What We Were Thinking Of, 4

“People are trying new ways to live”

What We Were Thinking Of is available for full productions and readings. Interested parties may contact me through my Substack email address.

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⇐ Part 3, “The water's edge is a good place for secrets”

⇒ Part 5, “Radical confessions” (July 5, 2025)

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What We Were Thinking Of: Table of Contents

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Recap last week: Charles visits David, Bud, and their new college friend Sara in their dorm, freshman year, 1966. David visits Charles and Renata in fall 1990 to inform them of the mysterious letter from Bud. David and Charles argue.

This week: David meets with his now ex-wife Sara in Chicago’s Grant Park to tell her about the note from Bud. After the two briefly reminisce about their participation in the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention protests, we see all three in 1968 preparing to attend the protests.

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(David remains seated as Charles leaves. Sara enters and joins him on the bench in Grant Park, in a wintery Chicago. She places an overcoat around him.)

DAVID

All these years of wondering where he was, hoping to hear from him again. And now — why do you think he asks that: "Where is my daughter?" And "Who are my sons?" What the hell is that about? That's what he writes eleven years after he fell off the face of the earth?

SARA

Look who he wrote to.

DAVID

Look what he wrote.

SARA

She's your daughter, David.

DAVID

What if he wants her back?

SARA

You're so silly. She's a grown woman. It's not as if he could get custody. No one can be her father if she doesn't want it.

DAVID

What if she wants it?

SARA

Now you're being really silly. That's what comes of only talking to her every three months. Call her. I hate it when you don't.

DAVID

She could call me.

(On the screen above, the words, "The Security Council authorizes Member States co-operating with the Government of Kuwait, unless Iraq on or before 15 January 1991 fully implements...")

SARA

Oh, you're such a child. You both wait for the other one to call and then you don't talk to each other for ages. Everything's very uncertain right now. She could use to hear from you.

DAVID

Why can't he just write, "Sorry. I had my reasons. Let me explain."

SARA

Is this Bud we're talking about?

DAVID

(beat)

Would you want to see him again?

SARA

(standing, moving away)

God, I don't know. I don't know.

(beat)

Stop watching me. What do you think you're going to discover you haven't had every reason to know long before now?

(David looks away)

So who are you bonking this semester? Is it the brilliant young master’s student who sees the light in your eyes? Or have we finally graduated to post docs?

DAVID

(standing)

She's a doctoral candidate. I’m advising her. It's almost a year now.

SARA

A year? Congratulations. But you’re her dissertation advisor? Don’t screw that up. Sounds serious, though. Are you in love with her?

(at David's silence)

You're not sleeping around on her, are you?

(Sara instantly regrets the comment.)

DAVID

What about that assistant D.A. you were seeing? Barney?

SARA

Bernard. That's been over for months. I discovered, would you believe it, that a D.A. and a public interest attorney have not a tremendous a lot in common.

(Sara comes close to him. She points to a tree. On the screen above: The whole world is watching.)

Protesters at the General Logan Statue, Grant Park, Chicago, Illionois, during the Democratic National Convention, August 1968 (Photographer undetermined)

SARA

(continuing)

Look. That's where we slept. The three musketeers.

DAVID

No.

(holding up two fingers.)

Two musketeers.

(holding up one finger.)

One mouseketeer.

SARA

A couple of lefty sexist bozos. Why did I ever put up with either one of you?

DAVID

(pointing)

That's where you went off with Delinger.

SARA

(pointing)

That's where you two went off with Hayden. And when the fighting started, it was you who came to look for me.

DAVID

(softly)

Not Bud.

SARA

(almost as softly)

I know that, David. That was my point.

DAVID

A lot of ghosts.

SARA

Not for me.

DAVID

For me.

SARA

I know.

(beat)

So what are you going to do now? Are you going to look for him?

DAVID

I'm think I'm going to go to Salt Lake City. See if I can find myself a Mormon Sam Spade.

(David watches Sara walk away to where Bud sits at a typewriter, his back to David. Bud hands Sara a stack of flyers. David follows. On the screen above: "Stop the War (Machine). Join us in Chicago and tell the Democrats NO! University Student Mobilization.")

BUD

You distribute these on North Campus. David can do South.

SARA

In case you hadn't noticed, David's not here right now. Why can't you help?

BUD

Because I'm waiting for a call from Hayden.

SARA

All right. So where is David?

BUD

Ensnared by the tendrils of the spider flower, no doubt.

(Sara pauses to understand, then sees David. He puts a finger to his lips.)

SARA

(looking at David)

You mean he's with Rita. What an interesting way to put it.

(David blows her a kiss. She blows one back.)

BUD

I just report what I see.

SARA

They're in love. You know -- like you and me.

BUD

He's in love with the idea of love. Right now he sees it in her.

SARA

You're very unfair.

BUD

I'm not unfair. I'm not wrong.

(Now David enters. Bud glances in his direction, keeps typing.)

BUD

(continuing)

Nice of you to join us. If you'd waited a little longer, Chicago would be over. Then you could have missed all the work.

DAVID

Don't bust my chops.

BUD

You got any chops left?

DAVID

I need to talk to you.

BUD

I'm busy typing a letter. There was no one else to do it.

DAVID

Sara was here.

(Bud stops at this. He stares at David.)

SARA

I'm going to North Campus. When you boys are done having fun, you can do South.

(She exits.)

DAVID

I won't be here next month. Rita and I are driving to New Mexico.

BUD

(standing)

You're not going to Chicago?

DAVID

I'll be in Chicago. Maybe after, you and Sara will drive down with us. There's a lot going on down there. People are gathering from everywhere.

The so-called “Battle of Michigan Avenue,” August 26, 1968 — in the words of the “Walker Report” a “police riot”: “The whole world is watching.”

BUD

Man, I saw this coming.

(indicating David's crotch)

You're spending too much time thinking with your head instead of your brain.

DAVID

Maybe you should spend a little more time thinking with your head.

BUD

Fuck you!

(Awkward silence. Bud pulls out a joint.)

BUD

(continuing)

Blow one?

(David nods. Bud lights up. They share the joint.)

BUD

(continuing)

You know, I don't care that you're so much in love with this chick, but do you have to let her lead you around by the nose?

DAVID

This is your way of making up?

(beat, teasing)

Just for your information, Rita's opinion is that you put out too much negative energy.

BUD

Fuck her.

DAVID

I do.

(beat)

I'm just not in love with all this the way you are, Bud. I mean I care -- that's why I'm going to Chicago. But I don't want to do this all the time. There's too much else going on in the world. People are trying new ways to live, new ways to be. The politics is supposed to be in the service of life. It's not life.

BUD

Oh, really? Man, you never learn, do you? How do you think you get to live in new ways, pal -- to be something new, when the whole structure of life is designed to prevent it? Politics is life. It's all political. They make it that way. And they keep it that way by convincing people like you that it's not.

DAVID

Oh, here you go.

BUD

You see a man lose his job, and you think that's just the way it is. That's life, nothing to be done about it -- he'll just have to find another, when he can. You see people held down by hatred and prejudice, and you think, that's just the way it is. People are like that. That's life. You see war --

DAVID

Okay, stop. Next thing you'll have me voting for Nixon.

(taking a long drag on the joint)

You want to know what the worst thing is about war -- worse even than the death and destruction? When people forget why they're fighting it. When it becomes a machine that just needs to keep on going, the gears keep turning, to grease themselves and work themselves, because that's what machines are for -- to work. They think they just want to complete a task -- achieve victory. But they really just want to keep on working, because the motion in the parts, up and down, backward and forward, over and over, is what they're all about. It's their reason for being. And I don't know, Bud, maybe you do need another machine to stop the first. But we have to know when to turn it off. We have to know how. Otherwise nothing is new at all. We've just changed machines.

BUD

And you think the time has come to turn our machine off?

DAVID

No.

(beat)

But I want to walk away from it sometimes. I want to get off and stand on the ground wherever I am and look at what’s all around me, and see a thing for what it is, just what it is, without it being an idea.

BUD

You don't want it to be an idea?

DAVID

Just a thing. A tree or a building or a bunch of people together, without their being somebody's idea of the underlying structure of life, or of institutional oppression, or... Sometimes I just want to live.

BUD

You are an idealist! An aesthete probably. And you do have the luxury, don't you, of seeing things just as things, and not as forces that determine your life in ways you don't want, in ways that harm you. But everybody doesn't have --

DAVID

Just sometimes, Bud. Sometimes. Isn't that what everybody --

BUD

I have these visions! I see things. I see things different. I see things differently. I thought you did, too.

DAVID

I do.

(Long pause. They're at a standstill, agreeing and disagreeing in ways their words can't even reveal.)

BUD

Remember in high school, when we used to get high and then hyper-ventilate? Let's do it.

DAVID

Now? I thought there was work to do?

BUD

We'll work better after. Come on.

(They squat and pass the joint back and forth for a couple of long hits each. Then they take a series of deep, rapid breaths, holding the last. On Bud's signal they stand up quickly, exhaling and spinning. Dizzy, they both stumble to the floor. Bud scrambles over to David, holds his hand in front of David's face.)

BUD

(continuing)

See all the stars? Don't try to shake them off. Stay with them. Each one's a door -- a door of perception. Go through one. Tell me what you see.

DAVID

I see the woods behind your parents' house on the Chesapeake.

BUD

Shit. Don't be so fucking retrospective. See something new.

DAVID

No. No. Wait. I see you and me playing there, exploring in the underbrush, pouncing from the tree limbs. All the enemies we fought off together. All the worlds we made up. Just you and me.

BUD

That's right. That's right. And they were new worlds, too. Without the greed and the corruption and the lies. Imaginary people in imaginary worlds. We said we'd make them real.

DAVID

We said that.

BUD

(slowly standing, drifting back and away)

We did, David. You and me. Now the question is, how do we make them real? What are you willing to do to make the world new?

AJA

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⇐ Part 3, “The water's edge is a good place for secrets”

⇒ Part 5, “Radical confessions” (July 5, 2025)

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Poet. Storyteller. Dramatist. Essayist. Artificer.

ajayadler.com