The American People, Volume 2

by Larry Kramer

  “I am in a division responsible for funding worthy black enterprises in Africa, you know, the Third World,” he is saying as she notes that her hand is rubbing his crotch. She has never done anything like this in her life. Why am I being so cheap? You fucking wretched husband! How dare you parade your cock all over town!

  “How interesting,” she says to Mr. Bland. “Are the people in Africa better for having you around?”

  “I try to pretend we are not too late,” he seriously replies.

  Am I vengeful? Do I really want to be doing any of this?

  The eternal plaints of women in bondage since the beginning of time.

  “I deal with many black men who come from other black countries which cannot take care of them.” He is mumbling now because he has a pretty good idea what is on her mind and what is on his cock’s mind. How unexpected. Such an unlikely setting, this room, its walls covered with old framed photographs of the Holy Land, Palestine, Jerusalem, all from an era so long ago. He hopes she will not ask him what in the world he’s mumbling about, because if queried too closely he will prove inept at remembering all the new black countries’ names.

  Sara interprets the mumbling as some boyish discomfort in him, which makes him appear all the safer to her, as if he is living his name, Ronald, safe, pale, button-downed Ronald, an easy conquest—no test here!—like Jell-O. She is amazed at her growing courage and proficiency. He moves away from her hungry hand and closes the door. She had actually left the door open. He says, for some reason, that he’s been divorced for fifteen years after only one year of marriage. Is this a declaration of his availability as husband material or an alibi in advance in case he disappoints her sexually?

  He sits down on the bed, next to her, on some sort of old-fashioned handmade quilt. He says it’s not been an easy week for him. Why does he have to go into this? She stands up, placing herself in front of him, and performs the most unromantic act: she touches her own crotch. He looks past me, beyond the window, outside, into the space between this house and the one next door (far enough away), and quickly, nervously, he sticks his finger up under my skirt (from Bendel’s, Jean Muir) and under my panties (pale gray, Marks & Spencer) and … into me, and I sit on his lap, on his finger, and push myself back and forth, he who groans in much too short a space of time, poor lad, poor bland Ronald, that the tawdriness of this brief fingering should be erotically satisfying for him so quickly, and his penis still within his trousers, now resplendently wet, a growing, ever-increasing stain on his early-season seersucker. He jumps up, extricating his finger and holding it up in the air like it’s covered with shit and in immediate need of cleansing, and excuses himself as he rushes into the toilet across the room. I believe I hear him throwing up.

  Should I pause now to explore my feelings or continue with My Day (as I believe Eleanor Roosevelt documented her daily activities for all her avid audience so many years ago)? I smoothe my wrinkled British garments and go to join he who might be a possibility for my second conquest—why, they are simply walking around this house looking for me, word must have gotten around there’s an easy lay upstairs, or do women in heat send out messages like Western Union? I believe I heard him say he was also a government official, upon our introduction downstairs earlier, near the roast sliced turkey and various salads, I believe he said something about price controls, or the possibility of, the study of, their invocation by the new president, not, he said, that he had actually met the new president, but there was a meeting scheduled soon, although he thought the new president not intelligent enough to truly understand his specialty. Now they view some etchings on the corridor walls, also of the Holy Land, and make some small talk, and she flirts a bit more and coyly walks away. He’s too boring, even for me.

  She had heard the shower still running in the bathroom inhabited by he with the dirty finger. Why does she return there? Ronald is standing naked in the narrow shower stall, soaping himself up, particularly his finger, which, like the hand of Lady Macbeth, troubles him greatly. He stands in puddles of soap bubbles. Immediately when he sees her, he starts babbling of a wife and eight children, all of whom are under college age and all enrolled in different parochial boarding schools so that they will not be placed in a position of having to compete in situ. I am hungry, goddammit. I take my clothes off and slither in beside him and stick that thing that’s hard again inside me and we rumba together sufficiently and I feel my own tremors, feeble though they are under such circumstances, and I pull away as he squirts a few more drops into space. I move him back under the water again, reversing our positions, like I’m taking a package that’s in the wrong place and putting it somewhere else. I have yet to be truly aroused, beyond a cursory intellectual interest. I step out and dry myself with what I notice is a Minnie Mouse towel. It is next to a Mickey Mouse towel. Hers and His begin so young. Does Uncle Israel actually wipe himself with Minnie and Mickey? I replace the towel and dress. He is still in the shower, still washing his hands and, of course, his cock.

  I check my makeup and touch up my hair in the mirror, and I go out into the hallway. I ascend one flight of stairs, where I find my next conquest. This one surely will bring me some relief: Isn’t that what they say about black men—that they fuck white women well and good? He is less black than swarthy, someone of mixed identities. Do you now detect a certain bravura brazenness in my voice? His clothes, which are very good quality, very well made, are nevertheless a bit too tight on him, so that everything is bulging out, which I believe is the intention. He is very handsome and I want to joke out loud to him with much devil-may-care and joie de vivre that as far as I’m concerned he can bulge out all he wants to. I close a door behind us, and I lock it. We are in a children’s nursery! There is a lovely antique rocking horse. There are two beds, one a crib and another full length alongside it. I ask him where he’s from. He answers: “Here. But I grew up in Havre de Grace. I work for NITS in Franeeda County.”

  I believe that he is honest. Oh, daring Sara! I kneel on the floor before him and bury my face in his crotch. The mountain beneath my cheeks is touching to me in a way that is more maternal than sexual. I will protect you because you are almost a Negro or what they are now calling a Native American. He pulls me up and lays me back and carefully raises my skirt, as if he’s opening a special present, and gently pulls down my panties and … I open my eyes. He is staring down at my vagina. His enormous cock is sticking out of his fly. Suddenly he pounds himself into the entrance. It hurts me. Stephen has a large penis too, and when he did use it on me he didn’t know how to use it on me. Or so I thought. Or so I think now as this dark man uses his large penis on me, thicker too than Stephen’s, he is much less slurpy than Stephen, at least as I recall Stephen, there is no sound of slurp or suction, but no, this one knows not how to give pleasure either, now he’s performing with the same sort of regimental pumping as her husband, that she recalls, her bravura exercise in antidiscrimination revealing that all men are brothers, performing as they exercise in a gym, a certain set contains a certain number of repetitions that are checked off one by one until a total’s achieved that preferably tallies or surpasses some goal set in a previous workout. He appears to come in buckets. I wonder if some men store up semen like camels store water. He does not move, he is still hard, I should pump myself to climax on his still-hard cock. Why don’t I? I am conscious of a terrible silence. Not even grunts. No, I believe I’ve heard a few grunts. The leaves are going to fall late this year. But they’re going to fall. All Profumo did was fuck a high-class hooker. How does one bring down a government? For that is what he and his women did. How amazing. How does one become that powerful? This man, who still has his clothes on, is still hard and he isn’t moving and I feel light and giddy as I reenter this fray and we’re soon enough both sweating buckets and we’re drenched from each other.

  She thinks, I am tired of feeling safe. There is absolutely no safety, and a great deal of danger, in feeling safe; and even if she wanted to, safety was t
aken out of her hands by the discovery of a little purple book. And I always found such safety in books! They have always been my only friends. I thought all the knowledge in the world could be found in books. And now I’m proved right. The weeping willow bloomed late this year. Yes, the seasons are late. They can’t handle us, they can’t handle us, and they don’t know what to do. She giggles to herself, causing the current occupant to pull his hose out of her abruptly with a loud pop that elicits more giggles from her. One government official and one semi-schwartze. She is taking a survey: Have I passed the rigors of test marketing? How can I live? How can I live? How can I live? And I am a woman, the giver of life and death, the original power, the original imagination. Who says! I have let my life be taken away from me. I want it back. The new man, in his pool of sweat, has fallen asleep. Perhaps he’s dreaming of a new kind of mattress made of women. I want to talk and talk. There is so much I want to tell somebody. Who is there to tell? Who is there to listen? I want my Stephen. No. I do not.

  I feel like Virginia Woolf again, wading into the river, never to return. I am naked. Virginia had sense enough to drown with her clothes on. He wakes and lifts me up and carries me into the small nursery shower, and I notice the walls papered with Donald Ducks. The water coughing out is rusty, but warm enough. He removes his clothing. He leans me against the wall of this tiny space while he pays particular attention to soaping his pubic area. I am pleasing him enough to nurture renewed growth. The tomatoes are coming in sweet this year. With new courage from my journeyings, I run my palms up and down his smooth flat body; he feels like stones from some creek that have lain there forever. Oh dear, this rusty water is making us both slimy. His body appears to me suddenly quite repulsive, this flat, smooth, hairless, thin, upright body of—is it suntanned?—flesh with its now enormous erectile projectile … Unh. He hurts. The thuds of it and him … I push him away and quickly take some grungy soap and lather his erection. It’s like holding a piece of rusty hot pipe. He says nothing. I vaguely discern his disappointment, perhaps even anger at me for denying him continued entrance, but now come his tremors; he’s shaking all over, his penis spouts semen like a fire hose gushing the volumes still inside of him, it never seems to stop, it’s all over me, his stuff; he rubs it into my skin, over, all over, like I lavish my skin with emollients before I go to sleep. It’s not unpleasant … Now he, too, is fingering me. He has one finger inside me and his hand over my mouth … The finger inside me is now much more than a finger. The hand over my mouth now covers my nose. I can’t breathe and I can’t move against the power of his fist that pinions me to the wall … I can’t breathe …

  No, there is no such thing as safety. Intellectually I know that it is unreasonable to require safety via the conduit of another person. That’s all a load of shit, that safety within another’s arms is as essential to a person’s well-being as the search for knowledge and the seeking, as Chekhov put it, after life as it ought to be as against life as it is.

  I can’t breathe …

  Stephen, I am dying. Where are you?

  I am dead. Everything is yesterday’s cold leftover pizza. One must not be boring. The ultimate sin and crime is to be boring. I was boring. So I move on. Courage is all. I am now courageous.

  * * *

  Is Sara really dead? Well, Stephen will think so when he’s called upstairs to view her clothing on the floor along with her earrings, her bracelets, her watch, her rings, including her wedding band. It is as if she’d been decomposed and this is all that’s left. He had hoped for so long that something would happen to get her out of his life. He had ignored her for so long, hoping she would just go away. Well, she has gone away. Her body is not here. Nor will she be found. He is sensitive enough to know that he has done this to her.

  * * *

  No, I did not do this one. Not my style. Impressive. I wonder how he does it.

  EXT. CENTER OF DISEASE. DAY.

  INT. AUDITORIUM. DAY.

  A sign. OUR VISITOR TODAY IS: DR. LEMISH. GMPA. NYC.

  FRED stands on a platform, alone. He looks out at the audience. There are maybe six or seven in this huge place. One woman, Dr. Fester, has an enormous crucifix; one man, Dr. Moskowitz, has on a yarmulke; one blond guy, Dr. Harrow, could be a Nazi. Dr. Paulus Pewkin is the boss. He sits stone-faced.

  DR. MOSKOWITZ: A question I have. Why you guys don’t get married? If you were married this wouldn’t happen.

  FRED: We’re not allowed to get married.

  DR. MOSKOWITZ: This cannot be so! Everyone is allowed to get married.

  FRED: Two men? Tell me where and I’m moving there.

  DR. MOSKOWITZ: Oh, I don’t mean two men. Why don’t you marry women?

  FRED: Excuse me, but is this your entire staff?

  DR. HARROW (the Nazi): It doesn’t make any difference.

  He presses a button. A very complicated slide comes on filled with names and arrows from one to the other.

  DR. HARROW (contd): We’ve discovered the Chattanooga County Cluster!

  FRED: Yes?

  DR. HARROW: I have personally interviewed all of these arrows and discovered they are … interconnected.

  FRED: Yes?

  DR. FESTER: We discovered a high incidence of … between and among … anal intercourses.

  FRED: Must be a lot of new terms hard for you people. Are you saying you think anal intercourse is the cause of this?

  DR. FESTER: Well, it would certainly make sense!

  FRED: I know guys who are dead who never got fucked.

  Dr. Fester winces at the word fucked.

  DR. HARROW: Can you prove that?

  FRED: Can you disprove it?

  DR. MOSKOWITZ: We are only looking at the gayish lifestyle.

  FRED: I don’t know what that is.

  DR. MOSKOWITZ: You have sex every night!

  FRED: Sometimes twice!

  DR. BOOEY: Whoopee! I’ll buy that!

  This from a tiny gnome of a man not noticed.

  DR. FESTER: We are considering your promiscuity.

  FRED: Doctors are now reporting cases of single-contact infection. That’s not promiscuity, that’s bad luck!

  DR. PEWKIN: Dr. Lemming, could I speak with you privately for a moment?

  CUT TO:

  The back row of the auditorium. Pewkin and Fred sit side by side. The others have left. On a chair beside Dr. Pewkin is a stack of New York Pricks with Fred’s articles.

  DR. PEWKIN: I think you should know that we have other diseases that are of more concern to The American People. I wanted to meet you because of an article you wrote. In it you condemn us for intentionally not treating Negro people who had syphilis, and state that we are undertaking a similar tactic in dealing with homosexual men. The Public Health Service is one of the noblest institutions in the history of our great country. I am honored to have devoted my entire career to it. I will in no way allow you to tarnish us for your own salvation and I wanted to tell this to you personally. I wanted to tell you also that you are despicable in my religion, which is also the religion of my superiors—the surgeon general, the assistant secretary, indeed many people who run America’s health-care system. You are all despicable to all of us. Now perhaps you can find your own way out.

  He gets up and leaves. Fred is alone in this great auditorium. Slowly he gets up and walks down to and up on the platform. He pulls out some notes.

  FRED: Thank you very much for coming today. The great Dr. Alfred Kinsey has written that one out of every ten men in this country is gay. He has taught us that only fifty percent of all men are exclusively heterosexual throughout their lives. He has taught us that one out of every two men you meet responds sexually to another man at some time during his life. He has taught us that only four percent of all men are exclusively gay. He has taught us that forty-six percent of all men are neither exclusively straight nor exclusively gay. He has taught us that thirty-seven percent of all men will have sexual relations with another man that results in orgasm. It may on
ly happen once in a while but at any given point in time thirty-seven percent of the adult male population of our great country has done it or is doing it with another man. This is more than one-third of our country’s men. For our government to confine its definition of this growing plague to a homosexual problem shall prove to be a great tragedy, perhaps one of the greatest this world will ever know. This is not a gay problem any more than it is a gay country. We are a country where men, just like women, love, admire, respect, and need each other more than we are willing to acknowledge. I want to thank you all for coming here today and listening to me. I would be grateful if you could pass along all the information I have just related to you to all your companions in arms in your Public Health Service.

  He places his notes in his briefcase and picks up his coat and walks out of this enormous auditorium.

  “THIS SHIT” FINALLY GETS A NAME

  JOE KIDNEY CONTINUES HIS VALIANT ATTEMPT “TO GET THIS ADMINISTRATION, LIKE NO OTHER, DOWN ON PAPER”

  It was true that many have referred to whatever is happening to gay men as “this shit.” Even Secretary Hoidene Swilkers of the Department of Health and Disease (HAD) is known to do so. Finding it increasingly necessary to refer to it in public less offensively, she convenes an emergency council “to come up with a better name for this shit than ‘this shit.’”