The Inheritance

by Matthew Lopez

  I start to get close. I stand up on a bench. By now I’m completely covered in sweat and lube and spit. I start to jack myself off, bringing myself closer and closer to orgasm. All eyes are on me. Wanting me, encouraging me, demanding of me that I cum for them. And then finally, standing over them, my world contracts into a tight little ball and I release myself … I spray my cum all over them, like I’m anointing them. I’ve never cum so hard or so much in all my life. It was the closest I’ve ever been to genuine ecstasy.

  Toby reaches for Adam. Adam lets him.

  Everyone starts to cum. It was beautiful to watch. I was euphoric. I felt like a cult leader. And I remember thinking: I always want to feel like I do right now. This moment, this feeling, I want to live in this moment for the rest of my life.

  Toby continues to feel Adam.

  Slowly my euphoria starts to fade and a thought starts to form, like Adam Lucas McDowell returning to this hot, sweaty body: none of those guys had been wearing condoms. And suddenly, I’m awoken from my dream to face the fact that I’ve just barebacked with at least a dozen guys.

  Toby removes his hands from Adam’s body.

  I got down off the bench and made my way out of the stall. Everyone was grabbing at me, wanting me to stay. Suddenly their touches felt like violations. I ran to the locker room and quickly dressed. I left with my clothes sticking to my body, still sweaty and covered in lube and spit and cum. I smelled so disgustingly. I ran to my hotel. When I got to my room, I took the hottest shower I could stand. I cleaned myself and discovered I was bleeding. I could see it going down the drain. I got out of the shower and looked at my clothes. There was blood all over my underwear and inside my jeans.

  Toby What did you do?

  Adam I called my mom.

  Toby You told your mother / what you did?!

  Adam I just told her it was one guy. She called a friend of hers, a surgeon at Sloan-Kettering. This surgeon called a friend of his in Prague, who wrote me a prescription for PEP. I flew home the next day and we went up to Vermont for Christmas. I got really sick on Christmas Day. It felt like the worst flu ever. My mom took me to the hospital where I got a rapid HIV test. It came back inconclusive. The doctor ordered blood work. But it was Christmas and I had to wait three days for the lab to re-open. Worst Christmas of my life. Three days later, my mom and I drove back to the hospital for the results. They found the virus in my blood. Trace amounts. Barely detectable. But still detectable. HIV positive.

  Toby I had no idea.

  Adam The doctor told me to keep taking the PEP treatment for the rest of the month. I went back to school and tried to distract myself with work. I would lie awake at night obsessively going over that night in my mind. Which one gave this to me? How could an experience that transcendent yield consequences so terrifying? Once the month was out, I went to the health center on campus. They did another round of tests. This time they came back negative across the board.

  Toby Oh. So … what does that mean, exactly?

  Adam It means I was exposed to the virus, I became temporarily HIV positive and the PEP treatment worked. It means I came as close to the edge as possible and at the last second I was rescued. Kinda like what my parents did for me when I was two weeks old.

  Silence.

  Don’t ever tell me that I don’t know what it’s like to be scared to death.

  Toby Adam, I –

  Adam It’s getting late.

  Toby Adam, I –

  Adam I should get to bed.

  Toby Adam –

  Adam Goodnight, Toby.

  Toby silently stands there.

  Toby I’ll, um, I’ll see you tomorrow.

  Morgan That night, Adam McDowell learned an important lesson:

  He had power. Far more than he ever imagined.

  Young Man 1 He wondered what else he might be capable of.

  End of Scene One.

  SCENE TWO

  October 9, 2016. Eric’s thirty-fourth birthday

  Morgan Eric awoke on his thirty-fourth birthday to an email from the Glass family’s attorney. In exchange for a settlement, the Glass family had agreed to vacate the property at midnight on December 31. Eric busied himself with preparations for his birthday brunch, pushing thoughts of the future to the back of his mind.

  Eric His friends arrived at eleven.

  1. Eric and Toby’s Apartment

  Eric, Walter, Tristan, Jasper, Jason 1 and Jason 2 at Eric’s dining table. Jason 1 and Jason 2 are each showing Walter pictures of their wedding on his phone.

  Jason 2 And that’s us in the garden before the ceremony.

  Walter Lovely.

  Jason 2 And that’s us still in the garden before the ceremony.

  Walter Very nice.

  Jason 2 And that’s us in the garden before the ceremony but from a different angle.

  Walter Yes, I see that.

  Jason 1 Show him the floral arrangements.

  Jason 2 Our florist was amazing. We were on a waiting list for three years.

  Jason 1 We had to change the wedding date twice.

  Jason 2 She had the tulips flown in from Amsterdam.

  Jason 1 Cost a fortune. Show him a picture of the dinner.

  Jason 2 Our chef trained with Grant Achatz. Everything was molecular.

  Jason 1 Very progressive cuisine.

  Jason 2 The deconstructed blanquette de veau? To die for. Why can’t I find a picture of that?

  Jason 1 It’s in there.

  Jason 2 Yeah, but where?

  Jason 1 Maybe it’s in the next two hundred pictures.

  (To Walter.) There were twenty-seven courses.

  Walter Did any people attend this wedding?

  Jasper Your partner is Henry Wilcox, right? The real estate developer.

  Walter Yes, that’s right.

  Jason 1 How long have you been together?

  Walter Over thirty-six years.

  Jason 2 Wow!

  Jason 1 Have you ever thought of getting married?

  Walter No.

  Jason 2 Why not?

  Walter Never saw the need.

  Jason 2 Yeah, but the party. And the gift registry.

  Jason 1 What happens if he dies before you? Do you ever worry about that?

  Walter No.

  Jason 2 Oh, this is one of my favorites. Look.

  Walter Ah, still in the garden, are we?

  Jason 1 It’s such a lovely garden.

  Tristan What do you do for a living, Walter?

  Walter Fortunately, I’ve never needed to work. I raised Henry’s sons for him, which was work enough.

  Jason 1 You and your partner have children?

  Walter Henry has two boys from his marriage. Their mother died when they were young.

  Eric Really, Walter? I didn’t know that.

  Jason 2 Course 8! Course17! Course23.5!

  Eric Did you adopt them?

  Walter No, but I raised them. Henry travels so much. It was often me and the boys for many years.

  Jason 2 Speaking of adopting –

  (To Jason 1.) Should we tell them?

  Jason 1 I think you just did, babe.

  Jason 2 Jason and I are adopting a baby in the new year.

  The Lads react excitedly.

  Jason 1 It’s still not completely certain.

  Jason 2 But we found a mother. She lives in Phoenix. She’s due early January.

  Jasper How does that work? You just fly to Phoenix, grab the kid and take it home with you?

  Jason 1 Well, first you have to poke air holes in the suitcase.

  Eric God, you guys are gonna be parents.

  Jason 1 If everything works out.

  Walter Do all of you plan to have children?

  Jason 1 Obviously we do.

  Jason 2 We’re gonna have three!

  Tristan I’d like to someday.

  Jasper No fucking way.

  Walter Why not for you, Jasper?

  Jasper Children are dirty, diseased bloodsuckers
who get their grubby little fingers all over your expensive furniture. They drain you of your vitality, rob you of your sleep, age you prematurely and then resent you for it on their therapist’s couch, which you have to pay for.

  Walter Well, as long as you’ve given it some thought.

  Jasper If I ever do find the person I’m meant to be with, I wanna fuck him senseless every day. Go mountain climbing. Have an orgy in the Pines. Fist a twink together.

  Jason 2 Well you’re not babysitting.

  Eric Let’s eat!

  Young Man 4 The brunch commenced and Walter withdrew into silence.

  Walter lights a cigarette. Stunned silence from Eric and the Lads. Walter notices.

  Walter Do you mind if I smoke?

  They all clearly do, but:

  Eric I don’t mind.

  (To the rest.) Do you?

  Tristan I don’t mind.

  Jasper No.

  Jason 2 I’m expecting a child. (Then:) I don’t mind.

  Young Man 3 Eric was afraid Walter wasn’t enjoying the brunch nearly as much as he was enjoying his cigarette.

  Young Man 1 And so he attempted to bring the subject around to a topic about which he was certain Walter would have some insight.

  Eric You know what I miss? I miss the feeling that being gay was like being a member of a secret club.

  Jason 2 You mean being in the closet?

  Eric No, I mean that liminal state when we were out but also, I don’t know, still kinda mysterious and opaque to society.

  Tristan Oh, like: friends were welcome to visit our little club but only members were allowed to access the full benefits.

  Eric Yes! And in order to fully join, you needed people to help bring you in.

  Jason 2 You’ve just described SoHo House.

  Eric No, I’m describing a community. Everything was a little secretive, you know?

  Tristan But not in a shameful way –

  Eric No.

  Tristan – more like in a ‘this is our thing’ kinda way.

  Eric Yes! It was a secret culture with a secret language and shared, secret experiences.

  Tristan That really was the best part of being gay, wasn’t it?

  Jasper I always thought the best part was the orgasms.

  Jason 2 Being gay doesn’t feel remarkable anymore. It’s like, ‘Oh you’re gay? Ho-hum, what other tricks can you do?’

  Jasper But the point of all that work at visibility was to not feel stigmatized. To not have our sexual identities be our primary identities.

  Jason 2 I never felt stigmatized, I felt special! I like being gay.

  Jason 1 But being gay isn’t all you are, baby. You’re a lawyer, you’re married, you’re about to become a father.

  Eric I think my question is: what does it mean now to be a gay man?

  Tristan There was never one answer to that question.

  Eric No, of course not. But there were several clearly identifiable cultural markers.

  Jason 2 Are you talking about drag queens and camp and being Friends of Dorothy?

  Eric Yes, in part.

  Jason 2 About seeing every revival of Gypsy since at least Tyne Daly.

  Jasper But that’s just a clichéd part of the gay identity.

  Eric I just mean there are certain identifiable, broadly applicable cultural markers that are specific to the gay community that I fear we are starting to lose.

  Tristan For example?

  Eric Well, take camp, for instance.

  Jasper Ugh, I hate camp. It’s like gay minstrelsy. I’m so happy we’re past that.

  Jason 2 I’m not past it. I like camp.

  Jasper Of course you do.

  Jason 2 Yeah, because I’m a big fucking nelly faggot queen and I do not care who knows it.

  Jasper Yasss kween!

  Tristan Oh! That is something that genuinely pisses me off. This whole ‘Yas queen’ thing entering pop culture. My fourteen-year-old niece said ‘Yass kween’ at Thanksgiving last year and I was like, ‘Who the fuck have you been hanging out with?’ and she was all like –

  Young Man 4 ‘Oh Uncle Tristan, that’s from Broad City.’

  Tristan And I was like, ‘The hell it is. That phrase has been toppling out of the painted lips of drag queens since before you were born.’ They have taken a phrase that started in the drag world and built a brand off it.

  Eric Our culture is being co-opted.

  Jasper But you can’t on the one hand demand visibility and then cry foul when your culture starts getting disseminated into the culture at large.

  Eric That’s only true if that kind of cultural visibility also comes with the kind of societal participation that matters.

  Jasper Such as …?

  Eric Such as …

  Tristan Come on, baby, you got this.

  Eric Okay. Harvey Milk!

  Lads react loudly.

  Tristan Oh God, Eric just played the Harvey Milk card!

  Eric I mean, sure it’s great Sean Penn won an Oscar for playing Harvey Milk but American students are still taught nothing about queer history. It feels like we’re getting stripped for parts and the inside is hollowing out. It feels like the community that I came up in is slowly fading away. When was the last time any of us actually hung out at a gay bar?

  Jason 2 They’re all closing.

  Eric My point exactly! Gay bars used to be safe spaces for people like us to be ourselves and to find others like us. Now everyone just goes on to Grindr. But what about thr twenty-year-old kid who’s not looking for sex, but rather for community, for a connection with something that helps him understand himself? Or the sixty-year-old man who’s looking for the same?

  Jasper Or the sixty-year-old who’s looking for the twenty-year-old?

  Tristan That’s gonna be you.

  Eric What happens to that shared culture? If being gay only describes who we love and who we fuck but not also how we encounter the world, then gay culture and gay community would start to disappear. And we still need that community. Because this country is still filled with people who hate us with vengeful, murderous fanaticism.

  Jason 1 ‘Vengeful, murderous fanaticism’? I think you may be going a little overboard. Look at where we are now. Progress has happened.

  Tristan Tell that to the kids at Pulse.

  Jason 1 I know. I don’t mean to minimize that.

  Tristan But …

  Jason 1 There’s always going to be vengeful, murderous fanatics in the world. It doesn’t mean that progress still hasn’t happened. Like, I think it’s fair to stipulate that we’re fine, right? In this room. Barring an unforeseen tragedy, we are less vulnerable than others. Now we have a chance to build on the progress that has been made in the last eight years – (Anticipating Tristan’s objection.) While still holding ourselves accountable for the tremendous amount of work that still needs to be done. So what happens next? What do we do for our community now that the people in this room have mostly gotten what they need from the Obama years?

  Jasper Now let’s talk about trans rights. Let’s talk about bullying in schools.

  Tristan Let’s talk about addiction, about the resurgence of HIV among gay men of color.

  Jason 1 Let’s talk about suicide, violence, homelessness.

  These are the things that will require just as much of our attention as marriage equality did and these are the things we have the chance to make some real progress on once Clinton is elected.

  Walter Are we that certain she’s going to win?

  The Lads seem sure.

  What happens if you’re wrong?

  Eric I think what Walter means to say is that we should never assume anything – right, Walter?

  Walter In part. I’m also afraid she’s going to lose.

  Silence.

  I’m sorry. It’s Eric’s birthday. And we’re all having such a / nice time.

  Eric No, it’s probably worth thinking about: what if the unthinkable happens?

  Eric But what if it do
es? We need our community, we need our history. How else can we teach the next generation who they are and how they got here? Human culture from time immemorial has been transmitted through stories, right? Think about the ancient epics: the Odyssey, the Mahabharata, oral histories that allowed cultures to understand themselves. In order to become an honorable Greek, one had to study the actions of Odysseus. A young Hindu would reflect on the conversation between Arjuna and Krishna on the battlefield. African Americans teach their children about slavery and Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement so that they will understand Freddie Grey and Trayvon Martin. Just as my family taught me about the Holocaust. And from this intergenerational conversation, passed along in some cases for millennia, history is conveyed and cultures survived. Greeks thump their chests and reflect on the invasion of Troy. Black children stand just a little taller at the mention of Rosa Parks. And we in our own culture feel the stirring of pride when we reflect on the meaning of Stonewall, Edie Windsor, Bayard Rustin, Harvey Milk and the bravery of the men and women on the front lines of the epidemic. And to let that go means we’ve relinquished a part of ourselves. If we can’t have a conversation with our past, then what will be our future? Who are we? And more importantly: who will we become?

  Morgan And then, Eric thought but did not say:

  Eric Who will I become?

  2. Hallway

  Walter I had such a wonderful time. Your friends are all so exciting to listen to. And I found what you in particular had to say was incredibly thoughtful and moving.

  Eric Oh. Just the after-effects of three glasses of wine.

  Walter Don’t, Eric. Do not discount my words the way you discount yourself. You have so much promise, Eric Glass. I admire you tremendously. I see in you a version of myself I had long since forgotten.

  A moment, then:

  One day I’d like to take you to my house upstate.

  Eric Yes, I would love that.

  Walter Why don’t we go there tonight?

  Eric Tonight?

  Walter Yes, right now. The cherry tree should be in full reds and oranges. It’ll do us both good.