Content warning: crude language.
Coastal Design
CHARACTERS:
CHRISTOPHER mid–30s; he/him
PEDRO mid–30s; he/him
SETTING: a beach
TIME: early on a Sunday morning; the present
A beach in the early morning. Two beach chairs and an umbrella.
PEDRO sits in one of the chairs. CHRISTOPHER has just arrived, holding two mugs of coffee.
CHRISTOPHER
I can’t believe you’ve become an early riser.
PEDRO
Yeah, well, people can change.
CHRISTOPHER
And you’ve gotten so profound, too. Look–it, I brought you coffee.
PEDRO
I don’t drink it anymore. It screws with my sleep.
CHRISTOPHER
Really? I guess it’s true what they say: People can change. Mind if I join you?
PEDRO does not answer.
Not seeing a place to set down the extra mug, CHRISTOPHER
awkwardly lowers himself into the other chair while holding
both mugs.
CHRISTOPHER and PEDRO stare out at the sea.
CHRISTOPHER, cont.
“Oh Georgie, how I long for the old view.”
PEDRO
You’ve never been out here before.
CHRISTOPHER
Are you trying to break my heart? I was quoting a Sondheim musical. About an artist no less.
PEDRO
I don’t like musicals.
CHRISTOPHER
Okay, I know you’re mad at me, but there’s no call for blasphemy.
PEDRO [growing irritated]
Is there something I can do for you, Christopher? I came out here to be alone.
CHRISTOPHER
I am trying to stage a reconciliation scene. Don’t you want to hear my apology?
PEDRO
Now that it’s your last day here, you suddenly feel like being pleasant? You’ve been deliberately obnoxious all weekend. I didn’t invite you out here to ask rude questions the whole time, you know.
CHRISTOPHER
I know. You invited me out here to meet your new daddy. And I had to go and make everything tense.
PEDRO
His name is Frederick. And he’s the one you should be apologizing to. Why did you have to bring up his son?
CHRISTOPHER
I have no idea. I guess it was meant as satire?
PEDRO
Huh?
CHRISTOPHER
You know, like a humorous commentary on how Frederick was married to a woman and in the closet and a part of that world of conservative rich people for so long. And conservatives all think we’re such terrible dangers to children. Groomers and all that. But now, lo and behold, Frederick finally decides to come out of the closet at age 75. So it’s like, Fine, but wouldn’t his kind want to know how our lifestyle damaged the children?
PEDRO
That’s not what you said, though. You asked Frederick if he wondered whether he was the reason his son is in rehab.
CHRISTOPHER
Right. But I was speaking satirically. I’m explaining the subtext.
PEDRO
I don’t think it came across.
CHRISTOPHER
Evidently not.
PEDRO
And Frederick isn’t 75. He’s only 54. But that’s another thing you seem to have a problem with.
CHRISTOPHER
I don’t have a problem with Frederick’s age. But 54 is still old enough to have lived through some pretty major, pretty devastating events in the queer world, wouldn’t you say? And where was Frederick? Cowering in the closet, making obscene amounts of money, while the rest of us were out here fighting just to be treated like human beings —
PEDRO
I’m pretty sure you weren’t at Stonewall, either, Christopher. Seeing as how you were born like 20 years afterward. And in Alabama or wherever.
CHRISTOPHER
Arkansas. For the millionth time, I’m from Arkansas.
PEDRO
Wherever.
CHRISTOPHER
All these years you’ve been my alleged best friend, yet you still insist on pretending to mix up Alabama and Arkansas.
PEDRO
All I know is, you got the hell out as soon as you could. So it can’t be all that great.
CHRISTOPHER
Meanwhile, if anybody dares to forget whatever dot in the Caribbean your abuela left during the War of 1812, we never hear the end of it.
PEDRO
Is this colonial bullshit part of that apology you were talking about? Because so far I am not very impressed.
CHRISTOPHER
I am still warming up to the apology.
PEDRO
Well hurry up.
CHRISTOPHER
Fine. I’m sorry I called your new daddy – I mean Frederick. I’m sorry I made Frederick feel like a late–bloomer boomer groomer. Okay?
PEDRO
Is that it?
CHRISTOPHER
Please forgive me, Pedro. You know I have no tact. It’s an occupational hazard.
PEDRO
Oh please. Whenever you misbehave you try to blame it on being an actor. The way you talk you make actors sound like the most irritating people on earth.
CHRISTOPHER
And where’s the lie?
PEDRO
Not to mention that your acting doesn’t exactly —
He stops himself.
CHRISTOPHER
Doesn’t exactly what?
PEDRO
Never mind.
CHRISTOPHER
No, I want to hear this. Not to mention my acting doesn’t exactly what?
PEDRO
Doesn’t exactly qualify as your occupation. All right? You said your rudeness is an occupational hazard because you’re an actor, and I was going to say your acting doesn’t exactly qualify as your occupation. It doesn’t pay your bills, does it?
CHRISTOPHER
Boy oh boy, have you gotten materialistic.
PEDRO
You made me say it!
CHRISTOPHER
The way you pay your bills doesn’t define who you are, Pedro. You used to know that. And frankly, neither of us benefits from reducing ourselves to our résumés.
PEDRO
What is that supposed to mean? Are you saying I mooch off Frederick?
CHRISTOPHER
I’m saying here’s to the ladies who lunch.
He raises and clinks the coffee mugs together.
CHRISTOPHER, cont.
And don’t pretend you don’t know that’s from a Sondheim musical.
PEDRO
Not that I have to prove anything to you, Christopher, but I am a pretty well–regarded tablescape designer around here, you know.
CHRISTOPHER
Yes I know. Cover of ‘Centerpiece Monthly’ and everything. Or was it ‘Finger Bowl Digest’?
PEDRO
‘Coastal Design’ magazine. And it was a big accomplishment for me.
CHRISTOPHER
And I’m happy for you. Truly. But I mean . . . don’t you ever miss doing the sort of work you trained for?
CHRISTOPHER
That you sacrificed for? That you LIVED for in the days before Uncle Pennybags came along?
PEDRO
I still have a creative outlet.
CHRISTOPHER
So does my mother when she stocks up on appliques at Hobby Lobby. But you were an artist. You made art.
PEDRO
No, mostly I made minimum wage. And oat milk lattes.
CHRISTOPHER
So turn your back on coffee. But don’t forsake art!
PEDRO
When did this turn into a conversation about forsaking art? We were talking about you being an asshole.
CHRISTOPHER
It’s the same thing! Assholery is the prerogative of the artist. Do you even paint anymore?
PEDRO
Maybe I’m just not enough of an asshole.
CHRISTOPHER
Don’t sell yourself short. [beat] Do you know what my favorite painting of yours is?
PEDRO
Christopher . . .
CHRISTOPHER
It’s the one of your aunt Carmen where she’s wearing her bus–driver’s uniform and also one of those scary masks from that festival. What do you call those masks again?
PEDRO
I don’t even know what you’re –
CHRISTOPHER
Yes you do.
PEDRO
It’s a vejigante mask, all right?
CHRISTOPHER
That’s the one!
PEDRO
And you’re thinking of the Festival de Santiago Apóstol.
CHRISTOPHER
It’s a great painting. The juxtaposition and everything?
PEDRO
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
CHRISTOPHER
Folklore and modern life. The mythical and the everyday. A latent malice in both. You must’ve really hated your aunt Carmen.
PEDRO
Yeah, well, there was nothing latent about her malice.
CHRISTOPHER
Whatever happened to that painting anyway? Did Frederick make you burn all your work?
PEDRO
Of course not. Why do you want him to be a monster so badly?
CHRISTOPHER
I didn’t see any of your stuff around the house. None of your old stuff anyway.
PEDRO
We have a storage unit.
CHRISTOPHER
Is that where you’ve stashed tía Carmen?
PEDRO
I can’t believe you remember that painting.
CHRISTOPHER
Unlike you, I remember the important details in the lives of my alleged friends.
PEDRO
I remember Arkansas, Christopher. You’re from a place called Weston. There’s a meat processing plant there that’s responsible for the town’s distinctive stench and your occasional veganism. I just said Alabama to piss you off.
CHRISTOPHER [with mock outrage]
I knew it! You hate me!
They share a look and then, in unison, do Elizabeth Taylor in ‘Raintree County.’
PEDRO and CHRISTOPHER
“You hate me because I’m Southern!”
They laugh at their inside joke, and afterward some of the hardness between them has softened. After a pause:
PEDRO
I actually planned a series of those vejigante paintings. The idea was for each canvas to depict a different member of my family, each one wearing a different mask. And then the last work in the series would be a self–portrait. I couldn’t decide whether I should be wearing a mask or not.
CHRISTOPHER
That sounds brilliant.
PEDRO
I only made a start. I didn’t get very far.
CHRISTOPHER
I’d love to see what you have.
PEDRO
I told you: Everything’s in the storage unit.
CHRISTOPHER
So take me there.
PEDRO
You want to go to our storage unit?
CHRISTOPHER
Why not?
PEDRO
Christopher, I’m not gonna forget how you acted this weekend just because you compliment something I did a hundred years ago.
CHRISTOPHER
It wasn’t a hundred years ago.
PEDRO
Not to you. In your mind we’re 23–year–old bohemian twinks forever.
CHRISTOPHER
Whereas you’d prefer we cash in and stare out at the ocean at the crack of dawn every morning like respectable retirees? C’mon, take me to that storage unit. It’s the first interesting idea you’ve had all weekend.
PEDRO
It wasn’t my idea! I have no interest in rooting around in the past and pretending like we’re great artists bursting with potential.
CHRISTOPHER
Are you sure? Maybe that’s why you invited me out here in the first place. Maybe I really am here to ask rude questions. We should go to that storage unit, Pedro. The more I think of it, the more convinced I become. We should drink this coffee and go to that storage unit before it’s too late.
PEDRO
Are you serious?
CHRISTOPHER holds a mug out to PEDRO.
PEDRO, cont. [wavering]
I told you: Coffee screws with my sleep.
CHRISTOPHER
Your sleep could use some screwing with. As Mephistopheles said when he tempted Dr. Faustus, “Drink your juice, Shelby.”
PEDRO looks at the mug, thinks about it.
PEDRO
I remember you saying to me once how lucky we were to have all of our 20s ahead of us. Do you remember that? I can still feel sometimes what that was like. All of our 20s ahead of us. And now they’re all behind us. And half of our 30s too.
CHRISTOPHER
Well, that’s depressing.
PEDRO
Is it? I feel like we did what we could do.
PEDRO takes the mug. A silence falls. A truth dawns.
CHRISTOPHER
We’re not going to that storage unit, are we?
PEDRO
The weekend is over, Christopher. We did what we could do.
Fresh out of comebacks, CHRISTOPHER turns to look out at the sea.
They both take sips from their mugs.
CHRISTOPHER
How’s the coffee?
PEDRO
Tepid.
CHRISTOPHER
Figures.
CHRISTOPHER and PEDRO continue to stare out at the sea.
END
About the Author
Zac Thompson is a playwright and travel journalist. His work has appeared on stages, in literary journals, and in the Village Voice, Chicago Reader, and Frommer’s, where he is managing editor. Originally from Arkansas, he currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his husband, Frank.