Free Goldberg Street by David Mamet Page B

Pause .)
    2: They keep us cool.
    1: Oh. ( Sighs .) I tell you. It's like being at the Y.
    2: The Blackout?
    1: Yes. When you have taken off your clothes and they cannot see where you bought your watch.
    2 ( Sotto voce ) : Mmm.
    1: When they turned the power off. So when the men were in the streets all bets were off.
    2 ( Sotto voce ) : When they went after goods. I know. It says they put them forty to a room too small for ten.
    1: They did?
    2: I read they did.
    1: When they had caught them.
    2: Yes.
    1: You know, when you go in a record store you see the men with guns.
    2: I know.
    1: In Medieval England we learn they had seven hundred crimes which they could hang you for. We see that, and we are aghast. But now, today, you see them in the Supermarkets with their guns. They are empowered to kill you for the theft of record albums. ( Pause .) Of some diversionary device or machine.
    2 ( To self ) : And they were very hot in there.
    1: So when the men were in the streets, they said all bets are off. “You cannot live in Darkness. You insure your power by the gun.” ( Pause .) What audacity.
    2: I think so, too.
    1: Today you cannot buy a flashlight.
    2: It is difficult, but you can buy them.
    1: Do you know, the folks directing traffic . . .
    2: Yes.
    1: Controlling traffic in their nightdress, as in Revolutionary Times. This is not altruism.
    2: No. We'd all like to direct it.
    1: It is wish-fulfillment.
    2 ( To self ) : Until they came to Trial. ..
    1: Or they would go destroy a mercantile concern.
    2 ( To self , continuing ) : which would not be soon . . .
    1: And cause much unhappiness. ( Pause .)
    2: Someone should write a book.
    1: There. In the dark. Our dreams of courage, or The Indians. Of foraging.
    2: We all revert.
    1: You think so?
    2: Yes.

Food

     

    Two men: C and D

     

    C: I've loved eating and I've always loved eating. My father died of insulin shock. The day they put him in the hospital his blood pressure was twenty over eighty, wanted to dose him with insulin , he told them “no.” They killed him. He, one time, had a saccharin reaction, in the fifties, when they took it, when it was in everything. He proved their case. ( Pause .) He was the one, the cases of his type, why it's no longer in . . . in sodas . . . ( Pause .) in food . . .
    D: You're saying that it was his case?
    C: Yes.
    D: In what way, you're saying he took them to court?
    C: Not in that sense, no. Cases of his type. You understand?
    D: Yes.
    C: ( Pause .) And he overate. Those days . . . you know . . .
    D: Yes.
    C: You know how it was. Later we had no sugar in the house. You couldn't find it, for we didn't have it there. Nothing . And my mother was assiduous in cleansing it out; you remember, though, when we were young. It was in everything . The cereal . . . the tea . . . the coffee . . . rolls . . . you could go right through the day . . . . Lunch . . . ( Pause .) My idea later of dessert was half a grapefruit, but then and you, too, I know. When we were young . . . the oatmeal . . . ? My father put sugar on fruit .
    D: My father, too.
    C: My father put sugar on watermelon .
    D: My father did, too.
    C: Looking back, he was a sick man. He was a very sick man. ( Pause .) He must have been. All of the effort that he spent in balancing his diet; or, to say it on a different plane (because, finally, his diet did not admit of a balance), to achieve rest ; he was trying to find rest . In himself. In food. For one moment. I think. In his life. Because of the food he ate. To overcome the harm that he had done, as I'm sure that he knew. The milk to overcome the sugar; the caffeine to overcome the cloying effect of the milk, which, I think, in the future, will be seen to be the worst. The worst of what we eat, for all that we say it is natural.
    D: What?
    C: Dairy.
    D: Dairy products.
    C: Yes. And nicotine to calm the harm that he did with caffeine. And meat to give him energy he needed. Not for “life.” Not for his daily “life,” but to