Chain Smoking With Pepe’

Issue 7

Somewhere near Santee, CA. On a crack ass motel balcony, sits a plastic owl on a rusty railing.

The owl’s name is Pepe’.

It’s winter in California. The Sun is setting. Dustin, in a sweater, has a cigarette in one hand and cup of coffee in the other. Smoke is drifting away into the dusk.

Ingrid casually strolls up to Dustin, her cigarette slightly illuminates her face. Flickering like a firefly.

She hesitates then…

Ingrid: Been a while, huh?

Dustin doesn’t turn, but stares out with his still burning cigarette hoisted up next to his face as if about to take another drag.

Dustin: Hmm…

Ingrid: Aaaand it’s good to see you too.

Dustin turns to Ingrid and gives her a little smirk. Takes a sip of his coffee, then another drag of his cigarette letting the smoke slowly dribble out. Turns away again.

A beat.

Dustin: I’m 34 years old and I’m back… here.

Ingrid: You’re back home Dustin. You’re back home.

Dustin takes a long deep drag of his cigarette. Exhales.

Dustin: I know.

Ingrid: Then why so glum chum?

Dustin shakes his head a little, seemingly annoyed at Ingrid. He scoots toward Pepe’.
Ingrid is confused. Furrows her brow.

Ingrid: Oooooookay?

Ingrid continues to smoke. She stares off.

A beat.

Suddenly.

Dustin: Does Mary, Billee, Nate and-

Ingrid: (Interrupting) Yes they’re still all here.

A faint smile creeps up on Dustin’s face.

Dustin: Some things certainly never change.

Ingrid inches closer to him.

Ingrid: We missed you. Usually when people leave here-

Dustin: (Interrupting) They actually leave?

Ingrid smiles. Slightly nods her head and takes another drag.

Ingrid: Mariann and Lucas are still in Idaho I think.

Dustin: They did it right.

Ingrid: Remove yourself from the system.

Dustin: Jacqui, Gretchen, Steve…

Ingrid: Left around the millennium like most of them.

Dustin: I remember.

Dustin lights another cigarette up with the final embers of his previous one. Ingrid follows suit.

Dustin: (sighs) Yeah. I remember.

Ingrid: 95-97 was the peak…

Dustin: Jacqui went back to church or something, didn’t she?

Ingrid: Yeah she found some super Christian-y guy and-

Dustin: (Interrupting) God I miss her…the old her.

Ingrid: You miss the sex.

Dustin: I….. DO miss the sex, but I also really miss her.

Dustin takes another drag… contemplating.

Dustin: She did give the best fucking blowjobs that I’ve-

Ingrid: (Interrupting) I think I heard she has kids now.

Dustin: Yeah… that biological clock can be convincing I hear.

Ingrid: Not interested.

Dustin: What? In kids?

Ingrid nods her head in affirmation.

Dustin: Jacqui was saying the same shit when she was here. Remember?

Ingrid sucks in more of her cigarette, staring off. She shrugs.

Ingrid: I don’t know.

A beat.

Ingrid: You ever think about it?

Dustin: About kids? Umm…yeah….I don’t know.

Ingrid: Right.

A beat.

Dustin: I know it’s fear of commitment probably.

Ingrid: Or fear of success.

Dustin: Whatever.

Ingrid: Jacqui and I were like sisters though. And I loved her. We did so much together, and then she left. And I didn’t even know what I did. If I did anything.

Dustin: Because you didn’t.

Ingrid: You know what she told me right before she left? That she didn’t want to miss out on life.

Ingrid shakes her head takes another drag, obviously frustrated.

Dustin: I don’t know. Fear motives all of us in some way.

Ingrid sighs

Ingrid: It’s just… that moment where fear drives certain people like Jacqui to arbitrarily decide that it’s ‘do or die’…

Dustin: …Is obviously different for different people, Ingrid.

Ingrid: Yeah, but just the thought of pin-pointing what that specific moment is for each individual person would really-

Dustin: (Interrupting) …Accomplish what? We’ve established that the root cause is fear.

Ingrid: But what about trying to better understand our fellow human beings… through the advancement of knowledge… from observable data?

Dustin: That’s what this is all about to you?

Ingrid: I want to know their motivations.

Dustin: So do I, but this is getting into some deeply ingrained emotional, worldview type shit that isn’t easily deprogammable with certain people.

Ingrid smiles, sucks in more of her smoke. Exhales with force.

Ingrid: Then I suppose it’s purely selfish, but… I just feel like in being, not only an artist, but also a social scientist my, as cliché as it sounds, unquenchable thirst for knowledge has to be tended to from time to time….bitch!

She SMACKS his ass giving a devilish grin. Dustin, still laughing under breath, darts his eyes toward hers. They’re locked.

Dustin: That… just… all of that sounds arrogant.

Now Dustin is sizing Ingrid up. Ingrid sees that and plays coy.

Ingrid: Well, that’s not my intention, but-

Dustin: (Interrupting) You yourself just said the intention of this was purely selfish.

Ingrid: Yeah, but being selfish and being arrogant are two different things.

Dustin takes another drag and rolls his eyes. Ingrid glances over at him, and blows smoke in his face smiling.

Dustin: You know what I mean.

Ingrid: Don’t you just…

Ingrid inches closer

Ingrid: …want to know?

Dustin considers it then sighs

Dustin: Maybe… yeah.

Ingrid, sultry as can be, leans over and whispers in Dustin’s ear.

Ingrid: It’s passion. It’s confidence. It’s my burning desire. And my burning desire for my burning desire.

Dustin stands there transfixed….then decides to go in for the kiss. Ingrid coyly leans back from Dustin and takes a drag of her cigarette still burning.

Dustin: Riiiiight.

Ingrid leans over the balcony with a faint smile.

Ingrid: What?

Dustin just rolls his eyes. Takes a sip of coffee, drag of cigarette.

Ingrid: Hmm…so certain fears are obviously circumstantial.

Dustin: What?!? There’s no fear here I-

Dustin looks over at Ingrid. Her grin is even wider. She got him.

Dustin: Fuck you!

Ingrid: No fuck you! FUCK YOU!

Ingrid turns toward Pepe’. Lights another cigarette. Sucks half of it down and blows it in its face. A single teardrop wells up and starts to stream down her cheek.

A beat.

Realizing the sudden shift in Ingrid’s emotions, Dustin turns to her.

Dustin: I’m sorry I left.

Ingrid: (Softly) Me too.

Dustin: But I’m back now.

Ingrid: Thank you.

Ingrid is full out crying now.

Ingrid: I just… don’t want to be alone… rotting away… here...

Dustin takes a sip of coffee, drag of cigarette.

Dustin: Yeah.

Ingrid looks back up at him, as if looking for assurance.

Ingrid: You know?

A beat.

Dustin: Look, all those people that left here obviously thought they weren’t living life the way it should be lived… as if there is any right way to live it-

Ingrid: (Interrupting) Well-

Dustin: (Interrupting) …Aside from those basic social precepts (don’t kill, don’t steal, etc.) that our species used and perfected in order to survive millions of years of evolution.

Ingrid: I just think that no one actually wants to think after their 20s. It’s much easier to approach and assimilate.

Dustin: Because of modern social precepts. Stability. Career focus. Saving and investing money. Having that house. Raising a family. There’s a lot of pressure.

Ingrid: (Sighs) I know. People get weighed down by it, and then decide to have this time lock on certain things they can do in their life. And I get it, I just want to find a way to….

Dustin: (Interrupting) Ok. Let’s say you succeed and find some sort of variable, chemical or whatnot that is maybe a kind of predisposition that maybe motivates people into making these rash decisions. Let’s say you succeed in that. Let’s say you have the scientific, seemingly transhumanist cure for…. This.

Ingrid: Ok?

Dustin: Two points. 1. Would the sudden influx of new and verifiable data, and maybe even a cure, really change their minds at all? Do you really think they would just stop and take your antidote to normalcy? And 2. It’s astoundingly arrogant to proclaim, to them, that your particular way of life is better. I philosophically agree with you, but throwing science in their face makes them not only dislike you, but also dislike science.

Ingrid: So what? Mortality slaps you in the face and that’s it? That’s life?

Dustin lights up another one.

Dustin: Yeah.

Ingrid: Look, different people mature differently, but-

Dustin: (Interrupting) I’m selfish.

Ingrid: Don’t we have to be?

Ingrid goes over and puts her arm around him.

Dustin contemplates, takes a sip of coffee… drag of cigarette then…

Dustin: The friendship that we have… that we all have here. That we’ve had for years. It’s the most important thing in my life. I realize that now. It truly is what gives me meaning, but-

Ingrid: (Interrupting) People leave you. It’s inevitable.

A beat.

Dustin: This was a choice though-

Ingrid: Obviously.

Dustin: Done out of fear.

Ingrid: Indeed.

Dustin: Fear of happiness.

Ingrid: Fear of freedom.

Dustin: Fear of responsibility.

Ingrid: Fear of community.

Dustin: And then suddenly they question everything they’ve ever done.

Ingrid: Including “questioning”.

Dustin takes a huge drag of his cigarette and sighs.

Dustin: You know I was trying to think as I was coming back here… about all the memories… all the experiences… for good and bad… that I had here.

Ingrid: Some amazing experiences.

Dustin: Life changing ones.

Ingrid: Because life experience IS life.

Dustin: And then I think about what I had accomplished when I was here before. What I didn’t. About what my dreams were and why after leaving, for some reason it ends up bringing me back.

Ingrid: Point being?

Dustin: My moment of realization. No responsibility. That’s what it all boils down to.

Ingrid: Hmm… I see. So it’s not our slacktavist, creatively aware, pseudo-bohemian lifestyle being more fulfilling than eating the corporate dick?

Dustin: Creatively aware?

Ingrid: You really think none of us have any responsibility around here?

Dustin: Well think about it Ingrid, when you get past the basic day-to-day survival shit…there’s nothing.

Ingrid: Nothing in the sense of…

Dustin: (Interrupting) We who live here, have no real responsibility other than living. Surviving. We don’t contribute anything to the world. Make it a better place… really. In the big view. And why would we? This world is comfortable. It offers no challenges. It just asks that we be open to new ideas… tolerant… and survive.

Ingrid: Oh come on.

Dustin: All of us here call ourselves “artists”, yet what have we really produced other than an angst-riddled bohemian ideal of a some kind of slum-chic reality? One, which we’ve constructed ourselves, by the way, and have been living in for the past decade or so?

Dustin takes a long drag and chucks his finished smoke over the balcony. Lights another one.

Ingrid: That’s such a broad generalization. We all have plenty of responsibilities beyond bills and stuff.

Dustin: Like what?

Ingrid: Like to ourselves as human beings. As artists and intellectuals. You know, to our species in general which-

Dustin: (interrupting) Ok, let me stop you right there.

Ingrid: You were the very person that always spoke these discordian points of view, reveled in it and was on board with us through this adventure, now you want to stop the conversation?

Dustin: I don’t want to stop anything. Openness is very important.

Ingrid: What then?

Dustin: Ingrid, do you really think that waxing intellectual and being true to yourself and your art and blah blah blah….You’re going to tell me that trumps… I don’t know… being a leader… director… head of a company… teacher… mentor… father… mother….

Ingrid: Personally yeah, but I can’t speak for everyone obviously. In the broader sense I don’t think any one thing trumps another. Everything is on the same plane; it’s just how you look at it.

Dustin laughs.

Dustin: This is why the world will always have people like us. This is why we’ll always have our little nooks for our pow-wows. This is why we’ll be looked on as maybe local eccentrics. This idea of talking out the world’s issues yet never do anything other than talk. But we’ll drink, take all kinds of drugs, and fuck each other’s brains out all the while working on some futile and never ending artistic opus. And then we justify that we’re actually being creative and artistic and contributing to that world. We claim that we don’t compare ourselves with others, after all, all art is subjective, but we secretly do. And then one day we wake up and realize that the hottest artist in our field is 10 years younger than us… because maybe we’re past our prime? Who knows? But then we feel we have to justify AGAIN why we continue to be in this world. And we philosophize more. We slowly chip away at our never-ending endeavors. But we never ever address the elephant in the room. Responsibility. And it’s because we’re afraid, frankly. It’s because…we’re cowards.

Ingrid: What the fuck are you talking about?!

Dustin: This is why we’ll never leave here Ingrid. We’re afraid of what lies beyond this shit-ass parking lot.

Ingrid: You’re such an asshole. Why did you even come back then if you think we’re all fucking losers?

Dustin takes a long drag of his cigarette. Exhales. Sips his coffee.

Dustin: (Sighs) Because I miss this place.

Ingrid: Ummm…. Ok? So by your own account and given a choice, you’d rather be a loser with no responsibility? And… you…. Like it that way?

Dustin: Let me put it this way. I learned a valuable lesson being in corporate america for 6 months. I don’t mind leading. I don’t mind responsibility. I like it actually. There’s this energy. This rush. It’s very empowering and liberating actually. I just hate pretending to give a shit about stuff I do not give a shit about.

Ingrid: Well who does?

Dustin: Yeah. Sure. Actually, you know… it’s not even pretending to give a shit… it’s……. you’re forced to care about stuff you otherwise could give a flying fuck about. But you have to care about it, because it’s your job. You want to get paid, and that’s certainly how they get a lot of people. This slow corporatized, homogenized, masturbatory brainwashing that essentially coaxes you into believing that these database systems, internal folder structures, spreadsheets, work orders, clients and customers, sales and profits….that they all matter. That as a human being it matters. To advance our species to the next level of evolution… it matters.

Ingrid: That’s taking it a little too far, don’t you think?

Dustin: I don’t think so. Corporations may not like individualism, but they don’t say that. They guise it in this whole “team” mentality. “We’re all part of a team” “Let’s do some team building” “Everybody’s important to the team”… And from that it’s certainly implied that proactive individualism and creativity is encouraged and even praised. But that’s all bullshit. All they want are lemmings to work on the assembly line. Everybody’s expendable.

Ingrid: Look… dude… I get it. You just quit. All these feelings are fresh. You obviously didn’t have the best of experiences in the corporate world, and I can relate, but fuck it, you know? No sense being miserable when we’re both going to do what losers with no responsibility do in a few minutes… eat a bunch of acid and fuck each other’s brains out.

Ingrid nudges up next to him shoulder to shoulder. Dustin is in another place.

Dustin: Ingrid, the brutal reality is… all that bullshit matters… in THAT world and all worlds that are connected to that world. And if you’re in any of those worlds, then you’re undoubtedly forced to care about it. It’s-

Ingrid: (Interrupting) Who fucking cares!?! Seriously?!

They both take long drags of their cigarettes. Exhale. Ingrid smirks.

Dustin: (sighs) I just thought that was a path to some….answer I was looking for. I just realized that-

Ingrid: (Interrupting) You realized that you can’t be contained in a structured system like that. And that’s Ok.

Dustin: Is it? I don’t know anymore. Sometimes I feel like I’m cursed, because I can’t compromise my beliefs. I can’t work in a system that requires me to be a bitch forcing me to care about shit I do not care about.

Ingrid: So we’ll build our own system. Based on our values.

Dustin: Which was our goal way back when, and then…

Ingrid: You think we’ve become losers with no responsibility.

Dustin: I never said ‘loser’, you did!

Still smiling, Ingrid lights another and pats Dustin on the back.

Ingrid: I lasted 3 months as a temp at this Accounting Office like 12 years ago. And I realized that I just didn’t want to get to a place where decades down the road after looking back at all I had accomplished in my life it amounted to spreadsheets, filing systems, bookkeeping methods, regurgitated sales strategies greatly overshadowing everything else. That my passion amounted to a fraction of what I spent my life realistically doing.

Dustin stares off, seemingly in a different world. Ingrid continues.

Ingrid: So this new temp came in to be like a client relations bitch. He was super cute. I should’ve fucked him.

Dustin: Should’ve?

Ingrid: I know it may seem odd, but trust me I didn’t fuck him… and here’s why. His first day in, we’re shooting the shit and immediately discover that we have the same taste in music. Awesome! Same taste in movies. Amazing! We were talking about different art shows we had been to recently. I had mentioned that I was going to school for sociology, but loved to write. He was a musician and a writer himself. I swear I thought I had bumped into my own renaissance man. We were going to suffer through the trenches of corporate America together as freethinking rebel artists. I should note that I had just got out of a 5 year relationship a few months before. ANYWAY I tell ya, I thought I had found my anti-corporate pseudo-bohemian confidant in the corporate world. I was thinking as long as I’m working with this kid all this menial shit will be easier to swallow. We can both not give a shit and go home after work, rip a couple bong hits and be about our life. This is what my naïve younger self was thinking after having worked with the guy for just a couple days.

Dustin: …but...

Ingrid: (Sighs) It was not only that he totally jumped right in guns blazing and immersed himself in the corporate bullshit. But within a week he believed it. Was zipping out all those snappy corporate-y, sales-oriented buzz words. Q4, Q3, demo, PnL, net profit, web presence, etc. Cheesy-ass lingo to just continually assimilate himself. Power lunches, power naps… anything with ‘power’ in it. And he was being uber proactive. Listening in on conference calls and going to meetings as a temp. Joined the company softball team. Brought his golf clubs to work one day so he could check out a local driving range with a couple colleagues. All the while making workbooks and manuals, on his own, to elevate himself quickly. The more knowledge he obtained, the more power he asserted. And hey, that’s all well and good. People do it all the time. Many live the corporate life, and let them! But my interest in him immediately evaporated when I saw this. And it’s like, you try to have non-work or anti-work conversations… everybody does. Fuck the man, type shit. Couldn’t do that with this kid after that first week. I’m like, are you fucking kidding me? You’re taking this bullshit that seriously? I thought we had a fucking connection. I quit a few days later.

A long beat.

Dustin and Ingrid both take drags of their cigarettes. Exhale.

Dustin: I wish I had the love affair with chaos like I did a decade ago. Embracing the unpredictability it brings, yet reveling in the fact that you’re living life. You’re really living it! But I… I don’t know.

Dustin just stares off shaking his head. Ashes off the balcony.

Ingrid: We get older… and I suppose upkeeping certain…..things (for lack of a better word) gets exhausting. I don’t have all the answers I just know that…..I don’t like being broke.

They both take a long drag of their cigarette and exhale. Light up another one. Dustin tosses his empty pack off the balcony into the open dumpster below.

Dustin: Yeah, me neither.

Ingrid: So the goal is to embrace the chaos as it comes and compartmentalize it in our mind…output it as art. We create our own worlds, while building our own system.

Dustin: We’re such fucking hypocrites, though.

Ingrid: We’re capable of more.

A beat. Dustin takes sip of coffee, drag of cigarette.

Dustin: You know I ran away from home to live this life, but I have family. Blood family that… I barely know because of this. And I’m always one to not regret anything, because I am who I am today because of all my life experiences. Because of my success and failures. We all are. But lately, I have to be honest, I think about how I wasn’t there to be a big brother for my brother and sister through those difficult years of self-discovery.

Ingrid: Dustin don’t apologize for living life. For your years of struggle and self-discovery. Everybody does it differently.

Dustin: (Sighs) I know, it’s just …in the past when I would think about it, I would justify it in the sense that I didn’t have an older brother or older sister to look up too, you know? And it wasn’t easy for me. I was always alone through those formative and life changing years. But now I see them… my little brother and sister… they’re not little anymore. And I missed it…I missed them growing up… and the result is… they don’t know me… I don’t know them… not really.

Ingrid goes and hugs Dustin. Kisses him on the cheek.

Ingrid: Dustin!

Dustin: But this is my life. I want this. But I want them too. And I realize that that….will never happen. Not like this.

Dustin starts to tear up.

Ingrid: That’s the real reason why you got that job isn’t it?

Dustin nods his head, wiping the tears from his eyes.

Ingrid: So this sadness that you feel is-

Dustin: (Interrupting) Me realizing that this is really who I am. And I’m not ashamed of it. I don’t regret it. There’s things I desperately need to do differently now. My own family will never understand or truly know me. Ever. Even though I want them too.

Ingrid: Then tell them. Show them who you are. Jesus Christ stop wallowing in self-pity.

Dustin: Yeah, but my dad got me that job. He pulled a lot of strings too. I had a decent salary. But in the end, I hated that life. And come Monday… when they realize it’s not just a phase… or an emotional outburst… when they realize that I’m never fucking stepping into that fucking building ever fucking again, when they realize that I’m back here… I think…. No I know…. I will be lost to them.

Ingrid: You’re not lost here.

Dustin: This is the only real place in my life, yet I feel sad.

Ingrid: But you do believe in this?

Dustin: I want to, because I don’t believe in anything else.

Ingrid: What about your experiences… do you believe them?

Dustin dumps the rest of his coffee over the balcony. Takes another drag. Exhales slowly staring out blankly.

Ingrid: Do you?

Dustin snickers under his breath. He looks around, wipes his eyes again.

Dustin: This is it. This is my life.

Ingrid: It’s our life.

Ingrid finally lunges in and kisses him passionately.

Then…

Dustin: Let’s do it right.

Ingrid: Let’s…!

A beat.

Dustin contemplates then…

Dustin: Where’s that acid?


The End