Self-proclaimed Talented Playwright Verbalizes Further False Beliefs

After exiting The Lieutenant of Inishmore with an unsubstantiated-claimed playwright, he promptly tells me he's upset they 'stole' his torture scene from the play he's been working on, involving one actor hanging upside down from a rope.

"You do know this play is a few years old, right?"
"Still."
"So what does the scene accomplish in your play? Just devise another that achieves the same thing."
"But it HAS to be this way. It's when the ice demon [internal scream #1] is being tortured by the goddess named Betty." He pauses to wait for what he's sure will bring at least a look of 'Oh stop! You are TOO clever,' or the action of 'I must, I repeat MUST, bed thee.' Fortunately, I do not mind disappointing when faulty expectations are in play (no pun intended).
"There's an ice demon?"
"You'd like it. You like my writing." [Verbalized False Belief #1]
"Um, okay, so the fact remains - there's no reason it cannot be redone. Maybe it will even be better." Read as: please internalize the look of disgust on my face at the sheer, glaring stupidity you've just described. Save yourself. There may still be time.
"But they have to be like this. They wind up 69ing." [internal scream #2; physical wretching held in]
"That is just CHEAP* and BAD."
"No, no. Trust me, you'd like it. You like my writing." [Verbalized False Belief #1, again]
Does he think he's a Jedi Master? [He may.] Does repetition make it more true? Has he had earlier success in this limp brainwashing technique? "No. Really. That is just CHEAP ___ and ___ BAD. And I haven't seen anything near enough of your writing to formulate any sort of opinion of it, but this doesn't, I have to say, bode well."

More sad face. He clearly overestimates both the power of his Sad Face and my general compassion for annoying pseudo-artists. Someone with no more social intelligence than him couldn't possibly write plays well. He appears to operate entirely outside obvious social conventions. I imagine he'd write plays like this:

AN IMAGINARY SCENE FROM THE CHEAP-MOVE PLAYWRIGHT'S COMPLETE WORKS
[Cast: one female, one male; same early-adult age.]

Scene -
She reads his letter, wherein he expresses devotion in the form of whining. At Stage Left, he stands, self-assured and proud. She reads: 'I can take a hint, but the fact that you don't answer my calls or emails only endears you to me. I know what you mean. I know this is your way of saying I need to try harder. Well, I am and will.'

S: He is so bright and understands me so well. Others would've thought I was disinterested. Nay, put off and leary even. Instead, he has seen through my silly games, and won my heart.

H: I call to you. I call again. Do not answer. I don't want you to.

S: I cannot answer. I live to hear his voicemails.

H, leaving voicemail: I don't know where you are or what you're doing. I don't know if we are still going out. I feel sometimes like the fact the only contact we've had was when I forced you to hold my hand, which is the only contact we have had, means you don't want to touch me. But someday I hope to force you to do more. Please love me. I am all alone. No one cares for me, and when you wrote to me to say that there has to BE something in order for it to end, well, it made me cry a little inside. When you put quotation marks around the word relationship and then compared ours to not an aborted or miscarried one, but one that was never conceived, it made me want to take you out and make sad faces at you all night. You need to see how sad I can be. It makes me feel so badly to think of this, that I might repulse you or not be enough 'something' for you, though I don't know what. [Click.]

[Immediately redials.]

S: Hello? Oh, it's you again.
H: Yes, I just left you a really sad message.
S: Okay. Really? Wait, you're serious? [Throws phone onto couch, then herself onto the phone. She cries.]
H, muffled: Are you okay? I love you. Yes, two dates, but you will be my wife. I like your last name hyphenated with mine. [Click.][To audience: I will seduce her with sadness. Oh. I. Will.]

She has turned on the speakerphone and listens to his message. The whining tone grates across the stage. She calls him back, telling him to just keep calling her, over and over again. She does not tell him she's turned her phone to vibrate. Again, she throws the phone onto the couch and mounts it. It rings and vibrates and she climaxes.

Our playwright sits in the audience and finds himself satisfied, assured of his own brilliance. It is remarkable to him that such obviousness as merely recounting reality can actually gain him such applause.

If only life could be so clear.


(*Words appearing after this point in dialogue were said with eyes widened to point of bulging, for the sake of emphasis. The head jutted forward a bit at their pronouncement. Statements were closed with the circular out-and-down hand gestures. Emotions ran high, where 'emotions' are singular and named 'disgust.')