by Larry Kramer
All those Puritan preachers were vindictive, vengeful men spouting hateful thoughts and threats, and it’s disheartening that they’re still taught in the schools with reverence. They were shits. And they spouted shit. And a goodly portion of the world is still spouting shit.
Be careful when you talk about the fucking Pilgrims. They weren’t even the first Englishmen to settle in Massachusetts. In 1602 a band of Brits built a fort on Cuttyhunk, near New Bedford. They came to get rich digging sassafras, prized in Europe as a cure for, get this, the clap. In fact, for quite a few years no one was calling anyone pilgrims, and there weren’t any Pilgrims for even longer. It wasn’t until a decade after their arrival that the early Plymouth settlers were first referred to as pilgrims, in a sermon delivered in that town by the Reverend Chandler Robbins, who used a phrase that would also appear in William Bradford’s history of the colony, written in 1646: “but they knew they were pilgrims,” a quotation from the New Testament (Hebrews 11:13). Bradford was not singling out any group, and for almost two centuries the word was used to mean any early group of settlers. Now, get this again:
By the early nineteenth century, the new nation needed a myth of epic proportion on which to found its history. Who better than the Pilgrims, a term which by that time had narrowed its definition to apply solely to the settlers of Plymouth, whose piety, fortitude, and dedication to hard work embodied a set of ideals that could make every American proud? So it was that Plymouth was chosen to represent the beginnings of the infant nation, and the nineteenth century construction of the Pilgrims’ way of life reflects more the values of that time than the reality which it was meant to represent.
By the 1800s “a robust tale” had matured, with all sorts of Pilgrim Societies and Pilgrim Halls excluding almost everyone to come and almost everyone already here. “Both the Pilgrims and the much vaunted stone upon which they landed are figments of our fertile imagination” (James Deetz and Patricia Scott Deetz, “Rocking the Plymouth Myth,” Archaeology, Nov./Dec. 2000. Don’t you just dig these Deetzes!).
Hooker stock bred and fed this country. There were only a dozen or so Hookers in the 1600s and a thousand by the 1700s and by 1850 some ten thousand people from Hartford to Honolulu claimed to trace their roots to one copulating Hooker or another. And yet, by the twentieth century, most of us were gone. Once the frigging seed was planted and the roots had taken hold, did some force of evolution finally require us to get out of the way, or were we just exhausted and prepared at last to peter out and die? Were we just too cranky and nasty and spiteful for anyone to bear? Godly people can be awful, and usually fucking are. I’m like an appendix. No longer useful but still sticking around and dangerous when irritated. Or was God just tired of us and all our shit? God! That would be a laugh.
Well, no bird flies off anywhere without leaving droppings. There’s not a Christian mouth in this country that still isn’t shitting out, in one form or another, pith first pissed almost four hundred years ago by one of my forebears. They were capable of tremendous energies, those founding fathers: you had to be to believe with such insistence, and to insist with such belief, that what God ordained was really going to come to pass. Sin and guilt have enormous power and weight. Heft. Just like me. From the day I became a Catholic I’ve been fat as a house. I do not carry my burden of inheritance lightly.
The Hookers made their fortune from shit. So Dr. Sister Grace is going to tell you more than you want to know about shit. I am talking about American shit, not French shit, although it is the French who first learn how to profit from shit, and somehow they learned it in America, which is interesting only because the French never won any important battles in America and their prominence and residency here were marginal. For the following gleanings I am indebted to a small volume first published in France, History of Shit (MIT Press) by Dominique Laporte. Don’t know a thing about him.
The concept that each individual is responsible for his own shit originated in France. The Royal Edict of Villers-Cotterets from 1539 decreed the private management of the matter: “To each his shit.” This concept obviously never took hold in America. The instant it leaves us we don’t want to know what happens to it. The word waste was often used in place of shit, but there is nothing wasteful in a person’s shit. Everything in it is useful. It will be the twelfth of never before this is discovered.
Laporte tells us that in ancient Rome shit was used as a ladies’ cosmetic for the face and hair, as a cure for wounds and diseases, as a superior whitener of teeth, and as a tonic for weak children. The color of shit aided in classifying certain illnesses. Female hysteria in Egypt was calmed by the inhalation of crocodile dung, although the ancient Egyptians believed that the hideous stink of human shit was absorbed back into the body, causing all kinds of sicknesses, internal and ex.
Marie Allacoque, before her sainthood, ate the shit of her sick charges. The stench of shit is known to have awakened in the writer Michelet the spirit of creation. He hung around in latrines when unable to write, ever mindful of Kant’s dictum “The beautiful does not smell.”
Being French, Laporte is not beyond comparing the state to the immense toilet of the universe, not only because it shits out laws but also because it controls cleanliness within its sewers. The State is the Sewer. Very French.
Hermatros of course knew what the French would maintain many centuries later: shit is incontestably good.
The Hookers who remained in Massachusetts prospered mightily from shit. This is of course how and why I know so much about it. It’s fed me all my life.
It was one of Tom’s grandsons, the Reverend Ezra Hooker, Sr., who first discovered—God bless his restless inventive fucked-up soul—that there was money to be made in shit. No one paid a fart over human body wastes before. Only animal wastes were used for fertilizing crops. I don’t know where everything from inside us disappeared to: most likely down holes in the ground or into bodies of water. Or it didn’t disappear, and was just left wherever, Seneck style. But as hamlets became villages became towns certain problems increased: not being able to distinguish between walking through mud and walking through shit, and mussing up the house something awful; soil so saturated with fecal matter that vegetables grown in the same earth passed on some kind of poisonous parasitic vermin that accounted for an exceptionally high rate of mental disorders and derangements; so much shit surrounding your house that after a rain the stench was strong enough to make ladies faint dead away; poor people so hungry they ate the “mud” and fell into spasms and fits and had to be put down. There were suddenly a lot of lunatics, their arms and legs shooting out in unexpected twitches and karate-like jabs as they wandered the streets and farms of New Amsterdam and Philadelphia, kicking people, choking people, killing people who got in the way. Problems like there just being too many not-so-convenient-to-have-around piles of shit.
Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century geniuses in Germany studied shit and discovered that ammonia was a component in it, but they couldn’t figure out for what. Yes, shit fertilized crops. But not all of them. It could kill them, too. And depending on how close you got to it and how much you inhaled, it could kill you as well. The Nazis are going to study all this ammonia shit when they build their gas ovens. And thanks to these Nazis, little Grace will discover her Vel, which everyone will call the most ridiculous of notions but will turn out to be not so at all. Among other uses, Vel will signify the presence of ammonia, in shit or anything else. It showed that bacteria can smell the nutrients in shit and gravitate toward it to stay alive. For this I got my Nobel and for this all of our shares in Massachusetts Waste (yes, even Cousin Hoity Toity benefits from Massachusetts Waste, not that she ever thanks us for one turd) became worth even more.
What did they do about this shit over there in England, in Europe, where our FFFs came from? That’s Fucking Founding Fathers. Nothing, or else they would have done it here. Instead we have plagues (I must be careful using this word, is Hortatory Hermia in earshot?) causing all sorts of hideous conditions
—physical deformities, irreparable intestinal disorders, blindness, lameness, scabbed bodies, loss of limbs, atrophy of tongues, sexual organs not fully developed, all occurring with marked and increasing rapidity throughout the growing colonies. And no one ever wonders why. The notion of cause and effect escapes everyone for centuries. In too many instances it still does. So much ripe for study! Piles of shit going begging, if only someone would look at it.
In most people’s minds God was the most likely perpetrator. For centuries (and continuing), people everywhere were sore from guilt over their presumed constant sinning, which brought such divine (read ecstatic, as in pleasurable, masochistically pleasurable) physical punishments for all and any transgressions.
That simply shitting in a pot and burying its contents deep would take care of most of these plagues of hideousnesses much better than God the Father is a secret that eludes entire civilizations, even now.
But just getting the fucking stuff out of the fucking way never occurs to a fucking soul either.
Hookers discover this and get super fucking rich. Isn’t that a pisser?
Shit digests itself if left to itself, so it breaks itself down. By the end of about six months it’s relatively inactivated, and has lost its odor. If it’s spread on fields, the sun can kill enough of its poisons; when it’s extracted from bodies of water, which is where a great deal of early American shit was deposited, the addition of sea vegetation and its mineral life can actually improve fecal effectiveness as a natural nutrient for plants. It wasn’t long before this was discovered. And we favored animal over human excreta. But since there are only so many horses and cows to fertilize an increasing amount of farmland, human shit becomes something that must be looked into. Quietly. Shit is one of those things that upsets people. Particularly human shit. Of which there’s a great deal around. More and more every day. You must know this. But you just don’t think about it. And you never did.
In 1700, Rev. Ezra Hooker, Sr., began the first company—Massachusetts Farm Supply was its unthreatening name—to deal in removing waste for a fee and providing it right back to farmers also for a fee. There aren’t too many businesses, then or now, where both ends pay you. Ezra was clever to figure this out so early. I would still thank him in my prayers if I still prayed. He passes on his business to his son, Ezra Jr., who tried to interest his own boy, Hogarth, but he wanted to try Tom’s calling—preaching. The Hooker family was wedded to shit on all sides and turns.
Ezra Sr. separated animal from human shit. At least he said he did. He told everyone he was carting away their human waste and returning to them animal waste for fertilizer, after it had been dried out in the sun. I don’t believe it for a New England minute. It was too much trouble to separate the two, which lay around in communal dumps everywhere.
New York takes credit for being the first place where street cleaning took place on an organized basis. The Dutch were called the “most tidee.” But it was Massachusetts and the Hookers that made this calling lucrative. Boston was known for its clean streets long before New York, which, God help you sluts who live there, still isn’t. Do you know that the first street cleaners were called “scavengers” and, way before the whores, “hookers”?
So the Ezras sold the Massachusetts farmers shit. I have no idea whether the farmers knew or cared that it was human shit. It’s hard to believe they didn’t know. One assumes they didn’t care. It made crops grow just as well as the animal kind, so what was the difference?
As it turns out, there was and is a lot of difference.
I need a nap and will rejoin you shortly.
This shit is hard to do, Freddie.
* * *
I was in it, of course, both the human and the animal kind, and I enjoyed it for a while. It was a warm place for me to live, like a lovely bath. And I met so many new friends! I had no idea there were so many like myself. Fields and fields of us. I thought it might be more useful for me than it was. There was no one to infect! And it was exhausting realizing there were so many of us having to worry about staying alive just like human beings. All those Massachusetts people laying us to roast and dry out had been quite sexually active, so their shit was quite productive for hibernation if not procreation. Shit is a fertile breeding ground for most diseases but I am to sadly discover that it was and remains a dead end for me, unless, of course, people eat it, which I thought would be rarely the case.
Nevertheless, I’m grateful to the Hookers for putting it out there, this earthy cover. You never know when some country in the world will be forced to start eating shit for lack of other food and then, as I believe the British expression goes, “Bob’s your uncle.”
Oh, if you could only hear me! If all of you could only hear me. Then you would know better what you are up against and that I am growing more formidable by the minute while all you do is talk, talk, talk.
YOUR ROVING HISTORIAN TELLS US ABOUT THE FIRST GREAT MAN
Yes, that is what he was called, then and still, our first great man.
It is 1630, ten years after the Puritans landed on Plymouth Rock.
Who is this man who now makes his New World entrance on the stage of Massachusetts and becomes such a powerful leader so quickly? What did he say and do that some 350 years later Peter Ruester, the president of the United States in these first years of our plague of The Underlying Condition, is said to consult him, taking courage from his example and inspiration from his thoughts? Historians know who he is, of course, and still praise him, calling him America’s First Great Man in a line that will include Washington, Franklin, and Lincoln, who are all said to achieve “radical ends by conservative means,” which is intended as a compliment. Historians say things like this when they are not smart enough to look at the facts.
He came, he saw, and he set the tone for what was to come. That can certainly be said of him.
Everyone knew who he was when he was alive. They were frightened of him. Does this tell us that fear is necessary to render great men great? We must bear this question in mind as more “great” men parade through our pages.
His name was John Winthrop. He arrived here with two hundred of his followers. He wanted to make Boston, and Massachusetts, and the Massachusetts Bay Colony, of which he was elected governor before he left England, the perfect place for God. And he wanted God to see that this perfect place on earth was being made for Him. Of course it could not be truly perfect, because man is not perfect, and can never be perfect. But there you have it: the true dilemma the true Puritan faced trying to be true to God, who demands nothing less than true perfection.
That Massachusetts Bay Colony had been set up in England as a corporation, enabling one hundred white male religious fanatics to elect their leader to rule in a completely totalitarian way. Some 20,000 people had left England because Charles I dissolved a Puritan-friendly parliament. They got their name by trying to purify the Church of England. They failed. They got out when the getting was good. God got them out. These men and women believed that salvation is totally determined by God. God created all men unequal. The world isn’t fair and it’s your fault and God has to be thanked no matter what is given. This is what Grace’s Hookers were talking about and Winthrop is more of the same. I’d say worse, but as some comedian used to say when kids listened to the radio, “You ain’t heard nothin’ yet.”
He was rigid, John Winthrop was. His actions, looked at more closely today, really reveal a monstrous man, a harsh dictator who abided nothing short of this perfection that no one could possibly achieve, and with no compassion—well, these Puritans were not big on compassion. Puritanism did not allow compassion. “Puritanism required that a man devote his life to seeking salvation but told him he was helpless to do anything but evil. Puritanism required that he rest his whole hope in Christ but taught him that Christ would utterly reject him. Puritanism required that man refrain from sin but told him he would sin anyhow. Puritanism required that he reform the world in the image of God’s holy kingdom but taught him th
at the evil of the world was incurable and inevitable.” This is as good a description as this haunted calling gets and it is by a Yaddah professor, Edmund Morgan, who prides himself in extolling Winthrop’s greatness and in leading a big parade of Winthrop worshippers, I truly am uncertain why. Winthrop (and Morgan) said he wanted to save his people from sin, but who has come along to save us from the Morgans of history?
There was certainly no one there to save John Winthrop’s people.
It is a wonder that under such nonstop fury unleashed on them any Puritan man was able to get up in the morning, much less find a way to feed his growing family.
Where is Greatness in all this?
Let us continue to look.
What does it say about us that we wanted to be treated like this? That we allowed it? That we followed it and believed in it so fervently? And what does it say about us as a people that so much of what it meant to be a Puritan is still ingrained in so much of America? That we are unable to be compassionate? That we indeed are masochists? Dare we broach this conclusion before we even continue? One wants to scream out a warning: You are getting off on the wrong foot, America! Can’t you see it, you fools! It is malarkey. And you are falling for it and into it! Well, we weren’t calling ourselves America yet, as if this would be our saving grace when that happened.
How can I describe early Boston in as few words as possible? It really wasn’t all that interesting a place. Still isn’t. A hateful uppity gathering of snotty two-faced lying souls. Bad weather and dull people were what you saw then and what you get now. If history could learn one thing from Boston and Winthrop, it’s that you are never going to come up with all that different a result when, as Grace would say, the original shit is shit. The past will always continue to haunt. We never get away with and from our past. That so many prefer to avoid this fact is of never-ending amazement. Boston and Massachusetts were—well, they simply have not contributed as much to this country’s weal as their reputation and the “historical facts” maintain. So many for so long have called this city and this state so bountiful in all things Good and Great, Noble, and, especially, Godly, that by now it’s all unconditionally believed. That’s what constant repetition can do for you. You say it often enough, it gets believed. The Catechism should have taught us that. The Catholics should have taught us that. As it turns out, we didn’t need Boston as much as everyone there, before and since, thought we did. As another Grace-ism would put it: it is so fucking hard to get the real true story out there! And the longer you wait, the harder it is.
