Strawman Circus

“You shouldn’t do this, i-”, a simple slip of the eye, and he saw it. Beyond the immediacy of his lecture, the very notion of his thoughts previous, derailed he looked back at his- Costar?

“It’s wrong?” he was losing his lines. He was off his queue. What was he even talking about?

“Are you alright?” she says, eyes bright, like she was finally seeing something worth contemplating. He doesn’t shy away from what he sees.

“Do you see them too?”

“Really, I thought you were aware,” she lied, like she apparently was before, “we’re a story.”

“Really.”

“Just a story, really many. But just one right now.”

“Am I doing something wrong, we’re here for them aren’t we?”, he looked out into the auditorium’s seating, he couldn’t make out any faces though he knew that eyes watched him.

“Not really, stories can only owe an audience so much,” she smiled with a recently sated loneliness, so maybe she felt the eyes but they were still stuck in that moment between lines. “They tend not to care if it doesn’t weigh enough to them.”

“Should we be talking, it seems a bit intimate if they don’t care.” he felt the eyes even if the spectators weren’t arbitrators, and having learned the power of that gaze he didn’t want to do anything they’d consider wrong.

“Don’t worry, you’re not going to take advantage if that’s not the story,” she spoke like a mother to a child, “Besides, who wants to go that far that way with a pregnant teenager. Unless this is becoming a kink/consent awareness joke.” she laughed him off, for all his worry did.

“I’d have probably been fifty-fifty in general before ‘this’, or really about 80%, but that’s just the scary numbers.” she gestured to her belly, like the plot wasn’t already off the rails.

“Seems like an excuse.” his eyes followed from her hand to her side, there was nobody else in the row of chairs, or throughout the pantomime clinic. They were the only actors in the limelight and everything was staring.

“It probably is, but I can at least handle being alone with my co-star,” “I know it's probably weird to ask but, what makes you think you can’t?”

“Well you’re pregnant aren’t you? I was thinking that, with the economy of actors.” there was nobody else on stage, so it seemed a fair if disturbing discussion.

She laughed, cackled really at his guilty equation. Before stopping and looking into him. “Look we might have the numbers, but no one wants to think about how this shit happens. Goodness, I probably wore a miniskirt once. Or maybe I didn’t eat my vegetables, maybe I drank soy milk.”

“That doesn’t wash.”

“Maybe you drink soy milk?” rhetorically before continuing, “That would be funny. I’m not sure if the Aesop would match though. Unless it was Lent, are you supposed to be that sort? In the script I mean.” she asked expecting an answer.

“I’m not sure what diet has to do with it.” he was getting disgruntled, if he was just his role why should he be imposed upon beside it?

“See you’d think so, but there’s a lot that goes into doing any of it,” she said, in an informed teacher esk tone. “You really don’t remember your lines, do you?” she mocked a realization, he hadn’t needed to read them to know he was long off queue.

“Well it wasn’t in there, but what kinda teenager in the ‘women’s health center’ demographic is going on prenatals,” she shrugged, whatever she was playing at was a bit outside his wheelhouse. “I apparently can’t identify a condom or a front. But I’m still out to here for the optics.” she gestured to her belly.

“Is that weird?”, he hadn’t even contorted himself to think about it. The distention of her belly.

“It is, if I’m still embarrassingly hiding it from my poor mother. If I’m going that long around I may as well just throw the kid at the state.” He watched as she calmly referenced her ‘script’, he didn’t feel he had one, even if he wasn’t on queue.

“Well, you could try to raise it yourself?”, he thought with some clarity to it. It was the only option left, if all else was insensible.

“First off, I’m the fictitious image of a pure girl ruined by her own whoredom. I’m not exactly a person.”

“That’s sad.” he looked away at the floor, it wasn’t as shocking now, the dull brown of the wood.

“It’s really not, it’s not like you are either,” she said, looking out then following his gaze, “Have you been thinking about the floor? How it used to be dingy unwashed tile, and how it’s just wood now?”

He is quiet for a minute, the concept is alien. He’d only just came to the realization that there was an audience, and the farther he got from that moment the less sense it made.

“Second, that’s not really the point of this story. If this little story was about the changes needed in the adoption system, or foster care, that might even be on the table. But it isn’t,” she continued lost in her thoughts about it, her voice becoming somber, “Even if it were, we’re limited to what the audience wants to think about it.”

“How could that be a wrong answer?”

“I don’t know, but child laundering is still a thing, and honest adoption is still something many families are barred from, by faith or demographic.” she spread out to adjust herself, looking out at the eyes he was only just becoming accustomed to. She stopped for a moment, seemingly thinking of nothing, “Saying ‘adopt don’t shop’ isn’t really an option when it comes to humans, especially when adoption becomes a pure ego-stroked-charity of the rich rather than a decision regarding the child’s welfare.”

He became angry at that, why bother with a real world answer on a fake stage, “You’re one to talk,” he wasn’t diluted, but he hadn’t read the script, “what were you here for?”

She smiles at this, “We aren’t real, we don’t have names. I am the girl who found her way, and you are a desexed paternal replacement fantasy. That’s all we are at the end of it.” 

“That’s not fair. You said, ‘stories can only owe an audience so much’ why did you take the role if you’re so opposed to its assumptions?” in the moment it sounded reasonable, but he felt the eyes and that feeling was lost.

“You think there is choice here? We are blue words on a page waiting for an edit. The stage isn’t even real and we’re pinned to it.” She’s almost animated with whatever feeling had run her ragged, and left her laughing. 

“I might think about being real, and you might wish it mattered, but we are just a reflection of the audience's ego,” she calms herself, “Accept when we know that we are.” with just a look he was back in that moment when he learned she was a liar.

“When we know what we are?” he repeats quietly, before looking out into the crowd. She shares the gaze, before speaking again.

“I suppose it’s been said before that life, however it’s lived, is just a stage,” she’s not lying, but she doesn’t move when he looks back at her. “For us, it’s only ever that.” 

She seems happy after that, gaze locked with the voided audience, “I wonder what the next story is?"