Boys Will Be Boys

(*Note* - This is a VERY dark play. In fact, this is one of my darkest, and I consider it one of the most upsetting things I've ever written. I've had people flame me (some justly) for this piece. If the concept of rape and it's after-effects offends you, please cease reading. You've been warned.) 1

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Boys Will Be Boys 4

CHARACTERS

A : A woman, plainly dressed, wearing only thick, black, unattractive eyeliner all around her eyes. Short nails.

B : A woman, slightly better dressed, with a small chain necklace, perhaps, and maybe some subtle lipstick. She’s wearing eyeliner, but not so thick and perhaps not so black.

C : A woman, much better dressed; rich, bright colors, earrings, lipstick, beautiful manicure with long nails, looking damn glamorous in a way that a woman only can be when she pays top dollar for all her stuff, but not too much eye make-up, and if she’s wearing some, it’s subtle with brown eyeliner instead of black.

D : A woman, wearing bright colors, shining mirrors and beads and sparkles and feathers, eyes plain, mouth bright with lipstick. She knows that this isn’t how women are supposed to dress, but this is how she wants to dress and she’s damn proud of the face that she has the courage to wear what she wants to wear, instead of what people say she should wear.

SCENE
An empty stage. If you want to do something more to it, be my guest, but for the purposes of this play, an empty stage suits my needs just fine.

AT RISE
A is sitting alone on the stage, no chairs, curled up with her legs to her chest, silent and still. Her hair is unbrushed, her face sullen and sad, her jeans torn at the knees and stained at the bottoms with rock salt. Her face is free of make-up, with the exception of dark, angry, black circles drawn around her eyes. Her lips pale and her fingernails plain and unpainted, she looks at the audience until they start to get uncomfortable, and then she says…


SCENE ONE 5

A: So, you think it’s okay for him to call me a slut? (Pause) I was standing there in the line, in the grocery line buying the orange juice and the lettuce and the cheese. You were in the line in front of me and so I was talking to you, asking how your family was.

B: (From offstage) Saying hello.

A: And then he walks by and he calls me a slut. What the hell?

C: (From offstage) What the fuck?

D: (From offstage) What sort of shitty-ass motherfucking thing is that to say to a girl?

A: And so he calls me a slut and does that thing with his tongue towards me. You know that thing. Like, (sticks out her tongue and wiggles it in a perverted manner). That . I hate that. I don’t even know what it means, exactly. I mean, I kinda know what it means, sort of, but I could be wrong and I’m not going to do anything like ask someone because then they’ll think I’m naïve or stupid or something and I’m not . (Brief pause) So I’m not going to ask, because I don’t need to, because I got the general idea from when he called me a slut. That bastard.

C: (From offstage) Fucker!

B: (From offstage) Dick!

A: He’s with his friends, of course. That’s the kind of asshole he is.

(B enters the stage, from stage left. A doesn’t even look at her, but if she did , it would be a look of acknowledgement, and not of surprise.)

B: (without missing a beat) Like it makes it okay to be rude and horrible if he’s surrounded by people who don’t object to the things he’s saying.

A: And his friends all laugh at me and he laughs the loudest and I can see them all, looking at me, staring like I’m some sort of zoo animal.

C: (Entering from stage right) Like, what am I, a fucking wildebeest or something?

A: I want to say something, but I don’t because I’m embarrassed to speak, and I knew that it was stupid to be embarrassed, that my reaction was a way of giving those assholes power over me, but I was anyway. So I don’t speak because of that. (Pause) Actually, that’s a lie. What I really wanted to say was

D: (Entering from stage left) How dare you call me that, you pathetic asshole, clinging to your vapid, testosterone-addled groupies, like fucking hyenas with your braying laughter, you mongrels! Treating me like I’m less than human, in some pitiable attempt to pad your own non-existent self-worth! Because you have no worth! You’re animals, lowly and ignorant, who roll in shit all day because you’re too stupid to know any better, cursed from birth with genetic material so impoverished as to doom you to have all the nobility and intelligence of a rabid dog. You impolite, imbecilic misogynists!

A: But if I said that, which I wouldn’t because I couldn’t, because I’d stutter midway and make myself look like even more of an idiot… If I said that, then they’d latch onto the “misogynist” comment like leeches.

B: They’d say something like,

C: Oh, so the little slut’s a feminist now, huh? She wasn’t like that last Saturday night. She was seeing things our way on Saturday night. Fucking slut.

A: And then what would I say? I was terrified.

(Quickly, in a row, the next three lines are spoken)
B: If I don’t speak, don’t do anything, then maybe they won’t mention it.

C: If I ignore them, maybe they’ll go away.

D: If I don’t say anything, maybe they’ll leave me alone.

A: And it’s stupid. It’s all so stupid. And I wish I’m smarter than I really am. I wish I have a clever comment to say, to shut them up and make them wish that they had never called me a slut in the first place, had never even opened their mouths.

B: But I don’t. And so all the boys walk away, their day a little bit brighter now that they’ve brought me down.

A: And you’re still standing there, looking away from me as though it was me who said the bad thing and not them, like I was the reason for your social discomfort.

B: And I can understand it, almost. I mean, you’re an old woman, in your early eighties, and all you ever talk about when I see you around the neighborhood is your family, blah blah blah…

A: I usually smile and nod and make a fuss over the pictures of your grandkids that you keep in your wallet.

D: It’s not like I could ever get away with just a “hello” and a smile, or anything. No, you always drag those damn pictures out and I have to pretend to be oh-so-fucking enthralled with all those snotty-nosed, insipid little midgets.

A: But I tolerate it. And I treat you nicely, and then you have the nerve,

B: The audacity

C: The balls

A: To look at me and tell me, “it’s okay, honey. Boys will be boys.”

D: What the fuck?

A: Seriously!

B: Does having a dick gives them the authority to make my day a hell of a lot worse? And you just justified that,

D: you uncaring, unsympathetic hag.

A: But I shouldn’t think that, because you’re old and you grew up in an entirely different world, where guys were not only pricks, but were legally allowed to be pricks. Supported by the law, while all the women were kept down.

C: Couldn’t vote.

D: Couldn’t run for office.

B: Couldn’t run to the cops if your husband was beating you.

C: Raping you.

D: Killing you.

B: Because you were a woman, you had no rights, 80 years ago.

A: That was the world that you came from, I understand that, but that doesn’t make it okay now. It’s different now.

C: (unsure) I think… (Brief pause)

B: (angry) Boys will be boys, right? And that makes it okay if someone calls me a slut? (Pause)

A: The thing is… the boys? And what they said? …They could be right.

(B, C, and D move closer on the stage now to A, though not overbearingly so)

B: Last Saturday, there was a party.

A: It was at a friend’s house. Well, more specifically, a friend of a friend. And I went, for the first time, to an actual party. There was a keg, and the music was loud and the base throbbed and vibrated the floorboards,

C: But the speakers were old and I could hear them shake and make strange, subtle buzzing sounds every time a base-note sounded.

A: But it was a real party! And for the first time in my life, I was like a real teenager, doing real teenager things, instead of being the loser I usually was,

D: The pussy I’m afraid that I still am,

A: And staying home on the weekends, watching TV when I was living with my parents,

B: Studying now that I live in a dorm. (Pause)

A: And so I talked to boys, and I drank some of the beer, and I danced and flirted and did my very best to have fun.

B: And I should have been having fun. This was what real teenagers did. In the movies, all that teenagers did in high school, for fun, was go to parties, drink beer, dance around, get wasted.

A: But I wasn’t having fun. It felt fake. I felt fake. The beer was too sour and my clothes felt too tight and the music was giving me a headache and the smoke was clinging to my skin and hair and I felt disgusting.

C: I got up to go home, fuck what the movies said about what fun actually was, and then I realized that I couldn’t. That my legs felt really weak, and maybe the feeling in my head wasn’t totally from the music after all,

B: And I tried to remember the last time I ate,

A: Or drank something besides beer,

D: Or even to remember how many beers I’d had.

C: Maybe they hadn’t been so watery after all.

A: So I sat back down on the couch and laid my head back, hoping that at least the headache would go away, and then… (Pause)

B: The next morning, I woke up and I was on the grass and the dew was soaking into my shirt. I didn’t know where I was at first. It was a cold day and the wind made me shiver.

D: And my pussy was hurting.

A: I don’t want to think about that. (brief pause) I woke up, in the grass behind the house where the party had been,

C: Behind the old shed, where no one would’ve been able to see me from the house, if someone dragged me there.

D: And my pussy hurt.

C: It felt wrong .

A: (Arguing) But my skirt was all the way down. It was relatively tight, but it was knee-length and it wasn’t bunched up around my waist like someone had pushed it up to…to touch me.

C: Rape me.

D: Fuck me while I was unconscious, too weak to fight back.

A: But my skirt wasn’t pushed up! And why would a rapist bother to fix my skirt after he raped me? Wouldn’t he leave as it was, and just run instead?

B: It doesn’t make any sense. Why fix my clothing?

A: Because my skirt didn’t need fixed, because I was never raped. I probably just ended up stumbling outside the night before when I was drunk, and then forgot about it. Nothing happened to me. My skirt was proof. Nothing bad had happened.

D: Then why did my pussy hurt?

C: Like it was stretched, and torn, and broken open with hammers? (pause)

B: There are no answers. None I can accept. Nothing.

A: And it’s the not knowing that’s the worst part of it. After I woke up, I walked back to my dorm and took a shower.

B: And I took my soap and I scrubbed, as hard as I could, to get the smells away. I was afraid of the smells. The cigarette smoke, the beer. Their stench was like a miasmic cloud around me. It was disgusting.

C: But I was afraid. Afraid if I breathed too deeply, behind the scents of the smoke and the alcohol, I might smell something else.

D: I would smell a man, all over my body. Someone else. Someone else’s filthy, disgusting scent all over me, invading me, fucking proving that something had happened. Maybe more than one. Maybe a mixture of smells, a combination of different kinds of sweat, and spit, and come, all over me. From one person? From more than one person?

B: I would not find out.

A: And so I held my breath. And I scrubbed.

C: When I came to my cunt, I scrubbed the hardest. I had long nails then, and I was pressing so hard that my nails dug into my flesh and I winced, feeling the pain.

B: And then I did it again, and scratched harder. Harder.

D: And then I dug my fingernails in as far as they could go, and I yanked back, as hard as I could, until the shower room floor was pink with blood and water.

C: (Triumphant) It was my pain now. There was only the pain that I was causing, now. No one else’s. The soreness and the aching from last night was gone, drowned in the waves of stinging hurt from my nails. The only pain I could feel now was my own.

B: The pain was my fault. My responsibility. No one else could take credit for it.

A: It was mine. (Pause)

B: And so I went back home.

A: I haven’t dropped out yet, but I’m not going back. Not to take my classes, not to see my friends, nothing. My mom asks me what’s wrong.

B: She can tell, she says, that something’s wrong.
A: But I tell her that it’s nothing and that I’m just tired from school, that we have a week off even though nothing’s written on the calendar about any Fall Break. And I try to resume life.

C: And I try to be strong.

D: Because I am strong and I will continue to muster forth my tenacity. I will be goddamn unbreakable. I will be the veritable queen of stoic fortitude and perseverance. Whatever the hell might have happened to me, it will not make me weak.

B: (Pause) But, somehow, it has.

A: And I know it has because those boys, they called me a slut and I wouldn’t, couldn’t say anything back. I couldn’t.

B: Because if I did

C: If I did

D: If I dared to even say a word

B: They might say that they had proof I was a slut,

A: A whore,

C: A dirty, filthy, whore

D: (Adamantly) But I’m not!

B: They might know what happened behind the shed, the night of the party.

C: They might tell me.

A: And then I’ll know for sure, and I can’t know. I can never know. I never want to think about it again, about the possibilities, and if someone tells me for sure,

B: If someone admits to it,

A: Then I’ll never be able to forget about it, and right now, with not knowing, I might . I have a chance to never have to think about it again, to wonder about it, to stay up late at night and feel the scabs where my nails had penetrated and wonder what other secrets it might hold.

C: There were a lot of boys at that party, and some of them might live around here.

D: Some of them might shop at this grocery store.

B: Some of them might point me out in the check-out line and call me a slut.

A: And I don’t know! I’ll never know! And that’s the only thing that I have going for me anymore. The only defense I have left. (Pause)

B: So you think it’s okay if they call me a slut?

C: So you think it’s justified for them to say such shit to me?

D: So you think those contemptible, primitive, asinine vermin have the right, the fucking privilege to call me those things –

C: To do those things to me

A: (arguing) If they did them at all

D: Because boys will be fucking boys!?

A: And I will be left unknowing and only those assholes will know,

B: Assholes like them

C: Assholes who might be them.

A: So you think it’s okay if they call me a slut? ( pause) Yeah. Well. Whatever. (pause) I just had to get that off my chest.6

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