NED: A chance to kiss his ass?
BRUCE: We want to work from the inside now that we have the contact.
NED: It won’t work. Did you get this meeting by kissing his ass? He’s the one person most responsible for letting this epidemic get so out of control. If he’d responded with one ounce of compassion when we first tried to reach him, we’d have saved two years. You’ll see . . . We have over half a million dollars. The Times is finally writing about us. Why are you willing to let me go when I’ve been so effective? When you need me most?
BRUCE: You. . . you’re a bully. If the board doesn’t agree with you, you always threaten to leave. You never listen to us. I can’t work with you anymore.
NED: And you’re strangling this organization with your fear and your conservatism. The organization I promised everyone would fight for them isn’t fighting at all. It’s become the gay est.
BRUCE: Maybe that’s what it wanted to become. Maybe that’s all it could become. You can’t turn something into something it doesn’t want to become. We just feel you can’t tell people how to live.
NED: Drop that! Just drop it! The cases are still doubling every six months. Of course we have to tell people how to live. Or else there won’t be any people left! Did you ever consider it could get so bad they’ll quarantine us or put us in camps?
BRUCE: Oh, they will not.
NED: It’s happened before. It’s all happened before. History is worth shit. I swear to God I now understand . . . Is this how so many people just walked into gas chambers? But at least they identified themselves to each other and to the world.
BRUCE: You can’t call people gay who don’t want to be.
NED: Bruce—after you’re dead, it doesn’t make any difference.
BRUCE: (Takes a letter out of his pocket.) The board wanted me to read you this letter. “We are circulating this letter widely among people of judgment and good sense in our community. We take this action to try to combat your damage, wrought, so far as we can see, by your having no scruples whatever. You are on a colossal ego trip we must curtail. To manipulate fear, as you have done repeatedly in your ‘merchandising’ of this epidemic, is to us the gesture of barbarism. To exploit the deaths of gay men, as you have done in publications all over America, is to us an act of inexcusable vandalism. And to attempt to justify your bursts of outrageous temper as ‘part of what it means to be Jewish’ is past our comprehending. And, after years of liberation, you have helped make sex dirty again for us—terrible and forbidden. We are more angry at you than ever in our lives toward anyone. We think you want to lead us all. Well, we do not want you to. In accordance with our by-laws as drawn up by Weeks, Frankel, Levinstein, Mr. Ned Weeks is hereby removed as a director. We beg that you leave us quietly and not destroy us and what good work we manage despite your disapproval. In closing, please know we always welcome your input, advice, and help.”
(BRUCE tries to hand NED the letter. NED won’t take it. BRUCE tries to put it in NED’s breast pocket. NED deflects BRUCE’s hand.)
NED: I belong to a culture that includes Proust, Henry James, Tchaikovsky, Cole Porter, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Christopher Marlowe, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Tennessee Williams, Byron, E. M. Forster, Lorca, Auden, Francis Bacon, James Baldwin, Harry Stack Sullivan, john Maynard Keynes, Dag Hammarskjöld . . . These are not invisible men. Poor Bruce. Poor frightened Bruce. Once upon a time you wanted to be a soldier. Bruce, did you know that it was an openly gay Englishman who was as responsible as any man for winning the Second World War? His name was Alan Turing and he cracked the Germans’ Enigma code so the Allies knew in advance what the Nazis were going to do—and when the war was over he committed suicide he was so hounded for being gay. Why don’t they teach any of this in the schools? If they did, maybe he wouldn’t have killed himself and maybe you wouldn’t be so terrified of who you are. The only way we’ll have real pride is when we demand recognition of a culture that isn’t just sexual. It’s all there—all through history we’ve been there; but we have to claim it, and identify who was in it, and articulate what’s in our minds and hearts and all our creative contributions to this earth. And until we do that, and until we organize ourselves block by neighborhood by city by state into a united visible community that fights back, we’re doomed. That’s how I want to be defined: as one of the men who fought the war. Being defined by our cocks is literally killing us. Must we all be reduced to becoming our own murderers? Why couldn’t you and I, Bruce Niles and Ned Weeks, have been leaders in creating a new definition of what it means to be gay? I blame myself as much as you. Bruce, I know I’m an asshole. But, please, I beg you, don’t shut me out.
(BRUCE starts to leave, then stops and comes to NED. He puts his hand on his cheek, perhaps kisses him, and then leaves him standing alone.)
Scene 14
NED’s apartment. FELIX is sitting on the floor. He has been eating junk food. NED comes in carrying a bag of groceries.
NED: Why are you sitting on the floor?
FELIX: I fell down trying to get from there to here.
NED: Let’s put you to bed.
FELIX: Don’t touch me! I’m so ugly. I cannot stand it when you look at my body.
NED: Did you go to chemo today?
FELIX: Yes. I threw it all up. You don’t have to let me stay here with you. This is horrible for you.
NED: (Touching felix’s hair.) No fallout yet. Phil looks cute shaved. I’m hungry. How about you? Can you eat a little? Please. You’ve got to eat. Soup . . . something light. . . I’ve bought dinner.
FELIX: Emma says a cure won’t come until the next century. Emma says it’s years till a vaccine, which won’t do me any good anyway. Emma says the incubation period might be up to three, ten, twenty years.
NED: Emma says you’ve got to eat.
FELIX: I looked at all my datebooks and no one else I slept with is sick. That I know of. Maybe it was you. Maybe you’ve been a carrier for twenty years. Or maybe now you only have three years to go.
NED: Felix, we don’t need to do this again to each other.
FELIX: Whoever thought you’d die from having sex?
NED: Did Emma also tell you that research at the NIH has finally started. That something is now possible. We have to hope.
FELIX: Oh, do we?
NED: Yes, we do.
FELIX: And how am I supposed to do that? You Jewish boys who think you can always make everything right—that the world can always be a better place. Did I tell you the Times is running an editorial this Sunday entitled “The Slow Response”? And you’re right: I didn’t have anything to do with it.
NED: Why are you doing this? Why are you eating this shit? Twinkies, potato chips. . . You know how important it is to watch your nutrition. You’re supposed to eat right.
FELIX: I have a life expectancy of ten more minutes I’m going to eat what I want to eat. Ned, it’s going to get messier any day now and I don’t want to make you see it.
NED: Nobody makes me do anything; you should know that better than anybody else by now. What are you going to do? Sit on the floor for the rest of your life? We have a bed in the other room. You could listen to those relaxation tapes we bought you three months ago. You haven’t used them at all. Do you hear me?
FELIX: Yes, I hear you. That guy David who sold you the pig on Bleecker Street finally died. He took forever. They say he looked like someone out of Auschwitz. Do you hear me?
NED: No. Are you ready to get up yet? And eat something?
FELIX: No!—I’ve had over forty treatments. No!—I’ve had three, no four different types of chemo. No!—I’ve had interferon, a couple kinds. I’ve had two different experimentals. Emma has spent more time on me than anyone else. None of it has done a thing. I’ve had to go into the hospital four times—and please God don’t make me go back into the hospital until I die. My illness has cost my—no! the New Yorks Times’ insurance company over $300,000. Eighty-five
percent of us are dead after two years, Alexander; it gets higher after three. Emma has lost so many patients they call her Dr. Death. You cannot force the goddamn sun to come out.
NED: Felix, I am so sick of statistics, and numbers, and body counts, and howmanys, and Emma; and every day, Felix, there are only more numbers, and fights—I am so sick of fighting, and bragging about fighting, and everybody’s stupidity, and blindness, and intransigence, and guilt trips. You can’t eat the food? Don’t eat the food. Take your poison. I don’t care. You can’t get up off the floor—fine, stay there. I don’t care. Fish—fish is good for you; we don’t want any of that, do we? (Item by item, he throws the food on the floor.) No green salad. No broccoli; we don’t want any of that, no, sir. No bread with seven grains. Who would ever want any milk? You might get some calcium in your bones. (The carton of milk explodes when it hits the floor.) You want to die, Felix? Die!
(NED retreats to a far corner. After a moment, FELIX crawls through the milk, takes an item of food, which he pulls along with his hand, and with extreme effort makes his way across to NED. They fall into each other’s arms.)
NED: Felix, please don’t leave me.
Scene 15
BEN’s office. FELIX, with great effort, walks toward him. Though he looks terrible, FELIX has a bit of his old twinkle.
FELIX: Thank you for seeing me. Your brother and I are lovers. I’m dying and I need to make a will. Oh, I know Neddie hasn’t been talking to you; our excuse is we’ve sort of been preoccupied. It’s a little hard on us, isn’t it, his kind of love, because we disappoint him so. But it is love. I hope you know that. I haven’t very much time left. I want to leave everything to Ned. I’ve written it all down.
BEN: (Taking the piece of paper from FELIX and studying it.) Do you have any family, Felix?
FELIX: My parents are dead. I had a wife.
BEN: You had a wife?
FELIX: Yes. Here’s the divorce. (He hands BEN another piece of paper.) And I have a son. Here’s . . . she has custody. (He hands over yet another piece of paper.)
BEN: Does she know you’re ill?
FELIX: Yes. I called and we’ve said our good-byes. She doesn’t want anything from me. She was actually rather pleasant. Although she wouldn’t let me talk to my boy.
BEN: How is my brother?
FELIX: Well, he blames himself, of course, for everything from my dying to the state of the entire world. But he’s not talking so much these days, believe it or not. You must be as stubborn as he is—not to have called.
BEN: I think of doing it every day. I’m sorry I didn’t know you were ill. I’ll call him right away.
FELIX: He’s up at Yale for the week. He’s in terrible shape. He was thrown out of the organization he loved so much. After almost three years he sits at home all day, flagellating himself awfully because he thinks he’s failed some essential test—plus my getting near the end and you two still not talking to each other.
BEN: Ned was thrown out of his own organization?
FELIX: Yes.
BEN: Felix, I wish we could have met sooner.
FELIX: I haven’t much, except a beautiful piece of land on the Cape in Wellfleet on a hill overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Ned doesn’t know about it. It was to have been a surprise, we’d live there together in the house he always wanted. I also have an insurance policy with the Times. I’m a reporter for the New York Times.
BEN: You work for the Times?
FELIX: Yes. Fashion. La-de-da. It’s meant to come to my next of kin. I’ve specified Ned. I’m afraid they might not give it to him.
BEN: If he is listed as the beneficiary, they must.
FELIX: But what if they don’t?
BEN: I assure you I will fight to see that he gets it.
FELIX: I was hoping you’d say that. Can I sign my will now, please, in case I don’t have time to see you again?
BEN: This will be quite legal. We can stop by one of my associates’ offices and get it properly witnessed as you sign it.
FELIX: My little piece of paper is legal? Then why did you go to law school?
BEN: I sometimes wonder. You know, Felix, I think of leaving here, too, because I don’t think anybody is listening to me either. And I set all this up as well. (A hospital bed is wheeled into stage center by two orderlies, wearing masks and gloves.) I understand that the virus has finally been discovered in Washington.
FELIX: The story is they couldn’t find it, so after fifteen months they stole it from the French and renamed it. With who knows how many million of us now exposed . . . Oh, there is not a good word to be said for anybody’s behavior in this whole mess. Then could you help me get a taxi, please? I have to get to the airport.
BEN: The airport?
FELIX: I’m going to Rumania to see their famous woman doctor. A desperation tactic, Tommy would call it. Does flying Bucharest Airlines inspire you with any confidence?
Scene 16
FELIX’s hospital room, FELIX lies in bed. NED enters.
FELIX: I should be wearing something white.
NED: You are.
FELIX: It should be something Perry Ellis ran up for me personally.
NED: (As FELIX presses a piece of rock into his band.) What’s this?
FELIX: From my trip. I forgot to give it to you. This is a piece of rock from Dracula’s castle.
NED: Reminded you of me, did it?
FELIX: To remind you of me. Please learn to fight again.
NED: I went to a meeting at the Bishop’s. All the gay leaders were there, including Bruce and Tommy. I wasn’t allowed in. I went in to the men’s room of the rectory and the Bishop came in and as we stood there peeing side by side I screamed at him, “What kind of house of God are we in?”
FELIX: Don’t lose that anger. Just have a little more patience and forgiveness. For yourself as well.
NED: What am I ever going to do without you?
FELIX: Finish writing something. Okay?
NED: Okay.
FELIX: Promise?
NED: I promise.
FELIX: Okay. It better be good. (BEN enters the scene.)
FELIX: Hello, Ben.
BEN: Hello, Felix.
(Before NED can do more than register his surprise at seeing BEN, EMMA enters and comes to the side of the bed.)
FELIX: Emma, could we start, please.
EMMA: We are gathered here in the sight of God to join together these two men. They love each other very much and want to be married in the presence of their family before Felix dies. I can see no objection. This is my hospital, my church. Do you, Felix Turner, take Ned Weeks—
FELIX: Alexander.
EMMA: . . . to be your . . .
FELIX: My lover. My lover. I do.
NED: I do.
(FELIX is dead. EMMA, who has been holding Felix’s hand and monitoring his pulse, places his hand on his body. She leaves. The two order lies enter and push the hospital bed, through all the accumulated mess, off stage.)
NED: He always wanted me to take him to your new house in the country. Just the four of us.
BEN: Ned, I’m sorry. For Felix. . . and for other things.
NED: Why didn’t I fight harder! Why didn’t I picket the White House, all by myself if nobody would come. Or go on a hunger strike. I forgot to tell him something. Felix, when they invited me to Gay Week at Yale, they had a dance . . . In my old college dining hall, just across the campus from that tiny freshman room where I wanted to kill myself because I thought I was the only gay man in the world—they had a dance. Felix, there were six hundred young men and women there. Smart, exceptional young men and women. Thank you, Felix.
(After a moment, BEN crosses to NED, and somehow they manage to kiss and embrace and hold on to each other.)
THE END
The Destiny of Me
A Play in Three Acts
For my brother,
Arthur Bennett Kramer.
“I guess you could have lived without me.
I never
could have lived without you.”
Thank you.
I love you.
I would like to thank Sanford Friedman, Bill Hart, and Morgan Jenness for their invaluable dramaturgical contributions; and Dr. Suzanne Phillips, Dr.Joseph Sonnabend, Dr. Howard Grossman, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Robert Gallo, and Richard Lynn for answering my hundreds of medical questions.
L.K.
The Destiny of Me opened on October 20, 1992, at the Lucille Lortel Theater in New York City. The Circle Repertory Company (Tanya Berezin, Artistic Director) production was presented by Lucille Lortel. It had the following cast:
Cast of Characters
(in order of appearance.)
Ned Weeks Jonathan Hadary
Nurse Hanniman Oni Faida Lampley
Dr. Anthony Della Vida Bruce McCarty
Alexander Weeks John Cameron Mitchell
Richard Weeks David Spielberg
Rena Weeks Piper Laurie
Benjamin Weeks Peter Frechette
Director Marshall W. Mason
Sets John Lee Beatty
Costumes Melina Root
Lighting Dennis Parichy
Original Music Peter Kater
Sound Chuck London & Stewart Werner
Production Stage Manager Fred Reinglas
Originally produced in association with Rodger McFarlane and Tom Viola
Place: Just outside Washington, D.C.
Time: Autumn, 1992.
About the Production
As with all plays, I hope there are many ways to design The Destiny of Me.
The original New York production turned out to be much more elaborate than I’d conceived it in my head as I wrote it. As I worked with the director, Marshall Mason, I began to fear I’d written an undesignable play (not that there should ever be such a thing!).
On The Normal Heart I’d had the talent of the enormously gifted Eugene Lee, ever adept at solving problems of this nature in miraculously ingenious ways, and ways that were not expensive. I suspect that Eugene’s design for The Normal Heart—-the way he solved not dissimilar problems—has been utilized unknowingly all over the world, just from the participants in one production seeing photographs of another.
The Normal Heart and The Destiny of Me: Two Plays Page 10