Originally presented Off-Broadway in 2005 at The Barrow Group Theatre, starring Taylor Ruckel.
Eugene, a man dressed in a business suit and carrying a briefcase, steps out and sets his briefcase down. He is pointing a gun at the audience.
EUGENE
I know what you’re thinking, I can see it in your eyes. You think I’m crazy, don’t you? No, it’s all right, let’s be honest with each other, you’re sitting there thinking this guy’s a couple cans short of a full sixer, aren’t you? It’s all right, really. Seriously. People have always thought that I’m a little bit nuts.
Eugene lowers the gun and sets it on a nearby table.
There’s really a perfectly reasonable explanation.
Eugene removes his suit jacket and his tie.
I was the kid, you know, growing up, wore a baseball cap turned around backwards, the kid that climbed the tree that couldn’t be climbed, jumped his bike over the ditch that couldn’t be jumped, I was the kid that if you dared me to do something, I would do it. Eat a grasshopper? Did it. Throw a rock through the window of the church? That was me. Ride my Huffy bike all the way along the gutter on the roof of my house? Not a problem for Eugene the machine. I was known as the ballsiest kid on the block, hell, the whole neighborhood.
All of us guys would sometimes all light firecrackers at the same time and then hold them out, seeing who could hang on to it the longest before pussing out and throwing it. I always won that game. Singed my eyebrows, made my ears ring for a couple days, but I fucking won. Winning was good, but the bang, the BANG, that was even better.
I spent a large part of my adolescence in plaster, but it was worth it. I was the balls-to-the-wall legend of the neighborhood. It was fun. It was something. I was something.
He opens his briefcase and begins to clean the gun, very carefully.
Of course, I never figured I would end up an accountant.
It wasn’t my plan, being a bookkeeper. Originally, I was going in the Marines. First choice was to be a pilot, a Marine-Pilot, and if that didn’t work out then I’d join the Special Forces or something. But being a pilot was the number one priority, it’s the reason I got such good grades in math at school, because Pops told me pilots had to be good at math. Straight A’s, algebra, and calculus.
But there was not to be. Slight problem with my eyesight, I’d banged up my head pretty good once, jumping like a stuntman off of a moving freight train, when I was eleven. Crossed my eyes a little bit and fucked up my peripheral vision. Being a pilot was out. So I figured, Special Forces, hell, I’d even settle for infantry, but I got shit-canned during the induction physical. I got this thing, nothing really, but it kept me out of the service. It’s called a heart murmur, instead of going ba-bump, ba-bump, my heart goes ba-gloop, ba-gloop, like it’s a little leaky or something. A murmur. It’s such bullshit, I’m in perfect shape, I can run marathons, in fact, I do run marathons, I can do anything anyone else can. It’s a minor thing, really, but unless they reinstate the draft, I won’t ever get to serve.
So I went to college instead. UCLA. Got the math degree, had a lot of fun. Still the crazy kid addicted to extreme behavior, there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do, especially in college. I set the record for goldfish shots in my fraternity, you know how that works, right? Tie a string to a goldfish, do a shot, swallow the goldfish all the way down, then pull it all the way back again. Goldfish shots. There’s still a plaque in Delta’s hall with my name on it. Eighty-eight goldfish, down and back again. That was me. I was also the regurgitation champion of nineteen eighty-nine as well.
I just like doing things everybody else is afraid to do, you know? It’s a high, it’s a thrill, it’s like a stamp with your name on it. When you’re twenty-one years old, hanging from your feet off the Golden Gate Bridge over the San Francisco Bay, it’s like saying, Hey, Eugene was here.
Eugene sets the gun to one side, then takes off his shirt, wearing a wife-beater T-shirt underneath. He folds the shirt very carefully and places it in the briefcase.
When I was in college, I would have sex with the ugliest women. I would be in a bar, see the fattest, ugliest woman you could ever imagine, and I would go up and romance the pants right off of her, take the hairy beast home, and give her the loving of her life. I would! I would, and I’m a good-looking guy, I could and would get hot babes. But I would fuck the fat hairy ones, too, and you know why? Because no one else would. I still do that, from time to time. Eugene was here.
In case you’re wondering, there is a difference between fucking a hot babe and fucking an ugly woman. Big difference. Ugly woman APPRECIATE it.
What can I say, I’m OUT THERE, I’m Mr. Adrenaline, I’m EXTREME EUGENE, I love skating on the edge. Skydiving? Did it. Motor-cross? No problem. Bungee jumping? Bungee jumping is for pussies. Free-falling from a helicopter into an airbag is what real men do.
Of course, being in California, I learned how to surf. I LOVED surfing, there is something so Zen and surreal about running a tube, tons of water all around you, it’s like being transported to another universe. Surfing is one of the all-time great sexual highs. It was great until I broke my back in Australia. Wasn’t even my fault, I’d caught a high salty one, was hanging some serious ten when some amateur Gumby-head tried to hork my wave, wiped, and his board snapped free and BAP! Right between my eyes. That’s not what broke my back, of course, the monster wave and the reef did that when I hit the water. Before that, though, whatta rush, I saw all the colors water is and can be, all at once. Also, my eyes uncrossed when the board hit me, and now I could see better. So, except for the broken back, it was a profitable experience.
Eugene next takes off his pants, folding them very carefully and placing them in the briefcase.
My medical bills were piling up, so I took this accounting job, originally, I was just going to stay while I was in traction and rehabilitation. Ended up staying past that. Been with it eleven years. It pretty much sucks, but what can you do? Spend weekends spelunking and scuba diving, the occasional radical vacation white-water rafting down a river. Lately, I’ve been training in extreme fighting, you know, the no-holds-barred cage match stuff? But I haven’t been able to get into a match yet, as none of these pussy doctors will sign off on my back. But I did get a chance to test what I learned, you know, the fighting stuff. I went down to Texas, walked into a big shit-kicking bar wearing nothing but leather chaps and a pink T-shirt that said, “Kiss me, I’m GAY,” kicked back, and waited for the fun to start. Now that was a party. You know that jiu-jitsu stuff, that shit really works. No kidding. I fucked up something like ten, eleven homophobic cowboys before they arrested me, only getting a black eye, busted nose, and a broken hand in return.
Broken hand came from the cops, AFTER I was arrested and handcuffed. Pigs. My lawsuit’s still pending. It was fun. I’m not gay, but sometimes I wish I was. Just for the fights.
Eugene closes his briefcase and picks up the pistol, sighting it a couple of times.
I had been thinking about it lately. Not about being gay, I mean, thinking about what I do and why and all that. Then something happened. I had some sort of epiphany, something like that, happen on my last vacation. I was on a mountain in Tibet, the Himalayas, actually, and we’d just got caught in a whiteout. A whiteout is a blizzard that hits so hard and so fast you can’t see anything but white. We dug a hole in the side of the mountain in the snow, me and the Sherpas, and buried ourselves in the snow. We were tied together and staked to the side of the mountain so we wouldn’t get blown off.
The Sherpas were scared, both of them. I’ve been on a lot of expeditions, and I didn’t remember ever seeing a Sherpa get scared, but these two were. I know they were because they told me, they said, “Bwana, I’m scared.” They always called me Bwana, I don’t know why, it's not Tibetan. I think it’s just something they saw in a movie once. Anyway, we’re buried in a hole in the snow, and they start taking their clothes off, it’s the only chance we have to stay warm, we get naked and rub up next to each other. We got mostly naked, covered up, and waited for the mountain to stop screaming at us. Let me tell you something, Sherpas, they have a powerful smell. Not a lot of showers where they come from. No time to think about it, really. We’re entwined together naked, it’s forty below, the mountain’s shaking and howling, the Sherpa’s were praying and shitting, convinced they were gonna die, I know because they told me, they said: “Bwana, we die now, we die now!”
The wind screams, and all of a sudden, all the snow covering us blows away in a puff, the wind picks us up and yanks us out and away from the side of the mountain. We’re still staked and cabled to the wall, but the storm has pulled us straight out into the air. We’re weaving and bobbing in the wind like a cork on a fishing line, half-naked and pissing ourselves like live bait, the canyon two thousand feet below us, this is happening to us, and the whole time I’m thinking, “Oh my God. This is SO COOL! This is what LIFE is all ABOUT! YEEHAWWW!”
The Sherpas thought I’d lost my mind. We made it off the mountain, though. I only lost three toes.
But I had figured it out, I finally got what it all meant! When I’m at work, crunching numbers, having lunch, at home watching television, or doing my laundry, I’m not LIVING, I’m not ALIVE. There’s no life then. Maybe what we have here now, with our hearts going ba-gloop ba-gloop together, maybe that’s not life or living.
I’ve been clinically dead three times so far on various adventures. I’m now of the thinking that THAT’S the only time I’ve truly, truly lived. Not while holding the firecracker, not while lighting it, not while watching the fuse burn. That’s not life. I know it. I’m convinced of it.
Life only happens, it only shows its face, at those moments that have the BANG. That’s life.
BANG!
Eugene was here!
Eugene grins and raises the gun to his head.
Lights fade.
