Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Revised and Complete Edition (21 page)

ANGEL
: The stiffening of your penis is of no consequence.

PRIOR
: Well maybe not to you but—

ANGEL
: READ!

(More music, more light. Prior puts the glasses on, and reads.)

ANGEL
: You are Mere Flesh. I I I I am Utter Flesh,

     
Density of Desire, the Gravity of Skin:

     
What makes the Engine of Creation Run?

     
Not Physics but Ecstatics Makes the Engine Run:

     
(Continue below:)

(She begins to glow with intense sexual heat.)

PRIOR
(Hit by a wave of intense sexual feeling)
: Hmmmm . . .

ANGEL
(Continuous from above)
: The Pulse, the Pull, the Throb, the Ooze . . .
(Continue below:)

PRIOR
: Wait, please, I . . . Excuse me for just a minute, just a minute.

     
OK I . . .

ANGEL
(Continuous from above)
: Priapsis, Dilation, Engorgement, Flow:

     
The Universe Aflame with Angelic Ejaculate . . .

     
(Continue below:)

PRIOR
(Losing control, he starts to hump the Book)
: Oh shit . . .

ANGEL
(Continuous from above)
: The Heavens a-thrum to the Seraphic Rut,

     
The Fiery Grapplings . . .
(Continue below:)

PRIOR
: Oh God, I . . .

ANGEL
(Continuous from above)
: The Feathery Joinings of the Higher Orders,

     
Infinite, Unceasing, the Blood-Pump of Creation!

(With a rough gesture, she causes Prior to flip over on his back
.

     
She’s directly above and parallel to him, close.)

(Pause. The peepstones have fallen off, or he removes them.)

PRIOR
: Oh. Oh God.

ANGEL
: The Body is the Garden of the Soul.

PRIOR
: What
was
that?

ANGEL
: Plasma Orgasmata.

PRIOR
: Yeah well no doubt.

BELIZE
(He’s heard enough; stepping into the bedroom)
: Whoa whoa whoa wait a minute excuse me please. You fucked this angel?

PRIOR
: She fucked me. She has . . . Well, She has eight vaginas.

ANGEL
: REGINA VAGINA!

     
Hermaphroditically Equipped as well with a Bouquet of Phalli.

     
I I I I am Your Released Female Essence Ascendant!

BELIZE
: The sexual politics of this are—

PRIOR
: Very confusing. I know.

(As Belize challenges Prior, the Angel, unthreatened, intrigued, lands and listens closely
.

     
From the moment Belize enters the bedroom, Prior is simultaneously with him, on the street, three weeks hence, trying to tell what happened
, and
present in the bedroom with the Angel, where he’s very frightened, with no idea of what’s about to happen.)

BELIZE
: What . . . So what, um,
gender
is God? According to—

PRIOR
: According to Her: male. God is a—

BELIZE
: No shit? Seriously? You don’t think that’s sorta sexist or—

PRIOR
: He’s not an old man or anything, He’s a—from what I gather He’s a Hebrew letter.

ANGEL
: THE ALEPH GLYPH.

PRIOR
: A . . .
male
Hebrew letter.

ANGEL
: Deus Erectus! Pater Omnipotens!

PRIOR
(To Belize)
: Each Angel is an infinite aggregate myriad entity, They’re basically incredibly powerful bureaucrats, They have no imagination, They can
do
anything but They can’t invent, create, They’re sort of fabulous and dull all at once, and They copulate,
ceaselessly
, apparently, the Angels, They—I mean I—

BELIZE
: They get fucked by a Hebrew letter.

ANGEL
(To Prior)
: READ ON.

(Prior gestures to the Angel to wait.)

PRIOR
: When Angels cum They make something called, um—
(Continue below:)

ANGEL
: Plasma orgasmata!

PRIOR
(Continuous from above)
: —plasma orgasmata which makes some . . . other thing called—
(Continue below:)

ANGEL
: Protomatter.

PRIOR
(Continuous from above)
: —protomatter. Right. Which is what makes . . . Everything else.

ANGEL
: Creation.

PRIOR
: Creation. Heaven’s, like, a lot, um, livelier than we were led to—

ANGEL
: Heaven Is a City Much Like San Francisco.

(Prior puts on the peepstones and returns to the floor, reading at first from the Book, and then, as the Angel continues, he stops reading, removes the peepstones and listens to her. Belize is also listening, watching, bewildered and increasingly scared by the way Prior’s sounding.)

ANGEL
: House upon house depended from Hillside,

              
From Crest down to Dockside,

              
The green Mirroring Bay.

              
Oh Joyful in the Buckled Garden,

              
Undulant Landscape over which

              
The Threat of Seismic Catastrophe hangs:

              
More beautiful because imperiled.

              
POTENT: yet DORMANT: The Fault Lines of Creation!

              
(Coughs)

              
When
He
, ALEPH,

              
GLYPH From Whom All Words Descend,

              
Tearing Glyph from Auto-Generative All-Adoring Gaze,

              
He Would Come Down to Us ABLAZE!

              
THEN: Heaven’s Walls would Ring with the

              
Glad mad moaning of the Winged Throng.

              
Hot Wet FIRE would flood the Cosmos,

              
And Igneous Gases Enflame the Voids,

              
And lights revolve, and spheres resolve,

              
As ALEPH Burns.

              
He burns . . . forever, He . . .

(A deep sorrow wells up. She can’t speak. Little pause. Prior looks at her.)

(A far-off, deep rumbling.)

PRIOR
(To the Angel, hearing something in her story that’s recognizable)
: He changed.

BELIZE
(To Prior)
: God?

(Prior nods.)

BELIZE
: Changed how, honey? If He’s God, how can He—

PRIOR
: I don’t know. But He did. He—

ANGEL
: He grew weary of Us.

     
Our Songs and Fornications.

     
His Angels: Who cannot Imagine, who lack that Faculty.

     
Made for His Pleasure, We can only ADORE.

     
Seeking something New,

     
He split the World starkly in Two

     
(A mounting fury directed at Prior:)

     
And made
YOU
—

PRIOR
(To Belize)
: When God made people He created . . . division.

ANGEL
: Human Beings:

     
Uni-Genitalled: Female. Male.

PRIOR
(To Belize)
: He awakened a potential in the design for change—

ANGEL
: In creating
You
—

PRIOR
(To Belize)
: —for random event.

ANGEL
: Our Father-Lover Unleashed

     
Eternal Creation’s Potential for Change.

PRIOR
(To Belize)
: For movement forward.

ANGEL
(Bitter disgust, envy)
: In
YOU the
Virus of TIME began!

     
YOU
Think
. And You
IMAGINE
!

     
Migrate! Explore
—

BELIZE
: Uh-huh, but . . .

ANGEL
: And when you do:

BELIZE
: But so like you know none of this is, um,
real
, right?

ANGEL
: Paradise itself Shivers and Splits—

PRIOR
(To Belize)
: I, I didn’t say it was real, I said it was what She told me, and She’s, well . . .

ANGEL
: Each Day when
You
Awake—

PRIOR
: Real
enough
, I guess, I don’t know!

ANGEL
(Her fury now directed at Prior and Belize)
: As though WE are only

     
The dream of
YOU
.

PRIOR
: Everything’s come unglued, right? So is . . .
(The room, the world) this
any less plausible than you know than—

(A low but powerful tremor stops Prior. The Angel hears it, too; Belize doesn’t, but he sees Prior hearing it.)

ANGEL
(With loathing)
: PROGRESS!

BELIZE
(To Prior)
: We’re not supposed to
migrate
? To progress?

(Another tremor, louder and more powerful.)