The Normal Heart and The Destiny of Me: Two Plays

by Kramer, Larry

  Scene 4

  NED’s apartment. It is stark, modern, all black and white. FELIX comes walking in from another room with a beer, and NED follows, carrying one, too.

  FELIX: That’s quite a library in there. You read all those books?

  NED: Why does everybody ask that?

  FELIX: You have a whole room of ’em, you must want to get asked.

  NED: I never thought of it that way. Maybe I do. Thank you. But no, of course I haven’t. They go out of print and then you can’t find them, so I buy them right away.

  FELIX: I think you’re going to have to face the fact you won’t be able to read them all before you die.

  NED: I think you’re right.

  FELIX: You know, I really used to like high tech, hut I’m tired of it now. I think I want chintz back again. Don’t be insulted.

  NED: I’m not. I want chintz back again, too.

  FELIX: So here we are—two fellows who want chintz back again. Excuse me for saying so, but you are stiff as starch.

  NED: It’s been a long time since I’ve had a date. This is a date, isn’t it? (FELIX nods.) And on the rare occasion, I was usually the asker.

  FELIX: That’s what’s thrown you off your style: I called and asked.

  NED: Some style. Before any second date I usually receive a phone call that starts with “Now I don’t know what you had in mind, but can’t we just be friends?”

  FELIX: No. Are you glad I’m here?

  NED: Oh, I’m pleased as punch you’re here. You’re very good-looking. What are you doing here?

  FELIX: I’ll let that tiny bit of self-pity pass for the moment.

  NED: It’s not self-pity, it’s nervousness.

  FELIX: It’s definitely self-pity. Do you think you’re bad-looking?

  NED: Where are you from?

  FELIX: I’m from Oklahoma. I left home at eighteen and put myself through college. My folks are dead. My dad worked at the refinery in West Tulsa and my mom was a waitress at a luncheonette in Walgreen’s.

  NED: Isn’t it amazing how a kid can come out of all that and wind up on the Times dictating taste and style and fashion to the entire world?

  FELIX: And we were talking so nicely.

  NED: Talking is not my problem. Shutting up is my problem. And keeping my hands off you.

  FELIX: You don’t have to keep your hands off me. You have very nice hands. Do you have any awkward sexual tendencies you want to tell me about, too? That I’m not already familiar with?

  NED: What are you familiar with?

  FELIX: I have found myself pursuing men who hurt me. Before minor therapy. You’re not one of those?

  NED: No, I’m the runner. I was the runner. Until major therapy. After people who didn’t want me and away from people who do.

  FELIX: Isn’t it amazing how a kid can come out of all that analyzing everything incessantly down to the most infinitesimal neurosis and still be all alone?

  NED: I’m sorry you don’t like my Dr. Freud. Another agingJew who couldn’t get laid.

  FELIX: Just relax. You’ll get laid.

  NED: I try being laid-back, assertive, funny, butch . . . What’s the point? I don’t think there are many gay relationships that work out anyway.

  FELIX: It’s difficult to imagine you being laid-back. I know a lot of gay relationships that are working out very well.

  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 relentl
ess. 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.

  Scene 5

  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.

  BRUCE: But we can’t tell people how to live their lives! We can’t do that. And besides, the entire gay political platform is fucking. We’d get it from all sides.

  NED: You make it sound like that’s all that being gay means.

  BRUCE: That’s all it does mean!

  MICKEY: It’s the only thing that makes us different.

  NED: I don’t want to be considered different.

  BRUCE: Neither do I, actually.

  MICKEY: Well, I do.

  BRUCE: Well, you are!

/>   NED: Why is it we can only talk about our sexuality, and so relentlessly? You know, Mickey, all we’ve created is generations of guys who can’t deal with each other as anything but erections. We can’t even get a meeting with the mayor’s gay assistant!

  TOMMY: I’m very interested in setting up some sort of services for the patients. We’ve got to start thinking about them.

  BRUCE: (Whispering to NED.) Who’s he?

  TOMMY: He heard about you and he found you and here he is. My name is Tommy Boatwright. . . (To NED.) Why don’t you write that down? Tommy Boatwright. In real life, I’m a hospital administrator. And I’m a Southern bitch.

  NED: Welcome to gay politics.

  BRUCE: Ned, I won’t have anything to do with any organization that tells people how to live their lives.

  NED: It’s not telling them. It’s a recommendation.

  MICKEY: With a shotgun to their heads.

  BRUCE: It’s interfering with their civil rights.

  MICKEY: Fucking as a civil right? Don’t we just wish.

  TOMMY: What if we put it in the form of a recommendation from gay doctors? So that way we’re just the conduit.

  NED: I can’t get any gay doctor to go on record and say publicly what Emma wants.

  BRUCE: The fortunes they’ve made off our being sick, you’d think they could have warned us. (Suddenly noticing an envelope.) What the fuck is this?

  MICKEY: Unh, oh!

  BRUCE: Look at this! Was this your idea?

  NED: I’m looking. I’m not seeing. What don’t I see?

  MICKEY: What we put for our return address.

  NED: You mean the word “gay” is on the envelope?

  BRUCE: You’re damn right. Instead of just the initials. Who did it?

  NED: Well, maybe it was Pierre who designed it. Maybe it was a mistake at the printers. But it is the name we chose for this organization . . .

  BRUCE: You chose. I didn’t want “gay” in it.

  MICKEY: No, we all voted. That was one of those meetings when somebody actually showed up.

  NED: Bruce, I think it’s interesting that nobody noticed until now. You’ve been stuffing them all week at your apartment.

  BRUCE: We can’t send them out.

  NED: We have to if we want anybody to come to the dance. They were late from the printers as it is.