roy cohn monologue chunked (ed theatre fall 2025 audition)

chunk 1

AIDS. Your problem, Henry, is that you are hung up on words, on labels, that you believe they mean what they seem to mean. AIDS. Homosexual. Gay. Lesbian.

chunk 2

You think these names tell you who someone sleeps with, but they don’t tell you that. No. Like all labels they tell you one thing and one thing only: where does an individual so identified fit in the food chain, in the pecking order?

chunk 3

Not ideology, or sexual taste, but something much simpler: clout. Not who I fuck or who fucks me, but who will pick up the phone when I call, who owes me favours. This is what labels refer to.

chunk 4

Now to someone who does not understand this, homosexual is what I am because I have sex with men. But really this is wrong. Homosexuals are not men who sleep with other men. Homosexuals are men who in fifteen years of trying cannot get a pissant antidiscrimination bill through City Council.

chunk 5

Homosexuals are men who know nobody and nobody knows. Who have zero clout. Does this sound like me, Henry? No. I have clout. A lot. I can pick up this phone, punch fifteen numbers, and you know who will be on the other end in under five minutes, Henry? The President’s wife.

chunk 6

I don’t want you to be impressed. I want you to understand. This is not sophistry. And this is not hypocrisy. This is reality.

chunk 7

I have sex with men. But unlike every other man of whom this is true, I bring the guy I’m screwing to the White House and President Reagan smiles at us and shakes his hand.

chunk 8

Because WHAT I am is defined entirely by WHO I am. Roy Cohn is not a homosexual. Roy Cohn is a heterosexual man, Henry, who fucks around with guys. So no, Henry, no. AIDS is what homosexuals have. I have liver cancer.