Kate Taylor, a columnist and former theatre critic for
The Globe and Mail, once wrote that there are only a certain number of probable secrets that a character in a play will have. You're familiar with the scene: one character approaches another and says he has a dark secret from his past. His companion agrees to listen and the man unburdens himself, letting out this thing weighing down on his conscience. At the end of the story, the teller may or may not weep and the listener may or may not understand; the reactions are unimportant to this piece since we are only dealing with the secret itself.
I call the keeper of the secret a man but it could just as easily be a woman. Taylor wrote that the nature of the secret depends on the sex of the keeper. For a man, the list of the probable secrets are as follows, in no particular order: 1) He's having an affair, 2) He's married, 3) He's gay, 4) He has a drug addiction, and 5) He once killed somebody. For women, the probable secrets are: 1) She's having an affair, 2) She's married, 3) She once had an abortion, 4) She once gave up a baby for adoption, 5) She was raped, and 6) She used to be a prostitute. I should note that it's been a while since I read the column so it's likely that I left some out. The list is by no means definitive and some works go out of their way to create something out of the ordinary, such as when the man reveals it was he who was raped. The list, though, probably makes up the bulk of the secrets characters reveal to each other.
How do they reveal these secrets? It might go something like the following scenario:
SETTING: A small, sparsely furnished apartment with a couch.
A woman is sitting on the couch reading. A visibly agitated man enters and stands in front of the woman.
PAUL
I, I have something to tell you.
The woman is concerned by the tone of the man's voice. She puts down her book and looks up at PAUL.
LISA
(nervously)
Okay, go ahead.
PAUL
I - when I was sixteen I killed a man. A boy. We went to the same school. He was in the same final period as me and after class we went to the train tracks. I don't even know why we went there but after a while we started arguing about this girl we both liked. He pushed me and I, I pushed him back. He tripped and landed on the tracks. We'd been shouting so loud that we hadn't heard the train. It -
The man starts to weep. LISA stands up and takes him in her arms. The two of them sink back into the couch.
PAUL
(crying)
The train, it just -
PAUL takes deep breaths and tries to compose himself.
PAUL
The train engineer hadn't seen us fighting. The death was ruled accidental.
PAUL's crying becomes more intense. LISA starts to rock him back and forth like a child.
PAUL
(stuttering)
Jimmy Rizzo.
LISA
What?
PAUL
His name. Jimmy Rizzo.
There we have it, an example of a dark matter struggling to come out. But we all know that fiction is quite different from reality. How would a real secret be revealed between non-fictional characters? It would be like so:
SETTING: A small, sparsely furnished apartment with a couch.
A woman is sitting on the couch reading. A visibly agitated man carrying a pamphlet enters and stands in front of the woman.
JAKE
I, I have something to tell you.
The woman is concerned by the tone of the man's voice. She puts down her book and looks up at JAKE.
HEATHER
(nervously)
Okay, go ahead.
JAKE
Here, uh, you may want to read this.
JAKE hands her the pamphlet. HEATHER is shocked by the title.
HEATHER
"Gonorrhea: Symptoms and Treatment"?! You son of a bitch!
She stands up and begins to slap JAKE's head and face. JAKE lifts his hands to deflect her blows.
JAKE
I'm sorry! But you really should get checked out!
And so there is the difference between fiction and reality. What can we take from all this? We have learned that fiction has more dramatic force and not enough break-ups due to non-serious venereal diseases. We have also learned that one should always practice safe sex, especially when cheating on your girlfriend. Truly valuable lessons and ones we should never forget.
