Back To Reality (8.3.14)

Ok. So I'm a genius. 'Cuz I combined the two prompts into one. The prompts were:

Prompt #5: Take Facebook (or Twitter) posts from your friends off your news feed and either ruse the posts verbatim of use the posts as a basis for your play in some way.

Prompt #6: A person is discovered hiding alone in an underground bunker for the last twenty years, having believed the apocalypse occurred. He/she is unmercifully dumped into a modern society and must find his or her own place within it.

Which brings me to…

#3: BACK TO REALITY

(Lights rise on ALBERT, a gay man, and TALIA, a transwoman in the Prospect Park Subway in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. They are both cute and trendy as fuck. Albert might be a bear or a cub, and at the very least an otter. Talia is racially ambigious and has long, slender legs)

ALBERT: Do you ever look back on your childhood and get blown away by how gay you were before you even knew what gay was?

(Talia bursts out laughing)

ALBERT: Right?

TALIA: Oh my god.

ALBERT: I used to listen to my sisters CD's--

TALIA: Oh god. CD's.

ALBERT: Of Hilary Duff and The Spice girls. And dance around in my underwear in my room. I'm not even kidding. (singing brightly and broadly) "Let The Rain fall down…I'm coming clean…"

TALIA: You are too much.

ALBERT: Oh, like you weren't a total faggot?

TALIA: Hey watch it, bitch.

ALBERT: Whateva, bitch.

TALIA: No. I was a total queer. I used to walk around on my tippy-toes cuz I used to picture myself walking in heels.

ALBERT: You are too cute.

TALIA: I used to try on my mama's clothes.

ALBERT: And that wasn't a giant red flag?

TALIA: Giant rainbow flag.

ALBERT: I like, solely identified with female protagonists in everything I watched.

TALIA: What?

ALBERT: Like, I always wanted to be Dorothy from "The Wizard Of Oz" or Alice from "Alice in Wonderland"…and I always loved "The Little Mermaid".

TALIA: Same. I always wanted to be Ariel.

ALBERT: I don't know. I was always more drawn to Ursula.

TALIA: Really?

ALBERT: Octopuses are my favorite animal.

TALIA: Isn't it octopi?

ALBERT: You can actually say either/or.

TALIA: Aren't octopi like, vaguely…vaginal?

ALBERT: (laughing) What?

TALIA: I don't know. There's something about their.

ALBERT: Did you know Ursula was modeled after Divine?

TALIA: No shit, like the drag queen?

ALBERT: Yeah, grrl.

TALIA: Damn. Actually that kinda makes sense now.

ALBERT: Yeah.

VOICE OF THE MTA: The next. Uptown A Train will arrive in. Twenty. Five. Minutes.

TALIA: Damn.

ALBERT: I'm too tipsy for this shit.

TALIA: Seriously. Too fuckin late for this.

ALBERT: I'm glad we went out there though.

TALIA: How much do you think he pays for rent?

ALBERT: Oh god. I hope not more than like, $400 for that piece of shit.

TALIA: Seriously. Would not want to live here.

ALBERT: I think I'm drunk. I never drink. I'm too fucking broke to go out to the bars now. And none of the older guy are buying drinks for my ass.

TALIA: Did that guy from Grindr ever show?

ALBERT: No. 

TALIA: He was cute.

ALBERT: The Indian guy?

TALIA: Yeah.

ALBERT: And he has a huge dick. And he's a bottom. Swag.

TALIA: Sweet.

ALBERT: I keep like, talking to guys on Grindr but like, nothing happens. It's so annoying. They'll like hit me up and be like I'm free when I'm not free, and then when I'm free they're not, or better yet, don't respond.

TALIA: Guys on Grindr are dicks. One guy asked me if I was born in a lab.

ALBERT: Seriously?

TALIA: I mean I get guys calling me a freak all the fucking time. But yeah this guy was like, "What kind of creature are you?" Like really?

ALBERT: Bahahah what did you tell him?

TALIA: I told him that I was made by a mad scientist, or something.

ALBERT: That's great.

TALIA: Mm.

(A beat. Albert takes a one hitter out of his breast pocket, and a lighter)

ALBERT: I really want to take a hit off of this one hitter.

TALIA: Don't.

ALBERT: No one's around.

TALIA: Don't you fucking take a hit off that one hitter.

ALBERT: You know you want to.

TALIA: There are security cameras!

ALBERT: Who gives a fuck? All the MTA employees have gone home anyway. It's not like we're hot boxing the place.

TALIA: Albert…

ALBERT: There's just a little bit left.

(A silence. Albert takes a hit. He quickly passes it to Talia who hesitantly takes a hit)

TALIA: (through a cough) Damn that's good shit.

ALBERT: Ye.

TALIA: I'm gonna snap this shit.

(Talia takes out her smartphone and tries to take a snap of her and Albert in the subway, while taking another hit off the one hitter. We hear the camera snap-shutter sound. She tries to send it)

TALIA: Fuck. Come on, 3G.

ALBERT: Is it not sending?

TALIA: No.

ALBERT: We're too hot for everyone not to see that.

TALIA: I know. Ugh.

(She keeps trying to send it)

TALIA: My battery is being straight-up eaten alive down here.

ALBERT: Here just wait. 

TALIA: Ok.

(A silence)

ALBERT: I'm gonna play some music in the meantime.

TALIA: Janae?

ALBERT: Wait. After this song. I've had it stuck in my fucking head all day.

(He plays "Forever" by Drake. They break it down. At 0:46, we hear a giant crash and a hand breaks through the subway floor. The music cuts off, suddenly. Talia screams)

ALBERT: Oh HELL no.

(Then, another hand breaks through. A disheveled thirty-five year old man covered in floor dust and dirt crawls up from the ground. His name is CURTIS. He has a goatee, blonde highlights that are mostly faded, scuffed up Air Force Ones, diamond earrings, a short-sleeved button down shirt which is completely unbuttoned and a wife beater underneath. He wreaks of the year 2000. He screams)

ALBERT: Yo, who are you?

CURTIS: Who are you?

ALBERT: How did you just come out of the floor man?

CURTIS: How is there electricity?

TALIA: What?

CURTIS: Am I imaging this? Oh god. Oh god.

(Talia and Albert exchange glances. Curtis screams out of happiness)

CURTIS: Oh my god. It's real. This is real!!!!

ALBERT: What?

CURTIS: Y2K…it didn't happen, did it? (He laughs a loud, hearty mechichal laugh)

TALIA: Wait…say that again.

CURTIS: Technology…it didn't…

(A long silence)

TALIA: Have you…really been down in this subway since December 31st, 2000?

CURTIS: December 30th. I made sure to buy the non perishable items before everyone else.

ALBERT: And you've just been…living off of non perishable food items…down there? For…fourteen years.

CURTIS: I was wondering this whole time if it was safe to come up but…I kept getting too scared.

ALBERT: Fourteen years.

CURTIS: Yeah.

TALIA: I gotta Vine this.

(She takes out her iPhone. Curtis screams)

CURTIS: What the fuck is that?!?! What is that?!?!? What the fuck is that, man!!!!!!!

TALIA: Oh my god. You don't know.

ALBERT: Grrl. We got to fill you in.

TALIA: Sir…do you have a home?

CURTIS: Yes. I live on Grenwich Street.

(A silence)

ALBERT: Isn't that by…the world trade center?

CURTIS: Yeah.

(Albert and Talia's hearts sink)

TALIA: Oh. Honey.

CURTIS: What? What happened?

VOICE OF THE MTA: The next. Uptown A Train. Is now. Arriving.

ALBERT: It's a long story. We ought to take you home.

TALIA: And get you some new clothes. Damn, what were we thinking in 2000?

CURTIS: Do people not wear this now?

(Albert and Talia burst out laughing)

ALBERT: No. No they do not.

TALIA: Here honey. Come back with us. 

(The subway pulls up. A moment:)

CURTIS: I'm scared.

TALIA: Don't be.

(Blackout)