Angels in America
By Tony KushnerJoe is a sensitive Republican Mormon lawyer, who is also a married closet homosexual. It's complicated. Here, he is talking to Harper, his wife, who has recently become convinced that he is gay.
JOE:
I think we ought to pray. Ask God for help. Ask him together. Stop it! Stop it! I'm warning you!
Does it make any difference? That I might be one deep within, no matter how wrong or ugly that thing is, so long as I have fought, with everything I have, to kill it? What do you want from me? What do you want from me, Harper? More than that? For God's sake, there's nothing left, I'm a shell. There's nothing left to kill.
As long as my behavior is what I know it has to be. Decent. Correct. That alone in the eyes of God.
All I will say is that I am a very good man who has worked very hard to become good and you want to destroy that. You want to destroy me, but I am not going to let you do that.
A little later. Joe is still talking to Harper.
JOE:
Please don't. Stay. We can fix it. I pray for that. This is my fault, but I can't correct it. You have to try too...
I pray... I pray for God to crush me, break me up into little pieces and start all over again.
I had a book of Bible stories when I was a kid. There was a picture I'd look at twenty times a day: Jacob wrestles with the angel. I don't really remember the story, or why the wrestling - just the picture. Jacob is young and very strong. The angel is... a beautiful man, with golden hair and wings, of course... I still dream about it. Many nights. I'm... It's me. In that struggle. Fierce and unfair. The angel is not human, and it holds nothing back, and so how could anyone human win, what kind of fight is that? It's not just. Losing means your soul thrown down in the dust, your heart torn out from God's. But you can't not lose.
I'm not going to leave you, Harper.
In this monologue, Joe is talking to Roy, about Harper.
JOE:
The pills were something she started when she miscarried or... no, she took some before that. She had a really bad time at home, when she was a kid, her home was really bad. I think a lot of drinking and physical stuff. She doesn't talk about that, instead she talks about... the sky falling down, people with knives hiding under sofas. Monsters. Mormons. Everyone thinks Mormons don't come from homes like that, we aren't supposed to behave that way, but we do. It's not lying, or being two-faced. Everyone tries to live up to God's strictures... The failure to measure up hits people very hard. From such a strong desire to be good they feel very far from goodness when they fail. What scares me is that maybe what I really love in her is the part of her that's farthest from the light, from God's love, maybe I was drawn to that in the first place. And I'm keeping it alive because I need it.
There are things...I don't know how well we know ourselves. I mean, what if? I know I married her because she...because I loved that she was always wrong, always doing something wrong, like one step out of step. In Salt Lake City that stands out. I never stood out, on the outside, but inside, it was harder...
Later. Joe, who works in the Courts, sits outside eating three hot dogs, drinking Pepto-Bismol and Coke. JOE:
Um... Yesterday was Sunday... but I've been a little unfocused recently, and I thought it was Monday. So I came here like I was going to work. And the whole place was empty. And at first I couldn't figure out why, and I had this moment of incredible... fear and also... It just flashed through my mind: The whole Hall of Justice, it's empty, it's deserted, it's gone out of business. Forever. The people that make it run have up and abandoned it. I felt that I was going to scream. Not because it was creepy, but because the emptiness felt so fast. And well... good... A happy scream. I just wondered what a thing it would be... if overnight everything you owe anything to...justice, or love, had really gone away. Free. It would be... heartless terror. Yes. Terrible and... Very great. To shed your skin, every old skin, one by one and then walk unencumbered into the morning. (Little pause. He looks at the building.) I can't go in there today.
Talking to Louis, who has recently left his boyfriend, Prior, after Prior was diagnosed with AIDS.
JOE:
You don't want to see me anymore.
Louis. Anything. Whatever you want. I can give up anything. My skin. I'm flayed. No past now. I could give up anything. Maybe... in what we've been doing, maybe I'm even infected. I don't want to be. I want to live now. And I can be anything I need to be. And I want to be with you.
You have a good heart and you think 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 softness and weakness visit on people. Sometimes self-interested is the most generous thing you can be.
You ought to think about that... 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.
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