Session Twelve Transcript
MARI: Previously in Session Eleven
KACEY: So you made it through the Rage Stage.
LORI: I guess I did. I mean – I feel less likely to destroy something with my bare hands but I still feel very angry about some things.
KACEY: Oh -Mari - how did your meeting with the police go?
MARI: It was terrifying, of course – but my mission really helped.
KACEY: Oh good.
MARI: Yeah, I chatted up the receptionist before I went in and since I could see her through the window, I just kept checking in with her throughout the interview. I feel fairly certain she thought I was flirting with her and heck, I may have been. She was kind of cute.
LORI: Did you get her number?
MARI: I totally got her number.
LORI: This is good.
MARI: Who knows? But I can at least call her and ask about any openings in the police department.
LORI: Or openings in her heart department.
MARI: You are the worst.
LORI: Sorry.
MARI: What else could I expect from a champion plate smasher?
KACEY: Ahhh, plates. An excellent choice.
MARI: You should have seen her. She was like a plate smashing machine. Rhythmic. Precise. I felt like she was making a mosaic with just smashing,
Theme music begins
JACKI: Recorded live at Jalopy Theatre in Brooklyn
Messenger Theatre Company presents
The Defense
This is Session 12
MARI: I called the Mona Lisa from the police station.
LORI: What? Yay! Did you go out?
MARI: Actually, yeah. We got drinks a couple of days ago and I think she’ll tell me if the police start doing anything on the copy machine guy.
KACEY: That’s great, Mari. Well done.
LORI: Were there more sparks? How into you is she?
MARI: Lori!
LORI: What? You two are so cute together.
MARI: We were pretty cute together.
LORI: Yes. Yes. Yes. I like some good news. Yes.
MARI: Don’t go booking a church for us, okay?
LORI: So I ship you, so what? This is now a Mari-Mona Lisa Stan account.
MARI: You are hilarious.
LORI: Your dating life is giving me life.
MARI: Do you maybe need a dating life of your own?
LORI: Not right now! I don’t know how to choose a man I won’t small.
LEILA: And there we have it – the very reason I also remain single.
BRIA: Me, too.
MARI: Sorry y’all. That’s…uh – tricky, huh?
LEILA: It is. Very.
BRIA: Very.
MARI: But don’t you think the Defense would keep its hands off a man you loved?
BRIA: Aren’t most women who are murdered, murdered by the men who supposedly love them?
MARI: Is that true?
BRIA: Yeah.
LEILA: I just read something about this. Half of murdered women in this country are murdered by their intimate partners.
MARI: That’s horrible. I’m so glad you all have the Defense!
BRIA: The worst thing is that I’d almost prefer to be murdered then have the Defense kill a man I loved.
LEILA: I get that.
KACEY: Yikes.
MARI: Aren’t there some good ones out there? Like nice, kind, sorts of men?
LEILA: Sure. Everywhere.
MARI: Oh. You’re joking.
LEILA: Sorry. Yeah. No. Those aren’t so easy to find.
MARI: Yeah. I suppose I know that. With so many piles of ash behind me, I should know by now.
LEILA: There are some!
BRIA: I know a few.
LORI: I get why Bria thinks this is a curse now.
KACEY: It may feel like a curse in some situations but every time it saves your life, it is a solid blessing. There’s no question in my mind about that. It can sometimes feel like wearing a life jacket on a boat. It gets in your way and it doesn’t help you look your best but if that boat goes down or tips over, you’ll be very glad you had it on.
LORI: I guess that makes sense.
KACEY: And that’s what we’re here, for, too – to help you learn to deal with the things about it that feel like a curse. When it’s frustrating not to be able to tell your friends or your kind new partner you’d never small, you come here and you tell your friends here about what you’re going through.
LEILA: I did talk to one of my non-defense friends and she flipped out and thought she should take me to an asylum.
MARI: So it went really well then.
LEILA: So well.
BRIA: I have friends who know. They’re believers so they just wanted to know where it fit into the cosmology of the universe. They’re not great listeners but I’m glad they know and that I can talk to them – but sometime they think I maybe might be writing my name in the Devil’s book or whatever and it does make me really feel very weird. Or like they might, at some point, decide to get a stake and a pile of sticks together. I mean – the good news is that no one burns folks at the stake any more. The bad news is that I’m not 100% convinced that a certain segment of the population wouldn’t start back up again at the slightest provocation.
LORI: Right.
BRIA: I love my friends, for sure – but I also know they could turn on me pretty easily. That sort of thing has happened. One of our friends became Buddhist and oh my lord, you’d have thought she’d murdered her mother, the community was so horrified. They cut her off, never spoke to her again.
LORI: That’s so sad.
BRIA: Honestly when I first told them about the Defense, I was sure I was about to get the same treatment but it turns out that being a little witchy isn’t as bad as choosing a new religion. And I really don’t think they’d burn me at the stake. Yet.
LORI: I mean. If someone WERE going to get happy with piles of sticks and lighter fluid, we would be voted most likely to burn.
KACEY: Do you think any of your Defenses would allow some man to set you on fire?
LEILA: No.
MARI: Absolutely not.
BRIA: Sorry for the heart attack, fire man.
LORI: A little man with a little match might start a fire as well as a big one.KACEY: That’s true but I suspect you would small him long before he got his hands on a match. Would your Defense suffer a man to tie you up?
LORI: No!
KACEY: That’s my point. The Defense is very good at what it does. Always has been.
LORI: That is actually very comforting.
KACEY: I think so, too.
LEILA: But it wouldn’t be burning at the stake, now, would it? They’d find some other barbaric way.
KACEY: And since your Defense is connected to intention and not the technology, I would wager they would all be equally doomed to fail. A man coming at you with a tazer or a syringe or ANYTHING is still a man coming at you and your Defense will respond whether it’s an axe or a pillow in his hand.
MARI: Ha, ha! Stay away from me with that can of soda, ill intentioned, man!
BRIA: Watch yourself with that Swiffer, fella.
LEILA: What do you think you’re going to do what with that washrag, mister?
LORI: What exactly are you planning with that handful of lint?
KACEY: If a handful of lint could be dangerous to you – or rather, the man wielding it – then yes, believe it or not, even a handful of lint could provoke your defense.
MARI: I mean – really, all it takes is an advance, isn’t it?
LEILA: A step forward.
BRIA: An in breath.
LORI: It would be funny if someone’s Defense could just do whatever the person was planning or imagining doing to you. Like – if Mr. Handful of Lint was going to stuff it my mouth, and my Defense just stuffed it in his mouth instead – that would be some very satisfying vengeance.
LEILA: but imagine the horrors you’d have to watch. Like – think of the violent murders, the sexual assaults you’d have to see them commit on themselves. It would probably get pretty horrifying.
LORI: Eek, yeah. Good point. It’s only fun when it’s something I can imagine as pretty harmless. Like – oh, ball of yarn, funny – and yet, to actually witness someone being choked by a ball of yarn would be pretty awful. I’m – now that I think about it – pretty glad to just small people.
KACEY: There were at least two with that Defense.
LORI: Really? Are there stories?
KACEY: They did find it very difficult for just the reasons Leila pointed out. They were witness to so much violence and destruction that both of them ended up moving to Women’s communities because they couldn’t bear it any more.
LORI: Just the witnessing of the horrors?
KACEY: I think it was partly the witnessing of the horrors but ALSO the vividness of seeing what each of those men had hoped or planned or intended to do to them, Like – for all of us, I think, we just have a general sense of danger, the idea that we are at risk – but nothing is explicit. We don’t know whether the approacher intends to assault us or murder us or just take our purse. But the women with the reflective Defense knew exactly what fate they dodged, every time. To be confronted again and again with the darkness within so many people - it was really too much for either of them to bear – so they moved to woman only communities.
LORI: That’s the solution to not having to use the Defense? Move to a separatist place or something?
KACEY: There may be other solutions but it is the one that those two chose and from what I understand, they’re both very happy with their lives.
LORI: But I like men!
KACEY: No one says you shouldn’t!
LORI: I don’t want to small them all.
KACEY: No one wants you to! Your Defense will just small as many as are a threat.
LORI: So you’re saying the Defense is a NOT ALL MEN situation.
KACEY: Of course it is. If it wasn’t, you wouldn’t be able to get through a day without smalling someone. The Defense is interested in one thing and that one thing is Defending you. That is all. If there’s nothing to Defend, no need to protect you, the Defense will do nothing. Men who are not a threat will be just fine, perfectly safe. Actual nice guys will go about their business as if there were nothing to fear.
MARI: The “nice guys” though.
KACEY: Those ones have to be extra careful.
LORI: How do you mean “extra careful”?
KACEY: Well, the “nice guys” and I hope you can hear the quotation marks around those nice guys – the “nice guys” really think they’re nice. They’re usually the ones who tell you they’re nice guys and don’t understand why they’re not getting the things they think they deserve when they’re such nice guys. But they’re not nice at all - they’re entitled and tend to have extraordinarily unreasonable expectations.
MARI: The ones who say “But I’m a nice guy!”?
KACEY: Exactly.
BRIA: And they usually say it right after you said, “No” and right before they jump you.
KACEY: How many “nice guys” has your Defense protected you from?
BRIA: I think most of them would have said they were nice guys.
MARI: 100% Nice Guys.
LEILA: I don’t think my Defense has clarified beforehand but certainly if I heard the phrase “But I’m a Nice Guy” that was pretty much the last we heard of him.
LORI: How about the ones who say they’re jerks?
KACEY: Some of those are actually nice guys.
MARI: And a handful are actual jerks. I find those much harder to distinguish.
LORI: It’s funny how nice guys and nice girls are really not the same thing.
MARI: Really not.
LORI: It’s like we need nice girls to save us from the “nice guys.”
BRIA: The problem is, I don’t know if I believe in nice girls, either.
KACEY: What do you mean?
BRIA: I’m just waiting for the nice girls to turn mean.
KACEY: Really?
BRIA: Like, even here – I mean I like all you nice girls, don’t get me wrong but I keep waiting for one of you to turn.
KACY: Like, we’ll drop our friendly façade and suddenly lash out at you?
BRIA: Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve had quite a few women in my life turn on me, you know? Women who I thought were allies who tore me down or just didn’t have my back when I needed them. Women who didn’t believe me when I told them stuff that happened. Like, women can be assholes, too, you know?
MARI: No doubt.
LORI: All my bullies have been women.
KACEY: And you’re worried, Bria, that we’re going to turn out like whose women you’ve known in the past.
BRIA: I’m waiting for it, I guess. I mean, I don’t want it to happen but I expect it to.
LEILA: Like we’re all going to have a big fight and the group will fall apart.
BRIA: I don’t want it to! I need you, you know?
LORI: I think I’ve been waiting for that, too. That whole other shoe thing.
KACEY: It makes total sense that you’re looking for the cracks in this foundation. Are you bracing yourselves for conflict between us?
BRIA: I just think every story runs into conflict eventually and I’m waiting for ours.
KACEY: I get it.
LORI: Does every story have to have conflict?
MARI: That’s what they tell you in literature class.
KACEY: And whose stories have dominated for the last 5000 years?
LEILA: Uhhhh.
KACEY: Whose stories were published and produced or made into movies and TV? Who wins most of the Oscars and the Nobels and the Pulitzers and the Emmys and the National Book Awards?
LEILA: It’s men. Men win those awards.
LORI: Some women have won them!
MARI: Only recently, really.
KACEY: I’m just saying men have been in charge of our ideas about stories and even the ways our lives can echo stories for a very long time. All our models for stories and by proxy, for life, come from one side of the population. What if we learned connection from our stories instead of conflict? What if we don’t need to fall apart?
LEILA: I’d like that very much.
MARI: I’d like it too.
BRIA: So we just sit around and get along?
LORI: That might be okay.
KACEY: If you’d rather have a big blow up, that’s up to you. Many a group has gone that way. But – it’s also entirely possible that the attacks that you all have been subject to out there in the world are maybe enough conflict for you to have to deal with and maybe, just maybe, we can find solace in here. We can learn to connect. We can bond. We can eventually make space to help other people. That might be nice I think.
BRIA: It’s hard to trust it.
KACEY: I know. But the alternative to trusting it is to poke at it until it breaks and I know which I’d prefer.
MARI: Poking it until it breaks, right?
KACEY: You got me. I definitely volunteer for these groups so I can sabotage them.
MARI: I knew it!
KACEY: Listen – changing the stories isn’t easy and trusting other people when you have been attacked or threatened or – you get the idea – so many times…well – it’s no wonder you’re bracing yourself for disaster. But if you can, I might suggest looking for connection whenever you are tempted to search for difficulty. When you think “There it is – that’ll be what breaks us.” See if there’s something nearby that will connect us. You could be right. This could all fall apart. But it doesn’t have to.
BRIA: I don’t need to be right.
KACEY: That will help.
BRIA: But how do I keep from being right?
KACEY: We all do it. We keep each other connected. If we’re all looking for opportunities to connect, we’ll keep the net in good working order.
LORI: The net?
KACEY: The one we’re weaving below this trapeze act of creating community. The one that will catch us if we fall.
MARI: But we’re not going to fall, right?
KACEY: I don’t think so. You’ve got too much going for you. And if you’re all aiming at togetherness instead of dissolution, you’ve got very little to fear.
LEILA: Plus we’ve got pancakes.
KACEY: How could you go wrong with pancakes in your corner?
LORI: Something you said before about all our previous trauma made me curious about something.
KACEY: What’s that?
LORI: I guess, like, are we more likely to be targets? Like – I feel like everyone here has run into more creeps than most women. I would have thought I’d never small another man again. Like – it would be a one and done situation.
MARI: Don’t forget Mike the Mouse!
LORI: A two and done?
MARI: And the guy at brunch!
LORI: Ok – three and done.
KACEY: Well, one of the unfortunate side effects of having The Defense is that we catch all the almost ones.
LEILA: What do you mean almost?
KACEY: I mean all the nefarious characters out there who almost did something terrible to you or someone else. If you don’t have the defense, those things just pass by your attention. You don’t necessarily know when you nearly made contact with a dangerous man. You get a creepy vibe and then you go on with your day. When you have the Defense, we tend to rack them up. We don’t have to wonder if we narrowly avoided a creep. We know.
LEILA: Yeah, before I had the defense, I’d have moments where I’d end up alone with some man and I’d feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up but nothing happened and I was fine.
LORI: Just mortally terrified for a portion of your day.
LEILA: That’s true.
LORI: That was exhausting. Just having my wits scared out of me so often.
KACEY: It’s better now, isn’t it?
LORI: It is. I feel fear so much less often than I used to. I have a lot more space for other things.
BRIA: Like rage.
LORI: Yeah. And rage gives me something – something that fear took away.
KACEY: We don’t realize quite how much fear was in charge of our lives until we get a break from it.
LORI: Are there any plates around here? I’m starting to feel smashy again.
BRIA: I’ll find you some. We’ve got a broken dishware box at my church.
LORI: Yes please!
MARI: Field trip!
KACEY: Affirmation before you go?
ALL: I am safe but I’m not safe for everyone.
Theme music begins
JACKI:
The Defense is a production of Messenger Theatre Company.
It is performed by Marcella Adams as Leila, Amber Jessie as Mari, Cosmic Kitty as Bria, Kristen Vaughan as Kacey and Toni Watterson as Lori.
The writer/director is Emily Rainbow Davis.
Sound Design by Matt Powell
Sound Engineering by Daniel Massey
Sound Assistance by Angela Santillo
Stage Management by Ella Lieberman
The Producer is Melvin Yen.
The Defense theme is by Scott Ethier.
I’m Jacki Jing
I am safe but I’m not safe for everyone.