From SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH

(Chance tells his story of how he left home to become an actor. There are three separate selections here, though theyʼre all continuous in the play)

CHANCE WAYNE

Here is the town I was born in, and lived in till ten years ago, in St. Cloud. I was a twelve‐pound baby, normal and healthy, but with some kind of quantity ʻXʼ in my blood, a wish or a need to be different.... the kids that I grew up with are mostly still here and what they call ʻsettled down,ʼ gone into business, married and bringing up children, the little crowd I was in with, that I used to be the start of, was the snobset, the ones with the big names and money. I didnʼt have either... the others are all now members of the young social set here. The girls are young matrons, bridge‐players, and the boys belong to the Junior Chamber of Commerce and some of them, clubs in New Orleans such as Rex and Comus and ride on the Mardi Gras floats. Wonderful? No, boring... I wanted, expected, intended to get, something better... Yes, and I did, I got it. I did things that fat‐headed gang never dreamed of. Hell when they were still freshmen at Tulane or LSU or Ole Miss, I sang in the chorus of the biggest show in New York, in “Oklahoma,” and had pictures in LIFE in a cowboy outfit, tossinʼ a ten‐gallon hat in the air! YIP... EEEEEE!

CHANCE WAYNE

I was about to be sucked into the Army so I went into the Navy, because a sailorʼs uniform suited me better, the uniform was all that suited me, though. I kept thinking, this stops everything. I was twenty‐ three, that was the peak of my youth and I knew my youth wouldnʼt last long. By the time I got out, Christ knows, I might be nearly thirty! Who would remember Chance Wayne? In a life like mine, you just canʼt stop, you know, canʼt take time out between steps, youʼve got the keep going right on up from one thing to the other, once you drop out, it leaves you and goes on without you and youʼre washed up. ... And so I ran my comb through my hair one morning and noticed that eight or ten hairs had come out, a warning signal of a future baldness. My hair was still thick. But would it be five years from now, or even three? When the war would be over, that scared me, that speculation. I started to have bad dreams. Nightmares, and cold sweats at night, and I had palpitations, and on my leaves I got drunk and woke up in strange places with faces on the next pillow Iʼd never seen before. My eyes had a wild look in them in the mirror.