Banging Denmark, page 3
ISH: You don’t want to admit that you’re being superficial –
DENYSE: If you like him so much, you go out with him!
ISH: I would – but you spend so much time together, I’d also have to go out with you. I don’t date superficial women. Besides – your face is too … vase-ish.
DENYSE: Vase-ish?
ISH: There’s an altogether too decorative-pot-you-put-flowers-in quality to your head shape. And your hands, well –
DENYSE: Stop.
ISH: – I look at your fingers and see nothing but a jungle of kitchen utensils.
DENYSE: Stop it –
ISH: Great spindly spatula hands!
DENYSE: I WILL NOT BE JUDGED BY A WOMAN WHO WASHES WITH WET WIPES.
ISH: Spatula hands!
DENYSE: YOU SLEEP WITH A PHOTOCOPIER!
ISH: [Hearing something] Wait –
DENYSE: YOU ARE A XEROX SLUT.
ISH: Wait – shh – someone’s at the door –
DENYSE: Toby?!
ISH: Shh! – look, under the door – they’re putting something through –
DENYSE: Advertising?
ISH: In an arts building on a Saturday?
Beat.
It’s one of them.
They’ve found me. The trolls have found me – !
DENYSE: I’ll deal with it.
DENYSE calms her, and stalks the door.
ISH waits behind.
The action happens quickly [and probably offstage]:
DENYSE gets through the door, and leaps in front of JAKE [who’s in sunglasses and a hat] – JAKE tries to run, but trips.
DENYSE: YOU CAN’T RUN FROM ME, YOU TROLL MOTHERFUCKER!
JAKE hollers. He tries to get away and DENYSE collars him. She drags him into ISH’s office, collecting whatever was supposed to be shoved under the door.
ISH: Seriously? Hounded from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, the sanctity of my own home and even LINKED-IN – and you’re seriously stalking my office on Saturday now?
JAKE: It’s not what – how it looks – !
ISH: IT LOOKS LIKE STALKING.
JAKE: I’ll explain –
DENYSE: What’s your name?
He doesn’t say anything. She throttles his neck.
DENYSE: Tell us your name!
JAKE: Jake! It’s Jake – My name’s Jake Newhouse!
My ID’s – in my pocket – !
DENYSE: I’m not putting anything in your filthy pocket!
JAKE: Then – just – lemme use my – arm – and maybe – let me – breathe!
DENYSE looks to ISH.
ISH: My friend Dr Kim here is not only smarter than you, Jake – she’s higher, she’s further, she’s faster. If you try and run for it now, she may also be far less restrained.
Beat. DENYSE relaxes her grip from JAKE’s throat. He wastes no time handing ISH his wallet. She wastes no time in finding a camera phone to photograph his ID.
JAKE: [To DENYSE] You pull a – helluva choke-hold –
DENYSE: And that’s only my third best.
ISH: Effective martial arts are a fortunate tradition of the women’s movement.
DENYSE: Have you never heard of ‘suffrajitsu’?
JAKE: That can’t be a thing.
DENYSE / ISH: It’s an actual thing.
ISH: What were you trying to stick under my door?
JAKE: A letter –
ISH: – Letter – [To DENYSE] Open it. I want a witness.
JAKE: No – please – the contents are private –
ISH: Private? Not like my life – apparently any underemployed internet misogynist can help themselves to whatever’s left of that. Hey, Denyse – humanity’s greatest antagonist turns out to be an unheard-of feminist academic because she blogs about women and fucking video games. [To JAKE] What is it today? Trying to find out my bra-size to tell it to the internet? Are you here to take a photo of a pimple on my back? Oh, I FONDLY remember the time one of your brothers managed to upload the contents of my latest PAP SMEAR to a Reddit – fucking – discussion board.
Furious.
WHY ARE YOU HERE?
IS THERE AN ABNORMAL CELL YOU THINK I SHOULD KNOW ABOUT?
JAKE: Please – it’s all in the letter and it’s personal for you –
ISH: It’s hardly personal if I’ve never seen you before in my life!
JAKE: I’m not that guy. I’m not the internet, I’m a person. Look, I’m here on the floor. I have no internet-capable device in my hands. You can frisk me if you like.
DENYSE: [To ISHTAR] He’s clean.
JAKE: I’m desperate – Ishtar Madigan, I need your help, your specific help – please!
[Beat] Please!
ISH: Denyse – I’ll give this gentleman five minutes.
She nods.
DENYSE: I’ll be out in the corridor.
DENYSE hands the letter to ISH and leaves.
ISH reads. She notices JAKE tending to his sprains.
JAKE: I didn’t expect there to be anyone here on a Saturday.
I’m sorry if I frightened you.
ISH: You’re lucky she only gave you a sprain. Dr Kim can snap off a man’s head faster than you could spell ‘praying mantis’.
JAKE: That’s some doctor. Does she ever sew them back on?
ISH: Denyse is a doctor of computer science. She found medicine unchallenging.
Beat.
JAKE: What are you doing here on a Saturday? If you don’t mind me, you know –
ISH: I mind.
JAKE: [Of her pyjamas] I guess you can afford to dress casual if there’s no-one around.
[Of the box] At least you’re well-supplied with snacks.
And set up for naps by the photocopier and [realises] Jesus – are you living in here?!
ISH: [Of the letter] Mr Newhouse, I’m afraid I can’t help you.
JAKE: Why not?
ISH: I’m a sociologist. [Of the letter] What you request suggests you need a psychoanalyst. Or an old copy of Cosmopolitan –
JAKE: There’s no-one else can help me land this girl.
ISH: A girl cannot be ‘landed’, Jake. A girl is not a ship.
JAKE: Yes – this not-ship stuff is why I need you – I think maybe it’s what she’s all about and I seriously don’t know any of it.
ISH: Have you ever encountered an actual woman in your personal life?
You know, not one made of pixels or a relentless capitalist work ethic.
JAKE: I’ve had hundreds of women – that’s the problem –
ISH: In the cultural niche you inhabit, I presumed it would be some achievement.
JAKE: – I need to understand why none of my regular game is working on this girl.
ISH: ‘Game’?
Beat.
Oh my god.
[She points at him] Guy DeWitt!
GUY FUCKING DE WITT.
JAKE freezes.
ISH: This ‘game’ shit – this Pickup Artist crap – this is DeWitt – Did he send you here?
Not content with taking everything I’ve got he’s sent an envoy for a final obliteration!
JAKE: No! No –
ISH: Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about – game, routines – the stupid backhanded compliments thing – What’s it called? WHAT IS IT CALLED?
JAKE: ‘Negging’ – !
ISH: I’ll neg you, you little bastard – DENYSE!
JAKE: Wait! Please!
ISH: DENYSE!
DENYSE’s head is through the door already.
DENYSE: DON’T YOU TOUCH HER!
JAKE: [Hands behind his head] I’m touching nobody!
ISH: WHAT DID HE SEND YOU TO DO TO ME?
JAKE: I wasn’t sent! My name’s Jake Newhouse! I’m just a management consultant who spent some time in the seduction community –
DENYSE: – I’ll get security.
JAKE: Yes – I’ve done the courses – and the tapes and seminars and coursework weekend intensives – everything they tell you – and I’m good – I’m really good at it, I’m a seduction machine – but I’ve met this girl and I want help – feminist help – because I think I’ve gotta learn to be something else.
Silence.
JAKE: I don’t want to be this pathetic!
DENYSE thinks this whole situation is pathetic.
So does ISH.
ISH waves DENYSE away.
DENYSE leaves and ISH waits.
ISH: At the risk of devaluing your investment in ‘weekend intensives’, Jake – people either like each other or they don’t. Everything else is bullshit.
JAKE: Help me – get – just one date – with her.
ISH: Shouldn’t what this girl wants be the more major part of this conversation?
JAKE: You don’t understand. I can’t read her. I can’t see a single thing that she’s thinking.
ISH: Have you tried ‘asking’?
ANNE sweeps into the library, with her gloves and her old, dusty books. ISH will watch this whole scene.
ANNE slightly trips as she walks in – but, this time, she catches herself.
JAKE: [To ANNE] Hey there. Hey, Anne. Hey.
ANNE: How did you know my name?
JAKE: Your namebadge. You remember – I was here the other day and – your – badge – yeah –
ANNE: Is there something I can help you with?
JAKE: I wanted to apologise for that crack I made the other day. About you being European.
ANNE: I am European.
Stops, thinks.
I can’t remember the ‘crack’.
JAKE: I said that European girls were frosty bitches, and you – you made a face like that, really –
Beat.
You must speak a lot of languages. At least two, right? I travelled round South America for a year, I got pretty good at Spanish but I went into a Spanish ice-creamery the other day and I thought I’d try it out and I asked for a coño meaning a ‘small cone’ and the guy behind the counter gave me this look and it was pretty funny if you know Spanish. [Beat] Do you believe in palmistry?
ANNE: It doesn’t sound very funny for the man behind the counter.
JAKE: You know Spanish?
ANNE: If someone walked into my ice-cream shop and asked for a ‘tight vagina’, I’d just point back at the customer’s head.
JAKE: Yeah, he might have done something like that. [Beat] You know, I see you wearing those gloves all the time and I started wondering if you had secretly huge, hairy hands.
ANNE: Is this you coming into my ice-cream shop and asking for a tight vagina?
JAKE: Is there one on offer?
ANNE points at his head.
JAKE: I walked straight into that one –
ANNE: Yes. Straight into my huge, hairy hand.
JAKE: Hey, that’s okay – because I happen to know a little palmistry –
ISH interrupts from the sidelines.
ISH: [To JAKE] – Whoah – Whoah – Is this your actual routine or more of a loosely interpretative reconstruction?
JAKE: It’s supposed to be my usual routine –
ISH: Palmistry? Are you trying to pick up chicks in 1970? What do you do next – ask if she wants to play with your mood ring?
JAKE: Palmistry is a killer move!
ISH: ‘Maybe you could come back to my place and fondle some fondue forks.’ ‘We can watch Starsky and Hutch on a colour TV, thank god someone just invented my y-fronts.’
Beat.
ANNE: [To the ISH/JAKE reality] Do I need to remain in this scene?
ISH: No, honey – you don’t belong in this scene at all, you’re far too young.
JAKE: [To ANNE] Wait a second – [to ISH] I’m telling you – chicks respond to this –
ISH: Chicks who haven’t left a panel van in forty years.
JAKE: Very few of them were in panel vans!
ISH: And how did Unattainable Northern European Librarian Ice Princess respond?
JAKE: Uh –
ANNE: Do you know the history of this building?
For thousands of years, ancient peoples told one another stories about themselves and their world. Then literacy spread, and demand grew to create places of learning and the study of books. Enthusiastic citizens created civic literary associations to promote the diffusion of knowledge, and cities dedicated their resources to build extraordinary repositories for their archives of thought and human experience.
This, sir, is a library.
It is has never been a fortuneteller’s tent, a funfair or a carnival for amateur charlatans. I will not let you turn it into a nightclub, either.
So pick up a book – or get out.
ANNE leaves.
ISH: Wow.
Beat.
I really like her.
JAKE: Yeah. Get in line.
ISH: How much did you spend on instructional tapes to fail this badly?
No, seriously – do you count up the thousands of dollars you paid for all these ‘Sex Webinars for the Mondo Fuckwit’ or ‘The Dickhead’s Guide to Fingering’ courses you’ve done and think, ‘hey, I could’ve bought an Audi’? Then you’d at least enjoy some air-conditioned German comfort before you die alone.
JAKE: This is why I need your help.
ISH: Jake, I’m not going to help. I’ll get some popcorn and watch, but I’m not going to help.
JAKE: I’ll pay.
ISH: For what? I’m not a vending machine fairy godmother – you can’t just put in some money and receive a fucking miracle. She – doesn’t – like – you.
JAKE: You can make me likeable.
ISH: He said, to a feminist who writes about computer games, literally the most hated creature on the earth. Ha ha ha.
Beat.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
Beat.
You’ve totally never had even one casual death-threat, have you?
JAKE: I’ve seen a bit of stupid shitposting on the internet –
ISH: Yeah. That’s what I thought.
JAKE: Ok, so think of it as a kind of deprogramming where you overwrite all the Guy DeWitt code with Ish Madigan.
ISH: Have you ever tried being Jake Newhouse and respecting the consequences?
JAKE: No.
ISH: Christ – you don’t know anything about this woman. Maybe it’s not your slightly creepy personality that’s the problem. Maybe she thinks you’ve got a big, moony face.
JAKE: Women aren’t that superficial.
ISH: Oh, Brother – !
JAKE: Here – there’s a thousand dollars, cash, in my wallet. Down payment. All you have to do is get her to agree to one date with me.
ISH: Asking a feminist to assist overriding another woman’s consent indicates something of a lack of grasp.
JAKE: Hey, I can be a bag of dicks but I’m not a fucking sackful – I want her to like me, not have me arrested.
Think of it this way; you help me deprogramme my dickness and if, as a result, she just so happens to go out on one date with me, I’ll pay you to come help me celebrate that there’s now one less dick in the world.
ISH: Tempting, but no.
JAKE: I’ll pay you fifty thousand dollars.
ISH: Now I know this is a Guy DeWitt prank. Get the fuck out.
JAKE: A thousand now, a thousand whenever we meet up, balance if she dates me.
ISH: – Out –
JAKE: Come on – you’re living in your damn office –
ISH: – Do you want me to get Denyse again?
JAKE: I know you’ve got no income. I know you payed DeWitt out – every cent you had – so he wouldn’t take you to court.
ISH: And from that truly character-building experience, I learned that I don’t need money, I don’t want money and I certainly don’t want money from someone trying to fuck a perfectly innocent librarian by pretending he’s some kind of hand psychic –
JAKE: Your thesis is due soon, right? But you’ve got no job, you can’t service any debts, and I reckon you’ve already sold everything you have.
ISH: What do you know?
JAKE: We were close.
Me – and DeWitt.
ISH: I was informed by a team of very sharply dressed lawyers that ‘DeWitt’ was but a corporate entity with a registered trademark.
JAKE: The guy behind DeWitt. We were once very close.
ISH: So why aren’t you asking for help from the internet’s grossest dating guru?
JAKE: The age of The Game is over. None of the secrets to Pickup are secrets anymore.
Women are catching on.
And none of us left know what to do.
JAKE takes the thousand in cash out of his wallet, as well as a business card, and he puts it somewhere.
ISH: Please – you can pick up your rubbish. The answer’s still no.
JAKE: No or yes, I’m leaving this here – / shut up – I’m paying you for confidentiality.
ISH: / No, you aren’t –
As he leaves.
Jake –
He stops.
Why me for this Pussy Conquest Certain Death Mission?
I don’t even write about dating – I write about whether Crash bloody Bandicoot affirms the masculine id.
JAKE: You’re a – you know – feminist and –
The stuff I read about you – about the settlement with DeWitt – there was lot of it on the internet. I even read your blog –
ISH: … Before I ‘agreed’ to take it down.
JAKE: I probably know more about you than any woman I’ve met in ten years.
Beat.
ISH: That’s actually creepy.
Like, how spiders made of children’s fingers are creepy.
JAKE: You seemed like someone who needed the money, and that I could trust.
Beat.
Thanks for hearing me out.
And he walks out of the room.
She processes.
She wonders whether something bad will happen if she touches the money.
She’s half-terrified of it.
She can’t bring herself to touch it.
She tears a carrot from her box and eats it furiously.
She has barely finished one carrot when she shoves another in her mouth.
DENYSE comes in.
DENYSE: What the fuck?
ISH: Don’t judge me –
DENYSE: Are you panic-eating a carrot?!
What’s this pile of money doing here?!
Have you done a terrible thing?
TELL ME WHAT HORRIBLE THING YOU MAY HAVE DONE.
She picks up the money, goes through it. She finds a business card.
ISH: He wants to employ me as a dating coach to help him fuck some city librarian.
