Rinse and Repeat

FADES IN:

INSIDE – WHITE ROOM

Young man is sitting on a chair in a white room, leans forward and wipes camera lens with paper towel.

YOUNG MAN

I’ve always been a precise person. Smudges on glasses, paintings that aren’t straight. They irritate me.

Shows young man grinding teeth.

YOUNG MAN (CONT’D)

Make me feel uncomfortable. Being near something like that, knowing I could just reach out and fix it. So I always do. The problem I have, is that I can never get things quite right. Eventually I’ll get to the point where I get fed up, so I just look away and tell myself, “Just forget about it.” But I always look back. At that point that’s it, I’m gone.

Folds new paper towel in half, leans forward to wipe lens again.

YOUNG MAN (CONT’D)

Started to develop a vendetta against whatever it is that’s bugging me. It’s got to be clean. Takes me awhile to realize what I’ve done. But the point when I do – it’s terrifying.

I start getting frustrated, then after frustration comes fear, and that’s what people don’t get. That’s the part they can’t understand, just how awful it is. When you realize where you are. You see, some people are scared of spiders, others are scared of the dark. I’m scared that if I start cleaning a piece of glass I‘ll never, ever stop. It sounds stupid but I always find myself here, trapped. It’s like quicksand, I’m stuck.

My only way out is to get whatever’s bugging me clean but I know it will never be clean, it can never be perfect. So the more I struggle the more stuck I become. I tell myself all the time ‘just leave it.’

But I’m a moth to a flame and I just have to do it. Slowly it settles in for me that every time this happens I realize, ‘this is it’. This is what I’m doing forever now.

Continues to fold paper towels and add into large pile of folded towels.

YOUNG MAN (CONT’D)

So I keep doing it, getting more and more annoyed with myself every second and eventually I always break down, I panic. Every time this happens I’m reminded that this is the life I’m leading and its killing me.

I keep telling myself you idiot, you absolute stupid idiot. Just stop. But I can’t so I just sit there, crying and cleaning, and the worst part of it all, when I finally get myself together, I’ll calm down. Pause, and then just do it all over again.