The American People, Volume 2

by Larry Kramer

  By the time he’s president he has, even for a president, an extra-large pornography collection. He started amassing it before he married the lesbian. All these years he’s had his pictures. He learns quickly of Purpura’s need for constant sexual servicing and of his own inability to constantly oblige. He decides to display what will be one of his earliest examples of good sense: Let her take care of her own needs. Manny and Buster bring him new pictures. Eventually Purpura will provide him with a few. Then he can squeeze his rope. That’s what he calls it. His rope. What cowboy doesn’t have a rope?

  What does Peter see in Purpura or sense in her or know about her that makes him not only marry her but allow her such freedom? Does he know then she’ll be what he requires? Is she already satisfying him in other ways? What are these other ways? Does he have any sense of his destiny? He will always be expert at keeping himself to himself.

  And what does she believe she’s getting? Has she any notion of what he’ll turn out to be? Even then, is her sense of her powers so strong that she knows she’ll make him into something? Surely neither of them at this juncture is thinking president. That would be delusional.

  Often into a man’s life a woman comes along to make him great. Does she or he think that she’s this woman?

  How come he marries her?

  If he hasn’t heard about her skills originally, how can he not have heard about them latterly?

  Does he know and it doesn’t bother him? Or he gets a kick out of it? Or they may both get off on it? To thumb your nose at the world is an exciting sport, if that’s what they think they’re doing.

  Or does he have some secret of his own? Do they trade like kids with baseball cards? I’ll give you one of this if you’ll give me one of that. He’d practically raped a woman on their very wedding day. Is there more dirt under the covers like that? He was tired of sex and she’d be a relief?

  He dated every girlfriend he ever had for years and never touched them. Touched them, as in kisses; forget the fucks. If Purpura likes to do it and Peter likes to look at pictures, they don’t appear to be such a hot fit.

  Do they grab each other to save themselves? From what? Shared secrets bind people together in tormented pacts. His lack of interest in intercourse would have been acceptable to a lesbian and would explain his great depression when that marriage ended. For the next one he’d have to perform. Perhaps not, if she’s already got such a thriving business door to door.

  Does he feel sorry for Purpura? Did he feel sorry for the dyke? Does Purpura feel sorry for Peter? Peter believes in smiling whatever the hardship. His family on the plains wasn’t really drunks who never worked. They were noble Americans beset with adversity. Yes, he knows how to rise from ashes. They both know.

  Why does he need such a large pornography collection? We are not talking about a few little dirty pictures and a couple of dog-eared books. We are talking about the equivalent of a philatelist with a major collection of stamps. If he gets little sex and gives little sex, does he just jerk off over dirty pictures? If she hardened Spencer Tracy, is this something she does for her Peter? As Wallis Simpson does for her duke. A gift is a gift. God doesn’t discriminate whose hands are laying on whose.

  Is he marrying Purpura, the cocksucker, his very own live-in dirty-mouthed pornographic semen swallower? Is she marrying Peter Ruester, the dirty-minded collector of smut? A family that plays together stays together? All of this is a stretch. But then so is his election to his presidency.

  Does guilt have anything to do with anything?

  It is said, by Anne Edwards, the eminent biographer of both of them, that Ruester was a deeply religious man from childhood on. If he thinks he’s a washed-up sinner, then perhaps another washed-up sinner is what this exercise is about.

  How can any history of the Ruester years be true without any exploration of all this?

  After his marriage his career goes further on the skids. The studio won’t turn him into an Errol Flynn or a James Cagney or even a George Brent. Only Mr. Nice Boy, Mr. Boy Next Door for Pete. At first he considers this unfortunate.

  When does it occur to him—or them, he and his fine new wife—that this is the part he is born to play? That playing this part of the Common Man will turn him into God? Does he make some Faustian bargain with his God?

  Peter brings with him to the governorship one Manny Moose.

  Peter brings with him to the White House one Manny Moose.

  One day Manny Moose is just there.

  One day Buster Punic is just there.

  One day those Kaffeeklatschers are just there.

  It isn’t all that long after he’s governor that Peter Ruester is president of the United States, an eccentric country.

  So the man with the huge pornography collection and the woman who gives the best of blow jobs are now the president and First Lady of the United States of America, now an even more eccentric country.

  “I’m a cocksucker. You like dirty pictures. Let’s rule this country.”

  “Why not the world?”

  They’ve stayed together and wished upon a star.

  PATTI 2

  Ours is a greedy, hungry country that’s learned how to meet all needs. There are special places to cruise for lawyers, as there are for homos and hookers. There are plenty of lawyers if you know where to find them. She can walk into a conference or bar or restaurant and spot the one she wants. They wear suits that fit them differently, and their ties, no one else wears ties like lawyers, and their shoes, you can always tell a lawyer’s shoes. Yes, lawyers are boring, but boring men can be great fucks, I gather. Partners in law firms are the most boring, safest fucks. They’ve got the most at stake. Soon she’s only fucking the partners. Many of them will be helpful to her for years.

  The only men who aren’t boring to her are homosexuals. Swish and Foppy are gay. She’s had rollicking fun and laughs with gays for as long as she can remember. Her mother’s closest friends were lesbians. She figures her mother was one too. Her mother’s best friend was Zasu Pitts, a movie star of sorts and a dyke. Mom was friendly with Mary Martin, another dyke, who cast young Purpura in one of her musicals on Broadway. In the old days, when gay men or women gave the only parties she was invited to, she was grateful to them. They kept her from being too lonesome. Gay men helped her dress better and did things with her hair and makeup. Hers is not an easy face. Small. Squooshy. And she’s got those legs that belong on a piano. When gay men tell her their problems—their romantic problems are evidently always so complicated, and usually involve more than a cast of two—she gives them advice. That’s how she learns she’s practical. “Queers always come back for more. They need constant tending and reassurance. They cave in so quickly.” Her advice is never to cave in. Such wonderful practical experience, running lives. When one died years ago—“what was his name?”—from old age, she actually cried for him. She was surprised to realize she missed him, but she was running a state by then, so we couldn’t send flowers.

  It’s easy to get laid quietly in New York. There are millions of people to hide you. You can get lost in half a tick. You wear sunglasses, a wig, and a big hat. You can even walk. It’s not easy to get laid in Washington. There’s always “some spic maid who can’t keep her mouth shut or some schwartze chauffeur who likes to brag.” You can’t even take a cab. All the drivers think they’re about to get arrested or are being followed by Secret Service men with guns, which they probably are. It doesn’t help to play Big Deal. It makes cocks go limp. Cocks tend to get a bit dangly in D.C.

  But she’ll find a way, now that she’s reached the big top. Why, she might even get her dream, Frank Sinatra. He’d snubbed her many times in L.A.

  From the day of their inauguration—because she’s anointed queen as much as he’s made king—America’s on a love fest with Peter and Purpura Ruester. No one dares to criticize them. Funny how it would be so easy to make fun of them, yet no one does. Felix Turner tries to write amusingly about her in The New York Truth, but M
anny’s put a stop to that.

  Why and how will they get away with so many extracurricular activities?

  And I haven’t begun to tell you the half of it!

  Purpura and Peter know that their son is gay. And there is something out there infecting and killing gay men.

  FROM THE NOTEBOOKS OF JAMES JESUS ANGLETON

  CODE NAME: MOTHER

  So Patti is blabbing again. She continues to be most helpful to me.

  It’s a good thing I keep notebooks. All the best of us do. If only for our own salvation—to save our own necks when someone comes after us, as someone always will.

  Laws have to be broken if the rewards look substantial. All lies are told for a reason. I have intelligence files on large numbers of people. I have an army of spies under my personal control. I enjoy manipulating my boys and girls.

  I always assume the worst. My definition of both counterspy and counterespionage is that one is overt, the other is covert, but it boils down to the same and together they form Counterintelligence, and that is what I am in charge of. CIA Counterintelligence is mine!

  Drastic remedies are often called for. I learned that from Tom Jones at Yaddah. It’s interesting how many of the best of us were from Yaddah. We had a nice meeting before he died, Tom and I.

  My enemies think I am going too far, bringing on a police state, a Gestapo. But it’s they who will bring this about. Someone has started a typhoon against me, claiming I brought in Nazis to reinforce my troops. What nonsense. I need no one to help me call my shots.

  I must know everything that’s going on. It is sex that creates, rules, and ruins history. The Ruesters are incorrigible. With lots of new idiots ruling the roost since Nixon, I am constantly sending in my own Deep Throat to keep me apprised. It’s not only my own skin that I am saving.

  CHICAGO

  On March 3, 1981, Tidgy Schmidge and Kristos Rosenkavalier threw their two adopted twin baby boys out of their eighty-first-floor apartment on Lake Michigan and jumped after them. It was an exceptionally windy day so the bodies flew all the way to Michigan Avenue before they landed and went splat into millions of pieces. Still, it could be seen that all four bodies were covered with purple spots. Tidgy had had a brief affairlet with Fred Lemish, whose hairy ass Tidgy maintained turned him on. Fred was not aware his ass was hairy but Tidgy was a nice man anyway. “You have just a little but it’s hairy enough for me,” Tidgy told him. Kristos and Fred had been dancing partners many Tea Dance afternoons ago at Fire Island. Fred gave him this name when they were cuddling one evening listening to this opera and Kristos was holding a rose.

  RARE CANCER SEEN IN 41 HOMOSEXUALS

  THE NEW YORK TRUTH, JULY 3, 1981. PAGE A31

  BY DEARIE FAULT, M.D.

  Doctors in New York City have diagnosed among homosexual men 41 cases of a rare and often rapidly fatal form of cancer. Eight of the victims died less than 24 months after the diagnosis was made. The cause of the outbreak is unknown.

  The announcement was made by Drs. Hoakus Benois-Frucht and Emma Brookner of New York’s Table Medical Center. Dr. Benois-Frucht classified their findings as “utterly devastating.” He said that these cases had all involved his homosexual patients who have had multiple and frequent sexual encounters with different partners, “as many as 10 sexual encounters each night up to four times a week.”

  Many of these patients have also been treated for viral infections such as herpes and hepatitis, as well as parasitic infections such as amoebiasis and giardiasis. Many also reported using drugs and “inhalants” such as Dridgies, manufactured by the Greeting-Dridge pharmaceutical giant, to heighten sexual pleasure.

  Dr. Paulus Pewkin of the Federal Center of Disease said there was no apparent danger to non-homosexuals from contagion. “The best evidence against contagion is that no cases have been reported outside the male homosexual community or in women,” Dr. Pewkin said.

  Dr. Benois-Frucht said he had tested nine of the victims and found severe defects in their immunological systems. The patients had serious malfunctions of two types of cells called n-3c and 729.

  He also emphasized, “It is impossible to tell yet whether the immunological defects are in fact the underlying problem, or whether something has developed secondarily to the infections, or from drug use, or from the inordinate amount of sexual activity. I believe we’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg.”

  The Center of Disease officially reported the cases in their weekly publication, The Journal of Death.

  SHIT!

  That does it for Fred. He gets frightened. He gets frightened enough to stop being such a zombie. He instantly knew that Josie and Dom Dom were in these statistics. And who else that he knew? Well, he’d better start finding out a lot of things. Starting with how The New York Truth, the most important newspaper anywhere in the world, then, now, still, and continuing, and known by every gay person as exceedingly unfriendly to anything gay, had arrived at the “information” it was peddling in this article. Boo Boo Bronstein’s father, for whom he’d written a screenplay (Fred had fallen a bit for Boo Boo, Fred being the first man who ever fucked him, or so Boo had said), called to tell him Boo had died. Now his friend and Village neighbor Bruce Niles has just called to tell him that his lover Craig died. Fred had had an affairlet with Craig, too; Fred ended it when Craig told Fred he loved him and wanted to get serious. Not long after, Craig and Bruce met and bonded. It had been going along quite nicely. Four friends in two weeks. What the fuck was happening? Who’d be next? Why and how did he assume somebody would be next? He just knew.

  THE SCIENCE DEPARTMENT OF THE NEW YORK TRUTH

  Yes, on July 3, 1981, first word “officially” reaches The American People about what will, in a few years’ time, become the plague of The Underlying Condition. The article is hidden on an inside page of The New York Truth. Something is killing gay men. The announcement, which originally appeared in the pages of COD’s Journal of Death only a week before, is made by Dr. Hoakus Benois-Frucht of Table Medical Center, where he is chairperson of skin, and Dr. Emma Brookner, a hematologist there. Dr. Benois-Frucht is trying to beat to the punch Dr. Egypt Poo of Invincible Crewd-Harbinger, where he is chairperson of skin and with whom he’s shared similar findings. Dr. Poo, who is indeed an Egyptian, would have made the announcement to The Truth first, because in fact he saw his First Case a day before Hokie saw his First Case, but for the unwritten and unspoken and never-violated rule at Invincible Crewd-Harbinger: “The Institution may be mentioned to the press, but not the Self.” So Dr. Poo sees his First Case, knows he is seeing something special, knows he should report it, and senses that by not doing so he may be excluding himself from certain recognition, but with three kids at Dalton, a co-op almost on Gracie Square, and a wife with Grand Ambitions, the immediate present shuts him up.

  Table, Jewish as against Invincible’s gentile bent, has no such qualms. Jewish doctors love to see their names in the papers. Table specialists are on a first-name basis with Velma Dimley, Dr. Dearie Fault, Manny Shmutz, Rodney Pilts, and Ricky Twaddle, the science staff at The Truth, so of course Dr. Benois-Frucht answers Velma Dimley’s call and Table takes this opening trick. Not that there is, or will be, another hospital or medical center in the entire country that would want it.

  Velma Dimley, who today is doing the legwork for Dr. Dearie Fault, who as the only M.D. among them will get the byline, jots down Hokie’s answers to her questions. She recognizes, for a change, the worth of what he tells her, as “hot stuff,” if not as science, with which she has less familiarity, and bangs it into Truthful shape. She runs her short article by her editor, Ricky Twaddle, a transplanted Englishperson still suffering from a childhood filled with unkind references to his lack of masculinity when in fact he was, and is, a heterosexual. Before turning it over to Dearie for the final polish that will give it his special authoritative voice, Ricky queries Velma on Hokie’s warning: “We are seeing only the tip of the iceberg.” “The tip of the iceberg,” a favorite phrase, ap
pears in nine out of ten of Velma’s stories, about anything. She is invariably offended when questioned. “That is what he said and he’s a doctor” is, as always, her defense. Ricky and all his staff have been at The Truth a long time: there is no higher place to go in writing about science than The Truth. Velma’s article is approved by Ricky, as is Dearie’s rewrite by Rodney, who as the longest-lived as well as suffering, is last in line in double-checking his associates. (Manny Shmutz is on vacation.) Rodney deletes the tip-of-the-iceberg stuff. Dearie restores it and initials his final approval and sends it off into the world.

  As noted, these First Cases have already been officially reported in The Journal of Death (JOD). That is the law of the land. Provision 2B of the Heimat-Dingus Hate Protection Bill mandates (a favorite Washington verb) that deaths from Anything Unusual must be reported to the Department of Health and Disease (HAD), and to the Center of Disease (COD), which is in Natchez under the direction of Dr. Paulus Pewkin, and to the National Institute of Tumor Sciences (NITS), in Franeeda, now run by Dr. Stuartgene Dye. HAD, also in suburban Maryland, is now run, and very badly, by its new cabinet secretary, Hoidene Swilkers. While it is NITS that Congress, in 1912, chartered and charged “to look after the health of the American people,” it is HAD that is America’s overall umbrella agency for anything to do with—well, health and disease. If HAD is the top of the pyramid, then Hoidene, with her retinue of several hundred wigs, will be its tippy-top. COD’s, and hence HAD’s, Journal of Death is sent free of charge weekly to anyone who wants it, which at this time is some twenty-three thousand persons, who may or may not be doctors or connected to public health or medical or scientific reporters or just creeps who get off on reading about the ghoulish and macabre, with which its several poorly printed pages are routinely filled. It is seen by few and read by fewer, and Velma is to be congratulated for her eagle eye.