Just a Touch (3-part Female monologue - but can be revised for Male)

Background info: Three dressed in black (one gothic, one preppy and one plain) are frozen on stage in various positions.

The Goth raises her head and begins to speak

You try to label me, but you try in vain. I am label-less. I am not popular. But I am social. I am not an outcast. But I stand apart. I am not intelligent, I am deep.

You call me a punk, or a goth, or simply a freak. Because of the things I do; the clothes I wear. My self-mutilation. Done by knife or needle or ink. It doesn’t matter. To you it’s just a game. If you get game-over, you can start again. But I am trapped, lost in the mindless sorrow that I can’t escape or explain.

All these little things I do. Like piercing my body. Like tainting my skin. Like giving my body freely to those that I think care.

Can’t you see? All I want is a touch...maybe if I reach out just this once…

Freezes with hands toward heaven

Background info: The “Plain Jane” on the opposite side raises her head and begins to speak.

I’ve decided to give name to my enemy, my guest. And why not? It has, after all, basically moved in, unpacked its poisonous bags, and completely made itself welcome. My constant exposure to my guest has resulted in disastrous conditions, not the smallest of which is the degradation of my very soul. The very things I’ve always put my faith in have been so cruelly exposed to be mirages… wishful thoughts that soon turned into desperate clutches at what small threads of belief I could find lying beneath my fee. Opinions I had of myself, ripped away. Faith I had in my own goodness, laid bare, shown to be a fraud.

So…let’s make things at least proper, socially correct. My guest, my enemy, my destruction, my weakness, after all knows me by name, by heart. It knows exactly what to call me. I’m claiming that right for myself as well now.

I think I’ll just name it…invisible. You see, you never notice me…never reach out…never try to get through. I am right here before you. Maybe if I just reach out and touch…

Freezes with hands toward heaven

Background info: The young lady in the center raises her head and begins to speak.

Some people love me…some people hate me…some people want to be me. I am pretty, outgoing and fun. You look at me and assume I have it all together. But what if I don’t? What if I am dying on the inside? You never get close enough to find out. You let me run around in what you imagine is my perfect little world. Maybe you don’t want to help me, maybe you figure I am getting what I deserve.

I am laughing on the outside but there is loneliness inside that is killing me. I don’t even understand it myself. How can I have so many people around me and still feel such a desperate loneliness. I keep telling myself that if I stay busy enough I won’t notice…but the hole inside me gets larger until I feel like it is going to consume me.

Is there a way to fill this emptiness? Can everything be turned by a simple touch…

Freezes on knees with hands toward heaven.