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Comedy
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| In a Box | |
| By robokent | ||||||||||||||
| 18 November 2006 | ||||||||||||||
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been a long time since i've shown my face around here... thought i'd try and see if i might stir up a little trouble again... sorry, i realize the humor of this piece may prove a little to american in style, but give it a read, let me know what y'all think... Reed and Nate are sitting on stools at a bar. Each of them has a drink in front of them. Reed is taller than Nate. Reed is in his late twenties. Nate is in his late thirties. Reed: Look at all these people. Where do they all come from? Nate: What do you mean? Reed: I mean, look at them all, midnight on a Tuesday. What are they doing? Nate: Drinking, looks like. Reed: Don’t these people have jobs? Nate: Probably. Reed, you’re probably the only one in here who doesn’t have a job. Reed: Shouldn’t they be in bed? Don’t they have to be up early tomorrow? Nate: I have to be up early tomorrow. I’m here. Reed: Don’t you ever wonder what all these people do for a living? Nate: I used to date this woman. Co-worker. We used to go to lunch together, and she’d always ask that same question. Reed: Was she hot? Nate: Huh? Reed: Was the girl hot? Nate: Yeah, no, she wasn’t hot. She was really pretty, though. Had the most beautiful jet black hair. Reed: And you dated her? Nate: We went out for about a year and a half…but we never even kissed. Reed: You never kissed. Nate: No. Reed: Then, I don’t think that counts as dating, Nate. Nate: Well, I wanted to date her. Reed: Oh, so it’s kind of like the same situation as now, with that cute bartender over there. Nate: No, no. This girl won’t even give me the time of day. Reed: She’s pretty cute, though. Gotta love the fact that she’s not wearing a bra. Nate: She isn’t? Reed: How could you not notice? Her nipples are peeking right through that tank top. Every time she comes over here to fill a glass with ice I get a great look down her shirt. I think she caught me looking last time. Nate: Yo, do you think I have bad posture? Reed: Huh? Nate: Bad posture. You think I slump over too much? Reed: Yeah. Nate: Why didn’t you tell me? Reed: Thought you knew. I have bad posture too. Who cares? Nate: Doesn’t matter to you. You’re tall. Reed: I’m not that tall. Only a couple inches more than average. Nate: How tall are you? Reed: 6’1”. Nate: The average man is 5’7”. Reed: No way, the average man is 5’10”. How tall are you? Nate: 5’6”. Reed: Ah, height’s overrated. In the grand scheme of things, what’s a couple inches? Nate: Yeah, you know I was reading about the universe, and all these different theories about what it looks like. Reed: And? Nate: Well, they went into this whole thing about negative curvature, positive curvature; some scientists just think it’s flat. That’s the prevailing theory. Reed: Nah, Columbus proved it was round. Nate: Not the earth; the universe. How the hell can the universe be flat? The manufacturing of this beer can’s a mystery to me, let alone the creation of the cosmos. Reed: Uh-huh. Nate: Anyway, they were saying how the universe is, like, 15 billion years old, and at the time it was created, it started off, you know, like smaller than an atom, but after, like, .00000001 of a second, it was already the size of a grapefruit. Reed: Whoa, check her out! Another one with no bra! What’s going on here? Is this the new style? Nate: It’s the summer. Women go bra-less in the summer. Reed: I love summer. Nate: You ever worn a bra? Reed: Uh… no. (long awkward pause) Nate: You never wanted to see what it felt like? Never snuck one out of your ma’s drawer? Reed: Nate, you’re freakin’ me out. Nate: You ever wonder what it’d be like to be a woman? Reed: Where you goin’ with all this? Nate: You know. It’s a legit question, and it doesn’t make me gay or anything. I’m just wondering: would you ever want to be a woman? Reed: Why? Nate: Philosophically speaking. Reed: Well… no. I mean, it’s so much better to be a man. Men aren’t discriminated against, we’re stronger, age more gracefully, don’t have to do the monthly thing… I can’t think of one reason why I’d ever want to be a woman. Nate: What about so you could be a mother? Reed: Ah, I don’t buy that whole motherhood thing. “Oh, I’m a woman and I carry around my child for nine months, and it’s the greatest thing ever!” Big deal. Nate: Yeah, you’re probably right. Reed: Man, look at all these people. Just sitting around, drinking their beers, laughing and flirting. It’s midnight, and half the guys in here are still wearing their ties! Probably all a bunch of consultants. Nate: What exactly do consultants do? Reed: I don’t know. Nobody knows, actually. Companies just hire consultants to come in and take up space in their offices for a couple months, and the consultants make some suggestions I guess about their business, or whatever, and then when the consultants leave, everything goes back to normal. I think consulting is just a job for liberal arts college graduates. Nate: Didn’t you go to Swarthmore? Reed: Yeah. Nate: When are you gonna get a job? Reed: I don’t know. Soon, I guess. Nate: What do you want to do? Reed: I just want to be a writer. Nate: Yeah. You’re a pretty good writer. Reed: You know what the key is to being a good writer? Nate: What’s that? Reed: Spelling. Nate: Spelling? Reed: Yeah, if you’re a good speller, then it doesn’t matter what you write. People will think you’re a good writer because you can spell. Nate: So that’s your secret? Reed: That’s it. I made it to the Maryland state spelling bee when I was 14. Lost on ‘iridescent.’ Nate: You lost on that? Man, that’s an easy word! Reed: Yeah, well, first of all, I was 14, and second, let’s hear you spell it! Nate: I can spell it. Reed: Uh-huh. You can barely pronounce it. Nate: Iridescent. I-R-R- Reed: Wrong! Nate: What? Reed: You’re already wrong! Nate: What’d I say? Reed: There’s only one ‘R’. Nate: I-R-A- Reed: Wrong! Nate: I am not. It’s I-R-A- Reed: No, it’s not. You want me to spell it for you? Nate: No. I’d rather not know than have you tell me. Reed: See, that’s what’s wrong with you, Nate. Nate: What. Reed: You’d rather stay ignorant. Whereas I’m always trying to learn stuff. Nate: Hey, I learn stuff. And I have a job! Reed: Big deal. That job is like a box that you can’t get out of. You’re stuck in a box. But it’s alright. So is everyone else in this bar. They’re all stuck in the safe little boxes they’ve all created for themselves. Everyone lives 99% of their lives in these little boxes: go to work, come home, go Up North for the weekends. Nate: What’s wrong with that? Reed: Nothing. If you like stagnation. Boredom. Ignorance. They have no goals. Nate: No, they just don’t have your goals. Reed: Whatever. Nate: What are your goals, anyway? Reed: My goals? I have one simple goal. Become a famous writer. Nate: And you’ll achieve this goal through expert spelling. Reed: Exactly. Nate: Man, I wish I could talk to one of these girls in here. Reed: Make it your goal and do it. Nate: I need some kind of ‘in’. Reed: I got it. This is what we do. The next time a hot girl walks by, I’ll stealthily slip out my foot and trip her. Then you go to catch her! You’re the hero. What do you think? Wanna try it? Nate: No! That’s stupid. Reed: Fine. Then we’ll just sit here till the bar closes, and you can go home and put on a bra and get in touch with yourself that way. Nate: You get the feeling everyone else knows each other here? Reed: All white people know each other. Nate: What? Reed: See that girl over there? With the red top. Nate: Oooh. Yeah, she’s smokin’. Reed: Yeah, but when she walked by, I heard her talk. She’s got the strongest Philly accent I’ve ever heard. Nate: Oh, no. No, don’t start in again with this Philadelphia accent thing. There’s nothing wrong with the way we talk. Reed: Well, you sound alright. But you’ve got to admit that some people here lay it on pretty thick. Nate: Yo, it’s endearing. Accents denote character. Reed: They do not. That’s absurd. Nate: It’s true! Reed: So, what’re you saying? I have no character, since I don’t say ‘yo’ in every sentence. Nate: Yo, I haven’t said ‘yo’ once tonight. Reed: That’s a lie. You don’t even notice it. You’re immune to it. You’d hear it too, but you’re deaf to it because you’re from here. It’s like this: if you lived your whole life with only panda bears, you’d expect everyone to have black and white fur. That’d be normal for you. But then I come in, from the great state of Maryland, and I can immediately identify the inherent weirdness of you living with panda bears. Nate: What are you talking about? I don’t live with panda bears. And get off the whole Maryland thing! Maryland sucks. I mean, have you seen their quarter? Reed: Did you know that in a recent survey Maryland’s state flag was voted the #3 flag in the union, behind only New Mexico and Texas? Best flag east of the Mississippi, my friend! Nate: A survey of who? Reed: Flagologists. Nate: Now you’re just making stuff up. Reed: Am not! It’s true. Read it in the US News and World Report. Nate: Man, why don’t you take your state flag and your crab cakes and your “Old Line State” and stuff it. Reed: ‘Stuff it’? Nate: Yeah. Reed: Who says ‘stuff it’? Nate: I do. Reed: Well, you are a few years older than me. Must be one of those generational things. Nate: Yo, there goes Jacqueline. Reed: Who? Nate: The bartender. She must be going off duty. Reed: Well, go talk to her. Nate: Nah, I can’t. Look; she’s surrounded by guys. Reed: Oh, well. Guess you’ve lost another opportunity. Nate: Ah, who’m I kidding? Why do I come to bars to meet women? Reed: Yeah, you don’t want to meet a woman in a bar, anyway. How many marriages do you know of where the couple met each other in a bar? Nate: You’re right. Reed: Well, my friends Marco and Kate met each other in a bar, but besides them… Nate: And you know my buddy Ken, right? Well, he met his wife in a bar. Reed: Okay, so two couples. Nate: Actually, my friends Jimmy and Pete both met their wives in bars. Reed: Oh yeah, I just remembered. I have a friend named Pete too, who met his fiancée in a bar, but they’re not married yet, so you can’t count them. Nate: Not yet. Reed: Hey, you gonna watch that “Planet of the Apes” movie marathon coming up this weekend? Nate: I don’t know. Reed: Nothin’ like cheesy 70s sci-fi. Nate: Yeah, I remember when they came out. I loved those movies. The best one was when Charlton Heston goes to the planet. Reed: Yeah, the first one. Nate: No, no, it wasn’t the first one. No, the first one was, like, when the apes are slaves to the humans, and then they revolt. Reed: That’s not the first one. The first one was with Charlton Heston. He goes to the Planet of the Apes, but it turns out he’s actually just gone forward in time to when apes rule the earth. Nate: No, I think you’re wrong. Reed: Nate, I’m not wrong. Nate: No, I’m pretty sure the first one was when the apes revolted against the humans. Reed: Are you kidding me? Nate, I am 100% sure Charlton Heston starred in the first “Planet of the Apes” movie. Nate: That doesn’t make any sense. Why would that be the first one? The apes already ruled the earth at that point. In the first one, they hadn’t yet taken over. Reed: Okay, chronologically speaking, you’re right. But in the order that they made the films, the Charlton Heston film was the first one. It’s like “Star Wars”. “The Phantom Menace” comes after the original three, but it happened before them. Nate: I’m still not so sure about that. Reed: Next time I’m on the Internet I’ll print out the chronology for you, okay? Nate: Okay. How’s my posture? (sitting up very straight) Is this better? Reed: When you sit up that straight, you look stupid. Nate: (goes back to slumping) Oh. Reed: Look at that woman over there, using a straw with a Coke can. Nate: Yeah. What about her? Reed: Well, she’s using a straw with a can. What’s the point of that? Nate: I don’t know. Who cares? Reed: Well, it’s just not normal. You shouldn’t use a straw to drink out of a can. That’s all. Nate: I think my ma does that. Reed: You call your mom ‘ma’? Nate: Yeah. So? Reed: My mom calls her mom ‘Mummy’. Nate: Was she from a wealthy family? Reed: No, why? Nate: I don’t know; just sounds like something a rich person would call her ma. Reed: Whatever. Man, look at all these people. What are they all doing here? Why don’t they all go home? The end.
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