A: It’s all right there. On the flag.
B: On the flag? The yellow one?
A: Yellow like a rose.
B: Or a forbidden love.
A: A what?
B: The flag. The flag shows a coiled snake hissing.
A: And?
B: And?
A: And what is it saying?
B: “Don’t bread me.”
A: “Don’t bread me?”
B: “Don’t bread me. I don’t want to end up in anybody’s skillet.”
A: No, asshole. It says. (Pause) It says: “Don’t tread on me.”
B: Of course. Of course. I know what you’re talking about. I know which flag you’re talking about. For some reason, I was picturing the little triangle-shaped flags that they fly on golf courses… “Don’t tread on me.”
(Beat)
You mean like with a bicycle tire?
A: A bicycle tire?
B: Yeah, like: “Don’t ride your bike over me. I’m trying to catch some rays here!”
A: No. You dick. Dan Bongino explained it. It means don’t fuck with me and I won’t fuck with you. Get it?
B: Got it. So, the idea is that we are each separate snakes coiled and hissing, except for the bicycles, which are piloted by Redcoats or Northerners or Black Lives Matter or Antifa.
A: Uh-huh. Or Momtifa.
B: Right. Or Momtifa. And so, we are a country of coiled and hissing snakes --- in dirt holes, sunning ourselves on rocks, s-ing our way through swamps… well that’s not exactly right because so many Americans swamps were drained to make corn fields or or sugarcane…
OK. So, we are a nation of hissing and venomous snakes coiled around cotton plants and corn stalks and if you fuck with us, individually speaking… the fangs, motherfucker. The fangs, bitch.
A: Basically.
B: So. Then what you don’t do is ride your bicycle over the snakes because the snakes are the good guys. OK. So, my question is: What do you do?
A: “What do you do?”
B: What do you do? What do you do do? If I’m a snake, what do I do… besides wait around to maybe get tread on?
A: Well don’t say it like that.
B: Like what?
A: Like it’s meaningless -- not getting tread on. That’s a big deal. Dan Bongino put it like this… Don’t fu…
B: ... fuck with me and I won’t fuck with you. What I’m saying is that is there anything I’m supposed to do in my not fucking around with you.
(Beat)
I am a snake and I promise not to fuck with you…
A: Unless you fuck with me.
B: Right. Unless you fuck with me… But what else do I do? Building projects? Do I erect a porch on my property? Do I purchase property and then mainly observe it?
A: Sure. That’s fine. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with purchasing and observing property. As long as…
B: As long as long as you don’t fuck with anybody else.
E: Well?
B: That sounds boring.
A: What? What sounds boring? To you?
B: Sitting around looking at my property and not fucking with people and not getting fucked with sounds boring. I’m sorry.
A: It’s not boring! It’s not boring! Not fucking with other people and not getting fucked with by other people is not boring!
B: Ok.
A: And even if it is, it’s the best we got. As soon as you stop vigilance… As soon as you let somebody tread on you, fuck with you, get over on you, run a game on you, con you, fool you, bamboozle, bedazzle, shimmy shake you. Piss on you, ramrod you, regale you with gifts and then fleece you! Limit you… As soon as… As soon as…
B: What?
A: As soon as…
B: As soon as…
A: As soon as you give somebody your trust and they… burn you… well, then you ain’t shit then, Lester, are you?
B: Well. You’re not shit. You’re not not shit. You’re a person.
(Beat)
So, when was it?
A: When was it. When was what?
B: When was it? When did you get taken for a ride?
A: Doesn’t matter.
B: OK. It doesn’t matter.
A: That’s what I said. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what happened. If I got taken for a ride. If somebody ran a game on me. It doesn’t matter.
B: Right. I know. The fangs, motherfucker. The fangs.
A: That’s goddamn right, Charlie! You bet your goddamn ass, the fangs. And I’ll sink them so far into your neck that you may as well be a wax statue when I’m done with you. Put you into a dinner tux and send you off to Madame Tussauds.
B: Who turned you into wax, Jimmy?
A: Nobody.
B: Nobody turned you into wax. It just happened.
A: Yes. It just happened.
B: And who did you bury out over beyond the hill?
A: A bird… I’d been seeing her perched on the post at the end of our road three days running and I came out one day and she was on the ground. It looked like I could see outer space in her eyes. I took her back home. I brought her back to health. I learned what she needed. Mostly she needed care. She needed somebody to take care of her and give her little bugs and worms to eat. She was getting ready to fly away and somebody took her out of the little shoebox with grass that I had put her in. I found her dead outside of our back door.
(Beat)
And so I took her up over the hill and I buried her there and I came back down the hill and I was made out of wax.
B: Did you ever think that maybe you’re a bird and not a rattlesnake?
A: Could be. Could be.
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