A Monolouge.

INT. DINING HALL - NIGHT

Two college students sit next to each other at a table
eating their dinners. DAVE wears a black sweatshirt and
black pants. JOE wears a T-shirt and some baggy pants.

Joe holds his glass in his right hand and stares straight
ahead.

JOE
And then like every night its loud
yelling and bad music. Damn
teenagers and their parties. Ya
know, I wouldn’t mind so much if it
weren’t for all the damn noise. I’m
very sensitive to noise, as I am to
light. I can hear my father’s watch
ticking from 10 feet away. But its
odd, he’ll start talking to me and
I’ll have no idea what he’s saying.
Talked to my mom the other day and
apparently I’ve had some sort of
problem with processing noises
since I was a child. That’s
unfortunate. And you know what
else? The inside of my right ear is
disfigured, mal-formed really. Go
put your thumbs in your ears, with
the uh.. palm portion - the feely
side- facing up. Notice that
vertical line? I mean, horizontal
line, wow. Anyways, its supposed to
be a straight line. And with my
left ear it is, but the right one,
that one has a 90 degree angle.
Like, what the hell. That’s not
right. And it makes using ear buds
impossible with this ear. Then
again, they don’t much like the
other ear either but hey. Then
there was this one time last year,
some guy in my class wanted to show
me something on his phone. It was
called like sound grenade. And
apparently he activated it. I
didn’t even realize. He was talking
about how annoying it was and how
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2.



JOE (cont’d)
that was a sure fire way to clear
people out at a party. I just
looked at him confusedly. Is that a
word? Then the guy next to us says
to turn the damn thing off,
because, as he had said earlier,
its so damn annoying. He turned it
off. I noticed no difference.
Apparently this sound grenade thing
plays a frequency that just
irritates everyone in the area. And
my ears don’t pick it up. Again,
unfortunate, but you know what, is
it really? This is thee sound to
piss people off and I’m immune. Not
really sure what the reason is,
perhaps I’ve heard too many saw
blades in my time. Eh whatever, so
I’m like both glad and disheartened
by this recent revelation. What
other sounds can I not pick up?
Can’t help but think this is
related to why I can’t ever
understand what the hell my dad is
saying. Or maybe he’s just fucking
with me, cuz I don’t exactly speak
the clearest... as I’m sure you’re
aware... I’ve never been much of a
talker, and I got no idea how you
got me speaking like this, all run
on and what not, that’s usually
reserved for my online a-postin’.
Which I have linked back to my lack
of talking in the real world- gotta
vent someplace, I guess. Mom says I
gotta talk more, but um, yea. I
don’t think so. It’s not my
personality. Never has been,
probably never will be. Can’t
change a man’s personality, its who
he is, so unless I go through some
sort of mid-life crisis type thing,
I don’t see that happenin’.

Joe takes a sip from his glass.

Dave’s eyes are wide-open and his mouth agape. He stares at
Joe in awe.

JOE
Anyways, where were we? Somethin’
about talking... Oh yeah, this uh,
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3.



JOE (cont’d)
what we’re doing here, don’t happen
a lot for me. And the other day I
was talking to two people at once.
That’s a big step for me. Two
people’s like a group or something.
This one-on-one is like a uh..a.. a
duo, and that’s how most of my
conversations are. So yeah, two
people. Big step up. And we talked
for like an hour too! Sure, I felt
somewhat uncomfortable several
times during it, but I had nothing
better to do. Was probably just
gunna go watch a movie. Truth is I
probably shoulda been doing some
homework, but I wasn’t feeling it.

Joe drinks from his glass.

DAVE
You need to do stand-up.

Joe chuckles softly for a second and sighs.

JOE
I...I don’t think so.


I wonder how the format will end up.