by Larry Kramer
But sals can also mean, medically (see Novotrott’s standard text, Medicine of the Ancient World), “a not-quite-particular-enough salt.” In other words, a sort of ambivalent salt, although Novotrott does not elaborate. My article in The New England Journal of Salts makes a case for this ambivalence, sort of the bisexuality of salts. This goes a bit too far, some think, because Sals, alone, by itself, is not ert. It is not living, and no one expects it to get it up. But according to me, that’s precisely because it is not quite “particular” enough. If the salt were more formed, more specific, it would produce an effect other than the effect it produces as is. Anyone who puts salt on food can understand this. There are different kinds of salt—regular, rock, seasoned, Jerusalem, Accent, kosher, herb, Krazy Jane’s, Lawry’s, Marks & Sparks, even from Madagascar—and each gives the food it’s sprinkled on a different taste. Think of it this way: the salt is serving to mask the true flavor of the food it’s sprinkled on. It’s putting a protective sheath over it. It’s not accentuating the vegetable’s flavor, it’s masking it. The real essence of asparagus, like semen sheathed by a condom, can’t get through.
A few years ago, when a rush of cancer of the nose was in the air, I spent a lot of time and money trying unsuccessfully to develop a “denser” salt. A Dr. Goetzee from India had suggested that a dense salt should be sniffed up a cancerous nose; he had seen it work in his country, where this cancer is common. He suggests that Sals Particularity is not dense enough on its own against this Underlying Condition. He says that my salt’s ranshees are probably too weak and free-floating.
It is a difficult task to muck around with salt. According to Dr. Goetzee all you have to do to get a denser salt is to blanch in more ranshees. He sent an up-to-date recipe on how to do this.
Unfortunately, I then discovered that ranshees don’t get along with pus. I discovered this by using the pus slides from those six dead nuns at Mater Nostra Dolorosa. Pus is now top of the hit parade of possible causes of this shit. Nimroids, which I named after the famous Greek surgeon, exude poisonous pus. Ransheed pus produces only a terrible body rash that is also quite malodorous.
Dr. Horace Vetch, a plastic surgeon at Princeton, claims patients can die instantaneously from exposure to this pus. That was the first anyone had heard of such a speedy demise. His work is considered “Fringe, on the borderline of crackpot,” according to the pioneer eugenicist Jeremiah Brinestalker in New Godding, who is evidently internationally famous for his horses. Dr. Vetch claims to have infected a horse with nimroid pus, “cleansed” it via plasmapheresis of its blood before returning it to the animal, and then entering it in “a thoroughbred race, which it won.”
Experiments have been done on monkeys. This is always the Proof thrown in the face of the Unbeliever: “But experiments have been done on monkeys.” It’s always the “monkeys.” So much so that Dr. Dripper is facing a shortage of them. It’s never “But experiments have been done on mice.” Or “chickens.” Or even “amoebas.” (Although we have just seen a horse.) And of course it’s never—never—“But experiments have been done on patients.” (Which is why these charges against Dr. Sister Grace Hooker are so threatening. Much too much was “learned” at Nuremberg about fostering quick results.) Anyway, Dr. Dripper’s monkeys appear remarkably unaffected by my denser salt.
I am now trying to find out how to make ultra-ransheed salt get along with pus. My work is of particular interest to Middleditch (misidentified somewhere by that Lemish character as Middlemarch), whose star scientist, that nitwit Geiseric, evidently now feels threated by my work, which he is unable to take and run with. Dr. Middleditch must protect him and the glory of NITS.
I start injecting denser salts into sick young men to see if they remain alive longer. So far the results are inconclusive. Goetzee claims that the tolerated dosage hasn’t been reached. That is always what’s said when the results are inconclusive (i.e., patients keep dying). My studies are now under way involving the injection of gradually increased doses of ultra-ransheed salt directly into bloodstreams. Patients report that everything they eat now tastes of salt. They are also always very thirsty. Both good signs, says Goetzee.
This is proving a most laborious process, working with a body that is simultaneously succumbing to the ravages of this shit and dying of thirst.
DR. REBBY ITSENFELDER
Salt is salt. It is about as particular as it’s going to get. These theories are so ridiculous as to make one gasp for breath. Salt, no salt, better salt, different salt, denser salt, weak salt, strong salt! Ranshees! Gollys! PUS! God help us. Why can’t we just admit we don’t know anything about what causes this shit? If there even is an Underlying Condition. I cannot get back to New York fast enough. NITS! NITS is full of nits!
DR. BOSCO DRIPPER
Dr. Lucien Van Hoof’s son in Antwerp forwarded to me some newly discovered last reports written by his great father just before he died. Lucien had been concerned about strange deaths in western Africa of Pan troglodytes troglodytes and sooty mangabeys and “even some gorillas.” Like niggers, Pan trogs take such godawful care of their environments. But these various primate types do not infect each other. It is not in their mechanisms. Pan trogs fuck only with other Pan trogs. What were Pan trogs eating? Lucien died in 1948.
* * *
Yes. That is correct. I was there. I didn’t like it much. You’re right about a nasty environment! What is an Antwerp? Have I been there yet? I am finding so many places to go. What please is a nigger?
INT. GMPA OFFICE. NIGHT.
It’s nighttime. Fred and Bruce are doing paperwork. Fred looks at Bruce and realizes he’s been crying.
BRUCE: Albert is dead.
FRED: Oh, no.
BRUCE: What’s today?
FRED: Wednesday.
BRUCE: He’s been dead a week.
FRED: I didn’t know he was so close.
BRUCE: No one did. He wouldn’t tell anyone. You know why? Because of me. Because he knows I’m so scared I’m some sort of carrier. This makes three people I’ve been with who are dead. Albert, I think I loved him best of all, and he went so fast. His mother wanted him back in Phoenix before he died, this was last week when it was obvious, so I get permission from Emma and bundle him all up and take him to the plane in an ambulance. The pilot wouldn’t take off and I refused to leave the plane—you would have been proud of me—so finally they get another pilot. Then, after we take off, Albert loses his mind, not recognizing me, not knowing where he is or that he’s going home, and then, right there, on the plane, he becomes … incontinent. He starts doing it in his pants and all over the seat; shit, piss, everything. I pull down my suitcase and yank out whatever clothes are in there and I start cleaning him up as best I can, and all these people are staring at us and moving away in droves and … and I sit there holding his hand, saying, “Albert, please, no more, hold it in, man, I beg you, just for us, for Bruce and Albert.” And when we get to Phoenix, there’s a police van waiting for us and all the police are in complete protective rubber clothing, they looked like fucking astronauts, and by the time we got to the hospital, where his mother had fixed up his room real nice, Albert was dead.
(Fred starts toward him.)
Wait. It gets worse. The hospital doctors refused to examine him to put a cause of death on the death certificate, and without a death certificate the undertakers wouldn’t take him away, and neither would the police. Finally, some orderly comes in and stuffs Albert in a heavy-duty Glad bag and motions us with his finger to follow and he puts him out in the back alley with the garbage. He says, “Hey, man. See what a big favor I’ve done for you, I got him out, I want fifty bucks.” I paid him! Then his mother and I carried the bag to her car and we finally found a black undertaker who cremated him for a thousand dollars, no questions asked.
(Fred crosses to Bruce and embraces him; Bruce puts his arms around Fred.)
BRUCE: Would you and Felix mind if I spent a few nights on your sofa? I don’t want to go home.
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DEEP THROAT
You’re in big big trouble, Fred. Your guys just don’t know how big.
EXT. BEACH AT FIRE ISLAND. DAY.
A bleak day. The beach is deserted. A big photograph of Albert held aloft. About twenty guys. Fred, Felix, Mickey, Gregory, Christopher now with Herb, Pierre, Nick, Morton, Buzzy, a few others who are recognizable. A man with a minister’s collar hands Bruce a small box, then gives him a hug. Bruce, in his Green Beret uniform, starts to scatter Albert’s ashes over the water and then, even though he is clothed, wades into the water, scattering more, walking out farther and farther.
EXT. FIRE ISLAND PINES. NIGHT.
A mammoth beach party is in progress. The beach is crowded with dancers. The music is intense. Fred stands with Felix, over to the side, taking it all in.
EXT. WEST SIDE HIGHWAY AND CHRISTOPHER STREET. DAY.
Emma arrives there with Ned. The area is mobbed. A sea of men on a warm sunny Sunday afternoon. She glares at him. He stands there helplessly. Her eyes start to fill with tears. She suddenly takes off in her wheelchair. As she can’t get through the crowds of men she heads out to the highway itself, zooming alongside the traffic. Fred runs after her.
FRED (calling): Emma! Come back! Please wait for me!
He finally catches up with her and places himself in her path so she has to stop. Traffic is forced to stop and go around them. Lots of honking horns.
FRED (kneeling): Please tell me!
EMMA: All those men! Fred. All those men out there! They don’t know anything!
INTRODUCING DEEP THROAT
I have asked you not to use my real name, Fred. I intend to tell you the truth as I know and find it. For now, let me just say that I run the pathology labs at NITS. Ann Fettner put us together. She recognized birds of a feather. More important, you should know others know about you, too, and want me to keep them updated. “There is much rot in Denmark,” I say enigmatically. If you are sharing this with others, please honor my anonymity.
I was most impressed with your letters to Omicidio that were published. I am worried that your principal contact at NITS, Dr. Daniel Jerusalem, is less than what is needed. He appears to me so far as just another cog in the wheel.
Today I was standing at the Army’s Walter Reed National Military Medical Center watching a Change of Command ceremony. I am here to represent NITS. Army labs are meant to be supervised by NITS.
The Army has lots of ceremonies for lots of reasons. They all seem united in a theme I once heard said of the British Army, that they confuse sentiment with ceremony, so instead of embracing a colleague and expressing their sorrow at parting, they assemble buglers, trumpeters, drummers, and colleagues in foppish adornment to avoid expressing that sorrow. The expression of emotion is not only a sign of weakness in the military, it might suggest graver symptoms. There are barracks of enlisted men brokenhearted at the reassignment or death of dear friends, and too brokenhearted to confess this love or to cry. And enlisted men don’t even have departure ceremonies or Change of Command ceremonies the way officers do. For either, behavior that will not result in visible emotions is required.
As I stand in the hot sun and watch this ceremony, I puzzle over the strange reports I’ve been reading in The Journal of Death. I read this wrinkled quarto avidly; it’s important to stay up to date on the stuff they cover. Reports about a new disease. A killer disease. A disease that so far has killed only known homosexual men. As I watch the parade of young men assembled to pay homage to the departure of some incompetent bureaucrat who was commander of an incompetent battalion, I wonder how many of his men might die. Will lesbians sicken as well? It occurs to me that I don’t really know much about homosexuals. I’ve been told that since Sexopolis and the sexual revolution gave free license to sexuality for everyone, homosexuals have engaged in extraordinary feats of activity. I know that the Capitol men’s toilets have been a favorite trysting ground for congressmen. I have heard about “T rooms,” public toilets where men engage in anonymous sexual encounters lasting only long enough for ejaculation. But I don’t know much. I’m not sure what rimming is. Fisting is totally foreign. I don’t know how they do it. The idea that a Dr. Golly might ascribe this new illness to bad dope, he who only recently was betting on ransheed salt, seems to require a lot more exotic dope than I ever tried. To produce a full-fledged immune collapse would require monster doses of something that makes chemical sense. I can’t see how the many homosexuals so far affected could possibly have taken that much dope in so coordinated a manner that they all got sick at once. Assume that the amyl or butyl nitrite, the main ingredient in the Dridgies that JOD said all the boys are taking, was contaminated with some deadly poison. Amyl nitrite from the worst sources is at least 95 percent pure, and it would take about 95 milligrams to send somebody on the point of orgasm totally over the moon. That leaves 5 milligrams of bad stuff in the rest of the popper. It seems unlikely that these 5 milligrams could contain more than 1 milligram of really new chemicals likely to poison the immune system, which means that a substance had to be active at one part in 50 million. Assuming a functioning liver, it seems very unlikely that such a small dose could be diluted in the body and still remain active long enough to produce the types of lesions that occur. This Dr. Itsenfelder, the proponent of the Dridgies as cause, does not know his chemistry.
This was what I was thinking about as I stood and watched the Change of Command ceremony. I didn’t think about the money these things cost. A year ago, one of the buffoons at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology had a model airplane built big enough for him to sit in while having his picture taken. The entire carpentry shop worked for four months on that one.
I was still smarting about having called a reporter at The Washington Monument to draw his attention to the JOD article about the “Gay Plague” and hearing him respond, “So what?” (Jerry is to criticize me for this interaction). From what I have read, the disease was characterized by Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia. A bit later, Kaposi’s sarcoma was reported. Poor old Kaposi. He was a pathologist who described two diseases that bear his name (about the only way for us pathologists to become immortal is through eponymous naming of diseases), and one of them is Kaposi’s sarcoma. Sarcomas are a type of cancer. Strictly speaking, sarcomas are true malignant tumors that not only invade but spread to other parts of the body. Kaposi’s doesn’t do this. Pathologists have tried to think up terms such as “tumor-like” or “Kaposi’s lymphoderma perniciosa” to keep from calling it a cancer. Until the “Gay Plague,” Kaposi’s sarcoma was only an interesting skin disease. Patients rarely died of it. Blacks in Africa got KS and lived with multiple spots on their legs or arms for years. Blacks in America almost never get KS. It is found in white men fifteen times oftener than in females. In Europe it is a disease of old men, in whom Kaposi first described it in 1872. Until the reports from New York and San Francisco about nimroids, which turn out to be Kaposi’s lesions, we thought KS was an exotic disease that would rarely cross our lives.
The other tip-off in the reports was the coupling of Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia with this Kaposi thing. PCP was a lost disease, found in the most amazing circumstances. Like KS, PCP was first described many years ago. Its discoverers thought it was a form of sleeping sickness rampant in South America and Africa. There were sporadic reports of the disease in rats and guinea pigs for some years, and then it dropped completely out of sight until the aftermath of World War II. Central Europe was devastated and the very young and the very old suffered most. In the orphans’ homes of Czechoslovakia and Belgium babies died of a terrible pneumonia that turned their lungs into a kind of soggy sponge cake and their wasting bodies blue. Two bright Czech pathologists hypothesized that the pneumonia seemed to be caused by the parasite found in rats some thirty years before. They failed to establish a therapy. The disease lapsed into obscurity again as nutrition in Europe improved and babies got better care.
Beginning in the 1960s, crusading cancer specialists star
ted treating their patients with a whole collection of agents, first based on war gases and antibiotics, but later on custom-tailored molecules that could poison cancer cells preferentially. As the toxic drugs killed cells in the immune system, people became deathly ill from diseases that would never have affected them if they were not taking the drugs. The mysterious pneumonia that appeared baffled the oncologists, and specialists in obscure diseases were called in. One of them was Dr. Israel Jerusalem, who had won a Nobel for his work on an obscure disease in cannibals in the Andes and elsewhere, who was able to identify PCP as a major complication in patients undergoing chemotherapy. A leader in the next step was NITS’s Roscoe Middleditch, soon to cause me so much sadness. Middleditch recognized, by way of Israel’s discovery, that the connections among the effects of PCP, the use of chemotherapy, and a disintegrating immune system cause the last to be further compromised by the arrival on the scene of an increasing number of Opportunistic Infections (also noticed by Itsenfelder). Cease the chemotherapy and a few of the other OIs disappeared, which unfortunately wasn’t enough. Middleditch, perhaps one of the better oncologists around, recognized that treating cancer with chemotherapy and radiation is a juggling act. The physician must bring the patient near to death, using every skill to keep infections at bay until the treatment has progressed enough to destroy the cancer cells. Middleditch experienced a tragic example of these types of patients when his own son developed an irreversible blood disorder that left him without a proper immune system, so that the kid spent the last years of his life living in a bubble house of plastic to protect him from infections. Is it a small blessing that the child survived the immune deficiency only to die like that?
