I am using reading plays as a way to avoid writing one. I am telling myself that it is research. That I am studying form. Structure. Character. Exposition.

Bollocks.

I’m avoiding working.

Guess reading plays is better than watching Big Brother.

Here is another little blurb of what I have… if you’re interested…

ANDREW
What’s your novel about?

TALIA
Ahhhhh. . . It’s hard to talk about.

MAX
So don’t.

ANDREW
Don’t mind him. He was raised by wolves.

SARAH
And orangutans.

TALIA
It’s. Um. complicated. So in Japan, there are these kids that shut themselves in their room when they’re 13, 14, 15, whatever, and they just don’t come out.

SARAH
They just stay in their room?

TALIA
Pretty much. Some stay in there for 15 years. They’re called hikikomori. And their parents just take care of them. Modern life is just too much and they hide.

ANDREW
Your novel takes place in Japan?

TALIA
No. My main character is in San Francisco but he’s a western hikikomori. He’s been hiding in his room for 10 years. And. . . did you read about the German cannibal?

MAX
There are so many joke opportunities here. I simply don’t know where to start.

TALIA
So this guy put out an ad. He wanted to kill and eat someone and he met someone that wanted to be emasculated, killed and then. . . um.. . consumed.

ANDREW
Sorry. . . when, when, when you say emasculated. Do you mean?

MAX
Yes, she does.

ANDREW
Fuck me.

TALIA
So my novel is about this guy in his early 20’s that has shut himself away in a room for ten years and his relationship with a guy he met one the Internet that he’s asked to kill and um. . . eat. Him.

Pause.

MAX
It’s a comedy I take it.

SARAH
How do you think of that sort of stuff?

TALIA
I must admit I have a bit of a twisted mind, but I got it from the paper. If you pick up any paper there are tons of stories right there.

SARAH
I read something the other day that I thought was so amazing. So sad. This Thai woman got on a bus to go shopping in Malaysia and she got on the wrong bus coming back. So she ended up miles and miles away. No one could understand her because of her dialect. She ended up begging and was sent to a homeless shelter. She was there for 25 years. And she would sing this song, no one understood her until these health exchange students came to the shelter. And they heard her sing and they were from her region and they understood her. She told them what happened and 25 years after she was lost, she came home to her family.

TALIA
That’s amazing. See that is a novel or a screenplay right there.

MAX
That’s the saddest story I have ever heard.

SARAH
Isn’t it?

MAX
Your wife is gone for 25 years. You think you’ve gotten rid of her and then she comes back.

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