Monologue

Here's the monologue I wrote with my friend Bug. Use it for anything you wish, just make sure to credit us.

BOTTLES

Hey uh… I don’t know how this works. My first day. Right… my name’s John S. I don’t know why I’m here. I stopped in the bar across the street tonight, I saw the sign… and here I am… bar across the street. That’s gotta be weird for you guys, huh? Everytime you come in, you gotta see that. Eh, anyway… I’ve had a rough couple days… I’ve had a rough couple of years. Nah, I don’t wanna bring ya’ll down though. Let me tell ya’ll a funny story. This actually just happened to me. This was uh… this was the reason I wandered down to the bar down the street. I locked myself out of my apartment. Which really sucks, by the way. ‘Cause you’ve been out all day at work, doin’ what it is you do… I don’t know about you guys, but I work hard, and there’s nothin’ worse than takin’ the bus home after a long fuckin’ day—sorry, can I curse?—Okay. And, you think you’re about to open your door, crack open a bottle, sit down on the couch, and zone out to whatever the latest Law and Order spinoff is… and then BAM. (motions) No keys. And you know this isn’t a quick fix. You know that you are gonna be sittin’ against the door for an hour-and-a-half, smokin’ cigarettes, fuckin’ dreaming about that couch that’s waitin’ for you right on the other side. So I call the locksmith, he gets there, two hours later. He starts to work on the lock, and I have this moment of panic. ‘Cause I know what’s waitin’ on the other side of that door. Now let me tell you: I’ve always been a messy person. I mean, shit, when I was a kid, my Mom would always be yellin’ at me “Pick up those Legos! Don’t leave your bike in the driveway! Put your dishes in the dishwasher!” Haha… I used to start the school year, man, I’d hit the ground runnin’. I’d say to myself, “This year, John. This is the year you’re gonna turn it around.” Get the binder, the paper, the pencils, pens, stapler, ruler… and have it all organized. Stacked up. Zipped up. Everything in its proper place ready to go. And then three days into it, I’ve lost all my pens. I’m askin’ the poor fucker next to me for pens and pencils every two seconds. The stapler’s all jammed up. Those little metal things in the binder, they’re misaligned. So everytime you turn the page, they rip. I don’t even use folders anymore. I got all my homework just shoved into the middle of my books… what was I talkin’ about? Right. Panic. My place is a mess. So the locksmith’s workin’ on the door, and I’m cringing. But then, just as he opens the lock and gets in, he turns to me and says, “Jesus, buddy. I think you’ve been robbed!” My apartment was so fucked up, that this guy actually thought some maniac and broken in and ransacked the place. I just said, “Oh! Oh wow. Uh… that’s horrible!” So he immediately pulls out his phone to call the cops. So I say, “don’t worry about it. I’ll the cops myself. Let me just go in and figure out what’s missing.” He says, “You sure buddy? You gonna be alright?” I said, “Yeah, yeah. I got this.” And just for good measure, I threw in a “Goddamnit!” So he leaves… I step inside… and I close the door. And… whooh! Relief! I dodged that one. God… so I’m standin’ there I’m kind laughin’ to myself, I look around, and… yeah you know, my place is a mess. I’ve got a month’s worth of garbage bags in the kitchen… the dumpsters a 30-second walk away from my apartment, they’re still sittin’ there. I haven’t hung up a single article of clothing since I’ve moved. The floor has become my closet. I’ve gotten to the point where I’m just kinda washing the dishes that I need, so it’s just that top layer is gettin’ washed and used, everything below that… it’s like the abyss. But the crowning achievement of this masterpiece is the bottles. Beer bottles, liquor bottles… all over the place. On the TV, on the coffee table... The spare bedroom is devoid of furniture, and the floor is covered wall-to-wall with bottles. Now I know what you’re thinkin’: why? And I have the answer to that. Security. The way I figure: you go stumbling through this apartment in the dark, in the middle of the night, you are gonna make some noise. You know all that jazz about people in glass houses? Yeah, that applies here. You are not gettin’ into my apartment without breakin’ some shit. Hahaha… nah, I’m just kiddin’. I dunno. I dunno how it started. Well, I guess at first it was lazniess. Okay. Fine. But then I’m thinkin’, “I can do something positive with this. I can recycle this. I’ll be doin’ my part for uh… global warming, or whatever?” Plus, I can put whatever I make off these bottles towards more bottles. I remember the first time I had that thought. I kinda walked around the apartment. I thought, “Okay. I need to be organized about this. Plan first. Then execute.” So I’m goin’ from room to room, I’m lookin’ at each stash… the coffee table, the space under the coffee table, the dining room table, the space under the dining room table, every available counter, all the shelf space, the hidden ones under the shelves, the top of the fridge. And then I get to the guest bedroom, and I’m looking at it in all its glory…. And I realize: I can’t throw these out. I earned these. They represent time. Every single one of these bottles is part of a memory. You know, the uh… the bottle of Tres Generations that my best friend brought back from Mexico… the bottle of Sky that I jacked from my sister’s wedding reception… the bottle of Popov I bought the next day when my father told me I had ruined the wedding and that I was no longer welcome in his home… the multiple bottles of Jack that I went through when my girlfriend left me. Lotta memories. It’s easy to think that a guy sittin’ home drinkin’ is wasting time, or wasting away… but at least by keeping each and every bottle, I’m accomplishing something. It’s an actual, tangible result. It’s something I can touch, something that’s still here. When everything else in my life is leaving and being taken away from me, these bottles remind me of the time that I’ve spent here. …So there I am, standin’ there, lookin’ at these bottles: my life. All because the fuckin’ locksmith thought that I’d been robbed, and I was too ashamed to tell him otherwise. And it hits me. Everything that I’ve lost is because of these bottles. All the bad things, these bottles brought with ‘em. Everything that I’ve loved was pushed out the door to make room for this collection of glass. And it’s a problem. Because I don’t want to lose anything else. I don’t think I have anything left, but I just don’t want to lose anything else. I just don’t want to lose anything else. I think (ahem)… I think I might be an alcoholic.