Contemporary Monologues for Men

Ella Hickson

WHO Sam, nineteen, American.

TO WHOM The audience (see note on ‘Direct audience address’ in the introduction), and Joey, twenty-three, middle class, English.

WHERE A rooftop, New York City.

WHEN Christmas Eve, 2008.

WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED The speech that follows comes at the very start of the play. It is intercut with passages of dialogue between Sam and Joey.

WHAT TO CONSIDER

•	Sam works as a carer for Joey’s father George. George lives in an apartment beneath the rooftop. Joey has just arrived from London. She has not seen her father in two years and has no idea that he is suffering from dementia. At this point in the play, Sam does not realise that Joey is George’s daughter.
•	Sam’s ambition is to be a doctor.
•	He moved to New York when he was sixteen. Every night he would repeat to himself: ‘If you’re going to make your way in the world, it’s going to take everything you’ve got.’
•	He says he believes in ‘God, my country, my family… Myself.’
•	Sam’s brand of optimism is typically American. Joey’s cynicism is typically English.
•	Within a month, Barack Obama will become America’s first black president.
•	Much of the play’s discussion and humour resides in the differences between English and American sensibilities. Note how puzzled he is when she says, ‘I don’t believe in you.’

WHAT HE WANTS

•	To have sex with Joey.
•	To fulfil a fantasy… ‘like this is the moment that you might tell your kids that you met’.
•	To live the American Dream.

KEYWORDS (note how they come in pairs) cruel and beautiful black and death midnight, moonlit tired and desperate fast and quick (and furious) smart stuff and slutty stuff

Sam

(To audience.) It’s Christmas Eve in the winter of two thousand eight and the night is cruel and beautiful and it feels like it’s the first time it’s ever been that way. I’m sitting on a rooftop, downtown New York City; in front of me midtown, pouring out into the night like a million luminous toothpicks, but right around me is black, black and death. I’m nineteen and I’ve got an erection, right tight into the front of my pants ’cos I can feel a woman’s breath on the left side of my neck. This nervous little breath, panting, just beneath my ear; the moisture in it licking at me in the dark night and I so desperately want to turn around and suck that in, so desperately — but I keep my hands on my thighs, just like this and I say ‘hey’.

[…] (To JOEY.) What’s your name?

[…] No shit, mine too!

[…] No, it’s Sam. I’m sorry – I don’t know why I just said that.

(To audience.) She laughs this funny little laugh and it sounds funny so I say – You sound funny. […]

She says, all like that, all ‘I’m English’, like that. (To JOEY.) […] So… you’re up here for, um – a little air? […]

(To audience.) So I’m thinking ‘a little air’, like taking a turn on the veranda, like a midnight, moonlit stroll, like Audrey Hepburn at dawn before breakfast time at Tiffany’s; like this is the moment you might tell your kids that you met and she says — […]

(To JOEY.) Hepburn? […]

How did you do that? […]

(To audience.) And then I’m sure you won’t believe this, I’m sure you will have heard this said a thousand times before but piano music starts to play. […]

And suddenly we’re running fast as our feet will take us, stamping down fire escapes, looking in on late-night offices where tired and desperate men are sitting and watching dollars dropping like flies but we’re running, fast and quick and furious. We’re headed down Bleecker where the lights are kind and the windows are crowded up with smart stuff and slutty stuff and it’s cold, you see, so cold that my fingers get numb so as they might be tempted to let go of the very best thing that they have ever had the pleasure of holding on to –

(To JOEY.) You want to take the subway? […]

(To audience.) We take the uptown 6 train that goes all the way up and down Manhattan, scratching its back along the side of Central Park — we take it all the way up through Astor and Union and 59th and 96th and all the way on up to Harlem and when we get to the top we just come right back again and on our way back down we just can’t stop looking at each other and we laugh and we put our hands over our faces like kids in a bathtub – […]

I take her hand and I lead her off that train and I’ve judged my timing right because we emerge right into the middle of Grand Central Station. […]

And do you know what I did – right then, right in the middle of Grand Central Station? I pulled her right around and I kissed her, real hard. And when I stopped, when I stopped and stood back and I looked at her, she said the strangest thing, she said… ‘I don’t believe in you.’