OK, after my first draft, yesterday, and the feedback received, I tried to add some material that will make it tighter and more targetted. So I have tried to draw on the general feeling of relationships and make that more pronouced.
What the requirements were:
The monologue must be internal and should be sparked off by something your character notices at the dinner party; a napkin, another guest's attire, a pot plant in the corner, the door mat on the way in, a pudding spoon etc. No other guest can hear or respond to the piece.
This is why I have written in such a meandering way... I have tried to make the internal dialogue as realistic as possible. I imagined myself in the situation and wondered how erratic my thought process would be.
So, my changes:
I have added a new opening section:
I'm the first one here. That makes me feel indifferent. Where to sit, where to sit? Host and hostess will surely want the two heads of the table and the other couple will be seated next to each other, so that leaves one side of the table for myself and my mystery date. I will take a seat on the window side... if I run out of things to say I could do a kind of impromptu show and tell, by pointing at things out the window and waxing lyrical about them, in an intelligent manner...as is my want... What to talk about?... religion and politics? I would stand out as someone who is thumbing their nose at social conventions. I will find out if she is Catholic... it would make my Sunday phone call home more bearable if I could tell my mum that I had met a nice Catholic girl. F**k it, I am telling her that, anyway. You got to meet someone, you got to love someone, you got to live with someone, you got to marry someone, you got to impregnate someone, you got to raise the baby Catholic, you gotta see the baby, Jerry, a dingo ate my baby...A DINGO ATE MY BABY!!! Why do people waste rooms in their house... I mean, how often would you use a dining room....a nice desk, matching book shelves, get rid of all that Ikea art shit from the walls and you have yourself a little study. Instead, they make singletons, like me, sit in here alone, looking at a white canvas with a red cross splurged in the middle and fighting the urge to stab themselves in the eye with the fork...probably the starter fork and not the mains fork... starter fork...is that the right word?
and then the middle is still the same as it was:
Maybe I could discuss modern art with the mystery girl. I could point out that painting above the fireplace and she would see what a sensitive guy I am...how I have wonderful sensibility. Like that character in Sense & Sensibility... I can't remember her name... I think my brain is rotting at the age of 28. I can remember Lizzy from Pride & Prejudice...she walked through the mud to see her sick sister...how unbecoming... I feel so culturally naked when I am away from my cultural artefacts... I can't relax without my things. My books and films...they show my personality in ways my words just can't... and there are not many ways to drop 'The 400 Blows' into a conversation without looking like a dickhead... maybe I could tell her that the painting above the fireplace has a negative capability and hope she hasn't seen the scene in 'Manhattan' that I stole it from... having said that, do I want to meet a girl who hasn't seen 'Manhattan'? What am I talking about anyway, I don't want a girlfriend. I don't know why I came to this... getting set-up at a dinner party has to be the most awkward... thing. She is going to be a moron and I am going to have to either sit and converse with her all night or sit in silence, with the cruel glare of the rest of the party on me, thinking, 'what's wrong with him? She is a lovely looking girl. Why is he so arrogant and proud?'...like Mr Darcy. Why I have got Jane Austen on my mind tonight? Mark Twain hated Jane Austen... he wanted her body dug up so he could beat her over the head with her own shin bone. Exhume... is that the word I'm looking for? Recuse...that's when a lawyer doesn't want to represent you anymore... I learnt that from Californication... Nature V Nuture...what has shaped me more? DNA or American TV shows? Nostalgia! That's why I agreed to come tonight... I don't want a new girlfriend, I just want a handle on my memories. I want an instrument to help me remember the times I lived with her... the 2 months living above the family in the suburbs... the screaming boy that woke us up at 7:30am on a Saturday morning... the sex on the floor while the thunderstorm took pictures of us, the rain danced for us and the wind howled like a hammer (thanks Bob)...the broken sofa bed that made me sleep like a question mark...the simplicity of the life... every phase of my life seems more complicated than the one before... when you move on you may be painting a new picture, but you are never given new paper... you are just left to paint over what you had there before. So every layer is more complicated. I'm feeling morose. And where the hell is everyone? I didnt think I was that early. Bum de bum...de bum... touch my bum, this is life...was that the Cheeky Girls? What the f**k. In the 18th century they thought that nostalgia was an illness that had to be cured. I think they were right. I can't enjoy anything in the present, because I am always thinking about the past... things in that past that weren't even good or that enjoyable...but in my mind they inflate until I think that they were the best of times. Christ, I even look back fondly on my time working at Tesco as a trolleyboy... 5 years of hell...
and I slightly changed the ending
I really hope there is a prawn cocktail for starters, tonight... that could be a conversation starter, as well as, you know, a culinary starter...'so you like/dislike seafood?'... is that a conversation starter? Cos I'm not sure what the follow-up questions could be... 'you do like seafood? Including fish?'...Oh I could get into 'The Old Man & The Sea' that way...OK, if there is a fish dish we can talk about Hemingway... that would open up bullfighting, hunting... Orson Welles! And we are onto cinema! Yes! Fishdishfishdishfishdishfishdishfishdish....fush...fush...the way a New Zealander says fish is fush...Maybe I should say the word 'starter' again...starter...starter... Oh, someone is coming... It's a girl... nice tits, shortish, hairy hair, shiney teeth, warm hand.
I would liked to have re-written this a few more times, but the fact that I have to post this all the way from Germany, means that I have simply ran out of time.
End
