Angels in America by Tony Kushner Read Free Book Online

body’s immune system ceases to function. Sometimes the body even attacks itself. At any rate it’s left open to a whole horror house of infections from microbes which it usually defends against.
    Â Â Â Â Â  Like Kaposi’s sarcomas. These lesions. Or your throat problem. Or the glands.
    Â Â Â Â Â  We think it may also be able to slip past the blood-brain barrier into the brain. Which is of course very bad news.
    Â Â Â Â Â  And it’s fatal in we don’t know what percent of people with suppressed immune responses.
    (Pause. Roy sits, brooding. Henry waits. Then:)
    ROY : This is very interesting, Mr. Wizard, but why the fuck are you telling me this?
    HENRY (Hesitating, confused, then) : Well, I have just removed one of three lesions which biopsy results will probably tell us is a Kaposi’s sarcoma lesion. And you have a pronounced swelling of glands in your neck, groin, and armpits—lymphadenopathy is another sign. And you have oral candidiasis and maybe a little more fungus under the fingernails of two digits on your right hand. So that’s why—
    ROY : This disease.
    HENRY : Syndrome.
    ROY : Whatever . It afflicts mostly homosexuals and drug addicts.
    HENRY : Mostly. Hemophiliacs are also at risk.
    ROY : Homosexuals and drug addicts. So why are you implying that I . . .
    (Roy stares hard at Henry, who begins to feel nervous.)
    ROY : What are you implying, Henry?
    HENRY : I don’t . . .
    ROY : I’m not a drug addict.
    HENRY : Oh come on Roy.
    ROY : What, what, come on Roy what? Do you think I’m a junkie, Henry, do you see tracks?
    HENRY : This is absurd.
    ROY : Say it.
    HENRY : Say what?
    ROY : Say: “Roy Cohn, you are a . . .”
    HENRY : Roy? I don’t—
    ROY : “You are a . . .” Go on. Not “Roy Cohn you are a drug fiend.” “Roy Marcus Cohn, you are a . . .”
    Â Â Â Â Â  Go on, Henry . It starts with an “H.”
    HENRY : Oh I’m not going to—
    ROY : With an “H,” Henry, and it isn’t “hemophiliac.” Come on . . .
    HENRY : What are you doing, Roy?
    ROY : No, say it. I mean it. Say: “Roy Cohn, you are a homosexual.”
    Â Â Â Â Â  (With deadly seriousness)
    Â Â Â Â Â  And I will proceed, systematically, to destroy your reputation and your practice and your career in New York State, Henry. Which you know I can do.
    (Pause. Henry summons his courage.)
    HENRY : Roy, you have been seeing me since 1958. Apart from the facelifts I have treated you for everything from syphilis—
    ROY : From a whore in Dallas.
    HENRY : From syphilis to venereal warts. In your rectum. Which you may have gotten from a whore in Dallas, but it wasn’t a female whore.
    (A standoff. Then:)
    ROY : So say it.
    HENRY : Roy Cohn, you are . . .
    Â Â Â Â Â  (Roy’s too scary. He tries a different approach)
    Â Â Â Â Â  You have had sex with men, many many times, Roy, and one of them, or any number of them, has made you very sick. You have AIDS.
    ROY (A beat, then) : AIDS.
    Â Â Â Â Â  Your problem, Henry, is that you are hung up on words, on labels, that you believe they mean what they seem to mean. AIDS. Homosexual. Gay. Lesbian. You think these are names that tell you who someone sleeps with, but they don’t tell you that.
    HENRY : No?
    ROY : No. Like all labels they tell you one thing and one thing only: where does an individual so identified fit in the food chain, in the pecking order? Not ideology, or sexual taste, but something much simpler: clout. Not who I fuck or who fucks me, but who will pick up the phone when I call, who owes me favors. This is what a label refers to. Now to someone who does not understand this, homosexual is what I am because I have sex with men. But really this is wrong. Homosexuals are not men who sleep with other men. Homosexuals are men who in fifteen years of trying cannot pass a pissant