Sophisticated Scenes in Plain Drag : SOCIAL REALISM: People in Trouble <i> by Sarah Schulman (E. P. Dutton: $17.95, paper; 240 pp.) </i>

Flames are lit around the world these days. It is a volatile time. From cities to countries to entire cultures, the caring and the suffering together are deciding that whatever they thought they had to lose is already gone. People are taking matters into their own hands, making their anger the catalyst for change. For once, they’re winning. The struggle is happening on the urban home front too, though while the toll is higher, fewer people seem to want to hear about it.

But step into the satirical, apocalyptic arena of Sarah Schulman’s latest, enticingly transgressive novel, “People in Trouble,” and there is no denying that this war at home is raging in the streets. It is as clear as headlines, from the top of Page 1: “It was the beginning of the end of the World but not everyone noticed right away. Some people were dying. Some people were busy. Some people were cleaning their houses while the war movie played on television.”

On the surface, Schulman’s Lower Manhattan streets appear starkly realistic, like the style of the prose she uses to describe them. Yet something has been altered-- “normal” life seems oddly askew. Or does it? People are dying, not only of AIDS but of homelessness and heartlessness, and others who may at first seem to care really care only for themselves. Ironically, this novel that begins as satire, in the end takes on a kind of super-realistic quality.

While hard-edged and often dour, these politicized streets are transformed into a romantic battlefield as dark and sensual as the tenor of Molly’s clandestine meetings with her lover, Kate. Kate is an artist who is married to Peter, a theatrical lighting designer who is trying hard not to notice, with decreasing success, that his wife is having a lesbian affair.

His surroundings in general are appearing increasingly gay, a fact that, incredibly, has escaped his knowledge even though he is no newcomer to living in the heart of gay downtown. But Peter is an intellectual, and a liberal--he has the right opinions about the right topics--so this is all right with him. Or it would be if only it weren’t waved in his face constantly by his wife, by sidewalk confrontations, by reports on the news of heated demonstrations by the radical activist group, Justice. As Molly’s awareness of urban inhumanity grows, and as her friends fall to AIDS, she is drawn into participating in the forces of Justice. Kate, who is loving her new look as a cross-dresser and putting forth less and less effort to hide her affair from her husband, joins Molly.

But even though Kate’s commitment to truth and doing the right thing is ever-growing, she is unable to give in completely to being a lesbian. She cares for Molly but affirms over and over again, verbally and physically, her love for a particular part of Peter’s anatomy. Perhaps she isn’t really a lesbian after all; perhaps she just can’t let go. Peter sulks, then finally gets a girlfriend. Molly liberates herself and meets the cowgirl of her dreams. Justice affects some serious justice.

“People in Trouble” may seem simplistic at first, even humorously so. The story and the political views of particular characters are laid out so matter-of-factly at times that you may feel compelled to let out an occasional giggle. There is opportunity to indulge this compulsion; Schulman can be out-and-out hilarious. Conversely, there is a sort of secret and quite serious text running parallel to this humorous simplicity. Beware of passages that seem to be stated without any literary pretension. These will most often turn out to be sophisticated themes in plain drag.

What lurks behind this unintimidating black-and-white surface are some pointed contemplations of male dominance and narcissism, female submission to and rejection of patriarchy, the violent homophobia of the heterosexual mainstream, and human inability to accept personal desire that might be seen as deviate or taboo.

But what is most challenging about “People in Trouble” is Schulman’s redefining of society. Here is an urban world that, at a glance, looks and sounds the same as ever. People are living on the street, people are hungry and people are sick. And all these people are still the minority, still forgotten.

What is different here is that they have invented a voice and seized a forum. We are offered a vista of the similarity in their various grave situations, so the possibility of natural coalition becomes visible. It is a possibility wrought with power.

Have you ever stopped to think what would happen if out of the blue, social structure as it had been was reordered? If, say, all of a sudden the heartless became outcast, and the caring and the suffering together gained power? If one day we woke up and people came together, like metal shavings on magnets, to work affirmatively and with force to change society for the better?

Schulman has thought about all this, and in “People in Trouble,” she offers a startling vision of what it might be like. Though somehow, through the extraordinary events of the last few months, her prophecy doesn’t seem that outrageous after all.

When was it that transgression got such a lousy rap anyway?