Wanting

(this is the first version of this piece that was performed at La Mama in 2000. the stage directions relate to this initial staging. the piece was then restaged under the direction of Sharon Jacobson in 2007. I am yet to document this second version.)

(Performer enters. Across her back in thin, black paint is written : DESIRE IS AN APPETITE THAT SEEKS TO EAT ITSELF UP. The performer does not show their face to the audience, and walks to the chair, which faces front, and sits legs astride facing the back. The performer waits, and then swings around on the chair and begins speaking animatedly.)

I am sitting in a restaurant with a man. It is a chinese restaurant, and we appear to be the only anglo-saxons there. I take this as a good sign. We are waiting for food, filling the space. He talks.

He is worried about life at the beginning of the 21st century. He says that there is too much choice, too much information. He wonders whether it is healthy to have this glut of options: music, entertainment, clothing, education, and food. ‘Just look at what we’re eating’, he says. This topic seems to put him in quite an unpleasant mood.

His face has fallen into a deep crevice over his Chinese Pork Dumplings. I smile and watch his adam’s apple. It rises and falls along the line of his throat like an electrcical pulse. I think about what he has been saying, but say nothing. I realise that I disagree. Somehow we humans must want this life we have. Maybe we have made an enviroment for ourselves that corresponds perfectly to our needs - our need to learn something about having so much choice.

He lives in the suburbs. I live in the CBD.  He has a garden and birds in the morning. I wake up to a metropolis. A guy I know says that in order to live in the city you’ve got to be ready for a personal revolution. I wonder to myself sometimes, ‘What sort of revolution?’ But I know what he means. I experience it every day.

(Performer rises from chair.)

Humans are fascinated by cities, even though we claim to hate them. One explanation for this might be because the city is a kind of training ground - it trains us in the arts of desire. It is an education in the pitfalls and pleasures of wanting. It bears down on us with promises and temptations, it saturates us, invades us, seduces us, wakes in us desires that we would rather not admit, desires that are inconvenient and contradictory. It disturbs our lame attempts at equanimity. It throws light on the little fissures in our consistent facades.  It makes us restless, it disrupts the peace of our complacent self-knowledge. It keeps us alert and in a constant state of lust.

I’m out walking late one night. The streets are silver and make me feel arrogant and invincible. My legs sweep quickly over the dark surfaces beneath my feet. Footfalls ringing like blades across the empty spaces. My mind is crisp and airy, playing with nothingness and attending to the body only.
Attending to the body - Which begins nowhere and has skin like the glow from headlights: intense at the centre but then expanding out infinitely with no clear boundaries. The body is a beautiful vessel for desire, because like the body, the boundaries of desire are always melting and morphing into other things. You could spend a life trying to map the territories of wanting.

At this point, I want to make a very clear distinction between:

WANTING and HAVING.

It seems simple I know, but I want it to be very clear.
Wanting is that which usually comes before the having.
And wanting cannot exist in the same way once the having is had.
Wanting suggests lack. It is movement towards.
Would it be correct to assume that the experience of wanting contains within itself a certain becoming and the potential for a certain destruction.
If we want to have something, then we want the state in which we will have that thing, and if once we have that thing, we are no longer technically ‘wanting’ it anymore (because you can’t want and have at the same time) - then wanting always wants to escape itself.

Or in the words of Adam Phillips:
Desire is an appetite that seeks to eat itself up.

Do you find want-fondling a little perverse? When you feel desire, do you like to linger and luxuriate in it? Or are you in a hurry? - For the having, I mean. Would it be generalising too much to say that humans tend to prefer to flee the state of wanting and rush on to the experience of having what they desire?

If the answer is, “yes”, then we have to admit that this is a strange compulsion. For if all endings are a kind of death, it would seem that, when we flee desire, we are bent on killing off a valuable part of our experience. It is almost a kind of sensory suicide.

And so, the question remains:
Can desire still be considered desire, in those instances when it does not seek to extinguish itself?

Performer offers cheeses to the audience, and then eats a bocconcini from the plastic plate/dish herself. Places dish to the right of them on the floor. In a state of reflexion.

Recently I have had too many lovers. Too many lovers? ‘Not possible’, you said, as I leant down and took your nipple between my teeth and smiled. I am waiting for one of these love affairs to become a crescendo, to catapault me into unbearable places, moods of elation and leglessness. It is as if I am craving the perfect meal, in the faith that this perfect meal exists, somewhere. The meal to end all meals. The happy ending, the perfect death.

(Performer shoves 2-3 boconccini into the mouth, compulsively, and talks through them.)

You     invite
me    for
dinner.     You
offer     to
feed     me.

(Spit out the cheese repulsed into dish.)

How dare you assume that I have spaces in me that require filling! And yet you are right. There are gaps amongst my denser regions that are a little light on, require some attention, some filling up, padding out, trickling in.

You offer me fish. Simultaneously pulls out a package of butchers paper with whole fish inside, unwraps the papers, leaving fish lying on the ground..

Yes, these days, I do eat corpse. I have abandonned the chastity of earlier times. Now I take other creatures’ flesh into my flesh and await the consequences. I do not claim it to be safe, or nice, or even advisable for the faint of heart. Nearly everybody does it, but not everybody realises just what they are doing when they

cut, cook, cut, spear, raise, take, taste, chew, swallow down

the body of a dead being.

Do you know what you do? Do you do it with all the pores of your body open to the potential of this chaotic, necrophilic exchange?

Pick up the fish disinterestedly by the tail.

You offer me fish. Fish is a soft option for some, less alive. Perhaps the ocean is closer to death, all that salt and preservation, fish is not meat. Fish is in a separate category of the dearly departed. So I agree, ‘Yes, please! Serve me up the remains of a wriggling, silver alien on my plate and in a puddle of butter.’ We establish that we both eat butter, both prefer real fat, to plastic fat.

Put down fish. Licking fingers...
You offer me more.
(Yes, more! Tickling my wanting, you run your cunning fingers up my creamy-white repression thresholds...)
You say, breathing down the phone (I can smell your intention from all this way) that you also might make me a... pie. It’s your speciality - fine, lime, ginger custard tart. As tart as I desire, how tart do I take it, as a rule?
‘Very’, I reply.

Well, excellent! It’s settled then: fish and pie.
And I’ll buy a bottle of good red wine
A deep, double-barrelled marriage of grapes
Dressed in glass like an emergency switch.
And I’ll paint my fingers the colour of steel.

(Painting nails.

Two large cards have been strewn on the floor, face down. They have the words ‘1. epmty’ and ‘2. full’ printed large and clearly on them. With the sticky fingers, carefully flick them over.Keep doing nails and talking at the same time.)

Compare these two experiences:
1. Feeling empty.
2. Feeling full.

Number 1. has more life, perhaps. There is potential, there is promise - a striving towards a change of state. When one is empty, the feeling can be envigorating, inspiring, compelling. While Number 2 - the feeling of fullness - is wet and warm, like a sticky stain on the bedsheets. Was it really so exciting at the time, and how do you feel about it now you have to sleep with your legs cramped up avoiding the chilly,damp patch? But it can also be reassuring.  

A full belly equals a body safe from the threat of emaciation, and of disappearing. Safe, at least temporarily, from shrinkage. A living creature must take up space, the space it takes up defines its grip on life.  It is a declaration of its share in the oxygen and square-meterage of the available landscape. To declare a preference, therefore, between full and empty, is never simple.

(Blow on nails a couple of times.)

I ready myself for our encounter. It is to take place at your house. I have the address. I took it down during the phone call.

The phone call. (pause reflectively...remembering)

We were both surprised, I think. We weren’t expecting anything. It was a week night and we were home alone, respectively. I wonder what you had been doing, what made you think to call me on the number I had scibbled for you, on the napkin, at the cafe. I had been sitting with the chinese-restaurant-man. You interrupted our conversation. Came and stood beside me and I impulsively wrapped an arm around your waist. Introductions were made, that everybody would forget. He was eating soup again. I was eating shortbread. Because it is cheaper, costs less. The sugar may have made me do it - wrap an arm around you. And then that arm may have made you think of me, while you sat at home on a Wednesday night. And the thought of the arm, or the memory of the arm on the body that was at home in a coldish house on a Wednesday, may have led you to think of me, and then to call.
Ah, yes. The phone call.

It left me shaky, by the way, and not a little damp. I smiled my way through 6 and a half hours of sleep and then several days of waiting before the time arrived for those preparatory ablutions.

Men. All males must ask themselves, if married or not, if single or not, if straight or not: what is the marvel of the female ritual of grooming? It is a marvel, is it not? It is a deeply intricate process, personalised, intimate. It is, I postulate, an acting out of the experience of wanting, because.....it comes before. It is setting the table before the meal. Grooming is always undertaken in the space of desire, desire fuels it. It could almost be seen as the glorification of the state of lust.

Do not confines your impression here to sex. It is not about sex alone. It is about wanting anything. Wanting approval, wanting the gaze, wanting the job, the lover, the envy of others, the magic transformation, the upheaval, the first impression, the feast, the journey, the experience of anything, anything at all.

But as well as being about wanting something to happen, grooming can also be about wanting something not to happen. It can be an act of prevention - to avert humiliation, shame, rejection, anonymity.

Grooming can appear, therefore, to be a caring ritual. But is it actual caring, or is it an empty ritual that goes through the motions of simulating care? Is it possible that self-mutilation and grooming are closely related to one another?

They both can happen when one is experiencing extreme misery or lovelessness. You see, when feeling this bad one can either pick up razor blades or the enzyme-rich alpha-beta hydroxy, hydrating, fruit-acid, advanced formula facial mask.

(Apply mask liberally to face. And keep talking...)

The razor blades are simply tools of the expression of a loathing, the facial mask is the tool that tries to silence that loathing. Sometimes.

Sometimes people hate themselves.

(Put mask down.)

And sometimes they just want to look hot for a sexy date.

So I prepare myself for the meal.
The question remains, am I to be the meal? Who will eat and who will offer?

I begin grotty.
A day of work.
Sweat like bad breath in my pores
Grime like molasses under the nails
I start with a drowning.
Shower-cap on to protect the hair that is
Just dirty enough, contains just enough of my body’s oils
To hold its shape the way I want
Taps on
Body under, the water is an argument on my skin
I run fingertips laced with soap over all
Possible zones of interactions - that is -
I wash everywhere. Remove all trace of fluid and
Sediment - fresh and succulent it will be laid
Down anew
Soon enough
Face doused with warm water
Palm of the hand rubbed across the surfaces
That have slept all day
Rubbed ‘til they’re red and the blood comes up
To the surface of the skin in itchy blooms
Turn off the hot tap, but not the cold
Count two seconds and then
Silent screaming as the water turns
Ice and everything contracts, stands itself up
Shock therapy - cold becomes bearable
As breath is sucked
Dry into the thrilled
Taut lungs -woken up.

I step out of the shower.
I dry myself.
Then
Mop the floor.
Then
Brush my teeth.

The order is important. The order of the grooming tasks is VERY IMPORTANT. Putting lipstick on before brushing the teeth, for example, can be disasterous.

Begin unwrapping the neck-scarf while talking...
Then I
-do my hair
-get dressed
-apply make-up
-put on shoes
-do my nails
-put on jewellery
-apply perfume
-check the effect
-pack my bag
-depart

(Fling the scarf away...)

....walking with the saunter of someone who has just put a lot of effort into creating a flawless facade of gorgeousness, and intends to sustain it... at least until after the main course.  

(The following has been prerecorded on a tape, and it loops, mantra-like over and over. The performer switches on the sound device. And then proceeds to wash off the face mask. The washing should appear calm at first, almost clichéd skin-care ad, but then it because frantic and almost violent, hateful and panicked.)

What is your worst fear? What do you fear the most?

Pain, the lack of pleasure
Loneliness,  the lack of love
Humiliation, the lack of respect
Exhaustion, the lack of rest
Starvation , the lack of food
Or indifference, frigidity, impotence, the lack of desire?

(When the face mask is fully off and the face dried, then switch off the device anywhere, do not wait for the loop to finish.

Walk almost menacingly close to the audience.)

I am titilated by your invitation to dinner.
Titilated but not touched.
My blood is moving
But not through my heart.

It is unpleasant to be full all the time.
It is unnatural and unsustainable.
Boredom creeps in like toxins into the blood
But what about too little, what about
Not enough?
Would I prefer emptiness
To all this having?

(Kneel down in front of the light and the fish.)

You will take time out of your day to care for me. Time to comtemplate the meal, to shop for the ingredients, to prepare them and cook them. You are offering. Why am I not struck by the generosity of this act? Why am I not grateful?

(Pick up the fish and slam it across the stage, maybe against a wall if there is one. It should be an ugly gesture.)

Not
Hungry
Enough.

(Theatre lights down.
Turn on the blue or white fluorescent light that is lying face up in front of the performers knees. Important change in the mood.)

It is lateish afternoon in the CBD. I walk through shops, searching for the pair of shoes that will carry me in perfect comfort and not fall apart and present to the world the pristine reflection of my inner-contemporaneity. Under fluorescent lights, I am taunted by speakers leaking pop, while a girl in pastels and charcoal bounces up and down the shop fetching me shoes to fill the ‘shoe’ gap in my world. I need a meal of shoes, a plateful of rubber-soled leather perfection to stave off this niggling whim. None of the shoes please me. I leave.

It is that time of day when it is better to stay away from other humans. I maintain that the afternoon is a dangerous time to be out on the streets. All blood in the bodies of the species is at this hour digesting pestilent lunches. Digestion is a turgid and sticky process at the best of times, but it’s always worse in the afternoons.

Supermarket. Six items. Shiny floor feels hard. I let a woman in line in front of me. She has only one item. A brown paper bag with the label ‘Easter bun’. She is very well dressed and has a conservative line to her lips. She is very grateful. Has a train to catch. I wonder who the bun is for. And where her train is going. Her handbag is large, smooth and expensive-black.

As I turn the corner of the street, I see a man, up ahead, a few metres. He has a large sign made out of a ripped up box. There is writing on it in red-texta. I read ‘Homeless, ----unless get money’. I turn my head away. I have already decided not to give him anything. I have stopped giving money to so many people lately. Apparently they are all junkies and the stories are all lies. This is what people tell me.  I can never tell and I don’t know if it is bad thing to give money to people who ask. Asking, offering, is it a gift if it comes with a condition attached? Implied - I’ll give you 20 cents but just don’t buy smack. This man, even though I am not looking at him, doesn’t have the feel of a junkie. But I am naive and wouldn’t know. I think people who are really talkative with me are friendly, I never realise that they are just pinned.

The light changes to green and I can cross the street and distance myself from him. I hide my confusion behind my...look-straight-ahead-shoulders-square-lids-lowered-mouth-neutral-city-girl face , but my heart squeezes up like a juiced citrus skin and I feel totally gutted.

(Fluoro off. Lights back to previous level.
The performer begins to speak more candidly.
Mood shifts again.

While speaking the following paragraph, find the fish and the scarf, and wrap it up, nursing it finally like a baby for the last section.)

Maybe being too full is a tiresome, banal thing. Too much food, too much attention, to much information, to much affection. But then what about the opposite. This man sitting on cold concrete in thin trousers. With an ugly sign. And nobody looking. Maybe he would appreciate some gluttony. Maybe he would like the boredom of all this having. Instead of the heightened thrill of endless wanting. Maybe you should be making dinner for him?

(Performer places two chairs slightly away from the centre of the stage, like a car front seat. Sits down on what would be the passenger side.Arranges the body like it would be in a car. )

You picked me up in your car. It has a name, but I can’t remember it now. I think I had been working...at the place with the wealthy customers, the stereo that jumps and the fridge with three doors. We drove along the beach road, six lanes of traffic. I was excited just to be in a car, on a Sunday night. Lateish, with lights streaking the windows like streamers. So many cars on the night before Monday, where are they all going? I always wonder this. Especially in the city, where there are so many lives jammed in close together. You can drive parallel for a few seconds with experiences and histories you could never understand or imagine, and then there’s a lane change and you’re suddenly up close to someone else, something else unimaginable.

I’m overexcited, talking in gusts, shuffling cassette tapes in and out of the player, squinting at titles in the dark. I find the right song. My hopes soar. I force it into the rectangular mouth - fast forward, rewind, forward, forward, play. I inch the volume up till the sound fills the belly of the car, and we’re swimming in the song - the appropriate song that I came across only by luck. Fumbling amid crumbs and pockets of plastic and foil. I wonder if the song will save us. If the force of the sound waves with funnel our experience toward something beautiful, something gracious.

We have been trying vey hard.
In our own different ways.
But sometimes people run out of energy.
Even when they eat fish and butter, shortbread and wine.

(Come to standing. Centre stage, nursing the fish.)

You are running along the beach. You lean down, scoop up the ball in your right hand, draw your arm back, skipping along a couple of paces and launch. The small, grey, salt-sodden sphere sails across the sand, out of your hand in a mathematical arc. Your little dog, stout and athletic, with intelligent eyes, skims across the beach and retrieves the ball in her black-gummed mouth.

This movement is familiar to you. You have appropriated it, taken it into yourself and claimed it, almost invented it. You convince me that no-one in the world has ever performed this particularly beautiful series of movements before.
We are arguing.

The beach is black and the sun set hours ago. Light only comes from the esplanade lamps that illuminate the dry edge of the sand. The light gets fainter as it approaches the water.

Your dog drops the ball at your feet. I am metres away, watching you. The conversation has stopped. You lean down again, tireless, pick up the ball, your body is fluid and strong - strong because it could perform this movement a million times, your limbs have found the perfect pathway and once discovered there is no friction, just perpetual, mesmerizing motion. At this moment, watching the hair at the nape of your neck, I could fall in love with you.

I don’t know what that means. I have just learnt to say it to myself in the presence of a certain type of wanting that seems capable of existing in the presence of gratitude. A desire that is fragile and precarious, but not suicidal. Because, for just a few seconds, it has no urge to eat itself up.

(Sound device is turned on, with a quiet steady voice recorded in loop saying the following:)

And I am grateful that you exist in the world. Throwing balls on beaches and hurling angry words at me across soft, damp, sand.

(Performer returns to the chair again facing away from the audience and using the water from the mask that is near the chair, proceeds to sponge soapy water down their back, partially washing off the quotation. (Device should loop for about 90 sec.))

END