by Tony Kushner
BELIZE: Which is not unimpressive, even among monoliths.
LOUIS: Well, no, but when the race thing gets taken care of—and I don’t mean to minimalize how major it is, I mean I know it is, this is a really, really incredibly racist country but it’s like, well, the British. I mean, all these blue-eyed pink people. And it’s just weird, you know, I mean I’m not all that Jewish-looking, or . . . well, maybe I am but, you know, in New York, everyone is . . . well, not everyone, but so many are but so but in England, in London I walk into bars and I feel like Sid the Yid, you know I mean like Woody Allen in Annie Hall, with the payess and the gabardine coat, like never, never anywhere so much—I mean, not actively despised, not like they’re Germans, who I think are still terribly anti-Semitic, and racist too, I mean black-racist, they pretend otherwise but, anyway, in London, there’s just— And at one point I met this black gay guy from Jamaica who talked with a lilt but he said his family’d been living in London since before the Civil War—the American one—and how the English never let him forget for a minute that he wasn’t blue-eyed and pink and I said yeah, me too, these people are anti-Semites and he said yeah but the British Jews have the clothing business all sewed up and blacks there can’t get a foothold. And it was an incredibly awkward moment of just . . . I mean here we were, in this bar that was gay but it was a pub, you know, the beams and the plaster and those horrible little, like, two-day-old fish-and-egg sandwiches—and just so British, so old, and I felt, well, there’s no way out of this because both of us are, right now, too much immersed in this history, hope is dissolved in the sheer age of this place, where race is what counts and there’s no real hope of change. It’s the racial destiny of the Brits that matters to them, not their political destiny, whereas in America—
BELIZE: Here in America race doesn’t count.
LOUIS: No, no, that’s not—I mean you can’t be hearing that.
BELIZE: I—
LOUIS: It’s— Look, race, yes, but ultimately race here is a political question, right? Racists just try to use race here as a tool in a political struggle. It’s not really about race. Like the spiritualists try to use that stuff, are you enlightened, are you centered, channeled, whatever, this reaching out for a spiritual past in a country where no indigenous spirits exist—only the Indians, I mean Native American spirits and we killed them off so now, there are no gods here, no ghosts and spirits in America, there are no angels in America, no spiritual past, no racial past, there’s only the political, and the decoys and the ploys to maneuver around the inescapable battle of politics, the shifting downwards and outwards of political power to the people—
BELIZE: POWER to the People! AMEN! (Looking at his watch) OH MY GOODNESS! Will you look at the time, I gotta—
LOUIS: Do you—You think this is, what, racist or naive or something?
BELIZE: Well it’s certainly something. Look, I just remembered I have an appointment—
LOUIS: What? I mean I really don’t want to, like, speak from some position of privilege and—
BELIZE: I’m sitting here, thinking, eventually he’s got to run out of steam, so I let you rattle on and on saying about maybe seven or eight things I find really offensive—
LOUIS: What?
BELIZE: But I know you, Louis, and I know the guilt fueling this peculiar tirade is obviously already swollen bigger than your hemorrhoids—
LOUIS: I don’t have hemorrhoids.
BELIZE: I hear different. May I finish?
LOUIS: Yes, but I don’t have hemorrhoids.
BELIZE: So finally, when I—
LOUIS: Prior told you—He’s an asshole, he shouldn’t have—
BELIZE: You promised, Louis. Prior is not a subject.
LOUIS: You brought him up.
BELIZE: I brought up hemorrhoids.
LOUIS: So it’s indirect. Passive-aggressive.
BELIZE: Unlike, I suppose, banging me over the head with your theory that America doesn’t have a race problem.
LOUIS: Oh be fair I never said that.
BELIZE: Not exactly, but—
LOUIS: I said—
BELIZE: —but it was close enough, because if it’d been that blunt I’d’ve just walked out and—
LOUIS: You deliberately misinterpreted! I—
BELIZE: Stop interrupting! I haven’t been able to—
LOUIS: Just let me—
BELIZE: No! What, talk? You’ve been running your mouth nonstop since I got here, yaddadda yaddadda blah blah blah, up the hill, down the hill, playing with your MONOLITH— (Continue below:)
LOUIS: Well, you could have joined in at any time instead of—
BELIZE (Continuous from above): —and, girlfriend, it is truly an awesome spectacle but I got better things to do with my time than sit here listening to this racist bullshit just because I feel sorry for you that—
LOUIS: I am not a racist!
BELIZE: Oh come on!
LOUIS: So maybe I am a racist but—
BELIZE: Oh I really hate that! It’s no fun picking on you Louis; you’re so guilty, it’s like throwing darts at a glob of jello, there’s no satisfying hits, just quivering, the darts just blop in and vanish.
LOUIS: I just think when you are discussing lines of oppression it gets very complicated and—
BELIZE: Oh is that a fact? You know, we black drag queens have a rather intimate knowledge of the complexity of the lines of—
LOUIS: Ex-black drag queen.
BELIZE: Actually ex-ex.
LOUIS: You’re doing drag again?
BELIZE: I don’t— Maybe. I don’t have to tell you. Maybe.
LOUIS: I think it’s sexist.
BELIZE: I didn’t ask you.
LOUIS: Well it is. The gay community, I think, has to adopt the same attitude towards drag as black women have to take towards black women blues singers.
BELIZE: Oh my we are walking dangerous tonight . . .
LOUIS: Well, it’s all internalized oppression, right, I mean the masochism, the stereotypes, the—
BELIZE: Louis, are you deliberately trying to make me hate you?
LOUIS: No, I—
BELIZE: I mean, are you deliberately transforming yourself into an arrogant, sexual-political Stalinist-slash-racist flag-waving thug for my benefit?
(Pause.)
LOUIS: You know what I think?
BELIZE: What?
LOUIS: You hate me because I’m a Jew.
BELIZE: I’m leaving.
LOUIS: It’s true.
BELIZE: You have no basis except your—
Louis, it’s good to know you haven’t changed; you are still an honorary citizen of the Twilight Zone, and after your pale, pale white polemics on behalf of racial insensitivity you have a flaming fuck of a lot of nerve calling me an anti-Semite. Now I really gotta go.
LOUIS: You called me Lou the Jew.
BELIZE: That was a joke.
LOUIS: I didn’t think it was funny. It was hostile.
BELIZE: It was three years ago.
LOUIS: So?
BELIZE: You just called yourself Sid the Yid.
LOUIS: That’s not the same thing.
BELIZE: Sid the Yid is different from Lou the Jew.
LOUIS: Yes.
BELIZE: Some day you’ll have to explain that to me, but right now—
You hate me because you hate black people.
LOUIS: I do not. But I do think most black people are anti-Semitic.
BELIZE: “Most black people.” That’s racist, Louis, and I think most Jews—
LOUIS: Louis Farrakhan.
BELIZE: Ed Koch.
LOUIS: Jesse Jackson.
BELIZE: Jackson. Oh really, Louis, this is—
LOUIS: Hymietown! Hymietown!
BELIZE: Louis, you voted for Jesse Jackson! You send checks to the Rainbow Coalition!
LOUIS: I’m ambivalent. The checks bounced.
BELIZE: All your checks bounce, Louis; you’re ambivalent about everything.
LOUIS: W
hat’s that supposed to mean?
BELIZE: You may be dumber than shit but I refuse to believe you can’t figure it out. Try.
LOUIS: I was never ambivalent about Prior. I love him. I do. I really do.
BELIZE: Nobody said different.
LOUIS: Love and ambivalence are . . . Real love isn’t ambivalent.
BELIZE: “Real love isn’t ambivalent.” I’d swear that’s a line from my favorite bestselling paperback novel, In Love with the Night Mysterious, except I don’t think you ever read it.
(Little pause.)
LOUIS: I never read it, no.
BELIZE: You ought to. Instead of spending the rest of your life trying to get through Democracy in America. It’s about this white woman whose daddy owns a plantation in the Deep South in the years before the Civil War—the American one—and her name is Margaret, and she’s in love with her daddy’s number-one slave, and his name is Thaddeus, and she’s married but her white slave-owner husband has AIDS: Antebellum Insufficiently Developed Sexorgans. And there’s a lot of hot stuff going down when Margaret and Thaddeus can catch a spare torrid ten under the cotton-picking moon, and then of course the Yankees come, and they set the slaves free, and the slaves string up old daddy, and so on. Historical fiction. Somewhere in there I recall Margaret and Thaddeus find the time to discuss the nature of love. Her face is reflecting the flames of the burning plantation—you know, the way white people do—and his black face is dark in the night; and she says to him, “Thaddeus, real love isn’t ever ambivalent.”
(In the outpatient clinic, Emily enters, wearing latex gloves. She turns off Prior’s IV drip.)
BELIZE: Thaddeus looks at her; he’s contemplating her thesis; and he isn’t sure he agrees.
(Emily removes the drip needle from Prior’s arm and bandages the puncture wound.)
EMILY: Treatment number . . . (Consulting chart) four.
PRIOR: Pharmaceutical miracle. Lazarus breathes again.
LOUIS: Is he . . . How bad is he?
BELIZE: You want the laundry list?
EMILY: Shirt off, let’s check the . . .
(Prior takes off his shirt. Emily examines his lesions.)
BELIZE: There’s the weight problem and the shit problem and the morale problem.
EMILY: Only six. That’s good. Pants.
(Prior removes his pants and underwear. He’s naked. She examines his crotch, then he turns around and she examines his butt, looking for new lesions.)
BELIZE: And. He thinks he’s going crazy.
(Prior puts his underwear back on.)
EMILY: Looking good. What else?
PRIOR: Ankles sore and swollen, but the leg’s better. The nausea’s mostly gone with the little orange pills. BM’s pure liquid but not bloody anymore, for now, my eye doctor says everything’s OK, for now, my dentist says, “Yuck!” when he sees my fuzzy tongue, and now he wears little condoms on his thumb and forefinger. And a mask. So what? My dermatologist is in Hawaii and my mother . . . well leave my mother out of it. Which is usually where my mother is, out of it. My glands are like walnuts, my weight’s holding steady for week two, and a friend died two days ago of bird tuberculosis; bird tuberculosis; that scared me and I didn’t go to the funeral today because he was an Irish Catholic and it’s probably open casket and I’m afraid of . . . something, the bird TB or seeing him or . . . So I guess I’m doing OK. Except for of course I’m going nuts.
EMILY: We ran the toxoplasmosis series and there’s no indication—
PRIOR: I know, I know, but I feel like something terrifying is on its way, you know, like a missile from outer space, and it’s plummeting down towards the earth, and I’m ground zero, and . . . I am generally known where I am known as one cool, collected queen. And I am ruffled.
EMILY: There’s really nothing to worry about. I think that shochen bamromim hamtzeh menucho nechono al kanfey haschino.
PRIOR: What?
EMILY: Everything’s fine. Bemaalos k’doshim ut’horim kezo-har horokeea mazhirim.
PRIOR: Oh I don’t understand what you’re—
EMILY: Es nishmas Prior sheholoch leolomoh, baavur shenodvoo z’dokoh b’ad hazkoras nishmosoh—
PRIOR: WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT! Stop it! Stop it!
EMILY (Shocked): Stop what?
PRIOR: You were just—Weren’t you just speaking in Hebrew or something.
EMILY: Hebrew? (Laughs) I’m basically Italian-American. No. I didn’t speak in Hebrew.
PRIOR: Oh no, oh God please I really think I—
EMILY: Look, I’m sorry, I have a waiting room full of—
(Prior starts dressing, frantic, terrified.)
EMILY: I think you’re one of the lucky ones, you’ll live for years, probably—you’re pretty healthy for someone with no immune system. Are you seeing someone? Loneliness is a danger. A therapist?
PRIOR: No, I don’t need to see anyone, I just—
EMILY: Well think about it. You aren’t going crazy. You’re just under a lot of stress. No wonder. (She starts to write in his chart)
(Suddenly there is an astonishing blaze of light and a menacing subterranean rumble; then, a huge chord is sounded by a gigantic choir, and a great book with steel pages mounted atop a molten-red pillar bursts through the floor! In rapid succession: The book flies open! Instantly a large Aleph, inscribed on the right-hand page, glows red and bursts into flames, whereupon the book immediately slams shut, and with the molten-red pillar it disappears in an eye blink under the floor, as the lights restore to reveal the floor perfectly unmarred, not a trace of its having been torn asunder. All of this occurs in under thirty seconds! Emily, making notes in Prior’s file, has noticed none of this. Prior is agog.)
EMILY (Laughing, exiting): Hebrew . . .
(Prior is paralyzed with fear. Then, partly undressed, he flees.)
LOUIS: Help me.
BELIZE: I beg your pardon?
LOUIS: You’re a nurse, give me something, I . . . don’t know what to do anymore, I . . . Last week at work I screwed up the Xerox machine like permanently and so I . . . Then I tripped on the subway steps and my glasses broke and I cut my forehead, here, see? And now I can’t see much and my forehead—it’s like the Mark of Cain, stupid, right, but it won’t heal and every morning I see it and I think, Mark of Cain, Biblical things, people who . . . in betraying what they love betray what’s truest in themselves, I feel . . . nothing but cold for myself, just cold. And every night I miss him, I miss him so much but then . . . those sores, and the smell and . . . where I thought it was going. I could be . . . I could be sick, too, maybe I’m sick, too. I don’t know.
Belize. Tell him I love him. Can you do that?
BELIZE (Tough, cold): I’ve thought about it for a very long time, and I still don’t understand what love is. Justice is simple. Democracy is simple. Those things are unambivalent. But love is very hard. And it goes bad for you if you violate the hard law of love.
LOUIS: I’m dying.
BELIZE: He’s dying. You just wish you were.
Oh cheer up, Louis. Look at that heavy sky out there.
LOUIS: Purple.
BELIZE: Purple? Boy, what kind of a homosexual are you, anyway? That’s not purple, Mary, that color up there is (Very grand) mauve.
All day today it’s felt like Thanksgiving. Soon, this . . . ruination will be blanketed white. You can smell it—can you smell it?
LOUIS: Smell what?
BELIZE: Softness, compliance, forgiveness, grace.
LOUIS: No . . .
BELIZE: I can’t help you learn that. I can’t help you, Louis. You’re not my business. (He exits)
(Louis puts his head in his hands, inadvertently touching his cut forehead.)
LOUIS: Ow FUCK! (He stands slowly, looks toward where Belize exited) Smell what?
(He looks both ways to be sure no one is watching, then inhales deeply, and is surprised) Huh. Snow.
Scene 3
Harper in a very white, cold place, with a brilliant blue sky
above; a delicate snowfall. She is dressed in a beautiful snowsuit. The sound of the sea, faint.
HARPER: Snow! Ice! Mountains of ice! Where am I? I . . . I feel better, I do, I . . . feel better. There are ice crystals in my lungs, wonderful and sharp. And the snow smells like cold, crushed peaches. And there’s something . . . some current of blood in the wind, how strange, it has that iron taste.
(Mr. Lies appears, also in splendid snowgear; his is emblazoned on the back with the IOTA logo.)
MR. LIES: Ozone.
HARPER: Ozone! Wow! Where am I?
MR. LIES: The Kingdom of Ice, the bottommost part of the world.
HARPER (Looking around, then realizing): Antarctica. This is Antarctica!
MR. LIES: Cold shelter for the shattered. No sorrow here, tears freeze.
HARPER: Antarctica, Antarctica, oh boy oh boy, LOOK at this, I—Wow, I must’ve really snapped the tether, huh?
MR. LIES: Apparently . . .
HARPER: That’s great. I want to stay here forever. Set up camp. Build things. Build a city, an enormous city made up of frontier forts, dark wood and green roofs and high gates made of pointed logs and bonfires burning on every street corner. I should build by a river. Where are the forests?
MR. LIES: No timber here. Too cold. Ice, no trees.
HARPER: Oh details! I’m sick of details! I’ll plant them and grow them. I’ll live off caribou fat, I’ll melt it over the bonfires and drink it from long, curved goat-horn cups. It’ll be great. I want to make a new world here. So that I never have to go home again.
MR. LIES: As long as it lasts. Ice has a way of melting.
HARPER: No. Forever. I can have anything I want here—maybe even companionship, someone who has . . . desire for me.
You, maybe.
MR. LIES: It’s against the by-laws of the International Order of Travel Agents to get involved with clients. Rules are rules. Anyway, I’m not the one you really want.