Find us on
Monologue Genie
  • Home
  • Monologues
    • Female Monologues
    • Male Monologues
    • 2 Minute Monologues
    • 1 Minute Monologues
    • Monologues from Plays FEMALE
    • Monologues from Plays MALE
    • Monologues For Teens
    • Monologue Recommendations >
      • Monologues For Men
      • Monologues For Women
      • Comedic Monologues
    • All Monologues >
      • 2 Minute Monologue Latte Factor
      • 2 Minute Ate the Divorce Papers Monologue
      • 2 Minute Terrible Being Nice Monologue
      • 2 Minute I Kissed Marisa Monologue
      • 2 Minute Breaking Up with Brandon Monologue
      • 2 Minute Fact Checker Monologue
      • 2 Minute 26 Year Old Bar Mitzvah Boy Monologue
      • 2 Minute Honey I'm a Leprechaun Monologue
      • 2 Minute Quiche isn't Sexy Monologue
      • 2 Minute Puppy Room Monologue
      • Ate Divorce Papers Monologue
      • Its Terrible Being Nice Monologue
      • Hit and Run Monologue
      • Serial Dater Monologue
      • Switching Sides Monologue
      • Conjugal Connections Monologue
      • Turkey Day Monologue
      • Yoga Fart Monologue
      • Fire the Boys Monologue
      • New Year's Wish
      • Namaste Bitch
      • Quiche isn't Sexy
      • The Matzah Thief Monologue
      • Un-Chatty Cathy Monologue
      • Death by Peanut Monologue
      • Deafening Applause Monologue
      • Surrender My Love Monologue
      • Space is Nicer than Here Monologue
      • 12 Years Wise
      • My Father's Blue Eyes Monologue
      • Breaking Up with Brandon Monologue
      • I Kissed Marisa Monologue
      • I'm More Man than You Monologue
      • Almost 16 Monologue
      • Flunking Yoga Monologue
      • I Meditate Wrong Monologue
      • The Farting Yogi
      • Coffee Slave Monologue
      • Miss Havisham
      • The Gratitude List
      • Secret Identity
      • Secret Identity (Extended Version)
      • Always Smiling Monologue
      • There's No Place Like Oz Monologue
      • My Tattoo
      • Art Schooled Monologue
      • Don't Blame the Muse Monologue
      • Cranky Wife Monologue
      • A Good Pudding Monologue
      • Sleepless in Sukhasana
      • Welcome to FLY Yoga
      • Naked Barbies Monologue
      • Ken Doll Theft Monologue
      • Bell Shaped Body Monologue
      • Recess Monologue
      • Supreme Leader
      • The Roadrunner Never Looks Down Monologue
      • Most Frightening Wonderful Thing Monologue
      • Killing Chuck Monologue
      • 26 Year Old Bar Mitzvah Boy Monologue
      • Fact Checker Monologue
      • Honey, I'm a Leprechaun Monologue
      • The Cheese Robber Monologue
      • Best Lazyboy in the Galaxy Monologue
      • Nice Catch Chuck Monologue
      • White Whale of Hotness Monologue
      • Unhandy Man Monologue
      • Maddie's Dad Monologue
      • The Cheerios War Monologue
      • Grow Up Humanity Monologue
      • The Burger Addict
      • Cat Mozart Monologue
      • Road to Ruin; Paved with Kittens
      • Love Sick Monologue
      • Hungry Yuppies Monologue
      • Basketball Therapy Monologue
      • Indestructible Super Puppies Monologue
      • Good Humor Man Monologue
      • My Dad's so Uncool its Cool Monologue
      • We're All Kings Monologue
      • Saint Peter the Cheater
      • Sleeping with Sleep Monologue
      • Wife Alert Monologue
      • Pretty Lies Monologue
      • Santa Monologue
      • Secret Identity (Extended Version)
      • Teen Monologues - Pinball Eyes
      • Teen Monologues - Scared Popular
      • Teen Monologues - Not Impressed
      • Teen Monologues - Candy Girl
      • Save this Divorce
      • Mission to Prom Monologue
      • Hungry Elsa Monologue
  • More Stuff
    • Monologue Writing 101
    • Monologue Catalogue
    • Monologue Performances
    • Magic Carpet
    • Contact

Monologues for women | "My Tattoo" by Gabriel Davis

My Tattoo Monologue
Monologues for women
by Gabriel Davis

Picture
My daughter has sent me here with this voucher to get my tattoo removed.  A “birthday” present she calls it.  She thinks my tattoo is … This song … this song that’s playing … ! Oh, never mind … for a moment I thought it was a different song … I’m sure this is a fine song but …

You know a great song when you hear it.  You hear such songs and suddenly you’re filled with joy or sadness or lust or rage or love.  What is it about such a song? Its power to plumb the depths of our primal feeling.  To call vivid flashes of sense and memory, to color our thought, alter the rhythm of breath, the beating of a heart?

A song can transform the world. It can set us free and bring down the walls that divide us.

For me growing up in East Berlin that song was “Looking for Freedom” sung by the incomparable David Hasselhoff.  Before it reached #1 here on our charts, I heard it and I could not unhear it.

It haunted me, possessing my voice in the shower.  I’d find myself compelled to sing it - loud as I could - and my boyfriend, often in there with me, he says “Greta, my ears are bleeding, please, please won’t you stop.”  But I could not stop. I tell him, “Today your ears may bleed, but soon it will be your heart that bleeds as mine does for unity with West Germany. And he gives me that look that he gives me.  But then he begins to sing it too.  

We’re so loud together singing it that our neighbor, the old man in the next apartment, begins banging on the door telling us to shut up or he’ll call the police.  My boyfriend runs out of the shower, grabbing the one clean towel, and opens the door still singing.  He tries to explain to the old man why we sing, but the old man is yelling over him. I run out trying in vain to cover myself with a small washcloth while explaining why we sing … then the old man understands, or at least he’s excited, and he begins singing too.

This song made me, my boyfriend, this old man feel things we hadn’t felt for so very long. For my boyfriend and I, that feeling was hope.  For the old man, it was probably hope.  And soon it wasn’t just us singing Hasselhoff’s harmony of hope.  Everywhere you went in East Berlin, people were singing it.  It played on the radio day and night.  It became our anthem.

And when the East German government announced that we would be allowed to freely cross the wall, I heard the news as if delivered to me by the baleful baritone of Hasselhoff himself.

New years eve, 1989.  I stand with my brethren at the crumbled wall, East and West together.  And there he is.  Hasselhoff in a crane hoisted above the crowd. A god in the machine. My boyfriend grips my hand tightly. The old man grips my other hand tightly. I feel strange about it, but more than anything just pure, powerful joy.

And then he begins to sing the anthem “Looking for Freedom.” Many of us are crying, because we know that we have found it. We know the Americans laugh at him. They do not understand like we do this beautiful man, his perfect brown curling locks, his soulful melodic ways. But we do.  We watch transfixed as he sings, moving about excitedly in his cool leather Jacket.  A jacket so awesome it has flashing lights on it.

For we, we the formerly oppressed can watch such a sight without any irony, without any, what you now call “snark”.  We are not “snarky” we are free.

Twenty years later, I look back on that moment, and I do not feel ashamed that I adored this man.  I do not apologize for the way he moved us all.

My daughter and her American husband can laugh at it if they want.  But I lived it.  And, yes, I have the tattoo to prove it. I wear the face of Hasselhoff upon my left breast. I wear it with pride.  

That is why … I am ripping up this voucher. And I am leaving.