Ships

My sophomore year of college I had to write a play for my Introduction to Creative Writing class. It was titled “Ships” and explored that middle ground between friendships and relationships, that crush/attraction/fascination that seems to embody most high school and early college romances. The characters were named Alex, Sam, Nic, Morgan, Jody, and Taylor and I made a note that “they can be played as either gender, or preferably as neither gender and just as.” Most of the scenes were snip bits from the melodrama of shifting and unbalanced affections amongst the characters. The dialogue could have been (and much of it was) copied word for word from the melodrama of my life at that point, none of which feels very relevant to my life at this point now. But there is a quieter scene between Nic and Sam that I return to throughout the play and that I found myself connecting with as I returned to it today.

* * *

(Lights down on stage right and up on Nic stage left. S/he is lying on his/her back on a blanket, looking up at the sky. Sam enters.)

SAM: Are you going to share some of that pillow?

(Nic moves over, they lay down together, both heads on one pillow, on top of one blanket, but still managing to only brush limbs.)

SAM: Do you know any constellations?

NIC: Yeah. A few. My dad and I used to stand outside together in our yard when the stars were bright and he would point out different ones. I can always pick out Orion. See those three bright stars in a line? That’s his belt. And then the line of fainter stars coming off the side? That’s a sword. Wait never mind, I think it’s supposed to be a knife ‘cause he’s a hunter. And he’s supposed to be holding a bow and arrow, but I can only ever pick out the bright star that makes the tip of the arrow.

SAM: Hot damn, I see it. I wonder who came up with that. Like couldn’t you just connect those dots any which way and draw a dog or a naked lady or something?

NIC: Once when I was little I was looking at the stars with my Dad and we were lying down in the grass and I had just gotten Oscar then and she was laying on my stomach purring up a storm. I found three kind of faint lines of stars on the horizon and named them after her whiskers.

SAM: Can you still find them?

NIC: I always look for it, but I’ve never been able to find it again. Sometimes I think I might see it, but I don’t have any one to verify it.

* * *

(Lights back up on stage left—Sam and Nic in similar pose from before looking at the sky.)

SAM: Nic! I just saw a shooting star! I’ve never seen a shooting star.

NIC: Are you sure it wasn’t a satellite?

SAM: No. I’ve seen a satellite before.

NIC: Well, I don’t know. I thought everyone had seen a shooting star before too.

SAM: I can’t believe I just saw a shooting star.

NIC: Did you make a wish?

SAM: No. Should I?

NIC: I’m not really convinced it makes any difference.

SAM: I just saw another one! Did you see it?

NIC: No, but I bet there’ll be more. It’s probably the beginning of a meteor shower or something

SAM: If the stars all start falling at once. Do everyone’s wishes all come true at the same time?

NIC: Like I said, I don’t really believe in it to begin with.

* * *

(Lights up on stage left. Back to Sam and Nic.)

SAM: The stars were never really that good growing up. The smog only allowed the very brightest to shine through. You were lucky if you could see the moon. But you didn’t need moonlight. The streetlamps seemed to illuminate the whole world. It’s funny. I always thought that everything seemed so big in the city, with so many buildings and cars and people and that when I came to college out here in the country it would feel so small. And it does feel small during the day. I mean, I can walk three blocks and cover the whole down town. But at night, lying here like this, I look up and it is so huge—bigger than I could ever have imagined while I was in the city.

* * *

(Stage left. Sam and Nic.)

NIC: Sometimes it’s comforting to feel so small, so insignificant. You know? Like you can fuck up and everything is still going to continue and the sky is still going to be there with its dots of light. And you can look up at the three stars that make Orion’s belt and be like “I know you. You are so fuckin’ far away—farther than I can even comprehend, and I know you.” I spent a semester in Australia and even there I could find Orion in the sky. It was upside-down, because I was in the southern hemisphere, but even upside-down or backwards, I could still step outside at night and see him.

* * *

(Lights switch to stage left, Sam and Nic.)

SAM: What’s that light, near the horizon? It’s moving but it’s just sort of shifting around in its own little area. It can’t be a star.

NIC: I think it must be the light at the top of sailboat. They probably just dropped anchor out there to sleep and the waves are rocking the boat, so the light is rocking too.

SAM: Yeah, I can kind of make out a shape under it.

NIC: We should probably go to sleep to.

SAM: I’ve never slept on a dock before. I’m afraid I’ll roll off.

NIC: You’ll be fine.