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breakinglight11This scene for my Cabin Pressure fan fiction is a complete mess. I pushed to finish it so it has a lot of slapdash connective bits in it. But I do like the main ideas. I want the crew to be talking a little bit about their past relationships and revealing what their view of love has become based on past experience. Here's something for Carolyn, and I think if I clean up some of the fleshing out pieces, it could work well. It could also stand to be funnier, though. Ah, well. That's what drafting is for!
Ordinary Level of Horrid
by Phoebe Roberts
CAROLYN KNAPP-SHAPPEY, CEO of MJN Air
MARTIN CRIEFF, captain at MJN Air
DOUGLAS RICHARDSON, first officer at MJN Air
~~~
DOUGLAS: Carolyn, tell Martin something reassuring.
CAROLYN: Why me?
MARTIN: You've got some experience of it.
CAROLYN: Experience of what?
MARTIN: Love.
CAROLYN: Ha!
MARTIN: Or, well, marriage.
CAROLYN: By “marriage,” do you mean the lifelong slog through hell with a man chained behind you at the ankle and children strapped in struggling bundles to your back?
DOUGLAS: In fairness, you only have one child, and managed to head off the “lifelong” part of things at the pass.
CAROLYN: I should think you, of all people, would understand. Mr. "Third Time Definitely Wasn't the Charm."
DOUGLAS: Yes, well, I'm attempting to maintain some vestige of faith in the ideal of love.
CAROLYN: Oh, God, don't even start this with me.
MARTIN: We are, after all, talking to the woman who refers to the bloke she's been seeing for a year now a "man she knows."
DOUGLAS: Well, if that's your metric, Carolyn, there's quite a few fellows who count! You tramp, you.
CAROLYN: If my marriages were the alternative, I should have been so lucky.
DOUGLAS: Come now, Carolyn, you were a flight attendant! You're too young to remember, Martin, but there was a time when a hostie could practically name her own price on the old meet market.
CAROLYN: If by name her own price, you mean keep to a weight limit, an age ceiling, and an endless barrage of drunken rich prats pinching your bottom as you walked by. But if you managed to brave all of that to sniff out a fellow in a half-decent suit who could keep his hands to himself, then, yes, we certainly had the world on a string.
MARTIN: So that's what drew you to Gordon. Your expectations were low.
CAROLYN: Ugh. You should have met my first husband. Little did my twenty-year-old self know, it turns out there is something less appealing than life stuck in Cheshire with my sister Ruth.
DOUGLAS: Ah, a tale as old as time. Boy meets girl, boy likes girl, boy is driven like rented mule in escape from girl's suffocating home life.
CAROLYN: If only I'd though to start flying sooner. It would have been a less grueling way to get half a world away.
MARTIN: So how did you end up with Gordon then? If you don't mind my asking!
CAROLYN: Oh, you know how it is. With men who are too used to getting their way.
DOUGLAS: No, I really think he doesn't.
CAROLYN: If you haven't learned anything in two marriages, you've only yourself to blame. Men like him, with a bit of money, who walk around like they own the place... their confidence beyond reason and sense has a sort of charm to it.
DOUGLAS: God bless it.
CAROLYN: Yes, thank you, Douglas! Trouble is, when you're young, you don't always see that... men who always get what they want don't like to give that up... even if you want something different. You try your best to be whatever it is you think he wants, and when you've turned yourself into something so thoroughly false even you can't stand yourself, and soon you find out that he was never worth it anyhow.
MARTIN: Ah.
(Pause.)
CAROLYN: And of course there was Arthur. Heaven knows he would try the patience of Mother Theresa, but if a boy's own father can't take pity on him, who can?
DOUGLAS: Sounds as though you made the right decision.
CAROLYN: I thought so.
MARTIN: I have to say, it's hard to imagine you putting up with that sort of thing.
CAROLYN: Well, that's when I decided. I was never going to... deal with a man, any man, as anything other than stubbornly, resolutely myself. So if I'm going to fright them off, well, they'll be frighted off sooner rather than later.
(Pause.)
CAROLYN: Go on and laugh.
DOUGLAS: No. As a matter of fact, I think that's rather beautiful. If they can't handle you at your worst, then they don't deserve you at your... ordinary level of horrid.
Ordinary Level of Horrid
by Phoebe Roberts
CAROLYN KNAPP-SHAPPEY, CEO of MJN Air
MARTIN CRIEFF, captain at MJN Air
DOUGLAS RICHARDSON, first officer at MJN Air
~~~
DOUGLAS: Carolyn, tell Martin something reassuring.
CAROLYN: Why me?
MARTIN: You've got some experience of it.
CAROLYN: Experience of what?
MARTIN: Love.
CAROLYN: Ha!
MARTIN: Or, well, marriage.
CAROLYN: By “marriage,” do you mean the lifelong slog through hell with a man chained behind you at the ankle and children strapped in struggling bundles to your back?
DOUGLAS: In fairness, you only have one child, and managed to head off the “lifelong” part of things at the pass.
CAROLYN: I should think you, of all people, would understand. Mr. "Third Time Definitely Wasn't the Charm."
DOUGLAS: Yes, well, I'm attempting to maintain some vestige of faith in the ideal of love.
CAROLYN: Oh, God, don't even start this with me.
MARTIN: We are, after all, talking to the woman who refers to the bloke she's been seeing for a year now a "man she knows."
DOUGLAS: Well, if that's your metric, Carolyn, there's quite a few fellows who count! You tramp, you.
CAROLYN: If my marriages were the alternative, I should have been so lucky.
DOUGLAS: Come now, Carolyn, you were a flight attendant! You're too young to remember, Martin, but there was a time when a hostie could practically name her own price on the old meet market.
CAROLYN: If by name her own price, you mean keep to a weight limit, an age ceiling, and an endless barrage of drunken rich prats pinching your bottom as you walked by. But if you managed to brave all of that to sniff out a fellow in a half-decent suit who could keep his hands to himself, then, yes, we certainly had the world on a string.
MARTIN: So that's what drew you to Gordon. Your expectations were low.
CAROLYN: Ugh. You should have met my first husband. Little did my twenty-year-old self know, it turns out there is something less appealing than life stuck in Cheshire with my sister Ruth.
DOUGLAS: Ah, a tale as old as time. Boy meets girl, boy likes girl, boy is driven like rented mule in escape from girl's suffocating home life.
CAROLYN: If only I'd though to start flying sooner. It would have been a less grueling way to get half a world away.
MARTIN: So how did you end up with Gordon then? If you don't mind my asking!
CAROLYN: Oh, you know how it is. With men who are too used to getting their way.
DOUGLAS: No, I really think he doesn't.
CAROLYN: If you haven't learned anything in two marriages, you've only yourself to blame. Men like him, with a bit of money, who walk around like they own the place... their confidence beyond reason and sense has a sort of charm to it.
DOUGLAS: God bless it.
CAROLYN: Yes, thank you, Douglas! Trouble is, when you're young, you don't always see that... men who always get what they want don't like to give that up... even if you want something different. You try your best to be whatever it is you think he wants, and when you've turned yourself into something so thoroughly false even you can't stand yourself, and soon you find out that he was never worth it anyhow.
MARTIN: Ah.
(Pause.)
CAROLYN: And of course there was Arthur. Heaven knows he would try the patience of Mother Theresa, but if a boy's own father can't take pity on him, who can?
DOUGLAS: Sounds as though you made the right decision.
CAROLYN: I thought so.
MARTIN: I have to say, it's hard to imagine you putting up with that sort of thing.
CAROLYN: Well, that's when I decided. I was never going to... deal with a man, any man, as anything other than stubbornly, resolutely myself. So if I'm going to fright them off, well, they'll be frighted off sooner rather than later.
(Pause.)
CAROLYN: Go on and laugh.
DOUGLAS: No. As a matter of fact, I think that's rather beautiful. If they can't handle you at your worst, then they don't deserve you at your... ordinary level of horrid.
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