I’m Not The Only One

Separated at the 38th This somber, dramatic monologue was written for Adn, a Korean-American actress who was auditioning for an independent film about various Korean War survivors.

Good night, Miranda Another somber and dramatic monologue written for a male actor who was trying to get into soap operas. I didn’t ask who Miranda was.

To A Girl I Had Fucked But Hadn’t Fucked Me This depressing little monologue was for an off-off-Broadway actor who auditioned for roles played by overweight, short bald men.

I Wish I Were A Bus Driver This thoughtful and quirky monologue was for a Jewish actor in his 40s.

Separated at the 38th

By Daniel Cuevas

Hi, my name is Adn. It means “beautiful” in Korean. I came to New York when I was ten. I didn’t know the language, and the words all looked funny to me. I didn’t have too much trouble adjusting to the food. I’d eaten Big Macs and hot dogs in Seoul the last two weeks before coming to the U.S.

My parents owned and worked on a farm and five acres of farmland out in Chung-Nam Province. When we sold the farm to the bank to pay for the big trip we stayed with friends in the capitol. The flight from Seoul to New York was so long that I thought the airplane was our new home. We finally arrived in JFK around six a.m. As the plane landed the sun was rising and my new home was just waking up.

We had family waiting for us at the airport and they drove us – my father, mother, and my brother Jong – to their apartment in Flushing. I learned English pretty quick once I started school. It’s easy to learn English when you’re surrounded by teachers and friends who speak it well. My parents, however didn’t learn English well. Fourteen years later, they still need me or Jong to interpret when they go to the hospital or anywhere where no one speaks Korean. It’s hard to learn English when you work twelve hours a day alongside people who speak as little English as you do.

We haven’t gone back to South Korea because my family has been saving to buy a house. I don’t remember much about it, mostly because I was very young when I lived there. My grandmother has visited us twice. Her family lived right on the north/south border before the war, when it was just Old Chosun. After the war, her two sisters and their children were separated from her, swallowed by the big red monster. Since the war, the North and South Korean governments haven’t allowed much communication or travel between the two countries, so we know nothing of our relatives in the north. My grandmother cries when she thinks of them because she suspects they are all dead, either killed by starvation, a flood or the by the Communist government. For all we know, she is right. I cry too sometimes when I think of how well I live in comparison to my long-lost relatives in the north. You don’t have to be Korean to understand how I feel. You just have to be human.

North and South Korea are like a person cut in half, right through the middle. South Korea is only one eye, one arm, one leg, half a mouth, half a heart, and half a face, distorted and scarred by the war. I have more relatives in the north; people I probably will never meet. The war was like an attack and the big red monster just stomped on Chosun, swallowing half the people. Some people blame the Red for what happened. Others blame the Red, White and Blue. Searching for a scapegoat won’t solve the problem. It won’t bring the two halves back together. It won’t reunite my family, my whole family.

I hear the president of South Korea is visiting the president of North Korea. Maybe if they talk peacefully, things will change. Maybe the big red monster will release from its belly all my long-lost cousins, so that I can contact or even meet them. Or just know that they’re safe. Hey, it happened to Germany. Maybe, if something comes out of these peace talks between the two nations, Chosun will be whole once more. With two legs to stand on. Two eyes to see towards the future. One proud, beating heart. And one whole beautiful face for the world to see.

* * *

Good night, Miranda

By Daniel Cuevas

(Leaning over a hospital bed)
I got bad news for you, Miranda. This is not easy to say. I’ve made a decision. I can’t go on like this. I can’t stand to see you stay like this, nor can I afford to keep you alive. The night you were hit by that drunk driver, I remember it like it was yesterday. You had slipped into the coma. I was angry and afraid and confused all at the same time. At the time we’d only been married five years, and you were carrying Michelle inside you. Remember, honey? (stroking hair) We had tried so many times to conceive and finally we did. God, I was so happy. For the first time in my life I felt complete. I had a beautiful wife and a baby girl on the way. (Fists clenched) But when they called me from the emergency room that you had been hit by a car and had lost the baby, I was devastated. My insurance covered your life support for the first three years, and I was determined to use the remainder of the money we saved up for the baby to keep your heart beating. I had already lost one precious girl; didn’t want to lose the other. I always tried to raise money to pay for the medical bills, even sacrificing a lot of things, like moving back home with my parents. I love you so much, Miranda.

Oh, hell, I’m beating around the bush. (Sighs) What I came to tell you, baby, is that I can’t pay these hospital bills anymore. I know that any minute you could sit up and come right out of that coma. The night you were hit, I prayed that you might come out of the coma the next day or the next week. But that was ten years ago, Miranda. I can’t stand to see you like this. Every night after work I come here and spend time with you, but I’m not even sure if you know I’m here. You’ve shown no vital signs other than a heart beat. You used to be so active. Now, you eat through one tube and shit through another. The driver who hit you is behind bars, but he wasn’t the only one to receive a life sentence. I can’t sit here any more and watch you, year after year, lying in this bed. Ten birthday parties I’ve thrown for you inside this hospital room. And all the times I’ve held your lifeless hand in mine and sobbed, more times than I care to remember.

I think this is what you’d want me to do, honey. I can’t live like a child in my parent’s home and live like a beggar to pay for you to remain a vegetable. I got all the legal stuff done, and when I leave you tonight, I’ll give the order for the doctors to come in and turn off the life support. Oh, Miranda, when I think of what kind of life we could’ve had, what little Michelle would have been like. (Caressing her face) At least I was able to spend five years married to you before this whole tragedy came about. As hard as it is, I gotta pick up the pieces of my life and move on. All that remains of you are photos, home videos, and this motionless body which the doctors insist is living. But I don’t call this living and neither would you. Please don’t hate me for doing this. In my heart, I know it’s the only way.

I guess this is where I say goodbye, Miranda. I love you. I’m happier to have spent these past ten years with you in a coma than with anyone else living. You’ll always be in my heart, and only in Heaven will we truly be together again. (kisses her on the forehead)
Good night, Miranda. (exits room)

To A Girl I Had Fucked But Hadn’t Fucked Me

By Daniel Cuevas

Five-thirty in the morning, the rising sun greets the city. I peer out your window. Six stories below, I watch the streets crowd with blue-collar workers scurrying about. They work hard in their newsstands, coffee shops and food carts, all waiting in hungry anticipation for the white-collar workers who will arrive later in the morning. These entrepreneurs, mostly immigrants, starve for their patrons’ dollars and savoring the flavor at the end of the day. Some cash is sent to their past lives back in their homeland, wherever that may be. Where their families and old friends probably live worse than they do.

It’s all such an interesting little scene, but I soon turn my head back to you. The sight of you brings a bittersweet taste to my heart. You lie there, your beautiful black hair strewn onto your pillow. Your beautiful body twisted in a strange yet exotic position entangled in the bed sheets. I try to smile and think about last night’s events and the terrific sex we had, but without success because the truth holds too strong a presence in my mind.

When you eventually wake up, you won’t remember a thing, but will most likely piece together last night’s events from the evidence in your room and on your bed. We met last night in the bar at the Knitting Factory. The in-house band played like it was their last day on earth. The large smoky room was filled with small talk, friendly conversation and jazz-filled sound waves emerging from the stage. I’d already had a few drinks when I sat down on the stool next to yours, building up enough courage to offer to buy you a drink.

Apparently, you had already beat me to the punch, as you turned to me and your breath told tales of a night of heavy drinking. I didn’t feel right taking advantage of an intoxicated woman, so I smiled and stood up to find a phone to call you a cab. But you grabbed my thigh, begging me to stay. I’m a gentleman and only came here to take advantage of the inexpensive live jazz and not of drunken women.

But your thin fingers, clutching onto my leg brought out from within a man I hardly knew existed. The sudden bulge in my pants announced to you my arousal. I sat back down as your fingers ran through what little hair I have left. Parts of my body tingled with excitement as you told me I was the handsomest man you’d ever seen. And then we kissed. Your lips sent me to worlds I’d never known and your forceful tongue dominated mine.

You begged me to drive you home, being too drunk to even get your key into the car lock. I came here by subway, so I agreed to get you home safely. As I sped up the FDR, you leaned over and down to my lap. I did nothing to stop you from unzipping my pants and engulfing my manhood. I held the wheel at ten and two as you held my cock from twelve to twelve. By the time we reached the Upper West Side, you had licked away the result.

I carried you out of the car and up to your sixth floor apartment. The gentleman in me was ready to leave you in your apartment and go home. But you kissed me again, knocking out the jackal once more. We fucked everywhere, on your kitchen table, on your sofa, in the shower and finally on your bed. You did things to me none of my ex-girlfriend would’ve agreed to do. You slurred alcohol-induced compliments as I took you from behind. Your curvy body convulsed as you climaxed. It had been so long since I’d had sex I almost forgot what to do. Your muscle from within gripped me as the touch of your fingers drove me wild.

Throughout the whole act you repeatedly slurred how gorgeous I was. But after you fell asleep, my fully naked body passed by your full-length mirror. I gasped as reality showed me the man who stood before me. Sagging breasts, round midsection, flabby thighs, and folds in my neck. A big nose, a fat face and an enormous bald spot. What exactly was so beautiful about me?

I stood at that mirror and wept a little. The salty tears rode down my chubby cheeks before plummeting to the floor. I realized too late that if you weren’t so drunk, you’d never have given me a second look. Being who I am, looking like I look, sounding like I sound, I could never have had a chance with you sober. Drunken stupid is the only way an unsightly excuse for a man such as myself could have ever had a chance with a woman as gorgeous as yourself. If I had sat next to you and spoken to you before you had drank so much, you’d probably laugh at the thought of talking to me, get off your stool and approach someone better looking. Or with more money, or more education, or better social status.

So here I sit at the edge of your bed, surveying you in your slumber. Perhaps in your drunken stupor, you thought I was a handsome, debonair studly man. And in my lust-driven stupor, I actually thought I was attractive and wanted by a woman like you. I retrieve my clothes and get dressed as you remain asleep, alcohol still present on your breath. I take one last glimpse into that brutally honest sheet of glass as I tie my shoes.

I take one final look at you as I pull on my jacket. I leave before you wake up. The only thing that will make you feel worse than the hangover you’re going to have is knowing you gave your beautiful body to someone like me. Perhaps when you piece together what happened the night before, you’ll visualize the handsome stud you didn’t have passionate sex with instead of the ugly man you did have sex with.

Your apartment door moves with a low-sounding creak as I close it behind me.

I Wish I Were A Bus Driver

By Daniel Cuevas

I wish I were a bus driver, sometimes, anyway. Nobody asks a bus driver stupid questions or makes crude assumptions about his job. I studied for years to get my Ph.D., so I could be a psychologist and help people with their problems. Instead, everyone asks me the most asinine questions.

People see my sign, Dr. Simon Horowitz, Psychiatrist outside my small practice in Flushing and automatically think I’m a “Doc, I broke my leg stitch it up for me” kind of doctor. When they find out what kind of doctor I am they ask me if I can recommend any “real doctors”. What the hell am I, a fake doctor? I understand I can’t fix broken bones or perform surgery, but don’t leave me out of the elitist circle of medical professionals, to which I am proud to belong. I can, however, fix human psyches and perform analyses, but that obviously means nothing to most people.

The sign originally displayed my name only. But people kept bombarding my secretary with tales of broken legs, sprained ankles, and other physical ailments. They would become furious upon discovering my true field of medicine and march right out. So, to save further confusion, I had a new sign made with the title next to my name.

I believe the part about being a psychiatrist that disgusts me the most is in social situations, when people discover what I do and then try to get free advice out of me. When I was fresh out of grad school complete strangers would talk to me and eventually tell me about their sibling rivalries or their foot fetishes or their relationships with their mothers and I would sit there and give free advice. A woman once dated me three times so she could tell me about her childhood. I wonder now what she would’ve done for a serious psychoanalysis.

Sometimes I wish I had picked a different career, one where people, upon hearing the title would know what I did and have no misconceptions or prejudices about what I did for a living. Like a bus driver. No one gets into a bus and gets mad when they thought they were boarding a taxi. Nobody hears that you have a license to operate a bus and say, “Do you know anyone who operates a real vehicle?%E

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