Precious Little Talent (NHB Modern Plays)

Because eventually you have to close your mouth, stop staring, get the fuck off the rooftop and go to work and that’s what you have to believe in, you have to believe in getting up at dawn, and you have to believe in fourteen-hour shifts, you have to believe being alone is okay, you have to believe that shit magazine job might be the first step to something else. Rooftops, stars, midnight runs – they’re just going to make it harder to get up in the morning.

Aren’t I? Aren’t I? Because I can’t shake the feeling, Sam, that you, you and all your smiling and your starry-eyed fucking – I just walked up Fifth Avenue – and it’s all big and shiny and the cars are huge and the buildings all stretching themselves up into the stars and lights on Broadway all shouting their success into the night like everyone is just bound to be a big success! And then you go and sit in a café and all the waitresses are failed actresses and failed singers and on the subway there are a billion adverts for pissy little classes and you just know those waitresses are going to be serving coffee for the rest of their

ve spent my whole life jumping through these hoops that were meant to lead somewhere, I worked my arse off at school, at each stage, GCSEs, A-levels, I busted a fucking gut at uni whilst everyone else was getting pissed and getting laid and it was all meant to be so that when I left, I’d – I’d land somewhere. But it’s like I made it through the final hoop, fucking degree in my hand and smile on my face, ready to enjoy my job and my security and then someone just smacked me in the face with a fucking spade. I got sacked from a bar job, there aren’t any other crap jobs left, I haven’t landed anywhere.