Sweat Equity Script
SCRIPT
Chapter 1: FRONT DOOR
Narrator: Welcome everyone to the house showing. It’s a relief to see so many faces from the neighborhood. It’s nice to think about our home going into familiar hands. For those of you who don’t know, I shared this home with my late husband who recently passed away. He was…..well. Anyways. Before we start the tour, I AM-
Chapter 2: LIVING ROOM
Poem: I Am, Yours Truly
I am thumbing through pages
to find the one that the rest of the class is on.
I am breathing in secondhand smoke
from grandparents long dead and gone.
I am coffee with cardamom and silt at the bottom of the cup
so dark it tastes like licking an ashtray
I am all three of the reasons
we were locked out that one night.
I have no stomach for losing
but am not much for playing my hand.
I am the warm, worn welcome
of a crumpled dollar in a coat pocket.
I am a hole in the plot of my parent’s lives,
unraveling like a run in nylon tights.
I am only sometimes once in awhile drunk on champagne
in my kitchen on a Tuesday at 2.
I am letting my best friends and favorite shoes gather dust on a shelf,
afraid to wear them out.
I am seated at a table for two,
ordering a meal for one.
I am…..
Narrator: Alice for short. Now-before we go one I must ask you not to touch the walls. I am, of course, trying to sell this place. And besides, I’m not on social media so this is my newsfeed and timeline. These pictures are all there is. Sometimes though, I make up the hashtags I’d use if I had an Instagram.
#LOVETHISLATTE
brimming with belly
milk, farmer’s sweat and
summer’s silage.
#LOVETHISSWEATER
I lie as I hold up my grandmother’s gift
to see that each stitch is spun silage,
soft and swollen as if full of milk.
#LOVENATURE
is not a tag for photos of that body
or the bonsai trees growing between our legs
that we trim in the bath
but for frames brimming succulents and hiking trails.
#ILOVEYOU---
I blurt before I remember we are still so soft, so green.
I backpedaled, face brimming with ripe regret
and add “-YOUR BODY!” (cough, repeat: i love your body)
#LOVETHEMOON
is for photos of pale fruit,
brimming in night sky above
the summer’s silage,
ripe and ready for harvest.
Narrator: I had a pinterest for a while. As a joke, I had a board for my next wedding. Bill thought it was real funny. He liked all of the ideas too. He told me that if he ever died, he didn’t mind me getting married again. But he wanted his funeral to look like this wedding with gold glitter on donuts, dance floor and string lights. He said he wanted a celebration.
Funeral Trends on Pinterest
Underneath the infographics for
planning one, hush hung
like the air trapped under the spreading top sheet
in a moment of silence before sleep.
Let us fill the shhhhh with search bar stories:
“Let no one wear black.
Have a can of life!”
Let us show ease by
painting grief on the bottom of
sugar rimmed red solo cups.
Let us diffuse the silence with something virally funny-
like putting makeup on Bill’s face
while he sleeps. Lay down, coffin pose
Less elastic, mom always thought
of him as the more mature match.
Now- at his funeral
I’m leaning on the back wall,
Looking at his blank stare, listening to
The Who,
sipping on a beer- bored.
While sunsoaked balloons wrinkle around me.
Narrator: Someone told me once that Bill once invited them to play farmville with him. It still sends him notifications that Bill wants him to play. Bill had lots of good, old photos up on his wall. One of them is this one right here.
Narrator: Look at those little grins! Can you believe everyone is so old now? Him, you guys know him, on the right. HummyJo! He had just told the best joke. Do you remember it? No? That’s okay. I do but I’m afraid I won’t nail the delivery the way he did but let me try.
Poem: Punchline
Where does a catcher sit down for dinner?
Behind the plate where
Hummy Jo and I hid our green beans from the parents. To get popsicles
the punchline is a slow pause and then please?
Hummy Jo asked- what can you catch but not throw?
Our breath
which was enormous and tangled with laughter like
mom’s sheets tumbling in the
wind. Our sun-smacked grins dressed in
our dessert
which runs in red rivers around arched teeth that match
the stained-glass window we broke
right before we learned that life can throw a punch
without lines or laughs.
Narrator: That joke makes me………... want a popsicle. Let’s quick go see if there are any in the freezer. You can see the new sink she installed too. I want to take you guys all around the house to show you everything we’ve done since we moved in.
Chapter: KITCHEN
Narrator gets out dishes, makes tea, hands cup to audience member
Narrator: Oh, you like this cup? Isn’t it so cute? I just love that you like it. Can you tell by my pink cheeks? You know, the FDA released an official nutritional label for compliments and these blushed cheeks are all red dye #40. Compliments are interesting. They can nourish space like a good glass of milk in an empty stomach. Or they can make space like a big ol’ cavity in our ego. Let me see if there’s an old one in my pocket.
Narrator digs paper out of pocket
Poem: Nutrition Facts
4 per Package
Serving size: 1 sentence
Amount per Serving
Calories 230
% Daily Value
Saturated Fat 10%
Total Carbohydrates 83%
Total Sugars 19 grams
Added Sugars 18 grams
Protein 3 grams if you eat the wrapper too
Vitamin D 9%
Communion 20%
Kinship 5%
Vitamin B 17%
Ingredients: Eye contact (warmed with good intentions), hand drawn map of the brain’s taste buds, grains of truth, a soft touch on the shoulder, Red dye #40 (the color of blushed cheeks).
Warning: This product was processed in a facility that processes peanuts.
Narrator: I don’t have anything as sweet as that compliment but I do have some snacks. It’s not much. I haven’t been doing a lot of grocery shopping. Bill always did that. You can see the last list he made over there. He forgot it and it still feels like he’s going to come back through the door for it.
Grocery List:
1 Klondike bar for her friend, so she would feel remembered
1 brownie to collapse into after tumbling through
5 gulps of milk that were scheduled to sell a week ago
3 oz of bone broth tinted blue from the
½ head of purple cabbage careening through
1 package of alphabet noodles that
are so easy to pour into a pan,
unlike pouring words into air.
In the soup, it’s easy to let the skeleton of each word soften,
easy to let the serif font fall away
to let us sip the sincerity of every meaning’s marrow.
Let us always add salt to
sing clarity
into each bowl.
Let us always
remember
1 bag of kitty kibble
Amen.
Narrator holds silence
Narrator: OH. I think I need to hear a good joke. Who has one?
Narrator solicits one from audience
Narrator: Aw. That’s a good one. I loved that. Do you guys have a favorite kind of joke? Knock-knock? Mine are inside jokes. But sometimes the hardest thing is bein’ in on the joke. Real hard to be the butt of one too.
Poem: Jokes
They think
I am the
punchline.
I think
I am
punchline.
laughing. laughing. laughter.
running under
the silence
like little
bugs under our
skin like water
running in the sink like
tears sticky on a cheek.
Holding breath,
holding in a laugh
because I
am the
joke
and
trying to
dig out
the punch line
but I DON’T GET IT- I finally admit
because
I forgot: I
am loved.
The joke is that we are all HAppy.
Jokes are made with love,
the highest form.
We are joking when we are loving.
We are loving when we are joking,
richly.
The joke only HAurts
when we pretend to love,
when we won’t hold the pain for a moment to sustain the HeAling joke,
when we won’t drink the sHAme out in the open to relieve the tension that we can’t help but feel because we’re- we- we- we- we………...are HumAn. and interconnected, intelligent and sensitive so we can’t-
The joke is a cup of Honesty we’re All trying to HeAl a little.
You are the joke because you are loved.
To sugarcoat pain so it can be held by others,
that is love too.
Sometimes love tastes bad but we have to drink it all if we want to live in grace with our neighbors.
I promise I will try harder to hear your jokes
Narrator: You know, Bill and I met young. When he moved away in high school for a year, I told myself a lot of jokes to pass the time. If you turn back the years on that calendar over there, you can see how I tracked the motions of the sun. My to-do lists were filled with handpicked troubles just for distracting myself from the silence he left me with. I wrote him a letter to tell him how much I missed him. The empty mail-box looked me square in the eye every day at noon. If we look in the trash, we’ll see that love letter he didn’t want.
Prose: Letter
There are a thousand ways that someone can love another person. So there are a thousand ways that you can misunderstand what I mean when I say “I love you”.
My life is rich with people who know and love me. I don’t need any more people to love me. So it’s okay if you do not love me back.
As much love as there is in my life….there isn’t enough listening. I have a hard time getting people to hear what I’m trying to say.
You usually seemed to know what I was trying to say. Sometimes, even when the words I chose were completely wrong, you heard me. That isn’t such a rare event I guess. People usually grasp what I’m trying to say. However, with you it seemed to come more easily.
It sounds insignificant but it has made all the difference in my life. Knowing what it feels like to be fully understood and with ease…..means that I will know what to look for in the people that I let into my life.
Sending this letter has given me peace of mind. You can throw it away, use it to write down your grocery list….it doesn’t matter. The true intent and purpose of this letter….was fulfilled the moment I dropped it in the mailbox. Those words aren’t stuck in the back of my throat anymore. I can move through my life knowing that I’m not afraid to tell people how I feel about them.
I hope that all is well in your life. If you’re ever in here….please know that you have a friend in town.
Narrator: I wrote it well enough. So maybe we’ll just slip this into the recycling bin for my next man.
Narrator: I remember that when I did hear back, it was all at once.: If we pick up this landline here, we can still here a lil’ echo.
Narrator picks up phone
Narrator: I have met and will meet other people like you. Hopefully, one of those other people will love me the way I will love them. But I’m not asking that of you. I wouldn’t want that from you. I don’t know what I want, I just know that it’s hard for me to breathe. I know I miss you.
Narrator: Don’t that just hit you in the back of the throat? The bitter after taste grows on ya though.
Narrator: Come see the yard. I don’t feel like bein’ inside anymore.
Narrator: If you look closely, you can see the house where Bill grew up. The one he moved out of that summer to live with his real mom. His step mom Sue was nice but…...
Poem: Absence
He told me that the space between
“step” and “son” on his project
tipped the grade to a C.
On the curb, he would wait
for Sue’s, not Mom’s, tires
to nudge through the stillness
of the empty parking lot.
The rubber band around the rolled poster board broke
and the paper circle became bloated with space, making it
real hard to hold.
When the car pulled up to the house,
Mom was space rising
through the rooms like air murmuring
from the pot on the stove.
When he bumped into Sue in the doorway, her
down jacket sent a cold puff of mint-tobacco
and blank space over his cheeks.
Leaning his head into her
he folded into the
space of her frame.
He folded between seconds like
a dime rolling across pavement into a crack.
Narrator: He folded quick, like the tent we tried to set up together summers before. Technically he was my brother’s friend, but he was always real nice to me when he came over. Neither of us were real interested in our parent’s houses. Partially because neither could afford extracurriculars or air-conditioning. His real mom had started acting real peculiar then though. We’d decided on the middle school playground that we might as well go steady- ‘cause people were already talking. His mom picked us up that day and we shared the big news. She smiled real big and asked if we were interested in tasting love.
Honey
Two spoons
And a jar of honey in the
Sun baked kitchen.
She handed spoonfuls
Oozing trails over the table that led directly to our chins.
Perched on our lips, real slow smile.
First spoon tasted getting home from school
Second hit our stomachs hard like homesickness
Third tasted like not getting picked in gym class
Fourth tasted sick and sweaty like losing sight of our parents in a crowd
Fifth tasted black.
By monday I’d saved a lot of the grape gummies from my snacks-
Bill’s favorite.
I held them out, warm and squished.
He threw up on my new shoes.
Narrator: That slow summer when even the clocks seemed to drag in the heat and humidity. I didn’t feel so wanted in the house and I only ever wore one shirt so none of the other kids liked me that much. I was tryin’ to pitch a tent in the backyard one day but I couldn’t raise the poles on my own. He saw and helped me. Gosh, I’m so glad he saw. Some people are born with helpin’ hands.
Poem: He Hung
Him helpin’ me hang that fabric over the poles made me sure he hung the moon.
He hung the still lights of his home that matched the
piano keys he hung in the air, winking in white noise like tinsel at night.
They hung thick strands of slurry slick as syrup, snot or black tobacco chew
over my face-
I hung “Stop!” and
hanging my hand into
the blades of snowflake flecked scissors
the rest of the table hung a pause in their conversation
finally hanging my image in their eyes
imploring me to hang hush in my breath but
the air was hanging in thin threads, hanging like cold sweat off the walls.
they hung a wire to my eyes, saying the symptoms of their sickness
hang in plain sight.
Blind, I hung my sunday best
over my frame, hung a hollow salesman smile and slippery teeth from my face
but saved his smile, hung it in my pocket, bumping it when I’m fumbling for change at the cash register- feeling it’s thin, hard surface when I’m thinking and I’ll hang the hard corners into the tips of my fingers, hanging in it’s sweltering stillness when I am unsure
for the smile that soothed my simmering sleep -
I am hanging out at the bus stop at the corner of home: (sickness) &(lessness)
Hanging out
in my failure
to ask better questions.
Narrator: He was sleeping outside because things were getting weird with is mom at home. I slept outside because all the pipes kept leaking. We couldn’t afford to fix it so we weren’t supposed to talk about how everything was damp and smelled like mildew. It was either damp socks or that little tent that collapsed in the wind. The outside always got in. Dew n’ bugs crawlin’ all over each morning. I felt like an raw nerve, ‘septable to every tilt of grass. When the outside is all over the inside, I saw Dr. Phil call that a “sickness of self.”
Narrator: Speaking of the outside getting in…..
Narrator: I recently repainted the foyer. If you poke your head into that closet there, you’ll see our little ghost Bibendum. Or, well I suppose you know him as the michelin man. He was bibendum back when the posters were hand drawn and they were first rolling those tires out. His first name is Bibendum and you can call him that if you’re on good terms. How kind have you been to your tires?
Poem: Bibendum
His image peeks from the tread
of shoes and tires to see
his own reflection peer back from each
hubcap and spoke spinning past.
Bidendum navigates from the hull of her sneaker heel as
I, the shadow, stand fast to be unwrinkled and stretched by the sun.
Bibendum gives me lots of restaurant recommendations and
sometimes helps me peel this shadow off the pavement to
continue on the free road ahead.
In winter, he sheds the shoes and sinks
into the silk lining of a too-tight tuxedo in the closet.
With dust settling around him like snow, he writes
to other gifts from the French whose
first names fell away, free.
Dear Statue of Liberty,
With love,
Bibendum
Narrator: Let’s move onto the bathroom. That is the main selling point of the house of course!
Narrator: See all that standing water in the tub? There’s something wrong with the drain. We keep all the problems in here, household or otherwise. And there’s all that film on the surface of the water. That’s ‘cause words sink in here. The letters sink too deep and it’s hard to see what those words were in the first place. They’re definitely there though because they leave that ugly film. That big piece of wire over there is for fishing them out of the drain. I keep everything I find in that black book over there. If I throw it out, it just ends up back in the drain. You can see the book if you want to but it’s mostly nonsense and honestly, it kind of smells exactly like something dredged out of the drain. Originally it was a prayer journal we got free from some fucking lutheran handin’ em out on the street.
Prose: Black Book
Born too early,
Bursting into Next! (AUDIBLE BANG, CRASH or BREAK)
To avoid now
Black silhouettes greeted me with garments made of my choices,
Now THIS is the rest I’ve always wanted, to let my mistakes slip onto my fingers like rings glinting in the sunlight
Someone is cutting up pictures of a perfect life and sprinkling shards mine, leaving
trails of paper cuts.
Looking wall:
you keep slapping
my hand from the cracks
And then slapping these red cracks off my hands
being big enough to grasp
is the only way to feel you here.
early and too often with
the soft lenses crushed for lack of focus
washing clothes each week- washing the week off each week,
-washing the salt off the sleeves
I am spinning down if you are here
I am resting on my laurels at the beach, hoping to go home.
There is rebirth after a burn
But I am spinning down
after running down the fire escape hand over foot, hand over mouth because
Someone wanted to harm this page!
the pressure in me is ‘bout to *pop* *POP* *pop* and
fill the tub until I am green as fresh grass-
green enough to go to recess maybe maybe
someone will come- but all I hear is spinning down
the metal staircase, spinning out
of bed right before the BANG brought the ghost
BANG is born out of feelings I inflated with something else to make myself palatable and interesting. Cooking up a personality is tricky you need a lot of flavor when the rations are low let me tell you the closet filled with things I wouldn’t cook like these strawberries in my hair and other things last seen sinking away
into the depths of black water seeping from the closet that is reeking “Let’s all talk
louder to cover up that smell,’
Lack: mislabeled as loneliness because sometimes it’s easier to want literally anything else
than to be still with the hunger for something out of reach. see grief in the glossary on page 201.
to demand space, is to taint it with the exact shape of myself.
In other news, a blade of grass peeled away from the edge of the lawn today
The entire turf screamed as the sliver curled into the shape of the moon and rolled away
to the oasis near the sprinkler.
I am spinning down if you are here behind the glass, your breath curling across the surface, reaching like the fine edges of a leaf about to unfurl please fold me in your palm the way you do each bud in spring as it emerges
I’m not supposed to be here I try to tell the man in the window when it’s my turn in line but he just sends me to the back of the line I am worried that there are people I left who still feel the weight I refused to hold. I feel their breath fogging beneath the glass, warming the surface on my side, condensing into clouds on theirs and raining on everything I desperately miss.
Do you feel me here, you are here enough for me.
Sit down all the way
Let yourself be here because it is the only thing that is effortless
Let yourself sleep here please be here for all of it
All of it is enough, all of it is plenty
There is pain here but if you settle here,
If you are plenty here, the pain will settle too and be your boat here.
bring all of you here
stop washing your hands here.
They have always been clean.
Narrator: See? If those words made any sense then they wouldn't have sunk so deep.
Narrator: Alright, just one room left. This is the bedroom. This ol’ bed spread reminds me of that children’s rhyme about Jack and Jill.
Poem: J&J
Jack’s shirtless shoulders slouched a little
A foot away from Jill
Who was putting her pants back on
And said, “You know…
Sometimes I get worried that you look like my mom.
You don’t. It just crosses my mind sometimes.”
Narrator: I helped him carry in that huge mirror. Real heavy but only 15$ on craigslist. He was all sweaty that day and not talkin.’ I mean, real sweaty. And you KNOW how Bill liked to be so together. We set the mirror here and for a second, there was only one person looking back at us. I told him “The further you fall from where you ought to be, the more whole this house is.”
Narrator: He got real mad at that of course and pretended not to hear me. I slept on the couch that night but it was worth it. I just love being right and my punishment tasted like dessert, the proof was in the pudding that I was dead right. Otherwise he wouldn’t have cared.
Now these walls seen a lotta things. They have seen a lot of cheating. Not the kind of cheating you’re thinking. No, not that fun.
This is the kind of cheating done in a game. Good natured cheaters and there’s the mean cheaters. Imma good natured cheater. See, it’s not about winning. It’s really a performance. I just wantchya to know how clever I am. I want you to know I might be more clever than you. So if you try to cheat, I’ll not only catcha, I’ll out cheat you. It’s not about winning because I don’t need to cheat to do that. Some’m cheat to win though and those are the real mean ones ‘cause they got some real heavy guilt. First they got that shame that made ‘em do that in the first place. ‘Cause they know they can’t win by the rules. And they got this sickness that make ‘em feel like we won’t love a loser. ‘N that’s what make’s em twist up their truth so bad that they gotta twist up everyone else’s. Anyone can love a loser. And anyone can love a liar or cheat. But not if the truth is twisted up beyond words. Just like all that honey’s twisted trails across the table and upt to our chins.
First time Bill cheated the game because he felt shamed’ of his own thoughts about me. He tried to stop bein’ my friend. That was right after his monther fed us all that honey. It made me feel real lonely and like I’d done something wrong. Like I was maybe too dirty for a good friend like Bill. Those thoughts he felt ashamed of just popped up and the harder he pushed them out, the more that showed up. That’s wasn’t a big deal. But it made’m feel no good so he stopped bein’ my friend. I was real sad about that. I missed him so much.
Then there was that time I was too drunk and got into the lake. Someone’n took of his clothes and followed me. I pushed’m away but when I got to shore to Bill, the only person I wanted to be with that night, he was feelin’ real fragile about it even though he wasn’t my boyfriend yet. . Which anyone can love a fragile person. But he forgot I am fragile too and that if he hadn’t been there, it could’ve been a tight spot for me. He twisted it up until I said I was sorry.
Then there was a time I’ll never understand. One where he preferred to take something I would have freely given. He knew I wanted to. But instead he kept filling my red solo cup. He offered his couch so I wouldn’t have to walk home. But his couch turned into his bed and the next morning, I might not have known he’d been up to anything except he had this razor sharp mean streak that only guilt brings.
The next morn’ I seen the razor sharp mean streak that guilt brings. He carried on about how his relationship was ruin’d n’ he’d have to explain this to his girlfriend. Ain’t no love there, just fear. It was real quick like, how he turn’d them tables so I held both our losing hands, hurt and fault. He twisted up the truth too bad n’ now it’s trapped in that drain o’er there in the tub. Smells bad. If he hadn’t twisted up that truth ‘till no one could breathe, I could have forgiven him in a heartbeat. We couldn’ve forgiven him. We’re real good at that. Ain’t no body beyond it if nuthin’s twisted.
Narrator: That kinda cheating always causes mold in the foundation. Everytime I tried to call someone to come fix it, they said they don’t deal with emergencies. By the time I tried to call 911, the buttons on the phone were all worn out and real hard to press. That’s when the outside started getting all over the inside. It’s that sickness of self. Even the outside temperature was getting in because the furnace broke. Yup, this house is just a mess. There are cracks all over the foundation. But you know, Leondard Cohen once that “There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.”
I’ll sell this house to the best offer. But this home, this sense of home…..despite all the cracks I wouldn’t sell it for the world.
My life is a series of breaks ranging from lucky ones to Christmas ornaments. Doctors sometimes break a bone to help it heal. I am so grateful for every broken thing in my life because each opened me up for things I could not have known to ask for.
END
Exit/Final goodbye to audience:
Great product, pricing and shipping
Thank you! It’s an excellent record of homes I should be grateful for
-for pockets of friends and family appreciated correctly on paper
(in practice too when it's convenient),
Between the pages of homes I tucked thank you notes I wrote
for rooms turned out like a pauper’s pockets every morning
I’m grateful no one's forgotten me, sleeping #blessed in their pockets, among crumbs and loose change.
My pockets are full of gratitude and old gum that resonates reminders
of how much is possible to stomach
and still taste gladness.
On these pages I am glad for these skewed, swollen lines
where I had the delicate privilege of
trying to avert my eyes
while I handed out quotes full of water but
not turn so far as to tip over the burlap pocket we share full of
dried mud that smells good like shared spaces
because every pocket is
bone deep with
boorish, belly-born, mouth-breathing
beliefs, not worn like bangles that clink over coffee or are murmured into phone calls.
I didn’t cry once into the lining of my pockets
But sometimes in my dreams, my family carries
spring in their hands. Spring is full of things that are better than
what I know to ask for because I am
easy, grateful for anything-
but most of all for hands inside of pockets enmeshed in the soft underbellies of glaciers running off course, running into my pockets where I am on my knees, elbow deep in sweat
and gratitude.
Overall, I'd give this product a 4/5. I wish there were a pocket sized version.
Sent from my iPhone
END