Monologue

What! Just think of it. Just – think about it! [Flails her hands around in an expressive, Mediterranean manner]

There we all are, we’re dancing and strobing and flashing and laughing and a circle, jumping up and down.

Smiles. He – she – everywhere – they, I mean even I, smile, too. They’re grinding.

I’m not. I’m thinking. They are physical. I am mental. And I mean really, really out-of-my-brains kind of mental.

I’m thinking: these are the days, the best days, the days which I’ll talk about in twenty years time, always prologue-ing my antic monologue with the same, dusty opening line: “When I was young…” etcetera, etcetera. Always, of course, tactfully omitting the really fun stuff. I mean - I’m sure my mum smoked up at some point in her life.

And I look at us, in this moment, when we in fact are young; and before it’s even over I feel nostalgic.

Nostalgia. A hot mass in my stomach. A poem by Duffy. Pain for home. I feel it even though I haven’t departed.

[Lapses into frantic mode again] What sort of a fucked up, existentialist freak am I? I don’t want to do this to myself. Hell, I don’t want to do this to the people around me who just look at me with their eyes and mouths wide open whenever I try to articulate even the most truncated version of my thoughts.

“You think too much for your age,” they say.

Well, yeah I do. And I like it.

Ten steps ahead, that’s me. Always rushing, always eager to be able to rewind. The reflection of today from some mirror river of tomorrow. That’s my craft.

[Pauses; she slows down]

And today? On this dance floor? Now?

What of it.

It’s not significant. We’ll all be left with souvenirs of it anyway. I just make mine on the spot.