I KNOW THESE GUYS. Well, maybe not “know” know them, but I know them.
The people that populate the landscape of The Distance from Here are very familiar to me, much more like the kind of folks I grew up around than the fairly privileged, white collar, white bread men and women I’ve spent the last few years writing about. Don’t get me wrong, I know those people too, but the Darrells, Tims, and Jenns of this world hold a special place in my mind. A unique, uncomfortable space that says, “Damn, that could’ve been me.” Even growing up in America, I think most of us are only two detentions and one dead-end job away from ending up just another failed dreamer with a difficult childhood and lousy luck. You make another couple mistakes, have a baby or two, start pulling down minimum wage, and you might be staring real trouble in the face. A fellow like Darrell, however, doesn’t even have that chance. In high school, I sat next to a bunch of boys like Darrell and Tim in woodshop and algebra and study hall and watched them simmer and burn and consistently pull down a solid D– in nearly every subject. They knew, even at sixteen, that they had absolutely no hope in this life and they were pretty pissed about it. Pretty damn pissed indeed.
The Distance from Here takes a whack at capturing some of that teenage rage in a story about families. Shattered families, to be sure, but families all the same. The absent fathers that haunt the pages of this play are not the only “missing persons” here; emotionally, Darrell and company went AWOL a long time ago. Darrell, his friends, and the other characters of this story are banging their collective heads against the bars of their cage, not exactly sure whether they’re trying to get out or to get back in. As people, I’d probably give them wide berth if we ran into each other in McDonald’s. As characters, they make me laugh, they make me frustrated, they make me sad. They also make me wish I were a better person, which I guess is saying something.
When I was in high school in Washington State, there was a myth that ran through our hallways; our own little urban myth, in fact, about a boy and girl who had dated since junior high. I still remember their faces. It was whispered that she had gotten pregnant on several occasions and, whenever it happened, the boy would pound the girl in the stomach until she miscarried. That story stayed with me for a long time, right up until I wove it into the dramatic fiber of this play. I hope it has finally left me now, a part of this world and no longer a frightening image from my teen years. I think that is often why writers write and painters paint and musicians play their instruments. It’s not just because they have a gift, but also to create something even slightly more beautiful or coherent or illuminating than the frenzied, scrambled memories of their own pasts. The Distance from Here is some sort of effort on my part, then, to acknowledge a kind of person I’ve always known well but consciously and constantly marginalized. I never liked the way those kids dressed, or the music they listened to, or the way they talked, so from the beginning they were, in essence, dead to me. This is my attempt at a resurrection.