by Wally Rudolph
“I’M THE ONE WHO SAVED YOU FROM THE FEROCIOUS BUTTERFLIES.”
02/03/19
“I’m the one who saved you from the ferocious butterflies.”
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INT. LOS ANGELES CAFE - LATE AFTERNOON
TORRENTIAL RAIN. WASHINGTON BOULEVARD.
The rain sounds like chains at the window of the small sparsely furnished coffee shop in mid-city Los Angeles. Everything is wood, save for the glass coffee decanters and large gleaming espresso machine that sits like a jetliner on the counter. Altogether the decor is another version of Scandinavia - Haute Ikea'd Los Angeles.
MAN - EARLY 40s, MIXED-RACE - enters, shakes off the rain from his jacket, sees WOMAN - EARLY 40s, GERMAN - seated at the window on a low wooden bench, already sipping her coffee.
Man goes to the counter to order. The BARISTA, young tattooed woman, steps over.
MAN
Do you have teas here?
BARISTA
Just the three: a black, earl-grey, and a floral.
MAN
Which one isn't too strong?
BARISTA
I really enjoy the floral, I think you will. I'll bring it over.
The Man nods his head, goes to the Woman at the window, takes a seat.
MAN
How are you?
WOMAN
Tired.
MAN
Me as well. How is work?
WOMAN
Good! Our submission won a prize for a park in Latvia. Everyone is excited.
MAN
Congratulations.
WOMAN
We don't know if they'll build it, but it will be something if they do.
A beat. A short, silent conversation about: their bodies, how they feel heavy, radio waves around them like ocean currents, their hands, sex, both wanting to be held.
MAN
It will be okay...After. It will.
WOMAN
I just want it to be over. Right now, all I think about is being away from the girls, not seeing them every day.
The tea arrives.
WOMAN
I am a viking, you know. I'm not afraid.
CLOSE ON: Glass jar, tea leaves swirling, a tornado.
ON UNION
I went to the theater last night with a friend who is about to go through a divorce. We were late. The show was sold out so we walked through downtown, peeked our heads through fences, talked about the specific magic of theatre lobbies, how the carpet seems to hold your feet through your boots.
I’m sad and excited for her. Divorce is something. The change is everything. It dwarfs you, swallows you up, but after when the veil is lifted, it is gone. Forever. You see it all.
Two days later, a Friday, late in the day. Rain all over Los Angeles. The PCH was shut down above Malibu. The 101 stacked. She asked her mother to move from Germany to help her with her two children. Her coffee was thick with cream. It appeared like chocolate, and as she spoke and vented and opened up her heart to me. The rain outside increased, really came at the windows, and I watched the chocolate congeal, come together as she asked me to be honest with her always, to stake our friendship on it.
‘I’m a viking,” she said. ‘I need this. I’ll take it.’
She said she’d bring me coffee the following Thursday, early in the morning. We would make love twice a month, she said. Until everything was over.
On Sunday, I thought of Pale in Burn This, the play by Lanford Wilson.
PALE: Sure you know me—“Do I know you”—we met. I’m the one who saved you from the ferocious butterflies.
I thought of those scenes. What they would mean today—Rabe, Mamet, Wilson all addicted to fuck. Language as violence. Language as body. Language as the patriarchy telling you their language is important, that the ennui of broken white men is of note. Stageworthy. What counts.
The late, great Philip Chapman put me in a full nelson when I was playing Pale. During the scene, he had the lights turned off in the studio—a blackout—then him around me, spitting, whispering, screaming into my ear.
“Get to that woman. Don’t you love her? Love Her.”
At the bar with my friend, I spoke to her about how much I want to disconnect masculinity from the patriarchy for my son. How I want to redefine his connection with his body, how I want him to celebrate his growing arms, his growing legs, his whole body. I want him to dance like a tornado, love like his mother, peek his head through fences, see it all.
WALLY RUDOLPH is a multi-disciplinary artist, and diversity and equity advocate in Los Angeles. He is the author of the novels Four Corners and Mighty, Mighty. Born in Canada to Chinese-Jamaican immigrants and raised in Texas, he’s traveled and lived throughout North America but now calls The City of Angels home.