DramaLit Blog 1.0: BU School of Theatre

Initial response in my journal: “I’m crying. Breathing in a way I don’t know how. I feel something in the pit of my stomach right above my uterus or right in front of it I don’t know. The search for God or the Universe, or The Bigger thing out there is every day happening. Wasted time is never wasted, it is learned from. I want to find this man, grab him by the arm, turn him around violently so that my fingertips have become white and the skin and fat of his arm is hugging my fingers and tell him, I’m your woman. Throw me up against a wall, take me out to dinner, tell me I’m not perfect, LET THE WATER FROM THE SHOWER HIT YOUR ASSHOLE WHILE YOU HOLD YOUR ASSCHEEKS OPEN, I’m your woman. If he’s married—I laugh through a brutal inhalation of the junk in my nose—then he loves her and she loves him and they are inside and outside each other. Maybe he’s not looking for THAT WOMAN, maybe he’s looking to connect with as many people as possible. He’s dirty but so clean because he discloses himself. ‘What you do not make known will destroy you.’ He doesn’t let that happen.”

Johnson decides to go a push further with his confessional-monologue-type writing, owning his position as an American white male. I am not one bit offended by what he refers to in his interview with Lane Czaplinksi as his “unrepentantly male and American libido.” He argues that it has every bit as much right to be heard the way feminism needs a voice; that both sides need to be brought to the table. I agree with him wholeheartedly. It is impossible to have one without the other. He is in fact heavily influenced by women. The only male writer he can think of who has had an impact on him is Cornell West. His top two inspirations are Joan Didion and Susan Sontag. He hopes that when people see Another You, that they can derive from it somehow that he “spent a great deal of time listening” to the later generations of feminists.

The play opens in total darkness, Johnson’s voice in V.O. Something about how he was in the shower after his girlfriend hit him in the back of the head, feeling and letting the water hit him, he’s talking in stream of consciousness. The lights fade in, red, on something. It’s a toilet, with a man sitting on it, ass-naked. Towards the end of the V.O. monologue, he gets up, we see his balls as he pulls his pants up, and the lights come up as he finishes buttoning his fly, loud bar music comes on, he opens his mouth and starts talking and there I go. Gone. Some kind of fucking arrow has pierced me. My heart is beating hard—not fast, hard. If ever I meet Allen Johnson, I will melt.

There is no doubt about it in my eyes, the man deeply respects Woman. It bewilders me that some accuse him of writing misogyny for the stage. There is not an ounce of it in Another You. He goes from telling a story about how in high school, he would jerk off using the house vacuum cleaner, waiting for the mailwoman to come just so he could see her ass through the slit that she drops envelopes through… to remembering kindergarten nap time with this girl that he used to lie across from, “and [they] would just look. Just that, look.” And how nice it was to know that there was someone who really appreciated you being there. He talks about how she would pick her nose, he does the same as he recounts it, like a little girl, innocently. “I should have died then, it would’ve been a perfect life.” I believe him. I know what he’s talking about. He even says, in the interview, that if one were to look at the world through the lens of men vs. women, logistically speaking, “Women. Are running. The entire show; women are running… the world. Every bit of male war, anger, violence is this just… awfully pathetic attempt to try and make up for the fact that every male started as a group of cells in a woman’s body.” This is coming from a man who brands himself as one of those males. He glorifies Woman, even at her nastiest and least perfect; in one story, begs to find the “dirtiest her” who would pull him into a fitting room with a 3-sided mirror and “fuck [his] face.” He describes many moments with many girlfriends, stories interspersed, but there is one that stands out to me in particular.

He and she met at a social gathering of some sort, and he asked her if she would just want to get together soon and read, that’s it, just read, and she said sure. Two days later, it happens at her place, they read in their own corners, she refills his tea. She puts music on, Chet Baker, whom he had never heard. In this moment, he takes the time to acknowledge Chet Baker not only as an unmistakably gifted jazz player, but also hearing something else in the music: a  frightened boy running home to his mother in the rain. Perhaps a reflection upon himself… and what follows is a very intimate and vulnerable moment which he shares with us. This woman kisses him right under his left ear, leads him quietly into her bedroom, lies him down on top of her and holds him. Then “she does this thing,” he says. She hikes up her shirt to her arm pits, and does the same to his, and presses him in closer to her, just so more skin could be touching. A moment of contact. “Thank you. For having been so close. And for being something I will never be able to understand.”

He says the same thing after having told a story about his father, just before this last one. “Thank you. For being so close, and for being something I will never understand.” He and his father had an extremely tumultuous relationship. Johnson always wanted to connect more with him, to understand him. One would think, after being raped by his father at the age of 3, that this would put a damper on things. It did, sure. Still, Johnson never lost respect for his father, who taught him multitudes. He sees his father when he looks down at his own hands. He sees his father’s hands reaching for the bottle of Jack Daniel’s in the cupboard while he’s telling Allen a story before bed, taking one swig, and putting it back. He remembers stories of violent acts his father’s hands have committed at all ages.

Violence is recurring in this play. When prompted to answer the question why, Johnson, admittedly frustrated, responds that it’s because it’s a part of his life, that’s why. “Physical violence has informed who I am on a deep, deep, deep level.” But what interests him isn’t the why, it’s the what. What is it. By making known his own experiences, he is asking [the world], “What is that need…. that we have, societally, to beat up on each other?”

“What kind of connection or expression is at the root of that?”

In the play he begins to answer these questions. He mentions a time when his mother would hit him, maybe strike a bone, and he would tell her, “God you’re strong. And then we’d talk about what was for dinner.” Between two individuals, violence creates a bond. It is hard, raw, inescapable, brute contact demanding both people to be here and now. The bond is in what fills each violent gesture. The bond is in that what, which can only be answered by the individual(s) in the situation.

In the midst are questions about how God fits into all this. About how God is a question. When Johnson uses the word, “God,” it is the first time that I do not immediately relate the word to an organized religion. There is a beautiful moment when the stage is in total darkness, and the only sound is his voice on V.O. overlapping ambient music. He is thanking God for all the things he not able to do or say. He is asking for 5 honest minutes with this woman. He is being in the moment. He is in this moment asking what is God, what can this force do, what is this… impalpable thing so many of us on this planet pray, beg, speak to, find comfort in, get angry at, rely on, blame, heed, fear, disbelieve, fail to understand time and time again?

God, Sex(uality), Violence, Love. The power each of these have is touched on in Johnson’s attempt to reach higher ground. Or perhaps just ground.

I have fallen in some kind of Love with a man that I have never met. I would challenge him, pick his brain, chase him, make him chase me, talk to him, argue with him, dare to push through the rough times with him. My heart is still beating furiously. Questions, questions, questions. What is it with my desire to destroy things? What is my fascination with beating someone’s face to a pulp? Would I ever? Who am I going to have children with? When am I going to fall in love next? Do I know him already? Why, after 8 years, have I still not gotten over wanting to be a cleaner, yes, a hitman? Notice I didn’t say hitwoman? Why do I have so much trouble accepting my womanhood at times? What is my God? What greater power do I believe in? What is this world we live in, and is it worth bringing children into? Does sex imperatively have to “mean something?” Do I have to be ashamed of the things I do behind closed doors? Even if I know I don’t have to be, but I still am, how do I get rid of feeling dirty? Or do I not get rid of it, but accept it? What turns me on? What turns me off? Am I going to physically discipline my kids? How much time is there? What am I doing with it? Am I gay (he asks himself that, too)?

This is how we live our lives. In vignettes, fragmented; transitions are not smooth, instead there are quick turns, whacks in the head, questions don’t always get answered. Like in this paper. Like in Another You.