by Larry Kramer
His report for HAD, dated 3 Aug. 1838, signed by Gideon Furstwasser, although he has been disposed of? unloaded? murdered? disappeared? by the time of its receipt in Washington, is as follows:
“We arrive in our boat at night because it takes much time to sail from Sagg. No one is here to greet us. We march on to the Hospital. No one is there to greet us. We go inside what is identified as ‘Office.’ Again no official with greetings. We pass down corridors and we look into the many tiny windows of doors. All doors are locked. Much stink comes from the tiny rooms, packed two, three, four, five to each, with the people inside them screaming like banshees or dead. What to do with them? This is not a question I know how to answer in comfort.
“Further investigation reveals no one of authority in evidence. In Switzerland I was a man accustomed to be in charge. What would I do in Switzerland? I ask myself.
“I make a list. There is no one in charge. There is no food. There are ten soldiers with ten musket guns fit to kill jungle animals. I do not believe any jungle animals are here. Options include finding food and feeding people in tiny rooms. This is no option since we can find no food or keys. All cupboards are bare. We are on a tiny island. Options include burning whole place down and removing people from misery. I am not permitted by God to make such Judgment and perform such acts. Options include going back to Sagg and seeking help from another source. But this takes time and storms are coming. If the storm kills our boat what will happen here?
“I and Ezra determine we must set these people free. But we find no keys. Then a woman appears in night robe who names herself as Mrs. Katherine Horvath, Chief Nurse. She takes us to the office of Dr. Punic, whom I have been looking for, and locates keys to the tiny rooms. She is bleeding and excuses herself. Then Ezra Furstwasser and I unlock the doors. It takes us many hours and dawn comes by the time we finish. The soldiers hold up their musket guns so the inmates stay in line as we set them free outside. They look terrible. They look almost dead. They lie down on the grassy banks and fall asleep in the fresh air.
“How many? Two hundred. Three hundred. Not thousands as we are told and as says the official reports sent to our Department. But they are possibly dead and disposed of.
“Outside is also the body of Dr. Maurice Punic hanging from a tree.”
This is the end of his report, a copy of which I tracked down at Iron Vaultum.
As Ezra’s official biography issued by the Disciples of Lovejoy (Mother) Church of Montrose, Missouri, states: “As he surveyed the diseased hordes which, mingling under this moon, were to become his first flock of followers, swaying already in thralldom to this new leader, he, Ezra Furstwasser, received his First Call from God. He is told that it is now his time. He must redefine his name. He is given the choice, to be either Furst or Wasser. He elects to become Ezra Furst and Gideon accepts his new calling as Gideon Wasser.
“The Angel then says to Ezra, ‘Furst means Prince too. You are hereby the First Prince of a new religion that God and Jesus are birthing.’ Gideon immediately kneels down before Ezra. ‘My brother, I pledge you my fealty!’ The Angel causes lightning and thunder to announce this fealty of brother for brother.”
A later official biography, entitled Our Prince, describes in more elaborate detail and more polished English how Ezra Furst led “my faithful three thousand” out of bondage and into the Promised Land. Their march westward across America, eventually to the Nehigh Basin in the as yet unclaimed and unnamed western provinces, is to become known as the Great Migration.
This is the account of the Great Migration given in Our Prince. It is told in the first person, as narrated by Ezra:
“I returned to the now-empty Great Hospital and I set fire to it. Such a house of horror and unkindness to humanity and the human spirit must no longer stand. I had wondered how difficult it might be to do this. I am a man not given to deeds of destruction, no matter what reason for it, but I feel that God is lighting this fire with me. Indeed, so willing was this fire to inflame the heavens that the night breezes fan the tiny flames into bigger and bigger ones in cooperation with this Holy Spirit that is guiding me. This was to be the Great Consumption that we shall celebrate each year, along with the Great Migration, as part of Our Festival of Our Beginnings. God was my fellow torchbearer. A mighty bonfire it was, growing to so huge a height and making so loud a clamor for importance that I am told it could be seen and heard on all far shores on the entire coast. I am in awe of my deed. Yes, I see my act as one of sweeping this filthy earth clean. I knew I was now God’s co-worker.
“Yes, it was here and now that I felt my first call to be God’s leader. Right here and now I heard my name called out loud by God. As these new hordes prostrate themselves before me on this Great Lawn I kneel with them and we pray. Oh Lord Our God, oh Jesus your son, give Your Blessings to this New Calling to which You summon me. And these new servants before me raised their hands to me and to our Lord and his Son. With the conflagration behind us making ever-louder tintinnabulations, my new people, racked by hunger and lack of love, gallop like some terrified herd of cattle released into the freedom of the only thing safe before them: the Unknown. Three thousand strong in total, they pound down the hill in the dark night. Closer and closer and faster and faster, as one we reach the water’s edge.
“Yes, we wade into the water of the Great Bay, like Egyptians walking into the Red Sea. I, Ezra Furst, their Moses, lead them and part their waves. It is low tide by now, for God is on our side, and He makes for us to walk on the firm sands He now provides for us, leading us to freedom. We set out across the wilderness of this country’s deserts and plains to find, finally, on the two hundred and twenty-second day, that the Lord hath delivereth us, my people and me, now at last and for all eternity, to our new home, Montrose, where God tells me this is where He wants us to be, and we will be, and that is where we stop, to be joined by Tom Lovejoy and his followers and to be knit by our Lord into one.
“In all this journey does He take but one of us, my beloved Brother, Gideon, who, in crossing the wilderness, succumbs to a rare illness that he has carried from his own partnering with another man on Fruit Island and with which God wishes to fell him. In this death, from this disease, God has given our new religion its first fervent mission: to crusade against the evils of the flesh in all the many guises of its proliferating sinning, most particularly the one that he has spared my people but not my brother. God wants us to be Clean and we pledge ourselves to oblige Him in all ways we can.”
So many biographies of Ezra Furst, and of his brother Gideon Wasser, and of Tom Lovejoy, have been written that such “facts” as there are are now codified by “scholars” and “historians” and “ecclesiastical experts” into a legendary inspirational scenario of early awakening to piety, a stumbling, fraught, but eventual triumphant struggle against temptations, all leading to unbounded happiness and an exceedingly important spiritual life of constant communication with “Our Saviors,” Jesus Christ and God the Father and all the Angels.
The murder of his brother’s wife and the disposing of his brother are not among these “facts,” nor is there any mention of the Massacre at Fruit Island, at least not in any resemblance to the various versions of that event now coming down to us, all lacking in agreement as they appear to be.
LUCID CONTINUES
The two new men who came to this island fucked Maurice Punic, Jr., to death. They both took of the aphrodisiac. Maurice was still clutching a little bottle of it and he was still alive and he stuck it up their noses. The few prisoners left, maybe fifty of us outside, stood around and watched. And then all the others rushed forward, not abiding by the volleys of shots from the guards with their muskets. Their bodies were hungering for more of the magic sex potion and they tore Maurice limb from limb and ate him, believing that he was made of his aphrodisiac. They were crazy. One of the new men was fucked to death by these hordes, and the other new man would have been done to death had he not grabbed a torch and set fire to the hospital
while those outside rushed down to the water where many were drowned in the swamps. I was hiding there and I saw it all. Three thousand people still inside were burned up!
I see the voiceless lad who is shaking mightily from so much fear as I am and we go into the forest together.
VOICELESS
I find another new lover. We hold each other tight and when it is darkest he takes my hand and we walk into the forest and we disappear. He says he will lead us out to freedom and safety. How many months or years passed I here? Two of the four of us in our cell had long since died. My living cell mate would softly chew their flesh. And then he died too. I was alone with three dead lads.
Those of us left alive and then let free rushed out and many died in the swamp.
HERMIA CONTINUES
The dead were never found.
A check dated June 25, 1840, for $63,987.09 was made out by the United States Treasury to Amalgamated Medical Holdings as full payment due under its contract with Dr. Maurice Punic, Sr., “for services rendered at the Great Hospitals in Sagg and on Plum Island inter alia.” A further payment of $35,398.54 was made to Dr. Maurice Punic, Jr., for “professional services rendered to the needy.” Both payments were sent to the Schroederer-Lutz Bank in Zug, Switzerland, for the account of the Brothers of Lovejoy, Ezra Furst, Principal Disciple.
Dr. Maurice Punic, Sr., was a poor Furstwasser who came to the New World, went to work for the United States Government in Washington, discovered a way to take advantage of a loophole he discovered, brought his smarter cousins Ezra and Gideon over to help him, and almost made a fortune. There is no record of his name after this. Perhaps he returned to Switzerland to spend his money, quite a decent amount for those days.
FROM THE PEN OF DR. ISRAEL JERUSALEM
I put in my own ten cents.
According to Mr. Plutarch, at the Battle of Chaeronea one hundred and fifty pairs of lovers from Thebes pledged to defend themselves against the invaders. They fought and died to the last man. They were all found dead in each other’s arms.
These men on Fruit Island had come in hopes of meeting others like them. Sagg was on the water, it was summer, what better excuse and place for a holiday? Sagg was a port, so there would be sailors there as well. What better! They were certainly not all poxed. But it was hard not to see no one wanted them. Wherever they went, wherever they were, they were sniffed out by dogs and sent away. If they were not hanged by some government for schtupping each other. Straight men do not get hanged for schtupping a special tootsie. Even not so special. Even a kurvah. A whore. There is in this country never a penalty for fucking a whore.
Yes, many went to Sagg because word had got around that there were others like them there. True, some went to Sagg because word had also got around that there was money to be made by participating in experiments. Those infected convinced themselves a cure was being perfected that would save them. They put their trust in Dr. Maurice Punic, Sr.
In either case, they all gave the most precious thing they had to give, their bodies.
This is an early example of a Tuskegee experiment—that is, one in which the government on purpose allows the infection of unknowing subjects. I believe this to be the first example of what will become the backbone, the foundation, of all future scientific research in America, what is called the “controlled clinical trial.” Controlled, my tushie. These hushmarkeds, then, are participating in history, the first of a long line of homosexuals that our government will get its hands on. NITS will become the world’s chief home of the Controlled Clinical Trial and, in due course, of The Underlying Condition, which will be their man who came to dinner who never leaves.
They are then told they will be safe on this far island, on this Fruit Island, with some famous Dr. Punic no one ever heard of. By this time, from all the experiments they had done on them, and from all their couplings in the excitement of meeting so many like them, they had come to be afraid that they were dying. If this were so, well, then they would die in each other’s arms as in ancient Greece.
And so they did. They died in each other’s arms.
* * *
My first massacre. My debut. You think it was pox or clap that infected them all? You insult me.
You have now met me in my growing glory.
A FEW GOOD MEN
“All, all are dead, and ourselves left alone amidst a new generation whom we know not, and who knows not us,” Thomas Jefferson, such a good talker, laments before he dies. He has seen what is happening. He senses what is coming. “Notable geniuses and great-souled men” are no longer around to lead. From here on in, the string of America’s leaders should shame The American People, who voted them in. Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, one is almost worse than the next or the preceding (although maybe not Polk, who got us California, Nevada, and Utah, with Texas and Oregon thrown in, thus doubling the size of our country albeit hastening the Civil War). And then comes Lincoln and we murder him. To be followed by another string of mediocrities just as long.
In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville and his boyfriend Gustave de Beaumont come from France to travel around America, to take a look, to size it up. Alexis is only twenty-five years old but he writes a book about us that many say is still smarter and tougher and more prescient than almost anything any American of any age has ever written. He predicts, for instance, that the danger of the “tyranny of the majority” will cause great troubles, that the majority will trample on the minorities, the people “reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.” He also says, most frighteningly, that he knows of no country with “less independence of mind and true freedom of discussion.”
Alexis, inspired by Gustave, has written America’s first reality show. “It will be given to America to teach the world about good and evil, not because the world wants to listen to anyone so young, but because America will not know how to do anything but show them.”
The love letters between Gustave and Alexis have only recently been discovered. But that is a French affair and this is an American history. Just know that Alexis himself is so highly sexed, as one of his annotators puts it, that his wife destroys all their correspondence, always a suspicious sign of such high-sexedness, and that Gustave and he jointly share a preoccupation with young women, but also with each other, and so to take advantage of their distance away from home they vow celibacy, which leaves them free to spend each night only with the other. Such abilities for clearing the decks in this way for the important things are particularly French.
In later years, after his two volumes have been published and he’s lived longer and observed us more from over there, Alexis becomes increasingly disillusioned with the United States. This is rarely written about by his many champions in their determination to extol his praise of us. He is proved correct in his prediction that slavery here would not be abolished without a civil war, if then. He now more fully realizes that it is money alone that makes our world and the “loudmouthed ignorance” of our politicians and public leaders go ’round; and that the general population will be reduced to “sheep-like dependency” on a state that saves them the necessity of thought and destroys their will. He has already predicted “the lonely crowd” where individuals will find themselves alone in the midst of many and unable to think any differently than this multitude, and that religion will attempt to make us good citizens, although all “attempts to relieve the distress of the poor would destroy the economy.” Oh, he got it all, eventually, although his “great” work contains little of the prescience of his later years that would and should have been written and published by him as volume three (Damrosch, Tocqueville’s Discovery of America, 2010; Alan Ryan, NYRB, Nov. 2010).
From 1829 to 1837, Andrew Jackson, the shaper of the modern Democratic Party, is president. We know he was a pisser. He needs more said about him than this history is going to
say, though it will say this: He was madly in love with his wife, who died quickly. What we did not know was that the popular portrait painter Ralph Earl climbed the back stairs of the White House to Jackson’s bedroom, and he would stay by his side until Jackson died. Yes, they were lovers. For many, repeat: many years. As there was in short order no Mrs. Jackson, Ralph had a long run playing the part. How could this not be seen and known, recorded and remarked upon?
While we are at it, from 1853 to 1857 there are two more gay presidents in the White House. Franklin Pierce is an alcoholic from Vermont who was roommates at Bowdoin College in Maine with another famous American not yet recognized as the homosexual he was, Nathaniel Hawthorne. President Pierce is married and has lost three sons. His wife, Jane, faints when he announces his candidacy and spends much of his term isolated in an upstairs room writing letters to a son dead only two months in a train accident. Pierce is lackluster and ignoble and leads us closer to war, one of those northerners who favors slavery, or rather opposes it not enough. He is exceptionally handsome. He drinks himself to death. But Hawthorne loves him. It is the great hidden mystery of this mysteriously hidden, i.e., closeted, great American writer who ran in terror when our other great American gay writer of this period, Herman Melville, moved to Salem to be near Nathaniel, to woo him, and to somehow win him.
And in 1855, an outrageous gay poet publishes a book of passionate odes called Leaves of Grass. He loves men furiously, and with great hunger, and too openly. No one knows what to make of his poetry, which is ravishingly homoerotic, and so hard to conceive of as anything else that it is assiduously overlooked, as is its author. And what a symbolic title, Leaves of Grass. Is it meant to mean … what? That men in love are everywhere, as plentiful as grass?
