our eyes are open, our eyes are open

this was my final for writing and performing monologues

I want to be a hippie. I know what you’re thinking—I’m a teenager full of angst and wanting sex and drugs and social disruption. Or to go braless or stop shaving or something. It’s not about that. It’s about having a time and a place to be free. Sometimes I sit in my room and listen to Creedence or the Stones or Jimi and I close my eyes and dream—dream that I was lying under the stars with friends, with brothers and sisters. Or under a hot sun, naked, with someone I love, someone I trust. Anywhere but here. I want to walk down the street and not have to hang my head but smile, say hi, approach someone and tell them I love you for being alive and having fingernails and laugh lines and belly buttons and; could you imagine that world? Where you love everyone just because of the miracle it is that they are alive? I wouldn’t feel so alone here. My family doesn’t show affection. I don’t even think my mom knows my dad’s favorite color. No ones knows anyone anymore. It’s because no one cares about anyone anymore. I mean, I want to meet someone and have them ask something other than “what do you do?” Ask me, “what’s your favorite kind of ice cream?” “ what is your favorite song to sing?” “what makes you happy?” I want to be a hippie because I want to know people. In the 60’s people did everything they could to get closer to each other. They would trip just to become one with the grass, the sky, their fellow man. And the sex—I mean—what better way to know someone than to be inside them? It wasn’t about getting fucked up or fucking, it was about a need and desire for love, however you can find it. I want to love so hard that there’s literally no room for anything else. I’m sick of the superficial. None of the formalities, the forced laughter, the bullshit. This is ridiculous from this moment on, I will love harder than Janis loved Southern Comfort, I will love harder than Dr. Leary loved acid, I will love harder than the Manson girls loved Charlie. I don’t need the sixties to be free. It started with love, and it can start with me. Peace, brother.