Roy Cohn quotes from Angels in America

Roy Cohn

Yeah, you heard of Ethel Rosenberg. Maybe even read about her in the history books. Well, if it wasn't for me, Joe, Ethel Rosenberg would be alive today, writing some personal-advice column for Ms. Magazine. She isn't. Because, during the trial, Joe, I was on the phone every day talking with the judge. Every day, doing what I do best — talking on the telephone. Making sure that that timid Yid nebbish on the bench did his duty to America, to history. That sweet, unprepossessing woman, two kids, boo-hoo-hoo, reminded us all of our little Jewish mamas. She came this close to getting life. I pleaded till I wept to put her in the chair. Me, I did that. I'd have fucking pulled the switch if they let me. Why? Because I fucking hate traitors. Because I fucking hate communists. Was it legal? Fuck legal! Am I a nice man? Fuck nice! They say terrible things about me in The Nation? Fuck The Nation! You want to be nice or you want to be effective?! You want to make the law, or be subject to it? Choose!

Roy Cohn

Yea, AZT. I want my own private stash, Martin. Of serious, honest-Abe medicine that I control here in the room with me. No placebos. No, I'm no good at tests, Martin. I'd rather cheat. So, send me my pills with a get-well bouquet, pronto, or I'm gonna ring up CBS and sing Mike Wallace a song. You know the ballad of adorable Ollie North and his secret Contra slush fund. You only think you know all I know. I don't even know what all I know. Half the time I just make it up and it still turns out to be true! We learned that trick in the fifties.

Roy Cohn

Your problem, Henry, is that you are hung up on words, on labels: "gay", "homosexual", "lesbian." You think they tell you who a person sleeps with, but they don't tell you that. Like all labels, they refer to one thing and one thing only: Where does a person so identified fit in the food chain? In the pecking order. Not ideology or sexual taste, but something much simpler: clout. Who owes me favors. Not who I fuck or who fucks me, but who will pick up the phone when I call. To someone who doesn't understand this, homosexual is what I am because I sleep with men, but this is wrong. Homosexuals are not men who sleep with other men. Homosexuals are men who, in 15 years of trying, can't get a pissant anti-discrimination bill through City Council. They are men who know nobody, and who nobody knows. Now, Henry, does that sound like me?

No.

Roy

No. I have clout — lots! I pick up that phone, dial 15 numbers, and guess who's on the other end of the line? In under five minutes, Henry.

The President.

Roy

Better — his wife.

I'm impressed.

Roy

I don't want you to be impressed, Henry — I want you to understand. This is not sophistry, and this is not hypocrisy. This is reality. I have sex with men, but unlike nearly every other man of which this is true, I bring the guy I'm screwing to Washington, and President Reagan smiles at us and shakes his hand, because what I am is defined entirely by who I am. Roy Cohn is not a homosexual. Roy Cohn is a heterosexual man who fucks around with guys.

Roy Cohn

[delirious, under the impression that Belize is the Angel of Death] Can I ask you something, sir?

"Sir"?

Roy

What's it like? After?

After...?

Roy

This misery ends?

Hell or heaven?

Roy

[laughs]

Like San Francisco.

Roy

A city! Good! I was worried... it'd be a garden. I hate that shit.

Mmmm. Big city. Overgrown with weeds, but flowering weeds. On every corner a wrecking crew and something new and crooked going up catty corner to that. Windows missing in every edifice like broken teeth, gritty wind, and a gray high sky full of ravens.

Roy

Isaiah.

Prophet birds, Roy. Piles of trash, but lapidary like rubies and obsidian, and diamond-colored cow spit 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.

Roy

And Heaven?

That was Heaven, Roy.

Roy

The fuck it was!