Scene 5, Tracy explaining Ben why she had an abortion and why she tries to make him hate her, by telling a story about her childhood.
Tracy: "When you were little did your parents always keep giving you these animals and things, like they thought you looked like you had to have something to be grabbing onto all the time or you’d fall over or blow away or something? Well, don’t look at me like that. Listen, if you don’t want to hear this, I can just leave, if you think this is stupid or something. So my parents kept giving me these animals, see, not just like cats and dogs but also a pregnant raccoon and two ducks named Mickey and a deflowered skunk and a chicken named Arnold and all kinds of things like that. They were really dumb. Not the animals, my parents. Well, you know how dumb they are. And the house we lived in was too close to the road, and what happens when you live too close is that all of your animals get splattered always on the road, and your brothers are always having to go out with a shovel and scrape them off and take them someplace to bury. And sometimes if they’re all squashed but not quite dead your brother has to hit them with the shovel until they stop screaming or quacking or squawking or whining or meowing as the case may be. And giving them names makes it worse but I loved to and I couldn’t help it and I did and when they got squashed it wasn’t just the cat or the duck it was somebody with a name that you lived with and slept with and talked at and listened to and fussed over and took care of and accepted you and then it was the mess that was left on the road.
And after the last one, this small Persian kitten named Clarence, after that last one got squashed I made my stupid parents promise me they would never get me another thing that was alive because I had figured out what was true and still is true that there is no excuse and no way ever to make up for the millions and millions and millions of innocent betrayed and squashed up dead, and nobody’s parents and nobody’s God was ever going to be able to explain it to me and make it all right, and the only way not to go crazy if you had the misfortune to be a compulsive namer and lover was if you never hooked yourself up with splatterable things then it can never be your fault for needing them and having them because if you don’t give you can’t hurt and you don’t get guilty because you can’t betray if you never gave to begin with. Doesn’t that make sense to you? It does make sense. It does."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
WARNING: Animal harm
Date: 2011-10-18 12:13 am (UTC)Tracy: "When you were little did your parents always keep giving you these animals and things, like they thought you looked like you had to have something to be grabbing onto all the time or you’d fall over or blow away or something? Well, don’t look at me like that. Listen, if you don’t want to hear this, I can just leave, if you think this is stupid or something. So my parents kept giving me these animals, see, not just like cats and dogs but also a pregnant raccoon and two ducks named Mickey and a deflowered skunk and a chicken named Arnold and all kinds of things like that. They were really dumb. Not the animals, my parents. Well, you know how dumb they are. And the house we lived in was too close to the road, and what happens when you live too close is that all of your animals get splattered always on the road, and your brothers are always having to go out with a shovel and scrape them off and take them someplace to bury. And sometimes if they’re all squashed but not quite dead your brother has to hit them with the shovel until they stop screaming or quacking or squawking or whining or meowing as the case may be. And giving them names makes it worse but I loved to and I couldn’t help it and I did and when they got squashed it wasn’t just the cat or the duck it was somebody with a name that you lived with and slept with and talked at and listened to and fussed over and took care of and accepted you and then it was the mess that was left on the road.
And after the last one, this small Persian kitten named Clarence, after that last one got squashed I made my stupid parents promise me they would never get me another thing that was alive because I had figured out what was true and still is true that there is no excuse and no way ever to make up for the millions and millions and millions of innocent betrayed and squashed up dead, and nobody’s parents and nobody’s God was ever going to be able to explain it to me and make it all right, and the only way not to go crazy if you had the misfortune to be a compulsive namer and lover was if you never hooked yourself up with splatterable things then it can never be your fault for needing them and having them because if you don’t give you can’t hurt and you don’t get guilty because you can’t betray if you never gave to begin with. Doesn’t that make sense to you? It does make sense. It does."