Finished: Angels In America, Part One: Millennium Approaches (Kushner). Pulitzer Prize winning, Tony Award winning play about AIDS, homosexuality, and politics in New York in 1985. Wow. I've had this play on my list to read ever since I started my list over a year ago. I think I've been mentally putting it off because I knew it dealt with AIDS and it's so hard for me to read books and/or plays that I know will get very emotional, when I know that my brother lived through this horrific nightmare himself. Well, actually, not lived through, but suffered through until his death. I had no idea that I actually had the book in my home until I was looking through some of my brother's books that I now have. So it hit me...that means David must have read the play, or seen the play and bought the book. And...if he did so, it was long after he already knew he'd been diagnosed as HIV positive. So, I figured if he could be brave enough to read it, much less go through it in reality, then I can certainly be brave enough to read it myself.

Wow, again, what an intense play. I think I feel it so much because I saw parts of my brother's journal where he put his innermost anguish down in pen after finding out he was HIV positive. He was given a literal death sentence back at that time. He then lived his life for six and a half more years with such positivity on the outside, that I never knew until he was gone how scared and tormented he was on the inside. What I wouldn't give for one day to have back with him.

So, Angels in America, Part One is the first part of a two part story. It's an entire play unto itself. It centers around Roy Cohn, the real life NY attorney who prosecuted Ethel Rosenberg for being a spy; Prior Walter, a gay man in a 4 1/2 year relationship, who finds out he has AIDS; Louis Ironson, Prior's lover, who can't handle the idea of the sickness, so leaves Prior as he becomes sicker and sicker; Joe Pitt, a married Morman man who works as a clerk in the NY justice system; and his wife, Harper who's addicted to Valium. And, oh yeah....Joe is a closet homosexual! Joe and Harper are miserable, and Joe finally confesses to her that he's gay. Harper goes on a few pill-induced trips. Roy Cohn tries to get Joe to go to work for one of his buddies in Washington D.C. because he finds out he's going to be disbarred and he wants Joe to do some underhanded covering up for him. And, Roy Cohn also finds out that HE is dying of AIDS, but he makes the doctor call it liver cancer. He, after all, the great and powerful man cannot be seen as a weak homosexual. By the end of the play, he's being visited by a vision of Ethel Rosenberg. Louis and Joe happen to meet and because they are both at loose ends, they have a fling. Meanwhile, Prior is in the hospital having visions of prior Prior's. He also keeps hearing mysterious flapping and trumpeting sounds. He's despondent that Louis has left him, but he has his ex-boyfriend, drag queen, Belize, looking after him. At the end of the play, the Angel or the Messenger, or whatever you call her from God has finally descended into Prior's room.

The play itself is fast-paced, heartbreaking, funny at points, tear-inducing, truthful, and so hard to swallow....but oh so good. I can see why it is so acclaimed. It's always amazing to read words that display feelings that I know for a fact my brother had. It makes me feel good in the sense that I know he wasn't floundering alone when he hadn't told any of us. He had his boyfriend and he had a community of people who supported him and loved him and understood him. I thank God for playwrights and human beings like Tony Kushner. I'm looking forward to reading Part Two as soon as I can get it.

Just one snippet. Before Joe has confessed to his wife, Harper, that he's gay, she asks him what he prays to God for. I read so much into his very simple statement.

Harper: When you pray, what do you pray for?

Joe: I pray for God to crush me, break me up into little pieces and start all over again.