Rhinoceros
after Ionesco and Ruhl
This sort of thing happens to me a lot
By this sort of thing I mean finding myself in the foyer of a theatre glued to a Reddit thread about disassociation from SSRI withdrawal
Replacing the burden of loneliness
With the burden of companionship
Or the other way around
For example instead of asking you about your day I’m thinking about how most of the main decisions I have made in my life so far have had too much to do with sex
And not enough to do with love
Like how I quit learning German after a month because I didn’t find it to be a sexy language
I did once fall for a German man
but he’d grown up in Islington since his family moved here from Berlin when he was a kid so he didn’t have the accent
Plus he had a fiancé which he did not mention until after the act when I immediately stopped fancying him
Because I am a well-adjusted person
Morally opposed to this kind of dishonestly between people who have made a commitment
to each other and God and all my moral commitments
Align perfectly with my sexual appetites
Which is just endlessly convenient for me
And everyone I have ever loved
You say the rhinoceros is the rising tide of fascism I think it’s whatever’s been sitting on my chest this week
But you are better versed in this sort of thing
By this sort of thing I mean the meaning of art
And talking about some current cultural moment while laughing beautifully into a warm summer night
I am feeling increasingly alienated increasingly distant from things like plays and other people
Not only because of the SSRI withdrawal
But also because I have been particularly terrified by the impermanence of our existence lately
and theatre is an inherently impermanent medium so it reminds me of this
I’m one of the lucky ones
It rips me apart.
Anyway, love is not a dignified state to operate from
Without God it’s pretty morbid
By God I mean SSRIs and by love I mean sex
By God I mean the Rhinoceros and by love I mean withdrawal
A person on the Reddit thread comments I can’t explain it but my house doesn’t feel like my house and colours don’t look like colours I don’t know if this makes sense to anyone
The rhinoceros wails in the middle distance
I’m not scared of love just scared that there are so many beautiful kind women in this world and especially in this theatre tonight you’d have an easier time loving than me
You touch the small of my back as if to say get off your phone
or we’re going to be alright I can’t tell
Another Redditor comments I know that this post was pinned two years ago but I’m lying in my bed right now while reading this almost in tears this is the only thing I’ve ever read that EXACTLY describes how I feel…the feeling of nothing being familiar…not even your children…the air feeling different…
The rhinoceros has gone home to his kids
I am the only one left in the auditorium
By only one left I mean the cleaners need to kick me out and
you’ve long spilled into the warm outside to congratulate your beautiful friends and I know we’re not going to have sex tonight even though I want you more than life itself
Sex without God being an entirely morbid endeavour
And the only escape hatch from all this I know
By God I mean you look so beautiful tonight
I can’t stop looking at your perfect face in the perfect moonlight thinking
All of this is going to be over so soon:
You, me, us, art, SSRIs; shame, morbidity, and pleasure
The earth itself ablaze
As we fight on your balcony
About who abandoned who
Syllogism after syllogism ripped up and thrown
Into the rising tides beneath.
Aisling Towl is a writer from South London. Her poems are published by DUST magazine and Seaford Review; shortlisted for the Pushcart and Bridpoint prizes. Her plays are published by Bloomsbury in the UK and Samuel French in the US and she is the current Shaffer playwright-in-residence at Trinity College, Cambridge.