the efficiency monologues – Johnny

Alex was an Efficiency Expert.

Not a sterling first line but it’s short, concise and gives you the information you need to move forward.

I was going to start with “Alex designed, developed and evaluated integrated systems for production processes to increase efficiencies across an organization” but then I thought “How would Alex say that?” Alex was an Efficiency Expert.

For the purposes of this story it doesn’t really matter what he does for a living.

Or does it?

You be the judge (without being judgmental, if that’s possible).

That night he had three dreams scheduled;

The one where he has sex with the neighbor (the wife… for a change).

The one where he wins the lottery.

The one where he designs a better integrated system for a production process and increases efficiency across his organization.

The first two dreams go off without a hitch.

The third however…

began with him rising from his bed and sleepwalking to his own front door. He took a few steps back from his front step and began a monologue;

“I’ll tell you why I was laughing. All of a sudden — just like that! — I remembered this time back in high school when I was making out with this really beautiful girl and was feeling incredibly suave and sophisticated and wondering if anybody would believe my good fortune and worrying if she was going to let me go all the way — I think it would have been her first time too — when all of a sudden I let out this incredibly loud fart. Like that. Only louder. It was awful. And there was no pretending it wasn’t me. You couldn’t say something like “Boy, did you hear that thunder?” or “Jesus, Peggy, was that you?” The best I could come up with was “May I use your bathroom?” which only made it worse. And there in the bathroom was her mother taking a bath at ten o’clock at night. She had one arm up, washing her armpit. I said something real cool like, “Hello, Mrs. Roberts.” She screamed and I ran out of the house. I tripped over the garbage cans and tore my pants climbing over the backyard fence. I must’ve run twenty blocks, most of them with dogs chasing me. I thought my life was over. We never mentioned what happened and I never dated her again and I lost my virginity with someone else. But that fart banged that back into my consciousness just then . . . !

He then went back inside, climbed the stairs to his bedroom and went back to sleep. He only knew about what he’d done that night because he’d recently installed a new doorbell that records everyone and everything that happens in front of it. He watched himself the next morning.”

He’d never seen Terrence McNally’s play Frankie and Johnny in the Clair De Lune so he had no idea how he could recite something from it word for word.

He had no idea what it could possibly mean.

That’s where you come in.