The Normal Heart and The Destiny of Me: Two Plays (7 page)

NED:
I guess I never see them.

FELIX:
That’s because you’re a basket case.

NED:
Fuck off.

FELIX:
What’s the matter? Don’t you think you’re attractive? Don’t you like your body?

NED:
I don’t think anybody really likes their body. I read that somewhere.

FELIX:
You know my fantasy has always been to go away and live by the ocean and write twenty-four novels, living with some
one just like you with all these books who of course will be right there beside me writing your own twenty-four novels.

NED:
(
After a beat.
) Me, too.

FELIX:
Harold Robbins marries James Michener.

NED:
How about Tolstoy and Charles Dickens?

FELIX:
As long as Kafka doesn’t marry Dostoevsky.

NED:
Dostoevsky is my favorite writer.

FELIX:
I’ll have to try him again.

NED:
If you really feel that way, why do you write all that society and party and fancy-ball-gown bullshit?

FELIX:
Here we go again. I’ll bet you gobble it up every day.

NED:
I do. I also know six people who’ve died. When I came to you a few weeks ago, it was only one.

FELIX:
I’m sorry. Is that why you agreed to this date?

NED:
Do you know that when Hitler’s Final Solution to eliminate the Polish Jews was first mentioned in the
Times it
was on page twenty-eight. And on page six of the
Washington Post.
And the
Times
and the
Post
were owned by Jews. What causes silence like that? Why didn’t the American Jews help the German Jews get out? Their very own people! Scholars are finally writing honestly about this—I’ve been doing some research—and it’s damning to everyone who was here then: Jewish leadership for being totally ineffective; Jewish organizations for constantly fighting among themselves, unable to cooperate even
in the face of death: Zionists versus non-Zionists, Rabbi Wise against Rabbi Silver . . .

FELIX:
Is this some sort of special way you talk when you don’t want to talk? We were doing so nicely.

NED:
We were?

FELIX:
Wasn’t there an awful lot of anti-Semitism in those days? Weren’t Jews afraid of rubbing people’s noses in too much shit?

NED:
Yes, everybody has a million excuses for not getting involved. But aren’t there moral obligations, moral commandments to try everything possible? Where were the Christian churches, the Pope, Churchill? And don’t get me started on Roosevelt. . . How I was brought up to worship him, all Jews were. A clear statement from him would have put everything on the front pages, would have put Hitler on notice. But his administration did its best to stifle publicity at the same time as they clamped down immigration laws forbidding entry, and this famous haven for the oppressed became as inaccessible as Tibet. The title of Treasury Secretary Morgenthau’s report to Roosevelt was “Acquiescence of This Government in the Murder of the Jews,” which he wrote in 1944. Dachau was opened in 1933. Where was everybody for eleven years? And then it was too late.

FELIX:
This is turning out to be a very romantic evening.

NED:
And don’t tell me how much you can accomplish working from the inside. Jewish leaders, relying on their contacts with people in high places, were still, quietly, from the inside, attempting to persuade them when the war was over.

FELIX:
What do you want me to say? Do you ever take a vacation?

NED:
A vacation. I forgot. That’s the great goal, isn’t it. A constant Fire Island vacation. Party, party; fuck, fuck. Maybe you can give me a few trendy pointers on what to wear.

FELIX:
Boy, you really have a bug up your ass. Look, I’m not going to tell them I’m gay and could I write about the few cases of a mysterious disease that seems to be standing in the way of your kissing me even though there must be half a million gay men in this city who are fine and healthy. Let us please acknowledge the law of averages. And this is not World War Two. The numbers are nowhere remotely comparable. And all analogies to the Holocaust are tired, overworked, boring, probably insulting, possibly true, and a major turnoff.

NED:
Are they?

FELIX:
Boy, I think I’ve found myself a real live weird one. I had no idea. (
Pause.
) Hey, I just called you weird.

NED:
You are not the first.

FELIX:
You’ve never had a lover, have you?

NED:
Where did you get that from?

FELIX:
Have you? Wow.

NED:
I suppose you’ve had quite a few.

FELIX:
I had a very good one for a number of years, thank you. He was older than I was and he found someone younger.

NED:
So you like them older. You looking for a father?

FELIX:
No, I am not looking for a father! God, you are relentless. And as cheery as Typhoid Mary.

(
NED
comes over to
FELIX
and sits beside him. Then be leans over and kisses him. The kiss becomes quite intense. Then
NED
breaks away, jumps up, and begins to walk around nervously.
)

NED:
The American Jews knew exactly what was happening, but everything was downplayed and stifled. Can you imagine how effective it would have been if every Jew in America had marched on Washington? Proudly! Who says I want a lover? Huh!? I mean, why doesn’t anybody believe me when I say I do not want a lover?

FELIX:
You are fucking crazy. Jews, Dachau, Final Solution—what kind of date is this! I don’t believe anyone in the whole wide world doesn’t want to be loved. Ned, you don’t remember me, do you? We’ve been in bed together. We made love. We talked. We kissed. We cuddled. We made love again. I keep waiting for you to remember, something, anything. But you don’t!

NED:
How could I not remember you?

FELIX:
I don’t know.

NED:
Maybe if I saw you naked.

FELIX:
It’s okay as long as we treat each other like whores. It was at the baths a few years ago. You were busy cruising some blond number and I stood outside your door waiting for you to come back and when you did you gave me such an inspection up and down you would have thought I was applying for the CIA.

NED:
And then what?

FELIX:
I just told you. We made love twice. I thought it was lovely. You told me your name was Ned, that when you were a child you read a Philip Barry play called
Holiday
where there was a
Ned, and you immediately switched from . . . Alexander? I teased you for taking such a Wasp, up-in-Connecticut-for-the-weekend name, and I asked what you did, and you answered something like you’d tried a number of things, and I asked you if that had included love, which is when you said you had to get up early in the morning. That’s when I left. But I tossed you my favorite go-fuck-yourself when you told me “I really am not in the market for a lover”—men do not just naturally not love—they learn not to. I am not a whore. I just sometimes make mistakes and look for love in the wrong places. And I think you’re a bluffer. Your novel was all about a man desperate for love and a relationship, in a world filled with nothing but casual sex.

NED:
Do you think we could start over?

FELIX:
Maybe.

NED’
s apartment
.
MICKEY, BRUCE
,
and
TOMMY BOATWRIGHT
,
a Southerner in his late twenties, are stuffing envelopes with various inserts and then packing them into cartons. Beer and pretzels.

MICKEY:
(
Calling off.
) Ned, Gregory says hello and he can’t believe you’ve turned into an activist. He says where were you fifteen years ago when we needed you.

NED:
(
Coming in with a tray with more beer.
) You tell Gregory fifteen years ago no self-respecting faggot would have anything to do with you guys.

TOMMY:
I was twelve years old.

BRUCE:
We’re not activists.

MICKEY:
If you’re not an activist, Bruce, then what are you?

BRUCE:
Nothing. I’m only in this until it goes away.

MICKEY:
You know, the battle against the police at Stonewall was won by transvestites. We all fought like hell. It’s you Brooks Brothers guys who—

BRUCE:
That’s why I wasn’t at Stonewall. I don’t have anything in common with those guys, girls, whatever you call them. Ned, Robert Stokes has it. He called me today.

NED:
At Glenn Fitzsimmons’ party the other night, I saw one friend there I knew was sick, I learned about two others, and then walking home I bumped into Richie Faro, who told me he’d just been diagnosed.

MICKEY:
Richie Faro?

NED:
All this on Sixth Avenue between Nineteenth and Eighth Streets.

MICKEY:
Richie Faro—gee, I haven’t seen him since Stonewall. I think we even had a little affairlet.

BRUCE:
Are you a transvestite?

MICKEY:
No, but I’ll fight for your right to be one.

BRUCE:
I don’t want to be one!

MICKEY:
I’m worried this organization might only attract white bread and middle-class. We need blacks. . .

TOMMY:
Right on!

MICKEY:
. . . and . . . how do you feel about lesbians?

BRUCE:
Not very much. I mean, they’re . . . something else.

MICKEY:
I wonder what they’re going to think about all this. If past history is any guide, there’s never been much support by either half of us for the other. Tommy, are you a lesbian?

TOMMY:
(
As be exits into the kitchen.
) I have done and seen everything.

NED:
(
To
BRUCE
) How are you doing?

BRUCE:
I’m okay now. I forgot to thank you for sending flowers.

NED:
That’s okay.

BRUCE:
Funny—my mother sent flowers. We’ve never even talked about my being gay. I told her Craig died. I guess she knew.

NED:
I think mothers somehow always know. Would you like to have dinner next week, maybe see a movie?

BRUCE:
(
Uncomfortable when
NED
makes advances.
) Actually . . . it’s funny. . . it happened so fast. You know Albert? I’ve been seeing him.

NED:
That guy in the Calvin Klein ads? Great!

(
TOMMY
returns dragging another carton of envelopes and boxes.
)

BRUCE:
I don’t think I like to be alone. I’ve always been with somebody.

MICKEY:
(
Looking up from his list-checking.
) We have to choose a president tonight, don’t forget. I’m not interested. And what about a board of directors?

BRUCE:
(
Looking at one of the flyers.
) Mickey, how did you finally decide to say it? I didn’t even look.

MICKEY:
I just said the best medical knowledge, which admittedly isn’t very much, seems to feel that a virus has landed in our community. It could have been any community, but it landed in ours. I guess we just got in the way. Boy, are we going to have paranoia problems.

NED:
(
Looking at a flyer.
) That’s all you said?

MICKEY:
See what I mean? No, I also put in the benefit dance announcement and a coupon for donations.

NED:
What about the recommendations?

MICKEY:
I recommend everyone should donate a million dollars. How are we going to make people realize this is not just a gay problem? If it happens to us, it can happen to anybody. I sent copies to all the gay newspapers.

BRUCE:
What good will that do? Nobody reads them.

MICKEY:
The
Native’s
doing a good job.

NED:
(
Who has read the flyer and is angry.
) Mickey, I thought we talked this out on the phone. We must tell everybody what Emma wants us to tell them.

MICKEY:
She wants to tell them so badly she won’t lend her name as recommending it. (
To the others.
) This is what Ned wrote for me to send out. “If this doesn’t scare the shit out of you, and rouse you to action, gay men may have no future here on earth.” Neddie, I think that’s a bit much.

BRUCE:
You’ll scare everybody to death!

NED:
Shake up. What’s wrong with that? This isn’t something that can be force-fed gently; it won’t work. Mickey neglected to read my first sentence.

MICKEY:
“It’s difficult to write this without sounding alarmist or scared.” Okay, but then listen to this: “I am sick of guys moaning that giving up careless sex until this blows over is worse than death . . . I am sick of guys who can only think with their cocks . . . I am sick of closeted gays. It’s 1982 now, guys, when are you going to come out? By 1984 you could be dead.”

BRUCE:
You’re crazy.

NED:
Am I? There are almost five hundred cases now. Okay, if we’re not sending it out, I’ll get the
Native
to run it.