`The kind of guy you see in every mall. Not adverse to a good night out or a prank but with an extra touch of sensitivity that sets him apart from the others. On the outside he demonstrates the machismo and self-assurance required from him by society, but is quite emotional and tentative underneath.'

The boy is torn between the promise of fulfilling his dream, and the fear of rejection or realisation that the dream may not be all it's cracked up to be:-

`As she wanders back out into the mall, I see just one thing. Her T - shirt's not R.E.M, it's RADIOHEAD. Well, that's life for you.'

He is superficially less philosophical than the girl, but this is only because he spends the play hiding behind, and emerging from behind, an armour of nonchalance and masculinity. As soon as he realises that he has stepped away from this armour and is in the position to be injured, he hurriedly steps back behind it :-

`All the girls I know think Morgan is incredibly good looking. I suppose he is, I can't really tell. He looks a bit like Evan Dando from the Lemonheads but with dark brown hair so I guess he is .'

Just imagine Kane's reaction if he admitted that Morgan is in fact good looking! It would leave `Boy' open to teasing and most definitely open to emotional hurt - the very same hurt he is afraid of experiencing should he act upon his desire to talk to the girl:-

`If I was my friend Morgan I could've plonked myself right next to her ... at least he can just launch straight in the middle of a conversation and say things that don't make him sound like a demented halfwit drunk. I can't do that. Just go up and talk to a girl like that.'

In the book from which the play is taken, Morgan is a major character, whom the `Boy' alternatively envies for his ability to break the ice and to not appear to be affected by any emotion or by empty romantic liasons (which leave the `Boy' guilty for days), and pities for the same reason.

He is essentially frightened of girls - both of the strength he sees in them, the difference he cannot bridge between the female and male psyche. However, this is also a source of fascination for him.

`Girls fascinate me. I mean here's a human being like me, but they're not like me, they think totally differently to me. I don't know where along the line men suddenly decided they were the dominators but they sure got their facts wrong. Every guy I know just about is going to disagree with me. I try to too, but it's true. Girls can dominate me like nothing you've ever seen. I mean, I've got guys all worked out - I am one, and I spend most of my time with them. But with girls, it's like discovering a completely new civilisation and trying to work out the language they speak. Like trying to speak to dolphins. I really want to know how they think and what they think, and why. I'd really like to trust a girl enough to ask her anything at all about girls.'

The main object of his affection in the book (named Bethel) is an extremely strong and overbearing girl whom he feels overwhelmed by and can exercise no power over. This is why he is so delighted with the reaction of the `bimbos' :-

`Then all those girls go `Ewwww!' and giggle some more, and looking at me and Kane like we're members of Nirvana or something'

- because he is the one with the power in this situation, no matter that he has no intention of forging anything meaningful with them. In fact, in some ways he is quite comfortable with girls having power over him, as it means he doesn't have to take the first step.

`She's a hell of a lot stronger than me, usually. Usually it's me she's holding up. I'm nothing to her, she's one of the strongest people I know.'

`A lot of kids I know don't like Bethel. She's pretty stuck to her ideas. If she thinks someone's full of crap she'll go right ahead and tell them, no messing around or nothing. I think that makes people kind of scared in a way. If she knows what I'm thinking she'll let me know she does. That is scary, it's almost like she has some sort of hold on my mind.'

`This is the thing about girls. They always seem to have some sort of control over the situation. Maybe it's my imagination but it seems that way to me .... Maybe that's sexist , I don't know , but it's just the way things seem to me .'

The incident in the Boy's monologue is also concerned with issues of power within a relationship. He tends to put girls on a pedestal, linking them with nature, seeing them as being as powerful and uncontrollable as a storm or hurricane - and just as liable to wreak emotional havoc in his mind. The very nature of his fantasy, with its emphasis on perfection, indicates how highly and in some ways unrealistically he views women. However, he is on the way to realising that they are just as human as he is. He is at an earlier stage of emotional development to the `Girl', but is striving to fix this, at the moment in the middle of a transitory phase. Although Kane's exploits are still able to amuse him, it's clear he's ready to move on from them.

`Perhaps a little more worldly and mature than the Boy, but romantic - minded. More of a `dreamer' than a `doer'. She is more philosophical rather than merely inquisitive as the Boy is and thus more likely to delve deeper into what she sees around her, and be more reflective about her experiences .'

The Girl is caught up in her ideas of what conventional love should be. She is very concerned about the `right' way to go about a relationship, rather than submitting to instinct and seizing the moment. One of the themes of the book from which the play was taken is naturalness versus falseness. By overburdening herself with worry about `correctness' she is denying the spontenaety and naturalness that would have allowed her to talk to the Boy. :-

`The kind of day I want everyone to remember when one day they are caught up with stupid things like buying Valentines Day cards for people they don't even love.'

`There's this girl and a guy together, doing everything wrong, spilling their Coke and smiling uneasily at the flat popcorn on the carpet.'

`I mean, there's me who goes all by the book, perfect timing, perfect subtlety, not too forward - and it's the cows who roll up and say a couple of quotes from `Wayne's World' and end up with a guy in each pocket.'

However, holding this opinion is more a matter of jealousy than malice - the couple who are doing everything wrong have nevertheless taken the step that she is too afraid to take - of breaking the ice - and, by going about everything in the `wrong' manner is disproving her theory that once you're together, everything is perfect from then on. She realises this and is later a little kinder in her assessment of the other couple she sees:-

`I saw him try to aim a kiss but get a mouthful of hair instead. Poor guy, I really felt for him.'

The monologue also reflects this - she wishes there was some conventional way of experiencing love, or some sort of rules to live by - but is only just realising how abstract a concept it is.

In this she is also expressing a fear of rejection and realisation that the dream may not be all it's cracked up to be (the main emotions she shares with the Boy) - the fact that, should she and he get together, they might just end up as that couple doing everthing wrong.

She is definitely more emotionally mature than the boy, and is allowed by society to express herself more.

Although the `Girl' appears only in this one passage, she is very similar to the other girls the main character (`Boy') meets and is attracted to on the way - most of whom are (he believes) more powerful and/or mature than he is. She is in essence, the prototype of them all, from his unrequited love Bethel, who dominates the book, to the several unsatisfying liasons he has with near - strangers. He tends to link girls with nature, seeing them to be, like nature, an untameable and unpredictable, potentially destructive and omnipotent force in the same way as a hurricane or tornado is.

To give you some idea of the kind of girl the boy likes :-

`I don't think I really have any dream girls . I like Winona Ryder . You could invite her night fishing and she wouldn't get complain about the mosquitoes . I like Juliette Lewis too . But she's always so thin , like if you picked her up she's break and you'd have to put her back together and get blamed for it . That girl in `Speed' , I like her , she's interesting . She has a good personality . I mean , she has a personality at all , that's prretty rare . Oh , no wait . I'll tell you who I like . That girl bassist from Smashing Pumpkins. She's incredible. How she gets her hair like that I do not know . She makes my chest pump, I swear.'

`It wasn't the girl from Smashing Pumpkins, but boy, did it ever look like her ! Electric blonde hair parted exactly on one side, done in a whole lot of plaits, and flowers, flowers actually twisted in to the plaits, leaves and all. Red hi - top converse. Ripped - up white denim vest and shorts, a blaack lace shirt under that, I could barely concentrate.'