The Return Monologue
STEVE: No, no, no… ya can’t turn back now. I’m startin’ to see you as the voice of a very misunderstood section of our society. But you know… there’s a million of me getting’ round, mate. And they’ll all tell ya they had a tough life. You know, beaten up by their dad, in trouble with the cops, pisshead mum, rough school. A million fuckin’ excuses why they turned out to be bad eggs.
And I got all of the above… Oh yeah! Truth is, most of ―em are just bored. They leave their shit-ass state school and live on the dole in their diddly bumfuck nowhere suburb. Before ya know it, ya got some girl up the duff and no money. She spends the day with a screamin’ sprog and a fag in her mouth plonked in front of a daytime soap wearin her tracky daks all day, dreamin’ of bein’ swept away by some Fabio and she just gets… fatter. But… her Centrelink payments have gone up and all her fat friends are waitin’ in line behind her!
It’s a career move for ―em. Gettin up the duff. And you… drink with ya mates, watch the footy and the highlight of the week is the local tavern has a skimpy barmaid every Friday. And ya know the rest of the world is havin a better time. Ya just know it. The magazines are tellin’ ya that, the newspapers, the telly.
Everybody’s richer, everybody’s more beautiful, and everybody’s got more… purpose. And ya thinkin’, how do I make sense of this dog-ass life? And then one day ya just get hold of a gun. Ya don’t even know what ya gonna do with it. It’s like the sound of a V8 in the distance. It takes ya… somewhere else. [Pause.] I didn’t see ya writin’ any of this down. I’m spillin’ my guts out in the name of art and you don’t give a shit. What sort of writer are ya?
