You're Sick Of Dancing At This Crummy Nightclub! But Johnnie Is Waiting By The Stage Door. What Are You Going To Say To Him So You Two Can Finally Get Out Of Here?

Johnnie’s at the stage door! That crumb-bum, that dog at your heels, that get-over-here heel of a nobody! He, who could drag you out of these four pressboard walls of a cheap Thursday night but never has! Tired of the rumba, tired of the big-night city that melted you down into a Brandy Alexander and a five-dollar headache, never to sleep on the Riviera or to crack open the peaceful newspaper husband you could’ve had back on the road! What are you going to say to him?

I say to Johnnie:

I laugh gaily and hatefully at him! I laugh for spite! I laugh because I’m getting out of this place at midnight without the awful Johnnie!

Johnnie, have you got a cigarette for me in those hands?

Johnnie, you’re not coming and you never were, are you?

Johnnie, talk to me again when I’m younger, and still carry the ace of spades!

Johnnie promises you California! What are you going to do?

Don’t pretend to me about California, Johnnie!!!

I’m sunk up to my hips in East Coast!

I’ll shoot every state that tries to get in between me and California! Train city, here we come, Johnnie!

Come over here and prove California to me, Johnnie, or I’ll never stand with you under a lamppost again!

Johnnie hears a wife-sound! What do you do?

I shoot the wife-sound with my little pearl pistol!

I dance! I dance! I DANCE!

I say goodbye, Johnnie, after all you did hear her wife-sound first. Goodbye, Johnnie. Maybe we were always kidding ourselves, Johnnie, and this nightclub isn’t so bad after all.

I shoot Johnnie for having ears to listen with in the first place!

You need to wash the city clean off your skin, and Johnnie’s wife off of your hands!

It’s time for me to dance! That’s what the audience came to see, and I hate the audience!

The river – the RIVER is clean!

You’ve got a sink in your heart, haven’t you, Johnnie? A sink for me to get clean in?

They were never my hands, Johnnie!

There’s smoke in the shadows! Who’s there, Johnnie?

You promised, Johnnie!

I’m going away without you! Going away from all the lamps and all the nightclubs to live forever in the good clean nine am! I’m leaving with Macready, who told me so! Train’s pulling out of the station, Johnnie, and you’re gonna be the one left touching the third rail.

You’ll never get out of here without me, Johnnie! I’ll dance you into Hell!

Zip me up one last time, Johnnie! I’ll be twenty-five in an hour, and I want everyone to watch me die!