Divorce

The scene takes place in a lawyer’s office. The lawyer, RATIONAL, sits at the head (haha) with JULES and TRAUMA at either side of the table. JULES is trying to divorce TRAUMA.

TRAUMA: You can’t stick me with the brats. You’re the one who fucked ’em up. Don’t make them my problem.

JULES: I’m the one who fucked them up?

TRAUMA: Was that rhetorical or what? You think they got that way at school?

JULES: It’s not like school helped.

TRAUMA: You raised them, Jules.

JULES: They’re not my kids, Trauma.

TRAUMA: You nurtured them, hyper-analyzed them, pumped them so full of sugar they wouldn’t sleep, left them in need of years of therapy. If that’s not parenting someone needs to tell your folks.

JULES: Would’ve been more helpful before they died.

TRAUMA: Should’ve known you couldn’t take a joke.

JULES: Maybe if I get rid of you and “the brats” Sense of Humor would move back in.

TRAUMA: Woah woah woah, I thought we’d settled this. They’re not my bastards. Sell ’em online for all I care.

JULES: You think I should CraigsList my anxieties?

TRAUMA: Post a link on Facebook to a self-diagnosis site for some rare-but-fatal-disease where the only symptom is an occasional itch on your left forearm. Someone’s bound to take them off your hands.

JULES: Very funny.

TRAUMA: If you feel that strongly about it, offload them onto your sister.

JULES: My sister?! Please. She’d never let me forget it. She’d be all like, “y’know you can have these anxieties back whenever you and trauma get back together. I love taking care of them for you but they don’t really fit my cosmopolitan lifestyle.”

TRAUMA: Are you getting anxious your anxieties won’t find a good home?

JULES: -

RATIONAL: So it’s settled then, Gillian gets the anxieties. Next: the body.

JULES: Shit.

TRAUMA: Here we go.

JULES: You can’t walk away with my body.

TRAUMA: Who said it’s yours?

JULES: Objection!

RATIONAL: Overruled. The ownership of the body is precisely the subject under discussion.

JULES: Fuck me.

TRAUMA clambers over the table towards JULES.

JULES slaps TRAUMA across the face and throws TRAUMA from her.

JULES: Not literally! Jesus. Get off me.

TRAUMA: Ouch. You know you’re going to pay for this right?

JULES: Worth it.

RATIONAL: Order, please.

JULES: Excuse me, Rational, but I’m still not clear what exactly is at stake here.

RATIONAL: I can’t say exactly, each case is unique, but in most cases if Trauma got custody of the body, the person in your position would go about their daily life more or less detached from their body.

JULES: What?

RATIONAL: This item is a little tricky, because total ownership isn’t really possible as you will both still occupy the body, even if it formally belongs to just one of you. I like to think of it this way: the body is a home one of you will rent from the other and follow their rules as landlord, or lady. So, if the body goes to Trauma, you’ll probably have to refrain from sex in the dark, or maybe the rent will come in food.

TRAUMA: If I’m in charge I’m making the body fat as all hell.

JULES: You wouldn’t dare.

TRAUMA: Watch me. Oh, and watch your weight.

RATIONAL: Can we try to stay civil in here? Thank you.

JULES: There’s no way I’m giving up this body. I was a cheerleader in high school. You didn’t earn this body the way I did.

TRAUMA: Oh so cheerleading was a Trauma-free zone.

RATIONAL: (Laughs)

(beat)

JULES: Fuck it, you take the body but I’m keeping sexuality.

TRAUMA: Yeah I’m sure it’ll be really fun to fuck with an aching pussy.

JULES: There are plenty of ways around that little loophole.

TRAUMA: And friends?

JULES: Friends are mine. You can’t take body and friends.

TRAUMA: Please. You know your friends will drop you once you drop me. Such drama queens.

JULES: What? No. They were with me long before you.

TRAUMA: What, like the anxieties?

JULES: This is different.

TRAUMA: Doesn’t seem that different to me.

JULES: Classic Trauma.

TRAUMA: I’m a baddie, chicks dig it. You’re friends dig it…Marie eats it up.

JULES: She’d like me without you. You’re the third wheel here.

TRAUMA: Oh yeah? When was the last time you had a movie night that didn’t end in her sipping your tears out of a teapot.

JULES: You don’t mean that.

TRAUMA: I’m just stating what we both know: happy people are boring people. If I’m on the way out, then so are they. They’re not going to stick around to hear how great it is you’ve had “normal” days for three months straight. *yawn*

JULES: They’re not like that. You don’t know them.

TRAUMA: “Babe, tell me what happened. What did Ryan do to you?” Sound familiar?

JULES: She just didn’t know better.

TRAUMA: Mhm.

JULES: Ok, take Marie. She was always a gossip anyway. Apparently.

TRAUMA: Now you’re talking. While you’re at it, you might want to give me Katie and Ricky too.

JULES: Them too?

ANXIETIES: Every Sunday morning they’d get coffee together and re-hash what a mess you were the night before. Poor Jules and her (air quotes) “traumatic life.” Blah blah blah anorexia blah blah blah survivor. We get it already. Then they keep me up till 3 a.m. and no deets.

JULES: What are you doing here?

ANXIETIES: We’ve been here this whole time. You gestured to us at the beginning then totally failed to acknowledge our presence.

JULES: That does sound like me.

ANXIETIES: Yeah, that’s what Ricky said too.