You need to be fast in order to survive — this isn’t about that sort of speed. Shadows, sciatica and zipperless pants. This explains everything.
words and music by Adam Litovitz
done by Adam Litovitz and Sook-Yin Lee
SOOK-YIN: This is a gripping situation –I know — it can’t be helped. Loosened and unbuttoned. Unfastened is the proper term.
ADAM: He had pulled down his pants when his mother stepped out of the shadows.
SOOK-YIN: Christopher! She shouted. She wasn’t much of a shouter though if you had her on the right topic…
ADAM: She had gravel for speech, chewed up rocks spewed out. Stay put!
SOOK-YIN: Christopher took to the defensive, staying just so, remarkably just so once it began to be…
ADAM: Something happening there in those shadows, that shadow.
SOOK-YIN: Remorse I swear, well, I was sure, sure as ever.
ADAM: What would you do with it had it been yours? Christopher’s own, or the other one entering the deep.
SOOK-YIN: Now the shadow — or shadows — are — or is — the deep? Well rightly so.
ADAM: She was not of the physical sort, but her props, her regulations. She demanding he sheath the sheath-able.
SOOK-YIN: It could be put away. You insist. I say he’d sustained an injury, from the French trip, likely. There were warring factions within, you know, known to bubble up.
ADAM: That’s how you put it — just another bubble caught in the veranda, rather the French doors.
SOOK-YIN: He had creepy crawlers in there, as he’d put it — not physically, but saying-wise, he all rife with wisdom that one.
ADAM: Unconscionable. He must have put some more thought into it — not physically, but thought-wise. Get it right! [hits self]
SOOK-YIN: Why must you be so ogreish and untowards? Yourself is your most cherishible possession.
ADAM: Perishable, rather. I drew out a black bag last night from the trunk my father left over from his tickling days.
SOOK-YIN: Wish Chris had registered — wish he had signed up — wish he had held the basket long enough. What I could have done for him?
ADAM: He wouldn’t be held. — A flower never to form inside, but rather to droop beneath like one’s never seen a balcony. How romantic.
SOOK-YIN: He was in those days. I took the measurements properly. Father, the tailor, practically had tape measure for arms.
ADAM: He was wise to lengths, so wise and proper to every last inch, or part of inch.
SOOK-YIN: There were no part-of-inches in my coarser father’s practices. He took steps toward a broad practice. Staff and shield heroics.
ADAM: I saw him in a field, in pants without zipper.
SOOK-YIN: They never know what to do with their stillness — the broad types, the tailors. I wretch.
ADAM: It’s a rankling note in my personal history — the put it away of ethics.
SOOK-YIN: He’d had a piece and was done with the pie, definitely stained pants, to neighbours in need — through the ice storm, nevermind the rips.
ADAM: His hip surgery was a failure– No more metal to break any falls.
SOOK-YIN: Christopher’s coming –from inside me — oh dear god, I don’t want to be exposed, not like Christopher.
ADAM: Oh, and he’s coming out from inside me, too. We’re sure to be a pair of vulnerable Chrises.
SOOK-YIN: Ah, it feels good to be out and alive. Every part of me, every inch, complete in the sunshine.
ADAM: Ah, I’m also here. Entirely. It’s all for the giving and the taking.
SOOK-YIN: Nudist colony, nothing on me. Bunch of S Q U A R E S full-blown bores. Go home. You don’t belong.
ADAM: I have a fancy to, to, to — to celebrate. That’s what the whole body does, baby.
SOOK-YIN: Oh Christopher, I’m so happy to understand you from the inside out. You’re here in our wishes, and our dreams, and now right here with us, really, for real. Can you see me?
ADAM: Cast aside your doubts. Make what our realnesses are capable of. The shadow is no longer. The shadows are no longer.
SOOK-YIN: Bare naked freedom like an Adam and an Eve without sex. They make examples of the unspoken word together, “offstage”, if you drift my catch — catch my switch — fish my cat. It’s now a cat.
ADAM: You did a nasty. A video nasty. You British censor and unlikely cuckold.
SOOK-YIN: Now we’re both censorious.
ADAM: It’s not glorious.
SOOK-YIN: It’s the way birth gives birth to birth — in the exposed pants of every Adam.
ADAM: It’s not pants that he exposes. It’s his taste. For exposure. Chik-chik all the kiddies.
SOOK-YIN: Chik-chik.
ADAM: Chik-chik-chik.
SOOK-YIN: Chik-chik.
ADAM: Sciatica, I’m getting sciatica.
SOOK-YIN: Have you seen someone? Are you Christopher?
ADAM: That would explain things. Wait — that does explain things.
