The Normal Heart and The Destiny of Me: Two Plays (29 page)

NED:
What if this doesn’t work?

BEN:
It’s going to work. (
Sits beside him on bed.
)

NED:
Even if it does, it will only work for a while.

BEN:
Then we’ll worry about it in a while.

NED:
You’ve certainly spent a great deal of your life trying to keep me alive, and I’ve been so much trouble, always trying to kill myself, asking your advice on every breath I take, putting you to the test endlessly.

BEN:
I beat you up once.

NED:
You beat me up? When?

BEN:
We were kids. I was trying to teach you how to tackle in football. You were fast, quick. I thought you could be a quarterback. And you wouldn’t do it right. You didn’t want to learn. It was just perversity on your part. So I decided to teach you a lesson. I blocked you and blocked you, as hard as I could, much harder than I had to. And then I tackled you, and you’d get up and I’d tackle you again, harder. You just kept getting up for more. I beat you up real bad.

NED:
I don’t remember any of that. Now why did you go and do all that?

BEN:
A thousand reasons and who knows?

NED:
I don’t want to he cremated. I want to be buried, with a tombstone, so people can come and find me and visit. Do you want to be buried or cremated?

BEN:
Neither.

NED:
What will they do with you?

BEN:
I don’t care.

NED:
How can you not care?

BEN:
I won’t be here.

NED:
You don’t want people to remember you?

BEN:
I’ve never thought about it.

NED:
It seems like I’ve spent my whole life thinking about it. How can you never have thought about it?

BEN:
I never thought about it.

NED:
Well, think about it.

BEN:
I don’t want to think about it.

NED:
I just thought we could be buried side by side.

BEN:
Please, Ned. You’re not go—

NED:
I’ve picked out the cemetery. It’s a pretty place. George Balanchine is buried there. I danced around his grave. When no one could see me.

BEN:
Are we finished with the morbid part of this conversation?

NED:
No. I want my name on something. A building. At Yale, for gay students, or in New York. Will you look after that for me?

BEN:
You’ll have many years to arrange all that yourself.

NED:
But you’re my lawyer!

BEN:
Everything will be taken care of.

NED:
Then, the rest of my money, you give to the kids and Sara, please give something special to Sara. You married her and you didn’t even love her. And you grew to love her. I’m sorry I never really had that. For very long.

BEN:
I want you to know. . . I want you to know. . . I’m proud you’ve stood up for what you’ve believed in. I’ve even been a little jealous of all the attention you’ve received. I think to myself that if I’d gone off on my own instead of built the firm, I could have taken up some cause and done it better than you. But I didn’t do that and you have and I admire you for that.

NED:
I guess you could have lived without me. I never could have lived without you. Go back to your hotel.

BEN:
I’ll see you tomorrow.

(
Lights up.
DR. DELLA VIDA
enters, carrying a long computer printout. He turns off the computer and then the Ex-Cell-Aerator.
)

NED:
The results are in. May I have the winning envelope, please?

TONY:
I don’t know how much more we can take. Your hoodlums infiltrated my hospital. They destroyed my entire laboratory. (
Throwing him the printout.
)

NED:
I guess they want you to admit you don’t know what the fuck’s going on and go back to the drawing board. I’m worse? I’m worse!

TONY:
Yes.

NED:
What are you going to do?

TONY:
There’s nothing I can do.

NED:
What do you mean there’s nothing you can do? You gave me the fucking stuff! You must have considered such a possibility! You must have some emergency measures!

TONY:
Oh, shut up! I am sick to death of you, your mouth, your offspring! You think changing Presidents will change anything? Will make any difference? The system will always he here. The system doesn’t change. No matter who’s President. It doesn’t make any difference who’s President! You’re scared of dying? Let me tell you the facts of life: it isn’t easy to die: you don’t die until you have tubes in every single possible opening and orifice and vent and passage and outlet and hole and slit in your ungrateful body. Why, it can take years and years to die. It’s much worse than you can even imagine. You haven’t suffered nearly enough. (
Leaves.
)

NED:
(
Pulls the tubes from his arms. Blood spurts out. Gets out of bed.
) What do you do when you’re dying from a disease you need not be dying from? What do you do when the only system set up to save you is a pile of shit run by idiots and quacks? (
Yanks the tubes violently out of the wall apparatus, causing blood to gush out. Then pulls out the six bags of blood, smashing them, one by one, against the walls and floor, to punctuate the next speech.
)

My straight friends ask me over and over and over again: why is it so hard for you to find love? Ah, that is the question, answered, I hope, for you tonight. Why do I never stop believing this fucking plague can he cured!

ALEXANDER:
(
Appearing in the bath towels he was first seen in.
) What’s going to happen to me?

NED:
You’re going to go to eleven shrinks. You won’t fall in love
for forty years. And when a nice man finally comes along and tries to teach you to love him and love yourself, he dies from a plague. Which is waiting to kill you, too.

ALEXANDER:
I’m sorry I asked. Do I learn anything?

NED:
Does it make any sense, a life? (
Singing.
) “Only make believe I love you . . .”

ALEXANDER:
(
Singing.
) “Only make believe that you love me . . .”

NED:
When Felix was offered the morphine drip for the first time in the hospital, I asked him, “Do you want it now or later?” Felix somehow found the strength to answer back, “I want to stay a little longer.”

NED
and
ALEXANDER:
“Might as well make believe I love you . . .”

NED:
“For to tell the truth . . .”

NED
and

ALEXANDER:
“I do.”

NED:
I want to stay a little longer.

THE END

A portion of Bertolt Brecht’s poem “And I Always Thought,” used in Tony Kushner’s Foreword is from
Poems 1913-1956,
translated by Michael Hamburger, Copyright © 1976 by Methuen. Used by permission of the publisher.

Portion of “September 1, 1939,” copyright © 1940 by W. H. Auden. Reprinted from
The English Auden,
edited by Edward Mendelson, by permission of Random House, Inc.

“Stouthearted Men” music by Sigmund Romberg, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II; “Where’s the Mate for Me?” and “Make Believe” from
Show Boat,
music by Jerome Kern, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II; “This Nearly Was Mine” and “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair” from
South Pacific,
music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II: Used by special arrangement with The Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization, 1633 Broadway, Suite 3801, New York, NY 10019.

“Blue Skies” music and lynics by Irving Berlin: Used by special arrangement with The Rodgers and Hammerstein Organization, on behalf of Irving Berlin Music Company, 1633 Broadway, Suite 3801, New York, NY 10019.

“Don’t Fence Me In” music and lyrics by Cole Porter; “Victory Polka” music by Jule Styne, lyrics by Sammy Calm; “Somewhere” music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim: By arrangement with Warner Chappell Music Company, Inc., 10585 Santa Monica Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90250–4950.

“Rum and Coca-Cola” by Al Stillman, Jeri Sullivan, Morey Amsterdam, and Paul Baron. Copyright © 1944, 1956. Renewed 1972. EMI Feist Catalogue. World Print Rights controlled by CPP/Belwin, Inc., P.O. Box 4340, Miami, FL 33014.

“Don’t Sit Under the Apple tree” by Lew Brown, Sam H. Stept, and Charlie Tobias. Copyright © 1942, 1954. Renewed 1970, 1982. EMI Robbins Catalog and Ched Music Corp. World Print Rights controlled by CPP/Belwin, Inc., P.O. Box 4340, Miami, FL 33014.

Larry Kramer was the co-founder of Gay Men’s Health Crisis and the founder of ACT UP. He is the author of
The Normal Heart,
which was selected as one of the 100 Greatest Plays of the Twentieth Century by the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain and is the longest-running play in the history of the New York Shakespeare Festival’s Public Theater. He is also the author of
The Destiny of Me,
which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and won an Obie and the Lucille Lortel Award for Best Play. Kramer’s screenplay adaptation of D. H. Lawrence’s
Women in Love,
a film he also produced, was nominated for an Academy Award. He is a recipient of the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was the first creative artist and the first openly gay person to be honored by a Public Service Award from Common Cause. His other plays include
Just Say No
and
Sissies’ Scrapbook.
He is currently at work on a new novel,
The American People.