Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Revised and Complete Edition (26 page)

JOE
: I know how you feel, I keep expecting Divine Retribution for this, but . . .

     
I’m actually happy. Actually.

LOUIS
: You’re not happy, that’s ridiculous, no one is happy. What am I doing? With you? With
anyone
, I should be
exterminated but with
you
: I mean politically, and, and you’re probably bisexual, and, and I mean I really
like
you a lot, but—

(Joe puts his hand over Louis’s mouth.)

LOUIS
: So, like,
this
is kind of hot . . .

JOE
: Shut up, OK?

(Louis nods. Joe takes his hand off Louis’s mouth and, after looking all around, kisses him, deeply.)

JOE
: You know why you find the world so unsatisfying?

(Louis shakes his head no.)

JOE
: Because you believe it’s perfectible.

LOUIS
: No I—

JOE
: You tell yourself you don’t, but you do, you cling to fantasies of perfection, and, and kindliness, and you never face the sorrow of the world, its bitterness. The parts of it that are bitter.

LOUIS
(Intrigued)
: Huh.

JOE
: You have to reconcile yourself to the world’s unperfectibility.

LOUIS
(Nodding)
: Reconcile. And . . . And how do you do that?

(Joe kisses Louis again, begins to unbutton Louis’s shirt.)

JOE
: By being thoroughly in the world but not of it.

LOUIS
: You, you mean like a like an Emersonian kind of kind of thing? I don’t see how that’s um workable, practical, given, you know,
emotions
and—

(Joe bites Louis’s nipple.)

LOUIS
: Oh God . . .

JOE
: You have to accept that we’re not put here to make the entire earth into a heaven, you have to accept we can’t. And accept as rightfully yours the happiness that comes your way.

LOUIS
: But . . .
Rightfully?
That’s . . . so . . . Republican, it’s—Bite my nipple again.

(Joe does. Louis responds. Joe starts to unzip Louis’s pants. Louis stops him.)

LOUIS
: No, wait, fuck, I’m like lost in an ideological leather bar with you. I want my, my
clarity
back, what little I ever possessed, it’s been stolen by, I mean, I mean I wish you weren’t so, so . . .

JOE
: Conservative.

LOUIS
: No. So fucking gorgeous.
And conservative!
Though if you were gorgeous and your politics didn’t horrifically suck I’d really be in trouble here, but yes, I do sort of wish you weren’t responsible for everything bad and evil in the world.

JOE
(Not taking the bait, trying to keep the sex going forward)
: You give me way too much credit.

LOUIS
: Right, I mean, Reagan deserves his fair share.

(Joe playfully pulls Louis’s hair, but Louis shakes his hand away. Louis’s withdrawal is beginning to make Joe apprehensive: something’s up.)

JOE
: You’re obsessed, you know that? If people like you didn’t have President Reagan to demonize, where would you be?

LOUIS
: If he didn’t have people like me to demonize where would
he
be? Upper-right-hand square on
The Hollywood Squares
.

JOE
(Seriously)
: I’m not your enemy. Louis.

LOUIS
: I never said you were my—

JOE
: Fundamentally, we both want the same thing.

(Little pause. Louis nods his head yes, then:)

LOUIS
: I don’t think that’s true.

JOE
: It is.

     
What you did . . . When you walked out on him, that was, it must’ve been hard. To do that. The world may not understand it or approve but . . . You did what you needed to do. And, and since I first met you, I . . . I consider you very brave. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone as—

LOUIS
: Nobody does what I did, Joe. Nobody.

JOE
: But maybe many want to.

     
This is so . . . This isn’t . . . But.

     
(Beat)

     
I. I’m maybe . . . falling in—

(Louis laughs, embarrassed and alarmed.)

LOUIS
: No you’re not.

JOE
(Angry)
: Don’t laugh at— Don’t say that. I am. I’m—

LOUIS
: You’re not! You can’t be, it’s only been two weeks.

     
(Continue below:)

JOE
: Three, actually, and what difference does that— I’ve never felt so, um, so happy to, so
hungry
for anyone before, it’s like all the time I—

LOUIS
(Continuous from above)
: It takes
years
to . . . feel like that, love, love, ohmygod,
love
, if there even is such a
thing as, as— You
think
you do but that’s just the, the gay virgin thing, that’s—

JOE
: You and I, Louis, we’re the same. We are. We both want the same thing. We both—

LOUIS
: I want to see Prior again.

(Joe freezes, then turns away.)

LOUIS
: I miss him, I—

JOE
: You want to go back to—

LOUIS
: I just . . . need to see him again.

     
It’s like a, a bubble rising through rock, it’s taken time, these weeks, with you, but—

     
Don’t you . . . You must want to see your wife.

(Little pause.)

JOE
: I miss her, I feel bad for her, I . . . I’m afraid of her.

LOUIS
: Yes.

JOE
: And I want more to be with—

LOUIS
: I have to. See him.

     
Please don’t look so sad.

     
Do you understand what I—

JOE
: You don’t want to see me anymore.

LOUIS
(Uncertainly)
: I—

JOE
: Louis.

     
Anything.

LOUIS
: What?

JOE
: Anything. Whatever you want. I can give up anything.

     
My skin.

(Joe starts to remove his clothes. When he realizes what Joe is doing, Louis tries to stop him.)

LOUIS
: What are you doing, someone will see us, it’s not a nude beach, it’s freezing!

(Joe pushes Louis away, Louis falls, and Joe removes the rest of his clothing, tearing the temple garment off. He’s naked.)

JOE
: I’m flayed. No past now. I could give up anything. Maybe . . . in what we’ve been doing, maybe I’m even infected.

LOUIS
: No you’re—

JOE
: I’m so . . . afraid of that. Of things I never knew I’d ever be afraid of, things I didn’t even know existed until we—I’m afraid, now, maybe for the first time, really . . . um, scared.

     
Because I don’t want to be sick. I want to live now. Maybe for the first time ever. And . . .

     
And I can be anything, anything I need to be. And I want to be with you.

(Louis starts to gather up Joe’s clothes and dress him.)

JOE
: You have a good heart and you think the good thing is to be guilty and kind always but it’s not always kind to be gentle and soft, there’s a genuine violence softness and weakness visit on people. You ought to think about that.

LOUIS
: I will. Think about it.

JOE
: You ought to think about—

LOUIS
: Yeah, I will.

JOE
: —about what you’re doing to me. No, I mean—
(Continue below:)

LOUIS
: I’m sorry, I will, I, I tried to warn you that I—

JOE
(Continuous from above)
:
What you need
. Think about what you need. Be brave.

(Louis starts to walk away from Joe. Joe calls after him:)

JOE
: And then you’ll come back to me.

(Louis turns back to Joe, then turns again and leaves the beach. Joe starts to dress himself, then sinks to his knees in the sand
.

     
Prior returns home to his apartment. He unwraps his layers of black prophet clothes. He is sweating heavily and feels very sick
.

     
He goes to the sink, runs water, splashes a little on his face, shudders
.

     
Joe, on the beach, looks up and yells:)

JOE
: YOU’LL COME BACK TO ME!

(Joe remains, kneeling in the sand, trying to collect himself, unable to move
.

     
Louis is now at a payphone at the edge of a parking lot near the beach
.

     
Prior, in his apartment, takes one pill each from three different bottles, puts them in his mouth, then puts his mouth to the faucet
.

     
Louis dials a number
.

     
In Prior’s apartment, the phone rings. Prior’s still swallowing. He grabs the phone.)

PRIOR
: Wait, I have a mouthful of pills and water, I—

LOUIS
: Prior? It’s Lou.

(Prior swallows.)

LOUIS
: I want to see you.

ACT FOUR:

John Brown’s Body

January 1986

Scene 1

Two days later. Roy and Joe in Roy’s hospital room. Roy’s in a big hospital chair, the kind that makes it possible for very sick people to sit upright briefly. The tube of an IV drip bag, hanging from a portable drip stand, runs into a vein in his arm. He’s shockingly altered, in terrible shape. He wears a flimsy hospital bathrobe; under that, a backless hospital johnny gown, and under that, adult diapers. His legs are bare, fish-belly white, and there are disposable hospital slippers on his feet
.

He forces himself to speak as normally as he can, using energy he doesn’t have, to focus and stay connected
.

Joe sits in an ordinary chair, facing Roy
.

ROY
: If you want the smoke and puffery you can listen to Kissinger and Schultz and those guys, but if you want to look at the heart of modern conservatism, you look at me.
Everyone else has abandoned the struggle, everything nowadays is just sipping tea with Nixon and Mao, that was
disgusting
, did you see that? Were you born yet?

JOE
: Of course I—

ROY
: My generation, we had
clarity
. Unafraid to look deep into the miasma at the heart of the world, what a pit, what a nightmare is there—
I
have looked, I have searched all my life for absolute bottom, and I found it,
believe
me:
Stygian
. How tragic, how brutal life is. How false people are. The immutable heart of what we are that bleeds through whatever we might become. All else is vanity.

     
I don’t know the world anymore.

     
(He coughs)

     
After I die they’ll say it was for the money and the headlines. But it was never the money: it’s the moxie that counts. I never waivered. You: remember.

JOE
: I will, Roy.

(Pause. Roy is sunk in silence. Joe is moved by what Roy’s said, but he doesn’t know how to respond. He clears his throat, then:)

JOE
: I left my wife.

     
(Little pause)

     
I needed to tell you.

ROY
: It happens.

JOE
: I’ve been staying with someone. Someone else.

ROY
: It happens.

JOE
: With a . . .

     
I was afraid you wouldn’t want to see me. If you’d forgive me. For letting you down.

ROY
(A shrug)
: I forgive you. But I don’t forget. Or I forget but I don’t forgive, I can’t remember which, what does it—