Quiet people aren’t always good people…that’s my story. I think they stay quiet because they don’t know how to tell the truth. And I don’t mean a normal kind of quiet. I mean the kind of quiet that stays, after everything else seems to be back in place. Like a paper cut, if that makes sense, that kind of quiet.
(beat)
You know, I don’t think it would have bothered me so much if it had been after twenty, thirty years, that she left, because there’s a lot to habit that people deny for the sake of crying, or being hurt, but all habit is, is routine…and yes, there’s safety in that, but also mediocrity, and all you have to do, is just think about that instead of the emptiness…
(beat)
…because with routine you learn a lot about yourself, and the, the opposite of love is learning, right? That’s what I always hear, “I should have known better; should have seen it coming, etc.”, and next time, you will, I mean, that’s the price you pay when they leave, and I know that hurts, but at least you get something out of it…but when you’re young, you don’t know the price of learning, and, and there’s more new to it than old, than routine, and well…that’s the horrible truth about young love, I guess…and then one day they need—I don’t know what they need—but they go looking for it, and you sit there day in, and day out, with no routine, yet, nothing to fall back on like you’d have after twenty years or so, nothing to sit with and learn from…all you know is she left you for someone else, or no worse, like you said, for something else, a better face, a bigger dick, less fat, who knows…it doesn’t even matter…instead of a lifetime of memories, you’re left with nothing but reasons why you think she left, and those might be real or not…but they’re not solid like routine, like habit. She leaves you and all of a sudden, you’re not a man. All of a sudden, you never were.
(beat)
…you’re just that kid your mother shoved together, and she’s locked herself in the bedroom again, and she won’t talk, she just passes notes under her bedroom door to you, and she won’t write unless she’s got a Ticonderoga #2 pencil and that wide-lined tablet paper you can only find at Dollar General, and you can cry all night, she’s not letting you in…she just writes and writes and sometimes it makes sense because it’s a grocery list, and sometimes it’s illegible because she’s too panicked to hold the pencil still, and sometimes it’s recipes but she never can remember how high to turn the oven on or how much of an ingredient goes in, and sometimes it’s a good bye letter and silence…and you’re so afraid she’s killed herself, until you get really quiet and hear her soft snoring, and you’re only seven, eight, and nine and…
(beat)
…inside, I am so sick and tired of being quiet…inside, I’m louder than the whole world, but I’m afraid to yell, I’m afraid of my own voice; I’m afraid if I’m loud people will actually hear me, and hold me to my words, and I don’t want that– I just want it to be said and done but I was alone for so much of my life—that you get used to speaking softly, sleeping softly, because you’re the one who has to listen, and if you can’t hear her snoring, she might be dead…so why be loud…and you, you sit outside in the hallway all night, listening, and every morning, you stare at the television screen and fall in love with Mr. Rogers simply because he looks back at you…and he knows you’re there, he knows how important coloring is, and how devastating it is not to know your home address and phone number in case of an emergency…
(beat)
…somehow he knows exactly what makes you afraid and he tells you what to do make it better, who to call, what to say…and so you start mimicking his behavior, how he dresses, how he walks, gestures, how he puts his shoes on and takes them off, and you watch when he shows you how closets aren’t full of monsters, just hangers, and…and the simplicity, staggers you. And you start to realize that there’s a real, a significant difference in living and doing life. And you know this, deep inside, but you’re too quiet, and you can’t, you really can’t hear yourself think, that’s how quiet you are…and so you grow up and become an obsessive, compulsive man full of anxiety who leaves all the lights on, and never, never shuts a door, and dates quiet women, and writes only with pens and he doesn’t know who he is, really, or what he is, or how he got so unhappy, or why he couldn’t…couldn’t apparently make anyone else happy, either, and you look up one day, and you’re lost, anyway, and there’s no home address, there’s no phone number, and everything is an emergency, and, and…and deep down, you feel that Mr. Rogers did all he could, but he obviously never heard you talking back to him, or answering his questions, and you got confused because he was such a damn good guesser. And, yet, you prayed, you prayed every night, that he’d come and rescue you and take you away to the Land of Make Believe, and let Lady Aberlin tuck you in each night. But he never did, and she never did. And by the time you realized that TV’s didn’t work like telephones, you were old enough to write a letter, but there was no paper left, and all the pencils were gone…and Mr. Rogers, well, he just got old, and died…and went into syndication.
(beat; smiles)
which is not exactly the same thing as routine, is it…?
