Between Riverside And Crazy

“—and if that’s the truth, I could leave like today, for real, cuz I respect you too much, Dad, to be annoying you in this your place of residence—”

At the start of the play, Oswaldo, a friend who is staying with Pops in his rent-controlled apartment, expresses his gratitude for Pops’s generosity. These lines of Oswaldo’s to Pops are only a few of many repetitive statements of appreciation he makes to Pops; Oswaldo’s worry that he is annoying results in his annoying habit of repeating himself and talking too much. The irony of Oswaldo’s well-meaning but ignorant communications set a humorous tone for the start of the play. 

“That ain’t the point! The point is: Lulu, she juss said she gonna take the fuckin’ dog with her, right?!”

After Lulu, Junior’s girlfriend, says she will take the dog with her when she goes out, but then neglects to take the dog when she actually leaves the apartment, Pops exclaims in impatience to Oswaldo. Pops’s overreaction to Lulu’s mistake could be a worrying sign of drunkenness or a reflection of Pops’s fraught emotional state or his high-strung temperament. Pops is characterized as a man who drinks too much; if he is actually an overwrought person, he could be self-medicating with alcohol. 

“How many drinks you had this morning, Pops? How many he had, Oswaldo?”

Junior, Pops’s son, expresses concern at Pops drinking alcohol first thing in the morning. His asking Oswaldo immediately after asking Pops shows that Pops, historically, has not been honest with Junior about his intake of alcohol.