But These Are All Golden Dreams

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A Monologue About the Things We Carry Around

OK so I just wanted to show you this, because I think it will help you understand what I’m getting at here. It’s right… hold on just one second. [She rummages in her purse.] OK, how many server notebooks could I possibly have in this bag. Ha. OK. Maybe in this pocket. Oh. Here’s my other wine key. And my other, other wine key. Awesome. Nice, pictures from the photo booth at that bar… ha, we almost look like normal humans who enjoy each other’s company here. That’s cute. So it’s probably somewhere at the bottom… oh this is funny. Do you know what this is? It’s called a “wobble wedge”. It’s for sliding under table legs so that the whole thing doesn’t move. I have, like, thirty of them in here. Wow. So many pens. None of these are mine. I mean, all of them are mine, now, but I didn’t actually purchase a single one of them…. Oh, and that one exploded. Nice. Fuck. This purse was new nine months ago. I bought it when I got some windfall from that gig… sort of a big girl present to myself. My first real grown-up lady bag. I guess it’s not so new anymore. [Pulls out a flask]. That’s not mine. [Opens it, looks to see if there is anything left, drinks.] [Pulls out a black thong]. Hey, you never know. [Pulls out a handful of tiny enevelopes.] Oh, these are what we get our tips in. See, you write the date and then the credit card tips here and the cash tips here. Except whoever does the money is usually wasted at the end of the night so it’s pretty much illegible… do any of these have cash left in them? Nope. Nope. Nope. Ah! Sweet. Twenty-three dollars. That’s totally a night a union pool, minus tacos. OK so what I wanted to show you, is…. Oops, that is definitely my passport, I was looking for that. Um… lipstick. Lipstick. More lipstick, mmm! [Reapplies]. Oh! Yeah. Here. Notes From Underground. Anyway I guess I just wanted to show you this [reads from page 19 of Notes from Underground] :

“Oh, if I were doing nothing only out of laziness. Lord, how I’d respect myself then. Respect myself precisely because I’d at least be capable of having laziness in me; there would be in me at least one, as it were positive quality, which I myself could be sure of. Question: who is he? Answer: a lazybones. Now, it would be most agreeable to hear that about myself. It means I’m positively defined; it means there’s something to say about me. “Lazybones!” –now, that is a title and a mission, it’s a career, sirs. No joking, it really is. I would be a lazybones and a glutton, and not just an ordinary one, but, for example, one sympathizing with everything beautiful and lofty. How do you like that? I’ve long been fancying it. This “beautiful and lofty” has indeed weighed heavy on my head…. Oh! Then it would be different! I would at once find an appropriate activity for myself— namely, drinking the health of all that is beautiful and lofty. I would seize every occasion, first to shed a tear into my glass, and then to drink it for all that is beautiful and lofty. I would then turn everything in the world into the beautiful and lofty; in the vilest, most unquestionable trash I would discover the beautiful and lofty…. But these are all golden dreams.”