Read The Normal Heart and The Destiny of Me: Two Plays for Free Online Page B

what you think. Is that true? I can’t find any gay leaders. I tried calling several gay organizations. No one ever calls me back. Is anyone out there?
    NED: There aren’t any organizations strong enough to be useful, no. Dr. Brookner, nobody with a brain gets involved in gay politics. It’s filled with the great unwashed radicals of any counterculture. That’s why there aren’t any leaders the majority will follow. Anyway, you’re talking to the wrong person. What I think is politically incorrect.
    EMMA: Why?
    NED: Gay is good to that crowd, no matter what. There’s no room for criticism, looking at ourselves critically.
    EMMA: What’s your main criticism?
    NED: I hate how we play victim, when many of us, most of us, don’t have to.
    EMMA: Then you’re exactly what’s needed now.
    NED: Nobody ever listens. We’re not exactly a bunch that knows how to play follow the leader.
    EMMA: Maybe they’re just waiting for somebody to lead them.
    NED: We are. What group isn’t?
    EMMA: You can get dressed. I can’t find what I’m looking for.
    NED: (
Jumping down and starting to dress.
) Needed? Needed for what? What is it exactly you’re trying to get me to do?
    EMMA: Tell gay men to stop having sex.
    NED: What?
    EMMA: Someone has to. Why not you?
    NED: It is a preposterous request.
    EMMA: It only sounds harsh. Wait a few more years, it won’t sound so harsh.
    NED: Do you realize that you are talking about millions of men who have singled out promiscuity to be their principal political agenda, the one they’d die before abandoning. How do you deal with that?
    EMMA: Tell them they may die.
    NED: You tell them!
    EMMA: Are you saying you guys can’t relate to each other in a nonsexual way?
    NED: It’s more complicated than that. For a lot of guys it’s not easy to meet each other in any other way. It’s a way of connecting—which becomes an addiction. And then they’re caughtin the web of peer pressure to perform and perform. Are you sure this is spread by having sex?
    EMMA: Long before we isolated the hepatitis viruses we knew about the diseases they caused and had a good idea of how they got around. I think I’m right about this. I am seeing more cases each week than the week before. I figure that by the end of the year the number will be doubling every six months. That’s something over a thousand cases by next June. Half of them will be dead. Your two friends I’ve just diagnosed? One of them will be dead. Maybe both of them.
    NED: And you want me to tell every gay man in New York to stop having sex?
    EMMA: Who said anything about just New York?
    NED: You want me to tell every gay man across the country—
    EMMA: Across the world! That’s the only way this disease will stop spreading.
    NED: Dr. Brookner, isn’t that just a tiny bit unrealistic?
    EMMA: Mr. Weeks, if having sex can kill you, doesn’t anybody with half a brain stop fucking? But perhaps you’ve never lost anything. Good-bye.
    BRUCE: (
Calling from off.
) Where do I go? Where do I go?
    ( BRUCE NILES ,
an exceptionally handsome man in his late thirties, rushes in carrying
CRAIG ,
helped by
MICKEY. )
    EMMA: Quickly—put him on the table. What happened?
    BRUCE: He was coming out of the building and he started running to me and then he . . . then he collapsed to the ground.
    EMMA: What is going on inside your bodies!
    ( CRAIG
starts to convulse.
BRUCE, MICKEY ,
and
NED
restrain him.
)
    EMMA: Gently. Hold on to his chin.
    (
She takes a tongue depressor and holds
CRAIG
’s tongue flat; she checks the pulse in his neck; she looks into his eyes for vital signs that he is coming around;
CRAIG’S
convulsions stop.
)
    You the lover?
    BRUCE: Yes.
    EMMA: What’s your name?
    BRUCE: Bruce Niles, ma’am.
    EMMA: How’s your health?
    BRUCE: Fine. Why—is it contagious?
    EMMA: I think so.
    MICKEY: Then why haven’t you come down with it?
    EMMA: (
Moving toward a telephone.
) Because it seems to have a very long incubation period and require close