by Tony Kushner
MR. LIES: There are no pine forests in Antarctica.
HARPER: I chewed this pine tree down. With my teeth. Like a beaver. I’m hungry, I haven’t eaten in three days! I’m going to use it to build . . . something, maybe a fire.
(She takes a soggy box of matches from under her pullover. She strikes match after match; all dead.
She gives up, and sits on the tree, heavy with despair.)
HARPER: I don’t understand why I’m not dead. When your heart breaks, you should die. But there’s still the rest of you. There’s your breasts, and your genitals, and they’re amazingly stupid, like babies or faithful dogs, they don’t get it, they just want him. Want him.
(Joe enters the scene, dressed in his Temple garment, barefoot. He looks around, uncertain of where he is till he sees Harper.)
MR. LIES: The Eskimo is back.
HARPER: I know.
I wanted a real Eskimo, someone chilly and reliable, not this, this is just . . . some lawyer, just—
JOE: Hey, buddy.
HARPER: Hey.
JOE: I looked for you. I’ve been everywhere.
HARPER: Well, you found me.
JOE: No, I . . . I’m not looking now. I guess I’m having an adventure.
HARPER: Can I come with you? This isn’t working anymore. I’m cold.
JOE: I wouldn’t want you to see.
HARPER: Think it’s worse than what I imagine? It’s not.
JOE: I should go.
HARPER: Bastard. You fell out of love with me.
JOE: That isn’t true, Harper.
HARPER: Why did you come here? Leave me alone if you’re so goddamned happy.
JOE: You want me here.
(She nods.)
HARPER: To see you again. Any way I can.
OH GOD I WISH YOU WERE—No I don’t.
JOE: Please don’t.
HARPER: DEAD.
Come back.
(Little pause.)
JOE: Oh, buddy, I wish so much that I could. But how can I?
I can’t.
(He vanishes.
Mr. Lies plays the oboe—a brief, wild lament. The magic Antarctic night fades away, replaced by a harsh sodium light and the ordinary sounds of the park and the city in the distance.)
MR. LIES: Blues for the death of Heaven.
HARPER (Shattered, scared): No . . .
MR. LIES: I tried to tell you. There are no Eskimo in Antarctica.
HARPER: No. No trees either.
MR. LIES (Pointing to the chewed-down pine tree): So where did you get that?
HARPER: From the Botanical Gardens Arboretum. It’s right over there. Prospect Park. We’re still in Brooklyn I guess.
(The lights of a police car begin to flash.)
MR. LIES (Vanishing): The Law for real.
HARPER (Raising her hands over her head): Busted. Damn.
What a lousy vacation.
Scene 4
The same night. In the Pitt apartment in Brooklyn. A telephone rings. Hannah, carrying the bags and wearing the coat she had on in Act Three, Scene 4, of Millennium Approaches, enters the apartment, drops the bags, and runs for the phone.
HANNAH (Exhausted, grim): Pitt residence.
No, he’s out. This is his mother. No I have no idea where he is. I have no idea. He was supposed to meet me at the airport, but I don’t wait more than three and three-quarters—
I—Yes of course I know her, yes she lives here, what’s—
OH MY LORD! Is she—Wait, Officer, I don’t—She did what, exactly?
Why on earth would she chew down a pine tree?
(Severe) You have no business laughing about it, you can stop that right now. That’s ugly.
Apology accepted.
I don’t know where that is, I just arrived from Salt Lake and I barely found Brooklyn, I had to give the superintendent money to let me into the—I’ll take a . . . a taxicab.
No! No hospital! She’s not insane, she’s just . . . bewildered, she—I don’t see how it’s any business of yours what she is.
Tell her Mother Pitt is coming.
(Hannah hangs up.)
Scene 5
The same night. Prior in his bedroom, alone, asleep in his bed. The room is intact, no trace of the demolished ceiling. Prior is having a nightmare. He wakes up, frightened.
PRIOR: OH! (He looks around) Oh.
(He looks under the covers. He discovers that the lap of his pajamas is soaked in cum)
Will you look at this!
First goddamn orgasm in months and I slept through it.
(He dials a number on his bedside telephone.
At Belize’s workstation on the tenth floor of New York Hospital, a phone rings. Belize, in a colorful version of scrubs [his design and execution], is busy with paperwork.
Prior, while waiting for Belize to answer, grabs a box of Kleenex and, reaching under the covers, blots himself dry.
Belize answers.)
BELIZE: Ten East.
PRIOR: I am drenched in spooj.
BELIZE (Continuing to work): Spooj?
PRIOR: Cum. Jiz. Ejaculate. I’ve had a wet dream.
BELIZE: Uh-huh, bound to happen, you’ve been abstemious to excess: Beaucoup de spooj.
PRIOR: It was a woman.
BELIZE (Stops working): A woman.
PRIOR: Not a conventional woman.
BELIZE: Grace Jones.
(Prior looks at the ceiling.)
BELIZE: Hello?
PRIOR: An angel.
BELIZE: Oh FABULOUS.
PRIOR: I feel . . . lascivious. Come over.
BELIZE: I spent the whole day with you, I do have a life of my own, you know.
PRIOR: I’m sad.
BELIZE: I thought you were lascivious.
PRIOR: Lascivious sad. Wonderful and horrible all at once, like . . . like there’s a war inside. My eyes are funny, I . . .
(He touches his eyes) Oh.
I’m crying.
BELIZE: Prior?
PRIOR: I’m scared. And also full of, I don’t know, Joy or something.
(In the hospital, Henry, Roy’s doctor, enters.)
PRIOR: Hope.
HENRY: Are you the duty nurse?
BELIZE (To Henry): Yo.
(To Prior) Look, baby, I have to go—
PRIOR: Oh no, not yet, I—Sing something first. Sing with me.
BELIZE (To Prior): Wash up and sleep and—
HENRY (Over the line above): Are you the duty nurse?
BELIZE (To Henry): Yo, I said.
HENRY: Then why are you dressed like that?
BELIZE (To Henry): You don’t like it?
(To Prior) I’ll call you in the morning when I—
PRIOR: Just one little song. Some hymn?
HENRY: Nurse. Hang up the fucking—
BELIZE (To Henry): One moment, please. This is an emergency. (To Prior, singing:)
Hark the herald angels sing—
(Prior joins in:)
PRIOR AND BELIZE:
Glory to the newborn king.
Peace on earth and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled—
HENRY (Over the last line above): What’s your name?
PRIOR AND BELIZE (Belize singing louder):
JOYFUL all ye nations rise,
Join the triumph of the skies!
With angelic hosts proclaim:
Christ is born in Bethlehem!
Hark the herald angels sing,
Glory to the newborn king!
BELIZE (To Prior): Call you back. There’s a man bothering me.
PRIOR: Je t’aime.
(Belize hangs up. He turns to Henry.)
BELIZE: May I help you?
HENRY: Nurses are supposed to wear white.
BELIZE: Doctors are supposed to be home, in Westchester, asleep.
HENRY: Emergency admit, Room 1013. Here are the charts.
(He hands medical charts to Belize. Belize scans the chart, reads the patient’s name, rais
es his eyebrows, reads a little more. He looks up at Henry.)
HENRY: Start the drip, Gamma G and he’ll need a CTM, radiation in the morning so clear diet and—What?
BELIZE: “Liver cancer.”
HENRY: Just—Ignore that, just—
BELIZE: Oncology’s on six, doll.
HENRY: This is the right floor.
BELIZE: It says liver can—
HENRY (Lashing out): I don’t give a fuck what it says, I said this is the right floor.
BELIZE: Ooooh, testy.
HENRY: He’s a very important man.
BELIZE: Then I shouldn’t fuck up his medication?
HENRY: Think you can manage that? And, maybe, you know, confidentiality, don’t share this with your sewing circle.
BELIZE: Safe home.
(Henry leaves.)
BELIZE: Asshole.
(He looks at the chart, shakes his head; after a moment’s hesitation he picks up the phone and dials. Prior answers.)
BELIZE: I have some piping hot dish.
PRIOR: How hot can it be at three in the—
BELIZE: Get out your oven mitts. (Looking around to make sure no one is near, then:)
Don’t tell anyone, but guess who just checked in with the troubles?
The Killer Queen Herself. New York’s number one closeted queer.
PRIOR: Koch?
BELIZE: No, not Koch. Better. (He whispers into the receiver)
PRIOR: The Lord moves in mysterious ways.
BELIZE: Oh indeed. Indeed She do.
Scene 6
The same night, continuous with Scene 5. Roy in his hospital bed, sick and very scared. Belize enters, putting on latex gloves.
ROY: Get outta here you, I got nothing to say to you.
BELIZE: Just doing my—
ROY: I want a white nurse. My constitutional right.
BELIZE: You’re in a hospital, you don’t have any constitutional rights.
(Belize begins preparing Roy’s right arm for the insertion of an IV drip needle, palpating the vein, disinfecting the skin. He moves to insert the IV needle in Roy’s arm.)
ROY (Nervous): Find the vein, you moron, don’t start jabbing that goddamned spigot in my arm till you find the fucking vein or I’ll sue you so bad they’ll repossess your teeth you dim black motherf—
BELIZE (Had enough; very fierce): Watch. Yourself.
You don’t talk that way to me when I’m holding something this sharp. Or I might slip and stick it in your heart. If you have a heart.
ROY: Oh I do. Tough little muscle.
BELIZE: I bet.
Now I’ve been doing drips a long time. I can slip this in so easy you’ll think you were born with it. Or I can make it feel like I just hooked you up to a bag of Liquid Drano. So you be nice to me or you’re going to be one sorry asshole come morning.
ROY: Nice.
BELIZE: Nice and quiet.
(Belize puts the drip needle, painlessly, in Roy’s arm. Roy’s impressed, but doesn’t show it.)
BELIZE: There.
ROY (Fierce): I hurt.
BELIZE: I’ll get you a painkiller.
ROY: Will it knock me out?
BELIZE: I sure hope so.
ROY: Then shove it. Pain’s . . . nothing, pain’s life.
BELIZE: Sing it, baby.
ROY: When they did my facelifts, I made the anesthesiologist use a local. They lifted up my whole face like a dinner napkin and I was wide awake to see it.
BELIZE: Bullshit. No doctor would agree to do that.
ROY: I can get anyone to do anything I want. For instance: Let’s be friends. Jews and coloreds, historical liberal coalition, right? My people being the first to sell retail to your people, your people being the first people my people could afford to hire to sweep out the store Saturday mornings, and then we all held hands and rode the bus to Selma. Not me of course, I don’t ride buses, I take cabs. But the thing about the American Negro is, he never went Communist. Loser Jews did. But you people had Jesus so the reds never got to you. I admire that.
BELIZE: Your chart didn’t mention that you’re delusional.
ROY: Barking mad. Sit. Talk.
BELIZE: Mr. Cohn. I’d rather suck the pus out of an abscess. I’d rather drink a subway toilet. I’d rather chew off my tongue and spit it in your leathery face. So thanks for the offer of conversation, but I’d rather not.
(Belize starts to exit, turning off the light as he does.)
ROY: Oh forchristsake. Whatta I gotta do? Beg? I don’t want to be alone.
(Belize stops.)
ROY: Oh how I fucking hate hospitals, nurses, this waste of time and . . . wasting and weakness, I want to kill the—
’Course they can’t kill this, can they?
(Belize says nothing.)
ROY: No. It’s too simple. It knows itself. It’s harder to kill something if it knows what it is. Like pubic lice. You ever have pubic lice?
BELIZE: That is none of your—
ROY: I got some kind of super crabs from some kid once, it took twenty drenchings of Kwell and finally shaving to get rid of the little bastards. Nothing could kill them. And every time I had to itch I’d smile, because I learned to respect them, these unkillable crabs, because . . . I learned to identify. You know? Determined lowlife. Like me.
You’ve seen lots of guys with this.
(Little pause.)
BELIZE: Lots.
ROY: How do I look, comparatively?
BELIZE: I’d say you’re in trouble.
ROY: I’m going to die. Soon.
That was a question.
BELIZE: Probably. Probably so.
ROY: Hah.
I appreciate the . . . the honesty, or whatever . . .
If I live I could sue you for emotional distress, the whole hospital, but . . .
I’m not prejudiced, I’m not a prejudiced man.
(Belize just looks at him.)
ROY: These racist guys, simpletons, I never had any use for them—too rigid. You want to keep your eye on where the most powerful enemy really is. I save my hate for what counts.
BELIZE: Well. And I think that’s a good idea, a good thing to do, probably.
(Little pause. Then, with great effort and distaste:)
This didn’t come from me and I don’t like you but let me tell you a thing or two:
They have you down for radiation tomorrow for the sarcoma lesions, and you don’t want to let them do that, because radiation will kill the T-cells and you don’t have any you can afford to lose. So tell the doctor no thanks for the radiation. He won’t want to listen. Persuade him. Or he’ll kill you.
ROY: You’re just a fucking nurse. Why should I listen to you over my very qualified, very expensive WASP doctor?
BELIZE: He’s not queer. I am.
(Belize winks at Roy.)
ROY: Don’t wink at me.
You said “a thing or two.” So that’s one.
BELIZE: I don’t know what strings you pulled to get in on the azidothymidine trials.
ROY: I have my little ways.
BELIZE: Uh-huh.
Watch out for the double blind. They’ll want you to sign something that says they can give you M&Ms instead of the real drug. You’ll die, but they’ll get the kind of statistics they can publish in the New England Journal of Medicine. And you can’t sue ’cause you signed. And if you don’t sign, no pills. So if you have any strings left, pull them, because everyone’s put through the double blind and with this, time’s against you, you can’t fuck around with placebos.
ROY: You hate me.
BELIZE: Yes.
ROY: Why are you telling me this?
BELIZE: I wish I knew.
(Pause.)
ROY (Very nasty): You’re a butterfingers spook faggot nurse. I think . . . you have little reason to want to help me.
BELIZE: Consider it solidarity. One faggot to another.
(Belize snaps, turns, exits. Roy calls after him:)
ROY: Any more of your
lip, boy, and you’ll be flipping Big Macs in East Hell before tomorrow night!
(He picks up his bedside phone)
And get me a real phone, with a hold button, I mean look at this, it’s just one little line, now how am I supposed to perform basic bodily functions on this?
(He lifts the receiver, clicks the hang-up button several times)
Yeah who is this, the operator? Give me an outside line. Well then dial for me. It’s a medical emergency, darling, dial the fucking number or I’ll strangle myself with the phone cord.
202-733-8525.
(Little pause)
Martin Heller. Oh hi, Martin. Yeah I know what time it is, I couldn’t sleep, I’m busy dying. Listen, Martin, this drug they got me on, azido-methatalo-molamoca-whatchamacallit. Yeah. AZT.
I want my own private stash, Martin. Of serious Honest-Abe medicine. That I control, here in the room with me. No placebos, I’m no good at tests, Martin, I’d rather cheat. So send me my pills with a get-well bouquet, PRONTO, or I’ll ring up CBS and sing Mike Wallace a song: (Sotto voce, with relish) “The Ballad of Adorable Ollie North and His Secret Contra Slush Fund.”
(He holds the phone away from his ear; Martin is screaming)
Oh you only think you know all I know. I don’t even know what all I know. Half the time I just make it up, and it still turns out to be true! We learned that trick in the fifties. Tomorrow, you two-bit scumsucking shitheel flypaper insignificant dried-out little turd. A nice big box of drugs for Uncle Roy. Or there’ll be seven different kinds of hell to pay. (He slams the receiver down)
ACT TWO:
The Anti-Migratory Epistle
(For Sigrid)
January 1986
Scene 1
Three weeks after the end of Act One. Prior and Belize stand outside a dilapidated funeral parlor on the Lower East Side. They’ve just left the funeral of a mutual friend, a major New York City drag-and-style queen. Belize is in defiantly bright and beautiful clothing. Prior is dressed oddly, a long black coat over black shirt and pants, and a large, fringed, black scarf draped like a hood around his head, capped off with black sunglasses; the effect is disconcerting, vaguely suggesting adherence to a severe, albeit elegant, religious discipline.
Belize has been deeply moved by the service they’ve just attended. Prior is closed off in some place as dark as the costume he’s wearing.
PRIOR: It was tacky.
BELIZE: It was divine.
He was one of the Great Glitter Queens. He couldn’t be buried like a civilian. Trailing sequins and incense he came into the world, trailing sequins and incense he departed it. And good for him!