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Freedom
(Freiheit)

SETTING: A Manhattan bachelor apartment, 1982

CHARACTERS:
Steve Whiteman, a playwright, early 40s
Michael Black, a lead actor in Mr. Whiteman's company, late 30s
Franz Augustine, an actor from Germany in Mr. Whiteman's company, 20s

(It is morning, and Steve and Michael have just woken up and come out into the living room, where Franz is sleeping on the sofa.)

STEVE: So here we are. Remember when we were arrested together, and how we met?

MIKE: You like that.

STEVE: I knew it was not only civil rights you were after.

MIKE: You were after me.

STEVE: I offered you a job.

MIKE: Did I have to do that kind of job for your company?

STEVE: Well, you were only a novice then. But I knew you were thirsting to be the lead.

MIKE: I was a hungry actor.

STEVE: But you admired me.

MIKE: I knew you had talent as a playwright, and perception. But you had hungry eyes for me, and no woman.

STEVE: I don't deny it. But you never protested once.

MIKE: I wanted to be bonded in your company.

STEVE: I wanted to try being bonded as your love slave.

MIKE: So that you could love your guilt.

STEVE: So that I could take cover, and hide you under my covers.

MIKE: You wanted to bury yourself in me.

STEVE: You wanted to be my man.

MIKE: I wanted you more than any woman.

STEVE: You never liked women. You just used the idea of them as a ploy to get me turned on more.

MIKE: How do you know my past?

STEVE: I've been with you for twenty years, and I never saw you with a woman.

MIKE: I gave up my life for the company.

STEVE: You really like making me guilty?

MIKE: Your background thrives on it. When I met you the first time, and you gave me my first acting role, I knew you wanted to make me in your image for the play. Then you began to fraternize with me; then infantilize and effeminize me.

STEVE: You never protested.

MIKE: I wanted to be the lead actor in your plays. And besides, everyone likes being loved.

STEVE: I was always high strung. And I wanted you to protect me from the world.

MIKE: Why, because I was bigger than you?

STEVE: I knew I had a lot going on for me, and i recognized your talent. I always wanted to have my own team.

MIKE: You were a real sport, Steve, in those days.

STEVE: I don't know why I always felt the need of protection. Maybe because the other guys hurt me growing up. Maybe I chose the maternal part of me, and I wanted to make everyone in our company at home. But I sensed I needed a bonding with you.

MIKE: I believed in you, until you took pictures of me to show your friends uptown.

STEVE: I won't deny it. But it did give you publicity in those days, when you needed it.

MIKE: At least you didn't make me a Playgirl centerfold.

STEVE: You wanted to be stripped that first time, remember?

MIKE: God. You stripped me.

STEVE: How primitive of me.

MIKE: That's what you wanted.

STEVE: A Lawrencian trip. It was all for aesthetics, really.

MIKE: Plus my ass. You wanted me to be your plaything.

STEVE: I wanted to be your playmate too. Neither of us had much of a boyhood.

MIKE: With you, everything is play.

STEVE: I know I can be a tough taskmaster; part of being a professional.

MIKE: I never begged you for a part.

STEVE: Was it pocket money you were after when you first put your hand in my pocket?

MIKE: Steve, do you think I hit the jackpot?

STEVE: I gave you everything for nothing.

MIKE: And I won the nigger pool.

STEVE: Watch your mouth. But I guess you didn't want to be the exception.

MIKE: When I met you, I thought you were my sugar daddy.

(Steve laughs.)

STEVE: I thought we both hated the white and black bourgeoisie.

MIKE: I wasn't a political animal like you. I was only human then.

STEVE: Political theater was my reality.

MIKE: In most of your plays, we kept exchanging roles – father and son, master and slave.

STEVE: You didn't object to the plantation scene. And I loved being your slave. And you liked being master. The trouble was, the bonding became our bondage.

MIKE: You introduced me to a whole new world.

STEVE: Don't play the innocent. You seduced me, pretending you liked women and acting homophobic. I knew you cheated on me.

MIKE: You were the one who brought Franz home first.

STEVE: You had him first. He will never leave us. Or it will be over my dead body.

MIKE: You sound like your neurotic Holocaust mother. Didn't you find him in some seedy old Berlin movie theatre?

STEVE: Yes, in Germany. He was trying out for a Fassbinder part. But he needed to get up the nerve, so he want to see him in one of his plays first. Look who's waking up.

MIKE: Maybe we woke him up.

STEVE: I like to watch him waking up.

MIKE: If Franz weren't a German you wouldn't have been interested in him.

STEVE: Love has strange slaves.

MIKE: He loves being your slave. But he's not yet in the master bedroom.

STEVE: You had him on your side more than me.

MIKE: You turned me on to his side of the bed.

STEVE: Look at Franz waking up. He is so beautiful. I could make love with him all day.

MIKE: He'd do it for you, too. All out of guilt also.

FRANZ: Stop fighting, boys, behind the scenes.

MIKE: Don't call me boy.

FRANZ: Is coffee ready?

STEVE: I love you, Franz. Isn't he perfect for the part?

MIKE: You still like to play concentration "camp" with Franz, like you played a plantation scene with me.

STEVE: I can't deny it, That's what the world meant to me.

MIKE: Why do I have a soft spot for you?

STEVE: It's hard.

FRANZ: Ich liebe sie beide.

STEVE: And to think his parents thought we were both subhuman.

FRANZ: That's the beauty of it, being here.

STEVE: Beauty is just skin deep for us. Come here, Franz.

FRANZ: I'd like to shave first.

STEVE: I'd like to shave every part of him off.

FRANZ: Then I'll shower.

STEVE: I will go in with you.

FRANZ: To be in the shower with you is as exciting for me.

MIKE: What a gas.

STEVE: It's better than Hitler's yellow showers.

FRANZ: But what about mine?

MIKE: I should clear out.

STEVE: I've been good to you.

MIKE: Like a motherfucker. And haven't I been good for you? I let you into my manhood, my neighborhood—

STEVE: I was a regular Robin Hood.

FRANZ: Just let me by, I have to shower. The door is open.

(Exit Franz.)

STEVE: We all hate bourgeois privacy, even in the privy. In my house, my mother never let me sit on the john without checking out if I was alone—when I was a teenager.

MIKE: I never had a mother.

STEVE: But how many johns have you had?

MIKE: We met in the all-white john. Remember?

STEVE: We were always Johnny-come-latelys, and we've never come off it. Since Franz is in the john, we can hold each other.

MIKE: I'm no substitute.

STEVE: We're all prostitutes in some way.

MIKE: I admit my jealousy when you brought Franz here.

STEVE: So now that I'm famous, blackmail me. You weren't that loyal to me. I've caught you in the arms of hundreds of others, both backstage and here. Listen to the German shower.

MIKE: At least all the Jews' troubles were over. My ancestors were sold into slavery and their troubles just began.

STEVE: I love you.

MIKE: For the moment.

STEVE: Don't become my Othello.

MIKE: I'm always ready to put on any act for you, or act up if you pay me.

STEVE: I've always paid you well.

MIKE: I've paid my dues.

(Franz emerges from the shower.)

FRANZ: Do you like my new shirt? Steve bought it for me.

MIKE: It's sexy.

FRANZ: Think so?

STEVE: I do. Isn't he hot?

FRANZ: Sometimes I think I'm in a beauty pageant.

MIKE: You're his Queen Ester. Remember the night we were drunk, and Steve had you play Tarzan, and he played Jane. Maybe I wanted to be the King of the Jungle.

STEVE: When I was a boy, no one else wanted to take the female role, so I took it.

MIKE: Did you ever want to be a girl?

STEVE: I want to experience everything.

FRANZ: What's wrong with dressing up? Sometimes we need gender changes. When my parents saw me once dressed up on the Berlin stage, I was considered degenerate. But they didn't object to Hitler.

STEVE: Even after my parents survived the camps, they didn't see their own fascism. Screw our parents' generation.

MIKE: I had none to really screw me over.

FRANZ: You're lucky.

STEVE: Screw them.

FRANZ: I agree, my musketeers. Let me drink coffee. I like mine black.

MIKE: Steve likes the dregs.

STEVE: We've all been there, and to heaven.

MIKE: How long is our honeymoon going to last? I have some bad news. I'm dying.

STEVE: I suspected it. But I will stand by you.

FRANZ: I knew before you. Perhaps that's what we all want – to take part in each other's death. I think we are all in love with death, if not with each other. That's our parents' generation's legacy.

STEVE: Why can't we ever choose life?

FRANZ: Too boring.

STEVE: Reading Nietzche again?

MIKE: Remember the time you dressed Franz and I up as supermen?

STEVE: I had a bad nightmare that we had a triple suicide. Sometimes I think murder is like sex, or sex is like murder.

FRANZ: Life is a cross between defecation and showers. And there's no way to get out of it.

STEVE: And who are we?

FRANZ: The sugar daddy, the son and the ghost.

STEVE: I could never figure any of it out, nor did I care.

FRANZ: Nor me. It's a mystery how it survived.

STEVE: How come you and I survived? Our parents could have easily been killed in the last war.

FRANZ: My father was on the Eastern front.

MIKE: As a boy of ten, I was a street preacher in Harlem for a month.

STEVE: He's never preached to me.

MIKE: Only children can believe in God.

STEVE: My parents, in Europe, believed in God.

FRANZ: Then God died.

MIKE: I don't want to die.

FRANZ: He's turning to God.

STEVE: I will help you.

MIKE: I feel tired. And don't tell me I look tired.

STEVE: Franz, can you give me a rubdown?

MIKE: But I usually do.

STEVE: I thought you were tired.

MIKE: I'll go to my room and sleep this off.

FRANZ: Gay schloffen.

(Mike exits.)

STEVE: Michael's not dying. He only pretends it so we will love him more. We love him anyway.

FRANZ: Do we?

STEVE: I know it's difficult to be three.

FRANZ: No, it's Christian. I'm used to it. You're the father…

STEVE: And you're the son of a bitch.

FRANZ: No. Forgive me. You've been good. Too good for me. I'm no good. But life is gut. Coffee is gut.

STEVE: But not as good as in Germany. Nothing is as good as in Germany. Even victims.

FRANZ: What do you want from me? I wasn't born then.

STEVE: I bring you here and put you in the best plays. Go back to Germany if you like.

FRANZ: If I like? But I'm too lazy. It's the good life here. Isn't that propaganda? Unfortunately, it's the "good life" over there too.

STEVE: People like us don't believe in life or afterlife?

(There is a gunshot from the other room.)

STEVE: Oh, no.

FRANZ: It's my fault for coming here.

STEVE: I think he's just kidding. Promise me you'll never leave, Franz. You're my identity.

FRANZ: I know that. Do you want me to wear your yellow star in our yellow showers? I have to confess something. I once had sex with a famous war criminal's nephew.

STEVE: I don't want to hear about it.

FRANZ: I'm sorry, father.

(Mike enters, dressed in a Superman outfit.)

MIKE: I'm the ghost. I thought I'd end it by being the black Superman. I pretended I could fly, and I opened the window.

STEVE: You can't even find your fly.

MIKE: I found yours.

STEVE: Mike's a fly-by-night.

MIKE: Then I took the shotgun, the prop from the last play, which had rubber bullets. When you heard the shot, why didn't you come right in? Did you know I was using the toy gun?

STEVE: I didn't know.

MIKE: I could have been dead!

STEVE: I couldn't accept it.

MIKE: No one could ever accept me for what I am.

STEVE: And what are you?

MIKE: A street nigger to the world. But you, Mr. Whiteman, took me in, fed me, clothed me, loved me, missed me when you were away, gave me acting jobs, praised me, and still I didn't feel free.

STEVE: We're all just survivors.

FRANZ: But we always have our tongues in cheek.

STEVE: You didn't mind.

FRANZ: I got off on being with you, because you were Germany's victims, I could be your victor and victim at the same time.

MIKE: That's what I wanted too.

(Mike finds a real gun and aims it at Steve.)

STEVE: Don't aim that gun at me if you just want to frighten me. Kill me. Small loss. They'll write a nice obituary in the Times. Some will say I was a great talent, but lost in life. Others will say I'm a degenerate, and not the best playwright. I tried to be the best I could be.

MIKE: You were good to me, so I can't let you live if I'm going to die.

STEVE: If you die, Mike, I will too.

MIKE: You'll write about me in a new play and get over me.

FRANZ: Give me the gun. I'll get rid of both of you, and I'll wind up in porno films in America. That gun is mine; I bought it the other day.

MIKE: I can't go on, knowing that I might die. As a boy, I believed in God.

STEVE: Why don't you join Queens for Christ?

FRANZ: Steve, you're part of a race against time.

STEVE: (to Mike) Hand over the gun. We have each other, at least for now.

(Mike hands Steve the gun. Steve puts it away.)

STEVE: We have no time to play games.

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