Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes: Revised and Complete Edition Read Online Free PDF Page B

anything that wasn’t there to start with, that didn’t enter it from experience, from the real world. Imagination can’t create anything new,can it? It only recycles bits and pieces from the world and reassembles them into visions . . . Am I making sense right now?
    PRIOR : Given the circumstances, yes.
    HARPER : So when we think we’ve escaped the unbearable ordinariness and, well, untruthfulness of our lives, it’s really only the same old ordinariness and falseness rearranged into the appearance of novelty and truth. Nothing unknown is knowable. Don’t you think it’s depressing?
    PRIOR : The limitations of the imagination?
    HARPER : Yes.
    PRIOR : It’s something you learn after your second theme party: It’s All Been Done Before.
    HARPER : The world. Finite. Terribly, terribly . . . Well . . . This is the most depressing hallucination I’ve ever had.
    PRIOR : Apologies. I do try to be amusing.
    HARPER : Oh, well, don’t apologize, you . . . I can’t expect someone who’s really sick to entertain me.
    PRIOR : How on earth did you know . . .?
    HARPER : Oh that happens. This is the very threshold of revelation sometimes. You can see things . . . how sick you are. Do you see anything about me?
    PRIOR : Yes.
    HARPER : What?
    PRIOR : You are amazingly unhappy.
    HARPER : Oh big deal. You meet a Valium addict and you figure out she’s unhappy. That doesn’t count. Of course I . . . Something else. Something surprising.
    PRIOR : Something surprising.
    HARPER : Yes.
    PRIOR : Your husband’s a homo.
    (Pause.)
    HARPER : Oh, ridiculous.
          (Pause, then very quietly:)
          Really?
    PRIOR (Shrugs) : Threshold of revelation.
    HARPER : Well I don’t like your revelations. I don’t think you intuit well at all. Joe’s a very normal man, he . . .
          Oh God. Oh God. He . . . Do homos take, like, lots of long walks?
    PRIOR (A beat, then) : Yes. We do. In stretch pants with lavender coifs. I just looked at you, and there was . . .
    HARPER : A sort of blue streak of recognition.
    PRIOR : Yes.
    HARPER : Like you knew me incredibly well.
    PRIOR : Yes.
    HARPER : Yes.
          I have to go now, get back, something just . . . fell apart.
          Oh God, I feel so sad . . .
    PRIOR : I . . . I’m sorry. I usually say, “Fuck the truth,” but mostly, the truth fucks you.
    HARPER : I see something else about you.
    PRIOR : Oh?
    HARPER : Deep inside you, there’s a part of you, the most inner part, entirely free of disease. I can see that.
    PRIOR : Is that— That isn’t true.
    HARPER : Threshold of revelation.
          Home . . .
    (She vanishes. Prior’s startled. Then he feels very alone.)
    PRIOR : People come and go so quickly here . . .
          I don’t think there’s any uninfected part of me. My heart is pumping polluted blood. I feel dirty.
    (He starts to wipe off his makeup; suddenly, he smears it furiously around .
          A large gray feather falls from above. Prior stops smearing the makeup and looks at the feather. He goes to it and picks it up.)
    A VOICE (It is an incredibly beautiful voice) : Look up!
    PRIOR (Looking up, not seeing anyone) : Hello?
    A VOICE : Look up!
    PRIOR : Who is that?
    A VOICE : Prepare the way!
    PRIOR : I don’t see any—
    (There is a dramatic change in lighting, from above.)
    A VOICE : Look up, look up,
          prepare the way
          the infinite descent
          A breath in air
          floating down
          Glory to . . .
    (Silence.)
    PRIOR : Hello? Is that it? Helloooo!
          (Very frightened) What the fuck? . . . (He holds himself)
          Poor me. Poor poor me. Why me? Why poor poor me?
          Oh I don’t feel good right now. I really don’t.
    Scene 8
    That night. Split scene: Prior and Louis in their bed. Louis reading, Prior cuddled next to him. Harper in Brooklyn, alone. Joe enters .
    HARPER : Where were you?
    JOE : Out.
    HARPER : Where?
    JOE : Just out. Thinking.
    HARPER : It’s late.
    JOE : I had a