The American People, Volume 2

by Larry Kramer

  MONTAGE:

  Fred visits several offices and several people, all of whom seem decent enough. They will look at him pleasantly and they will shake their heads pleasantly, or come back pleasantly from a search empty-handed. Finally he will be taken to an enormous storage warehouse where shelving loaded down with decades of files seems to reach up to the sky. No one is in this huge place except Fred and the employee who will ride him around on a cart as he investigates various locales.

  DRIVER: Anything really important, you won’t find here.

  FRED: Where would I look?

  DRIVER: Nowhere. They’d all be burned up.

  DEEP THROAT (v.o.): If it is true and you get anywhere near to finding anything, which I doubt, did it occur to you that you could be killed?

  FRED (v.o.): You’re serious?

  DEEP THROAT (v.o.): Congress appropriated one billion dollars for biological warfare last year and the Pentagon doesn’t have to say where it went. We are spending more money developing germs than we are to stop them.

  FRED (v.o.): What does Omicidio say about any of this?

  Deep Throat just lets out a big, loud laugh.

  WHO’S TALKING?

  There is now an office of the Tricia Institute in every major city. Each month new tallys are reported to me of the number of homosexuals it has located. The numbers continue to rise. While none of us is certain what we are to do with this information, I am instructed its time will soon come.

  DR. MONSERRAT KRANK

  The reactions I am hearing from many of my heterosexual friends remind me of the stories I heard about Jews during the war, that homosexuals were dirty and evil and deserved to die. I am determined to prevent my gay friends being treated this way. Fortunately, my heterosexual friends are rich and are grateful to Binky for something or other, so it’s been easy to shame them into contributions for my organization with Rebby. Sadly, Binky is not very supportive. It is his movie star clients I’m going after.

  DAME LADY HERMIA

  Where are you, my Freddie? I await your further contributions to my ongoing history of evil, you who are hurling “Hitler” and “Holocaust” with increasing regularity. Are you aware that as we spread our wings Jewish scholars now condemn us for “sullying” their own precious Holocaust? They argue harshly that “their” ur-text is the only Original Holocaust, and we are forcing it to lose its “necessary bold-face currency as the only currency, lest it be cheapened”? Indeed, one camp survivor has written me, “If so many see evil lurking now everywhere behind every tree and in every nook and cranny, how can the world be expected to remember the real thing?” We must teach them that evil is evil, in any time and every place, and if “they” don’t like it, so what, so (as you and dear lost Grace would most certainly say) fucking what. Goodness, listen to me.

  And listen to this:

  “Every able-bodied man they could find was put to work in three shifts: writing file cards for an enormous circular card file, several yards in diameter, which a man sitting on a piano stool could operate and find any card he wanted thanks to a system of punch holes. All information important … was entered on these cards. The data was taken from annual reports, handbooks, the newspapers of all the political parties, membership files; in short, of everything imaginable. Each card carried name, address, party membership, whether Jew, Freemason, or practicing Catholic or Protestant, gypsy, homosexual; whether politically active, whether this or whether that.”

  These are the words of Adolph Eichmann as published in Eichmann Interrogated: Transcripts from the Archives of the Israeli Police, edited by Jochen von Lang and translated by Ralph Manheim. This book has created a bit of a stir. Questions are raised about the accuracy of the translation—ridiculous since Manheim is an award-winning translator of great standing. The inclusion of the words gypsy and homosexual is questioned. The book sells well, particularly in the Washington area.

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  OFFICE OF THE PRESS SECRETARY PRESS BRIEFING BY LARRY SPEAKES

  June 13, 1983

  Q: Larry, does the president think that it might help if he suggested that the gays cut down on their “cruising”? (Laughter.) What? I didn’t hear your answer, Larry.

  MR. SPEAKES: I just was acknowledging your interest—

  Q: You were acknowledging but—

  MR. SPEAKES:—interest in this subject.

  Q:—you don’t think that it would help if the gays cut down on their cruising—it would help this … thing?

  MR. SPEAKES: We are researching it. If we come up with any research that sheds some light on whether gays should cruise or not cruise, we’ll make it available to you. (Laughter.)

  Q: Back to fairy tales.

  VITAL STATISTICS

  COD reports 2,259 cases, with 917 dead.

  * * *

  Insulting.

  DANIEL TO FRED

  Gobbel has just appointed as “Adviser to the President” a man named Brinestalker. Therein lies another whole history that I don’t have the stomach to go into today, but my father worked for a Brinestalker and I’ll bet he knows something about David. Word is that he’s advising the administration on homosexuality. I tried to locate Brinestalker. I left my name at his office downtown three or four times and he’s not calling me back. I have this creepy feeling he’ll tell me David is dead.

  DANIEL THE SPY

  The bloodies finally meet. It’s taken them this long. NITS, HAH, FADS, COD, ARB, BOAN, Army, Navy, etc. It’s mayhem. Even Representative Dingus showed up; he’s known to appear only when he smells something for him to expose.

  COD and NITS are each convinced that the other is invading its turf and trying to purloin money from the other’s budget, which is pretty puny to begin with. And hemophiliacs are terrified that Factor VIII will be taken away from them because they’re being linked with homosexuals. Various Red Crosses and Bloods are afraid of being attacked for some fuckup or other as blood is obviously getting more infected. The pediatricians are screaming, “My little babies did not get this from having sex!” And the revered head honcho of all blood, Dr. Stewwinger Foss of Yaddah—you remember all those photographs we had to have taken of us naked freshman year, to test our “posture”? Foss was in charge of that. It was his idea. I wonder where all those photos are? And what his rationale really was, to photograph every freshman naked; how did he get Yaddah’s president to go along with that?—he keeps announcing over and over like a mantra, “The blood supply is safe, the blood supply is safe,” as if his own life depended on it. He’s giving himself absolutely no wiggle room, which I’ve learned in D.C. is something you just don’t do.

  Interesting how there are all-institute top-level meetings for blood, but nothing for research or for that funny word cure. Dye says, “I am not interested in other divisions’ opinions.” “Other divisions”! What’s his opinion on what we should be doing if not this?

  Monserrat and Rebby, also here, realize it’s been way over three years with no research, no plan, no coordinator, no prevention methods, no official guidelines or health recommendations from anyone, concerning blood or anything else.

  And Jerry has just testified to Congress that no further money is needed: “We have all we need.” This is an outright lie but it’s the mantra he’s ordered to repeat by Gree Bohunk and Linus Gobbel, who have whispered to him they’ll find him a few bucks behind Stockman’s back if he keeps his mouth shut. A few bucks!

  How could there not be a plan, any intelligent person would ask. Well, this intelligent person is wondering if perhaps the plan is that there is no plan. Monserrat discusses this possibility with Binky, who’s had much experience interacting with presidents. “This present lot, I fear, is scum.” She quotes him in Jerry’s office. She’s come to bawl him out “for your total lackluster behavior,” she announces regally. She next goes to Sec. Swilkers to ream out Hoidene, who has no idea who she is. “Nasturtium won’t return my calls,” Monserrat tells me. “It’s very dispiriting.” She didn’t know G
arrie’s dead and now they don’t think it was suicide.

  Paulus of COD came in looking white as a sheet. He’s learned that “it can take anywhere from five to eleven years for this UC shit” to bloom inside us into full-blown activity. This is terrifying news. It means that the government can continue to ignore it because it will remain relatively no problem, or not enough of a problem, for many years to come. How can that be? The answer is it can’t.

  Paulus made this discovery in his own lab, and Dodo heard about it, and Paulus’s lab was briefly shut down. Dodo screams out at Stuartgene’s meeting, “I will not be trumped! I will not compete with incompetence! Dodo’s lab must reign supreme!” Middleditch calms him down.

  And COD’s budget is cut some more.

  VITAL STATISTICS

  Cases reported in thirty-nine states, as well as D.C. and Puerto Rico, and twenty foreign countries.

  * * *

  Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. I giggle with glee.

  ONE LAST TOUCH OF PENIS

  The One Touch of Penis agency, R. Allan Pooker proprietor, is as busy as ever. If there is trouble ahead, R. Allan’s clients aren’t thinking about it. R. Allan, however, is a mite concerned. Several of his boys have quietly died, several more are not well, and one of them, that cute fresh kid named Durwood, disappeared and the word is that he passed away on the job somewhere.

  R. Allan is filming a few of his still living beauties, Cully, Midnight Cowboy, and a couple of new ones whose names he already can’t remember. R. Allan fills his boys’ noses full of Dridgies, he still has some original Dridgies left in the original orange packaging. They don’t age, they’re worth a fortune, the boys can’t wait to have them, he’s got hot music on the speakers, the lighting is perfect, he’s rolling his cameras, he’s got two going, running back and forth from one to the other because his regular cameraman is dead …

  No one can get it up.

  R. Allan makes an appointment with Mordy Masturbov to discuss matters with him, really to try to sell him One Touch of Penis. “But I have never partaken of your kind of business,” Mordy says dismissively. “That’s not what I heard,” R. Allan says. “In any event, that is not to argue. We’ve both been responsible for encouraging whatever’s happening to happen. Don’t you think we should discuss our future? That is, if we’re to have one?” Since R. Allan’s business is quickly disappearing and Mordy’s isn’t—Sexopolis is healthier than ever—Mordy doesn’t give R. Allan’s words a second thought, even when he receives an invitation a few months later to a memorial service in R. Allan’s honor, after his death from “pneumonia.” Funny thing to die from, Mordy remembers thinking. In this day and age.

  MAYOR KERMIT GOINS’S LOVER NATHAN PERCH IS SICK IN AN UNDISCLOSED CLINIC IN CALIFORNIA

  He was after me, after my body, after my brains, after my mouth, after my life, I couldn’t take it anymore, he was driving me nuts, he said he loved me, he said he hated me, he said he’s going to pay me off with contracts and send me to the Coast or else he’s going to encase me in cement … So here I am on the Coast.

  When we first met he looked deep into my eyes and said, “I want to spend the rest of my life in your arms,” and he found me a rent-controlled apartment and he got me a job in his Department of Sex and Germs. Just to be near him. He liked to be sucked off under the desk in his office. “You won’t have to do a thing, just come when I whistle,” he’d said, and he whistled every Wednesday night, we ordered in, neither of us could cook … I had the most famous lover in the city!

  He told the world he loved Donny M. and then he said Donny M. was a pig and then Donny M. killed himself. He told the world he loved Stanley F. and then Stanley F. got indicted and sent to prison. He told the world he loved Bessie M. but she became a lying shoplifter and no longer any good as his beard so he couldn’t pretend he was going to marry her. And then Mario B. got indicted, and then Dereck D. started saying nasty things about us unless he was given lots of West Side real estate, and then Geoffrey L. turned into a stoolie. And Bessie M. became a lesbian and told the press she couldn’t marry him anyway. And then Herb R. and Dan W., who owned The Village Vice, talked to him …

  … and then the latest polls showed that less than 30 percent wanted him reelected, and then he came every other Wednesday, and then he came one Wednesday a month, and then he came every other month, and then he stopped … paying my rent, and then in my job at Germs I learned all about the growing plague and he said, “Shut up, you goniff twit, it’s a secret, haven’t I taught you anything about secrets,” and then a huge Italian man with a big big gun came and gave me money and told me to keep my mouth shut and get out of town fast, don’t even pack, or the ripple of destruction and the swirl of death would drown me in the Hudson in that cement.

  So I came west to be among my brothers. I thought I’d be safe here. But then the gay leaders discovered all about us, and they found me and came after me to publicly blab the truth, they are ceaseless in their tenacious fixation to destroy him for destroying them, but they’re coming after me, I’m caught in the middle, so all of this—all all all of this!—has brought me closer to death because he’s coming after me because I know too much and he knows I know too much and he knows what I know could … He’s running for a fourth term!

  VITAL STATISTICS

  January 1984. COD reports three thousand cases of UC, with 1,283 deaths.

  * * *

  This is getting ridiculous. But I keep forgetting none of you can count.

  You have achieved little in the way of progress, America. You’re not smart enough to figure me out. Thank goodness.

  THE HOLY TERROR IN THE WHEELCHAIR CALLS THE HEAD OF TABLE MEDICAL CENTER

  “Dr. Grafft, this is Dr. Emma Brookner, in Hematology/Oncology. I’m the doctor in the wheelchair you had to build all those ramps for. Yes, that holy terror in the wheelchair. I didn’t expect you to remember every woman doctor’s name on your staff—there are only a dozen of us—but I thought you might remember mine since I cost you twenty-seven million dollars. Well, I’m having a little trouble with your latest letter to the staff. ‘Please try to curb your admissions of UC lest Table become known as the exclusive hospital for this growing epidemic.’ As I am the prime overadmitter, I thought I’d ask you just how many you’d allow me to admit. I have, let’s see, thirty-three in right now. I had thirty-seven yesterday, but four died. I give you a fast turnover. Yes, I think thirty-three is excessive too. Where would you like me to admit the twenty-four I expect to need beds for in the next few days? I only have a one-bedroom apartment.”

  FRED CONTINUES TO FLIP HIS DAILY LID ON THE COUCH OF DR. ODYSSEUS HOMER

  A creep is now saying, “I saw my first case in 1976”! And then other creeps start being interviewed and, boing, plop, into the historical record go doctors and scientists who saw this shit going back into the 1970s, earlier even, there are a few edging up to claiming they’d seen this shit in the 1960s. And I am saying, fuck you all, you are liars and opportunists. And if you were seeing stuff that scared the shit out of you so much that you didn’t know what to do, what kind of fucking doctor were you, are you, what do you mean you didn’t know what to do! You sound the alarm! That’s what you fucking do. And nobody sounded any alarms, anywhere. The silence among docs everywhere was deafening, all the way from Gretta Lell in Miami, who now says she was keeping mum because her sick Haitian patients were putting curses on her, invoking voodoo rituals, to Dr. Paulus Pewkin, who when Gretta told him about her earliest cases, responded, “I am very skeptical about what you are saying,” she said he said, and that, taken with the Haitians calling her names and other black doctors treating her as a “rich white racist,” which of course is exactly what we all are … And also she claimed that COD very reluctantly went down to Florida to interview her patients, “and they totally insulted them, and tried to pin homosexuality on them, and said, ‘Are you sure you didn’t get sick not from voodoo but from cock up the doo-doo?,’ which did not go down well.�
�� “What year are you claiming for your first ones, Gretta?,” someone tried to pin her down. “I think it was 1979, 1980.” “You don’t know? You don’t have records to double-check your memory?” “Get off my fucking back! You think you were the only one around worried about what was happening! What ego! What pomposity! You’re full of shit.”

  That New Jersey doctor who claims he saw cases in kids in 1980, well, at least he has proof that he sent reports to several journals and to The Journal of Death and he was turned down everywhere. COD and JOD would not publish his paper, which NEJS had turned down too, until now, 1984. I actually saw a letter from somebody at COD, “How could such a filthy disease happen in children?” By 1984, which is now, some five thousand cases have been reported to COD, with over two thousand dead. It took three years for the first five thousand cases to be reported to COD and ten months for the second five thousand cases …

  Grace is gone now.

  I feel shitty, shitty ass ratfucking awful.

  I feel, I sense, I’m now losing Daniel as well.

  DANIEL

  Fred, Jerry got $12 million from Congress. Don’t yell. It’s a start.

  DEEP THROAT REPORTS TO MOTHER

  You’re right. Of course he will win again. You and I both know that Ruester is more popular than ever. And anyway, it’s all been planned. And Dredd Trish is there for after Peter Ruester, not instead of.