WORLD-SPORT: Act 2, Scene 1

[A multi-storey car park in Portsmouth, site of this - ____’s - suicide attempt, marked for demolition, 2004.]

____: I’m just a girl.

TINTIN: Yeah, I know. Aren’t we going to fuck the gender ratio if you kill yourself?

THANATOS: Attempt, yo.

____: Anyway, just because it feels right doesn’t make it good. Here Tintin, take the conch.

TINTIN: Ok. Bring it on.

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: You, or one of your associates, have established this computerised pool hall, with its flickering FACEPLANT signage and neon wall art, presumably in the hope of accruing members and inciting verbal exchange.

TINTIN: Hey, not without this [hands over conch.] Again.

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: You, or one of your associates, have established this computerised pool hall, with its flickering FACEPLANT signage and neon wall art, presumably in the hope of accruing members and inciting verbal exchange.

TINTIN: Yeah, it was me. And I don’t see that as so much of a hope as an inevitability.

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: You have solicited contributions on the basis of your own assumptions about the contributors, which remain murky.

TINTIN: I hope you feel safe in assuming that your assumptions about those assumptions are less murky.

____: [brushing teeth] Conch. [catches with other hand] I am still given cause to wonder what your, Monkey, investments in a potential answer to this question are.

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: I admit that my ‘investments’ in a potential answer are minimal.

____: You remind me of this woman collecting for a charity who accosted me in Costa the other day. [spits into basin] Or I suppose you remind me of the opposite of her. I asked her how large her organisation was and she told me it was “growing.”

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: What the hell has that got to do with anything?

____: Nothing much. But what I mean is, I was asking for a quality rather than a quantity. In your case.

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: I would have to follow up by asking what investments of your own should cause you to be concerned about mine.

____: “follow up by?” Follow what up?

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: My admission.

____: Oh, yes. What investments? Well, I cannot tell you what they are exactly, only that they are maximal. Let me follow this up by

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: Look. I - actually - have something to say here, a more-or-less urgent question for this forum which I believe a priori to be irredeemably fatuous by the way but nevertheless, here it is: Can a grou

TINTIN: CONCH! THE FUCKING CONCH!

____: Oh. I forgot about that too.

TINTIN: Yeah but you’re ok, you had it the whole time. The monkey has to say all that again. From “I admit that”. Your whole confession again, please.

____: No, c’mon. I’m dying here. I’m bored of this. Let’s just issue him a fine or something.

TINTIN: Ok.

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: A what?

TINTIN: YOU WILL NOT SPEAK WITHOUT THE CONCH!

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: You haven’t got it either! ____ has!

TINTIN: Well I’m playing banker and I can’t exactly fine myself now, can I.

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: Well give me the conch then, please.

TINTIN: [to ____] We’ll make a hell of a lot more off him if you don’t.

____: You think he’d really pay to talk?

TINTIN: Oh, he’ll pay alright.

____: I mean, will he talk if he knows he has to pay for it?

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: Fuck you both. [pulls out a Tec.]

____: Ok, Tec beats conch. Speak.

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: Thankyou. [still focusing Tec between TINTIN’s eyes] Can a group – even a virtual one – be consciously formed without a basic agreed-upon identity?

TINTIN: Well, let’s see. It’s a group. Check. A virtual one. Check. Consciously. Consciously? Can a group be formed unconsciously? False consciously? What kind of Lukacsian clarity of consciousness are you after here? A basic agreed-upon identity. I don’t give a shit about identity, but then I’m assuming, murkily, that you don’t either. And you seem to sense, rightly, that any such identity could only be co-ordinated by means of an intensively centralised bureaucratic apparatus, namely me.

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: When the audience addressed is one of fellow-despairers (as it invariably is), what function do you then serve (as a writer or otherwise) beyond mutual consolation and ego massage of your social-cum-professional circle?

____: Woahwoahwoah. Relax all this about despair and massaging cum-circles. I’m not into despair, Jeff and Ryan are. And even they probably don’t have any more of a horn for it than you claim not to have.

DELOYT&TUSH: Can we legitimately claim to have readjusted the gender ratio if we get negative erections?

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: [rouched.] And by ‘profitable love’, do you mean the pursuit of biological stimulus through congregating with fellow humans? Is that why our faces are planted to this screen?

TINTIN: Will you cut out all this bukkake-suggesting shit? ____’s trying to kill herself for god’s sake. You’re getting in the way of the pathos.

ALEXANDRA EMILY ROBERTS: does it not have to be in context? I’ve been very inappropriate all evening. Bob works in the dungeon at the police station so he has to collect bags fulls of guns with brains on them so he’s going to ask for a pay rise. I love Toby in this hat.

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: [shaking. Tec shakes. Beads of perspiration.] I saw the Lord, sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his blood filled the corpus cavernosum!

[MILOU IN MONKEY MASK squeezes trigger, putting a bullet through TINTIN’s forehead. TINTIN dies tactlessly.]

MILOU IN MONKEY MASK: What…what have I done? [rips off monkey mask in utter, aboriginal despair.]



____: Oh, hi Milou. What the fuck. Well obviously I can’t go through with this now. It’ll look like a meaningful gesture. Someone give me a lift to A&E.

[Fade]