Monologues
DANNY - from Water, Water
***Appears in The Best Men's Stage Monologues 2023
by William A. Smith
What? Does it piss me off? What do you think? I’ve had enough of your slurs, your digs at me, my wife, my life, and constantly telling me what to do and how to do it. To you, all Mexicans are “spics”, all Asians are “chinks” and, when you’re in an especially magnanimous mood, African-Americans get to be “colored people.” I have friends that fit in all of your pigeon holes and they don’t deserve to be talked about that way. Jenny doesn’t deserve to be talked about that way. No one does. Growing up, you and mom sent me to church where they taught me to love, to be kind, to be generous, and to extend that to all people, like Jesus did.
Well, I guess I am as dumb as you think I am because I bought that line of bullshit. I believed it and actually tried to practice it. Can you imagine that? How stupid must I have been? I fell for it even though Monday through Saturday you made it pretty clear that it was all a cover. I guess, like you’ve always said, I was naïve or slow or both because during the week I would lie awake at night and think “Oh, he doesn’t mean those words,” knowing that you did. But you never changed. …Don’t say a word, Dad, I’m not through. As a kid my friends wouldn’t come to my house because my Dad called Bobby “fat boy”. They wouldn’t come because Danny’s dad, called Leonard a “wetback” and you called Phillip “Charlie Chan”. You intimidated them and verbally abused them.
You did it to me and mom too but we were used to it. For the first seven or eight years of my life I wasn’t sure whether my name was “dumbass” or “idiot” and don’t think I didn’t know you were calling me “queer” for that couple of years when your name for me was “sugar britches”. I would tell myself that you must be tired, had a long day, or weren’t feeling well because those were the things Mom would tell me when she heard you calling me names. The truth was that you climbed in that Johnny Walker bottle when you came home from work and stayed there as long and as often as you could. So, when you finally quit drinking, Mom and I had reason to believe things would get better. We were wrong. Even without alcohol the abuse continued and as a kid I thought it was all my fault. After all, that’s what you told me, right? You told me and Mom every little thing we did was wrong or just plain stupid. Well, I learned differently. It took several years and a lot of therapy but I finally understood that the problem wasn’t me or Mom. The problem wasn’t stress or hard days at work. The problem, all along, wasn’t that you were a drunk, the problem… was that you were not a good person. Twenty years later not much has changed. You are still the same belligerant, abusive, racist jerk. Am I pissed? You bet I am. Will I lose another night’s sleep over your vile behavior? No way. I’ve had enough.
© 2019 William A. Smith, All rights reserved
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