Playboy Interview: Harvey Fierstein

It was on a Sunday evening in June 1984 that Harvey Fierstein first imposed himself upon the national consciousness. Just announced as the Tony award winner for Best Book of a Musical for "La Cage aux Folles," he rushed onto the stage, smiled into the network-television camera and, in a Brooklyn rasp that has been variously likened to the mating call of a bulldog or a backed-up vacuum cleaner, declared his everlasting gratitude to his male lover.

Such was the force of the impression he made that almost no one recalled that something similar had occurred just a year earlier. In fact, it was a preshow admonition to the audience by the executive producer to "please, please avoid last year's embarrassment"--when someone had quietly thanked his male lover--that prompted Fierstein to say what he did.

"Before that," as he later recalled, "I couldn't have cared less if I won, since I had two Tonys already; but suddenly, the gauntlet was down. I had to win just to prove that, we ain't gonna take that kinda shit."

Not that anyone who knew him was at all surprised. Fierstein has rarely hesitated to stand up for the proposition--summed up in the rousing anthem for "La Cage," "I Am What I Am"--that gay people don't need the straight world's approval.

That stance, however, has often proved to be a professional inconvenience. A situation comedy Fierstein developed about a gay couple--"It was going to portray them as people," he says, "instead of caricatures"--could not get past top network executives. The Wall Street Journal killed a profile of Fierstein after he refused to allow his use of the word gay to be changed, in accordance with the paper's stylebook, to homosexual. Nor, he claims, is he any longer welcome on "Late Night with David Letterman," following a famous on-air duel of put-downs with the comedian: When Fierstein remarked that he assumed everyone was gay unless told otherwise, Letterman snatched up a pencil and a pad and wrote,"I'm not," and turned it toward his guest; but Fierstein directed his written response--"Would eight o'clock be OK?"--at the camera.

The attention accorded to Fierstein as a representative of gay pride, and the considerable flair he brings to the role, sometimes conspire to draw attention from the gift that brought him to public notice in the first place. In fact, at 34, he is recognized as one of the most eloquent voices in contemporary theater.

That reputation is predicated, above all, on "Torch Song Trilogy," the nearly four-hour-long, frankly autobiographical opus that won 1983's Tony for Best Play. It also won Fierstein a Best Actor award. In the role of Arnold Beckoff, a nice Jewish boy whose mother had wanted him to grow up as anything but a drag queen, his performance was a tour de force. Yet it had taken four years for the play to make its way uptown, from off-off-Broadway, perhaps because, he says, his homosexual protagonists "don't commit suicide at the end or repent their evil ways."

In fact--and this certainly had no small part in the play's eventual success--for all its candor and the depth of its gay sensibility, "Torch Song's" values are essentially traditional ones. "Arnold Beckoff wants what most people want," the play's coproducer, John Glines, once observed. "He's very middle class, and he wants a job he doesn't hate too much, enough money to live comfortably and someone to share it with. He wants a family life. What Harvey proved was that you could use a gay context and a gay experience and speak universal truths."

"Gay liberation should not be a license to be a perpetual adolescent," as Fierstein himself noted at the time, adding a postscript that struck a chord within as many straights as gays: "If you deny yourself commitment, then what can you do with your life?"

Not, finally, that any of that should have been surprising. Fierstein grew up middle class and, unlike many social activists, has never disavowed or disparaged that background. Although he was a fat kid--by adolescence, he weighed 240 pounds--he more or less fit in.

It was to please his parents that after high school, Fierstein studied painting at Brooklyn's Pratt Institute. But by then, having already made his stage debut--as a drag queen in Andy Warhol's "Pork"--he was in love with the theater. For a while, he worked, like Arnold Beckoff, as a female impersonator before turning to writing. "It's a fine old theatrical tradition," he would later explain, "of uncastable people who get frustrated and start writing for themselves."

Fierstein's early efforts--"Flatbush Tosca," "Cannibals Don't Know Better," "In Search of the Cobra Jewels" (the last featuring a cockroach chorus)--tended toward camp. It was only with "Torch Song," first produced at the tiny downtown La Mama Theater (and slated for release this year as a film, with Fierstein playing Arnold and Anne Bancroft as his mother), that he displayed his range.

As a blockbuster musical, "La Cage aux Folles" confirmed not only his broad-based commercial appeal but his status, as he characterized it, as the first "real-live, out-of-the-closet queer on Broadway."

But by then, the AIDS epidemic had already begun to take its ghastly toll. Although he had never professed to be a spokesman for anyone but himself, Fierstein soon found himself regularly called upon by the media to speak out on the crisis, cast, despite himself, as a kind of emissary from the gay community to the straight, laboring to dispel the pervasive misconceptions about the disease and those who have it. When he would later appear with physicians and AIDS researchers on programs such as ABC's "Nightline," often it was Fierstein's vivid remarks, more than the figures and the science, that made the strongest and most memorable impression on viewers.

Fierstein's next play, "Safe Sex"--actually, a trio of one-acts--was also largely autobio-graphical and dealt with, among other things, the dehumanizing impact of AIDS on all of us. In the words of New York Times drama critic Frank Rich, "If it would be grotesque to suggest that anything good has come of AIDS, it can be said that the theater has found its own voice in rising to the disease's challenge."

With evidence of public confusion about the role of homosexuals in the spread of AIDS, and a backlash against gays in some parts of society, Playboy sent writer Harry Stein to see Fierstein. The former "Ethics" columnist for Esquire, Stein is the author of "One of the Guys: The Wising Up of an American Man." His report:

"In a sense, Harvey is the easiest interview in the world. It is rare to run across someone both so at ease with his convictions and so adept at expressing them. His passion, even his intense dislikes--for the Reagans, for example--are never tempered by the caution that comes as second nature to most of those in the public eye.

"Yet it is that same quality--the tendency to come on so strong, to engage in verbal overkill and, sometimes, deal in generalities--that makes talking with him such a challenge. Harvey is a gifted performer, and at the beginning of our conversations, it was hard not to sense that what I was getting was something of a creation, the public Fierstein.

"In retrospect, it ought to be acknowledged that part of the problem--probably more mine than his--had to do with our different sexual orientations. Although we are roughly of the same generation and social background, in fundamental ways we have inhabited different worlds; and, like most straight men, I approach his with a certain trepidation. It took a little while to get beyond all that. But, eventually, we established considerable rapport.

"Fierstein spends a lot of his time alone these days, with a pair of dogs in rural Connecticut--a seeming anomaly for a man whose life and work are so closely linked to the beat of the city. In fact, although he has by no means surrendered all his compulsions--he continues to chain-smoke and to punish himself with a variety of diets--he is extraordinarily at ease there, more than once interrupting our conversation to point out the window at some natural magnificence. 'You should hear the Canada geese honking late at night,' he noted at one point. 'It sounds just like the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn. Then you go outside, and they're flying against the full moon, and you're in a Walt Disney movie.'

"But, no, the man will never be confused with Marlin Perkins. For although the gentleness of spirit has much to do with his distinctive voice, it plays off a gritty, often outrageous honesty.

"A couple of weeks after our first meeting, I found him in his other new home, a duplex in a just-completed building on New York's Upper West Side, surrounded by paintings and prints waiting to be hung, making plans to head up to Toronto to shoot one of the 'Safe Sex' plays for HBO.

"'You know,' he said, nodding toward the bedroom upstairs, 'I've got no curtains up there yet, and this morning, when I got out of the shower, I noticed there were all these workmen on the roof of the building across the way, staring in at me. What could I do? I walked over to the window and stared right back.' He smiled and shrugged. 'I figured they were the ones who ought to be embarrassed, not me.'"

[Q] Playboy: We understand that as a child, you were a regular reader of this magazine.

[A] Fierstein: Incredibly enough, yes. We had some relatives in Ellenville, New York, and the two boys were the same age as my brother and I. They had some books there, really dirty books. Every other word was fuck and shit.

[Q] Playboy: How old were you then?

[A] Fierstein: Oh, I had to be, like, nine, ten. Anyway, one time, my mother opened up one of these books and she practically had cardiac arrest. So my parents made a deal with my brother and me. If we didn't read these gross books anymore, they'd get us a subscription to Playboy.

Of course, what my parents didn't know was that very few of the pictures really enticed me. I liked only the Sex in Cinema features. Those were the only pictures that I found at all sexy, because they had men in them.

[Q] Playboy: So you already knew you were gay.

[A] Fierstein: Oh, yes. Gay. I was so gay, they don't make them any gayer.

[Q] Playboy: How was it to be surrounded by all the heterosexual stimuli as a child? What did you feel about yourself then?

[A] Fierstein: I would say that anybody who is an out-of-the-closet gay, or even a practicing gay person, has gone through more analysis in his own head than he'd get from paying some Freudian analyst $4,000,000. Because what happens when you're a kid is that you go through an identity search. When straight kids go through it--boom!--they come up with the answer and they fit right in.

What happens with a gay kid is, you go through this identity search and you come out with the wrong answer. Then you go through it again and you come out with the wrong answer. And then you come out again with the wrong answer. So you're constantly rethinking your feelings, figuring out where you fit in. Am I a man trapped in a woman's body? Am I a woman trapped in a man's body? Is homosexuality normal? Am I gay because my mother yelled at me and my father didn't? I mean, you deal with all these questions on a basic level before you even know that psychological theories exist.

[Q] Playboy: Do you remember your first homosexual stirrings? Was there a moment when you said to yourself, I'm attracted to boys as opposed to girls?

[A] Fierstein: No. I just always was. I always had more in common with girls in the sexual games. And was always attracted to men. I remember at sleep-away camp that many nights I used to fake not being able to sleep and being homesick so that I could get into bed with my counselor. He must have been 18, but, to me, he was this big man and he wore this cowboy hat and this butch-looking outfit and all the girls carried on with him. But I slept in bed with him. And this was before, obviously, I knew anything about sex.

[Q] Playboy: Did you talk with anyone about it? Could you confide in your brother?

[A] Fierstein: No. You know, I always thought I was extremely honest with myself. Then, all of a sudden, something happens. I'll give you an example. A while back, my mother came to visit me for the weekend and--you know how mothers are--she brought this big bag full of old junk she thought I might want to have. There was one piece of paper in an envelope. I opened it and I freaked. It was one of those notes family members leave for one another on the kitchen table, saying where we are and when we'll be back. My handwriting was on it, but I didn't consciously read it. I just started yelling at my mother to stop dragging up ghosts. "If you want to save this kind of crap, go ahead!" I shouted. "But don't inflict it on the rest of us!"

Even I couldn't understand why I had reacted the way I had. So a few days later, I mentioned it to my brother, and he asked what was in the note. "I don't know," I said. "All I remember is that I quoted a Joni Mitchell song--you know: 'I've looked at life from both sides now.'" He said, "You don't remember the 'both sides now' note? It's when you came out to the family."

And, of course, I had totally blocked it. Because, in my case, there were no fights to remember, no screaming. Maybe fighting it out would have helped at that age. I don't know.

[Q] Playboy: How did your father react?

[A] Fierstein: The only thing I specifically remember was, we were taking the dog to the vet in Jersey, and during the car ride, he asked me if I wanted to try a prostitute. I was 13 years old. And I said no, it wasn't necessary. I don't know how painful it was for him, but it was definitely never dealt with by that screaming, yelling crap that you see on television.

[Q] Playboy: You were very lucky.

[A] Fierstein: Yes, I was extremely lucky. But, in a funny way, my parents had no choice, because that's how they brought us up--that whatever you believed in you should stand behind.

[Q] Playboy: It seems like an extremely untroubled childhood.

[A] Fierstein: Just bizarre. Because the entire time, I was also going through these stages of trying to figure out who I was in this world that didn't match. Back then you never saw a homosexual anywhere.

[Q] Playboy: There was no guilt, no feeling that there was something wrong with you?

[A] Fierstein: Not at all. You know, people say how brave I am about what I've done and all that. I say it's the opposite. Everything I've done is out of cowardice, out of fear of being different. I was too stubborn to go along with the world, so I made the entire world gay. I wanted the entire world to see that homosexuality is normal and this is the way a lot of us are.

[Q] Playboy: But, again, you were lucky never to have been ostracized by your family. Lots of gays are rejected by their parents when they come out.

[A] Fierstein: Yes, but I always think it's their fault, too. I mean, I just went through it with somebody whose lover was dying of AIDS. He went home to tell his family--his nine siblings and his parents--that he was gay. He just dropped it on them.

I certainly understood that he needed the support of his family. But that's just not the way to do it. You don't just walk in the door when you're 30 years old and say, "Guess what? I'm gay and my lover is dying of AIDS!" Who wouldn't freak? He went to them as this desperately needy person and expected them to act out this scenario that he'd written in his mind: "Oh, Johnny, we love you so and we don't care that you're gay and you poor thing!" Instead, the family had this big meeting, and they decided that if they all pulled back from him, he would change his ways.

But, of course, he was doing the same thing to them. He was also going in unprepared to compromise. It was set up to be a disaster. Not that there would be any mistaking whose side I'm on. The fact is, I have trouble even with most heterosexuals who profess to "understand" us.

[Q] Playboy: That's certainly a recurrent theme in your writing.

[A] Fierstein: Thank God we live in a time when at least I'm able to write about it. It's just been in the past ten years that all these writers who have always been gay are finally getting to write gay characters, are finally able to express themselves without having to change the name from Leonard to Leonora. But, even now, "well-intentioned" straight people, if they see a gay play in which the main character is loveless, or miserable and self-destructive, they're going to love it. But if a gay person is happy and proud and triumphs at the end, they're going to hate it and call it a whitewash of homosexuals.

Straight critics have written that in Torch Song Trilogy, I "steal" the values of hearth and home and family. When the fuck did heterosexuals get the patent on home and love and hearth and family? These are human terms! For the three years that Torch Song ran on Broadway, in every interview, I'd say, "This is a gay play." The journalist would say, "It's not a gay play, it's universal." "No," I'd repeat, "it's a gay play. Gays are human beings, and you, as a straight human being, can understand it, because we're all human beings. But it is a gay play and you will not take that away from me." And then I'd read the article and, of course, it would say, "Torch Song is a universal play." [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: Do you think straight people were surprised to find that they could perceive gays as human beings, feel the same things that they felt?

[A] Fierstein: Yes. Since the show moved them, they had to adopt it. It couldn't be gay, it had to be universal. Otherwise, they'd have to stand back and say, "Oh, my God, this is a gay play. I relate to this gay play!" That was somehow threatening to them. It was the same thing with La Cage aux Folles. When I was brought in on that show, it was set in New Orleans. The first thing I said was that we had to move it back to the French Riviera, where the movie had been set. Why? Because, for the audience, it's safe to have gay people in this foreign place. After all, everything is sort of queer to start with, everything is sort of different. But when the same thing happens in America, it frightens people right away.

[Q] Playboy: You've often expressed anger at what you see as condescension by the straight world toward the gay world.

[A] Fierstein: Well, look what happened during the last big vote in Congress on AIDS education! [Senator] Jesse Helms stood up and attacked a Gay Men's Health Crisis comic book that had drawings of men having safe sex, showing how to make your lover put on a condom. Helms held it up as pornography. He called the [1987] AIDS march on Washington a mob of perverted human beings and a national disgrace, and the amendment lost by a vote of 94 to two. They voted to take away safe-sex funding. Only Lowell Weicker and Pat Moynihan voted for it. All the other liberals--our so-called friends--voted against us.

I was asked afterward about our friends--the Ted Kennedys and so forth. We homosexuals are fine to these liberals--they love us--as long as we don't get into bed, as long as we don't have sex. They'll shake our hands, they'll march with us, they'll go for gay civil rights, they'll talk about housing and employment and all that, but don't have sex. Please, don't do that. Don't put that thing in your mouth. Please, don't put that thing in your mouth! It scares the shit out of them.

I trust the Catholic Church as much as I trust Ted Kennedy. It's exactly the same. We're told that the Church loves homosexuals, it just hates homosexuality. What does that mean? It's like saying I love the idea of Christianity, I just hate the Church. Either you love people and accept them for what they do or you don't. And if they do something that you don't like, but they're not hurting anyone, you deal with it in whatever way you have to. But you don't tell them how to live their lives. You don't say, "You can be alive as long as you don't take your dick out." That's none of your goddamn business! Of course, people like that love to bring up things like bestiality. [Laughs] Well, I've been gay a lot of years and I've known a lot of gay people, and I never met one who had sex with a dog. Maybe I live a sheltered life.

[Q] Playboy: We didn't know people linked bestiality to homosexuality.

[A] Fierstein: That's what I mean. It's like transvestism. There is exactly the same percentage of transvestites in the straight community as in the gay community. If ten percent of the world is gay, ten percent of all transvestites are gay. But, of course, transvestites are what get thrown in our faces. Bestiality, transvestite teachers. If you find a teacher who's a transvestite, it's 90 percent more likely that he is going to be a heterosexual than a homosexual. And, of course, the ever-popular "child molester." We've long known the truth about that. All the figures show that gay people don't go out and do that to children any more than straight people do.

[Q] Playboy: But there is a correlation between being gay and early sex, isn't there?

[A] Fierstein: Yes, a lot of gays do start having sex at a young age. I was having sex at 13. But that's not specifically gay, either. There's a line in Torch Song--the 15-year-old kid says it--to the effect that no matter how many petitions people sign, they can't get God to change the age of puberty to 18. Kids have sex, period. When I came out at 13, it was against the law for anybody of age to sleep with me. But I needed to experiment. I needed sex. My mother works in a junior high school and, believe me, things haven't changed. The danger in sex today is the lack of education.

[Q] Playboy: What do you mean?

[A] Fierstein: My worry now is for straight people--kids and adults. If you look at the studies out of San Francisco, the gay community has learned how not to get AIDS. People getting sick now have mostly been carrying the virus for a long time and are now getting full-blown AIDS or developing ARC [AIDS-related complex]. So I'm not as worried about the gay community, because I know that we've learned what to do.

It's straight ignorance that is really most dangerous. The ones I'm worried about are married men who are getting infected. There's a parking lot a couple of miles from here in Brooklyn where these straight guys, on their way home from work, pull in and suck each other off. And they are going to take it back to their wives. I go past the Metropolitan movie theater. I see the guys going in and out of there. And I know what they're doing in there because of what I used to do in there. And then they go home to their nice little wives.

[Q] Playboy: Wait; we came prepared to talk about the devastation of AIDS in the homosexual community. You say your concern is with the straight community?

[A] Fierstein: You bet. I worry about the girl who gets sent on her 16th birthday to a ski lodge and meets a boy and is too embarrassed to ask him to use a condom. So she gets over the trauma of "Oh, my God, I had sex" and goes home and goes to school and all that, graduates from college and gets married, and then she has a baby, and all of a sudden, she's positive and she's dying. She has AIDS.

[Q] Playboy: Last year, Playboy published an article suggesting that AIDS was not going to spread to the heterosexual community as had been anticipated. Other articles in medical journals, in The New York Times and in Cosmopolitan have added to a consensus that the risk is overwhelmingly confined to gays and drug users.

[A] Fierstein: I don't believe that. I know somebody who was just now diagnosed. Straight. Never been with men. Never abused drugs. Got it from a prostitute. I mean, that's the only place he could have gotten it, or from an old girlfriend he hasn't seen in ten years.

[Q] Playboy: That's pretty anecdotal. Studies are beginning to show that heterosexual victims, when followed up, end up admitting either to homosexual experiences or to drug abuse.

[A] Fierstein: Well, we all know that it's a disease that has a long incubation period. Straight people are not going for voluntary testing. Married men who do prostitutes and are maybe doing drugs, or maybe have a girlfriend on the side--none of these people are going for voluntary testing. We will not find out about them for maybe another ten years.

[Q] Playboy: It has been studied now for eight years, and the statistics appear to show that prior to 1987, two percent of AIDS cases were heterosexual without apparent contributing factors. And there has been no increase in that percentage.

[A] Fierstein: I just don't believe that. The cases that are reported to the CDC [Centers for Disease Control], I believe, are less than ten percent of the real cases in the United States. If you came down with AIDS and you went to your private doctor, do you really think he, knowing your position--that you have a wife and children and this and that--is going to report you to the CDC? No. Believe me.

[Q] Playboy: But still, isn't there a real fear among gays that if, in fact, AIDS is perceived in the public mind exclusively as a disease of the high-risk groups, those groups are going to be abandoned, with no real help from the community at large?

[A] Fierstein: What's new? That's the way it was and that's the way it still is. Where do you see any other support? I don't see why you think that if it remains a gay disease it's going to make it any different. We still raise all the money. We're still out there doing all the work.

[Q] Playboy: The truth is, until AIDS was seen as a heterosexual problem, there wasn't much concern about it.

[A] Fierstein: No. It was the "gay plague," and how many straights really worried about that? But I think it's important to note, given all the awful news, that, for the gay community, there have been some positive aspects to the AIDS crisis. First, no one can deny any more how many of us there are. Just from the numbers of people who are sick. They know that we're everywhere. There are 25,000,000 gay people in America. Everyone knows now that Rock Hudson was gay, but they have no idea how many of the stars they worship on a daily basis are gay.

But it gives people the feeling that they can't be absolutely sure about anyone. They say, "Oooh, you never know, do you?" Liberace was no great shock to America. I mean, even the stupidest person could have figured him out. But Rock Hudson really shook up people. I remember way back, when I was about 14 or 15 and just getting into the theatrical world, I told my mother that Rock Hudson was gay. She went into a depression for the longest time.

[Q] Playboy: She believed you?

[A] Fierstein: Oh, yes. She already knew my information was good.

Another positive thing that's come out of AIDS is that a lot of gay people are being more supportive of one another than ever before. There was a recent study that indicated that in the three years since it was determined that AIDS is sexually transmitted, we have almost completely stopped the epidemic in the gay community. And that would not be happening if the gay community were not strong--and out of the closet.

[Q] Playboy: Isn't it also true that the stigma of being gay--among straights--has been greatly magnified by AIDS?

[A] Fierstein: Yes, definitely, there's some of that. I have a friend who's a dentist who works with children. Although he is out privately, he feels that there's no way he could come out publicly now, because parents would stop going to him. So, yes, there's some of that.

But, actually, I think there's a lot more of the opposite. In general, I don't see that people are more scared to be identified as gay now. I mean, when you're first coming out, you're up against so many things. That is one more obstacle. And if anything, in my mind, it's not as much a real problem as it is one more reason not to come out, one more excuse not to be real.

[Q] Playboy: But let's take as an example your friend the dentist. Objectively, wouldn't a lot of people, gay and straight, hesitate in this atmosphere to go to a gay dentist? Right or wrong, who wants to have somebody who may be infected putting his hands in his mouth?

[A] Fierstein: I don't think that gay people would. But maybe we should define our terms, create a Harvey dictionary. When I talk about gay people, I'm talking about self-accepting gay people, people who are out of the closet. I don't suggest that everybody do what I did--go on The Tonight Show and talk about being gay. I'm talking about people who are openly gay, whose friends are gay and who have no trouble with that. There's another kind of gay person who says, "What I do in my private life is my business," and all that and hides in the closet. I don't consider him really gay.

[Q] Playboy: What do you consider him?

[A] Fierstein: I consider him homosexual. In that group are all the married men who go to truck stops and the guy who works as a banker and thinks nobody at the bank knows.

My gay people are not scared to go to a gay doctor or dentist. I always encourage people to go to gay doctors, even straight people! I say, "Go to gay doctors; they know about diseases!" I mean, we went through hepatitis B. We've gone through many strains of syphilis and gonorrhea and now AIDS. And so gay doctors do tend more to stay up on things and put a lot more work into being doctors.

[Q] Playboy: But getting back to your friend the dentist, presumably, his practice is mostly straight----

[A] Fierstein: Yeah, because it's children.

[Q] Playboy: And would you really argue that his practice wouldn't be hurt if he came out of the closet?

[A] Fierstein: That question would never even occur to me. And if it did--if people are that ignorant--then maybe he should be out there educating, instead of being scared that he's not making the almighty dollar. It is not worth lying. There is nothing worth lying about. There's nothing to be embarrassed about in being gay. And for him to consider, above everything else, that it may hurt his practice is, to me, disgusting and is not worth even thinking about. I could not, obviously, do anything in which I had to hide who I was.

But think about how many gay people have children! And how many others would like to. When Torch Song was being performed, people would ask my opinion about gay adoption. I would say, "Give us the retarded children, just the retarded kids. We'll takecare of them. Close the orphanages." If straight people weren't so fucking uptight, convinced that those children would be sexually abused--for which there's no proof whatever!--we could close every orphanage in the world. We'd take the unwanted children. We havethe money, the love and the caring. And we have the community to support one another.

[Q] Playboy: Having seen so much death by AIDS in recent years, and so close at hand, what has it done to you personally?

[A] Fierstein: [Pauses] It's a very, very, very complex question. Traditionally, throughout history, each generation has had two periods of loss. First, almost every generation has had its war, because as long as there have been heterosexuals, therehas been war. People die. And then, of course, there is the period when one's friends and acquaintances grow older and die.

But we, in our time--particularly those of us in the gay community--we have had a minimum of four periods of loss. We had Vietnam and we had our normal cycle of aging to look forward to. But we also had drugs. I lost a lot of friends to drugs. Some others, if they didn't actually die, fried their brains, and aren't much good now. Now we have AIDS, before going on to lose everybody else. It is incredibly unfair.

Now, it's safe to say that the majority of people in this country do not know about the AIDS generation firsthand. They've read about it in People magazine, maybe. But I'm on my third personal phonebook this year, because I couldn't stand to see the crossed-off names anymore--so incredibly many names crossed off. Take something as finite as Torch Song, that one show. I lost both of the men who played my lover. I lost one of the actors who played my son. And I lost one of my pianists. That's four out of a group of 15. On La Cage aux Folles, we've had six deaths already.

In terms of other friends and acquaintances, the numbers are beyond phenomenal. I had a week when five people died. It was just every day.... This one died, that one died, this one died, that one died. They weren't, necessarily, all people I was close to, but they kept dying.

[Q] Playboy: Have you taken the AIDS test yourself?

[A] Fierstein: No. I would never test. What's the difference? If I'm positive, I'd just worry. If I'm negative--which I probably am; it's been a lonnng time since I've had unsafe sex--it wouldn't change my lifestyle either. I wouldn't be any less relaxed or caring about people who are positive. It makes far more sense to be tested for syphilis or gonorrhea. At least those are things you can do something about right now. But test for AIDS--what for?

[Q] Playboy: For the relief of knowing one way or another.

[A] Fierstein: Listen, if I get sick, I'll deal with it. Frankly, I wonder why people would even want to know they're negative. People sometimes say to me, "I'm negative," almost like a boast. Do they think that makes them sexier to me? Does that replace "I've got eight inches"?

[Q] Playboy: Have you nursed anyone through the illness yourself?

[A] Fierstein: No, I've never been a primary nurse for someone who is dying. I've been secondary, tertiary. I had to play a very strong role with one friend, a very strong role in his death. He was one of the boys who played my son in Torch Song. Twenty-two years old. Another friend and I spent most of a day trying to get him to die.

[Q] Playboy: What do you mean?

[A] Fierstein: He was virtually dead already. He was paralyzed. He couldn't swallow. He hadn't eaten in weeks. They had to take him off diapers, because his ass was rotting away from lying.

[Q] Playboy: Bed sores?

[A] Fierstein: Beyond bed sores. He was on intravenous morphine just to keep down the pain. He couldn't really talk anymore. He made no sense. His brain was gone. He wasbald from the radiation. There was nothing left of him. There was nobody there anymore. He was dead, but they would not let him die. They kept dumping more and more medicine into him. And so we tried to talk him through to death, because we didn't want him to die alone or in pain. We worked with him for hours, trying to help him let go. I began by talking to him about my country house. He'd been too sick to go there. He loved flowers. I'd been sending him photographs almost daily. I'd go out and take photographs of the garden and send him pictures of flowers, and every time I went down to see him, I'd cut flowers from the garden for him. What I was doing that day in the hospital was taking him on walks through the garden, mental walks. And then, eventually, I was going to bring him to the light and let him go through the light and pass on. So what happened is that we were walking, looking at the flowers, and he said, "Can we pick some of these?"

[Q] Playboy: He was talking through that? He heard everything?

[A] Fierstein: Yes. See, he was very materialistic. That's why he was hanging on to life. He always wanted something physical. And so he picked some irises. Then we went on to the next flower. After 20 flowers or so, he finally got beyond picking them, which was real good. I felt we were getting somewhere. Then I said, "Now we're coming around the bend, a little bridge. Isn't it beautiful?" He said, "It's red, isn't it?" "Yes, it's a red bridge, a red Japanese bridge." And he went over to the pond to see the water. "Now let's wade into the pond." But suddenly, he started freezing up. "No, no, no. Not the pond!" And I remembered he was scared of water. [Laughs]

It took a while, but I finally got the mood right again. But then there was a knock on the door! The nurse had to come in and stick a thermometer up his ass. So that effort was killed. My friend arrived and the two of us went to work. But every time we'd just about get him through, something would go wrong. Someone would come in or there'd be a loud noise in the hall. It was frustrating, comic, almost. We got him to die six or seven times, but he always came back to tell us about it. I said, "Chris, don't tell us about it. Just go away."

[Q] Playboy: What do you mean, "Don't tell us about it"? About what?

[A] Fierstein: This is where you get into controversy. Many people believe that when they're near death, they see the light and people they know and all that. But what it is is the brain shutting down. Have you ever had heat prostration? Everything goes white. The same thing. That's what people who are dying see and that's very real. There are those who believe it's a physical reaction, as I do, and those who believe they are entering heaven.

We finally got him to the point where he saw lights and people, some he knew and some he didn't, and he thought they were angels. It was very funny, because he was at the gateway, as they say, but he just wouldn't go through. He said, "Is it real? I'm scared to go there." And I said, "Honey, you're walking. Look at your legs. You can move your legs. Look at your arms.You can move your arms. You're talking. You have hair. And think about yourself in this bed. You can't even move your fingers. You can't swallow. You haven't had a drink of water in three weeks. You're asking if that's real? Go, baby, go." I felt very good that we got him there, so that he knew there was nothing to be scared of. He's buried now in my back yard.

[Q] Playboy: How many people have you seen die in the past few years?

[A] Fierstein: I have no idea. I have no idea. Far more than I ever thought I would. And I'll tell you something. There is also an impact watching the people who have this disease. People with AIDS [P.W.A.] are different from anybody else. They know something that none of us will ever know. A while back, I was going to write a play about somebody with AIDS, and a P.W.A. said to me, "You have no idea what it's like. I don't care how well you know me or anybody else who has died of AIDS or is sick; there's no way that anyone else can know what it's like." He meant that when you have AIDS, you don't simply have a disease like cancer.

[Q] Playboy: What do you have?

[A] Fierstein: "To start with, when you have AIDS, you're part of a media event. When you have AIDS, you also have everything that comes with it. Thejudgment of people about how much sex you've had in your life and what kind, or the suspicion that you shoot up drugs and all the rest--every nasty, filthy lie that is told about homosexuals. The fact is, there's nothing wrong with having had a lot of sex. There's nothing wrong with putting your arms around someone, even if you don't know them very well, and kissing them and holding them and having a good time with them and then going away feeling great. But judgment comes with AIDS! There's also a certain look in the eyes that I've noticed. You hate making generalizations like this, but there is a certain look I seein everyone I've met who has this disease.

[Q] Playboy: What do you mean?

[A] Fierstein: Something that sets them apart. It usually does not appear at first, during the denial stage. But once in the acceptance stage, there's a certain look that just hits you in the heart. It's a kind of desperation, but not the sort you see in other people who know they're dying.

And although most people with AIDS lose a lot of weight, it doesn't have to do with that, either. In fact, when AIDS patients start taking A.Z.T., there's usually a honeymoon period when they start putting weight back on--but it doesn't affect the look in the eyes. Those AIDS eyes! I joke.

[Q] Playboy: You say that the gay community has changed its behavior because of AIDS--it's practicing safe sex. Wasn't that a big change for gays? Isn't sex more important to gays than to straights, if only as a unifying factor for the community?

[A] Fierstein: I don't believe that it's more important. I do think of it as the only identifiable trait that we share. We're not white, we're not black; we're homosexual. But the thing is, if people really were comfortable with safe sex, things wouldn't have to change. You can sleep with 1000 people a night and never be at risk. Even if all 1000 people had AIDS. People don't have to stop having sex. You just have to know what you're doing.

[Q] Playboy: Nevertheless, do you believe that the sexual revolution--gay and straight--is over, that we're doomed to return to the secular mores of the Fifties?

[A] Fierstein: Not at all. This is the sexual revolution. What we did in the late Sixties and early Seventies was a bunch of bullshit--child's play, kids let loose in a toy store seeing how many possibilities there were. You don't have to change your lifestyle to do that. The real discovery is that you have to take responsibility for your actions, responsibility both for yourself and for your partner.

[Q] Playboy: What do you think of the new candor in talking about all of this--the public-service commercials telling kids explicitly to use condoms, and so forth?

[A] Fierstein: I think that's absolutely good. It goes back to people's having respect for their own body. In the long run, people are so desperate for affection that they think to challenge somebody else is going to take that affection from them. [Imitates teenage girl] "But if I say that to my boyfriend, it's like telling him he has AIDS! I can't do that to him. He's so nice and he won't call me anymore!" Well, if you don't respect yourself enough to protect your own life, and he doesn't respect you for wanting to protect both of you, then what do you want this person for?

Look, syphilis and gonorrhea are both curable. And both are sporadically in epidemic proportions in the United States. Why? Because we don't talk about sex. And because magazines like this one keep it dirty.

Just look at the personal ads in so many gay and straight publications. They're incredible. I think all the loneliness in this society, all the separation of people from people, has to do with self-hatred. The woman who stays with a husband who beats her is staying because she doesn't think she deserves any better. Kids who are incest victims don't report it, because they believe on some level that they're at fault. It's not just gay people. It has to do with childhood, too. It has to do with hearing no much more than yes. It has to do with being told to stand in line instead of being urged to explore and find out on your own. It has to do with the way society operates.

[Q] Playboy: And yet, isn't it also true that men, whether they're straight or gay, tend to view relationships differently from the way women do? By and large, isn't the initial impulse among men sexual, with the emotional dimension afterward? While for women, doesn't it generally seem to be the other way around?

[A] Fierstein: Absolutely. And it's magnified in the gay community, because you're putting together two men or two women. The old joke is that there's no such thing as a one-night stand for a woman. You know, they move in for at least six years. And with guys, it's, Never ask somebody's name until you've had sex. [Laughs] Actually, that's something that's nice--dating is coming back. I mean, when I was a kid, that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to go to dinner. I wanted to go to the movies. I didn't even know about casual sex then; I thought you dated and maybe had sex while you were dating, and eventually, you either stayed together or went on looking for Mr. Right.

I mean, I've had more than my share of back-room sex--wham, bam, thank you, ma'am. Thatwas a lot of fun, too. But even then, I wanted to do the other thing. Even when I was having sex on a three-or-four-night-a-week basis, ten, 20 men a night, that thought was always there--someday, your prince will come. I mean, maybe tonight will be different, maybe the fourth dick I suck tonight will be him.

But back then, nobody wanted to date. Now, all of a sudden, this new possibility has been given to us.

[Q] Playboy: Romance.

[A] Fierstein: Yeah. Real romance. Well, we always had romance and love, but they more often happened by accident. It was after you'd had sex and you were lying there and you really didn't want to leave and he didn't want to leave, and then you figured out there might be something.

[Q] Playboy: Those figures you mentioned--ten, 20 men a night--

[A] Fierstein: You have to remember one thing: It's so easy for two men to have sex, so much easier physically than for two women, and that figures into it, too. You just open the zipper, flop the thing out, and you do it. You can do it standing in a bar; you can do it at the Metropolitan Opera: suck each other off during the show. With women, it's much harder. For most women, it takes a lot more than standing and grinding against your partner's leg on the dance floor, while two men can have sex on a dance floor with their clothes on grinding up against each other. The old dry hump, as it were.

[Q] Playboy: The sheer number of partners is still stunning to a lot of straight men. Ten years ago, we used to hear straight men say, "Boy, it must be fantastic to be gay and just get right down to it--no courting or preliminaries."

[A] Fierstein: For a long time, I was a great fan of anonymous sex. I much preferred anonymous sex to getting into bed with somebody and having to deal with whether you'd have to get dressed to go home or how you'd get rid of him. I had a little survival kit for someone I'd bring home; it had a token in it and instructions on how to get to the train station and two aspirins. On the other hand, I've lived with people who prefer a monogamous relationship.

One thing to remember, though, is that gay couples operate under disadvantages that straight couples don't have. You can have the most open relationship with your mother, but you still won't get the same support from her that you would in a straight relationship. You're not going to hear, "You can work it out; do it for the sake of the children." They don't think a gay breakup is nearly as bad as a divorce.

[Q] Playboy: But you often have long-term gay relationships in your plays.

[A] Fierstein: Yeah. And I've had friends say to me, "Oh, come on, Harvey, you know, you and your plays.... That's really not possible." Well, I was very lucky, because the first gay couple I knew were together almost 40 years. So I know it is possible. Not only possible but highly pleasurable. And they had a wonderful relationship.

[Q] Playboy: Do people really hope your relationships won't work out?

[A] Fierstein: Oh, it's not as simple as that. But when I broke up with my last lover, everybody was delighted. [Laughs]

[Q] Playboy: They didn't like him?

[A] Fierstein: No, they liked him a lot. They just didn't like me married. It cut down on my time with them. I had a relationship that I had to work at, spend time on. I did have a relationship once, the one that Torch Song is loosely based on, in which we had something that I didn't think was possible. I really did love him and he really did love me and it was the kind of love that didn't ever have to be discussed. I always knew what he was thinking. He always knew what I was thinking.

[Q] Playboy: Do you still see him?

[A] Fierstein: Occasionally. And the connection's always there.

[Q] Playboy: In the play, the character thinks of himself as heterosexual. Did this guy see himself that way?

[A] Fierstein: Yes. Desperately.

[Q] Playboy: And he thinks of his gay past as an aberration that he has overcome?

[A] Fierstein: I don't think he can deal with it. He's married now, just like the guy in the play, but he never looks happy to me anymore. He used to be one of the happiest people I knew. Happy in his work, happy in his home life. Interested in a lot of things. He loved theater, music, his work as a teacher. And when I see him now, he seems very boring, as if he were partially dead, as if that part of him has just died.

[Q] Playboy: Did you know a lot of men like him, who are homosexual but who live lives of heterosexuality?

[A] Fierstein: A lot. In fact, I assume a person is gay unless I'm told otherwise. I used to be attracted to the, shall we say, straight-acting man. I dated a lot of them in my young days. And something I've noticed in my sexual study, which is very unscientific, is that the butcher they are, the more they like to get fucked.

I used to be a Christopher Street queen. There were a lot of queens on the street, and we didn't have money to go into bars and drink, so we'd just hang out on the street and cruise from the time it got warm in the spring till it got too cold in the fall. And one of the first rules you learned was, If you want to get fucked, pick up a drag queen. If you want something to fuck, pick up a butch guy, because butch guys, their legs go up like they're attached to helium balloons. Another rule, by the way, was, Never let them take you to New Jersey. You'd rather die than get stuck in New Jersey.

But I wouldn't sleep with a married man now. Even then, I knew it was morally wrong. They'd have a wife at home who didn't know that the other woman she was fighting was a man. And there was no way she could compete, because that's who her husband really was. Gay.

You look at the ads in the gay press. Look how many of those ads are people who are looking for "right after work" or "in the afternoon." The ten percent of the population that is gay doesn't include those guys. There's probably a much larger percentage who are actually gay in our society. The point is, you can stick it in any hole. You know, there are real straight men who can have gay sex. It doesn't make them gay. And there are plenty of gay people, as we know, who have straight sex, and it doesn't make them straight. It has nothing to do with learning to stick it in one hole or the other. It has to do with who you are inside.

[Q] Playboy: What do you look for in a relationship now?

[A] Fierstein: Who knows? [Laughs] I can tell you all about bad relationships but not about great ones. I mean, you know that book Smart Women, Foolish Choices? That's the story of my life. I do know, though, that I want somebody who really likes life and really likes what he's doing with his life and is able to share that intimate part of himself. I don't want to have to entertain someone. I've done that a lot of times. I don't want someone who needs to be taken care of; that's not my idea of a relationship. I want somebody secure enough to leave me alone. And trustworthy, because I'm the jealous type. I don't know if all that's possible. But I imagine it is.

[Q] Playboy: That's what everyone wants.

[A] Fierstein: Yeah. Well, it took me a long time to realize it. I thought what I wanted was that all-encompassing love: The two of you don't breathe unless you're together. And I finally figured out that ain't it.

[Q] Playboy: That's the adolescent fantasy.

[A] Fierstein: Yeah.

[Q] Playboy: Let's get back to the impact AIDS has had on the lives of gay men. Are you concerned by what some perceive as an antigay backlash?

[A] Fierstein: Look, let's put it in perspective. There are 40,000 cases of AIDS. And the majority of those are I.V.-drug users. For argument's sake, let's say there are 500,000 people affected with the AIDS virus, and let's say 250,000 of them are gay. That still is only one percent of the gay community, a tiny minority within a minority. [According to the CDC, of 59,000 cases of AIDS, 18 percent are I.V.-drug users.] AIDS and homosexuality, there's no equal sign between the two. What I'm saying is that "terror" is ridiculous; it doesn't make sense.

[Q] Playboy: But it's not a question of logic. Are you saying that straight attitudes have had no impact on gay life?

[A] Fierstein: Sure, occasionally, you hear things. I got a call from a young woman who goes to a college in Virginia, and she said that in the cafeteria, they've been passing out really hateful antigay material.

[Q] Playboy: And you were surprised?

[A] Fierstein: In a college? Yeah. My feeling is that history doesn't go backward. It can repeat itself, but it's always progressing on another level. I'm not denying the degree of fear out there. Of course people are afraid. But honestly facing that fear, seeing it for what it is, is the only way of putting it to rest. And it's not just straight people. Several years ago, one of our gay leaders, one of our major spokesmen in New York, asked me how I could let people with AIDS swim in my pool. Initially, I was very angry. But I was glad, finally, that he was able to express it. "Eddy," I said, "don't you read the same shit I do? You ain't going to get it in a pool. You ain't going to get it from a towel." He just had to be reminded. It's one thing to be aware of those kinds of fears; it's another thing to become hysterical or go around telling people you can get AIDS by going to a restaurant where they have gay waiters.

There are a lot of people who find it easier to be openly gay now, because they're coming out for a cause. There are people who are unchanged by AIDS, and there are people who were set back in the cause and there are people it has helped come out. People who are running around saying, "I don't want to be gay." Do they not want to be gay because they're scared of a disease? Of course not.

[Q] Playboy: In The Boys in the Band, gay playwright Mart Crowley seems to say that nobody ever wants to be gay in the first place, and that produces self-hate.

[A] Fierstein: I can think of very few people who would honestly say, "I'm very glad that homosexuality exists, and I'm very glad I'm gay." You know, in a utopia, there would be no difference among any of us, and nobody would get dumped on. But it doesn't work that way. It can't work that way. Because if sexual preference weren't an issue, we'd find something else to hate about each other. That's the way human beings are.

[Q] Playboy: Larry Kramer, the gay writer and activist, seems to feel far different from you about the threat to gays. He gave a speech about AIDS recently that was an appeal, a cry that the gay community is being destroyed. Let us quote from it: "Easily half of all gay men in San Francisco and New York are now infected with the virus. We are walking time bombs." And he adds, "Definitive studies in San Francisco now prove beyond any doubt that after six and a half years, 76 percent of those with the virus will definitely come down with AIDS or ARC if they have no treatment at all. This 76 percent gradually increases in the following years to almost 100 percent." It's really an apocalyptic forecast.

[A] Fierstein: And I understand. I respect Larry greatly, but I do not respect those figures. The difference between Larry's approach and mine is that, for him, this is already done. These people are already dying. My view is, Let's get out there and make sure nobody else gets exposed. It's not that I think fewer people will die. I just think that we have to go for the most positive point of view, which is, What can we do about the disease?

[Q] Playboy: But Kramer is making a desperate appeal. He's saying, "We have to get a cure; we have to release the drugs that have not yet been tested. There are things to be done right now...."

[A] Fierstein: I agree with that. But my anger is directed elsewhere. For instance, I'm pissed as hell with the minority communities. In New York City, more than half the AIDS cases are minorities, and they're getting no support from their community. They're not out there speaking about AIDS. They're not out there educating. They're not out there saying, "This is our problem." They're very happy to lay the problem on gays, because everybody knows we're somebody to kick around. A lot of it has to do with macho, which is why on Gay Day, it's a sea of white faces.

[Q] Playboy: Granted, but don't you acknowledge that you may be dealing with a new tide of hostility against gays--one that seems to us much greater than it was five years ago--as a result of AIDS?

[A] Fierstein: Listen, I've lived my entire life with heterosexual hatred! All my life, I've been the queer down the hall. So this bothers me no more than any of the rest. It's a constant attack. I don't see why you think that all of a sudden, AIDS has given the haters more space than they ever had. It's always been there! Every Gay Day parade in New York City has had hundreds of thousands of people marching down Fifth Avenue, and the local TV coverage has shown a drag queen, a few people throwing things at St. Patrick's Cathedral and the 25 antigay protesters and has given them equal time to the 100,000 marching. There is homophobia on a huge incredible level. It has not changed because of AIDS. It may not have gotten much better, but it has not gotten worse.

[Q] Playboy: You don't think certain people now feel it's open season on gays?

[A] Fierstein: I read a column recently by that idiot Pat Buchanan, saying that AIDS was a result of gay degeneracy, of moral bankruptcy. This man's problem is not AIDS. He is scared to death of homosexuals, period. AIDS didn't create that. I understand your point--he can now make this kind of statement more freely. But a man like him would have found another way to make the statement. It's merely the newsprint equivalent of a guy telling gay jokes at the office. Moral bankruptcy? Where is Buchanan's article about syphilis, which is totally curable and which often is in epidemic proportions in the straight community right now? You run a blood test, two shots, curable. Where is his condemnation of morals in the straight community?

My point is, if gay people had enough goddamn self-respect to stand up when someone made a gay joke and say, "Fuck you in the heart, you little asshole. You go home and watch your lesbian porno movie or whatever you do, but I am gay and I resent your saying that"--that would make all the difference. Look, when people tell racial jokes, they look around to make sure that they are not telling them in front of a black person or a Hispanic bus boy. But gay people are invisible. Unless we make ourselves visible, we will never shut up an asshole like Pat Buchanan.

[Q] Playboy: But getting back to the----

[A] Fierstein: And if your ideal of morality is to be in a monogamous relationship, then you have to accept gay people and let them get married! Then you can yell at them if they fool around with somebody. But you can't tell gay people that they cannot do this and think they'll just go and be heterosexual. They'll explode and go to a backroom bar and have anonymous sex. If you want a moral society, then accept homosexuality as a viable lifestyle. Let us get married, if that's what we want to do. Some people will do it, some won't. Just like heterosexuals.

[Q] Playboy: Do you personally see monogamy as an ideal?

[A] Fierstein: I think the whole idea is a little strange. It's like saying, "I will have dinner only with you the rest of my life. I will never eat without you again." I mean, it doesn't make sense for thinking human beings.

For me, people are about choices and possibilities. The kids who get married right out of high school, and neither of them has ever fooled around--that, to me, is chilling, because they've so limited themselves. Probably, they won't do anything or add much to the society. They'll never push at any boundaries; they'll never create anything new. They won't paint experimentally if they haven't experimented with the rest of life. You can't be creative in one section of your life and not in others. Creativity, to me, is not the guy who buys the cookbook. Give me the guy who wrote the cookbook. And those people, who are truly creative, you cannot lock in with a rule. You meet somebody, you have sex with that person and that's it for life? I don't know anybody like that worth knowing.

[Q] Playboy: Do you believe that the gay community in general is more creative than the straight community?

[A] Fierstein: Oh, absolutely. Only because we have to do so much self-searching just to find out who we are. How many straight people do you know who lie as well as a guy who's in the closet? I mean, can you imagine the creativity that goes into constantly covering up, to be 60 years old and pretend to your family you've never had sex?

[Q] Playboy: You continually make the point that gays should be all the way out of the closet. How are you regarded by homosexuals who want to keep their homosexuality a secret?

[A] Fierstein: I scare the hell out of them. Gay celebrities shy away from me, like I'm mad. Gay movie stars refuse to be photographed with me. Rock Hudson wouldn't be photographed with me. We knew people in common, but he wouldn't be photographed with me.

[Q] Playboy: Did you confront him with it?

[A] Fierstein: He was sick already. When I met him, he was on the way. But I've confronted several gay stars.

[Q] Playboy: And what reply do you get?

[A] Fierstein: I'm told to shut up. [Laughs] One person said to me, "Look, America can deal with one of each type. You got there first, Harvey, so you're the out-of-the-closet gay person America can deal with. It won't work if I do it, too."

[Q] Playboy: He was----

[A] Fierstein: It was a she.

[Q] Playboy: A she? We don't have a big lesbian star yet. That slot is open.

[A] Fierstein: Well, we almost do. We have somebody who isn't too uptight about it.

[Q] Playboy: But uptight enough so that we won't mention her here, right?

[A] Fierstein: You know, a gay woman isn't nearly as threatening. A man in a dress is funny; a woman in a suit is sexy. There are so many people in places of power who are gay and self-hating. I know a big executive in television who is gay--everyone knows he is--but he thinks it's a big secret. And when it comes to doing gay subjects on TV, he is the most homophobic person there is. All the straight people say, "Yeah, let's do that project," but he always nixes it. But it's not just show-business people. Look at how many gay people were involved in the Iran/Contra scandals. Nobody ever talked about it, but take a look.

[Q] Playboy: To whom are you referring?

[A] Fierstein: I'm being cryptic, because I really can't tell you. But a lot of those people who were in the news as "American heroes" are gay. The people who did the deal are gay. But politics in this country are just disgusting. I mean, we had Bill Buckley actually saying that all people with AIDS should be tattooed--he said drug users should be tattooed on their arms, gay people should be tattooed on their asses. I say, "Where are you going to tattoo the babies?" Did he bother to think that most people have sex with the lights off?

Not, when it comes right down to it, that Ron and Nancy Reagan believe any of this crap. I mean, they have a lot of gay friends. But they think it's what people want to hear. There're only two people I trust in Congress--Barney Frank and Gerry Studds. And I trust them only because they're out of the closet, our first two out-of-the-closet elected officials. Of course, if we wanted to, we could fill the Houses of Congress with elected gay people. That's what gay people have to realize. There are 25,000,000 of us. If we voted as a bloc, we could name our own President.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think you'll ever have that kind of cohesion?

[A] Fierstein: Probably not, unfortunately. Because the gay community, when it comes right down to it, is not a community at all. It's too diverse. There is no Reaganite like a gay Reaganite. There is no right-wing conservative like a gay conservative. And there are still far too many gays afraid to open their mouths. When some of us were organizing to fight [Supreme Court nominee Robert] Bork, I got into a discussion about it with a gay couple even Pat Robertson would love. They're the most heterosexual homosexuals you'd ever meet. A nice married couple. They've been together 20 years. They have a house in the country and an apartment in the city. They both work hard. They have lots of friends, most of them heterosexual. They're not militant, they don't make noise.

[Q] Playboy: They're not troublemakers.

[A] Fierstein: Yeah, the nice homos down the block. And they said to me, "Oh, Harvey, we really wish that you and the gay community would not be so very vocal against Bork, because it will look like the lunatic fringe is fighting this man and then he will definitely get approved."

And I said, "What you say may be true. But in this world, if you keep your mouth shut, then you have no rights. You have to be out there doing everything you can to affect the world--or get the hell out of it."

[Q] Playboy: In the end, what do you think is so threatening to heterosexual men about homosexuality?

[A] Fierstein: That they might enjoy it.

[Q] Playboy: And if they enjoyed it?

[A] Fierstein: It would mean to them that they were queer.

[Q] Playboy: And what is so awful about being queer?

[A] Fierstein: Don't ask me. Personally, I couldn't imagine it any other way. [Laughs] You're asking the wrong person on that one. Mostly, I guess, it's fear of their own feelings. I don't know a man who's ever said to me, "I hate getting a blow job." And, of course, another great fear is anal sex. I did a funny scene in Torch Song in which I was being penetrated, and every night, the women in the audience screamed their heads off, loving every second, while the men covered their eyes. Scared to death to even imagine a man being penetrated. And, yeah, of course, it's also pragmatic. Who wants to be different? It is definitely easier to be white, rich, heterosexual, thin, blond and blue-eyed in this world.

[Q] Playboy: You've said that you don't particularly care whether straights accept you----

[A] Fierstein: No, approve. There's a difference between accept and approve. You have to accept me. You have to accept my rights as a human being and my right to live my life. I don't care if you hate me for it, or think I'm an abomination. Just get the fuck out of my way, 'cause I'm gonna do what I'm gonna do.

[Q] Playboy: Do you think there's a possibility that the majority of straight society will accept--and understand--homosexuality?

[A] Fierstein: Yes. When gay people stop hating themselves. When homophobia is gone in the gay community, it will disappear very quickly in the straight community. But realistically? I'm not holding my breath. I wrote a play, never produced, called Cannibals, which is set in an all-gay society. Two kids announce that they're straight and it rocks the family. One of the fathers says to his son, "But who else but another man could possibly satisfy you? Who else would know your body better and could know what every little 'ooh' and 'aah' meant? And who else could you relax with more than another man?" To this character, it is inconceivable that anybody would even want to have heterosexual sex, other than to have children.

But it doesn't work that way. Unfortunately, we're not all gay, so we'll keep on having trouble with you heterosexuals.

"Everything I've done is out of cowardice. I was too stubborn to go along with the world, so I made the entire world gay."

"I've lived my entire life with heterosexual hatred! All my life, I've been the queer down the hall."