The Normal Heart and The Destiny of Me: Two Plays (11 page)

BRUCE:
Tommy, he makes me so mad.

NED:
CBS called. They want our president to go on Dan Rather. He won’t do it. They don’t want anybody else.

BRUCE:
I can’t go on national television!

NED:
Then you shouldn’t be our president! Tommy, look at that. Imagine what a fantastic impression he would make on the whole country, speaking out for something gay. You’re the kind of role model we need, not those drag queens from San Francisco who shove their faces in front of every camera they see.

BRUCE:
You want to pay me my salary and my pension and my health insurance, I’ll go on TV.

TOMMY:
Both of you, stop it. Can’t you see we need both your points of view? Ned plays the bad cop and Bruce plays the good cop; every successful corporation works that way. You’re both our leaders and we need you both desperately.

NED:
Tommy, how is not going on national TV playing good cop?

(
MICKEY
enters.
)

MICKEY:
I couldn’t get out of work. I was afraid you’d be finished by now.

BRUCE:
(
To
MICKEY
.) Did you see his latest
Native
article?

MICKEY:
Another one?

NED:
What’s so awful about what I said? It’s the truth.

BRUCE:
But it’s how you say it!

MICKEY:
What’d you say?

NED:
I said we’re all cowards! I said rich gays will give thousands to straight charities before they’ll give us a dime. I said it is appalling that some twenty million men and women don’t have one single lobbyist in Washington. How do we expect to achieve anything, ever, at all, by immaculate conception? I said the gay leaders who created this sexual-liberation philosophy in the first place have been the death of us. Mickey, why didn’t you guys fight for the right to get married instead of the right to legitimize promiscuity?

MICKEY:
We did!

TOMMY:
I get your drift.

MICKEY:
Sure you didn’t leave anybody out?

NED:
I said it’s all our fault, every one of us . . .

(
HIRAM KEEBLER
,
the mayor’s assistant, enters, and
NED
carries on without a break.
)

. . . and you are an hour and forty-five minutes late, so why’d you bother to come at all?

BRUCE:
Ned!

HIRAM:
I presume I am at last having the pleasure of meeting Mr. Weeks’ lilting telephone voice face to face. (
Shaking hands all around.
) I’m truly sorry I’m late.

MICKEY:
(
Shaking hands.
) Michael Marcus.

HIRAM:
I’m Hiram Keebler.

TOMMY:
Are you related to the folks who make the crackers? Tommy Boatwright.

BRUCE:
Bruce Niles.

HIRAM:
The mayor wants you to know how much he cares and how impressed he is with your superb efforts to shoulder your own responsibility.

BRUCE:
Thank you.

NED:
Our responsibility? Everything we’re doing is stuff you should be doing. And we need help.

TOMMY:
What Mr. Weeks is trying to say, sir, is that, well, we are truly swamped. We’re now fielding over five hundred calls a week on our emergency hot line, people everywhere are desperate for information, which, quite frankly, the city should be providing, but isn’t. We’re visiting over one hundred patients each week in hospitals and homes and . . .

BRUCE:
Sir, one thing you could help us with is office space. We’re presently in one small room, and at least one hundred people come in and out every day and . . . no one will rent to us because of what we do and who we are.

HIRAM:
That’s illegal discrimination.

TOMMY:
We believe we know that to be true, sir.

MICKEY:
(
Nervously speaking up.
) Mr. Keebler, sir, it is not illegal to discriminate against homosexuals.

NED:
We have been trying to see the mayor for fourteen months. It has taken us one year just to get this meeting with you and you are an hour and forty-five minutes late. Have you told the mayor there’s an epidemic going on?

HIRAM:
I can’t tell him that!

NED:
Why not?

HIRAM:
Because it isn’t true.

BRUCE:
Yes, sir, it is.

HIRAM:
Who said so?

TOMMY:
The government.

HIRAM:
Which government? Our government?

NED:
No! Russia’s government!

HIRAM:
Since when?

MICKEY:
The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta declared it.

TOMMY:
Seventeen months ago.

NED:
How could you not know that?

HIRAM:
Well, you can’t expect us to concern ourselves with every little outbreak those boys come up with. And could you please reduce the level of your hysteria?

NED:
Certainly. San Francisco, LA, Miami, Boston, Chicago, Washington, Denver, Houston, Seattle, Dallas—all now report cases. It’s cropping up in Paris, London, Germany, Canada. But New York City, our home, the city you are pledged to protect, has over half of everything: half the one thousand cases, half the
dead. Two hundred and fifty-six dead. And I know forty of them. And I don’t want to know any more. And you can’t not know any of this! Now—when can we see the mayor? Fourteen months is a long time to be out to lunch!

HIRAM:
Now wait a minute!

NED:
No, you wait a minute. We can’t. Time is not on our side. If you won’t take word to the mayor, what do we do? How do we get it to him? Hire a hunky hustler and send him up to Gracie Mansion with our plea tattooed on his cock?

HIRAM:
The mayor is not gay!

TOMMY:
Oh, come on, Blanche!

BRUCE:
Tommy!

HIRAM:
Now you listen to me! Of course we’re aware of those figures. And before you open your big mouth again, I would like to offer you a little piece of advice. Badmouthing the mayor is the best way I know to not get his attention.

NED:
We’re not getting it now, so what have we got to lose?

BRUCE:
Ned!

NED:
Bruce, you just heard him. Hiram here just said they’re aware of the figures. And they’re still not doing anything. I was worried before that they were just stupid and blind. Great! Now we get to worry about them being repressive and downright dangerous.

BRUCE:
Ned! I’m sorry, sir, but we’ve been under a great deal of strain.

NED:
(
To
BRUCE
.) Don’t you ever apologize for me again. (
To
HIRAM.
) How dare you choose who will live and who will die!

HIRAM:
Now, listen: don’t you think I want to help you? (
Confidentially.
) I have a friend who’s dying from this in VA Hospital right this very minute.

NED:
Then why. . . ?

HIRAM:
Because it’s tricky, can’t you see that? It’s very tricky.

NED:
Tricky, shit! There are a million gay people in New York. A million and one, counting you. That’s a lot of votes. Our organization started with six men. We now have over six hundred active volunteers and a mailing list of ten thousand.

HIRAM:
Six hundred? You think the mayor worries about six hundred? A fire goes out in a school furnace on the West Side between Seventy-second and Ninety-sixth streets, I get three thousand phone calls. In one day! You know what I’m talking about?

NED:
Yes.

HIRAM:
If so many of you are so upset about what’s happening, why do I only hear from this loudmouth?

NED:
That’s a very good question.

HIRAM:
Okay—there are half a million gay men in our area. Five hundred and nine cases doesn’t seem so high, considering how many of us—I mean, of you!—there are.

NED:
This is bullshit!

BRUCE:
Ned! Let me take it. Sir—

HIRAM:
Hiram, please. You are?

BRUCE:
I’m Bruce Niles. I’m the president.

HIRAM:
You’re the president? What does that make Mr. Weeks here?

BRUCE:
He’s one of the founders.

NED:
But we work together jointly.

HIRAM:
Oh, you do?

NED:
Yes, we do.

HIRAM:
Carry on, Mr. Niles.

BRUCE:
Look, we realize things are tricky, but—

HIRAM:
(
Cutting him off.
) Yes, it is. And the mayor feels there is no need to declare any kind of emergency. That only gets people excited. And we simply can’t give you office space. We’re not in the free-giveaway business.

BRUCE:
We don’t want it for free. We will pay for it.

HIRAM:
I repeat, I think—that is, the mayor thinks you guys are overreacting.

NED:
You tell that cocksucker that he’s a selfish, heartless son of a bitch!

HIRAM:
You are now heading for real trouble! Do you think you can barge in here and call us names? (
To
MICKEY.
) You are Michael I. Marcus. You hold an unsecured job with the City Department of Health. I’d watch my step if I were you. You got yourself quite a handful here. You might consider putting him in a cage in the zoo. That I think I can arrange with the mayor. I’d
watch out for my friends here if I were you. The mayor won’t have it! (
Exits.
)

MICKEY:
I don’t believe this just happened.

NED:
Mickey, I’m on the
Today Show
tomorrow and I’m going to say the mayor is threatening your job if we don’t shut up.

MICKEY:
The
Today Show!
You’re going to do what?!

BRUCE:
You can’t do that!

NED:
Of course I can: he just did.

BRUCE:
God damn it, Ned!

NED:
We’re being treated like shit. (
He yells after them as they pick up their things and leave.
) And we’re allowing it. And until we force them to treat us otherwise, we get exactly what we deserve. Politicians understand only one thing—pressure! You heard him—him and his three thousand West Side phone calls. We’re not yelling loud enough! Bruce, for a Green Beret, you’re an awful sissy! (
He is all alone.
)

EMMA’
s office.
FELIX
sits on the examining table, wearing a white hospital gown.
EMMA
sits facing him.

FELIX:
So it is . . . it.

EMMA:
Yes.

FELIX:
There’s not a little bit of doubt in your mind? You don’t want to call in Christiaan Barnard?

EMMA:
I’m sorry. I still don’t know how to tell people. They don’t teach acting in medical school.

FELIX:
Aren’t you worried about contagion? I mean, I assume I am about to become a leper.

EMMA:
Well, I’m still here.

FELIX:
Do you think they’ll find a cure before I. . . How strange that sounds when you say it out loud for the first time.

EMMA:
We’re trying. But we’re poor. Uncle Sam is the only place these days that can afford the kind of research that’s needed, and so far we’ve not even had the courtesy of a reply from our numerous requests to him. You guys are still not making enough noise.

FELIX:
That’s Ned’s department in our family. I’m not feeling too political at the moment.

EMMA:
I’d like to try a treatment of several chemotherapies used together. It’s milder than others. You’re an early case.

FELIX:
I assume that’s hopeful.

EMMA:
It’s always better early.

FELIX:
It also takes longer until you die.

EMMA:
Yes. You can look at it that way.

FELIX:
Do you want a second opinion?

EMMA:
Feel free. But I’ll say this about my fellow hospitals, which I shouldn’t: you won’t get particularly good care anywhere, maybe not even here. At. . . I’ll call it Hospital A, you’ll come under a group of mad scientists, research fanatics, who will
try almost anything and if you die you die. You’ll rarely see the same doctor twice; you’ll just be a statistic for their computer—which they won’t share with anyone else, by the way; there’s not much sharing going on, never is—you’ll be a true guinea pig. At Hospital B, they decided they really didn’t want to get involved with this, it’s too messy, and they’re right, so you’ll be overlooked by the least informed of doctors. C is like the
New York Times
and our friends everywhere: square, righteous, superior, and embarrassed by this disease and this entire epidemic. D is Catholic. E is Jewish. F is . . . Why am I telling you this? I must be insane. But the situation is insane.

FELIX:
I guess we better get started.

EMMA:
We have. You’ll come to me once a week. There are going to be a lot of tests, a lot of blood tests, a lot of waiting. My secretary will give you a long list of dos and don’ts. Now, Felix, you understand your body no longer has any effective mechanism for fighting off anything?