THE SETUP
Gabby has just given a cassette tape to her boyfriend Vincent. The tape is a collection of answering machine messages left by their late friend Byron. Vincent had been distraught because he was forgetting what their late friend’s voice sounded like as his memory faded.
“And then when my mom died, I started to put together these tapes for my dad. Mom’s voice.”
GABBY
It’s a tape of Byron’s voice. I could kick myself for not thinking of this before, but then again, I never mentioned it to you, so, of course, it wouldn’t have come up as an option, for you, anyway, until now, and I mean, it probably seems pretty goofy and overly sentimental and I never know how people are going to react to the news that I’m doing it to them so it’s just simpler not to bring it up at all, you know?, and in my mind, it was always a family thing, so —
See, it hit me one day that my grandma and my mom and dad weren’t going to be around forever and it’d be nice to have their voices on tape to play after they were gone. So I wouldn’t forget. And they get self-conscious if you deliberately go the “recording for posterity” route. But I figured, since they were already being recorded every time they called and I wasn’t around anyway, that might be a place to start. And then when my mom died, I started to put together these tapes for my dad. Mom’s voice. So on her birthday or their anniversary or mother’s day or if he was just feeling blue — you know, he could hear her voice again. I’ve been dubbing my answering machine tapes for about nine years now. And like I said, it’s been this family thing, so it didn’t occur to me until last night, when you were talking about his voice, forgetting his voice — so, anyway, better late than never, here’s Byron.
(photo: 1997-1998 production by The Subterranean Theatre Company (Los Angeles, CA); Tania Gutsche as Gabby, Tom Sonnek as Vincent)
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