The American People: Volume 1: Search for My Heart

by Larry Kramer

  And almost out of nowhere, we now have Ezra Furst’s vitriolic hatred of homosexuals entrenching itself firmly in Washington itself in his newly established Tally Office. How has he managed to obtain such power in Washington? He bought it, with secret Disciples funds. At the office’s official (secret) opening, the staff drank champagne and sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.” Who are these Disciples of Lovejoy and why do they hate homosexuals so much? For that’s what Ezra’s intent on doing, getting rid of all the hushmarkeds who murdered his beloved brother at Fruit Island. And with the death of Founding Brother Tom Lovejoy, who proclaimed all love is equal, Ezra now controls a growing and mighty group who follow his every word.

  There is much overlap among these groups. Their representatives meet regularly to compare notes. Every group has its own Pushnow, out there being a spy-in-chief for something or other. It is difficult for some people to hate only one “other” at a time. Hate is surprisingly contagious. Or is it just communicable?

  AMERICAN RED BLOOD ESTABLISHED

  Some people are trying to be nice. In October 1867, Mr. Clarice Ding of Geneva, South Carolina, starts American Red Blood in the ruins of Atlanta. It is an organization meant to show everyone, North and South, that Someone Cares. Volunteer women, quite a large number of them from the South, start banding together around the country and try to help somehow, if only with a friendly voice. “You’re going to get out real soon, you hear?” they promise those still in hospitals as they wash their faces. Mr. Ding’s heart has been broken many times as he wandered around all the battlefields, every one. He is gratified that so many others are appearing to heed his call, even if most of these are women.

  Before the war, Mr. Ding was a wealthy playboy who longed for a cause but refused to let the Confederacy be that cause. He often goes by the name of Dr. Ding because of a degree from Oxford and believes that such volunteerism, what he comes to call “social work,” will become an important activity in this postwar world. He becomes quite caught up in his vision of what might be. Perhaps there might even be a way not only to collect information about enlisted men but also one day to collect blood and distribute it to those who need it. Mr. Ding is on to something here, but it’s a good idea way before its time.

  Many people now know, or sense, that blood is important, if only because so much of it is visible and so many clearly lost so much of it. Now, if we could only learn what to do with it, in or out of us. And if we all have it, then when we lose it there should be some way to replace it. But blood is still too mysterious, and its properties are elusive. “With the Lord’s blessing, one day in the future American Red Blood will help discover what blood is all about,” Clarice Ding writes in the Atlanta Plantation.

  In the meantime Ding forms a board of rich southern gentlemen, with many of whom he and his late father have been in business, of one kind or another. These men are all getting richer. After the war, even in the South, especially in the South, there is much money to be made, once again in one way or another. Reconstruction, it’s called. Money suddenly gushes like all that blood. Railroads are being started all over the place, for one thing. Clarice Ding will be very big in railroads. The Ding & Virginia & Ohio Railroad will shortly be of major importance. He doesn’t know all his partners on this one, and that will be a problem.

  American Red Blood remains just a name for the time being. If it’s too early for blood, Mr. Ding also has a notion that there might be a way to take shit and turn it into food. Why do so many folks find this possibility interesting? There is certainly plenty of shit around, particularly along the excavations for his railroad, where more and more men come to work and sleep outside. And there are certainly plenty of people starving. But no one knows quite what to make of this idea yet either. If it seems to the reader that there sure is a lot in this history about shit, s/he’s correct: there is, and not idly or irresponsibly so. There is a Mr. Gobesh Table, a Moroccan Jew who has a small hotel in the West Virginia wilderness, who writes to Dr. Ding expressing interest in this shit conversion. He receives no answer, but then mail delivery is really bad.

  It is not long before Mr. Ding’s board of directors decides to get rid of Mr. Ding. He is a single gentleman of a certain age in an age when such men are becoming increasingly more suspicious. They should be at home with a wife and making more babies to replace all the lost soldiers. It is implied that he has been too involved in the lives of a number of “my builders,” the army of workmen stringing tracks from coast to coast. Several of them have been paid to testify as much. In fact, one of them had been Clarice’s lover. Northern partners water the stock and clean him out. One of his northern directors even gets up at a board meeting and tells about Ding and his interest in shit. So Clarice is voted out of office of the very organization he started in his living room, and his name removed from everything. Clarice Ding goes bankrupt. In short order the Ding & Virginia & Ohio Railroad shortens its name. Mr. Ding is lost from the history of both business and blood. This breaks his heart and he commits suicide. When American Red Blood develops into the dominant and hugely important organization it will become, Mr. Clarice Ding’s name is nowhere near it. A nurse, Clarice Hummingbird, is located and is placed in charge. “At least know your new Clarice to be a real woman and mother to pain and suffering,” she announces in her acceptance speech. Her name had really been Polly O’Neill but she’d been renamed for this occasion. To this day it is she who’s given credit for founding American Red Blood. She never ceases bad-mouthing the original Clarice Ding. “I think his views were most absurd about wars costing too much; how could anyone who wanted to reduce suffering want to make war less costly?” She always refers to him as “that little man from Geneva.” For some reason she thought he was Swiss.

  Over the years it has been rumored that American Red Blood collected and sold blood. Even though no one knew what to do with it or how to keep it “alive,” this was a rumor from the very beginning and continues until the present day, when we do know what to do with it and how to keep it alive.

  Blood is a cesspool and will always be one. It is certainly still a cesspool many decades later when Mrs. Rivka Jerusalem goes into the District to work for the national headquarters of American Red Blood and Mrs. Algonqua Lemish goes to work for the Franeeda County chapter in Hykoryville.

  LUCID IN WASHINGTON

  Arrives in Washington on the night of the very parade, Lucid with his two Messies. He has not come to Washington to march. Lucid has another mission to accomplish here. He has survived an earlier war.

  He’s brought his beloved Messie’s ashes to Washington because he read there is a cemetery where beloveds can bury beloveds who were killed in battle defending their country. Certainly the giving of their youth to their country upon such battlefields as Fruit Island and New Bliss, Ohio, qualifies them both. He has come to think of the Massacre at Fruit Island as part of the Civil War. New Bliss is not exactly a Civil War battlefield, but no one has to know exactly where his Messie died.

  He has come to think of the ashes in the can as his beloved, much to Messie Too’s chagrin.

  They are older now, a bit the worse for the unrooted restlessness that has taken them from Ohio to many other places, which, so unwavering are their wanderings, become nameless to them the moment they leave them. What is it that makes their feet refuse to stay in place? There is not a town or rooming house or bed that holds them for more than a few days. It is not that they grow bored. Indeed, there are many places that Messie, particularly, would like to explore in more peace and detail. But Lucid just can’t do that, as Messie comes to realize soon enough into their journey from Mrs. Sary Peyser’s in New Bliss. Messie also realizes that he wants to stay with Lucid, even though Lucid has a tendency not to see things that are there to be seen clear as day, like how much Messie Too is in love with him and in hurt from his not knowing this.

  Lucid wants to bury his can of Voiceless in this cemetery in Washington, and when he is ready he will lie down beside h
im and they will live side by side forever. It does not take him long to discover that people in offices all over town look at him like he’s crazy when, fumbling for the correct words, he tries to make his wishes known.

  “I have the ashes of my friend here and I want to bury him in the government’s cemetery for heroes.”

  He faces a grim elderly woman in the office of the Department of the Army. She is eyeing the container of Messie uncomfortably.

  “There is no such cemetery as of yet.”

  “When will there be?”

  “This is not known.”

  “Where is he, and we, to rest for eternity, then?”

  “We?”

  “Yes.”

  “You wish to be buried together?”

  “Yes. Side by side.”

  “You are kin?”

  “We are family to each other.”

  “But you are not related by blood?”

  “No.”

  “What are you, then?”

  “We are two dear friends with great love for each other.”

  “Yours is an unusual request that is not for this department to answer.”

  “Why not? We fought side by side and he died in my arms. What department should I go to?”

  “I do not believe there is one.”

  He stands there staring at her. He does not know what to say next.

  “Nor do I believe there should be one,” says the grim woman. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

  “Should I? Well, I am not. And you are saying more than you have been called upon to say!”

  Then he follows this up by saying: “And of course there will never be a place for one man to lie down beside another man, no matter that the war was fought by nothing but brothers. Well, I am a brother who will fight to protect his brother even after death!”

  The woman looks at him piercingly. He is much more intelligent than he appeared. She is moved by his words. She would not say so. She is not accustomed to dealing with intelligent men.

  “I am sorry there is no place for you and your … brother to lie down together.”

  Out on the streets he finds himself smiling at his courage. He is proud that he stood up and spoke out and did not falter. Messie, the voiceless and dead one, has given him his voice.

  Does Lucid realize he has crossed a new bridge? That there was indeed a war in which he can honestly claim that he and his Messies were heroes?

  He tries to conceive of a way in which his request might not be perceived as peculiar. As he goes to more and more departments, of the Navy, of Health, of Dying, to the bureau of this and that and the office for this and that, he refines his technique so that his desires, in their abbreviation, become more rather than less obvious to the listener.

  “If my reading of your situation is correct I think you had best leave this building, sir, for you are against the law of God.”

  He is to hear this often. There is that God again. He is all over the place.

  After several weeks without success he feels dirty, a failure, and ready for death himself. He doesn’t even know how old he is, but he believes that his life must be near to over.

  “You are afraid of something,” Messie Too says often enough, never receiving an answer or affirmation of this quite correct suspicion. “Why won’t you ever tell me anything? Isn’t that what love is meant to do, help and be a balm?”

  Such concern, attention, devotion, makes Lucid cry when he is alone. He does not want Messie to see his tears.

  What precisely is Lucid afraid of? Of Punics, pursuing Punics come to poison his insides even more, come to reclaim the salve he still carries hidden deep inside his traveling pack. When he and Messie Too were on the road it was possible to outrun pursuing Punics, but now he is losing steam and he feels them catching up.

  He knows he is being followed. He knows not by whom, but he senses it. He has been subjected to enough horrors that he knows when another one is near at hand.

  That is why he never confides in Messie Too. One person’s fear is more than enough for either of them to deal with.

  He misses his first Messie, his Voiceless, very much. He carries his ashes everywhere, or rather the portion of the lad’s body that Messie Too had managed to salvage from Mr. Milton Prance’s mastiff’s jaws. This vicious cur had been set loose by their “neighbor” after Lucid and Messie Too set forth from New Bliss never to return. But the dog’s howling in the quiet night air forced Lucid’s cognizance of the gruesome act in progress and thus impelled them back. Messie Too shot the ravenous animal, and together he and Lucid rescued as much of Voiceless from the clawed-up grave as they could before more of New Bliss rushed forth to try to incarcerate them once and for all.

  Farther on, under the moon, they burned the remains of Voiceless. It is these ashes that Lucid carries still, in the little metal box.

  Thus it is that Lucid is not available to Messie Too for physical passion, causing the new lad to suffer much painful unsatisfied desire. They had made love only once before the mastiff roared.

  In Washington, in yet another unsmiling and unhappy room, when the lad goes out to explore, Lucid takes out his box of Voiceless and achieves the only erections and orgasms of which he is now capable, holding the box to his heart with his free hand.

  The young man becomes too sad to bear it any longer. One morning when Lucid awakens, Messie Too is gone.

  Lucid never even misses him. His box of his original Messie is enough. There is no point to moving on, he thinks. Where is there to go? There is no home anywhere, no childhood home, no safe backyard in which to bury Messie. Lucid decides to stay in Washington. It is his country too, so it is his capital too, and he will make it his home whether all the unkind and unhelpful government workers he has encountered since his arrival welcome him and his Messie or not.

  He lives in a small cabin on the outskirts of town, toward Maryland. It is country here. The owner of the house does not live near. There is a bed and enough crude furniture, and a big fireplace. He can chop enough wood outside his door. It is a lonely area but this is what he desires. He feels most comfortable being lonely. It is ingrown in him. He knows no other way to feel. He counts up his money. He has managed frugally, and yes, there is still enough left, though he is not certain for how long. He has noticed that things cost more each day and week. He should look for some kind of work. But doing what?

  When he no longer has the energy to maintain the necessary firm erection for his communion with his dead ashes, he does what he knew he would one day do. He takes out his pouch with its tin of Punic salve, the aphrodisiac that has already caused so much death, and he dabs some of it up his nose. Now he can get a big erection, fine and firm again, and make love to his Voiceless again, with the great passion his memory refuses to relinquish. He has used the salve only once before in Washington, after that big march, when he had met a very unhappy boy named Horatio Dridge (how could you forget a name like that?), who had lost his new love and had clung to Lucid earnestly, imploring him not to leave him too. They went into the forest of Rock Creek, and to cheer him up Lucid gave him a dab of Punic salve and jerked him off. Then he performed the same acts on himself and they fell asleep in each other’s arms. When Horatio Dridge woke up he walked off into the night, taking a sample of the salve with him in a little tin from his chewing tobacco.

  Lucid often wonders if Horatio ever found his lost friend.

  PUSHNOW

  It is in his small cabin that Pushnow finally catches up with Lucid Hooker and murders him in his bed in the dark of night and leaves his body, with the tin of the ashes of Voiceless, and its additional contents, the Punic salve and notebooks, no longer clutched to his chest.

  He is not the first Pushnow nor will he be the last. Pushnows have been here forever. They have always ferreted out and bought and sold secrets. There are always secrets and they are always for sale. There are always Pushnows to buy and sell them. Pushnows even sold and continue to sell their very name, which has
come to have its own stature in the world of secrets, conveying its own special fear or awe or respect among those who know about, or traffic in, these things.

  So the salve has now gone out into the world, via Pushnow, via Horatio, and yes, via Messie Too.

  GERMANS

  We have not been keeping track of the Germans. We neglected to mention that 1,800 of them arrived in 1710. (There were only 103 Brits on the Mayflower.) There were only 6,000 people in New York City then. Where did they all move to, these Germans? Today more Americans claim German ancestry than any other. And we haven’t been paying any attention to them! Well, there was no work for most of them in New York and they went up the Hudson, and then westward, to settle into hard times. We can trace dim patterns of their settlements because they named things after themselves. Fahrt Seed and Grain. Schmuck Wine and Liquor. Fahrt means a drive and Schmuck means a decoration, only they sound much better in English.

  FROM WALT WHITMAN’S JOURNAL, 1869

  “I cannot say I did much good though that is what I desired to do, solely. Though some thought I was only there for the boys, which of course was a truth undeniable and unrepentant. How could it be otherwise in an arena full of dying young men, and anyway what was the worse for the look?

  “There is no pleasure in this. There is naught but surpassing pain. I at least am not ashamed to look upon all and be pained, and mortified, and full of unapologetic love, and sadness that this is my country.

  “I am still punished for my looking and loving. I am denied the right to teach. I am forced to move from place to place because of untrue things people say about me. My books are made mortified and burned to crisps.”