Angels in America s01e05 Episode Script

Welcome to the mormon visitor's center diorama room.
We're happy to receive you and we hope you will benefit from what you are about to see.
Sit back, relax.
In just a moment our show will begin.
Please 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 the thing, make him talk, you'll see.
It's an incredible resemblance.
You 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 the joke of course.
They drag you on your knees through hell and then when you get there the water is undrinkable.
Salt! Promised land, alright, but what a disappointing promise.
Harper, you have got to can I ask you a question? What? It's something that's always bothered me.
Everyone thinks the angel's name was mormon.
No.
The name of the angel I know, I went to Sunday school.
Moroni.
Right.
The angel moroni.
Right.
So why don't we call ourselves morons? You should leave.
It's a visitor's center, I'm visiting.
For serious visitors, it'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.
It's a garbage scow.
They don't have any lines, the sister and the mother dummy.
And only his face moves.
It's not really fair.
Day after day 'til Well, 'til what? You sound just like him.
You even grind your teeth in your sleep like him.
If I could get him to come back, I would go back to salt lake tomorrow.
You can't go back to salt lake.
You sold your house.
I know my duty when I see it my mother-in-law, she sold her house.
Her son calls, 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, guess we disproved that theory, you know.
I'm not sure this is the best place for you.
I'd leave, you know, but I always wind up back here.
Or at some place just like this.
Alone in the dark, waiting for the dummy.
So you'll just sit here.
Yep.
Stuck! Yep.
Til? His wife, his mute wife.
I'm waiting for her to speak.
Bet her story is not so jolly.
The winter Atlantic, wow, huh? Ferocious.
It's freezing, what are we 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, or the St.
mark's baths.
Hardy pioneers.
Like your ancestors.
Not exactly.
Ah, and many have perished on the trail.
I fucked around a lot more than he did.
No justice.
Remember when you can get to places and see what it used to be.
The whole country was like this once.
A paradise.
Ruined now.
No, it's 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, uh, with you.
Married, probably bisexual, mormon, republican closet-case.
I mean, I really like you a lot, but So, the fruity underwear you wear, the Temple garment.
Oh, my God.
What's it for? Protection.
A second skin.
I can stop wearing it if how can you stop wearing it if it's a skin? Your past, your beliefs.
And in bed you're so sweet and I don't see how you believe the stuff you do.
I don't wanna fight now, stop attacking me, Louis.
Yeah, but, I mean, you make no sense.
The republican party? The republican party is I mean I 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 me to demonize where would he be? Upper right-hand square on the Hollywood squares.
I'm not your enemy, Louis.
I never said you were my enemy.
Can't you be, I don't know, happy? No one is happy.
You, you You believe the world is perfectible.
No, I yes, you do, and so you find it unsatisfying.
You have to reconcile yourself to the world's Unperfectability.
And 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, it 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.
And I consider you very brave.
Nobody does what I did, Joe, nobody.
Maybe many want to.
Hey, hear what I'm saying.
Free from politics.
You are in yourself a good, good man.
And I admire you, I believe in you, I do.
I know you do.
You seem to be able to live with what you've done.
You abandoned your wife and you're not all torn up and guilty about it either, you You've blossomed, and that's terrible.
But you're not a terrible person.
You're a decent, caring man and it's just not possible, but looking at you, it seems to be.
You do seem free.
Yes.
I am.
And happy.
And at night you sleep peacefully.
You don't have these terrible, terrible, awful, horrible dreams.
No, I never have any dreams at all.
Oh, you're Oh, you're, Louis.
Louis, I I'm just stressed.
No dreams at all.
Well, that would be amazing.
I really think I love you.
I wanna see prior again.
You, uh, wanna go back to I just need to see him again.
I miss him, don't you must wanna see your wife? Well, I want more to be with I have to see him.
It's been a month, I'm worried, I just Oh please don't look so sad.
Do you understand what do you wanna see me anymore? No, I, I Louis, anything.
What? Anything, whatever you want.
I can give up anything, my skin.
What are you doing? Do uh Oh, come on.
It's freezing! Someone will see us.
D-d it's not a nude beach! I'm flayed.
No past now, I could give up anything.
Maybe in what we've been doing, maybe I'm even infected! No! I don't wanna be, I wanna live now! I can be anything I need to be, and I wanna be with you! God God.
Y-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, and sometimes self-interested is the is the most generous thing you can be.
You oughtta think about that.
I will Think about it.
You oughtta oughtta think about what you're doing to me.
I'm, 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.
Oh, wow.
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've 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 and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists.
He pulls and pulls, 'til all your innards are yanked out.
And the pain Can't even talk about that.
And then he stuffs 'em back.
Dirty, tangled Torn.
It's up to you to do the stitching.
And get up And walk around.
Just mangled guts pretending.
Yeah.
That's how people change.
Prior? Prior, it's Lou.
I wanna see you.
It's five A.
M.
You ought to change that shirt, it's startin' to smell.
You're tellin' 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.
And 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 I'm not like you.
Strange things happen to me all the time, mother pitt.
Maybe I'm a witch.
Oh, you're not a witch.
I could be a witch, why not? I married a fairy.
Anything can happen.
Any awful thing.
Oh, 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.
Oh, it gave me no end of nightmares and an implacable hatred of winter.
Oh, 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 and those guys.
But if you wanna 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 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 want to see me.
If you'd forgive me for letting you down.
Forgiveness.
You seen a lady around here? Dumpy lady with a Stupid hat? She oh, boy.
Oh, boy.
No, she's off watchin' the hearings.
Treacherous bitch.
Who? You, uh Did you get a blessing from your father before he died? A blessing? Yeah.
No.
Oh, you should've done that.
Life, that's what they're supposed to bless.
Life.
Roy, I-I need to talk to you about shush, schmendrick.
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.
Wha Jacob's father, what was the guy's name? Isaac.
Yeah, the sacrifice.
That jerk.
My mother used to read me those stories.
See this scar on my nose? When I was three 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.
Look, don't waste energy beating up on me, okay? I'm already takin' care of that.
I don't see any bruises.
Inside.
You are one noble guy, inside.
Don't flatter yourself, Louis.
So, it's your tea party, talk.
It's good to see you again, I missed you.
Talk.
I wanna try to make up.
Make up? Yes, but 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, but it isn't.
But, I-I'm trying to be responsible.
Prior, 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.
And I think maybe Just too much of a victim, finally.
Passive, dependent.
And 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.
Oh.
No, you didn't.
I can't Move in again, start all over again.
I moved.
I don't think it'd be any different.
You're seeing someone else.
What? No.
You are.
I'm not.
Well occasionally, I he's a Just a pick up God 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.
Oh, prior, I haven't seen him for days now I'm going, I have limits, too.
I You cry You endanger nothing in yourself.
It's like the idea of crying when you do it.
Or the idea of love.
Attention, attention.
Visiting hours are now over.
Visiting hours are now over.
Now you have to go.
I left my wife.
I needed to tell you.
Oh.
Too late.
It happens.
I've been staying with someone else for a whole month now.
It happens.
How can I say this, uh With a, uh Man.
I'm with a A man? Yes.
You're with a man? Yes, I I gotta What, the, uh, bathroom, or Ah! What? No, no, no, no, no, no, Roy.
Roy, what are you doing? No, Roy! Oh, no, no, no, hold on.
Um, wait, uh, keep your hand up.
Oh, my God, um Um, help please.
He, uh, he pulled the, uh Oh, holy shit.
Get the fuck away from me.
No, no, no, Roy.
Roy, please, please just get back in your room! Shut up! You listen to me.
Get your ass shut up, I said! Now you listen carefully.
I want you home with your wife.
Whatever else you got going, cut it dead.
No, I can't, Roy, I need to be with 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! Get somewhere you can take off that shirt and throw it out and don't touch the blood.
Well, I why? I don't understand Out, out! I already gave you my blessing! What more do you want from me?! Get the fuck outta here.
Alright, Roy, please, I! What, you wanna stay and watch this? No.
Well, fuck you, too! So, your new lover He's not my lover.
Tell me where you met him.
In the park.
Well, first at work.
He's a lawyer or a judge? Lawyer.
A gay lawyer.
Yes.
Republican, too.
A gay republican lawyer, Louis But he's sort of, I I don't know if the word would be Well, in a way, sensitive.
Ah, sensitive gay republican.
He's just company.
Companionship.
Companionship.
Hmm.
You know, just when I think he couldn't possibly say anything to make it worse, he does.
Companionship.
How good.
How good.
I wouldn't want you to be lonely.
There are thousands of gay men in New York City with aids, and nearly everyone of them is being taken care of by a friend, or by a lover who has stuck by them through things worse than my So far.
Everyone got that, 'cept me.
I got you.
Why? What's wrong with me? Louis, are you really bruised inside? I can't have this talk any oh, the list 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, Louis, I wanna see blood.
'Cause I can't believe you even have blood in your veins, 'til 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 arriaga.
Belize to my friends, but you can call me Norman arriaga.
Tell me something, Norman, you ever hire a lawyer? No, Roy, I 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.
God! Shh Oh, look who's back.
Who? Nobody with me now But the dead.
Hi, chief justice Wilson's office, please.
Thank you very much.
Clerk Joe pitt.
Yeah, it's his office.
This is stupid.
Go home if you're chicken.
You're the one who should be home.
I have a hobby now haunting people.
Fuck home.
Wait here, I wanna meet my replacement.
Oh, oh, God.
Yes, can I What? Do you need something? No, no.
Could you I'm a prophet.
Prophet! Prophet! What? I prophecy, I have sight, I see! What do you do? I'm a clerk.
Oh big deal, a clerk?! You, what, you file things? You better be keepin' 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.
Oooh.
I wanna see.
Sacred heart of Jesus.
What is what, you're Roy's nurse, I recognize you, you're no, you don't.
No, you're from the hospital, you're Roy cohn's nurse.
No, I'm not, not a nur nurse, uh, we all look alike to you.
You all look alike to us, it's a mad, mad world.
Home on the range.
Chaps and spurs.
Now, girl, we gotta get you home and mega-butch, he made me feel beyond Nelly.
Like little 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.
Not his nurse, I'm not we're here 'cause my will is being contested.
What's that called when they challenge your will? Competency? But this is an appellate court.
And I'm appealing to anyone! Anyone in the universe who will listen to me for some charity.
Some people are so greedy, such pigs, they have everything.
Health, everything.
Still they want more.
Look, you you said something about my friend and Look, is this about Louis? Is he, uh Is he what, sad, hot, happy? Talk to him yourself, bullwinkle! What do I look like, a marriage counselor? Oh, nursey dear, fetch the medication, I'm starting to rave.
Pardons, monsieur l'avocat, nous sommes absolument desole.
Behave yourself, cherie, or nanny will have to use the wooden spoon.
Ah! Nice angel.
What angel? Bethesda.
What's she commemorate, Louis? I'll bet you know.
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 Well, not himself, he seemed Crazy? Is he having is he delusional, or Well, with a little help from his friends.
Listen, this guy I'm seeing, I'm not seeing him now.
Prior misunderstood, he jumped to oh yeah, your new beau.
Prior and me went to the courthouse.
Scoped him out.
You had no right to do that.
Oh, did we violate your rights? What'd you call me down here for, Louis? 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, but this I am not out on the town, I want you to tell prior sharing your dank and dirty bed with Roy cohn's buttboy.
Come again? Doesn't that bother you at all? Roy cohn? What the fuck are you I'm not sharing my bed with Roy your little friend didn't tell you, huh? Joe pitt is not Roy cohn's Joe's a very moral man.
He's not even that conservative.
Or, well not that kind of a conserv and I don't wanna continue this.
B'bye.
It's not my fault that prior left you for me.
I beg your pardon? You have always hated me 'cause you are in love with prior, and you were when I met him and he fell in love with me.
And so now you cook up this I mean How do you know this? That Joe and Roy cohn Well, I don't know whether Mr.
cohn has penetrated more than his spiritual sphincter.
All I'm saying is, you better hope there's no g.
O.
P.
Germ, Louis, 'cause if there is, you got it.
I don't believe you.
Not Roy cohn! He's like The polestar of human evil! He's like the worst human being who ever lived! He's not human even! Give me credit for something, please? I'm horribly, horribly unhappy.
I'm lost.
I hate myself.
So totally, so fucking totally and completely, but still I wouldn't I wouldn't go around sleeping with some someone who's Roy cohn's Buttboy.
Ugh! I'm so fucking wet and miserable! I want everything to go back.
I want everything to go back the way it was.
Well, wouldn't that be convenient and all.
You know what your problem is, Louis? 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? Well, 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.
I 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.
I hate America, Louis, 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 knew what he was doing.
He set the word "free" to a note so high nobody could reach it.
That was deliberate.
Nothin' on earth sounds less like freedom to me.
You come with me to room 1013 over at the hospital, Louis, I'll show you America.
Terminal, crazy and mean.
I live in America, Louis.
I don't have to love it.
You do that.
Everybody's gotta love somethin'.
Everybody does.
A mormon? He's a mormon? How is she? Nothin' surprising.
Thank you, ma'am.
Is she okay? Well, that would be surprising, wouldn't it? I couldn't go home, ma, to see her.
I'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.
Oh, don't be a fat head.
I'm not.
Oh-ho, in 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.
Well, you made that clear as day.
For a month now.
Can't even return a simple phone call.
A phone call from you is not so simple.
Just so I'd have somethin' to tell her.
This insanity.
Your wife left like a loony in a room full of mannequins, and you living on some rainy rooftop for all I know.
I call you at work just so I can have somethin' to say to her.
You can't talk on the phone, and you won't call me back.
Like I'm poison.
And you call that, what do you call it? Vitality? It'd be pathetic if it weren't so ugly.
It's cruel.
Not intended to be.
You sure about that? I'm taking her home.
You think that's best for her? Do you think that she can I know what I'm doing! I 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.
Oh, yeah, just being a man doesn't being a woman is harder.
Look at her.
It's a big deal, ma, botching up.
I could use some I migrated across the breadth of the continent of north America, I ran all this way to get away from Is she She's not here.
But she's not at the apartment, I Then she escaped.
Good for her.
Ask yourself, what it was you were runnin' from.
It's about time you did.
Not from me.
I was nothin'.
But from what? And what are you runnin' from now? You have a responsibility to your wife.
You cannot wish it away.
I want to I don't know anymore what I want.
What you want, what you want.
Well, 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.
Oh, 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, ma.
You should never have come.
I can't imagine why you did! That man who was just here? We're closed.
Go away.
Is he your son? You know him, that man? How do you know My ex-boyfriend, he knows him now.
I wanted to warn your son about later when his hair goes, and there's hips and jowls and all that human stuff.
That poor slob there is just gonna wind up miserable, fat, frightened and alone.
'Cause Louis, he can't handle bodies.
Are you a h-homosexual? Oh, is it that obvious? Yes, I am.
What's it to you? Would you say you are a typical homosexual? Me? Oh, I'm stereotypical.
What, you mean like am I a hairdresser or Are you a hairdresser? It would be your lucky day if I was, 'cause frankly I'm sick, I'm sick.
It's expensive.
Shit.
Now I won't be able to stop, now it's started.
I feel really terrible.
Do I have a fever? Do I have a fever?! Oh, yes.
How high? Oh, it's, uh Maybe there's a thermometer somewhere.
It's very high, very high.
Could you get me to a cab to I think I'm Don't be alarmed, it's worse than it looks.
I mean You should, get can you stand? No, let me see if there's anyone back here Shh-shh-shh.
Echo-breath, it's I overdid it, I'm in trouble again.
Take me to St.
Vincent's hospital, take me to I mean, help me to a cab, to the Here, here.
Can you stand? No, don't, just call me a c it's alright, I'm useless here.
That's it.
Ah.
Please, if you're trying to convert me, this isn't a good time.
Ohh.
Look at it out there, pitch black.
We'd better move.
Are you alright? 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.
It's starting to rain, where are your shoes? I 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 is 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.
Harper Joe.
Did you miss me? I've come back.
Oh, I know.
Here's why I wanted to stay in Brooklyn.
The view.
Water won't ever accomplish the end no matter how much you cry.
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 tellin' you, hand to my heart, the greatest movie ever made.
There's this fabulous chick who's called "she who must be obeyed", and she lives on this hill with excuse me.
Uh I beg your pardon.
I gotta get outta here.
I gotta get outta here.
I know, I know, but first we have to make you better.
Ohh What? Hmm? Oh, the bogeyman is here.
Lookit, ma, a schwarze toytenmann.
Come in, sweetheart.
What took you so long? You're flying, Roy, it's morphine.
They put morphine in the drip.
Ohh 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? Uh, no, it's not okay.
You're stoned, Roy.
Dark strong arms, take me like that.
Deep and sincere but not too rough, just open me up to the end of me.
Who am I, Roy? Ah, the negro night nurse.
My negation.
Come to escort me to the underworld.
Come on.
You want me, Roy? You want me to take you away? Oh, God, I'm ready.
I'll be comin' for ya 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.
Hmm? Hell or heaven? Like San Francisco.
A city.
Good.
I was worried it'd be a garden.
I hate that shit.
Mm, big city.
Overgrown with weeds, but flowering weeds.
On every corner A wrecking crew and something new and crooked going up cattycorner 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 cowspit streamers in the wind, and voting booths.
And everyone in balenciaga gowns with red corsages, and big dance palaces full of music and lights and racial impurity and gender confusion.
And all the deities Are creole, mulatto, brown as the mouths of rivers.
Race, taste and history finally overcome.
And you ain't there.
And heaven? That was heaven, Roy.
The fuck it was.
Who are you? Your negation.
Oh, I know you.
You're nothing.
Stom stomach grumble wakes you in the night.
Been nice talkin' to you.
Go to sleep now, baby.
I'm just the shadow on your grave.
Why do you keep your eyes closed? I don't.
You always do.
No.
You can say why, I already know the answer.
Then why do I have to You imagine things? Imagine men? Yes.
Imagining, just like me.
'Cept 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.
Oh, oh, back in Brooklyn, back with Joe.
I'm going out.
I have to get some stuff I left behind.
Look at me.
Look at me.
Look at me! Here, look here at me! What?! What do you see? What do I what do you see? Nothing, I nothing.
I see nothing.
Thank you.
For what? Finally The truth.
I'm going out.
Just out.
Goodbye.