Boys and Girls (NHB Modern Plays)

Dylan Coburn Gray

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781788502115
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

A play in verse following four young people across one night in Dublin.

Dylan Coburn Gray's play Boys and Girls was first performed at Dublin Fringe Festival in 2013, winning the Fishamble Best New Writing Award. It was also nominated for the Stewart Parker Trust Award.

A. Man’s best friend: Google Chrome Incognito.

Nothing sweeter than a guaranteed pornless history, my dick the victor who writes it and it writes mysteries. You’ll never know what went down – oh ho – and fuck now I’m thinking about Agatha Christie. Instant boner-kill.

Spankwire, thank you, welcome distraction. Get some gentle action going, up and down and up and down to the bottom of the page where it says hey, April O’Neill? Good choice, we’re feeling that, but yer outta luck bub. Two vids, both old, try Pornhub.

A pop-up offers a top-up on my penis, quick! Hop up on the table and shazoom! Ladies can’t resist your mister’s va-va-voom. They’ll jump for that Topman-chinos-lump when they spy with an admiring little eye a gee-busting hump-snake like a lesser man’s thigh. Swoon. Mr Tackle is knee-deep in poon.

Maybe not, thanks. Happy with what I got, thanks. No illusions, me, about being – (Exaggeratedly masculine voice.) a virile Rambo what shot tanks in some war. Nah, I’m a weedy cunt from Dublin 4, gifted only with a mortally offensive tongue and not the type to finish fights the barbed fucker’s begun.

Finish up with my modest manbits. Filthiest of habits, or healthy self-love-affair? Best not ask my socks. Dress with considerable care because my lack of muscle notwithstanding my branding does what hustle does for hunks. I present an uncompromising cynicism to the world, ciggy in hand, smoke rising, two fingers unfurled. Girls are intrigued, flattered by small attentions: the simple lack of the typical verbal batterings means they might be in my league. In there like swimwear. Yes, it’s a play on insecurity; yes, treat ’em mean keep ’em keen; but my ability to get a hand up a dress at Alchemy is unmatched by the virtuous. True love’s path ever did run tortuous, hatcheted through briars or hazarded with liars or both. Quoth this maven: the fires of passion will swallow you whole. Safer to safeguard the ol’ ticker and just get yer – if you follow – hole.

Unless it’s – well. Fucking hell, the merest mention of my dearest Laura cranks the fucking tension for me because she’s a sight for sore eyes at the worst of times and at her best she’s a burst of pure – Jesus, yeah. If love is a sure and willful self-abnegation, Laura’s a sexy form of zen meditation: inducing intimations of the transcendent in men when she smiles. Her lines are fine enough for double-takes, often double-taken for a model and who’s to say you’re mistaken? She could would should be. So it’s easy to think she’s beautiful because she’s blonde, thin, shape of a violin to fucking boot. Blah blah blah, dutifully capitulating to what society deems attractive, that shit’s just haters hating, argument from those lacking the lack that Laura’s rack alone is lacking. Need a minute for that one? I’ll spend it in contemplation, because that lackless rack is crack-a-lacking.

Am I coming across laddish, big baddish wolf hoping to eat her? In touch with my inner neanderthal, my soul wears a wifebeater? (Exaggeratedly masculine voice.) Equal rights equal fights, chance of jobs is chance of no jobs, end of the day what they’re for is making sandwiches and blowjobs? Yeah. Unashamed. Got my Misogyny Club member’s card laminated and framed. Find my humour distasteful, crass, dated? I find it wasteful when your mouth moves and my penis remains unfellated. I crack me up.

Unless you’re Laura, of course, for whom I’d turn chivalrous. Come out of the castle to nearest and dearest and mount up a white horse headed due timorous, servile, mannered. I’d fly the banner for niceness and resultant identity crisis be damned.

(The gag is he’s gay, only instead of being gay he’s a shithead.)

But son, we thought your deal was… misanthropy.

There’s no easy answer here; I thought so too.

Have you tried just… not being nice?

All my life, but something was missing.

Namely: Laura’s hugging and kissing. And I’d settle for less. I’d respect the shit out of her, and we’d both stay dressed. I’d admire her intellect all night long, talk Dylan songs, put string quartets on. Drink a nice wine till she begged for mercy, maybe watch a romcom sans excessive cursing. The finer things for this fine china lady, and my real Slim Shady wouldn’t dream of standing up. Nothing so abruptly sexual for Laura, for I adore her without expectation or exception, nothing so uncouth. For her if no one else I’m full of ruth, not ruthless, and who’s to know it’s all a truthless evil façade? So sociopathic deception feels a bit bad, I admit, but not as tragically shit as I feel now. Haven’t seen her in weeks and you could literally plough with the hard-on I’m harbouring.

I think I’m incapable of love. But it’s mistakeable for a certain kind of hopeless attraction? A perseverance in the face of a dearth of action, well known to the dicks with Dax on their hair who like Laura but not like I do. I view their antics with amusement, because it’s not clear who’s meant to be chasing who. Coiffed and toned they may be, but able they’re not for the finely honed madness for the sake of laughs of my slick surreal baby. On a dance floor she stands on their feet and yells blue murder. BLEGH. It’s fuckin’ scary, and their advances generally don’t advance much further.

Though I’ve got it too. Fucking state of me. Unrepelled by my beautiful mate and no more in her bonkers glory, I mean I know all too ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Acknowledgements
• Original Production
• Characters
• Boys and Girls
• About the Author
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information