"Alphabet land." "This is where the Jews lived when they first arrived." "Now, 100 years later the place to which... their more seriously fucked-up grandchildren repair." "This is progress?" "lt's a terrible mess." "lt's a little dirty." "It's messy, not dirty." "That's an important distinction:" "It's dust, not dirt." "Chemical/mineral, not organic, not like microbes, more like...." "Can I take your tie off?" "No, wait, I'm uncomfortable, actually." "Me too, actually." "Being uncomfortable turns me on." "Your boyfriend." "He's sick." "We can cap everything that leaks in latex." "We can smear our bodies with nonoxynol-9... safe, chemical sex." "Messy, but not dirty." "Look, I want to, but I don't wanna beg." "Come on, please." "No, I should go." "Hurry home to the missus." "Married gentlemen, before cruising the Ramble... should first remove their bands of gold." "Go, if you're going." "I'm not staying." "What kind of cologne is that?" "Faberge." "Very butch, very heterosexual high school." "Faberge." "You smell nice." "So do you." "Smell is an incredibly complex and under-appreciated... physical phenomenon... inextricably bound up with sex." "I didn't know that." "It is, the nose is really a sexual organ." "You know what a smell is?" "Yeah, it's some sort of...." "No." "It's made of the molecules of what you're smelling." "Some part of you where you meet the air is... airborne." "Little molecules of Joe." "Up my nose." "Smelling and tasting." "First the nose, then the tongue." "They work as a team, see." "The nose tells the body... the heart, the mind... the fingers, the cock... what it wants and then the tongue explores." "Salt." "Iron." "Clay." "Chlorine." "Copper." "Earth." "What does that taste like?" "Come." "What?" "Nighttime." "Stay." "Yes." "Louis...." "Words are the worst things." "Breathe." "Smell." "Let's stop talking." "Or if you have to talk, talk dirty." "Fuck." "Will you look at this." "First goddamn orgasm in months and I slept through it." "Ten East." "I've had a wet dream." "The Calvin Klein underwear man?" "t was a woman." "You turning straight on me?" "Not a conventiona/ woman." "Grace Jones?" "An angel." "How fabu/ous." "'m scared and a/so fu// of...." "l don't know, joy or something." "Hope." "Are you the duty nurse?" "Yo." "Call you back, there's a man bothering me." "Je t'aime." "Are you the duty nurse?" "Yo, I said." "Why are you dressed like that?" "You don't like it?" "Nurses are supposed to wear white." "Doctors are supposed to be at home in Westchester, asleep." "Emergency admit, Room 1013." "These are the charts." "Start the drip, gamma G, and he'll need a CTM." "Radiation in the morning so" "Liver cancer?" "Oncology's on six, doll." "This is the right floor." "lt says liver cancer." "I don't give a fuck what it says." "I said this is the right floor." "You got it?" "Testy." "He's a very important man." "Okay, then I shouldn't fuck up his medication?" "I'll be back in the morning." "Safe home." "Asshole." "The Lord moves in mysterious ways." "Get out of here, you." "I got nothing to say to you." "Just doing my job." "I want a white nurse." "My constitutional right." "You're in a hospital, you don't have any constitutional rights." "Find the vein, you moron." "Don't start jabbing that spigot in my arm... till you find the fucking vein, or I'll sue you so bad... they'll repossess your teeth, you dim black motherfucker." "Watch yourself." "Don't talk like that when I'm holding something this sharp." "Or I might slip and stick it in your heart, if you have one." "Oh, I do." "Tough little muscle, too, never bleeds." "I'll bet." "I've done drips a long time. I'll slip this in so easy, you'll think you were born with it... or I can make it feel like I just hooked you up to a bag of liquid Drano." "So you be nice to me... or you'll be one sorry asshole come morning." "Nice." "Nice and quiet." "There." "I hurt." "I'll get you a painkiller." "Will it knock me out?" "Sure hope so." "Then shove it." "Pain's nothing." "Pain's life." "Sing it, baby." "Yeah?" "When they did my face-lifts... I made the anesthesiologist use a local." "Lifted up my whole face like a dinner napkin." "I was wide awake to see it." "Bullshit, no doctor would agree to do that." "I can get anyone to do anything I want." "For instance, let's be friends." "We sha// overcome" "Jews and coloreds, historical liberal coalition, right?" "I mean, my people being the first ones to sell retail to your people." "Your people being the first mine could afford to hire... to sweep out the store Saturday mornings." "And we all held hands, rode the bus to Selma." "Not me, of course." "I don't ride buses, I take cabs." "But the one thing about the American Negro is... he never went Communist." "Loser Jews did, but you people, you had Jesus." "Reds never got to you. I admire that." "Your chart didn't mention that you're delusional." "I'm barking mad." "Sit, talk." "I'd rather suck the pus out of an abscess." "I'd rather drink a subway toilet." "Thanks for the offer of conversation, but I'd rather not." "For Christ's sake, what do I have to do, beg?" "I don't wanna be alone!" "I fucking hate hospitals and nurses." "They're a waste of time." "Weakness and wasting." "I wanna kill the...." "They can't kill this though, can they?" "No, it's too simple." "It knows itself." "It's hard to kill something when it knows what it is." "Like pubic lice." "Ever had pubic lice?" "None of your business." "I picked up some super crabs once from some kid." "Took 20 drenchings of Kwell... finally shaving to get rid of the little bastards." "Nothing could kill them." "And every time I had an itch I'd smile... because I learned to respect them." "These unkillable crabs." "Because I learned to identify." "Determined lowlife." "Like me." "You seen lots of guys with this?" "Lots." "So how do I look, comparatively?" "I'd say you're in trouble." "I'm gonna die soon?" "That was a question." "Probably." "Probably so." "I appreciate the honesty, whatever." "If I live, I could sue you." "Emotional distress, the whole hospital." "But I'm not prejudiced." "I'm not a prejudiced man." "No, these racist guys, simpletons." "I never had any use for them." "Too rigid." "You gotta keep your eye on where the most powerful enemy really is." "I save my hate for what counts." "Well, and I think that's a good idea." "Good thing to do, probably." "Yeah." "Look, this didn't come from me, and I don't like you... but let me tell you a thing or two." "They have radiation for you tomorrow, for the sarcoma lesions... and you don't want that." "Radiation will kill your T cells... and you don't have any you can afford to lose." "So you tell the doctor no thanks for the radiation." "He won't wanna listen." "Persuade him, or he'll kill you." "You're just a nurse." "Why should I listen to you... over my very qualified, very expensive Wasp doctor?" "He's not queer, I am." "Don't wink at me." "You said thing or two." "So that's one." "I don't know what strings you pulled to get in on the azidothymidine trials." "I have my little ways." "Watch out for the double blind." "They'll want you to sign something that says they can give you MM's... instead of the real drug." "You'll die, but they'll get... statistics they can publish in The New Eng/and Journa/ of Medicine." "You can't sue them because you signed." "If you don't sign, no pills." "So if you have any strings left, pull them." "Everyone is put through the double blind and with this... time's against you." "You can't fuck around with placebos." "You hate me?" "Yes." "So why are you telling me this?" "I wish I knew." "You're a butterfingers spook-faggot nurse." "I think you have little reason to wanna help me." "Consider it solidarity." "One faggot to another." "Any more of your lip, boy, and you'll be flipping..." "Big Macs in east Hell before tomorrow night!" "And get me a real phone!" "With a hold button." "I mean, look at this, one little line?" "How am I supposed to perform basic bodily functions on this?" "Fuck." "Hello, who's this?" "Operator." "Get me an outside line." "Well, dial it for me." "It's a medical emergency, darling, dial the fucking number..." "or I'll strangle myself with the phone cord!" "A// right!" "Area code 202... 244-31 16." "Hello, Martin Heller." "Hi, Martin." "Yeah, I know what time it is." "I couldn't sleep, I'm busy dying." "Listen, Martin." "Those pills that I have?" "You know, those pills...." "What do you call them, azido...." "Yeah, AZT." "I want my own private stash, Martin." "Of serious, honest-Abe medicine... that I control here in the room with me." "No placebos." "No, I'm no good at tests, Martin, I'd rather cheat." "Send me my pills with a get-well bouquet pronto... or I'm gonna ring up CBS, and sing Mike Wallace a song." "You know the ballad of adorable Ollie North... and his secret Contra slush fund?" "You only think you know all I know." "I don't even know what all I know." "Half the time I just make it up, it still turns out to be true." "We learned that trick in the '50s." "Tomorrow, you two-bit, scum-sucking, shitheel flypaper... insignificant, dried-out little turd... a nice big box of drugs for Uncle Roy... or there's gonna be seven different kinds of hell to pay!" "Fuck!" "The oboe." "The official instrument of the lnternational Order of Travel Agents." "If the duck was a songbird, it would sound like this." "Nasal, desolate... the call of migratory things." "I'm cold." "It's freezing." "What happened to global warming?" "Where'd you get that?" "From the great Antarctic pine forest, right over the hill." "There are no pine forests in Antarctica." "This one's a blue spruce." "There are no blue spruce in-- l chewed this pine tree down with my teeth." "Like a beaver." "I'm hungry, I haven't eaten in three days." "I'm gonna use it to build something." "Maybe a fire." "Lucky I brought these." "Snow'll melt." "Let it." "I don't understand why I'm not dead." "When your heart breaks, you should die." "But there's still the rest of you." "There's your breasts and your genitals...." "They're amazingly stupid, like babies or faithful dogs." "They don't get it, they just want him." "Want him." "Eskimo back." "I know." "I wanted a real Eskimo, someone chilly and reliable." "An Eskimo dressed in seal pelts." "Not this." "This is just some lawyer, just...." "Hey, buddy." "Hey." "I looked for you. I've been everywhere." "Well, you found me." "No, I'm not looking now." "I guess I'm having an adventure." "Who with?" "No one you know." "No one I know, either." "ls it fun?" "Scary fun." "Can I come with you?" "This isn't working anymore, I'm cold." "l wouldn't want you to see." "You think it's worse than what I imagine?" "lt's not." "l should go." "Bastard." "You fell out of love with me." "That isn't true, Harper." "Then come back!" "I can't." "Blues for the death of heaven." "I tried to tell you." "There's no Eskimo in Antarctica." "No." "No trees, either." "So where'd you get that?" "The Botanical Gardens' arboretum." "It's right over there." "Prospect Park." "We're still in Brooklyn, I guess." "Here's the law for real." "Busted." "Damn." "What a lousy vacation." "I don't know about this...." "Turn on the lights!" "For pity's sake, don't I look like his mother?" "Pitt residence." "No, he is out." "This is his mother." "Do you know where he is?" "I have no idea where he is." "I have no idea." "You could leave now." "I really wish you would." "So he" " No, that was the superintendent." "My son was supposed to meet me at the airport." "I don't sit around waiting more than three and three quarters hours for anyone so he" "What?" "Oh, my Lord." "Wait." "Officer, I don't...." "She what?" "Pine tree?" "Why would she chew...." "You have no business laughing about it." "You can stop that right now." "That's ugly." "I don't know where that is." "I've only just arrived from Salt Lake... and I barely found Brooklyn." "I will take a taxicab." "Yes, of course, right now." "No hospital." "We don't need any of that." "She's not insane, she's just peculiar." "You tell her Mother Pitt is coming." "That was tacky." "lt was divine." "He was one of the great glitter queens." "He couldn't be buried like a civilian." "Trailing sequins and incense, he came into the world... trailing sequins and incense, he departed, and good for him." "I thought 20 professional Sicilian mourners were a bit much." "A great queen, big fucking deal." "That ludicrous spectacle in there... just a parody of the funeral of someone who really counted." "We don't." "Faggots." "We're just a bad dream the real world's having... and the real world's waking up." "And he's dead." "Lately, sugar, you've gotten very strange." "Lighten up, already." "I apologize." "It was only a for-God's-sake funeral." "A cause for a fucking celebration." "Sorry if I can't join in with the rest of you death junkies... gloating about your survival in the face of... his ugly demise." "Unlike you, I have nothing to gloat about." "Never mind." "And you look like Morticia Addams." "Like the wrath of God." "Yes." "That is the intended effect." "My eyes are fucked up." "Fucked up, how?" "Everything's closing in, weirdness on the periphery." "Since when?" "For three weeks." "Since that night...." "And what does the doctor say?" "l haven't been." "For God's sake, why?" "I was improving before." "Do you remember my wet dream?" "The angel?" "lt wasn't a dream." "Of course it was." "No, I don't think so." "I think it really happened." "I'm a prophet." "Say what?" "I've been given a prophecy, a book." "Not a physical book." "Or there was one, but they took it back... but somehow there's still this book in me." "A prophecy." "It really happened." "I'm almost completely sure of it." "Stop looking at me as" "You're scaring me." "It was after Louis left me... I'd been having these horrible nights, and then...." "Then?" "And then she arrived." "Greetings, prophet!" "The Great Work begins." "The Messenger has arrived." "Oh, God!" "There's a thing in the air!" "A thing!" "I am the bird of America." "The Bald Eagle..." "Continental Principality..." "Lumen, Phosphor, Fluor, Candle." "I unfold my leaves... bright steel in salutation open sharp before you." "Prior Walter." "Long-descended, well-prepared." "No, I'm not prepared for anything." "I have lots to do, l" "American prophet, tonight you become American eye... that pierceth dark, American heart all hot for truth... the true great vocalist... the knowing mind, tongue-of-the-land... seer-head!" "Shoo!" "You're scaring the shit out of me!" "Get the fuck out of my room, please!" "Oh, please." "Please." "Now, remove from their hiding place... the sacred prophetic implements." "The what?" "Remove from their hiding place the sacred prophetic implements." "Your dreams have revealed them to you." "What dreams?" "You have had dreams revealing to you...." "l haven't had a dream I can remember in months." "No dreams, you...." "Are you sure?" "Yes, well, the two dead Priors" "No, not the heralds, not them." "Other dreams, implements." "You must have...." "One moment." "Now this is a dream, obviously." "I'm sick and so...." "Okay, it's a pretty spectacular dream, but still." "Quiet!" "Prophet, a moment, please, I...." "The disorganization is...." "He says he hasn't had any...." "Yes!" "In the kitchen." "Under the tiles." "Under the sink." "You want me to tear up the kitchen floor?" "Get a shovel or an axe... or some tool for dislodging tile and grout... and unearth the sacred implements." "No fucking way!" "The ceiling's bad enough!" "I'll lose the lease!" "I'll lose my security deposit!" "I'll wake up the downstairs neighbors, their hysterical dog...." "Do it yourself." "Submit!" "Submit to the will of heaven!" "What did you...." "What...." "And lo, the prophet was led by his nightly dreams... to the hiding place of the sacred implements and...." "Revision in the text." "The angel did help him to unearth them... for he was weak of body, though not of will." "You cracked the refrigerator." "You probably released a whole cloud of fluorocarbons." "That's bad for the environment!" "My wrath is as fearsome as my countenance is splendid." "Open the suitcase." "Oh, look at this." "Like wow, man, totally Paleozoic." "Oh, God, no!" "That was terrible, I don't wanna see that." "Remove the book." "From the council of continental principalities... met in this time of crisis and confusion... heaven here reaches down to disaster." "And in touching you, touches all of earth." "Peep stones." "Open me, prophet." "I am the book." "Read." "Wait." "How come...." "How come I have this erection?" "It's very hard to concentrate." "The stiffening of your penis is of no consequence." "Well, maybe not to you, but" "Read!" "You are mere flesh." "I am utter flesh." "Density of desire, the gravity of skin." "What makes the engine of creation run?" "Not physics... but ecstatics makes the engine run." "The pulse." "The pull." "The throb." "The ooze." "Excuse me for just a minute." "Just a minute." "Okay." "Priapsis, dilation... engorgement, flow." "The universe aflame with angelic ejaculate." "No shit." "The heavens a-thrum to the seraphic rut, the fiery grapplings... the feathery joinings of the higher orders... infinite, unceasing!" "The blood-pump of creation!" "Holy estrus!" "Holy orifice!" "Ecstasis in exce/sis!" "Amen." "Oh, God!" "The body is the garden... of the soul." "What was that?" "P/asma orgasmata." "Yeah, well no doubt." "Whoa, wait a minute." "Excuse me, please." "You fucked this angel?" "She fucked me, she...." "Well, she has eight vaginas." "Well, they're hermaphrodites, really... and they used to copulate ceaselessly before...." "They live in heaven, a city that looks like San Francisco... and there are earthquakes there, or rather, heavenquakes." "Our maker, our master grew weary of us... our songs and fornications." "Seeking something new, God split the world in two... and made you." "Human beings." "Uni-genitalled, female, male." "In creating you, our Father-lover... unleashed sleeping creation's potential for change." "In you the virus of time began!" ""The virus of time"?" "In making people, God apparently set in motion... a potential in the design for change, for random event... for movement forward." "As the human race began to progress, travel, intermingle... everything started to come unglued." "Manifest first as tremors in heaven." "So human progress..." "Migration, science, forward motion-- ...shakes up heaven." "You think and you imagine." "Migrate, explore... and when you do, Paradise itself shivers and splits!" "Progress, movement... shaking Him!" "God?" "He began to leave us." "Bored with His angels, bewitched by humanity." "In mortifying imitation of you, His least creation..." "He would sail off on voyages no knowing where." "Quake follows quake, absence follows absence... nasty chastity and disorganization." "Then April 18, 1906, in that day...." "April 1906, the...." "The great San Francisco earthquake, right?" "...in that day, the King of the universe...." "He left." "He abandoned." "And did not return." "Abandoned." "Yes." "I smell a motif." "The man that got away." "Well, it occurred to me, Louis...." "Even now, if he came back...." "Listen to your girlfriend." "I think the time has come to let him go." "That's not what the angels think." "They think it's all gone too far." "Too much loss is what they think." "We should stop somehow, go back." "But that's not how the world works, Prior." "It only spins forward." "Yeah, but forward into what?" "Surely you see towards what we are progressing." "Before life on earth becomes finally merely impossible... it will, for a long time before... have become completely unbearable." "You have driven Him away." "You must stop moving!" "Stop moving?" "You cannot understand." "You can only destroy." "You do not advance." "You only trample!" "Poor blind children, abandoned on the earth." "Groping, terrified, misguided... over fields of slaughter... over bodies of the slain." "There is no Zion save where you are." "If you cannot find your heart's desire in your own backyard... you never lost it to begin with?" "Turn back." "Undo." "Till He returns again." "Please." "Please, angel or dream, whatever you are... I don't understand this visitation!" "I don't understand what you want from me." "I'm not a prophet. I'm a sick, lonely man." "And what are you?" "Did you come to save me or destroy me?" "Stop moving, that's what you want?" "Answer me!" "You want me dead." "Yes." "No." "Yes." "This is not in the text." "We deviate no more." "I want you to go away." "I am tired to death of being done to... walked out on, infected, fucked over!" "And now, tortured by some mixed-up, irresponsible angel!" "Some...." "Leave me alone!" "You can't outrun your occupation, Jonah." "Hiding from me one place, you will find me in another." "I stop down the road... waiting for you." "You know me, prophet." "Your battered heart, bleeding life in the universe of wounds... vessel of the book now." "On you, in you, in your blood we write... have written, stasis." "The end." "You've been spending too much time alone." "Not by choice." "None of this by choice." "This is worse than nuts." "What, don't migrate, don't mingle?" "It's malevolent." "Some of us didn't exactly choose to migrate." "I hardly think it's right to get offended." "I didn't invent this shit. lt was visited on me." "Visited by who, Prior?" "It's from you, what else is it?" "Something else." "That's crazy." "Then I'm crazy." "You're not crazy." "lt was not an angel." "Then I'm crazy." "The whole world is, why not me?" "It's 1986, there's a plague, half my friends are dead... and I'm only 31 ." "And every morning I wake up, I think Louis is next to me in the bed... and it takes me long minutes to remember that this is real." "This isn't just an impossible, terrible dream." "So maybe, yes, I'm flipping out." "Well, you better not." "You'd better not fucking flip out." "This is not dementia, and this is not real." "This is...." "This is just you, Prior, afraid of what's coming." "Afraid of time." "And you want to go backwards so bad you called down an angel." "Some comfort, some angel." "Some cosmic reactionary." "But there is no angel." "You hear me?" "For me?" "I can handle anything, but not this happening to you." "Maybe I am a prophet." "Not just me, all of us who are dying now." "Maybe we've caught the virus of prophecy." "Be still, toil no more." "Maybe the world has driven God from heaven, incurred the angels' wrath." "I believe I've seen the end of things." "And having seen, I'm going blind, as prophets do." "It makes a certain sense to me." "And if I hate heaven, my only resistance is to run." "Okay, answer me this." "How can a fundamentalist theocratic religion... function participatorily in a pluralist, secular democracy?" "I can't believe you're a Mormon." "I can't believe I spent three weeks in bed with a Mormon." "Good morning." "Why didn't you tell me?" "l did." "Yeah, after I asked you." "I thought you were a Protestant, or something." "Well, I'm not." "Sleep well?" "No." "But you're a lawyer, you're a serious lawyer." "The chief clerk of the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is a Mormon, Louis." "I don't like cults." "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is not a cult." "Any religion that isn't at least 2,000 years old is a cult." "And I know people who would call that generous." "Why is it such a surprise?" "I know." "Most of the men I go to bed with turned out to be" "Of course it's a surprise!" "I thought you were all out West somewhere with the salt flats." "And cactuses." "There's some sort of profound displacement going on here." "It's creepy and you hid it from me." "Louis, I love you." "No, you don't." "Yes, I do." "You think you do, but that's just the gay virgin thing." "No, I do, I never felt...." "l never wanted something so much." "I never...." "l do. I love you." "No, you don't, you can't." "It's only been a few weeks." "It takes years and years to fall in love." "Four and a half years, minimum." "You and I, Louis, we are the same." "We both want the same thing." "We have to talk." "No records!" "What are you, deaf?" "I told you, I don't have any records for their shitty little committee." "It's not how I work, I don't...." "Yeah, those notes were lost." "Lost in the fire, water damage, I don't know." "I threw up 15 times today. I counted." "What are you looking at?" "15 times." "Hang up the phone." "I have to watch you take these." "The limo thing?" "For the love of Christ!" "I was acquitted twice for that." "What are they trying to do, kill me dead with this harassment?" "I've done things in my life, I never killed anyone." "Present company excepted, and you deserved it." "Get the fuck out of here." "Yeah." "Stall!" "They can't start tomorrow if we don't show, so don't show." "l'll pay the old harridan back, just" "Put down the phone!" "Suck my dick, Mother Teresa!" "This is life and death." "Put down the phone." "Touch that phone and I'll bite." "And I got rabies." "From now on I supply my own pills." "I already told them, push their jujubes to the losers down the hall." "Your own pills." "No double blind, remember?" "A little birdie warned me." "God!" "Jesus, these cramps." "Now I know why women go berserk once a month." "Oh, fuck!" "Good, I made her laugh." "I don't trust this hospital." "For all I know Lillian-fucking-Hellman's in the basement switching the pills around." "Wait a minute, she's dead, isn't she?" "Oh boy, memory." "Hey, Ethel, didn't Lillian die?" "Did you see her up there?" "Ugly broad, nose like a...." "Like even a Jew should worry with a punim like that." "Yeah?" "See anyone fitting that description up there in Red heaven?" "She won't talk to me." "Look at her." "She thinks she's some sort of death watch." "Who are you talking to?" "l'm self-medicating." "With what?" "Acid something." "Azidothymidine?" "Gesundheit!" "100-proof elixir vitae." "Give me those keys." "You scored." "lmpressively." "There may be 30 people in the country who are getting this drug." "Now there's 31 ." "Give me the keys." "There are 100,000 people who need it." "Look at you." "The dragon atop the golden hoard." "lt isn't fair, is it?" "No, but as Jimmy Carter said, neither is life." "So put your brown eyes back in your goddamn head, baby." "I'm not moved by an unequal distribution of goods on this earth." "It's history. I didn't write it." "Though I flatter myself I'm a footnote, and you are a nurse." "So minister and skedaddle." "If you live 15 more years, you won't swallow all those pills. I want some." "That's illegal." "Ten bottles." "I'm gonna report you." "There's a nursing shortage, I'm in a union, I'm scared." "l have friends who need them bad." "Loyalty. I admire that." "But, no." "Why?" "Because you repulse me." "Why?" "You'll be begging for it next." "Why?" "Because I hate your guts and your friends' guts." "That's why." "Give me." "So goddamned entitled." "Such a shock when the bill comes." "From what I read, you never paid a bill in your life." "Nobody worked harder than me." "Yeah, things are tough all over." "You talk about fairness." "You're coming in here looking for fairness." "They couldn't touch me when I was a lawyer." "Now that I'm dying, they try this." "That's fair?" "What am I?" "A dead man." "What was I saying?" "God, I can't remember anything." "Dead." "I'm a dead man." "You expect pity?" "I expect you to hand over those keys and then..." "move your nigger ass out of my room." "What did you say?" "Move your nigger, spade..." "You shit-for-brains..." "...faggot Blacky ass out of my room." "...filthy-mouthed, selfish..." "Slave!" "Mongol!" "Ape!" "...cock-sucking, cloven-hoofed pig." "Kike." "Now you're talking." "Greedy kike." "Now you can have a bottle." "But only one." "Oh, God, I thought he'd never go." "What are you gonna do, sit there all night?" "Just till morning." "Cock crows, you go back to the swamp?" "No, I take the 7:05 to Yonkers." "Yonkers?" "What the fuck is in Yonkers?" "The disbarment committee meetings." "You've been harking about it all week." "l'll have a look-see." "They won't let you through the front door." "You're a convicted and executed traitor." "I'll walk through a wall." "Fucking succubus." "Fucking blood-sucking old bat." "Worst thing about being sick in America, Ethel... is you're booted out of the parade." "Americans have no use for the sick." "Now, look at Reagan." "He's so healthy, he's hardly human." "He's 100 if he's a day." "He takes a slug in the chest... two days later he's out West, riding ponies in his PJs." "I mean, who does that?" "That's America." "It's just no country for the infirm." "We/come to the Mormon Visitor Center Diorama Room." "We're happy to receive you." "We hope you wi// benefit from what you're about to see." "Sit back, re/ax. /n just a moment, our show wi// begin." "P/ease refrain from smoking and food and drink...." "There's something wrong with the machinery." "I thought we agreed." "You weren't going to" "The main dummy." "The big daddy dummy." "He looks just like Joe." "We agreed that you would stop eating in here." "Fix him then." "Make him talk." "That's an incredible resemblance." "We can't believe a word that comes out of his mouth... but the sound of him is reassuring." "He's got a tale to tell, the dummy." "The exodus." "The Great Salt Lake." "That's a joke, of course." "They drag you on your knees through hell... and then when you get there, the water is undrinkable." "Salt." "A promised land all right, but what a disappointing promise." "Harper, you have got to" "Can I ask you a question?" "What?" "There's something that's always bothered me." "Everyone thinks the angel's name was Mormon." "No." "The name of the angel-- -l know, I went to Sunday school." "Moroni." "Right." "The angel Moroni." "So why don't we call ourselves Morons?" "You should leave." "It's a visitor's center. I'm visiting." "For serious visitors. lt's a serious religion." "This is a favor." "They let me work here as a favor." "Just so we have some place we can go each day." "It's for your sake, but you keep on making scenes." "Look at this mess." "lt's a garbage dump." "They don't have any lines... the sister and the mother dummy." "Only his face moves. lt's not really fair." "...day after day till...." "Till what?" "You sound just like him." "You even grind your teeth like him." "If I could get him to come back I'd go back to Salt Lake tomorrow." "You can't go back to Salt Lake." "You sold your house." "My mother-in-law, she sold her house." "Her son calls and tells her he's a homo, and what does she do?" "She sells her house." "And she calls me crazy." "You have less of a place in this world than I do, if that's possible." "I call and call." "He won't answer." "I tried to discuss it with the Bishop." "He said they think it's mothers... who are too close to their sons that cause this." "Well, I guess we've disproved that theory." "I'm not sure this is the best place for you." "I leave, you know, but I always wind up back here... or in some place just like this." "Alone in the dark, waiting for the dummy." "So, you'll just sit here." "Yeah." "Stuck." "Yeah." "Till?" "His wife." "His mute wife, we're waiting for her to speak." "But her story is not so jolly." "The winter Atlantic." "Wow, huh?" "Ferocious." "It's freezing." "What're we doing?" "There used to be guys in the dunes even when it snowed." "Nothing deterred us from the task at hand." "Which was?" "Exploration... across an unmapped terrain:" "the body of the homosexual human male." "Here, the Ramble... the scrub pines on Fire Island, the Saint Mark's Baths." "Hardy pioneers, like your ancestors." "Not exactly." "Many have perished on the trail." "I fucked around a lot more than he did." "No justice." "I love it when you can get to places and see what it used to be." "The whole country was like this once." "Paradise." "Ruined now." "Still a great country." "Best place on Earth." "Best place to be." "What am I doing with you?" "With anyone. I should be exterminated." "But with you?" "Married, probably bisexual..." "Mormon, Republican closet-case." "I mean, I really like you a lot, but...." "So the fruity underwear you wear...." "Temple garment." "Oh, my God." "What's it for?" "Protection." "Second skin." "I can stop wearing it." "How can you stop wearing it if it's a skin?" "Your past, your beliefs." "In bed, you're so sweet." "I don't see how you believe the stuff you do." "I don't wanna fight now." "Stop attacking me, Louis." "You make no sense." "The Republican party...." "l hate the Democrats, too, but the Republicans... half religious zealots wanting to control every breath every citizen takes... and half ego-anarchist, libertarian cowboys... shrilling for no government." "McCarthyism." "Watergate, Pat Buchanan, Jesse Helms...." "Barry Goldwater, George Will." "George Bush, Newt Gingrich." "Objectively speaking, a rum bunch." "Responsible for everything bad and evil in the world." "Throw Reagan on the pile and you're not far off." "If people like you didn't have President Reagan to demonize... where would you be?" "If he didn't have people like me to demonize, where would he be?" "Upper right-hand square on the Hollywood Squares." "I'm not your enemy, Louis." "l never said you were." "Can't you be, I don't know, happy?" "No one is happy." "You believe the world is perfectible." "No." "Yes, you do." "And so you find it unsatisfying." "You have to reconcile yourself to the world's unperfectability." "Be in the world, but not of the world." "That's what being a Mormon is." "That's what being a schizophrenic is." "Republican, Democrat, it's life." "Time is conservative. lt moves slow." "Accept that." "Don't be tragic." "Accept as rightfully yours the happiness that comes your way." "I have no idea what you're talking about." "What you did when you walked out on him was hard to do." "The world may not understand it or approve... but you did what you needed to do." "I consider you very brave." "Nobody does what I did, Joe." "Nobody." "Maybe many want to." "Hear what I'm saying." "Free from politics." "You are in yourself a good man." "And I admire you." "l believe in you. I do." "l know you do." "You seem to be able to live with what you've done." "You abandoned your wife, and you're not torn up and guilty about it." "You blossomed, and that's terrible." "But you're not a terrible person." "You're a decent, caring man... and it's just not possible." "Looking at you, it seems to be, you do seem free." "And happy." "l am." "At night, you sleep peacefully." "You don't have these terrible... awful, horrible dreams." "No, I never have any dreams at all." "I'm just stressed." "No dreams at all." "That would be amazing." "l think I love you." "l want to see Prior again." "You wanna go back?" "I just need to see him again. I miss him." "You must want to see your wife." "l want more to be-- l have to see him." "It's been a month. I'm worried." "Please don't look so sad." "You understand?" "You don't want to see me anymore?" "No, I...." "Louis, anything." "What?" "Anything." "Whatever you want, I can give up." "My skin." "What are you doing?" "Come on. lt's freezing!" "Someone will see us." "lt's not a nude beach!" "l'm flayed." "No past now. I could give up anything." "In what we've been doing, maybe I'm even infected." "I don't wanna be!" "I wanna live now." "I can be anything I need to be." "And I wanna be with you!" "You have a good heart." "The good thing is to be guilty... and kind always." "But it's not always kind to be gentle and soft." "There's a genuine violence in softness and weakness." "Sometimes, self-interested is the most generous thing you can be." "You ought to think about that." "l will." "You ought to think about what you're doing to me." "No, I mean, what you need." "Think about what you need." "Be brave." "And then you'll come back to me." "Then you'll come back to me." "Bitter lady of the plains... talk to me." "Tell me what to do. I'm stuck." "My heart's an anchor." "Look." "The magic of the theater, or something." "Look at you, so perfect in place." "The desert, the mountains, the previous century." "Maybe I could have believed in you then." "Maybe we should never have moved East." "Was it a hard thing to do, crossing the prairies?" "You ain't stupid." "So don't ask stupid." "Ask something for real." "In your experience of the world, how do people change?" "Well, it has something to do with God." "So it's not very nice." "God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly." "Then plunges a huge, filthy hand in." "He grabs hold of your bloody tubes." "You slip to evade his grasp, but he squeezes hard." "He insists." "He pulls and pulls... till all your innards are yanked out." "And the pain... I can't even talk about that." "Then he stuffs them back... dirty, tangled, torn." "It's up to you to do the stitching." "Get up." "Walk around." "Just mangled guts pretending." "Yeah." "That's how people change." "It's Lou." "I wanna see you." "It's 5:00 a.m." "You ought to change that shirt." "It's starting to smell." "You're telling me." "At first, it can be very hard... to accept how disappointing life is, Harper." "But that's what it is, and you have to accept it." "With faith and time... and hard work, you do get to a point where... the disappointment doesn't hurt so much... and it gets actually easier to live with." "Quite easy." "Which is, in its own way, a disappointment." "But...." "l'm not like you." "Strange things happen to me all the time, Mother Pitt." "Maybe I'm a witch." "You're not a witch." "I could be a witch." "Why not?" "I married a fairy." "Anything can happen." "Any awful thing." "It's raw out there." "You put this on." "My mother used to open up every window mid-winter mornings." "Cold, fresh air." "Wake up the dead." "It gave me no end of nightmares." "An implacable hatred of winter." "This is gonna be so much worse than I'd imagined." "Hello." "Fuck you, you little shitbag." "If you want the smoke and puffery then you'll listen to Kissinger and Schultz." "When you want to look at the heart of modern conservatism... you look at me." "Everyone else has abandoned the struggle." "Everything nowadays, just sipping tea with Nixon and Mao." "That was disgusting." "Did you see that?" "Were you born yet?" "Of course I was." "My generation, we had clarity." "Unafraid to look deep into the miasma at the heart of the world." "What a pit." "What a nightmare is there. I have looked." "All my life, I've searched for absolute bottom." "And I found it, believe me." "Stygian." "How tragic... how brutal and short life is." "Sinful, people are." "The immutable heart of what we are that bleeds through... whatever we might become." "All else is vanity." "I don't know the world anymore." "After I die, they're gonna say I did it for the money and the headlines." "I never did it for the money." "It's the moxie that counts." "I never wavered." "You remember." "I will, Roy." "I was afraid you wouldn't wanna see me." "If you'd forgive me for letting you down." "Forgiveness?" "Do you see a lady around here?" "Dumpy lady with a stupid hat?" "She...." "Oh, boy." "She's off watching the hearings." "Treacherous bitch." "Who?" "Did you get a blessing from your father before he died?" "A blessing?" "Yeah." "No." "You should have done that." "Life, that's what they're supposed to bless." "Roy, I need to talk to you about" "Shush, don't fuck up the magic." "You don't even have to trick it out of me like...." "What's his name, in the Bible?" "Jacob." "That's the one." "Ruthless motherfucker." "Some bald runt... but he laid hold of his birthright with his claws and his teeth." "Jacob's father, what was his name?" "Isaac." "A sacrifice?" "That jerk." "My mother used to read me those stories." "See the scar on my nose?" "When I was 3 months old, I had a bony spur." "She made them operate, shave it off." "They said I was too young for surgery, I'd outgrow it." "But she insisted." "I figure she wanted to toughen me up." "It worked." "I am tough." "It's taking a lot to dismantle me." "Don't waste energy beating up on me." "I'm already taking care of that." "l don't see any bruises." "Inside." "You are one noble guy inside." "Don't flatter yourself." "So, it's your tea party." "Talk." "It's good to see you again. I missed you." "Talk." "l want to try to make up." "Make up?" "You don't have to be so hostile." "Don't I get any points for trying to arrive at a resolution?" "Maybe what I did isn't forgivable." "lt isn't." "But I'm trying to be responsible." "There are limits, boundaries." "You have to be reasonable." "Why are you dressed like that?" "You were saying something about being reasonable." "I've been giving this a lot of thought." "Yes, I fucked up." "That's obvious." "But maybe you fucked up, too." "You never trusted me." "Never gave me a chance to find my footing." "Not really." "You were so quick to attack." "I think maybe just too much of a victim, finally." "Passive, dependent." "What I think is that people do have a choice..." "about how they handle" "You wanna come back?" "Why?" "Atonement?" "Exoneration?" "I didn't say I wanted to come back." "No, you didn't." "I can't move in again, start all over again." "I've moved." "I don't think it'd be any different." "You're seeing someone else." "What?" "No." "You are!" "I'm not." "Occasionally...." "He's just a pickup." "Damn!" "Ask me how I knew." "How?" "Threshold of revelation." "What?" "Fuck you!" "I'm a prophet!" "Reasonable?" "Limits?" "Tell it to my lungs, stupid." "Tell it to my lesions." "Tell it to the cotton-woolly patches in my eyes." "Prior, I haven't seen him for days now." "l'm going. I have limits, too." "You're crying." "You endanger nothing in yourself." "It's like the idea of crying when you do it." "Or the idea of love." "Attention." "Visiting hours are now over." "Now you have to go." "I left my wife." "I needed to tell you." "Too late." "It happens." "I've been staying with someone else for a whole month now." "Happens." "How can I say this?" "With a... man." "I'm with a...." "A man?" "Yes." "You're with a man?" "Yes." "I got to...." "What?" "The bathroom, or...." "What?" "No." "What are you doing?" "No, Roy!" "Hold on." "Wait, keep your hand up." "God." "Help, please." "He pulled the...." "Holy shit." "Get the fuck away from me." "Please, just get back in your room." "Shut up!" "You listen to me." "Get your ass" "Shut up, I said!" "Now, you listen here." "I want you home with your wife." "Whatever else you got going, cut it down." "l can't, I need to be" "Listen to me." "Do what I say or you will regret it." "And don't talk to me about it... ever again." "I never saw that coming." "You kill me." "Take off that shirt and throw it out." "Don't touch the blood." "Why?" "I don't understand." "Out!" "I already gave you my blessing." "What more do you want from me?" "Get the fuck out of here." "But, please, I...." "You wanna stay and watch this?" "No." "Fuck you, too!" "So, your new lover" "He's not my lover." "Tell me where you met him." "ln the park." "Well, first at work." "He's a lawyer or a judge?" "Lawyer." "A gay lawyer?" "Yes." "Republican, too." "A gay Republican lawyer." "And he's sort of...." "l don't know if the word.... in a way, sensitive." "Sensitive gay Republican." "He's just company." "Companionship." "Just when I think he couldn't possibly say anything to make it worse... he does." "Companionship." "How good." "I wouldn't want you to be lonely." "There are thousands of gay men in New York City with aids." "Nearly every one of them is being taken care of by a friend... or by a lover who has stuck by them... through things worse than mine... so far." "Everyone got that." "Except me." "I got you." "Why?" "What's wrong with me?" "Are you really bruised inside?" "l can't have this talk" "The least of things you can't do." "So fragile." "Answer me. inside, bruises?" "Yes." "Come back to me when they're visible." "I wanna see black-and-blue." "I wanna see blood." "I can't believe you have blood in your veins till you show it to me." "So don't come near me again... unless you've got something to show." "Every goddamn thing I ever wanted, they've taken from me." "Mocked and reviled all my life." "Join the club." "I don't belong to any club... you could get through the front door of." "What's your name?" "Norman Ariaga." ""Belize" to my friends, but you can call me Norman Ariaga." "Tell me something, Norman." "You ever hire a lawyer?" "No, Roy, never did." "Hire a lawyer, sue somebody." "It's good for the soul." "Lawyers are the high priests of America." "We alone know the words that made America... out of thin air." "And we alone know how to use the words." "The law... the only club I ever wanted to belong to." "Before they take that from me... I'm gonna die." "Look who's back." "Who?" "Nobody with me now... but the dead." "He's a clerk." "Joe Pitt." "Yeah, this is his office." "This is stupid." "Go home if you're chicken." "You should be home." "I have a hobby now: haunting people." "Fuck home." "Wait here. I wanna meet my replacement." "Oh, God." "Yes?" "Can I...." "What?" "Do you need something?" "No." "Could you-- -l'm a prophet." "What?" "Prophet!" "I prophesy. I have sight, I see." "What do you do?" "l'm a clerk." "Big deal." "A clerk?" "What, you file things?" "Keep a file on the hearts you break." "That's all that counts in the end." "You'll have bills to pay in the world to come... you and your friend, the Whore of Babylon." "Sorry, wrong room." "He's the Marlboro Man." "I wanna see." "Sweet lord of Jesus." "What is...." "You're Roy's nurse. I recognize you." "No, you don't." "You're from the hospital." "You're Roy Cohn's nurse." "No, I'm not a nurse." "We all look alike to you, you all look alike to us. lt's a mad world." "Home on the range." "Chaps and spurs." "Now, girl, we gotta get you home." "Mega butch!" "He made me feel beyond nelly... like wispy daisies are sprouting out my ears." "Run." "Wait." "What game are you playing?" "This is a federal courthouse." "You said something about...." "Who are you?" "I'm nothing. I'm a mental patient." "He's my nurse." "I'm not his nurse." "We're here because my will's being contested." "What's that called?" "Competency?" "But this is an appellate court." "And I'm appealing to anyone!" "Anyone in the universe who'll listen to me for some charity." "Some people are so greedy." "Such pigs!" "They have health, everything." "Still they want more." "You said something about my friend." "Look, is this about Louis?" "is he.... ls he what?" "Sad, hot, happy?" "Talk to him yourself, Bullwinkle." "What do I look like, a marriage counselor?" "Nursie, dear, fetch the medication." "I'm starting to rave." "Behave yourself, cheri, or nanny will have to use the wooden spoon." "Nice angel." "What angel?" "Bethesda." "What's she commemorate, Louis?" "I'll bet you know." "The naval dead of the Civil War." "The Civil War. I knew you'd know." "You are nothing if not well-informed." "This is Prior's favorite place in the park." "Listen, I saw him." "Prior." "Prior's upset." "is he okay?" "He seemed..." "not himself." "He seemed" "Crazy?" "is he delusional?" "With a little help from his friends." "Listen, this guy I'm seeing, I'm not seeing him now." "Prior misunderstood" "Oh, yeah." "Your new beau." "Prior and me went to the courthouse, scoped him out." "You had no right to do that." "Did we violate your rights?" "Why did you call me here?" "I don't have time for you." "You walk out on your lover." "Days don't pass before you're out on the town with somebody new." "I am not out on the town." "I want you to tell Prior-- ...share your dank and dirty bed with Roy Cohn's butt-boy." "Come again?" "Doesn't that bother you at all?" "Roy Cohn?" "What the fuck are you...." "I'm not sharing my bed" "Your little friend didn't tell you?" "Joe Pitt is not Roy Cohn's...." "Joe's a very moral man." "He's not even that conservative." "Not that kind of a...." "I don't wanna continue this." "Bye-bye." "It's not my fault that Prior left you for me." "I beg your pardon?" "You've always hated me because you are in love with Prior." "You were when I met him, and he fell in love with me." "So now you cook up this...." "l mean, how do you know this?" "That Joe and Roy Cohn-- l don't know whether Cohn has penetrated more than his spiritual sphincter." "All I'm saying is you better hope there's no GOP germ. lf there is, you got it." "I don't believe you." "Not Roy Cohn!" "He's, like... the polestar of human evil." "He's the worst human being who ever lived." "He's not human even." "Give me credit for something." "Please." "I'm horribly unhappy, I'm lost... I hate myself so fucking totally and completely." "But still... I wouldn't go around sleeping with someone who's Roy Cohn's...." "Butt-boy." "I'm so fucking wet and miserable." "I want everything to go back the way it was." "Wouldn't that be convenient and all?" "You know what your problem is?" "Your problem is that you are so full of piping-hot crap... that the mention of your name draws flies." "You don't know thing one about this guy, do you?" "Ain't that pathetic?" "And just so the record's straight... I love Prior, but I was never in love with him." "I have a man uptown and I have since long before... I first laid eyes on the sorry-ass sight of you." "l didn't know that you had a" "No, because you never bothered to ask." "Up in the air, just like that angel." "Too far off the earth to pick out the details." "Louis and his big ideas." "Big ideas are all you love." "America is what Louis loves." "So what?" "Maybe I do." "You don't know what I love." "You don't." "l hate America." "I hate this country." "Nothing but a bunch of big ideas, and stories... and people dying, and then people like you." "The white cracker who wrote the national anthem... set the word "free" to a note so high nobody could reach it." "That was deliberate." "Nothing on earth sounds less like freedom to me." "You come with me to Room 1013 at the hospital, I'll show you America." "Terminal, crazy, and mean." "I live in America." "I don't have to love it." "You do that." "Everybody's got to love something." "Everybody does." "He's a Mormon?" "How is she?" "Nothing surprising." "Thank you, ma'am." "is she okay?" "That would be surprising, wouldn't it?" "I couldn't go home, Ma. I had to see her." "l'm afraid." "Three whole weeks?" "Has it been three?" "Afraid of what?" "I didn't come to New York to volunteer." "I thought you did." "Don't be a fat-head." "l'm not." "ln your way, you always were." "Then why?" "My motives are a mystery to me." "I have a theory about you, though." "There's no possible thing I can imagine you doing, Ma." "You shouldn't have come." "You made that clear as day... for a month now." "You can't even return a simple phone call." "A phone call from you is not so simple." "Just so I'd have something to tell her." "This insanity." "Your wife, left like a loony in a roomful of mannequins." "And you, living in some rainy rooftop, for all I know." "I call you at work just so I can have something to say to her." "You can't talk on the phone, and you won't call me back." "Like I'm poison." "What do you call that?" "Vitality?" "It'd be pathetic if it weren't so ugly." "lt's cruel." "Not intended to be." "Are you sure about that?" "l'm taking her home." "Do you think that's best for her?" "l know what I'm doing." "l think you have no clue." "But that's only typical of you." "You're a man, you botch up, it's not such a big deal." "Just being a man doesn't" "Being a woman is harder." "Look at her." "lt's a big deal, Ma... botching up. I could use some...." "l migrated across the breadth of the continent of North America." "I ran all this way to get away from.... ls she...." "She's not here." "She's not at the apartment." "Then she escaped." "Good for her." "Ask yourself... what it was you were running from." "It's about time you did." "Not from me. I was nothing." "But from what?" "And what are you running from now?" "You have a responsibility to your wife." "You cannot wish it away." "l want to...." "l don't know anymore what I want." "What you want." "That shifts with the breeze." "How can you steer your life by what you want?" "Hold to what you believe." "You and me... it's like we're in Salt Lake again." "You sort of bring the desert with you." "Are you...." "Don't cry." "If I ever do... I promise you... you'll not be privileged to witness it." "It was a mistake." "I should never have called you." "You should never have come." "I can't imagine why you did." "That man who was just here..." "We're c/osed." "Go away." "...is he your son?" "You know him, Batman?" "How do you know...." "My ex-boyfriend, he knows him now." "I wanted to warn your son about later, when his hair goes... and his hips and jowls, and all that human stuff." "That poor slob there is gonna wind up miserable, fat, frightened, and alone." "Because Louis, he can't handle bodies." "Are you a homosexual?" "is it that obvious?" "Yes, I am." "What's it to you?" "Would you say you are a typical..." "homosexual?" "Me?" "No, I'm stereotypical." "What do you mean, like, am I a hairdresser?" "Are you a hairdresser?" "It would be your lucky day if I was, because frankly...." "l'm sick. lt's expensive." "Shit, now I won't be able to stop." "Now it's started. I feel really terrible." "Do I have a fever?" "Yes." "How high?" "Maybe there's a thermometer somewhere." "Very high." "Would you get me to a cab to...." "l think I'm...." "Don't be alarmed. lt's worse than it looks." "I mean...." "You should...." "Can you stand?" "No, let me see if there's anyone back here." "Lack of breath. I overdid it." "I'm in trouble again." "Take me to Saint Vincent's Hospital." "Help me to a cab." "Here." "Can you stand?" "No, don't." "Just call me a cab." "It's all right, I'm useless here." "That's it." "Please, if you're trying to convert me, this isn't a good time." "Look at it out there." "That's a boy." "We'd better move." "You all right?" "Where are they all going?" "The end of the world is at hand." "Hello, paleface." "Nothing like storm clouds over Manhattan to get you in the mood for Judgment Day." "It's freezing." "lt's starting to rain." "Where are your shoes?" "l threw them in the river." "The Judgment Day." "Everyone will think they're crazy now, not just me." "Everyone will see things." "Sick men will see angels... women who have houses will sell their houses." "Dime-store dummies will rear up on their wood-putty legs... and roam the land, looking for brides." "Let's go home." "Where's that?" "You wanna buy an island?" "It's going out of business." "You can have it for the usual cheap trinkets." "Fire sale." "The prices are insane." "Did you miss me?" "l've come back." "Oh, I know." "Here's why I wanna stay in Brooklyn." "The view." "Water won't ever accomplish the end, no matter how much you cry." "A flood's not the answer." "People just float." "Let's go in." "Fire's the answer." "The great and terrible day at last." "Mira, it was on last night when I got home." "It's called She." "And I'm telling you, hand to my heart, the greatest movie ever made." "There's this fabulous chick called "She who must be obeyed."" "She lives on this hill with" "Excuse me." "I beg your pardon?" "I gotta get out of here." "I know... but first, we have to make you better." "What?" "The boogeyman is here." "Lookit, Ma." "A shwartze toytenmann." "Come in, sweetheart." "What took you so long?" "You're flying, Roy. lt's morphine." "They put morphine in the drip." "You awake?" "Can you see who I am?" "Yeah." "You came for my mama years ago." "Wrap your arms around me now." "Squeeze the bloody life from me, okay?" "No, it's not okay." "Dark, strong arms." "You're stoned, Roy." "Take me like that." "Deep and sincere, but not too rough." "Just open me up... to the end of me." "Who am I?" "The Negro night nurse." "My negation... come to escort me to the underworld." "Come on!" "You want me, Roy?" "Want me to take you away?" "God, I'm ready." "I'll be coming for you soon." "Everything I want is in the end of you." "Can I ask you something, sir?" "Sir?" "What's it like... after?" "After?" "This misery ends?" "Hell or heaven?" "Like San Francisco." "A city." "Good." "I was worried it'd be a garden." "I hate that shit." "Big city... overgrown with weeds... but flowering weeds." "On every corner... a wrecking crew... and something new and crooked going up catty-corner to that." "Windows missing in every edifice, like broken teeth... gritty wind... and a gray, high sky full of ravens." "Isaiah." "Prophet birds, Roy." "Piles of trash... but lapidary like rubies and obsidian... and diamond-colored cows spit streamers in the wind... and voting booths." "And everyone in Balenciaga gowns with red corsages." "Big dance palaces full of music and lights." "Racial impurity and gender confusion." "And all the deities... are Creole." "Mulatto." "Brown as the mouths of rivers." "Race, taste... and history... are finally overcome." "And you ain't there." "And heaven?" "That was heaven, Roy." "The fuck it was." "Who are you?" "Your negation." "I know you." "You're nothing." "Stomach grumble." "Wakes you in the night." "Been nice talking to you." "Go to sleep now, baby." "I'm just the shadow on your grave." "Why do you keep your eyes closed?" "l don't." "You always do." "You can say why. I already know the answer." "Then why do I have to?" "Do you imagine things?" "Imagine men?" "Yes." "Imagining, just like me." "Except the only time I wasn't imagining is when I was with you." "You." "The only part of the real world I wasn't allergic to." "Please don't." "But I only thought I wasn't dreaming." "Back in Brooklyn, back with Joe." "I'm going out." "I have to get some stuff I left behind." "Look at me." "Here!" "Look here at me!" "What do you see?" "What do I...." "What do you see?" "Nothing." "I see nothing." "Thank you." "For what?" "Finally, the truth." "I'm going." "Out." "Just out." "Goodbye." "You lost eight pounds." "People would kill to be in the shape you were in." "You were recovering, but you blew it." "This isn't about weight, it's about lungs." "Pneumonia." "We don't know yet." "The fuck we don't. I know!" "You may not, but I can't breathe." "You'd breathe better if you didn't holler like that." "This is my ex-lover's lover's Mormon mother." "Even in New York in the '80s, that is strange." "This is serious, you understand?" "Keep breathing, stop moving, and stay put." "I'm getting you a room." "I should go." "I saw an angel." "Two weeks ago. I did. I saw her. I did." "I'm not insane." "l didn't say you-- -l saw an angel." "That's insane." "Insane." "But I'm not insane." "But then why did I do this to myself?" "'Cause I have been driven insane by your son and by that lying...." "Because ever since she arrived... ever since I have been consumed by this ice-cold razor blade... terror that just shouts and shouts:" ""Keep moving, run," and I've run myself into the ground." "Right where she said I would eventually be." "Really, she seems so real." "As real as you. I remember everything." "What's happened to me?" "Tell me." "You had a vision." "A vision?" "Thank you, Maria Ouspenskaya." "I'm not so far gone I can be assuaged by pity and lies." "I don't have pity." "It's just not something I have." "1 70 years ago... which is recent... an angel of God appeared to Joseph Smith... in upstate New York, not far from here." "People have visions." "That's preposterous." "It's not polite... to call other people's beliefs preposterous." "He had great need of understanding, our prophet." "His desire made prayer." "His prayer made an angel." "The angel was real." "l believe that." "l don't." "I'm sorry, but it's repellant to me, so much of what you believe." "What do I believe?" "I'm a homosexual with aids." "l can just imagine what you" "No, you can't... imagine... the things in my head." "You don't make assumptions about me, mister." "And I won't make them about you." "Fair enough." "My son is..." "..." "like you." "Homosexual?" "I flew into a rage when he told me." "Mad as hornets." "I assumed at first it was about...." "Homosexuality?" "But that wasn't it." "Homosexuality." "That just seems so ungainly to me." "Two men together." "It's not an appetizing notion." "But then, for me, men in any configuration is...." "They're just so lumpish and... stupid." "Stupidity gets me crazy." "I wish you'd be more true to your demographic profile." "Life is confusing enough." "You know the Bible." "Reasonably well, yes." "The prophets in the Bible, do they ever refuse their vision?" "There is scriptural precedent, yes." "What does God do to them when they do that?" "He feeds them to whales." "Here, just be still... you'll be all right." "No, I won't be." "My lungs are getting tighter." "The fever mounts, and you get delirious." "Then the days of delirium and all the pain and drugs." "Then you start slipping." "I really fucked up." "I'm scared, I can't do it again." "You shouldn't talk that way." "You should make a better show of yourself." "Look at this horror." "See?" "That's not human." "That's why I run." "Wouldn't you?" "Wouldn't anybody?" "It's a cancer." "Nothing more." "Nothing more human than that." "God, I wanna be done. I don't want this!" "I reject this." "I'm sorry." "Stay with me, please." "Just till my friend gets off work." "You comfort me." "You do." "You stiffen my spine." "When I got up this morning... this is not how I envisioned the day would end." "An angel is a belief... with wings and arms that can carry you." "It's not to be afraid of." "If it can't hold you up... seek for something new." "Louis." "Oh, my God." "It's the spring rain, is all." "It's her." "She's approaching." "She?" "Modesty forbids explaining exactly how I know... but I have an infallible barometer of her proximity." "And it's rising." "Hello." "I've come back." "Please let me in." "You're in." ""Have you no decency, sir?" "At long last, Have you no sense of decency?"" "Who said that?" "I'm having a really hard time, Louis." "It's so good to see you again." "You really don't know who said, "Have you no decency?"" "What's wrong?" "Second question:" "Have you no decency?" "Guess what I spent the rainy afternoon doing?" "What?" "My homework." "Research at the courthouse." "Look what I got." "The decisions of Justice Theodore J. Wilson..." "Second Circuit Court of Appeals, 1981-1984." "The Reagan Years." "You read my decisions." "Your decisions." "Yes." "The librarian was gay." "He had all the good dish." "He said Wilson didn't write these opinions any more... than Nixon wrote Six Crises..." "Or Kennedy wrote Profi/es in Courage." "...or Reagan wrote Where's the Rest of Me... or you and I wrote the Book of Love." "Listen, I don't wanna do this now." "I need you to stop attacking me." "These gems were ghost-written by you... his obedient eager clerk." "Naturally, I was eager to read them." "Now I love the one where you found against those women... on Staten Island who were suing the New Jersey factory." "The toothpaste makers whose orange-colored smoke... was blinding children." "Not blind, just minor irritation." "Three of them had to be hospitalized, Joe." "It's sort of brilliant in a satanic sort of way... concluding that these women have no right... to sue under the Air and Water Protection Act... because that Act doesn't protect people... but actually only air and water." "Amazing!" "Have you no decency?" "I can't believe my opinions are being criticized by the guy... who changes the coffee filters in the Secretary's Lounge." "Absolute favorite is this." "Stephens v. the United States... the Army guy who got a dishonorable discharge for being gay." "Stevens told the Army that he was gay when he enlisted." "When he got ready to retire, they booted him out... cheat the queer of his pension." "Right." "He sued, won the case, and got his pension." "The first judges gave him his pension back because... they ruled that gay men are members of a legitimate minority... entitled to the special protection of the 1 4th Amendment of the US Constitution." ""Equal protection under the law."" "I can just imagine... how news of that momentary lapse into decency was received." "Then all the judges of the Second Circuit were assembled" "We found for the guy again." "But on an equitable estoppel." "I had to look that up." "But Mr. Coffee can't be expected to know these things." "They didn't change the decision, just the reason for the decision." "They gave it to him on a technicality." "The Army knew Stevens was gay when he was enlisted." "That's why he won." "Not because it's unconstitutional to discriminate against homosexuals." ""Because homosexuals," they write..." ""are not entitled to equal protection under the law."" "You're being melodramatic." "They didn't write this." "You did." "They gave this decision to Wilson to write." "Which, since they know he's a vegetable incapable of writing do-re-mi... was quite the vote of confidence in his industrious little clerk." "This is an important bit of legal fag-bashing, isn't it?" "They trusted you to do it and you didn't disappoint." "It's law, not justice." "It's power, not the merits of its exercise." "It's not an expression of an ideal, it's reality." "So who said, "Have you no decency?"" "I'm leaving." "You moron." "How could you not know that?" "I'm leaving, you son of a bitch!" "It's the greatest punch line in American history." "Out of my way!" ""Have you no decency?"" ""At long last, sir, have you no decency?"" "I don't know who said it." "Why are you doing this?" "l love you!" "Joseph Welch!" "The Army-McCarthy Hearings!" "Ask Roy!" "He'll tell you, he knows!" "He was there." "Roy Cohn!" "What I want to know is, did you fuck him?" "Did I what?" "How often has the latex-sheathed cock I put in my mouth... been previously in the mouth of the most evil, twisted... vicious bastard ever to snort coke at Studio 54?" "'Cause lips that kissed those lips will never kiss mine!" "Don't worry about that." "Get out of my" "Did you fuck him?" "Did he pay you to let him fuck you?" "Move!" "You lied to me." "You love me?" "Fuck you, you cheap piece of shit!" "He's got aids." "Do you even know that?" "Stupid closeted bigot!" "You probably never figured out" "Hypocrite!" "Stop!" "Please say you're okay." "God, that hurt." "I never did that before." "I never hit anyone." "Can you open it?" "Can you see?" "l can see blood." "Let me get a towel." "I could have you arrested, you creep." "They could put you in jail for beating me up." "I've never hit anyone before." "It'd really be for those decisions.... lt was like a sex scene in an Ayn Rand novel, huh?" "I hurt you. I'm sorry, Louis." "I never hit anyone before." "Get lost... before I really lose my temper and hurt you back." "I just wanna lie here and bleed for a while." "Do me good." "Look at that big smile." "What you got to smile about, Roy?" "I'm going, Ethel." "Finally, finally... done with this world." "At long last." "All mine enemies will be standing on the other shore... mouths gaping open like stupid fish... while the Almighty parts the sea of death... and lets his Roy-boy cross over the Jordan... on dry land... and still a lawyer." "I wouldn't count my chickens, Roy." "It's over." "Over?" "I wanted the news should come from me." "The panel rules against you, Roy." "Oh, no." "They just started meeting two days ago." "They recommended disbarment." "The executive has to rule on the recommendation." "That'll take at least a week to sort things out." "The executive was waiting." "And they ruled." "One, two, three." "They accepted the panel's recommendation." "And one of the main guys on the executive... he leaned over to his friend and he said:" ""Finally!" ""l've hated that little faggot for 36 years."" "They won, Roy." "You're not a lawyer anymore." "But am I dead?" "No." "They beat you." "You lost." "I decided to come here... so I could see, could I forgive you?" "You... who I have hated so terribly." "I have borne my hatred up into the heavens... and made a needle-sharp little star in the sky out of it." "It's the star of Ethel Rosenberg's hatred." "And it burns every year, for one night only." "June 19." "It burns acid green." "I came to forgive... but all I can do is take pleasure in your misery... hoping I would get to see you die... more terrible than I did." "And you are... 'cause you're dying in shit, Roy." "Defeated." "And you could kill me." "But you couldn't ever defeat me." "You never won." "When you die... all anyone will ever say is..." ""Better he had never lived at all."" "Ma?" "Muddy, is it?" "It's Ethel, Roy." "I feel bad." "Who are you talking to?" "It's me." "Good to see you, Ma." "It's been years." "I feel bad." "Sing to me." "I am not your mother, Roy." "It's cold in here." "I'm up so late." "Past my time." "Don't be mad, Ma." "I'm scared a little." "Don't be mad." "Sing me a song." "Please." "l don't want to, Roy." "l am not-- -lt's scary out here." "Oh, God." "God... I'm so sorry." "So sorry." "Roy." "Are you...." "That's it." "What's up?" "Do you need me?" "No, I'm not!" "I fooled you, Ethel!" "I knew who you were all along." "I can't believe you fell for that Ma stuff." "I just wanted to see if I could finally... make Ethel Rosenberg sing!" "I win!" "Fuck." "Next time around... I don't wanna be a man." "I wanna be an octopus." "Remember that, okay?" "She's on her way." "Turn the lights back on!" "Turn the lights back on!" "I have returned, Prophet... and not according to plan!" "Take it back!" "The book, whatever you left with me, I won't be its repository. I reject it." "You gotta help me out here!" "Help me!" "This is a dream." "I don't think that's really the point at this particular moment." "I don't know what to do." "It was your idea. "Reject the vision," you said." "I thought it was going to be more of a metaphorical...." "You said scriptural precedent." "What am I supposed to do?" "Wrestle her!" "Say, what?" "It's an angel!" "You just grab hold of her... and say...." "What was it?" "Wait." "Yes." "You grab a hold of her and you say..." ""l will not let thee go except thou bless me."" "Then you wrestle her until she gives in." "You wrestle her." "I don't know how to wrestle." "I will not let thee go except thou bless me!" "Take back your book!" "Free me!" "Unfetter me!" "Bless me or whatever, but I will be let go." "I am the continental principality of America!" "I am a bird of prey!" "I will not be compelled!" "Entrance has been gained." "Return the text to Heaven." "Can I come back?" "I don't wanna go unless...." "You have prevailed, Prophet." "You choose." "Now release me." "I have torn a muscle in my thigh." "Big deal." "My leg's been hurting for months." "What?" "You've got no business with me." "I didn't call you." "You are his fever dream." "Not mine." "He's gone now... so you should go, too." "I'm going to wake up now." "Right now." "The body is the garden of the soul." "Greetings, Prophet." "We have been waiting for you." "Hurry." "Oh, my God." "This is too weird for words. lt's Roy Cohn." "It's so creepy here. I hate hospitals." "Stop whining." "We have to move fast." "I'm supposed to call the duty nurse if his condition changes." "It's changed." "Take off those glasses." "You look ridiculous." "What happened to you?" "Expiation for my sins." "What am I doing here?" "Expiation for your sins." "I can't take this stuff out myself." "I have to tell them he's dead and fill out forms." "I don't want them confiscating the medicine." "It's AZT." "Nearly 60 bottles left." "I needed a pack mule, so I called you." "Why me?" "You hate me." "I needed a Jew." "You were the first to come to mind." "What do you mean?" "We're gonna thank him." "For the pills." "Thank him?" "What do you call the Jewish prayer for the dead?" "A Kaddish." "That's the one." "Hit it." "Do it." "I'm not saying Kaddish for him." "The drugs, okay, fine, sure." "But no fucking way am I praying for him." "My New Deal pinko parents in Schenectady would never forgive me." "They're already so disappointed:" ""He's a fag, he's an office temp." ""Now look, he's saying Kaddish for Roy Cohn."" "I can't believe you'd actually pray for him." "Louis, I'd even pray for you." "He was a terrible person." "He died a hard death." "Maybe a queen can forgive her vanquished foe." "It isn't easy. lt doesn't count if it's easy." "It's the hardest thing." "Forgiveness." "Maybe that's where love and justice finally meet." "Peace at least." "Isn't what the Kaddish asks for?" "It's Hebrew or Aramaic or something." "Who knows what it's asking." "I'm 32 years old... and I've never been in a room with a dead body before." "So heavy and small." "I know probably less of the Kaddish than you do." "I'm an intensely secular Jew." "I didn't even bar mitzvah." "Do the best you can." "No, that's the Kiddush, not the...." "l don't know." "This is silly." "Please, I can't." "You son of a bitch." "You son of a bitch." "Thank you, Louis." "You did fine." "Fine?" "What are you talking about fine now?" "It was fucking miraculous." "I saw it. lt was there." "Most august fellow principalities, angels most high... I regret my absence at this session." "I was detained." "This is...." "The Prophet." "Yes." "We're working." "We're making progress." "I wanna return this." "What's the matter with it?" "lt just...." "We can't just stop." "We're not rocks." "Progress, migration, motion is modernity." "It's animate." "It's what living things do." "We desire." "Even if all we desire is stillness, it's still desire." "For, even if we go faster than we should... we can't wait, and wait for what?" "God...." "He isn't coming back." "Even if he did, if he ever did come back... if he ever dared to show his face or whatever in the garden again... if after all this destruction... if after all the terrible days of this terrible century... he returned to see how much suffering his abandonment has created... if all he has to offer is death... you should sue the bastard." "That's my only contribution to all this theology." "Sue the bastard for walking out." "How dare he!" "Thus spake the Prophet." "So thank you for sharing this with me, but I don't want to keep it." "He wants to live." "Yes!" "I'm 30 years old, for God's sake." "I haven't done anything yet." "I wanna be healthy again." "And this plague, it should stop in me and everywhere." "Make it go away." "We have tried." "We suffer with you... but we don't know." "We do not know how." "This is the tome of immobility... of respite." "Stay in heaven, don't return to life." "Suffer no more." "You choose." "I can't." "I still want my blessing." "Even sick, I wanna be alive." "You only think you do." "Life is a habit with you." "You have not seen what is to come." "We have." "What will the grim unfolding of these latter days bring... that you or any being should wish to endure them?" "Death... more plenteous than all heaven has tears to mourn it." "The slow dissolving of the great design." "The spiraling apart of the work of eternity." "The world and its beautiful particle logic... all collapsed, all dead... forever." "We are failing." "The earth and the angels." "Who asks of the Order's blessing with Apocalypse descending?" "Who demands more life... when death like a protector blinds our eyes... shielding from tender nerve more horror than can be borne?" "Let any being on whom Fortune smiles creep away to death... before that last, dreadful daybreak... when all your ravaging returns to you." "And morning blisters crimson and bears all life away." "A tidal wave of protean fire... that curls around the planet and bares the earth... clean as bone." "But still... bless me anyway. I want more life." "I can't help myself." "I do." "I've lived through such terrible times... and there are people who live through much worse." "But you see them living anyway." "When they're more spirit than body... more sores than skin... when they're burned and in agony... when flies lay eggs in the corners of the eyes of their children... they live." "Death usually has to take life away." "I don't know if that's just the animal." "I don't know if it's not braver to die, but I recognize the habit." "The addiction to being alive." "So we live past hope." "If I can find hope anywhere, that's it, that's the best I can do." "It's so much not enough." "It's so inadequate." "But still... bless me anyway." "I want more life." "And if He returns, take Him to court." "He walked out on us." "He ought to pay." "I'm exhausted." "You've been working hard." "l feel terrible." "We were worried we'd lost you." "Welcome back to the world." "From where?" "Well, look at this." "It's the dawn of man." "Venus rising from the sea." "l'm wet." "Fever broke." "That's a good sign." "Mrs." "Pitt." "The little girl's room." "Where did you find her?" "We found each other." "I've had a remarkable dream." "And you were there and you... and you." "I what?" "Some of it was terrible and some of it was wonderful." "But all the same, I kept saying I wanna go home." "And they sent me home." "What are you talking about?" "Thank you." "l just sat in a chair." "She saved my life." "Did no such thing. I slept in the chair." "Being in the hospital upsets me, reminds me of things." "I have to go now." "I had the most peculiar dream." "Can I come in?" "I have to start rounds." "You are one of the lucky ones." "I could give you a rose." "You rest your weary bones." "What happened to you?" "Visible scars." "Louis, you're so goddamn literal about everything." "l'm going now." "You'll come back?" "If I can...." "l have things I have to take care of." "Please do. I have always depended on the kindness of strangers." "That's a stupid thing to do." "Who's she?" "You really don't want to know." "Before I depart... a homecoming gift." "What, I can't read the label." "My eyes aren't any better." "AZT, where on earth?" "These are hot pills. I am shocked." "Contribution to the Get Well Fund from a bad fairy." "These pills, they make you better." "They're poison, they make you anemic." "This is my life from now on, Louis." "I'm not getting better." "I'm not sure I'm ready to do that to my bone marrow." "We can talk about it tomorrow." "I am going home to nurse my grudges." "Ta, baby." "Sleep all day." "Ta, Louis." "You sure know how to clear a room." "Prior." "I wanna come back to you." "You could respond." "You could say something." "Just say it's fine or... it's not fine, but sure, what the hell or...." "l really failed you." "Sorry." "Failing in love... isn't the same as not loving." "It doesn't let you off the hook." "It doesn't mean... you're free to not love." "I love you, Louis." "Good." "l love you." "l really do." "But you can't come back." "Not ever." "I'm sorry, but you can't." "I want your credit card." "That's all." "You can keep track of me from where the charges come from... if you wanna keep track." "l have some things to tell you." "We shouldn't talk." "I don't want to do that anymore." "Credit card?" "I don't know what will happen to me without you." "Only you love me... out of everyone in the world." "I've done things, I'm ashamed, but...." "l've changed." "I don't know how yet, but... please... don't leave me now, Harper." "You're my good heart." "Did that hurt?" "Yes?" "Remember that." "Please." "If I can get a job or something, I'll cut the card to pieces and there won't be charges." "Credit card." "Just call or...." "Just call." "You have to." "No, probably never again." "That's how bad." "Sometimes, maybe lost is best." "Get lost, Joe." "Go exploring... with a big glass of water." "You look a fright." "So do you." "l had a horrid night." "So did I." "Where is...." "l'm sure she'll be all right." "What can happen to her in New York City?" "lt's not what I expected... which is the best thing you can say for it." "Shall I make supper tonight?" "Joe?" "I'll try to wait up till you get home." "Night flight to San Francisco." "Chase the moon across America." "God!" "It's been years since I was on a plane." "When we hit 35,000 feet... we'll have reached the tropopause... the great belt of calm air." "As close as I'll ever get to the ozone." "I dreamed we were there." "The plane leapt the tropopause, the safe air... and attained the outer rim, the ozone... which was ragged and torn, patches of it... threadbare as old cheesecloth, and that was frightening." "But I saw something only I could see... because of my astonishing ability to see such things." "Souls were rising... from the earth far below, souls of the dead... of people who'd perished from... famine, from war, from the plague, and they floated up... like skydivers in reverse, limbs all akimbo, wheeling and... spinning." "And the souls of these departed... joined hands, clasped ankles, and formed... a web... a great net of souls." "And the souls were three-atom oxygen molecules... of the stuff of ozone, and the outer rim absorbed them, and was repaired." "Nothing's lost forever." "In this world, there is a kind of... painful progress." "Longing for what we've left behind, and... dreaming ahead." "At least I think that's so." "The Berlin Wall has fallen." "The Ceausescus are out." "He's building democratic socialism, the new internationalism." "Gorbachev is the greatest political thinker since Lenin." "We don't know enough yet to start canonizing him." "The Russians hate his guts." "Happy birthday." "Thomas Jefferson died on his birthday." "You aren't Thomas Jefferson." "l'm related to him." "The Walters are related to everyone." "Only the white meat, darling." "Salute." "Remember four years ago, the whole time we were feeling... everything everywhere was stuck." "While in Russia, perestroika, the thaw." "It's the end of the Cold War." "The whole world's changing overnight." "I wonder what will happen now, though, in places like Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia." "Yugoslavia." "Let's turn the volume down on this, okay?" "They'll be at it for hours." "It's not that what they're saying isn't important, it's just...." "This is my favorite place in New York City, no, in the whole universe... the parts that I've seen, on a day like today." "A sunny winter's day, warm and cold at once." "The sky's a little hazy, so the sunlight has a physical presence, a character." "In autumn, those trees across the lake are yellow... and the sun strikes those most brilliantly... against the blue of the sky." "That sad fall blue, those trees are more light than vegetation." "They're Yankee trees." "New England transplants." "They're barren now." "It's January 1990." "I've been living with aids for five years." "That's six whole months longer than I lived with Louis." "...amount of energy, whatever comes, what you have to admire in Gorbachev... and the Russians is that they are making a leap into the unknown." "You can't wait around for theory." "The sprawl of life... the weird...." "lnterconnectedness." "Yes." "Maybe the sheer size of the terrain." "It's all too much to be encompassed by a single theory now." "The world is faster than the mind." "That's what politics is, the world moving ahead." "And only in politics does the miraculous occur." "But that's a theory." "Yes, but you can't live in the world without an idea of the world." "But it's living that makes the ideas." "You can't wait for a theory, but you have to have a theory." "Go know, as my grandma would say." "This angel, she is my favorite angel." "I like them best when they are statuary." "They commemorate death, but suggest a world without dying." "They're made of the heaviest things on earth, stone and iron." "They weigh tons." "But their wings, they are engines and instruments of flight." "This is the angel Bethesda." "Louis will tell you her story." "She was this angel who landed in the Temple Square in Jerusalem... in the days of the Second Temple." "Right in the middle of a working day, she descended and... her foot touched earth, and where it did, a fountain shot up from the ground." "When the Romans destroyed the temple, the fountain of Bethesda ran dry." "Belize will tell you about the nature of the fountain before its flowing stopped." "If anyone who was suffering in... the body or the spirit... walked through the waters of the fountain of Bethesda... they would be healed... washed clean of pain." "They know this 'cause I've told them many times." "Hannah here told it to me." "She also told me this:" "When the Millennium comes...." "Not the year 2000 but..." "the capital-M Millennium." "Right." "The Bethesda fountain will flow again." "And I told him that I would personally take him there to bathe." "We will all bathe ourselves clean." "Not literally in Jerusalem." "We don't want this to have Zionist implications." "But we do recognize the right of the State of Israel to exist." "But the West Bank should be homeland to the Palestinians and the Golan Heights...." "Not both the West Bank and the Golan Heights and... no one supports Palestinians more than I do." "You're right." "l'm almost done." "The fountain's not flowing now." "They turn it off in the winter." "Ice in the pipes." "But in the summer... it's a sight to see." "I wanna be around to see it." "I plan to be. I hope to be." "This disease will be the end of many of us, but not nearly all." "And the dead will be commemorated... and will struggle on with the living... and we're not going away." "We won't die secret deaths anymore." "The world only spins forward." "We will be citizens." "The time has come." "Bye now." "You are fabulous, each and every one." "I bless you." "More life." "The great work begins." "And don't, please, start another political discussion." "That is not walking." "l know." "We can agree about walking."