by Larry Kramer
Block by block his grandfather and his father had bought up whole neighborhoods to become Washington’s biggest landholder. For now it’s all in trust until Abe dies, which he very well may do—Sexopolis may kill him. He’d thought that Doris’s house would do it. That his son Mordy is his mother’s son only adds to Abe’s heartbreak. Enough already, dear God, my no-longer friend.
MASTURBOV GARDENS
Masturbov Gardens is now twenty years old. The little bushes are now ugly trees, pissed on by too many dogs. Abe walks around it every day. Accountants and old ladies who check invoices and dun people for back payments look after the properties he owns. The trusted Nate Bulb rules their roost. Abe doesn’t much like Masturbov Gardens. It isn’t pretty. He owns an awful lot of pretty. But here there are no ghosts. This place is honest. He set out to build good value for good people, and he did. For him Masturbov Gardens is the most neutral place on earth, as safe as the cardigan sweater he never changes, once vaguely stained, now more visibly so, like the clothes of absentminded aging people.
Abe. Doris. Each becomes richer as the days pass. They talk to each other five times a day, like brother and sister, like best friends, like trusted advisers and confidants. She never relays the details of her activities because she knows they bother him. They do. He invests her money. From the amounts she gives him he knows more than he wants to know.
* * *
I was in Romania and Libya at the turn of the century. I was a big success. They were just such ugly and filthy places to live. I realized that America was the place to be. I would clean you out once and for all. I would make America even greater! Isn’t that what all your presidents are always promising? Out with the old filth! In with the new clean slate!
NAMING NAMES
They’re naming names, again. One has only to read the newspaper files of these days, or the many volumes written about Naming Names by such scholars of this act and era as Victor Navasky in his book of that very title, to comprehend the enormity of the bombs being hurled at the social fabric. Presumed Communists and homosexuals named publicly, out loud, are expelled from the once safe harbor offered by American democracy and its rights of privacy supposedly guaranteed by a Constitution and a Bill of Rights. Suddenly freedom for many is gone. It’s been removed. It’s no longer there. New laws are written and enacted before anyone sees them. “Communists” and “homosexuals” are actually put in prison, unless they have money and buy their way to Canada or abroad. Of all the people that “they” go after, it’s the Hollywood writers and moviemakers that now get it the worst. A second-rate actor named Peter Ruester is president of a union many belong to. He and Sam Sport are buddies. By mistake Ruester’s wife-to-be had been blacklisted. That’s when Peter Ruester learns firsthand to be buddies with whoever’s where the power is.
O’Trackney Vurd, an obscure senator, is obscure no longer. He is endlessly addressing too-willing audiences such as a national convention of women’s clubs at the Greenbriar in West Virginia, decorated by the legendary Dorothy Draper in her signature massive green fronds and brown coconut trees, in front of which Vurd waves a piece of paper he claims lists the names of 505 homosexual “agents” employed inside the State Department. He joins the no longer obscure Senator Joseph McCarthy, who makes a speech in 1950 in this very same location, brandishing “205 Communists in the White House” for Vurd’s 505 homosexuals. The president of Yaddah invites Vurd to speak at Yaddah as a “Visiting Scholar,” and it gives him an honorary degree. When Eisenhower is elected president, one of his first acts is to fire all the fairies.
Some of those named as Communists fight back. Some actually go to prison for refusing to testify against themselves. Some even confess. All now become blacklisted and both unemployed and unemployable. Ruester doesn’t do anything to find his besmirched actors, directors, and writers work. He thinks whatever they did was all their fault.
No one talks officially for homosexuals, and homosexuals don’t talk about or for themselves.
WHO IS THIS FUCKED-UP MAN?
Smart, rich, handsome, old Boston family, Harvard, Harvard Law, “a bachelor’s bachelor; as Eisenhower’s National Security Adviser no man in the Government, with the possible exception of the President, knows so many of the nation’s strategic secrets” (The New York Truth).
Robert Cutler is a gay man who for eight years sat atop the national security bureaucracy at a time when people like him were being purged from government service.
Ike’s campaign slogan, “Let’s Clean House,” alluded not only to corruption and sedition but also to an executive order mandating security background checks for federal employees. It was Bobby Cutler who added to the list of Unacceptables those guilty of “sexual perversion.”
Per Executive Order 10450, signed by Ike on April 27, 1953, thousands of Bobby’s fellow gay government compatriots lost their jobs, pushed out by one of their very own, a traitor to all the gays he knew both in government and socially.
To have such power as Eisenhower’s personal assistant and close friend shows a man of great intelligence.
But that this man himself is passionately, obsessively, and unrequitedly in love with one young man after another shows one truly fucked-up homosexual. His diaries of his many years of looking for love have recently been discovered. They are painful. They are pathetic. They are infuriating.
Yes indeed. Robert “Bobby” Cutler was one fucked-up homosexual.
PROFESSOR GEORGE CHAUNCEY,
YADDAH UNIVERSITY
“Congress specifically prohibits homosexuals as well as Communists from entering the country. A generation of foreign visitors applying for tourist visas has to sign statements swearing they belonged to neither one of these threatening groups, and a generation of lesbian and gay male immigrants must hide their identities from the authorities. Yes, the real-life consequences of heterosexual definitions of national identity do not stop here. Even homosexuals who were American citizens find themselves virtually stripped of their citizenship, including their rights to free speech and assembly. The federal government purges them from the civil service and bans the gay press from the mails. Local police departments raid gay bars and other meeting places, shut down newsstands daring to carry gay papers, and arrest thousands of gay men and women every year for cruising, dancing together, or simply gathering openly in restaurants, and even private homes. Lesbians and gay men are regularly depicted as treacherous outsiders who threaten both the nation’s security and its children.”
YOU ARE NOW OFFICIALLY SICK!
The American Psychiatric Association declares officially that homosexuality is a mental disorder and includes it as such in its newest edition of its DSM, or Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. This falls in line with previous decisions that declared oral-genital sex as deviant and masturbation evidence of out-of-control behavior.
THE MAJOR IN LOVE
I fell in love with him and I shouldn’t have. That’s why we’ve stayed here so long. He feels the same about me. He said he doesn’t know where to go or what to do, just like me. He broke my heart. He doesn’t talk much, just like me, just like many soldiers in combat, I tell him. He’s told me plenty of his own war stories, though, and they were pretty awful, just like mine. When he told me his I actually started to cry. So it was as if we bonded. I’m waiting for reassignment, which makes us both sad. He has this way of letting me hold him in my arms like he fits there and he curls up in me. It just drives me nuts. He has these scars. His back is all scarred. At first he wouldn’t tell me how he got them. He just wouldn’t. I know from combat that they come from something pretty strong. And at first he wouldn’t let me touch them. It was pretty hard to fuck not touching his back but we got there soon enough. When he saw that I accepted him scars and all he bawled his eyes out. That’s when I knew I was in love with him. I’ve never been in love with a guy. I just went to the Club to get it off with guys. I didn’t go very often until I met David. Now I go too much. I’m going t
o get in trouble when they find out. And they are going to find out, the MPs. I tease him that I’ll have to kidnap him. We start playing with that idea, like where would we go? Where would I take him? I think of exotic places like the battlefields I fought on, which I would like to see again. Most of them were in the South Pacific. Bataan. Corregidor. Iwo Jima. They must be getting pretty enough again. My telling him my war stories makes him cry too. He says we were both used for awful things. I tried to cheer him up by telling him how gay the army really was. “Every foreign posting I was stationed at all over the world, half of all the soldiers were gay.” He said, “If you had such a gay army why didn’t you fight back?” I never knew I could feel this way about another man. I tell him about my wife and my kids somewhere with a new father. I tell him about growing up in Austin, Texas. I don’t know what I’m going to do with the little fucker. He has my heart all right. I’m now a major in the United States Army. The army has been my whole life. There is no other work I know how to do or want to do. I can’t have him and have my army too. I think about all this but I don’t tell him about it. I am way far ahead of him in my feelings. I know that. Funny thing is, I’m not scared of it. I’m not scared of the military police hauling me in. It’s pretty scary that I’m not scared!
I let him read all this. One day I just take it to the Club and give it to him.
“What’s this?” he says.
“It’s a letter I wrote to myself. And I guess to you.”
“You want me to read it?”
“Yes. Yes, I do.” There. I said it out loud. I wasn’t so sure I could say it when it came right down to it. I can tell by the way I hear myself say it that I mean it. It’s a good feeling. I wait for him to read it. He has his back to me. After a while I see his body shaking. I take him in my arms. He collapses into me. I have to turn him around to look in those eyes. They’re closed. “Open your eyes,” I say to him. He shakes his head no. But he kisses me.
DAVID STARTS OUT FOR FREEDOM
I leave the Club. I’ve been here too long. It isn’t easy. I know I have to leave now, but how can I without telling Mr. Hoover? I try writing him letters of explanation. None of them sound right. Just writing them makes me realize what a prisoner I’ve been choosing to be. I’m afraid he won’t let me go. But if he’s been tied up with Amos and my father, maybe he won’t come after me.
Sammy had died. It took him a couple of years. He was followed by Charlie, who was followed by Dickie, who was always falling in love with his old rich clients. They found Matthew and some others dead somewhere.
Then my major died, Mike Starr. I figured I’d killed him. That’s when I decided to get out of here. I wanted to have a little breakdown somewhere quiet.
I didn’t make it. I was about to climb out my window when Clyde knocked on my door and said Mr. Hoover wanted to see me.
“I assume Major Starr’s death means you want to leave me,” Mr. Hoover said.
“Yes. I want to learn. I want to see the world.”
“You’ve seen a good bit of the world already, haven’t you?” He was staring at me in a way that made me feel uncomfortable. I had not had this feeling with him before.
I try to put it into words. “Yes, and it makes me wonder why we do the things we do. We talked about this when you suggested I’d learn a lot working at the Club. Why don’t we just love each other? Why do we do it in the dark? Why do we have to hide? Why are we punished for trying to love each other? Do you think there are answers?”
He was silent and I worried for my boldness before he answered, “I should be interested in them myself.”
I waited for him to go on, but when he didn’t I said, “Many guys are getting sick now. They turn purple and choke to death.”
“Why do you think that is?”
“We’ve had so many shots and vaccinations. Maybe one of them is making us sick. Or all of them put together.”
“Then shouldn’t you be dead?”
I waited a long time before I answered.
“I am.”
He actually gave me a little nod.
I ask it again. “Why are we being punished so much for trying to love each other?”
This time I thought I had gone too far. But he said, “All people do it in the dark.” Then he pulled himself up a bit, shaking his head as if to clear it. “Did you write me a report? You’re required to submit a severance report. You’ve had sex with a lot of men.”
“Not so many. I wasn’t very popular.”
“So I noticed in the ledgers.”
“Then why did you keep me on so long?”
“I figured you’d let me know when you wanted to leave. But tell me what you’ve learned here.”
He waited for me to compose my answer in my head. “I’ve learned that there are a great many of us, but we try to be invisible. I think we could be a big army if we’d all join. What do you think?” I added, “If you don’t mind my asking.”
He smiled. The first thought I had was, he is going to let me live. Until this moment I had not thought that he wouldn’t. But him knowing about Mike Starr being dead frightened me, the extent and reach of his knowledge.
“I think your future is going to be very interesting.” Then he stood up as if to say the meeting was over. “You have become a very handsome and intelligent and capable young man. Your experience here has matured you. I put my money on the right horse, ensuring that you could stay alive and flourish. Make good use of your gifts. You haven’t turned out so badly for all your particular adventures.”
He offered me his hand to shake. It was cold and sweaty. He held on to mine. “I wish things had been different for you. For me. For us. You will understand when you grow older. Give my regards to your father. His work for our country has been outstanding.”
“In what way? What does he do for you?”
“I will leave that for your father to tell you.”
I suddenly found myself asking, “Would you send me to college?”
“That can be arranged. Our government at least owes you that. I’d suggest something in San Francisco. A lot is starting to happen there. You can finally send me a report.”
* * *
You do not know about my history. All you are interested in is your own history. So you can all feel important.
FRED LEMISH TRIES TO COMMIT SUICIDE
I went to Yaddah. Six months later I tried to kill myself. Life has not been good so far and I don’t see it getting any better.
Henry was the first person I met the day we both arrived for freshman year. We got there early because we both had parents who believed in getting there the minute the gates opened. Registration was a three-day affair, and almost everyone else had sense enough to wait until the end to show up. But there we were, deposited on the steps of Hooker Hall first thing on the first morning, wondering if anyone else was coming to Yaddah this year. My parents left, I’m sure because they couldn’t wait to get rid of me, although Algonqua cried and Lester teared up. “I lived in Hooker Hall too,” he reminded me. I was happy to see them go. I was even planning to take a new name. Chuck. My middle name is Charles. What better way to start a new life than with a snappy new name like Chuck. I’d been so unhappy with the old one.
Henry and I nodded to each other. We were both dark-haired, crew-cut, and a tiny bit pudgy. He smiled more than I did. No, we were both big smilers. Too many people to please. I thought he was sort of cute.
We were both younger sons, and we both had fathers who hadn’t amounted to much. Henry’s father was a barber in the small New Hampshire town of Dowling, site of Paulson, the famous prep school. Henry’d gone to Paulson as the barber’s son, the son of the man who cut all the boys’ hair, all those kids from Park Avenue and Greenwich. He didn’t live in a cramped apartment in Masturbov Gardens, but his house was small, a tiny house on a tiny hill on the other side of town. His brother had gone to state college because he wasn’t as smart and his folks saved all their money for Henry, the one they wer
e counting on. My brother had graduated just last June from Yaddah and he’d accumulated so many honors, friends, trophies, varsity letters, and elected offices that when people heard my last name they always asked, “You Seth’s brother?” Was changing my name going to be enough?
“Your dad’s a barber?” I asked Henry as we sat on the steps of Hooker Hall smoking cigarettes. Hooker Hall is one of those great dark nineteenth-century castles of rough-hewn stone that seem impregnable and eternal and righteous and there. I’m sure I sounded rude asking Henry about his father, but I was ashamed of my own. Like every other father in Masturbov Gardens, he worked for the government, but he knew and we knew that what he was doing was beneath him and not what Yaddah said he should be doing. He never talked about it except to say how tired he was every day when he came home from work.
“Yes, he is,” Henry answered, smiling and dragging on his Chesterfield; but I could see that under all that noble bravura was shame equal to my own. I wondered if Henry had ever said out loud what I had: “I hate Pop.” I’d said it to Algonqua for the first time when I was six. “Oh, don’t say things like that, dear,” she said, very matter-of-factly.
I’d wanted to go to Paulson. I’d come across an announcement of their summer school in my high school library. It looked so impressive, so welcoming. I knew Lester wouldn’t pay the tuition, so without telling him I applied for a scholarship and I won. I still needed two hundred dollars more. But he wouldn’t pay for that, either.
“But it’s for Paulson! I thought you’d be so proud.”
“It’s just a summer school. You don’t have to go to summer school. You’ll get into Yaddah without Paulson. Hell, you’ll get into Yaddah because I went there and Seth is finishing there and your uncle Murray and my brother Sam. And that cousin, Morton. It was a big deal then, Jews going to Yaddah.”
