Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. Tony Kushner
exits.)
Scene 7
A week later. Mutual dream scene. Prior is dreaming that he’s at a fantastic makeup table, applying his face. Harper is having a pill-induced hallucination. She has these from time to time. For some reason, Prior has appeared in this one. Or Harper has appeared in Prior’s dream. It is bewildering.
PRIOR (His makeup complete, he examines its perfection in the mirror; then he turns to the audience): I’m ready for my closeup, Mr. DeMille.
One wants to move through life with elegance and grace, blossoming infrequently but with exquisite taste, and perfect timing, like a rare bloom, a zebra orchid . . . One wants . . .
But one so seldom gets what one wants, does one?
No. One does not. (Sorrow and anger well up, overwhelming the grand manner) One gets fucked. Over. One . . . dies at thirty, robbed of . . . decades of majesty . . .
(Angry) Fuck this shit. Fuck this shit.
(He consults the mirror, attempting to resume the pose)
I look like a corpse. A . . . corpsette!
(It doesn’t work. Commiserating with his reflection)
Oh my queen; you know you’ve hit rock-bottom when even drag is a drag.
(Harper appears. Prior is surprised!)
HARPER: Are you . . . Who are you?
PRIOR: Who are you?
HARPER: What are you doing in my hallucination?
PRIOR: I’m not in your hallucination. You’re in my dream.
HARPER: You’re wearing makeup.
PRIOR: So are you.
HARPER: But you’re a man.
PRIOR (He looks in his mirror, SCREAMS!, mimes slashing his throat with his lipstick and dies, fabulously tragic. Then): The hands and feet give it away.
HARPER: There must be some mistake here. I don’t recognize you. You’re not—Are you my . . . some sort of imaginary friend?
PRIOR: No. Aren’t you too old to have imaginary friends?
HARPER: I have emotional problems. I took too many pills. Why are you wearing makeup?
PRIOR: I was in the process of applying the face, trying to make myself feel better—I swiped the new fall colors at the Clinique counter at Macy’s.
(He shows her.)
HARPER: You stole these?
PRIOR: I was out of cash; it was an emotional emergency!
HARPER: Joe will be so angry. I promised him. No more pills.
PRIOR: These pills you keep alluding to?
HARPER: Valium. I take Valium. Lots of Valium.
PRIOR: And you’re dancing as fast as you can.
HARPER: I’m not addicted. I don’t believe in addiction, and I never— Well, I never drink. And I never take drugs.
PRIOR: Well, smell you, Nancy Drew.
HARPER: Except Valium.
PRIOR: Except Valium; in wee fistfuls.
HARPER: It’s terrible. Mormons are not supposed to be addicted to anything. I’m a Mormon.
PRIOR: I’m a homosexual.
HARPER: Oh! In my church we don’t believe in homosexuals.
PRIOR: In my church we don’t believe in Mormons.
HARPER: What church do . . . Oh! (She laughs) I get it.
I don’t understand this. If I didn’t ever see you before and I don’t think I did, then I don’t think you should be here, in this hallucination, because in my experience the mind, which is where hallucinations come from, shouldn’t be able to make up anything that wasn’t there to start with, that didn’t enter it from experience, from the real world. Imagination can’t create anything new, can it? It only recycles bits and pieces from the world and reassembles them into visions . . . Am I making sense right now?
PRIOR: Given the circumstances, yes.
HARPER: So when we think we’ve escaped the unbearable ordinariness and, well, untruthfulness of our lives, it’s really only the same old ordinariness and falseness rearranged into the appearance of novelty and truth. Nothing unknown is knowable. Don’t you think it’s depressing?
PRIOR: The limitations of the imagination?
HARPER: Yes.
PRIOR: It’s something you learn after your second theme party: It’s All Been Done Before.
HARPER: The world. Finite. Terribly, terribly . . . Well . . . This is the most depressing hallucination I’ve ever had.
PRIOR: Apologies. I do try to be amusing.
HARPER: Oh, well, don’t apologize, you . . . I can’t expect someone who’s really sick to entertain me.
PRIOR: How on earth did you know . . .?
HARPER: Oh that happens. This is the very threshold of revelation sometimes. You can see things . . . how sick you are. Do you see anything about me?
PRIOR: Yes.
HARPER: What?
PRIOR: You are amazingly unhappy.
HARPER: Oh big deal. You meet a Valium addict and you figure out she’s unhappy. That doesn’t count. Of course I . . . Something else. Something surprising.
PRIOR: Something surprising.
HARPER: Yes.
PRIOR: Your husband’s a homo.
(Pause.)
HARPER: Oh, ridiculous.
(Pause, then very quietly:)
Really?
PRIOR (Shrugs): Threshold of revelation.
HARPER: Well I don’t like your revelations. I don’t think you intuit well at all. Joe’s a very normal man, he . . .
Oh God. Oh God. He . . . Do homos take, like, lots of long walks?
PRIOR (A beat, then): Yes. We do. In stretch pants with lavender coifs. I just looked at you, and there was . . .
HARPER: A sort of blue streak of recognition.
PRIOR: Yes.
HARPER: Like you knew me incredibly well.
PRIOR: Yes.
HARPER: Yes.
I have to go now, get back, something just . . . fell apart.
Oh God, I feel so sad . . .
PRIOR: I . . . I’m sorry. I usually say, “Fuck the truth,” but mostly, the truth fucks you.
HARPER: I see something else about you.
PRIOR: Oh?
HARPER: Deep inside you, there’s a part of you, the most inner part, entirely free of disease. I can see that.
PRIOR: Is that— That isn’t true.
HARPER: Threshold of revelation.
Home . . .
(She vanishes. Prior’s startled. Then he feels very alone.)
PRIOR: People come and go so quickly here . . .
I don’t think there’s any uninfected part of me. My heart is pumping polluted blood. I feel dirty.
(He