Free People in Trouble by Sarah Schulman Page A

thought, is the difference between theater and science.
     
    After the cues were run Peter did warm up a bit because Robert had done everything perfectly.   He sat back and watched the young man roll down his sleeves.
     
    "Do you know anyone with AIDS?"   Peter asked, suddenly.
     
    For one second he panicked because maybe Robert had AIDS, but then he looked at him again and decided that Robert was not a homosexual.   He was probably a virgin or else had the same girlfriend since high school on whom he made a lot of demands.
     
    "Yes," he said.   "Of course."   Then he said, "Do you have AIDS?   I'm not afraid of people with AIDS.   I can still work with you if you have AIDS."
     
    "No, I'm straight."
     
    Peter watched Robert's facial muscles.   Throughout this entire encounter he had not changed his expression.   He would have stayed calm even if Peter had said yes, because Robert was growing up accustomed to being with dying people.
     
    "My father's lover has AIDS.   He was already in dementia when they gave him the AZT.   He was walking around on a cane like an old, old man.
     
    The AZT brought him back.   He has a lot of nausea and diarrhea but he's still there.   You can talk to him and go places with him.   He's an actor.   He was around in the sixties."
     
    "I used to work in black theater," Peter said, realizing immediately that the man in question might not be black, and then added, "In the sixties" to pretend that was the connection.
     
    "I'm not interested in black theater," Robert said.   "I don't care about a woman in a black leotard doing jazz monologues.   I think black actors should be able to play any parts they want to play and not always have to play black."
     
    "Well," said Peter, relaxing into his favorite kind of distance: discourse on the role of theater in everyday life.   "Of course actors should be able to play a wide range of characters but community theater is an important training ground."
     
    "You don't know anything about black people," Robert said with the same tone he had used to say, "Do you have AIDS?"
     
    "Do you know what kind of music young black people listen to?
     
    They don't listen to jazz and they don't listen to blues.   They don't listen to soul or R&B.   Did you know that?   Have you been keeping up to date?"
     
    "No," said Peter, "I'm out of date."
     
    "You should correct that," Robert said.   "So that you at least know what it is you feel superior to."
     
    "I'm totally out of date," Peter said.   "I have no idea what's going on."
     
    "Look," Robert said, swinging his jacket over his shoulder and letting it hang from one finger like the guys in the ads for Harvey's Bristol Cream.   "Just watch two hours of TV a week and you can find out."
     
    He snapped the two metal clasps on his briefcase, swung it by the handle off the table and smiled at Peter as though he was the oldest man in the world.   As though he, Robert, was in charge now.
     
    "I want to get a job on the new Horne musical opening on Broadway, Ronald's Dream.   They've got lasers.   Do you know anyone there?"
     
    "Or Stephen Sondheim.   Do you know him?"
     
    "We were at the same party once."
     
    "Well then."
     
    Peter watched the boy walk out the door.   Then he went into the house manager's office and took out the portable TV.   He plugged it in and waited.   There was a show on called Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous.
     
    Some guy went around interviewing movie stars in their luxurious homes and the audience watched them play tennis and cook.   The most startling aspect of the lives of these celebrities was that they could be so famous and at the same time Peter had never heard of any of them or any of the shows or movies that they appeared in.   Then Peter reached over and switched on the office radio, flipping through all the stations from Top Forty to country.   He didn't know one song.   He had never heard of any of the groups.   He put his hand up flat