Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Revised and Complete Edition (7 page)

     
Yes.

(He tries to approach her.)

HARPER
: Get away from me.

     
Now we both have a secret.

(Joe leaves the room.)

PRIOR
(Speaking to Louis but not looking at him)
: One of my ancestors was a ship’s captain who made money bringing whale oil to Europe and returning with immigrants—Irish mostly, packed in tight, so many dollars per head. The last ship he captained foundered off the coast of Nova Scotia in a winter tempest and sank to the bottom. He went down with the ship—
La Grande Geste
—but his crew took seventy women and kids in the ship’s only longboat, this big, open rowboat, and when the weather got too rough, and they thought the boat was overcrowded, the crew started lifting people up and hurling them into the sea. Until they got the ballast right. They walked up and down the longboat, eyes to the waterline, and when the boat rode low in the water they’d grab the nearest passenger and throw them into the sea. The boat was leaky, see; seventy people; they arrived in Halifax with nine people on board.

LOUIS
: Jesus.

PRIOR
: I think about that story a lot now. People in a boat, waiting, terrified, while implacable, unsmiling men, irresistibly strong, seize . . . maybe the person next to you, maybe you, and with no warning at all, with time only for a quick intake of air you are pitched into freezing, turbulent water and salt and darkness to drown.

     
I like your cosmology, baby. While time is running out I find myself drawn to anything that’s suspended,
that lacks an ending. But it seems to me that it lets you off scot-free.

LOUIS
: What do you mean?

PRIOR
: No judgment, no guilt or responsibility.

LOUIS
: For me.

PRIOR
: For anyone. It was an editorial “you.”

LOUIS
: Please get better. Please.

     
Please don’t get any sicker.

Scene 9

A week later. Roy and Henry, his doctor, in Henry’s office
.

HENRY
: Nobody knows what causes it. And nobody knows how to cure it. The best theory is that we blame a retrovirus, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus. Its presence is made known to us by the useless antibodies which appear in reaction to its entrance into the bloodstream through a cut, or an orifice. The antibodies are powerless to protect the body against it. Why, we don’t know. The body’s immune system ceases to function. Sometimes the body even attacks itself. At any rate it’s left open to a whole horror house of infections from microbes which it usually defends against.

     
Like Kaposi’s sarcomas. These lesions. Or your throat problem. Or the glands.

     
We think it may also be able to slip past the blood-brain barrier into the brain. Which is of course very bad news.

     
And it’s fatal in we don’t know what percent of people with suppressed immune responses.

(Pause. Roy sits, brooding. Henry waits. Then:)

ROY
: This is very interesting, Mr. Wizard, but why the fuck are you telling me this?

HENRY
(Hesitating, confused, then)
: Well, I have just removed one of three lesions which biopsy results will probably tell us is a Kaposi’s sarcoma lesion. And you have a pronounced swelling of glands in your neck, groin, and armpits—lymphadenopathy is another sign. And you have oral candidiasis and maybe a little more fungus under the fingernails of two digits on your right hand. So that’s why—

ROY
: This disease.

HENRY
: Syndrome.

ROY
:
Whatever
. It afflicts mostly homosexuals and drug addicts.

HENRY
: Mostly. Hemophiliacs are also at risk.

ROY
: Homosexuals and drug addicts. So why are you implying that I . . .

(Roy stares hard at Henry, who begins to feel nervous.)

ROY
: What are you implying, Henry?

HENRY
: I don’t . . .

ROY
: I’m not a drug addict.

HENRY
: Oh come on Roy.

ROY
: What, what, come on Roy what? Do you think I’m a junkie, Henry, do you see tracks?

HENRY
: This is absurd.

ROY
: Say it.

HENRY
: Say what?

ROY
: Say: “Roy Cohn, you are a . . .”

HENRY
: Roy? I don’t—

ROY
: “You are a . . .” Go on. Not “Roy Cohn you are a drug fiend.” “Roy Marcus Cohn, you are a . . .”

     
Go on, Henry
. It starts with an “H.”

HENRY
: Oh I’m not going to—

ROY
:
With an “H,”
Henry, and it isn’t “hemophiliac.” Come on . . .

HENRY
: What are you doing, Roy?

ROY
: No, say it. I mean it. Say: “Roy Cohn, you are a homosexual.”

     
(With deadly seriousness)

     
And I will proceed, systematically, to destroy your reputation and your practice and your career in New York State, Henry. Which you know I can do.

(Pause. Henry summons his courage.)

HENRY
: Roy, you have been seeing me since 1958. Apart from the facelifts I have treated you for everything from syphilis—

ROY
: From a whore in Dallas.

HENRY
: From syphilis to venereal warts. In your rectum. Which you may have gotten from a whore in Dallas, but it wasn’t a female whore.

(A standoff. Then:)

ROY
: So say it.

HENRY
: Roy Cohn, you are . . .

     
(Roy’s too scary. He tries a different approach)

     
You have had sex with men, many many times, Roy, and one of them, or any number of them, has made you very sick. You have AIDS.

ROY
(A beat, then)
: AIDS.

     
Your problem, Henry, is that you are hung up on words, on labels, that you believe they mean what they seem to mean. AIDS. Homosexual. Gay. Lesbian. You think these are names that tell you who someone sleeps with, but they don’t tell you that.

HENRY
: No?

ROY
: No. Like all labels they tell you one thing and one thing only: where does an individual so identified fit in the food chain, in the pecking order? Not ideology, or sexual taste, but something much simpler: clout. Not who I fuck or who fucks me, but who will pick up the phone when I call, who owes me favors. This is what a label refers to. Now to someone who does not understand this, homosexual is what I am because I have sex with men. But really this is wrong. Homosexuals are not men who sleep with other men. Homosexuals are men who in fifteen years of trying cannot pass a pissant antidiscrimination bill through City Council. Homosexuals are men who know nobody and who nobody knows. Who have zero clout. Does this sound like me, Henry?

HENRY
: No.

ROY
: No. I have clout. A lot. I can pick up this phone, punch fifteen numbers, and you know who will be on the other end in under five minutes, Henry?

HENRY
: The president.

ROY
: Even better, Henry. His wife.

HENRY
: I’m impressed.

ROY
: I don’t want you to be impressed. I want you to understand. This is not sophistry. And this is not hypocrisy. This is reality. I have sex with men. But unlike nearly every other man of whom this is true, I bring the guy I’m screwing to the White House and President Reagan
smiles at us and shakes his hand. Because
what
I am is defined entirely by
who
I am. Roy Cohn is not a homosexual. Roy Cohn is a heterosexual man, Henry, who fucks around with guys.

HENRY
: OK, Roy.

ROY
: And what is my diagnosis, Henry?

HENRY
: You have AIDS, Roy.

ROY
:
No
, Henry,
no
. AIDS is what homosexuals have. I have liver cancer.

(Little pause.)

HENRY
: Well, whatever the fuck you have, Roy, it’s very serious, and I haven’t got a damn thing for you. The NIH in Bethesda has a new drug called AZT with a two-year waiting list that not even I can get you onto. So get on the phone, Roy, and dial the fifteen numbers, and tell the First Lady you need in on an experimental treatment for liver cancer, because you can call it any damn thing you want, Roy, but what it boils down to is very bad news.

ACT TWO:

In Vitro

December 1985

Scene 1

The first week in December. Night. Prior in his underwear alone on the floor in the hallway outside his bedroom; he is much worse
.

PRIOR
: Louis, Louis, please wake up, oh God.

(Louis runs in.)

PRIOR
: I think something horrible is wrong with me I can’t breathe . . .

LOUIS
(Starting to exit)
: I’m calling the ambulance.

PRIOR
: No, wait, I—

LOUIS
:
Wait?
Are you fucking crazy? Oh God you’re on fire, your head is on fire.

PRIOR
: It hurts, it hurts . . .

LOUIS
: I’m calling the ambulance.

PRIOR
: I don’t want to go to the hospital, I don’t want to go to the hospital please let me lie here, just—

LOUIS
: No, no, God, Prior, stand up—

PRIOR
: DON’T TOUCH MY LEG!

LOUIS
: We have to . . . Oh God this is so crazy.

PRIOR
: I’ll be OK if I just lie here Lou, really, if I can only sleep a little . . .

(Louis exits.)

PRIOR
: Louis?

     
NO! NO!
Don’t call, you’ll send me there and I won’t come back, please, please Louis I’m begging, baby, please.

     
(Screams) LOUIS!!

LOUIS
(From off; hysterical)
: WILL YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP!

PRIOR
(Trying to stand)
: Aaaah. I have . . . to go to the bathroom. Wait. Wait, just—Oh. Oh God.
(He shits himself)

LOUIS
(Entering)
: Prior? They’ll be here in—

     
Oh my God.

PRIOR
: I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

LOUIS
: What did . . .? What?

PRIOR
: I had an accident.

(Louis goes to him.)

LOUIS
: This is blood.

PRIOR
: Maybe you shouldn’t touch it . . . me . . . I . . .
(He faints)

LOUIS
(Quietly)
: Oh help. Oh help. Oh God oh God oh God help me I can’t I can’t I can’t.

Scene 2

Night. Harper at home, sitting on the floor, all alone, with no lights on. We can barely see her. Joe enters, but he doesn’t turn on the lights
.

JOE
: Why are you sitting in the dark? Turn on the light.

HARPER
:
No
. I heard the sounds in the bedroom again. I know someone was in there.

JOE
: No one was.

HARPER
: Maybe actually in the bed, under the covers with a knife.

     
Oh, boy. Joe. I, um, I’m thinking of going away. By which I mean: I think I’m going off again. You . . . you know what I mean?

JOE
: Please don’t. Stay. We can fix it. I pray for that. This is my fault, but I can correct it. You have to try, too.

(Joe walks to a floor lamp and switches on the light, then sits next to her on the floor. As soon as he sits, Harper stands, goes to the lamp, turns off the light, and then returns to sit beside him. They sit quietly, close together, in the dark. Then:)

HARPER
: When you pray, what do you pray for?

JOE
: I pray for God to crush me, break me up into little pieces and start all over again.

HARPER
: Oh. Please. Don’t pray for that.