The Bar

(A bar.  BRIAN and RONALD are people-watching, or attempting to.)

BRIAN:  I told you nobody would be here.

RONALD:  It was a shot.

BRIAN:  In the dark.

RONALD:  Implied, Brian, implied.  Darkness is implied.

BRIAN:  We should have gone to Boston.  I bet they’re having parties in Boston.

RONALD:  That’s an odd assumption to make.

BRIAN:  The world is going to end.  It’s a Saturday night.  And I’m at a bar—IN PROVIDENCE.  I’ll never forgive you for this.

RONALD:  Your goal for the end of the world should not be to get laid.  It should be to spend time with the people you love.

BRIAN:  What do you call this?

RONALD:  I call it another Saturday night of you bitching and complaining and me trying to make the best of the fact that we’re at the same bar, doing the same thing—

BRIAN:  This is my life.  Oh my God, this is my life.

RONALD:  It’s my life too.

BRIAN:  But you have other stuff.  You have Tristan.  You’re immune to being depressed by bars.  Depressing, dead bars don’t phase you anymore because you know who you’re going home to.  None of this fazes you anymore.

RONALD:  It’s not because I’m in a relationship.  It’s because I’ve shifted my priorities.

BRIAN:  You’ve shifted your priorities because your needs have changed.  It’s supply and demand.

RONALD:  I’m not a general store, Brian.  My priorities shifted before I even met Tristan.  I just sort of looked at all this and said ‘It’s not important’ and it wasn’t, you know?

(BRIAN laughs to himself.)

What?

BRIAN:  Nothing.

RONALD:  No, what?

BRIAN:  I was there when you met Tristan.

RONALD:  Right.  Yeah.  You were.

BRIAN:  Yeah.

RONALD:  So you remember—we were at a bar—

BRIAN:  Right, at a bar.

RONALD:  Right.  And I wasn’t really getting all that involved in what was going on at the bar.  I was just enjoying your company, and then Tristan walked over, and I think he sort of sensed that, you know, that apathy in me.  That I didn’t care if I really met someone or not, and I think he was drawn to that.  I really do.  People are turned off by desperation, you know?  I think my being kind of blasé about the whole thing helped.

BRIAN:  It also helped that I turned him down.

(A moment.)

RONALD:  What?

BRIAN:  In line to the bathroom.  He hit on me.  I shot him down.  Then he walked over to you.  So…

RONALD:  He never mentioned that.

BRIAN:  Why would he mention it?  It’s not important.

RONALD:  So why did you just mention it?

BRIAN:  I mentioned it to, you know, point out that there were other mitigating factors in you two meeting aside from just—Oh look at that one, lone guy in the bar not caring about anything.  Let me go over and talk to HIM.  HIM specifically, only HIM.  That’s not how it happened.

RONALD:  Why didn’t you say anything at the time?

BRIAN:  I didn’t want to be a jerk.  I could tell you liked him.  I didn’t want to, you know, pop your balloon, so to speak.

RONALD:  So you’re popping it now?

BRIAN:  Well, now it doesn’t matter.  Now it’s a year later.  Who cares?

RONALD:  I care.

BRIAN:  Why do you care?  You don’t care about anything.  You’re apathetic.

RONALD:  You’re telling me that the origins of my relationship are built on a lie and you think I wouldn’t care about that?

BRIAN:  They’re not built on a lie.  There’s just a—I don’t know—a prequel to the whole thing that you weren’t aware of.  That’s all.

RONALD:  A prequel?  My relationship has a prequel?  Prequels suck, Brian.  They always suck.  Star Wars—

BRIAN:  Fine, a prologue.  A prologue.

RONALD:  How could you not tell me this?

BRIAN:  Why does this make any sort of difference?

RONALD:  Are you telling me this because the world is ending and you want to be unburdened of something or is it just that you can’t stand the fact that I was going to die happy with someone and you were going to…

(A pause.)

BRIAN:  What?

(A short pause.)

What, Asshole?  Die alone?  Is that what I was going to do?

RONALD:  You knew what you were doing.  You know just how to hurt me.

BRIAN:  You mean it would hurt you to think the person you’re dating, who loves you, who has committed to you, could somehow be tarnished if, at some point before meeting you, he met me first and thought I was nice?  Or cute?

RONALD:  Stop.

BRIAN:  Didn’t you think I was cute when we first met?  And nice?  I mean, we’re friends, aren’t we?  At some point you must have decided you enjoy my company.

RONALD:  Don’t make this about when we met.

BRIAN:  You mean when we met and I thought you were great and you thought I was just funny and decent enough to be your friend but nothing else.  Screw you.

RONALD:  Don’t say ‘Screw me.’  Screw me.  You’ve ruined my relationship.

BRIAN:  By saying that—

RONALD:  By saying that maybe Tristan would have preferred you over me.  Yes.  YES.  I feel like—Oh my God, I’ll just be honest, why not be honest, the world is—YES.  The potential of my boyfriend liking you more than me, even before he and I met, somehow ruins the perfect image I have of our relationship.  Of us getting together.  I thought—I don’t know.  I thought it was all fated.  Now it just seems like he was some kind of pinball.  He went from you to me and—

BRIAN:  Ronald, listen, just forget it, okay?  Just forget it.

RONALD:  Well, I’ll never forget it now.

BRIAN:  Let me ask you something.  What if I’d slept with him?

(A moment.)

RONALD:  Don’t even joke about that.

BRIAN:  I didn’t.

RONALD:  Okay.

BRIAN:  But if I had—would it really bother you that much?  I mean, not if he cheated on you with me or anything, but if, before you and he had gotten together, he and I had…Would it really bother you that much?  I mean, not if we’d meant something to each other or had feelings for each other, but just, slept together, had a fling, would it really—

RONALD:  It happened, didn’t it?

(A pause.)

Did it happen?

(A moment.)

Maybe I…Maybe I’m being no better than some frat boy straight man by getting so…sexually territorial, but…I don’t think…I don’t think, and—I know it’s a small community, and a small state, and—but I don’t think it’s asking too much that I don’t want my best friend to have ever slept with my boyfriend.  The love of my…

(He can’t say the last word.)

And so then he ran into you at the bar that night—

BRIAN:  I blew him off.

(RONALD nods.)

You know, I…I kinda wanted to be the love of your life.  Even in a…friendly way.  I sort of…

(A moment.)

There’s nobody here.

RONALD:  We shouldn’t have come here.

BRIAN:  You’re going to wind up where you wind up, you know?  People are just drawn to certain places.  To certain other people.  To doing certain things, making certain mistakes.  You can’t help it.

RONALD:  I guess not.

BRIAN:  You try, but…you just can’t help it.

(They don’t speak.  Music plays.  They sit.  They don’t speak.  Music.)