Play 19: Damn Straight

CHARACTERS
GEOFF, age unimportant
THOMAS, age unimportant

GEOFF
At least I find it funny.

THOMAS
Why? I mean, they always say money can’t buy happiness.

GEOFF
You know, just cause our society puts so much emphasis on money and how all ads seem to say if you can just buy that car, that shirt, if you can just get the money then you’ll be happy. But is our country on the top of that study of which countries are the happiest? Not even close, and yet a ton of the poor countries in South America are right up there.

THOMAS
Yeah, it is kind of ironic.

GEOFF
And we have the highest homicide rate, hell, the city of Baltimore alone has more homicides annually than any other country I think, and if not at least more than the vast majority. We have more people in jail, more sociopaths, more autistic people and almost any other mental disorder you can imagine. And we’re the land of the free, we’re the golden country everyone wants to come to.

THOMAS
No wonder so many immigrants went back after coming here.

GEOFF
Our society is so impersonal: you go to a good high school to get in a good college to get a good job and of course happiness. And you’re supposed to just keep you’re bad feelings to yourself in public because, oh no, you might make the other people feel bad. Everyone’s so repressed and you wonder why everyone’s depressed and fucked up here.

THOMAS
As I said before. Just cause it’s over used doesn’t make it not true: “money can’t buy happiness.”

GEOFF
Yeah, sometimes those old adages definitely a lot of truth. I mean, things like that don’t generally get repeated unless there’s a good reason.

THOMAS
What about propaganda or stuff like that? Just cause you say something repeatedly doesn’t mean it’s true.

GEOFF
True. But in this case it holds a lot of truth.

THOMAS
Yup. But then again, The Tom Tom Club said “happiness can’t buy money.”

GEOFF
Touche.

(Beat.)

But they said that once, how many times has it been said the other way around?

THOMAS
Oh, back to the “more people said it so it must be true” theorem are we.

GEOFF
Damn straight.

THOMAS
From a deep philosophical monologue of the issues with our country to “damn straight.”

GEOFF
I try.

(They laugh.)

THOMAS
At least you’re off that soap box now.

GEOFF
Hey, you were eating it up.

THOMAS
To quote Sports Night: “Just because I’m looking at you doesn’t mean I’m listening to, or care about what you have to say. It’s just something I do to be polite.”

GEOFF
Which exactly proves my point about people being repressed here, you should’ve just told me I should’ve shut up.

THOMAS
Well, in that case, shut up.

(Pause.)

GEOFF
I think I liked it better when you were pretending.

THOMAS
Damn straight.

(They laugh.)

(Blackout.)