Students: A Play by Peter Rose

(Pause)

Would you say you knew much about the opposite sex?

(He drinks from the bottle until it’s empty)

I could tell you a few things…. I’ve often thought that if a woman truly wants to know her man she should secretly watch him sleeping with a prostitute. She’d learn more about him in those ten minutes than she would in an entire lifetime otherwise.

(He goes to the plastic bag, takes out a beer. Opens it with a bottle opener attached to his keys)

Do you want me to tell you a few truths?

(He swigs from the bottle)

Sure you wouldn’t like a beer?

(Pause)

A nightclub? A pub crawl?

(Pause)

I can just picture it. All dressed up. Shots. Cocktails. What do you drink when you’re in the nightclubs? One of those whatsits? Breezeys? Vodka tonics? I went to a campus bar once, a few years ago, with my youngest boy, they served a bottle of drink with a caterpillar in it…

(Pause)

I don’t care! I know I should! I know. But I don’t. I might lose my licence. Who cares! I might plough into a tree and go through the window screen, I know. So what?! I know I’m supposed to care but I don’t. And maybe what if a lovely mummy and daddy are crossing the road with their three little uns hand in hand and I’m too pissed to step on a brake pedal and the entire fucking clan bounces off my bonnet?

(He sits. Drinks. She drinks her tea)

I think I’m going through a difficult phase at the moment, Emma. Of course, my wife doesn’t understand. It’s boring isn’t it? Middle-aged men going through the same predictable breakdown, all piercing their ears, shopping in Fat Face and not looking each other in the eye down at Spearmint Rhino. The same old embarrassing crisis… Not that I’m middle aged, I’m beyond that, of course.

(Pause. Robbie drinks)

Have a beer.

(Pause)

Come on, have a beer.

(He stands, walks around)

A few things about men.

(Pause)

Someone’s got to! Someone’s got to tell you. Because otherwise you’ll learn the hard way. When I was nineteen… I was totally different, forget what you see here now, at nineteen… God, me at nineteen? I looked different, sounded different… I was cool… That’s what you’d call me back then… I was in Paris. Travelled through France, Spain, North Africa on a Norton Commando. People who knew me then would never have believed I’d end up like this. With a fucking pace maker and a vest. I was with this girl in Paris one morning. We were sitting on a bed talking and mucking about and I got this telegram asking me to call home. So I go to this café down the street and I call my mum and she tells me that my brother has drowned off the beach at Hastings. He’d been larking about with his mates when he’d been caught up in a strong undercurrent and that was it. Very calm, very matter of fact. She said that his body had been washed up the next day and that his face was unrecognisable… that he actually didn’t have any features, the nose, the eyes, they’d all gone because his body had been banged against the rocks and dragged across the sea bed so many times that it had… that you couldn’t tell it was him… they identified him from the ring on his finger. So anyway, she told me this, I put the phone down, I went back up to the room and the girl was still there, obviously she hadn’t any idea what had happened… She was lying on the bed waiting for me and she was naked… She’d covered her top half, her face and upper body, with pillows and so all I could see when I came in the room was her naked legs and… what not…

(He drinks)

What I’m telling you is… is that, of course, I jumped on and had it off. Even though I’d just found out that my brother was dead and that he’d drowned and that his face had been smashed off on the rocks… I was still in the mood to you-know-what.

(Emma goes to the doorway. Shouts up the stairs)

(Pause)

Nick!

(Pause)

(Robbie is looking out of the window. He drinks, empties a bottle)

(Emma sits)

I never went to university.

(He opens another beer)

Ok. There’s something I need to tell you. I’m just going to come out and say it.

(Pause. Emma looks uncomfortable)

I didn’t come here to see Nick. I never do. I come here to see you. I want to ask you something… I know this is… er… inappropriate… I do just need to say this one thing…

(He takes a deep breath. Drinks)

I really want to sleep with you.

(She raises her eyebrows, looks at him)

Please. Please, I’m sorry. I just want to fuck you. Just once.

(Pause)

Seriously. Please. Just once.

(Pause)

I know you’re not attracted to me. Of course not. But it wouldn’t be that bad. Seriously. I wouldn’t be a big deal. And I’d be so grateful… You’d be changing my life… by giving me the thing I want most… and it is the thing I want more than anything else…

(He sits. Pause)

(He looks at her)

(Emma stands)

Please, don’t think I’m a pervert for asking you… You’ve got to understand, I suppose you already know deep down, but the truth is, men want to sleep with you. Because of the way you look. Not just me. Everyone. Probably the only men who don’t want to sleep with you are related to you… everyone else… that’s what they want to do. Every single last man you come in contact with, your professors, your landlord, your next door neighbour, your mums boyfriend, the bloke cleaning window screens at the traffic lights, your male friends, your girlfriends boyfriends, your doctor, your dentist, your local MP, any man you ever meet… If they say they don’t, they’re lying. That’s the truth of it.

(Emma goes to the doorway. Looks up. Comes back into the room)

(Emma sits. Awkward silence. Emma stands, goes to the bag and takes out a beer)

(He hands sit to her. She opens the bottle and drinks)

(She drinks)

If Nick finds out you’ve come on to me he’ll kill you.

(Pause)

My oldest friend in the world, he’s the same age as me, married three years before I did, he worships his wife. They’ve just joined the bridge club. Go out for dinner together three times a week. He’s never been happier. I want to be content with what I’ve got. But I’m not. What can I do?

(Emma drinks)

I’m crude, aren’t I? But only because I’m being completely frank… What would you say I wonder if I was to ask you again to sleep with me… If I said please please come away with me to a hotel and have sex with me and what if I said that if you don’t, if you say no, I’ll go to the hotel alone and I’ll fucking hang myself. I wonder what you’d say if you were faced with an ultimatum like that?

(Pause)

I think I’ll up the stakes.

(Pause)

What I’m about to say/

(She drinks)

My original intention was to study Civil and Environmental Engineering. But I’ve ended up doing a BA in Cultural Studies with an emphasis on Women’s Studies. Which is mental because, you know, what good is that going to do me in the real world? But when it came to filling in my UCAS form I just felt like I had to do it. Because I’d had this epiphany.

(Robbie reacts with his face to the word epiphany)

I did. I was sitting in the kitchen with my mum and she was talking about when she was at university and how she used to come home some weekends on this late night coach that left Leeds at like midnight and drove through the night. And I could tell she didn’t mean to tell me but suddenly she just came out with this story about this time when a guy sat next to her and he was all friendly and making jokes and then in the middle of the night he grabbed her hand and forced it onto his dick underneath a coat he had on his lap and she said that it was the look that he fixed on her that was the worst part of it and afterwards he just fell asleep and she sat there and didn’t move and didn’t say anything and just sat there the entire journey. And in the morning when the coach stopped both of them acted as if nothing had happened. I listened to my mum saying this and it suddenly dawned on me that every woman I know, every female friend, family member, whatever, every single one has been sexually assaulted. You can understand why I used the word epiphany. That’s quite a thing to realise. And I thought no, I’ve got to be exaggerating. So I started to think of every female I’d ever been close to, my sister, my aunt, all of my mates. And at one time or another every single one of them had told me about something that had happened to them.

(She drinks)

So I decided to do Women’s studies. ‘Cos there’s got to be something to this. I’m on to something. And now I’m here I’ve started interviewing women. Women I don’t know. Because I wanted to see if it was only true of a particular class or race or whatever. And it isn’t. So far every woman, without exception, every single woman that I ask “has it happened to you?” answers yes. Late teens, early twenties seems to be the most dangerous age, that’s when it happens most. But of course, it can happen to you at any age. And when I say sexual assault I’m using the term quite broadly. I use it to describe a whole range of behaviour from flashing upwards. I interviewed eight women yesterday. The first one told me about a night she was in a pub and a guy pulled her top up and her bra down while his mates filmed it on their phones. The next woman told me, well, you don’t want to hear about it. But let’s just say it was a diverse selection of testimonies. I heard about the French kissing granddad; the cousin who makes you suck him off upstairs at family parties when you’re thirteen. The girl who got drunk and fell asleep at a party and woke up with her ex-boyfriend inside her. The Polish girl in a newsagents who gets fingered by a couple of guys while the man behind the counter turns his back and rearranges the cigarettes. Boyfriends, husbands, neighbours, strangers. I can hear five, ten stories a day. If I carry on at this rate I’ll have do to a fucking PhD.

(She drinks)

I can’t wait to hear what you’re going to say. I’m pretty sure I can guess what you’re thinking.

(She drinks)

You know what I find fascinating about it? Every woman I ask “have you been sexually assaulted?” answers yes. But I can’t find a man who will admit to ever having done it. All my male friends, my boyfriend, my dad, every man I ask, none of them have ever done anything like that. How could I even ask it of them? “You’d think that of me?” they say shocked and offended.

(Pause)
(We hear Nick’s footsteps as he comes down the stairs)

But what about you, Robbie? You like being frank. Have you ever done anything you shouldn’t?

(Lights out)