ISOBEL kneels, crying and praying.

ISOBEL
Heavenly father, please spare Justin Bieber. Yes, his unnatural
beauty is surely some kind of witchcraft but he knows not what he
does. Yes it’s a mortal sin for any living being to inspire such
adoration and lust in innocent hearts, but I beseech you, do not
punish him. Please do not make him crash his private plane on a
remote desert island where he will be heard from no longer until he
is forgotten by the faithful beliebers. Please do not command that
his beautiful face be stung by a swarm of bees until his poor pretty
skull looks like Mr Potato Head and he is no longer a distraction to
impressionable susceptible secret virgins. That would be just so
wrong, lord... wouldn’t it? Of course it would. Find another way, lord,
to help your humble servant resist all temptation in order that I
might do your good work and fulfil my destiny in your honour and
the glory of your name. I am not a fickle, flighty horny teenager. I
am not filled with sinful desire for cheeky tattooed shirtless fuckboys
with sexy dance moves and abs like speed-bumps. I love only you
lord. With all my heart and spirit and soul. I am yours, lord, I am
yours. So please, lord, let Justin live.
DANNY
He wants me Tracy. Yeah, you want me - but not like your
boyfriend wants me. Look at him. Sweating, panting - practically
devolving before our eyes... He’s ravenous for me, Tracy - He’s
consumed with me. He needs me. And I need to be needed. I need
to be desired, I need to be wanted. It’s what I live for, Tracy. It’s
what I am. I took down the curtains in my flat and put up a see-
through shower curtain and leave the door open for my flatmates -
I’ve set up a internet site with a web-cam in every room and I walk
round nude, eat nude - I sleep butt-naked with the lights on, hoping
that someone - in the block across the road - on the top deck of the
bus that stops at the traffic lights outside my flat - anyone,
anywhere - is watching me. Getting off on me for a fee or for free. I
love it when me Gran’s mates get pissed and out of order on News
Year’s and shove their tongues down my throat. I love it when I get
off a crowded tube and someone’s shot cum down the leg of my
jeans. I love being poked on facebook by randoms, been stalked by
strangers and psycho exes and I love being seen as a piece of
meat. I’m a 21st century boy and I fucking love being used. Don’t lie
to yourself. Don’t pretend to yourself that you love me. You’ve been
using me. And now your boyfriend is using me and I fucking love it.
Now give us that camera, Tracy, and get stuck in while I’m still
young and horny and the stuff of great memories. I won’t be this fit
for ever.
JOE
It wasn’t you, Naimh. It was me. The responsibility is all mine. I
should never have come here. Not with my temper. My Moods.
But I couldn’t stop myself thinking. I couldn’t believe he’d put his
hands on you. I couldn’t believe I’d let him touch you. You didn’t
know him - how he was. I knew - and I should have warned you.
And I should never have let you out of my sight. Look at you,
Niamh - what man wouldn’t want you? If you belonged to someone
else, I’d steal you without a second thought. Yeah, I should have
known. I should have seen it coming. That he’d never be able to
keep his hands off you. That you wouldn’t be able to resist him.
That you’d have his baby. And I’d never know ‘cause he’d still look
like me. I should have known that one day, I’d make you angry
enough to want to wound me and tell me the truth. And I’d go
round there and he’d laugh in my face. And I’d pick up the nearest
object and smash it into the side of his fucking laughing face. And
that would be the end of everything.
(pause)
This is the end of everything. Naimh. Of everything. With his last
breath he was still laughing at me. Still winning. The bastard...
And you know the funny thing? I’m actually sorry he’s dead. How
fucked up is that? How fucked up is all this?
CAESAR
Wake up woman! Their 17 ain't like our 17! These kids think
poverty is only five pound credit on their mobile and no Sky Movies
plus! You think they're ready to get up in the morning before it's
light and go out and sweat bullets for a living working two, three
jobs each? You heard her - She ain't doing no ironing! He's gonna
be a grimy Pop Idol and she's gonna be his manager financing his
inevitable rise to fame and fortune off her Post Office Savings Book!
They ain't got a bleedin' clue! They don't know they're born! They
ain't working class like us - They're over-entitled middle-class me-
generation snowflakes and if you took away their microwaves they
would starve to fucking death! You sweated for a living! You
sacrificed and you done without and you suffered. I know - I was
there. I suffered with you. You've broke your back raising a brown
baby in a racist world - You heard grown men and women teaching
their kids to sing, 'White but not Quite' to your baby in it's pram.
you've seen him searched on the street just for being there and
being black. You've seen schools fail him and pop videos misguide
him and peers try to drag him down the wrong road. You've been a
council estate poor cow, pushing your tar baby along in his pram
while cowards have spat at you out of windows. You've been called
a nigger-lover to your face. You've seen how cruel life can be. And
now - knowing all that you know. Knowing all the tribulations them
two kids have got in store, you're still determined to indulge their
doomed little delusions as if they were actual plans - When they
ain't plans - they're blue-prints for crucifixion. And yet you have the
audacity to make me the villain - when it's you who’s being cruel.
LENA
You dare sit here on my furniture calling Mr Paul Robeson
a traitor? You, crawling on your belly in the swamp with
so-called Senator McCarthy, who exemplifies the worst of
the South and none of its graces? You have the gall to call
one of the greatest men living in America a ‘cancer’? This
paragon of dignity and wisdom who taught me, a pale-
skinned, superficial society airhead, my true culture? You
are not worthy to soil his name with your fetid, rancid,
bilious breath. You claim to protect the Land of the Free,
when your own people are not free to walk where we
want, work where we want, marry who we want? Why
aren’t you using your time in Hollywood to publicly
denounce the movie houses in Alabama and Texas who
consistently cut what little dignified presence we might
have out of movies and our names from the posters?
Why aren’t you asking the Senate why white women are
continually coated with make-up developed for my skin in
order to appropriate roles that should be played by gifted,
talented hard-working despairing actresses of color? Why
aren’t you asking how many black soldiers were used on
the front line as cannon fodder and forced to sit at the
back of the mess hall when I came out to sing for them?
Why my marriage to a good man is forced to be kept a
poorly-kept dirty secret? Why I can sing in a five star hotel
yet never sleep in it? How my daughter heard the word
nigger for the first time on her first day in a Hollywood
elementary school. Why the NAACP feels compelled to
insist that I turn down all of the Broadway shows that are
written for me because our exposure in the world is so
rare and precious that every word we say has to be
scrutinized and fretted and vetted over and over. And you,
Mr Alvin Williams Stokes, as delusional and desperate as
a whipped and wound-infected house slave, suppurating
in the plantation of the House of Deeply Un-American
Activities, now you want for us to use what little voice we
have to turn on our Moses? I find myself deeply disgusted
Sir. By this conversation, this circumstance and by you. I
would disown you, but you were never of me. I would
curse you, but you are your own curse. So instead, I will
ask you with all the civility I can muster, to get the Hell out
of my house.
(smiles with lethal sweetness)
Please.
STEVIE
When you fall asleep with my head on your chest. I listen to your
body and wonder what it would be like to be inside it. That brave
body. To have been through what it’s endured. Walking home from
school. Who’s going to stop and search me? Who’s going to
challenge me? Who’s going to fear me? Follow me round the
supermarket? I see all the eyes. Weighing you. Branding you. You
were right. I do know some of it. Have felt some of it. Walking home
after dark is a safari for every woman. But how many people ever
look at you and want to protect you? To defend you. How many see
how gentle your hands are? How perceptive your eyes are? How
philosophical your mind is. How heartbreakingly fragile your tired
body is so often. They see big. Even though let’s face it you’re not
so tall. They see black. They see man. And what’s more
superhuman and scary than a Big Black Man? So few of us realise
that what’s truly dangerous is the Little White Man who’s afraid of
the big black one. But no. The black man is King Kong and we’re all
Fay Wray. Terrified and aroused. Screaming and enthralled. Every
evening I watch you sleeping, as vulnerable as a newborn, and I
want to annihilate anyone who refuses to notice your vulnerability.
And I’m lacerated by the longing to hold you ridiculously close. To
keep you safe. To never let you go. And that is why I try too hard.
Because I care too much. About you.
ERIN
I was eight years old in the school playground and fighting over a
ball with Will Thompson when he says “at least my dad’s not a
serial killer.” I asked my mum about it and I could tell she was lying
to me. Google told me the truth. When he was 19, my father
murdered his twin brother. Some say it was over their inheritance.
Some say it was because his brother - my uncle - was gay. My
mother saw the case in the papers, fell in love with Daddy’s photo,
met him in prison, married him in prison, and got pregnant on a
conjugal visit. He’s never killed again as far as I know. He was a
lovely dad. Next day at school I told Will to get his facts straight.
Daddy was not a serial killer - he was a murderer. School was hard
after that. I was no longer popular. But I promised myself I would
never participate in a lie again. And I would never willingly be lied
to. We do that you know. Willingly welcome lies. We think they’re
easier. Sometimes we even think they’re kind. Silence too. Silence
can be the cruelest of deceptions. So I became a journalist. And
recently I did a show about my family. Changed the names to
protect the innocent and the guilty. First mistake. Then some of my
family accused me of making money from our misery and tried to
sue me. Cash is thicker than water in my family. So I paid them off.
Second mistake. And now for the first time in so long, I’m a liar too.
Just like everyone else. Lies are thicker than blood. Family. They
always fuck you up. But at least mine haven’t tried to kill me. Yet.
DANNY
So, I’m minding my business - Headphones on, yeah - Just wilding
out internally, walking in time to the riddims, yeah...? When bang,
bruv, She is right there, materialized like a legend out of nowhere.
And she is sick-en-ing, mate. (high pitched long A) Aaaaaabsolutely
ridiculous levels of hottage. She is rocking a backwards snapback
over her seemingly endless tresses, crop-top vest, no bra, tight low
trackies and hi-tops that are blatantly limited edition, and I am slack-
jawed and drooling like a Merrie Melodies cartoon. Yep! That’s all
folks! You dun know, Danny Boy is done for. And she’s got her
headphones on and I am just totally certain for sure that we are
both blazing the same tune. We are literally walking in time. This is
luuuuuv cuz and we both know it. So, I’m feelin’ like don’t be a
pussy in the face of destiny - just speak to the woman. Let her know
you’re miraculously single and all set to vibe, interact and connect.
I’m muttering internally, rehearsing lines like, “Is your name
Summer, cause you are hot - and if looks could kill, you’d be guilty
of mass murder - but that’s okay, I’m happy to be your victim ‘cause
like a broke pencil, life without you would be pointless, is your name
Wifi, cause I’m definitely feeling a connection?... Is it Wifey, cause
I’m sensing some affection, Nah, it must be Appendix - ‘cause I
don’t understand how you work but this feeling in my stomach
makes me want to take you out.” I’m gearing up for some serious
lyrics and flows and we’re still in step like we’re practically dancing.
Practically courting, practically shagging, practically shacked up and
wed. No more Danny the dog, just Danny the Daddy. I’m falling
mate, I’m getting proper feels. And then I pull off my megabass
studio quality headphones all ready to chirpse this goddess and
boost her beautiful ego, when she takes a sharp turn and crosses
the road and I’m like, fuck you, pigeon. Your loss, talk about up
yourself! I mean she blatantly blew me out and bottled it! Why are
gal dem so shit-scared of intensity, bruv? It’s downright
disheartening. Why are women so flipping long?
BERTIE
Fuck you’re skinny. I thought prisoners spent their lives in the gym.
Do you want me to send you in some food? I can make that thing
mum used to make. That thing you loved. With the dumplings and
caramelized beans. Don’t call her that, man. Please. You used to
be in love with her, remember? She’s fine, I think. No, I don’t know,
I think so. I haven’t really seen her. ...For a while. I basically live at
Isaac’s now. No dad, we’re not boyfriends. We’re business
partners. I’m the D.J. Yes, that’s my job title. Yes, I make a living
out of it. I’m actually rather fucking good at it. Because I’m not
interested in all that. Because it’s bullshit. Because there’s more to
life than wearing a suit and stealing people’s fucking money. What
are you talking about? You’re actually in fucking prison for fucking
up people’s pensions and stealing their life savings and making
families homeless. You weren’t even that good at it. At least you
weren’t even a good enough criminal to be one of the ridiculously
many that got away with it, so don’t you dare to look down on me.
Tracksuits are fucking expensive actually. I came in here wearing a
fuck off nice chain but they made me take it off. So don’t look down
on me, mate. I’m fucking minted and popular and I’m not in-fucking-
carcerated. Take a good long look at what you’re wearing,
sunshine. Nice bruises by the way, are they love bites from your
prison daddy? Is it him who’s giving you the drugs you’re on? Or
are you sucking off the prison doc for prescriptions? You want me
to fuck off? Okay, then I’ll fuck off. Seriously, if you actually want me
to go, don’t be too shy to be a complete cunt, just say what you
want to say. Okay. Fine.
(sits)
I’m sorry. Fuck, Dad, I’m sorry. Are they beating you up in there?
Are you being bullied? No! I’m not talking down to you. I don’t think
I’m better than you. I don’t think I’m better than anyone actually. But
I am a fucking good D.J. Sometimes I fantasise that I’m Neo. That
dude from your favourite film. And I walk up to the prison gates in a
sexy long black coat, pulling guns out from everywhere, killing my
way in until I find your cell, throw you a AK47, which you catch with
one hand and we shoot our way out of there. We run away to
Mexico and I become a superstar DJ and you become a club
promoter and we’re a team again. Like that time we went fishing
with Grandad. Yeah, course I remember. One of the best days of
my... I know Grandad was a bit of bastard to be around most the
time. The way he talked to you. That time he spat in your face. The
other stuff you told me about when you were kid. But that day was
mostly good, wasn’t it? You me and him and the water, guys
together, just catching and cooking fish. Are you okay? Dad are you
crying? Oh, right. It’s just that... it looks like you are. Do you want…
Do you need a... hug? Oh, okay. Just asking. You know. Just in
case.