Free People in Trouble by Sarah Schulman

rest of the afternoon.   The ones who were used to being sick always carried sweaters, which they put on over their T-shirts.
     
    Then they dispersed, quickly.   Some went off to have coffee, others went home to rest.   Once those shirts were covered, they stopped looking like gay men with AIDS.   They looked just like everyone else.
     
    That, thought Peter, is their most effective trick.
     
    The play he was designing that week was called Crossing the Border, about a love affair between a Mexican migrant worker and a Russian emigre' nuclear physicist.   It was a musical.   Peter knew he couldn't work the best material all the time and that really his finest work was ahead of him.   He'd always dreamed of designing for the greats, for Richard Foreman or Bob Wilson or the Wooster Group.   But those jobs were sewn up by an elite clique.   So in the meantime he had a generally accepting attitude about the work that did come his way.
     
    Peter's new intern was waiting for him inside the theater.
     
    He had been working all day but was wearing a suit and tie.
     
    Every time he climbed up the ladder, the intern carefully took off his jacket, unbuttoned his sleeves, folded them twice up his forearm and then climbed.   When he came down again he put his clothing back in order immediately.   He was a short black man named Robert who had just graduated from Yale Drama School and was assigned to Peter by the playwright, who was an old college buddy of Robert's father.   Something about him annoyed Peter deeply.   He was organized, true, but he was businesslike, that was his problem.   He looked like a stockbroker, not an artist.
     
    Robert carried a briefcase.   He never opened it balanced on one knee.
     
    He always laid it down deliberately on a flat surface and snapped the metal clasps so that they clicked and popped at the same time.   He had been one of five black students in his prep school and one of five black students in his program at Yale.
     
    He moved similarly to Peter, like a man who knew he could have been in finance but chose something more dangerous and obscure.   But his briefcase reflected those other options a bit too blatantly for Peter's tastes.   Inside it were little I ompartments for tools and a tape measure.   He had smaller cases to hold his brandnew stencils for drawing leikos and Fresnels.   At Yale he had learned up-to-the-minute technology for the various applications of mechanized light.
     
    "I supervised the put-in," he said.   "And I programmed the cues."
     
    "I hate computers," Peter said trying to be personal.   "I've refused to learn how to use them.   It is a lot more interesting to try to run a show by candle or flashlight than to push one button and have everything done by computer."
     
    Robert sharpened his pencil.
     
    "Okay," he said, meaning nothing.   "Let's run the cues."
     
    Then he carefully removed his jacket and draped it over the back of his chair, folding his sleeves up his brown forearms.   He had clearly been one of those kids who wore suits to school.   A kid who was most comfortable in a jacket.
     
    "Okay," Peter said.   "The audience has come in and taken their seats.
     
    So, flick the houselights and then, take them down."
     
    "They don't flick," Robert said.   "They are not programmed to flick.
     
    They can go bright or dim, on or off, but not both."
     
    Peter couldn't imagine what to say.   He felt very tired suddenly.   He felt older than he'd ever felt in his whole life.   His role was becoming obsolete.   He was being replaced by something with a level of information and ability that was not higher than his.
     
    "Do you know how to make lights out of coffee cans?"   he asked, hearing himself creak like someone's backwoods grandfather asking "Do you know how to make a fishing pole?"
     
    "No," Robert said.
     
    "No," Peter repeated, completely unprepared.
     
    "No," Robert said.   "Why would I want to?"
     
    That, Peter