THE RELEASE OF A LIVE PERFORMANCE

Sherry Kramer

Seriocomic

NELL, late 20s–early 30s

A year ago, NELL fell in love with a man with whom she had a one-night stand, and she doesn’t know how to fall out of love with him. Everything—including other men—reminds her of him, so she has spent the past year remembering him in some very horizontal ways, with a different man every night. Her older sister, COCO, a married mother of two, has come back to Texas to rescue NELL from herself. NELL tries to tell COCO what it is like to be in the center of a world made out of longing.

NELL Here’s what I didn’t tell you: There’s no way back. There isn’t anything I can do that doesn’t make me think of him and when I think of him there’s nothing left worth doing. Nothing. For a while I thought I had it licked. I took care of myself. I did things right. I felt the pleasure of doing things right. Things got very right for a while around here—the house was very clean and there was a lot of gourmet eating going on and I was to work on time and my bank balance was a piece of anal retentive art. Things got very right and I felt the pleasure of it, felt it fully, one day, for about thirty seconds. That was my mistake. My first, last, and always mistake. My always. I can make this chair—if I try very hard—I can make this ordinary chair not remind me of him. It’s an act of the magic of hard work, but I’m not afraid of hard work. It can be done and I can do it. I can hard work systematically across this room like a minesweeper, disengaging every snap, crackle, and pop. But I can’t break the hold in here. You walked into this house. You know—you must know—how warm and good it feels to have you walk into this house. And everything it feels like is him.