Friday, February 8, 2008
More Pretty Good Writing
Love Letters
ANDY
I'm writing because when I telephoned, you just hung up on me. One thing about letters: you can't hang up on them.
MELISSA
You can tear up letters, though. Enclosed are the pieces. Send them to Angela Atkinson at Sarah Lawrence.
ANDY
What the hell is the matter?
MELISSA
I hear you're now writing long letters twice a week to Angela Atkinson, that's what's the matter.
ANDY
O.K. Here goes. The reason I'm writing Angie Atkinson is because I just don't think I can stop writing letters, particularly to girls. As I told you before, in some ways I feel most alive when I'm holed up in some corner, writing things down. I pick up a pen, and almost immediately everything seems to take shape around me. I love to write. I love writing my parents. because then I become the ideal son. I love writing essays for English, because then I am for a short while a true scholar. I love writing letters to the newspaper, notes to my friends, Christmas cards, anything where I have to put down words. I love writing you. You most of all. I always have. I feel like a true lover when I'm writing you. This letter, which I'm writing with my own hand, with my own pen, in my own penmanship; comes from me and no one else, and is a present of myself to you. It's not typewritten, though I've learned how to type. There's no copy of it, though I suppose I could use a carbon. And it's not a telephone call, which is dead as soon as it is over. No, this is just me, me the way I write, the way my writing is, the way I want to be to you, giving myself to you across a distance, not keeping or retaining any part of it for myself, giving this piece of myself to you totally, and you can tear me up and throw me out, or keep me, and read me today, tomorrow, any time you want until you die.
MELISSA
Oh boy, Andy! Love, Melissa.
ANDY
No, I meant what 1 wrote in my last letter. I've thought about it. I've thought about all those dumb things which were done to us when we were young. We had absent parents, slapping nurses, stupid rules, obsolete schooling, empty rituals, hopelessly confusing sexual customs --?. oh my God, when I think about it now, it's almost unbelievable, it's a fantasy, it's like back in the Oz books, the way we grew up. But they gave us an out in the Land of Oz. They made us write. They didn?t make us write particularly well. And they didn't always give us important things to write about. But they did make us sit down, and organize our thoughts, and convey those thoughts on paper as clearly as we could to another person. Thank God for that. That saved us. Or at least saved me. So I have to keep writing letters. If I can't write them to you, I have to write them to someone else. I don't think I could ever stop writing completely. Now can I come up and see you next weekend, or better yet won't you please escape from that suburban Sing-Sing and come down here and see me? I wrote my way into this problem, and goddamn it, I'm writing my way out. I'll make another reservation at the Hotel Duncan and I promise I'll put down my pen and give you a better time.
MELISSA
Dear Andy: Guess what? Right while I was in the middle of reading your letter, Jack Duffield telephoned from Amherst and asked me for a weekend up there. So I said yes before I got to where you asked me. Sorry, sweetie, but it looks like the telephone wins in the end.
ANDY
Somehow I don't think this is the end. It could be, but I don't really think it is. At least I hope it isn't. Love, Andy. -
END OF PART ONE.
(The event works best if everyone takes a short break at this point.)
28
Love Letters, by A. R. Gurney, performed by Bruce Abel March 30, 31, April 1, 2006 at Glendale Lyceum, Cincinnati, Ohio.
www.lawyers.com/abellaw
