Comedic monologues

(Someone, cue card in hand, rehearses in front of a mirror.)

MOI

Dear all. Dearest all. Dear… deaR. Right. Let me start over.

Good evening. I’m the best man. Well, “the” best man: there are four of us, but I’m the one talking. The others got scared.

I’ve known Thomas for fifteen years. No. Twelve. Fifteen means I’m forgetting three years of his life in front of his whole family.

Let’s start again. I met Thomas at a certain point in our lives. There. That’s true for everyone, it commits me to nothing.

I wanted to tell the story of the trip to Italy. But half the room was there. And the other half must absolutely never find out.

So: not Italy.

I’ll talk about his qualities. Thomas is… punctual. No. Nobody gets married for punctuality. Though, at this stage, we’ll take it.

Thomas is generous. That one’s true. Exhibit A: he handed me this microphone.

Léa, if you’re listening, and you are, you always are, you made my best friend better. That’s mathematical and unfair: I was ranked very highly before you.

(He checks his card. The card is blank.)

MOI

I wrote it all down. On the wrong card. This one is my shopping list. “Butter. Batteries. Don’t cry.”

Right. Butter, done. Batteries, we’ll manage.

(He breathes.)

MOI

Okay. No card, then. The true things, you don’t read them, you know them.

I’ll just raise my glass. Because a failed speech people remember beats a perfect speech nobody listens to.

To Thomas and Léa. And to the card, somewhere, holding magnificent things.

(A bare room. A single chair, turned to face the wall.)

MOI

I invited the chair to sit down. Out of politeness. It declined. A chair that refuses to sit puts you right back in your place.

We’ve lived together for three years. It doesn’t judge me. It just stays more stable than I am, which is already an opinion.

Yesterday I told it about my plans. It didn’t move. That was exactly the support I needed: present, and without illusions.

People ask if I feel lonely. I tell them: no, I have a chair. They leave. The chair stays. The proof makes itself.

(He sits on the floor, beside the chair.)

MOI

See. Between the two of us, we almost make a living room.

One day, someone will come. They’ll want to sit. And then I’ll have to choose between them and you.

Don’t worry. I’ll seat them on the floor. We have our habits.

CYRANO

Ah no! It’s a bit short, young man! You could have said… oh, Lord!… any number of things…

Aggressive: “Sir, if I had such a nose, I’d have it amputated on the spot!”

Friendly: “But it must dip into your cup! For drinking, have a tankard made for you!”

Descriptive: “It’s a rock!… a peak!… a cape! Nay, a cape?… It’s a peninsula!”

Tender: “Do you so love the birds that, fatherly, you took care to offer their little feet this perch?”

That, more or less, my dear, is what you’d have said, had you a little wit and letters.

(An art gallery. Someone contemplates a white square.)

MOI

Magnificent. Absolutely magnificent. I understand nothing, but with rare intensity.

What moves me, you see, is the emptiness. No, the fullness. Well, the full emptiness. Very Japanese. Or very overdue for delivery, I can’t tell yet.

I’m told it’s a critique of capitalism. At twelve thousand euros, I’d call it: brilliantly argued.

Between us? I think it’s the wall. I think we’re admiring the wall and the painting fell off.

But say nothing. In art, being right too soon is the worst kind of snobbery.

(Sitting at a café, laptop open. He stares at the screen the way you stare down an opponent.)

MOI

Right. You and me, we don’t know each other yet. Network “CaféLumière_2”. The “2”. Never trust a network that already has an ex.

Password. I type it. You think about it. You think about it a lot, for something with only one job.

“Connected, no Internet.” Beautiful. Connected to what, then? To the idea of Internet? To its memory?

I slide my chair back ten centimetres. Towards the window. As if ten centimetres could reconcile two beings with nothing in common.

(He lifts the laptop at arm’s length, like an offering.)

MOI

One bar. ONE. Nobody move. Nobody breathe. We’re almost there, the two of us.

…Gone. Fine. Waiter! The password for “CaféLumière_1”, please. I’m starting my whole life over.

(Facing the audience, a slice of cake, no, the whole cake, in front of her.)

MOI

The diet starts tomorrow. “Tomorrow” is important. Tomorrow is a day scientifically stronger than me.

So tonight, this cake, it’s a farewell. You don’t throw away a farewell. That would be rude.

Besides, a cut cake goes off. So I might as well finish it all: it’s ecology.

(She takes a second slice. Then a third.)

MOI

Right now, technically, I’m making room in the fridge. I’m tidying. I’m an organised person.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll be a new person. And that person deserves to start with no leftover cake lying around.

(A houseplant, yellowed, on a ledge. She talks to it like a patient.)

MOI

Right. Let’s be honest, the two of us. You’ve been sulking for three weeks. I’ve tried everything.

I put you in the sun. You got too hot. I put you in the shade. You sulked. You’re like my aunt: never the right temperature.

I looked online. “Your plant is thirsty.” I watered you. “Your plant is drowning.” There’s no manual with you. Well, there is. There are thirteen, and they contradict each other.

(She touches a leaf. The leaf falls off.)

MOI

…Right. That’s passive-aggressive. You did that on purpose, right in front of me.

Listen. I’m not asking you to bloom. I’m just asking you not to die before my mother comes to dinner. After that, do what you want. We’ll both be free.

MOI

No no, everything’s fine. Thanks for asking. Really.

So: my car has broken down, my cat has hated me since I called him by my ex’s name, and this morning I sent a love message to my boss instead of my girlfriend. A fairly… detailed message.

But apart from that? Apart from that it is an absolutely radiant day.

The best part is that everyone keeps telling me to “stay positive”. Positive. Of course. Hang on, let me be positive: at least my boss now knows I am a very affectionate person. That is good for the mood in the office, isn’t it?

So there we are. Everything’s fine. I’m smiling. See? I’m smiling. That is a smile, that. Absolutely. Don’t push it.

MOI

Right. Let me explain, because told like that, in the paper, it sounds worse than it was.

The plan was perfect to begin with. I said perfect. I had thought of everything: the ring in the dessert, the violinist paid for, her parents waiting in the next room. Everything. Thought of.

What I had not thought of was the waiter (a charming lad, by the way) taking the dessert to the wrong table. So, technically, yes, I did propose to somebody. A lady of seventy-two celebrating her birthday with her grandchildren.

And there, you see, an ordinary man would have panicked. Not me. I kept my nerve. I said: “Madam, this ring was not intended for you, but allow me to wish you a very happy birthday.” With flair. A flair I did not know I had.

The problem is that at that moment my girlfriend, the real one, the one the ring was for, saw the whole thing. And she… misread it.

So, to sum up: I am single, a lady of seventy-two kissed me on both cheeks, and the violinist was paid for nothing.

But the plan, I stand by this, was perfect. It is reality that executed it badly.

MOI

Wait, don’t say anything. I prepared something. Well, “prepared”… I made a list. You know me, when I am nervous I make lists.

So. “Reasons you should stay.” Number one: I make a decent coffee. No, don’t laugh, it is a serious argument; you have drunk other people’s coffee, you know how rare that is.

Number two: I know all your silences. The “I’m thinking” silence, the “I’m hurt but I won’t say so for three days” silence, and the “if you have to ask, it is worse” silence. It took me a while, but I know them all.

Number three… now number three, I crossed out four times, because every time it sounded like something from a film, and you hate films where people talk like they are in a film.

So I am going to say it badly, in my own words: I am not a good person every day of the week. But with you I want to try. Every day. Even the hard days. Especially those.

There. It is a bad list. But it is an honest list. Are you keeping it?

MOI

Everything’s fine. I’ve got this. I have completely got this. Look how I’ve got this.

All right, technically, I cried in the frozen aisle earlier. In front of the peas. I do not even know why the peas. But these things happen to people who have got this.

The trouble is that everyone finds me “solid”. “You’re all right, you’re solid.” Do you know what it means, being the solid one? It means nobody ever asks how you are, because the answer has already been decided.

So I smile, I crack jokes, I carry other people’s boxes on moving day, and in the evening I go home and stare at the ceiling wondering who, exactly, is carrying mine.

But it’s fine. I’ve got this. I just… I just need somebody to tell me it’s all right, that I can put the box down for two minutes. Just two minutes. Then I’ll pick it up again, I promise.

MOI

Right. The big day. My brother’s wedding. I am the best man. Three hundred people in front of me, a microphone, and one mission: not to be that guy. You know the one, the one people still talk about twenty years later. “Do you remember the best man?”

I prepared. Oh, I prepared. I have cards. Numbered. A plan: one touching anecdote, one joke, a second joke in case the first one dies, and an ending that makes the aunts cry. Foolproof.

Card number one. The touching anecdote. “When my brother was six…” And that is when I realise I have absolutely no memory of what he did at six. Six is a black hole. I wrote “touching anecdote” and never filled in the rest.

Card number two. The joke. I deliver it. Silence. A silence so complete that I can hear the caterer, at the back, set down a fork. One single fork. The loneliest sound in the world.

So, in the panic, I pick up the wrong card, and I read out loud, to three hundred people and the grandmother: “remember to collect the suit, pay the dry cleaner.”

And then something magical happens. People laugh. They think it is a bit. They find me bold. Modern.

So I own it. I look at my brother, I put the cards down, and I say the only true thing I had in my head: “I do not know how to make speeches. But I will always know how to be here. At six, at thirty, and at every age where you need somebody to hold the microphone while you get on with your life.” And then, only then, the aunts cried. Mission accomplished. By accident. Like everything I ever get right.