Dec. 1: Changes
"I hate change." "I know." Those were the final two lines from the first scene of Three Scenes from a Bus Shelter, which may be the best thing I have ever written. The characters were two men in their early 20s who had gone to high school together. They weren't friends in school but a chance encounter in the bus shelter on New Year's Eve gives them a chance to get reacquainted. Both of them subtly confess that they are not happy with their lives and their entire conversation is a desperate attempt to mine some encouragement out of each other. I was 21 when I wrote it. My life was even more pathetic than the ones of the two guys in that scene, both of whom were at least enrolled in college. I was a dropout and, on that particular New Year's Eve, I had been kicked out of a bar where I thought I was "employed" as the house magician. I took the bus home in the freezing rain, the derisive laughter of the bar's patrons still ringing in me ears,