SCENE D

The windowpane is grimy in the back room. He looks out, and sees nothing but a dusty greasy reflection of himself. He pulls his sleeve over his hand and wipes a circle away. The rain spits against the glass, and dribbles down.
He sees a woman with a red umbrella but the sideways spitting still gets her. He’s tempted to sing show tunes to her, but refrains himself. Instead, he hums them slowly to himself like a dirge.
He cracks open the window with great effort, and fog collects at the opening. He makes a smiley face (with no nose) with his left pinky. He admires it, and then smudges it out. He is sure that nothing good can come of smiley faces.

SCENE C

David is pacing slowly, deliberately around his apartment. Every once in a while he stoops down to examine a book. So far, today he has found three books stacked in the wrong piles. He moves them back to where they belong every time, and wonders each time how he could have made that mistake.

When David was younger, he used to go to libraries and bookstores and put the books just slightly out of order. He would switch Camus with Cather, Kant with King. David made mental notes of which authors and books they carried. He would submit anonymous requests for certain books each week in different handwritings. David checked up on the libraries and bookstores as often as he could, to see how long it would take them to fix their shelves or get new books. He went to four different bookstores and two libraries.
The libraries were both the same, the only people that seemed to work at them were older ladies whose children had finally gone off to college (or Los Angeles) and high school students. The selection of reading material was fine until David started looking for obscure novels, essays and authors. When he became frustrated at the lack of what he was looking for, he began his game.
Three of the stores were huge, corporate book-pounds. David always thought of really great books going there to die, be looked at, but ultimately, only the younger, trendier books would get homes at the end of the day. The store that he loved was a tiny store run by a peculiar old man that had messy grey hair. David would go there once a week and rearrange some of the books. Eventually the old man caught on to David. The man would follow him around the shop and put the books back immediately. After about a month or so of following David around, the old man offered him a job at his store. David accepted, and that was the end of his game.

David stops his pacing and decides that it’s time to go to bed. He thinks about how icy the sheets can get this time of year without someone else to help warm them. He moves his folded laundry off of his bed and puts it on top of his dresser. He takes off his shirt and belt and crawls under the covers. He shivers out of loneliness, fatigue, and cold. He closes his eyes and hopes to dream of nothing.

SCENE B

The bar is gloomy, there are a handful of people sitting at tables. Most of them are alone with their beers or double shots of bourbon. The bartender is disinterested, she wears a black sweater that has nervous holes in the sleeves, from her fingers picking at lint. Her eyeliner and mascara are smudged haphazardly, and her red lipstick bleeds into the skin around her mouth. She lights a cigarette and looks around the room.
There's a couple staring at each other, the bartender is sure that they're about to break-up. The girlfriend coughs. The girlfriend is looking away from the man across from her. He reaches for her hand, between their two drinks. He barely touches her, and she pulls her whole arm away and puts it safely into her lap, out of his reach. The man looks away at a neon sign advertising Budweiser, finishes the rest of his drink and the bartender puts out her cigarette.
It's a Monday night, and this is as full as the bar is going to get. The bartender expects everyone to get thoroughly drunk and play rock ballads and old Patsy Cline on the Jukebox. She expects no tips tonight, all of the crumpled dollar bills she would usually get will go towards more alcohol and sad music to make it easier for her patrons to cry into their beer.
There's a man that's about her father's age sitting with a pint of Guinness in a corner, reading in the dimness. He hasn't shaved for days- his grey stubble spreads over his chin and jaws up into his cheeks. He glances up from his book; before she can look away, he's made eye-contact with her. She busies herself. Cleaning glasses, the counter, anything so she won't have to hear his story. The old man closes his book and carries his beer to the bar. He sits on the stool nearest the window, reaches for a napkin and cleans off his glasses.
When the old man is sure of their cleanliness, he hooks the glasses behind both ears. He takes a slow sip from his beer. He watches the head slide slowly down the glass, creating elephant and monster shapes. When he is content with what he sees in the foam, he looks up and waits patiently for the bartender. She comes over to him.
"What can I get you pops?" she asks, as curtly as she can.
"What's your story, lady?" the old man replies.
"My story? You want to know my story?" The bartender stops and laughs. A full, deep belly laugh.
"Yeah, lady, I wanna know your story," says the old man.
"I don't have a story yet, pops. I'm here working on my story. This here, is my story. Ya know? I don't get a story yet pops." She lights a cigarette, and starts to walk away.
"Hey, lady... Everyone's got a story..." The old man says as he watches her walk away.
"You really want to know? Fine. Here's my story: I grew up in this shithole city; I went to school, high school anyway; I didn't get the grades for college. I work at this shithole bar that only alcoholics come to. I live in a shitty apartment, with shitty neighbors. And I don't care. I'm just biding my time until I can get the fuck out of here. And my name's not 'lady,' it's Dana."
"Well, nice to meet you Dana. I hope your story gets better," the old man says before he finishes his beer.

SCENE A

The sky is grey, with wisps of blue floating through it. The green skyline is all he can ask for on a day like this. He hopes for beautiful sunsets, and later, the smell of steak on the barbecue.
He sees the sunset through a screen door and a fog of smoke. He smells the barbecue later, when he steps barefoot onto his patio; the barbecued steak is not being made for him. He lights a Camel, though one is already burning in the ashtray inside. He inhales deeply, and exhales through his nose. He scratches his shoulder through his t-shirt and opens the screen door. He wanders through his too-crowded studio apartment, weaving around stacks of books, looking for his phone. He finds it between the T's and the U's.
"Hey mom. It's me, your son, David. Just calling to let you know I'm alive. Pass it on to--"
"No. I'm busy mom; I really don't--"
"Oh Jesus Christ! Fine! Put him on...” His voice gets louder and raspier as the conversation goes on. "No dad. I didn't apply for that job.” There is a pause while he takes a sharp inhale off of his cigarette. "Because that's not for me dad!” Another pause. "Because that's not who I am dad. That's not what I want to do! Why can't you understand that?"
He glares down at the phone, "Oh yeah? Well fuck you too!” The phone flies across the room; the mouthpiece pops off upon impact against the far wall. The earpiece cracks.
"Fuck," he mutters. He pulls the phone cord out of the jack in the wall.
Nothing happens. He expects a change. Nothing. It grows darker outside his window; though not too dark because the streetlamp is in his view.
Gnats and moths spend hours chasing the triangle of light up to the glass. They throw themselves full force into the covering. Sometimes they stick; sometimes they bounce further from their goal than they began. He notices how they persevere. He wants to scream, "Don't you know there's more to it than this?” But he can't.

Preface

" I stand up.I am very quiet. Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing more. I am so alone, and so without hope that I can confront them without fear. The life that has borne me through these years is still in my hands and my eyes. Whether I have subdued it, I know not. But so long as it is there it will seek its own way out, heedless of the will that is within me."- Erich Maria Remarque


I suppose I started off like anyone else, beating my head against walls, trying to dull out the noise of my masses. I guess I beat my head against alcohol, sleep, insomnia, sex. Anything to drown out the outside world. I still try to drwon out the world, I'm less dramatic about it these days- I turn up the volume on my stereo and read dilligently.
I wish that I could be a complete idiot. Then I might be content with everything in my life. Perhaps the goal in life is to be dumb, and some people are definitely already there, and I am not. This cannot possibly be fair.
It started the way most things start. I read more, thought more than everyone I'd ever known. I read everything I can get my hands on, I think deeply about everything I do. I know. I know. There's no point in my telling you this... these aren't even the important bits. You'll have to see for yourself.

Overall Project Proposal

Working Title: How I Learned to Stop Caring About Depth, and Love American Idol

One Sentence concept/logline/spine: A struggle of a person trying to find their natural place in the world, and realizing that they will never be able to fit in because of their analysis over everything.

A Compelling Two Paragraph Summary:
The protagonists and antagonists in this story are by any standards normal people, they have no psychic abilities, are no better or worse than anyone else. It is only the way in which they deal with the circumstances inflicted on them that differentiates them from other normal people.
The story is not about extraordinary events, but rather a string of abnormal events intruding upon their daily lives that creates a sense of other worldliness and surrealism alien to the previous life of the characters. These (unspecified) events cause a reevaluation of the previous subjective values of their existence, leading to a change in the very nature of the characters as people.