Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll

Eric Bogosian

• Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781559361248
• eBook ISBN: 9781559367431
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Drama
• Index: Literature

"Mr. Bogosian is a hilarious wit: there is one line after another that you will quote to friends. He is a born storyteller with perfect pitch for the voices of various ethnic, racial and economic backgrounds. Using every powerful means available to a theatre artist, he shakes the cages of a complacent country engulfed by homelessness to ask just exactly who, if anyone, is home." -Frank Rich, New York Times

"Greatly and bilaterally talented... spiky, stinging, caustic without cauterizing. And funny." -John Simon, New York Magazine

"Scabrously funny... a dervish of a performer, ricocheting off the walls of the male psyche." -Boston Phoenix

Eric Bogosian is one of our most innovative and provocative artists, with a unique gift for portraying the currents and idioms of contemporary society. The monologues in Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll form a composite picture of the complex, sometimes alarming state of American culture in the 1990s.

One of America’s premier performers and most innovative and provocative artists, Bogosian’s plays and solo work include suburbia (Lincoln Center Theater, 1994; adapted to film by director Richard Linklater, 1996); Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, Pounding Nails in the Floor with My Forehead; Griller; Humpty Dumpty; 1+1; Skunkweed; Wake Up and Smell the Coffee; Drinking in America; Notes from Underground and Talk Radio (Pulitzer Prize finalist; New York Shakespeare Festival, 1987; Broadway, 2007; adapted to film by director Oliver Stone, 1988). He has starred in a wide variety of film, TV and stage roles. Most recently, he created the character of Captain Danny Ross on the long-running series Law & Order: Criminal Intent. In 2014, TCG published 100 (monologues), a collection that commemorates thirty years of Bogosian’s solo-performance career.

SEX, DRUGS, ROCK & ROLL

(Lights go down.

An amplified voice is heard. A raucous deejay.)

Hey, you’re listening to WRXX, the home of hard rock and roll! I don’t know about you, but I want to party, I want to rock the house, I want to take care of business-if you know what I mean, and I hope you do! So buckle your belts, grab your hats, zip your pants, and hoist your bats—we got some rockin’ to do too-night!

(Amplified hard rock blasts at the audience.

A man appears in silhouette, holding a stick.

He begins a frenzied “air guitar” mime to the music.

The lights change. The man is hobbling toward the audience on the stick. . . .

Segue . . .)

GRACE OF GOD

(A man is revealed hobbling on a cane, holding an empty paper cup; he addresses the audience.)

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I only want a few minutes of your time. It doesn’t cost you anything to listen. Please be patient with me.

I just got released from Riker’s Island, where I was unjustly incarcerated for thirty days for acts I committed during a nervous breakdown due to a situation beyond my control. I am not a drug addict.

This is the situation: I need your money. I could be out robbing and stealing right now; I don’t want to be doing that. I could be holding a knife up to your throat right now; I don’t want to be doing that. . . . And I’m sure you don’t want that, either.

I didn’t choose this life. I want to work. But I can’t. My medication costs over two thousand dollars a week, of which Medicaid only pays one-third. I am forced to go down to the Lower East Side and buy illegal drugs to stop the pain. I am not a drug addict.

If you give me money, if you help me out, I might be able to find someplace to live. I might be able to get my life back together. It’s really all up to you.

Bad things happen to good people. Bad situations beyond my control forced me onto the streets into a life of crime. I won’t bore you with the details right now. But if you don’t believe me, you can call my parole officer, Mr. Vincent Gardello. His home number is 555-1768.

The only difference between you and me is that you’re on the ups and I’m on the downs. Underneath it all, we’re exactly the same. We’re both human beings. I’m a human being.

I’m a victim of a sick society. I come from a dysfunctional family. My father was an alcoholic. My mother tried to control me. My sister thinks she’s an actress. You wouldn’t want the childhood that I had.

The world is really screwed up. Things get worse every day. Now is your chance to do something about it . . . help out somebody standing right in front of you instead of worrying about South fuckin’ Africa ten thousand miles away. Believe me when I tell you God is watching you when you help someone less fortunate than yourself, a human being, like me.

I’m sorry my clothes aren’t clean. I’m sorry I’m homeless. I’m sorry I don’t have a job. I’m sorry I have to interrupt your afternoon. But I have no choice, I have to ask for help. I can’t change my life—you can. Please, please look into your hearts and do the right thing! . . . Thank you.

(He addresses people in the front row, begging to one or two while holding out his cup, saying “Thank you very much, God bless you” repeatedly. If money is given, he says, “Stay guilty. ”If money is withheld, he says, “I really feel sorry for you, man. ”Finally, he leaves, repeating over and over again, “Thank you, God bless you” . . . segueing into the “Thank you ”s that begin the next piece.)

BENEFIT

(The “thank you ”s from the last segment introduce this segment as a man addresses an imaginary “host” onstage, then seats himself in a chair stage left. His accent is “British.”)

Thank you, Bill, thank you. . . .

(Sits, attaches lavaliere microphone to shirt)

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes . . . we’re very excited about the success of the new album. It’s nice having a number-one album again, you know, considering the band really hasn’t done anything for about ten years . . . it’s a real breath of fresh air. . . .

(Picks up a glass of water from a small table on his left, sips the water)

No . . . I don’t, Bill . . . and I’m glad you asked me that question. . . .

(Returns the glass of water and picks up a pack of cigarettes and a lighter; taps out a cigarette as he speaks)

I used to do quite a few drugs. . . . But you know, Bill, drugs are no good for anybody. I’ve seen a lot of people get really messed up on drugs, I’ve seen people die on drugs. . . .

(Lights cigarette, inhales deeply)

I was saying to Trevor just the other day—I said, “Trevor, how is it that we managed to survive?” After Jimi died and Janis died and John died, I said to myself, “Why didn’t we die?” We shoulda died. All the stuff we used to do.

Yes, Bill, I was. I was a bona fide drug addict. I used drugs every single day for five years.

What was it like? Well, I tell you, Bill. I used to get up every morning, before I even brushed my teeth, I would smoke a joint. While I was smoking the joint, I’d pop a beer. While I was sipping the beer, I’d cook up a spoon of cocaine, heroin—whatever was lying around. Shoot it right into my arm, get completely wasted. . . . Flip on the telly, get high some more . . . maybe order up some lunch . . . have some girls over, get high with them . . . fool around with the girls, get high some more.

I did that every single day for five years.

It was horrible . . . it was horrible. . . . I mean, it was wonderful too, in its own way. I won’t lie to you, Bill—my life is based on honesty today.

Yes, we did . . . we saw many tragic consequences. People very close to us. We had a sound engineer who had major problems with drugs . . . Hoover, we called him. His problem was that he wasn’t just our sound engineer, he was also in charge of getting the drugs for the band, because we always used to get very high whenever we cut an album. And I’ll never forget, we were cutting the Wild Horses album, and Hoover shows up—

Oh, thank you, Bill . . . yes, it is a great album. A real rock classic.

—So we’re cutting Wild Horses, and Hoover shows up with a coffee can full of the most amazing white flake Peruvian cocaine . . . absolutely pure, very wonderful. . . . I don’t know if you’ve ever done white flake Peruvian, Bill, but it’s an experience.

Wouldn’t mind having a little bit of it right now! (Laughs out loud, then remembers the audience) Just joking, just joking!

So we took that can of cocaine, dumped it onto a table in the middle of the studio, cut out some lines two, three feet long. . . . Hoover would do three or four in each nostril . . . what a beast. Don’t know where he had room in his skull for the stuff.

And we started to play. . . .

Of course, in those days we didn’t just do coke. We did everything—it was heaven! Trevor was smoking Afghani hash round the clock. Nigel was in his crystal meth period, so we had that. Ronnie showed up with a large bottle of NyQuil. We were blind, we were so high . . . completely wasted.

And we started to play, and you know, Bill, we never played better. It was like we all had ESP; it was historic. . . . Myself, I looked down at my fingers and I’m thinking, “It’s not me playing this guitar, it’s not me playing this guitar. It’s God playing.” . . . It was awe-inspiring.

(Long pause, loses his train of thought) What was I talking about? . . . Oh right—Hoover!

So we’re playing this brilliant music for about an hour, and I happened to look up and there’s Hoover in the sound booth, and well . . . he was smashing his head up against the glass. Blood is running down off his forehead all over his nose. His nose is all red with blood. Cocaine is shooting out of his nostrils onto his beard. His beard was all white. He looked like a deranged Sandy Claus.

Well, see, the thing is, the thing is, he forgot to push the “record” button. And he went completely stark raving mad. They had to take him away in a straitjacket. Took him to a sanitarium.

And the sad thing is, Bill, he was one of my closest friends in the whole world.

(Puts out cigarette)

What’s that? . . . No . . . no . . . I don’t know where he is today. I know he’s somewhere. Probably still in an institution somewhere. . . . Maybe he’s watching right now.

Hoover, if you’re watching . . . (Makes a thumbs-up gesture to an imaginary TV camera, then laughs)

You see, Bill, that’s the insidious thing about drugs—you don’t realize . . . uh . . . I mean, you’re having such a good time, you don’t realize what a bad time you’re having.

I got straight while I was on tour. Woke up one morning . . . typical tour situation: luxury hotel room, I don’t even know where I am . . . beautiful naked girl lying next to me in the bed, I don’t know who she is, I don’t know how she got there . . . champagne bottles all over the floor, cocaine on every horizontal surface. I hardly have the strength to pick up my head. So I pick up the remote control and I flip on the telly.

And I was saved, Bill, I was saved.

You have a man on in this country, on TV all the time. Saved my life. White hair. A genius . . . Donahue, Donahue was on. . . . What he said really hit me. He said: “If you haven’t met your full potential in this life, you’re not really alive.” The profoundness struck me like a thunderbolt. I thought, “That man is talking about me. He’s talking about me.”

Because here I was, young, talented, intelligent, wealthy, good-looking, very intelligent . . . and what am I doing with my life? I’m on drugs, day and night. I mean, I can understand if you’re talking about some Negro guy or Puerto Rican guy in the ghetto on drugs—I can understand that. But in my case it was such a tragedy when you think about it. Such a waste of human potential. Such a waste.

Because, Bill, you can have your caviar breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you can have your stretch limousines, your Concorde flights back and...

Table of contents

• BOOKS BY ERIC BOGOSIAN - AVAILABLE FROM TCG
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• SEX, DRUGS, ROCK & ROLL
• ORPHANS