The Normal Heart and The Destiny of Me: Two Plays (5 page)

(
CRAIG
hugs him, then
NED
,
and goes into
EMMA’
s office.
)

DAVID:
They keep getting bigger and bigger and they don’t go away. (
To
NED
.) I sold you a ceramic pig once at Maison France on Bleecker Street. My name is David.

NED:
Yes, I remember. Somebody I was friends with then collects pigs and you had the biggest pig I’d ever seen outside of a real pig.

DAVID:
I’m her twenty-eighth case and sixteen of them are dead. (
He leaves.
)

NED:
Mickey, what the fuck is going on?

MICKEY:
I don’t know. Are you here to write about this?

NED:
I don’t know. What’s wrong with that?

MICKEY:
Nothing, I guess.

NED:
What about you? What are you going to say? You’re the one with the health column.

MICKEY:
Well, I’ll certainly write about it in the
Native,
but I’m afraid to put it in the stuff I write at work.

NED:
What are you afraid of?

MICKEY:
The city doesn’t exactly show a burning interest in gay health. But at least I’ve still got my job: the Health Department has had a lot of cutbacks.

NED:
How’s John?

MICKEY:
John? John who?

NED:
You’ve had so many I never remember their last names.

MICKEY:
Oh, you mean John. I’m with Gregory now. Gregory O’Connor.

NED:
The old gay activist?

MICKEY:
Old? He’s younger than you are. I’ve been with Gregory for ten months now.

NED:
Mickey, that’s very nice.

MICKEY:
He’s not even Jewish. But don’t tell my rabbi.

CRAIG:
(
Coming out of
EMMA’
s office.
) I’m going to die. That’s the bottom line of what she’s telling me. I’m so scared. I have to go home and get my things and come right back and check in. Mickey, please come with me. I hate hospitals. I’m going to die. Where’s Bruce? I want Bruce.

(
MICKEY
and
CRAIG
leave.
DR. EMMA BROOKNER
comes in from her office. She is in a motorized wheelchair. She is in her mid-to-late thirties.
)

EMMA:
Who are you?

NED:
I’m Ned Weeks. I spoke with you on the phone after the
Times
article.

EMMA:
You’re the writer fellow who’s scared. I’m scared, too. I hear you’ve got a big mouth.

NED:
Is big mouth a symptom?

EMMA:
No, a cure. Come on in and take your clothes off.

(
Lights up on an examining table, center stage.
NED
starts to undress.
)

NED:
Dr. Brookner, what’s happening?

EMMA:
I don’t know.

NED:
In just a couple of minutes you told two people I know something. The article said there isn’t any cure.

EMMA:
Not even any good clues yet. And even if they found out tomorrow what’s happening, it takes years to find out how to cure and prevent anything. All I know is this disease is the most insidious killer I’ve ever seen or studied or heard about. And I think we’re seeing only the tip of the iceberg. And I’m afraid it’s on the rampage. I’m frightened nobody important is going to give a damn because it seems to be happening mostly to gay men. Who cares if a faggot dies? Does it occur to you to do anything about it. Personally?

NED:
Me?

EMMA:
Somebody’s got to do something.

NED:
Wouldn’t it be better coming from you?

EMMA:
Doctors are extremely conservative; they try to stay out of anything that smells political, and this smells. Bad. As soon as you start screaming you get treated like a nut case. Maybe you know that. And then you’re ostracized and rendered worthless, just when you need cooperation most. Take off your socks.

(
NED
,
in his undershorts, is now sitting on the examining table.
EMMA
will now examine him, his skin particularly, starting with the bottom of his feet, feeling his lymph glands, looking at his scalp, into his mouth. . .
)

NED:
Nobody listens for very long anyway. There’s a new disease of the month every day.

EMMA:
This hospital sent its report of our first cases to the medical journals over a year ago.
The New England Journal of Medicine
has finally published it, and last week, which brought you running, the
Times
ran something on some inside page. Very inside: page twenty. If you remember, Legionnaires’ Disease, toxic-shock, they both hit the front page of the
Times
the minute they happened. And stayed there until somebody did something. The front page of the
Times
has a way of inspiring action. Lie down.

NED:
They won’t even use the word “gay” unless it’s in a direct quote. To them we’re still homosexuals. That’s like still calling blacks Negroes. The
Times
has always had trouble writing about anything gay.

EMMA:
Then how is anyone going to know what’s happening? And what precautions to take? Someone’s going to have to tell the gay population fast.

NED:
You’ve been living with this for over a year? Where’s the mayor? Where’s the Health Department?

EMMA:
They know about it. You have a Commissioner of Health who got burned with the Swine Flu epidemic, declaring an emergency when there wasn’t one. The government appropriated $150 million for that mistake. You have a mayor who’s a bachelor and I assume afraid of being perceived as too friendly to anyone gay. And who is also out to protect a billion-dollar-a-year tourist industry. He’s not about to tell the world there’s an epidemic menacing his city. And don’t ask me about the President. Is the mayor gay?

NED:
If he is, like J. Edgar Hoover, who would want him?

EMMA:
Have you had any of the symptoms?

NED:
I’ve had most of the sexually transmitted diseases the article said come first. A lot of us have. You don’t know what it’s been like since the sexual revolution hit this country. It’s been crazy, gay or straight.

EMMA:
What makes you think I don’t know? Any fever, weight loss, night sweats, diarrhea, swollen glands, white patches in your mouth, loss of energy, shortness of breath, chronic cough?

NED:
No. But those could happen with a lot of things, couldn’t they?

EMMA:
And purple lesions. Sometimes. Which is what I’m looking for. It’s a cancer. There seems to be a strange reaction in the immune system. It’s collapsed. Won’t work. Won’t fight. Which is what it’s supposed to do. So most of the diseases my guys are coming down with—and there are some very strange ones—are caused by germs that wouldn’t hurt a baby, not a
baby in New York City anyway. Unfortunately, the immune system is the system we know least about. So where is this big mouth I hear you’ve got?

NED:
I have more of a bad temper than a big mouth.

EMMA:
Nothing wrong with that. Plenty to get angry about. Health is a political issue. Everyone’s entitled to good medical care. If you’re not getting it, you’ve got to fight for it. Do you know this is the only country in the industrialized world besides South Africa that doesn’t guarantee health care for everyone? Open your mouth. Turn over. One of my staff told me you were well-known in the gay world and not afraid to say what you think. Is that true? I can’t find any gay leaders. I tried calling several gay organizations. No one ever calls me back. Is anyone out there?

NED:
There aren’t any organizations strong enough to be useful, no. Dr. Brookner, nobody with a brain gets involved in gay politics. It’s filled with the great unwashed radicals of any counterculture. That’s why there aren’t any leaders the majority will follow. Anyway, you’re talking to the wrong person. What I think is politically incorrect.

EMMA:
Why?

NED:
Gay is good to that crowd, no matter what. There’s no room for criticism, looking at ourselves critically.

EMMA:
What’s your main criticism?

NED:
I hate how we play victim, when many of us, most of us, don’t have to.

EMMA:
Then you’re exactly what’s needed now.

NED:
Nobody ever listens. We’re not exactly a bunch that knows how to play follow the leader.

EMMA:
Maybe they’re just waiting for somebody to lead them.

NED:
We are. What group isn’t?

EMMA:
You can get dressed. I can’t find what I’m looking for.

NED:
(
Jumping down and starting to dress.
) Needed? Needed for what? What is it exactly you’re trying to get me to do?

EMMA:
Tell gay men to stop having sex.

NED:
What?

EMMA:
Someone has to. Why not you?

NED:
It is a preposterous request.

EMMA:
It only sounds harsh. Wait a few more years, it won’t sound so harsh.

NED:
Do you realize that you are talking about millions of men who have singled out promiscuity to be their principal political agenda, the one they’d die before abandoning. How do you deal with that?

EMMA:
Tell them they may die.

NED:
You tell them!

EMMA:
Are you saying you guys can’t relate to each other in a nonsexual way?

NED:
It’s more complicated than that. For a lot of guys it’s not easy to meet each other in any other way. It’s a way of connecting—which becomes an addiction. And then they’re caught
in the web of peer pressure to perform and perform. Are you sure this is spread by having sex?

EMMA:
Long before we isolated the hepatitis viruses we knew about the diseases they caused and had a good idea of how they got around. I think I’m right about this. I am seeing more cases each week than the week before. I figure that by the end of the year the number will be doubling every six months. That’s something over a thousand cases by next June. Half of them will be dead. Your two friends I’ve just diagnosed? One of them will be dead. Maybe both of them.

NED:
And you want me to tell every gay man in New York to stop having sex?

EMMA:
Who said anything about just New York?

NED:
You want me to tell every gay man across the country—

EMMA:
Across the world! That’s the only way this disease will stop spreading.

NED:
Dr. Brookner, isn’t that just a tiny bit unrealistic?

EMMA:
Mr. Weeks, if having sex can kill you, doesn’t anybody with half a brain stop fucking? But perhaps you’ve never lost anything. Good-bye.

BRUCE:
(
Calling from off.
) Where do I go? Where do I go?

(
BRUCE NILES
,
an exceptionally handsome man in his late thirties, rushes in carrying
CRAIG
,
helped by
MICKEY.
)

EMMA:
Quickly—put him on the table. What happened?

BRUCE:
He was coming out of the building and he started running to me and then he . . . then he collapsed to the ground.

EMMA:
What is going on inside your bodies!

(
CRAIG
starts to convulse.
BRUCE, MICKEY
,
and
NED
restrain him.
)

EMMA:
Gently. Hold on to his chin.

(
She takes a tongue depressor and holds
CRAIG
’s tongue flat; she checks the pulse in his neck; she looks into his eyes for vital signs that he is coming around;
CRAIG’S
convulsions stop.
)

You the lover?

BRUCE:
Yes.

EMMA:
What’s your name?

BRUCE:
Bruce Niles, ma’am.

EMMA:
How’s your health?

BRUCE:
Fine. Why—is it contagious?

EMMA:
I think so.

MICKEY:
Then why haven’t you come down with it?

EMMA:
(
Moving toward a telephone.
) Because it seems to have a very long incubation period and require close intimacy. Niles? You were Reinhard Holz’s lover?

BRUCE:
How did you know that? I haven’t seen him in a couple of years.

EMMA:
(
Dialing the hospital emergency number.
) He died three weeks ago. Brookner. Emergency. Set up a room immediately.

(
Hangs up.
)

BRUCE:
We were only boyfriends for a couple months.

MICKEY:
It’s like some sort of plague.

EMMA:
There’s always a plague. Of one kind or another. I’ve had it since I was a kid. Mr. Weeks, I don’t think your friend is going to live for very long.

FELIX TURNER’
s desk at the
New York Times,
FELIX
is always conservatively dressed, and is outgoing and completely masculine.

NED:
(
Entering, a bit uncomfortable and nervous.
) Mr. Turner?