The Normal Heart and The Destiny of Me: Two Plays

by Kramer, Larry

  (To BEN.) So you do think I’m sick? (No answer.) You do. I told Theo that going to Europe as his assistant on his Guggenheim was a terrific opportunity but that after walking round and around the block all night long I decided not to go.

  BEN: Good man.

  ALEXANDER: I told him no because I don’t love him.

  BEN: You told him no because you know it’s wrong.

  NED: (To BEN.) I told him no because. . . because 1 knew you wanted me to tell him no.

  BEN: (To NED.) You told him no because you knew it was considered wrong and unhealthy and sick.

  ALEXANDER: Don’t I just not love Theo because I just don’t love Theo?

  BEN: There’s something called psychoanalysis. It’s the latest thing. You lie down on a couch every day and say whatever comes into your head.

  NED: (As ALEXANDER looks at him, suddenly worried.) Why listen to me? I can only predict epidemics and plagues.

  ALEXANDER: What have I done?

  NED: You’re letting Ben push you on to a treadmill of revolving doctors, not one of whom will know a fucking thing about what makes your heart tick.

  ALEXANDER: What will they do to me?

  NED: They will turn you into a productive human being.

  ALEXANDER: What’s wrong with that? I’m flunking every course.

  NED: While they teach you to love yourself they will also teach you to hate your heart. It’s their one great trick. All these old Jewish doctors—the sons of Sigmund—exiled from their homelands, running from Hitler’s death camps, for some queer reason celebrated their freedom on our shores by deciding to eliminate homosexuals. That’s what you are. It’s going to be a long time before you can say the word out loud. Over and over and over again they will pound into your consciousness through constant repetition: you’re sick, you’re sick, you’re sick. So your heart is going to lie alone. So you see, you should have gone to Europe with Theo.

  ALEXANDER: Ben—I’m scared.

  BEN: You’re making all the right decisions. I’ll always fight for you and defend you and protect you. All I ask is that you try. The talking cure, it’s called. (Puts his arm around ALEXANDER’s shoulder.)

  ALEXANDER: Talking? I should be cured real fast. (Leaving with BEN.) Theo gave me crabs. Do you know what crabs are? (BEN nods.) I didn’t but I do now.

  (They exit. HANNIMAN enters with her cart. Sounds of chanting outside can be dimly heard.)

  HANNIMAN: We need more blood.

  NED: What are you opening, a store? Do you know how many blood tests I’ve had in the past twelve years? It’s definitely a growth industry. The tyranny of the blood test. Ladies and gentlemen, step right up and watch the truth drawn right before your very eyes. We are being tested for the presence of a virus that may or may not be the killer. We are being tested to discover if this and/or that miraculous new discovery that may or may not kill the virus which may or may not be the killer is working. We live in constant terror that the number of healthy cells, which may or may not be an accurate indicator of anything at all and which the virus that may or may not be the killer may or may not be destroying, will decline and fall. What does any of this mean? Before each blood test, no one sleeps. (Singing.) “Nessun dorma.” Awaiting each result, the same. The final moments are agony. On a piece of paper crowded with computerized chitchat that, depending on whom you ask, is open to at least two and often more contradictory interpretations, and which your doctor is holding in his hand, is printed the latest clairvoyance of your life expectancy. May I have the winning envelope, please?

  HANNIMAN: Boy, you are one piece of cake. What happened between you and your people out there?

  NED: You ran out of miracles.

  HANNIMAN: Not personal enough.

  NED: They look to me for leadership and I don’t know how to guide them. I’m going to die and they’re going to die, only they’re nineteen and twenty-four and somehow born into this world and I feel so fucking guilty that I’ve failed them. I wanted to be Moses but I only could be Cassandra.

  HANNIMAN: And you lay all that on yourself?

  NED: Why not?

  HANNIMAN: If people don’t want to be led, they don’t want to be led. You’re not as grand and important as you think you are.

  NED: In a few more years more Africans will be dying from this plague than are being born. If this stuff works, only rich white men will get it. I call that genocide. What do you call it? How do you go to sleep at night lying beside your husband knowing all that? What are you doing for your people out there?

  HANNIMAN: I don’t have to take this shit. (Walks out.)

  NED: (Calling after her.) You’re as grand and important as you want to be!

  (Loud banging is heard, then BEN’s voice.)

  BEN: Ned! Your landlady says you’re in there! Open up. Open up the goddamned door! Alexander!

  (BEN is banging on the door of a sparsely furnished New York studio apartment. ALEXANDER sits staring into space. BEN finally breaks the door down. He carries a bottle of champagne.)

  You haven’t been to work in a week. Your office said you were home sick. Why don’t you answer the phone? Does Dr. . . . I can’t remember the new one’s name . . . know you’re like this? Ned, come on, talk to me. You always talk to me. Ned, God damn it, please answer me! You know, you’re not a very good uncle. You never come and see my kids. Alexandra would like to see her namesake. Timmy wants to know all about the movie business. Betsy—sometimes I think my feelings for my firstborn are unnatural. Have you been staring into space for a week? Come on—congratulations! You’re going to London! Your career is progressing nicely. Are you going to talk to me?

  (BEN uncorks the champagne. NED gives him a cup. BEN pours some and offers it to ALEXANDER, who refuses.)

  ALEXANDER: Be careful you don’t ever give me one of your secrets.

  NED: I told you not to tell him.

  ALEXANDER: Fuck you! (Mimicking:) “I told you this!” “I told you that!” I’ve had enough of your . . . lack of cooperation.

  NED: Well, tough shit and fuck you yourself, you little parasite.

  ALEXANDER: Parasite?

  NED: Bloodsucker. Leech. Hanger-on. Freeloader. You’re like the very virus itself and I can’t get rid of you.

  ALEXANDER: I didn’t know that’s what you wanted to do.

  NED: There’s never been a virus that’s been successfully eradicated.

  ALEXANDER: (Repeating.) I didn’t know that’s what you wanted to do.

  BEN: Who is it this time?

  (BEN offers him the cup of champagne again. This time ALEXANDER takes it. BEN drinks out of the bottle.)

  ALEXANDER: Six shrinks later I’m still the most talkative one in class. When do I graduate? You always take care of me. Why? (No answer.) Why?

  BEN: Tell me about him.

  ALEXANDER: Which one?

  BEN: Any one.

  ALEXANDER: Dr. Schwartz kept calling me a pervert. Dr. Grossman said I was violating God’s laws by not fathering children. Dr. Nussbaum was also very uncomplimentary. I ran into him getting fucked in the Provincetown dunes. Dr. . . . I go to all the doctors you send me to. One doesn’t do the trick, you find me another.

  BEN: What’s wrong!

  ALEXANDER: I didn’t know life could be so lonely.

  BEN: I’m sorry. You’ll meet someone.

  ALEXANDER: Oh, that. I already tried that. Hundreds of times. At first I wanted love back. But now I’m willing to give that up if someone would just stay put and let me love him. That’s really a person who likes himself a lot, huh?

  BEN: Don’t give up. Your self-pity will. . . diminish.

  ALEXANDER: I did meet someone. He loved every book I loved. Every symphony and pop song and junk food. I couldn’t believe this man was interested in me. He was so . . . beautiful. Beauty rarely looks at me. I couldn’t stop feeling his skin, touching his face. (Pointing to mattress.) Right there. There! All night long, two days through, we couldn’t let go of each other.

 
And then came the brainwashing session. What did that mind-bender say to turn me into such a monster? I walked home very slowly. I came in here. Peter had made breakfast. Nobody ever made me breakfast. He smiled and said, “I’ve missed you.” He missed me. “We have one more day before I have to go back.” He was finishing his doctorate at Harvard. The perfect man for anyone to take home to the folks. And I said . . . I actually said . . . I don’t know where the words came from or how I could say them. . . but I said: “You have to leave now.” God damn you!

  BEN: Me?

  ALEXANDER: They’re your witch doctors! (To NED.) All this psychoanalysis shit and you’re what I’ve got to show for it?

  NED: I did not send you into psychoanalysis.

  ALEXANDER: Stop trying to keep your hands so fucking clean! You’re the bloodsucker!

  BEN: Ned . . . ?

  ALEXANDER: Why do I go to them? One after another. One doesn’t do the trick: step right up, your turn at bat. Why do I listen to them? Why do I listen to you? How do we still love each other, when all we do is . . . this? Peter could be here (Holding out his empty arms.) right now. Why are you so insistent? Why do I obey you? You don’t put a gun to my head. Why don’t I say: get out of my life, I’ll make my own rules? I could be loved! But you do put a gun to my head. You won’t love me unless I change. Well, it’s too powerful a force to change! It’s got to be a part of me! It doesn’t want to die. And fights tenaciously to stay alive, against all odds. And no matter what anyone does to try and kill it. Why don’t you just leave me alone? We don’t have to see each other. Are you afraid to let go of me, too? Why? Why am I—why are we both—such collaborators? And how can I love you when part of me thinks you’re murdering me?

  BEN: You’re very strange. You just lay it all right out there. You always have.

  NED: (To BEN.) Answer him!

  BEN: What do you want me to say! (Pause.) Change is hard.

  ALEXANDER: How about grief? And sadness. And mourning for lost life and love and what might have been.

  BEN: Try not to be so melodramatic.

  ALEXANDER: Melodramatic? Who are you? Do I know you? Sometimes you can be a very mysterious person.

  BEN: I’ve heard excellent things about another doctor. In London.

  ALEXANDER: Why’d you stay away from home so much? (No answer.) Why’d you stay away from home? (No answer.) Why did you run away?

  BEN: I didn’t run away.

  ALEXANDER: You were never there.

  NED: Answer him!

  BEN: (After a long pause.) I didn’t have a mother.

  ALEXANDER: You never had a mother?

  BEN: You asked me why I never came home. That’s why I never came home.

  ALEXANDER: You thought Rena didn’t love you?

  BEN: She doesn’t.

  ALEXANDER: Mommy doesn’t love you? (To NED.) Did you know this?

  NED: That’s what he believes.

  BEN: She was never there! She had so many jobs. She was always out taking care of everyone in the entire world except me. So I went out and did a thousand projects at a time because I thought that was how I’d get my mother’s love. If I got another A or headed up another organization, she’d notice me and pay attention to me and I’d win some approval from her. I needed her and she wasn’t there and I resent it bitterly. (Long pause.) And I’ll never forgive her for that.

  ALEXANDER: (Shaken, feeling he must defend her.) She had to work! Pop didn’t make enough! She was doing her best.

  BEN: That’s all she cares about. Her best. She made Daddy quit working for Uncle Leon. It was a good job. All through the Depression, Leon was rich. Pop had been making big bucks. Suddenly he’s no longer the breadwinner, with no self-respect. He was out of work for something like seven, eight years before the war finally came and there was work in Washington for everybody. So we moved to Washington where he made ten times less than he’d made with Leon.

  ALEXANDER: You can’t blame that on her!

  BEN: Why not! She had to be the star. She never stopped. She had a million jobs. She had a few spare hours she ran over to take dictation from a couple of bozos who repaired wrecked trucks. Leon found Pop a job as American counsel in the Virgin Islands. A big house, servants, tax-free salary. A fortune in those days. They turned it down.

  ALEXANDER: She said there wasn’t any milk for babies. You were just born.

  BEN: You boil milk. You use powdered. What did all the tens of thousands of babies born there drink? Have you heard about any mass demise of Virgin Island babies? She didn’t want to go! She felt so “useful.” And so he stayed home, unemployed, playing pinochle with the boys.

  ALEXANDER: Why didn’t he hustle his ass like she did?

  BEN: You’re not listening to me. She took his balls away! Why are you defending her so? She almost smothered you to death.

  ALEXANDER: She was the only one interested in me!

  BEN: Interested in you? What did she ever do to help you develop one single ability or interest or gift you ever had? You wanted to act, sing, dance, write, create . . . whatever. That’s what parents are supposed to do! Richard crucified every single one of those desires and she stood by and let him. All she does is talk endlessly and forever about herself!

  ALEXANDER: It wasn’t her. It wasn’t! It was him. It was all him. It was Richard. Why aren’t you mad at him for being so weak instead of her for trying to be strong?

  BEN: She called all the shots and she called them from her own selfish point of view.

  ALEXANDER: You don’t like her as much as I don’t like him. What happens when a kid is chosen for the wrong team? It’s as if we each took one parent for our very own. And each of them chose one of us. The whole procedure had nothing to do with love. Can you say “I love you?” Out loud? To anyone? And mean it? (No answer. To NED.) Can you? (No answer.)

  BEN: There’s just an anger inside me that never goes away. I’ve got to get out of here. I’m late. Walk me back to the office.

  ALEXANDER: How’d you figure all this out? (No answer.) You have just told me I shouldn’t love my mother. How did you figure this all out!

  BEN: (Another long pause.) I’m being psychoanalyzed.

  ALEXANDER: (Pause.) I don’t know why but that scares the shit out of me.

  BEN: It should make you feel better you’re not the only one.

  ALEXANDER: It’s all the decisions I let you make for me because you were the only one. What happened? God, wouldn’t it be wonderful if it were another man.

  BEN: You know how Richard always yelled at you, no matter what you did, you couldn’t do anything right? That’s how Sara treats Timmy. She says I. . . I withhold. I don’t show how I feel toward anyone and that makes her overreact and overreach and vent her anger on young Timmy. My son . . . he . . . she . . . she’s so hard on him, she takes everything out on him that’s meant for me. I called her. . . a controlling bitch. She says she can’t stop herself from doing it. Alexander, it’s a mess. The poor kid’s got some kind of stomach ulceration now. He’ll suddenly start bleeding, he can never be out of range of a toilet, and he’s only a kid, he’ll have this all his life. He’s such a good kid. He came into my room and started crying. I want him to be smart in school and the kid just isn’t. And he knows it disappoints the shit out of me. Ned, why doesn’t he do better? He’s smart. I just know it! He was crying. He started screaming I didn’t love him. And I’d never loved him. Why are you looking at me that way? We’re working on it! Sara’s in therapy, too. She’s learning. I’m learning. Richard and Rena couldn’t learn. We can learn. We mustn’t stop trying to learn.

  NED: “And the sins of the fathers shall visit unto the third and fourth generations.”

  BEN: No! I don’t believe that! We can change it!

  NED: And all those years you told me it was worse for me and I believed you!

  BEN: It was. It was worse for you.

  NED: No, it wasn’t. Why was it so important for you to hold on to that? Why was it so important to you to make
me the sick one? Were you so angry at Rena that you had to make my homosexuality so awful just to blame her? It wasn’t so hot for either of us! It made you stay away from home. And it didn’t make me gay. It made both of us have a great deal of difficulty saying “I love you.”

  BEN: Ned—go and call Peter back.

  ALEXANDER: Thank you, Ben. I called Peter back. I asked him to meet me. Which he did. At the Savoy Plaza. I took this grand suite and ordered filet mignon and champagne and flowers, tons of flowers. I apologized over and over again for what I had done. He said he recalled our time together as very pleasant. I practically pounced on him and threw him on the bed and held him in my arms and kissed him all over. He told me he was very happily in love with someone else and he thought it best that he leave. Which he did.

  BEN: I’m sorry. I have to get back to the office. I really am sorry. I have a meeting. Good luck in London. Maybe you’ll meet someone.

  ALEXANDER: Are you saying loving a man is now okay?

  BEN: Keep fighting. Keep on fighting. Don’t give up. The answers will present themselves. They really will. For both of us!

  (They go off.)

  NED: I haven’t been honest with you. I left out the hardest part for me to talk about. It was done by another Ned, someone inside of me who took possession of me and did something I’ve been terrified, every day of my life ever since, he might come back and do again. And, this time, succeed. After my father beat me and Mom up and told me he’d never wanted me and after I told my brother I was gay and after my brother got married and before my first year’s final exams that I knew I’d flunk, I pulled a bottle of some kind of pills which belonged to my roommate whose father was a doctor out of his bureau drawer and swallowed them all. I had wanted to take a knife and slice a foot or arm off. I had wanted to see blood, gushing everywhere, making a huge mess, and floating me away on its sea. But there were only pills. I’m only going to take two for a headache and two more to help me sleep. I have finals on Monday and there’s no way I can pass. Where else can I go? Back to Eden Heights? I’d rather be dead. So where? Every social structure I’m supposed to be a part of—my family, my religion, my school, my friends, my neighborhood, my work, my city, my state, my country, my government, my newspaper, my television—tells me over and over what I feel and see and think and do is sick. The only safe place left is the dark. I want to go to sleep. It’s Friday. I want to sleep till Tuesday. (Swallowing HANNIMAN’s pills with BEN’s champagne.) This couple of pills will take me till tomorrow and these until Sunday and . . . Monday . . . now I can sleep till Tuesday. Might as well take a few more. Just in case. Pop’s right, of course. I’m a failure. (Looking at himself in the mirror over the sink.) You even look like Richard. You’ll look like him for the rest of your life. I am more my father’s child than ever I wanted to be. I’ve fought so hard not to look like you. I’ve fought so hard not to inherit your failure. Poor newly named Ned. Trying so hard to fight failure. Now increasing at an awful rate. I woke up in the hospital and Ben was there beside me.