The American People, Volume 2

by Larry Kramer

  It is suddenly now fashionable to write about the Ruesters and their circle. “That guy who owns TV Guidebook wants to become ambassador to Britain! Yes, it all becomes more and more a hoot,” Old Washingtonian Ianthe Adams Strode told this reporter.

  There is no denying this town is overflowing with new light and life. A new set of faces, most of which have never been seen in Washington before, have taken center stage overnight. Mrs. Ruester has surrounded herself with her special court that dances to her every dream. She has parties scheduled a year in advance. She has new gowns from Estrez Ovida arriving daily. Houses and apartments are gobbled up so fast real estate agents retire. Old-time Washingtonians marvel at how fast they are dropped from every list as if they’ve never lived here all their lives.

  It is she and her women friends who already set the tone—Purpura and Carlotta and Carolina and Mica and Chesty and Judy and Nan, all on the arms of their Foppy, their names like a string of valuable-enough pearls. It is their first names only that Women’s Wonderful already is emblazoning in its pages, accompanied by glamorous photos of this handsome proud arrival of strong females dressed to the hilt around the clock. Even Jackie is popping back, so fallen from grace with “that Greek ocean liner,” and she’s actually welcomed by this crowd, which understands her better. Again I quote the inimitable Ms. Strode.

  Your Style Section predicts there never will be a reign—for that is what’s transpiring in this town—like the one that’s now revved up for action. Washington has never been a city in its soul. It remains a town, and for these women now embarked upon their adventure of living here, it is so much easier to live in a town. Our Town, they already call it.

  And indeed for them it is and will be.

  DR. DANIEL JERUSALEM

  I’ve lived in D.C. all my life and I’ve never seen anything like this. Washington’s always been an indecent place to live. Centuries go by and no president changes the poverty of this place in which they live. I help to supervise a clinic at Mea Montezuma for the indigent. We process five thousand to eight thousand patients a week. That’s unheard-of for a hospital in a town.

  JANUARY 20, 1981

  PETER RUESTER IS INAUGURATED AS PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

  If one is to pinpoint a moment in time when the shit in the closet starts hitting the fan and extruding itself into our plague, there are some who will always believe it coincides with the arrival on the Washington scene of Purpura Ruester and her Peter.

  * * *

  INT. VARIOUS BALLROOMS. WASHINGTON. NIGHT.

  Montage of shots as Peter in elaborate formal attire and Purpura in various gorgeous designer gowns dance at one celebratory ball after another. Everyone roars and cheers.

  STATE OF THE UNION

  Upon the assumption, by Peter Ruester, of his presidency, an assessment of the economy finds this country to be in “a more severe depression than anyone thought possible under my predecessor,” a Democrat. Since the new president made much campaign fodder out of how badly all his predecessors going back to Franklin Roosevelt had depleted the resources of The American People, this situation must be rectified as quickly as possible. Still awaiting the appointment of various economic advisers (so far no one approached can understand the jargon they are being asked to support, prepared by an unknown young man named Stockman), Attorney General Manny Moose releases the following to the financial press:

  It is not the best of times. The National Abundance Ratio (NAR) is $459 trillion. This is very bad. The Triculosis Factor (TF) is less than minus .07. This is also very bad. The Bohunk Institute, the most reliable of market forecasters not funded by a specific industry, now predicts a price-earnings-wage-ratio-cum-salvage factor of 2–1, the lowest since the Great Depression. This is exceptionally worrisome. A new scale produced for your new President by the highly respected Nimkins-Strato-Perdist Group tells us that not one single state in the entire Union can claim phangel results that are not inferior to any posted in the last four years. This is a terrible indicator we must immediately attend to.

  All budgets and expenses except for the military must therefore be reduced immediately and accordingly.

  We have inherited all of this. We must not forget this. We must prepare ourselves so that this state of affairs never happens again.

  So President Ruester has his work cut out for him. He pledged to deliver to you his and your economic revolution.

  He has asked his newly appointed Chief of Staff, Linus Gobbel, to personally supervise this revolution.

  The President asked me to deliver this message to you:

  “I pledge to The American People that I will deliver on my promises. I promised you I would make America great again. I know you will join me as we now fight together to make our country great again. So great that it will be morning again in America. Together we will make it so. God bless America.”

  To begin to rectify as much of this situation as quickly as possible, the new president of The American People proposes to the Congress of The American People a new Desed-Offal Bill that will allow the Treasury to exceed all former debt limits by up to 5,000 percent. “This will be a splendid antinecrosis factor!” Ruester beams his now-famous smile as he presents his plan to Congress.

  The new Congress, in love with its new president, overwhelmingly approves the measure immediately. The honeymoon is on. Mr. Stockman gets to work. The first thing he must do is lower taxes on the rich to start paying off the Kaffeeklatschers, an ever-growing group.

  There are a few personnel announcements. Dr. Stuartgene Dye has been appointed as Ruester’s director of NITS, and henceforth “he will be responsible for the health of The American People.” Do we remember Stuartgene, whose hobby, nay obsession, is to perfect the complete evaporation of the human body? For the good of humanity, of course. He had run Partekla. Do you remember Partekla? It’s still there and quite busy. (No one knows Dye was in charge of it. Or that he has a collection of Picassos.)

  DR. STUARTGENE DYE

  Ah, yes, my Picassos. I cherish them. It was Doc Rebbish who taught me how much beauty can come from pain. He gave me my first Picasso, a lithograph of a gored bull being mourned by a lovely girl. He’d received it as a gift of thanks from a dying Seneck chief. “For a life devoted to the care of our people through your search for knowledge” is written on its back, I believe in the chief’s own blood, above his seal of office. Picasso himself said, “Art is an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy.” I identify with that. I am an artist too. I create with chemicals. They are my paint.

  HOPE!

  As always, there are medical realities that should be sobering. COD identifies the first case of “this shit” in a hemophiliac. It is announced in The Journal of Death. Dr. Paulus Pewkin is quoted: “I wonder what this means?” An inquiry to Drs. Dye and Omicidio at NITS receives no response. The New England Journal of Spots and The New England Journal of Blood reject, i.e., refuse to publish, letters submitted by concerned doctors, which detail transfusion (i.e., ostensibly non-gay) cases of “strange” and “very strange” and “weird” and “unaccountable” and “troubling” blood infections in several large medical centers and in rural areas. Dr. Emma Brookner of New York’s Table Medical Center writes a particularly alarming one.

  Nevertheless, our Washington newcomers bring hope! All new administrations bring hope. This one will sustain it longer than most. As long as the right people become richer, and they will, all will be well. And hopeful. You bet. You’ll see. It will be a hoot.

  NOTES TOWARD UNDERSTANDING THE NEW FIRST LADY

  VIA IANTHE ADAMS STRODE

  Why am I introducing this? One of my burdens has always been to know all the First Ladies. One of my oldest friends is Purpura Ruester’s secretary, Patti Montgomery. I’ve known her since she worked for Pat Nixon, not an easy gig. She’s worked for Purpura Ruester forever. They are very intimate friends, she and her boss who quite obviously revels in telling her all, indeed in acting it out in her retelling
of it to her longtime assistant. So Patti knows where all the bodies are buried. There are always plenty of bodies. Some people like me believe fervently they must be exhumed. For the good of The American People. So does Patti, whose words these are. (You can tell she’s been thinking about this for a long long time and taken voluminous notes.)

  PATTI 1

  Pat Nixon was easy and straightforward. She hated her husband and stayed all day in her rooms. The new First Lady must get laid regularly. She thought she could hold out longer than one day after her husband’s inauguration. She can’t. You’d think she’d be exhausted from dancing at all the inaugural balls. We all watched her endlessly on television. She looked like a queen. You can see she now thinks she is one. And that royalty will get what it requires. Yes, you can see that from day one. This queen was destined to rule a country.

  As long as I’ve known her, despite all she’s constantly told me, she is still a mystery to me. I could tell you what she does but in the end I still can’t tell you why. I know this country would not tolerate her life, should they know about it. For instance, this on our answering machine:

  “This is Mrs. April. Is this my rare book dealer?”

  “What do you want?” he whispers hoarsely.

  “I want you. Fuck the code words.”

  He responds immediately. “I’m sitting here naked thinking of you. My dick is in my hand and it’s thick. Do you remember how thick?”

  “I remember!”

  “It wants you to come and sit on it. Say, ‘My cunt is wet with great need for your cock.’”

  “My cunt is wet with need for your cock.”

  “You left out great. Great need for your cock.”

  “The greatest need for your cock.”

  She met him a few years ago flying to Cleveland. They were sitting side by side in first class. He looks too old for her, though she can see he’s in decent-enough shape. He takes her hand and places it on his crotch. Just like that. She can tell he is enormous. So the first time the First Lady sucks his enormous cock she isn’t the First Lady. They’re in the airplane’s toilet, just like Jack fucked Marilyn. Then Purpura meets him again that very evening, at cocktails for Major Cleveland Benefactors. It is at a time when nobody thinks Ruester can get elected. Purpura feels less constrained realizing that obviously high-class types like he appears to be are on their side so early. He knows Peter will be elected. He says so. He has an enormous tongue. In her room during the fund-raiser he eats her out like she has never been eaten out before. She gives him another blow job. She is amazed he can maintain such an erection for so long. And at his age. He is on VAM, he tells her. “You’re not!” she exclaims. “However did you get it already?” She wants to try it too and will. When she and Peter arrive in Washington, this man will be convenient. His name is Brinestalker. He tells her he is a lawyer. That’s all she has to hear.

  He has a furry body. Daddy is hairless. Daddy is boring in every conceivable physical way. He doesn’t even kiss with his lips open. Peter’s just acres of arid white skin like the desert. Who wants to sleep in the desert? That’s why she calls him Daddy. She started calling him Daddy before they even had kids.

  “Would you marry me, if ever Daddy died?” she likes to ask this guy Brinestalker after he’s ejaculated and she’s untangling the knots of his pubic hair. He has followed her across the country, more or less. She is impressed. What woman wouldn’t welcome such attention in middle age from a furry man with a very large cock as a therapeutic aphrodisiac?

  “No.”

  “Good. I wouldn’t marry you either.”

  “He’s a tasteless boor,” Foppy Schwartz tells her. “How could he say anything like that to you?”

  She usually gets laid at Foppy’s apartment in New York. Nobody in New York cares what you do. But she can’t get to New York so easily now.

  “He’s huge.” She loves to talk dirty with Foppy. He is such a useful friend.

  “Ah,” Foppy sighs.

  “Someday your prince will come.”

  “It is highly unlikely. Not because of my age, which is deterrent enough, but because I suspect that deep within me I desire too much. I have contented myself with less.”

  “What do you do when you get horny?”

  “I utilize my right hand while standing erect over my toilet, you nosy tart. Or I listen to Stuartgene tell me about his activities.”

  “Oh, tell me more! Who is this Stuartgene?”

  “He hung someone in his shower last week and went off to a medical conference in Austin, completely forgetting to let the lad off the hook. He’s my doctor and you won’t find anyone better. He knows all kinds of ancient American remedies.”

  Foppy loves to tell stories like this.

  “I hear there are penis operations in India if you’re small,” she says.

  “I would prefer staying small to going to India.”

  “I didn’t know you were small.”

  “Only from disuse. It’s lying in waiting.”

  “I’m glad.” The First Lady loves Foppy.

  She gets laid a lot and she sucks a lot of dick years before she is elected First Lady. She loves the taste of semen in her mouth and the feel of it as it trickles down her throat. It’s evidently not easy to be a good cocksucker unless you really like it. You gag and choke a lot. It takes a lot of practice before you stop gagging and choking. Purpura’s a pro. Purpura hasn’t gagged or choked in years. Her father had abandoned her when she was a kid and it’s as if she’s been searching for another one ever since. That’s one reason older men appeal.

  Her first career, as an actress, coincides with the decline of the heyday of the great Hollywood stars. She sucks many famous cocks. The two most famous cocks she sucks belong to Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy. The most powerful cock she sucks belongs to Benjamin Thau. Benny is the head of film production at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, still a famous studio. Everyone knew Benny couldn’t keep his hands to himself. Benny invented the Casting Couch. You want a part at Metro, you suck Benny’s cock. He doesn’t want to fuck you. That’s too risky. He might get VD. At noon every Saturday Purpura sucks Benny Thau’s cock, one of Hollywood’s most important heads. When she finishes him, she throws the rubber down his toilet. The secretary always notices on Monday that the toilet’s clogged. Benny arranges for her to service Clark and Spencer. Benny knows a good blow job and passes it on, like the generous man he’s said to be, to Gable, despondent after the death of Carole Lombard, and to Tracy, a heavy drinker married to a Catholic woman who won’t divorce him. Spencer has a hard time staying hard. Spencer is also a homosexual, but that doesn’t come out until many years later when Katharine Hepburn is his beard, as he is hers.

  Purpura is not an equal recipient of Benny’s generosity. For all her hard work, her career at MGM does not flourish. Benny knows she’s a lousy actress standing up. Neither Spence nor Clark wants to see her face with his on the screen. Some actors make love to the camera and the camera loves them back. She is not one of these.

  One day she meets Peter Ruester. He’s been divorced from a star much bigger and getting bigger still. Who is also a lesbian, this star Peter got married to. The studio measures an actor’s worth by how many fan letters are received. The dyke receives far more letters than he does. The notion of her in bed with another woman’s exciting. A lot of good it does him. He was said to have dallied homosexually himself.

  Why does Peter marry Purpura? Her reputation must have been known. A life like hers is not kept secret in Hollywood. His own career as an actor is still promising. True, he wants A roles and is only given Bs. But he’s given Bs with regularity. Nobody ever whispers anything about Peter Ruester. Long before Teflon he is Teflon.

  He knows what it means to suck dick too. And to be available for gentlemen callers. These facts are generally unknown. Or, because he’s so boring, hard to believe. But when he was just getting started in movies, he lived dangerously. He’s passed around among certain sets. In these days no one frow
ns when boys will be boys. These are considered larks. For laughs. Not to be taken seriously. Actors have to do many things to get ahead.

  He loves being worshipped. The dyke never adored him. These guys get down on their knees and lap him up. To clear his conscience, he does it for money. He is, after all, an actor. Actors often don’t have much sense of an identity. Actors pretend. Letting men worship his body is a good early example of how well Peter can pretend.

  After the dyke divorces him he’s wretchedly lonely. Even a lesbian’s better than no one. Oh, he goes out. Starlets and singers and big blondes and outdoor types fond of hounds and horses. Lots of rich women kept horses then. It’s good practice for him for when he must do those westerns. He busies himself as best any beleaguered out-of-a-home-ex-husband can.

  And so, finally, he dates Purpura seriously. God knows she’s been pushy and forward, never leaving him alone after their initial introduction. She’s getting older. Very quickly she wants to be serious and he won’t talk about it. Then she decides not to push. She has few options. She’s not being courted or pursued. Her career, on-screen and off, is in the toilet. After two years of dating a marriage is arranged at last.

  It is Purpura who gifts him with a return of that potency the dyke’s rejection so disturbed, one that left him fearful he’d never perform again. How had that fine actress, who won an Oscar playing a deaf-mute the very year of their own child’s birth, torn his potency from him? She is to say publicly, “He was about as good in bed as he was on the screen.”