAVES)

ARIADNA: …Good bye…

DARK.

Translation by Diego Gómez Pickering

About Ximena Escalante

Ximena Escalante`s recent works recreate the myths of Phaedra, Electra, Andromache, Salome, Judith, Lilith.

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