Taken in Marriage
By Thomas Babe

The assembly hall of a church in a New Hampshire college town. The church hall is set for Hank and Annie's wedding reception. The wedding is tomorrow; today is the rehearsal. Thomas Babe writes, "The only thing Annie knows are the facts, not the reason why she wants to tell the facts. She's telling the facts to see if those facts make sense to anyone else. Perhaps she knows the answer, lo, these many years later - that the guy she is talking about was just a bastard. But it is her peculiar dilemma that making such judgments is foreign to her; putting this guy in a bag is wrong. She was a part of everything she did, and what she tells us about it all is still a question."

ANNIE

I lived with him eighteen months, the first man I ever lived with. I was in school and he was in school. He came and he went, and I came and I went, and it had all the feeling of a real life. You do the laundry, you make love, you have breakfast, you fight. And all the time, there was a pair of handcuffs on the doorknob of the bedroom. I never said, "What are these handcuffs doing here?" and he never said, "You may wonder what those handcuffs are doing here..." They were just there.

What was most odd of all, though, was that it wasn't very long before I knew him, that I knew that I didn't really love him, not in the same way he seemed to love me, but I could never tell him that, because of all the habits we shared, and because, if you must know, I was afraid to hurt him and to lose him. So one thing lead to another: and there were the handcuffs on the doorknob.

There was something I didn't know about him and me, and I was scared silly... It was in Hanover, New Hampshire, in January, in the snow, in twilight, very cold, very somber, that Michael said to me, "You can't go now." He said, "I appreciate your feelings, I appreciate you're being honest with me, but you can't leave just yet," and I said, "Sure as hell I can." And he said, "This will hurt me, and I think it will hurt you, because I know that you love me, and you know I love you, and you know you love me, so this finding yourself," he said, "this finding yourself, as you call it, I can appreciate, but don't go. Let's find together."

And I said, what could I say, I'm pretty unhappy here, right now, and you're swell, you're super, but..." And he said, "No buts, not now." He cried and I cried, it was fourteen below and we held on to each other just to keep warm, and when I put my arms around him, I could feel the handcuffs in his pocket. He said to me: "If anything happens, you know, to me... you might be a little to blame." I said, "You're so full of shit, honey, you're full up to the top." I walked away - and thought he'd probably lie down in the snow and die. (Pause.) Well, he didn't die, but he stood there long enough to get frost bite, anyway.

Order Taken in Marriage from Amazon.

This monologue brought to you by The Monologue Database.