by Tony Kushner
(He lowers the receiver and laughs quietly to himself)
Boy, did that come out awkward.
(He lifts the receiver to his ear)
Hello? Hello?
I’m a homosexual.
(Pause)
Please, Momma. Say something.
HANNAH: You’re old enough to understand that your father didn’t love you without being ridiculous about it.
JOE: What?
HANNAH: You’re ridiculous. You’re being ridiculous.
JOE: I’m— What?
HANNAH: You really ought to go home now to your wife. I need to go to bed. This phone call— We will just forget this phone call.
JOE: Mom.
HANNAH: No more talk. Tonight. This . . .
(Suddenly very angry) Drinking is a sin! A sin! I raised you better than that. (She hangs up)
Scene 9
The following morning, early. Split scene: Harper and Joe at home; Louis and Prior in Prior’s hospital room. Joe and Louis have each just entered. This should be fast. No freezing; even when one of the couples isn’t talking, they remain furiously alive.
HARPER: Oh God. Home. The moment of truth has arrived.
JOE: Harper.
LOUIS: I’m going to move out.
PRIOR: The fuck you are.
JOE: Harper. Please listen. I still love you very much. You’re still my best buddy; I’m not going to leave you.
HARPER: No, I don’t like the sound of this. I’m leaving.
LOUIS: I’m leaving.
I already have.
JOE: Please listen. Stay. This is really hard. We have to talk.
HARPER: We are talking. Aren’t we. Now please shut up. OK?
PRIOR: Bastard. Sneaking off while I’m flat out here, that’s low. If I could get up now I’d beat the holy shit out of you.
JOE: Did you take pills? How many?
HARPER: No pills. Bad for the . . . (Pats stomach)
JOE: You aren’t pregnant. I called your gynecologist.
HARPER: I’m seeing a new gynecologist.
PRIOR: You have no right to do this.
LOUIS: Oh, that’s ridiculous.
PRIOR: No right. It’s criminal.
JOE: Forget about that. Just listen. You want the truth. This is the truth.
I knew this when I married you. I’ve known this I guess for as long as I’ve known anything, but . . . I don’t know, I thought maybe that with enough effort and will I could change myself . . . but I can’t . . .
PRIOR: Criminal.
LOUIS: There oughta be a law.
PRIOR: There is a law. You’ll see.
JOE: I’m losing ground here, I go walking, you want to know where I walk, I . . . go to the park, or up and down 53rd Street, or places where . . . And I keep swearing I won’t go walking again, but I just can’t.
LOUIS: I need some privacy.
PRIOR: That’s new.
LOUIS: Everything’s new, Prior.
JOE: I try to tighten my heart into a knot, a snarl, I try to learn to live dead, just numb, but then I see someone I want, and it’s like a nail, like a hot spike right through my chest, and I know I’m losing.
PRIOR: Apartment too small for three? Louis and Prior comfy but not Louis and Prior and Prior’s disease?
LOUIS: Something like that.
I won’t be judged by you. This isn’t a crime, just—the inevitable consequence of people who run out of—whose limitations—
PRIOR: Bang bang bang. The court will come to order.
LOUIS: I mean let’s talk practicalities, schedules; I’ll come over if you want, spend nights with you when I can, I can—
PRIOR: Has the jury reached a verdict?
LOUIS: I’m doing the best I can.
PRIOR: Pathetic. Who cares?
JOE: My whole life has conspired to bring me to this place, and I can’t despise my whole life. I think I believed when I met you I could save you, you at least if not myself, but . . .
I don’t have any sexual feelings for you, Harper. And I don’t think I ever did.
(Little pause.)
HARPER: I think you should go.
JOE: Where?
HARPER: Washington. Doesn’t matter.
JOE: What are you talking about?
HARPER: Without me.
Without me, Joe. Isn’t that what you want to hear?
(Little pause.)
JOE: Yes.
LOUIS: You can love someone and fail them. You can love someone and not be able to—
PRIOR: You can, theoretically, yes. A person can, maybe an editorial “you” can love, Louis, but not you, specifically you. I don’t know, I think you are excluded from that general category.
HARPER: You were going to save me, but the whole time you were spinning a lie. I just don’t understand that.
PRIOR: A person could theoretically love and maybe many do but we both know now you can’t.
LOUIS: I do.
PRIOR: You can’t even say it.
LOUIS: I love you, Prior.
PRIOR: I repeat. Who cares?
HARPER: This is so scary, I want this to stop, to go back.
PRIOR: We have reached a verdict, Your Honor. This man’s heart is deficient. He loves, but his love is worth nothing.
JOE: Harper . . .
HARPER: Mr. Lies, I want to get away from here. Far away. Right now. Before he starts talking again. Please, please—
JOE: As long as I’ve known you Harper you’ve been afraid of . . . of men hiding under the bed, men hiding under the sofa, men with knives.
PRIOR (Shattered; almost pleading; trying to reach him): I’m dying! You stupid fuck! Do you know what that is! Love! Do you know what love means? We lived together four and a half years, you animal, you idiot.
LOUIS: I have to find some way to save myself.
JOE: Who are these men? I never understood it. Now I know.
HARPER: What?
JOE: It’s me.
HARPER: It is?
PRIOR: Get out of my room.
JOE: I’m the man with the knives.
HARPER: You are?
PRIOR: If I could get up now I’d kill you. I would. Go away. Go away or I’ll scream.
HARPER: Oh God . . .
JOE: I’m sorry.
HARPER: It is you.
LOUIS: Please don’t scream.
PRIOR: Go.
HARPER: I recognize you now.
LOUIS: Please . . .
JOE: Oh. Wait, I . . . Oh!
(He covers his mouth with his hand, gags, and removes his hand, red with blood)
I’m bleeding.
(Prior closes his eyes and screams.)
HARPER: Mr. Lies.
MR. LIES (Appearing, dressed in Antarctic explorer’s apparel): Right here.
HARPER: I want to go away. I can’t see him anymore.
MR. LIES: Where?
HARPER: Anywhere. Far away.
MR. LIES: Absolutamento.
(Harper and Mr. Lies vanish. Joe looks up, sees that she’s gone.)
PRIOR: When I open my eyes you’ll be gone.
(Louis leaves.)
JOE: Harper?
PRIOR (Opening his eyes): Huh. It worked.
JOE (Calling): Harper?
PRIOR: I hurt all over. I wish I was dead.
Scene 10
The same day, sunset, in front of Hannah’s house in Salt Lake City. Hannah and Sister Ella Chapter, a real-estate saleswoman and Hannah Pitt’s closest friend—although Hannah is never friendly and Ella is severely intimidated by her.
SISTER ELLA CHAPTER: Look at that view! A view of Heaven. Like the living city of Heaven, isn’t it, it just fairly glimmers in the sun.
HANNAH: Glimmers.
SISTER ELLA CHAPTER: Even the stone and brick it just glimmers and glitters like Heaven in the sunshine. Such a nice view you get, perched up on a canyon rim. Some kind of beautiful place.
HANNAH: It’s just Salt Lake, and you’re selling the house for me, n
ot to me.
SISTER ELLA CHAPTER: I like to work up an enthusiasm for my properties.
HANNAH: Just get me a good price.
SISTER ELLA CHAPTER: Well, the market’s off.
HANNAH: At least fifty.
SISTER ELLA CHAPTER: Forty’d be more like it.
HANNAH: Fifty.
SISTER ELLA CHAPTER: Wish you’d wait a bit.
HANNAH: Well I can’t.
SISTER ELLA CHAPTER: Wish you would. You’re about the only friend I got.
HANNAH: Oh well now.
SISTER ELLA CHAPTER: Know why I decided to like you? I decided to like you ’cause you’re the only unfriendly Mormon I ever met.
HANNAH: Your wig is crooked.
SISTER ELLA CHAPTER: Fix it.
(Hannah straightens Ella’s wig.)
SISTER ELLA CHAPTER: New York City. All they got there is tiny rooms.
I always thought: People ought to stay put. That’s why I got my license to sell real estate. It’s a way of saying: Have a house! Stay put! It’s a way of saying traveling’s no good. Plus I needed the cash.
(She takes out a pack of cigarettes from her purse, lights one, offers the pack to Hannah.)
HANNAH: Not out here, anyone could come by.
(Ella smokes. Hannah looks out over the ledge.)
HANNAH: There’s been days I’ve stood at this ledge and thought about stepping over.
(This is news to Ella.)
HANNAH: It’s a hard place, Salt Lake: baked dry. Abundant energy; not much intelligence. That’s a combination that can wear a body out. No harm looking someplace else. I don’t need much room.
My sister-in-law Libby thinks there’s radon gas in the basement.
SISTER ELLA CHAPTER (Immediately alarmed): Is there gas in the—
HANNAH: Of course not. Libby’s a fool.
SISTER ELLA CHAPTER (Still alarmed): ’Cause I’d have to include that in the description.
HANNAH (Ending it): There’s no gas, Ella.
(Little pause, then) Give a puff.
(Hannah takes a furtive drag of Ella’s cigarette. Then she hands the cigarette back to Ella.)
HANNAH: Put it away now.
(Ella carefully knocks the ash off the cigarette, extinguishes it and returns it to the pack. Desolate, she looks at Hannah.)
SISTER ELLA CHAPTER: So I guess it’s good-bye.
HANNAH (Uncomfortable): You’ll be all right, Ella, I wasn’t ever much of a friend.
SISTER ELLA CHAPTER: I’ll say something but don’t laugh, OK?
(Tentative, careful) This is the home of saints, the godliest place on earth, they say, and I think they’re right. That mean there’s no evil here? No. Evil’s everywhere. Sin’s everywhere. But this . . . is the spring of sweet water in the desert, the desert flower. Every step a Believer takes away from here is a step fraught with peril. I fear for you, Hannah Pitt, because you are my friend. Stay put. This is the right home of saints.
HANNAH: Latter-day saints.
SISTER ELLA CHAPTER: Only kind left.
HANNAH: But still. Late in the day . . . for saints and everyone. That’s all. That’s all.
Fifty thousand dollars for the house, Sister Ella Chapter; don’t undersell. It’s an impressive view.
ACT THREE:
Not-Yet-Conscious,
Forward Dawning
December 1985
Scene 1
Late night, several days after the end of Act Two. Prior’s bedroom, completely dark. Prior is in bed, having a nightmare. He wakes up, sits up in bed, and switches on a lamp. He looks at his clock. Seated by the table near the bed is a man, fierce and gloomy, dressed in the clothing of a thirteenth-century British farmer/squire, carrying a scythe. Prior is terrified.
PRIOR: Who are you?!
PRIOR 1: My name is Prior Walter.
(Little pause.)
PRIOR: My name is Prior Walter.
PRIOR 1: I know that.
PRIOR: Explain.
PRIOR 1: You’re alive. I’m not. We have the same name. What do you want me to explain?
PRIOR: A ghost?
PRIOR 1: An ancestor.
PRIOR: Not the Prior Walter? The Bayeux tapestry Prior Walter?
PRIOR 1: His great-great-grandson. The fifth of the name.
PRIOR: I’m the thirty-fourth, I think.
PRIOR 1: Actually the thirty-second.
PRIOR: Not according to Mother.
PRIOR 1 (Angry!): She’s including the two bastards, then; I say leave them out. I say no room for bastards! The little things you swallow . . .
(The ghost snatches up a plastic pill bottle from Prior’s night-stand.)
PRIOR: Pills.
PRIOR 1: Pills. For the pestilence. (He struggles to open the bottle but can’t get past the safety cap) I too— (He throws the bottle aside)
PRIOR: Pestilence . . . You too what?
PRIOR 1: The pestilence in my time was much worse than now. Whole villages of empty houses. You could look outdoors and see Death walking in the morning, dew dampening the ragged hem of his black robe. Plain as I see you now.
PRIOR: You died of the plague.
PRIOR 1: The spotty monster. Like you, alone.
PRIOR: I’m not alone.
PRIOR 1: You have no wife, no children.
PRIOR: I’m gay.
PRIOR 1: So? Be gay, dance in your altogether for all I care, what’s that to do with not having children?
PRIOR: Gay homosexual, not bonny, blithe and—never mind.
PRIOR 1: I had twelve. When I died.
(A second ghost appears, this one dressed in the clothing of an elegant seventeenth-century Londoner.)
PRIOR 1 (Pointing to the new ghost): And I was three years younger than him.
(Prior sees the new ghost and screams!)
PRIOR: Oh God another one.
PRIOR 2: Prior Walter. Prior to you by some seventeen others.
PRIOR 1: He’s counting the bastards.
PRIOR: Are we having a convention?
PRIOR 2: We’ve been sent to declare Her fabulous incipience. They love a well-paved entrance with lots of heralds, and—
PRIOR 1: The messenger come. Prepare the way. The infinite descent, a breath in air—
PRIOR 2: They chose us, I suspect, because of the mortal affinities. In a family as long-descended as the Walters there are bound to be a few carried off by plague.
PRIOR 1: The spotty monster.
PRIOR 2: Black Jack. Came from a water pump, half the city of London, can you imagine? His came from fleas. Yours, I understand, is the lamentable consequence of venery—
PRIOR 1: Fleas on rats, but who knew that?
PRIOR: Am I going to die?
PRIOR 2: We aren’t allowed to discuss—
PRIOR 1: When you do, you don’t get ancestors to help you through it. You may be surrounded by children but you die alone.
PRIOR: I’m afraid.
PRIOR 1 (Grim): You should be. There aren’t even torches, and the path’s rocky, dark and steep.
PRIOR 2: Don’t alarm him. There’s good news before there’s bad.
We two come to strew rose petal and palm leaf before the triumphal procession. Prophet. Seer. Revelator. It’s a great honor for the family.
PRIOR 1: He hasn’t got a family.
PRIOR 2: I meant for the Walters, for the family in the larger sense.
PRIOR (Singing):
All I want is a room somewhere,
Far away from the cold night air—
PRIOR 2 (Putting a hand on Prior’s forehead): Calm, calm, this is no brain fever . . .
(Prior keeps his eyes closed. The lights begin to change. Distant Glorious Music.)
PRIOR 1 (Low chant): Adonai, Adonai,
Olam ha-yichud,
Zefirot, Zazahot,
Ha-adam, ha-gadol
Daughter of Light,
Daughter of Splendors,
Fluor! Phosphor!
Lumen! Candle!
PRIOR 2
(Simultaneously, louder than Prior 1): Even now,
From the mirror-bright halls of Heaven,
Across the cold and lifeless infinity of space,
The Messenger comes
Trailing orbs of light,
Fabulous, incipient,
Oh Prophet,
To you!
PRIOR 1 AND PRIOR 2: Prepare, prepare,
The Infinite Descent,
A breath, a feather,
Glory to—
(They vanish.)
Scene 2
The next day. Split scene: Prior in an exam room in an outpatient clinic at the hospital; he’s seated on a stool, hooked up to a pentamidine IV drip. Louis and Belize facing one another at a table in a coffee shop. Louis, responding to something Belize has said, is pursuing an idea as he always does, by thinking aloud.
LOUIS: Why has democracy succeeded in America? Of course by succeeded I mean comparatively, not literally, not in the present, but what makes for the prospect of some sort of radical democracy spreading outward and growing up? Why does the power that was once so carefully preserved at the top of the pyramid by the original framers of the Constitution seem drawn inexorably downward and outward in spite of the best effort of the Right to stop this? I mean it’s the really hard thing about being Left in this country, the American Left can’t help but trip over all these petrified little fetishes: freedom, that’s the worst; you know, Jeane Kirkpatrick for God’s sake will go on and on about freedom and so what does that mean, the word “freedom,” when she talks about it, or human rights; you have Bush talking about human rights, and so what are these people talking about, they might as well be talking about the mating habits of Venusians, these people don’t begin to know what, ontologically, freedom is or human rights, like they see these bourgeois property-based Rights-of-Man-type rights but that’s not enfranchisement, not democracy, not what’s implicit, what’s potential within the idea, not the idea with blood in it. That’s just liberalism, the worst kind of liberalism, really, bourgeois tolerance, and what I think is that what AIDS shows us is the limits of tolerance, that it’s not enough to be tolerated, because when the shit hits the fan you find out how much tolerance is worth. Nothing. And underneath all the tolerance is intense, passionate hatred.
BELIZE: Uh-huh.
LOUIS: Well don’t you think that’s true?
BELIZE: Uh-huh. It is.
LOUIS: Power is the object, not being tolerated. Fuck assimilation. But I mean in spite of all this the thing about America, I think, is that ultimately we’re different from every other nation on earth, in that, with people here of every race, we can’t— Ultimately what defines us isn’t race, but politics. Not like any European country where there’s an insurmountable fact of a kind of racial, or ethnic, monopoly, or monolith, like all Dutchmen, I mean Dutch people, are well, Dutch, and the Jews of Europe were never Europeans, just a small problem. Facing the monolith. But here there are so many small problems, it’s really just a collection of small problems, the monolith is missing. Oh, I mean, of course I suppose there’s the monolith of White America. White Straight Male America.