The American People, Volume 2

by Larry Kramer

  “I am offended, Roscoe. I am dumbstruck that you are downplaying my great discoveries. I’ve already discovered UC’s analogues and dredge participants and its vectors—I have discovered its vectors!”

  Middleditch continues. “Okay. So let’s just say, what if you have discovered a viral cause of this?”

  “What if! I am offended again, Roscoe. I have discovered the viral cause of this.” This isn’t true, but no one knows this. Dodo is vamping, with his “made-up” vocabulary of scientific terms, which many of these guys tend to do. “Dredge participants”? What the fuck are they?

  “Then why haven’t you shared your dredge participants with us? Where is your paper on them? Where is your paper on your viral analogues? You’re usually into the journals faster than anyone. On their own, these new ‘discoveries’ do not sound like they amount to a full virus and therefore don’t amount to shit in moving us forward. And you know it. We’re all sitting here, waiting for you. I’ve watched you for years, Dr. Dodo Geiseric, and the only time you discover anything is when I see smoke coming from the top of your head. I am not seeing any smoke.” And he turns and leaves. He walks out of the meeting. Dodo doesn’t like this. He sees that Roscoe Middleditch, whom he has looked upon as his father and protector, is now all of a sudden not acting very paternal or protective. He doesn’t know that his safekeeper is not going to be around much longer.

  Dodo had only Poopsie and a couple of others in his lab. Middleditch had given him three dozen more, including a young smart one, Flo Hung Nu, Jr. Twenty-five years ago when he was a student winner of the Westinghouse Science Competition for high school kids and got to work at NITS for the summer, Dodo fucked her mother on this same lab floor, and this one’s his daughter, whether either one of them knows all this or not. (Thank you, Hermia, for digging this up. And Minna for confirming it.)

  Now we are beginning to hear that something of more than routine interest is going on in Paris, among several people Dodo knows and even worked with. He’d asked for and received their isolates. In science one never refuses a fellow scientist’s request for isolates, for that’s how progress is made.

  * * *

  DEEP THROAT: It’s also how credit can be manipulated, and dare one even think so, stolen.

  * * *

  FRED: As has been mentioned, this is the Reader’s Digest version. A lot will be written about how Dr. Dodo Geiseric stole or did not steal the credit for the “discovery” of the UC virus from the Drs. Français. It is a nasty story, an unkind, selfish, inhumane story, no matter which way it’s told. Just know that from here on in manipulations that would do Nixon, Kissinger, and Tony Soprano proud will transpire. This will not result in progress. It will result in deadly delays. It will result in the loss of yet more precious years and the concomitant deaths of many thousands of people who might have been saved if Dodo had responded in a dignified and humane fashion. Dodo is not that man.

  * * *

  HERMIA: Dr. Kelvin “Dodo” Geiseric is an evil man. I am featuring him prominently in my history of evil.

  * * *

  FRED: There’s growing belief by such as Rebby Itsenfelder that Dodo stole “his” isolates from that blood sent over by Gaston Nappe at CCC, who himself is now rumored to be fighting his own battles with Astolphe Bordeaux over who is closer to Jacquie. No more than two people can win a Nobel for the same discovery. Yes, that noble word Nobel is starting to be heard. The French have evidently never come up against the brute force that Americans can display in science. I am now learning firsthand: Where the fuck have I been, or was I when I was a journalist and then a screenwriter schlepping through Africa and other places populated by the French?

  * * *

  DANIEL: Dodo’s increasingly shorter fuse turns him beet red if anyone refers to “Jacquie’s discovery.” Everyone at NITS has seen her work by now and it looks irrefutably convincing. Even Jerry’s impressed. “Looks like bingo to me,” he tells me.

  * * *

  DEEP THROAT: What remains is for Jacquie—or someone—to duplicate her discovery by proving it can actually cause UC. NITS no longer has any monkeys, and it’s against the law for Dodo’s isolates to go straight into humans. Dodo’s determined to prevent her proof from being proved. He’s the one who’s going to prove it. I know the type. I can see it in his eyes. All I can see in Jerry’s eyes is someone who’ll be here until he dies.

  * * *

  DANIEL: I’m learning that science is all about backing horses, and Dodo has been considered a better scientist by far than Jerry. No one takes Jerrold Omicidio seriously as the scientist he so wants to be taken. Nobody suspects that Dodo is stuck in a rut, except Dodo and that Flo Hung Nu, Jr. (he’s indeed now fucking her on his lab floor, it’s no secret), and Jerry, and of course Deep Throat.

  It’s getting messier, sadder, and dare I say farcical.

  Hey, I’m getting pretty good at this spy shit, no?

  What happens next is that Dodo “proves” that Jacquie’s isolates do indeed isolate UC. Only he’ll claim that she’s discovered this with his isolates, when in fact they’ll be the ones she sent him.

  Oh, Middleditch suddenly isn’t here anymore. Lucas won’t tell me what’s happening.

  * * *

  REBBY: I do not approve of it, of course, the stupidity of shots in the dark, but I do not completely disdain it either, because there are too many instances when stupidity has been partnered with genuine genius. We must be free to fall on our asses. It takes courageous scientists to confront the world with ideas that are off the wall. But none of this applies here. Theft is not science.

  * * *

  DANIEL: “I have my own clues to this new plague’s residence in the body and I honestly believe I’m winning.” Dodo actually announces this on ABC Television’s International Medical Journal. Jerry’s becoming more unpleasant. I actually am feeling sorry for him. I’d got him drunk over dinner at his favorite Italian restaurant and he said to me: “I want to discover the cure for this shit! I’m not going to leave here until I do.”

  “But you haven’t started anything and we haven’t any money! How are you going to discover dipshit!” I found myself saying. Must have been the wine. He didn’t respond and he wouldn’t look me in the eye. I suddenly don’t feel sorry for him anymore.

  Dodo then takes those isolates of his to Japan, where he somehow manages to infect several dozen people and, from there, announces his “major discovery” to the world, which he now names KDG-1, “the cause of UC.”

  And he also says: “It contraindicates what we are seeing from France, which is something else.”

  You would think that the bunch of them, Dodo, Jerry, Flo Jr., Poopsie, Stuartgene, even Hoidene as their boss, would be called to the White House for a meeting, a thank-you, at the very least a handshake. Does that mean no one believes him? Or doesn’t want to?

  * * *

  DEEP THROAT: In one word: lawyers. Lawyers for any and all scientific researchers know what “Something Else” implies. It means that the primary investigator of The Underlying Condition in America’s premiere research institution is saying, in essence: I’m going to tell you what I discovered but since it’s protected and copyrighted and patented and registered, you can’t steal it and claim it for yours. If you do, I’ll sue the shit out of you. This process is one of the wonderments of Modern Scientific Research and is perhaps the main reason why America is where it is, that is, light-years behind where we could be, in this instance embracing and cooperating with France. This is how teamwork is encouraged, under the guise of that great American suffocating canopy of enforced competition. Another race to be won by the most swift, most clever, most On the Ball, with side skills in deceit and chicanery, and of course, it goes without saying, to the most crafty. Read: the biggest thief. These NITS lawyers can now maintain that what Dodo had done was very original indeed. The French will be suitably baffled or dare I say checkmated. They haven’t even seen Dodo’s paperwork from Japan and already they’re being
accused of being thieves.

  Always remember that in medicine, in science, as in all else, successful obsession is the name of the game. It is not always the calm, composed, decent, fair, thorough, gracious, noble, generous, moral, upstanding, honest, and undefiled person who claims the Answer. It is often the crank, the crazy, the nutcase, the person no one can stand and many people hate. The loony in the attic. The madman in the cellar. The screamer. The crook. The Dodo. I believe Fred and Hermia have posited the very same.

  Dodo’s obsession respects no boundaries. You think that Dodo has discovered the virus? That’s what he’s more than intimated, and the world is rushing to his door or his virus’s door to hear all further details. What everyone young and idealistic is going to find out, at NITS, at med schools, in the labs, is that if you have an idea someone like Dodo will steal it from you and make it his own. If he can get hold of it. Dodo has ahold of it. It is called Jacquie’s own isolates.

  He will now lie and cheat and murder and kill. Well, no one is certain about the murder and kill business (at least not yet), but anyone whose labs deal with what is laughingly called “the slave trade,” advertising in Japan and the Third World for human volunteers for “official clinical studies by America’s foremost research institution by America’s leading scientist,” can reasonably be assumed to have lost a few. We have only to not forget Partekla. It comes with the territory. There’s an old saying around every major lab in the world: “If you haven’t killed anyone, you haven’t been doing your work right.” Try to get that truth in The New York Truth.

  Dodo has learned that in medicine as in so much else in this country, celebrity is all. He doesn’t know that shortly no one is going to pay any attention to him, except for Rep. Dingus, who’s really out for his ass. And lots and lots of lawyers will soon be increasingly on call. Before he’s yanked from center stage Dodo will cost NITS, and hence The American People, millions and millions in legal fees. Dingus will figure this out.

  But at this precious moment, Dodo is now going to perform once more for the world.

  FLING WIDE THE DODOGATE!

  DANIEL: Dodo appears on another national news show, this time CBS Television’s World Medicine Today. He says, “If my KDG-1 causes UC in the Orient it can happen in the Occident. Thank you, fine citizens of Japan. Thank you for helping me prove it.”

  This fucker is telling the world that his “discovery,” which no one’s seen, causes The Underlying Condition! How the fuck did he prove it? Who did he kill to find out? How many Japanese? The Monument runs an occasional column on Saturday entitled “My Latest Discovery.” So many of these haven’t panned out that when a few readers mention this, the column is retitled “What I Am Working On.” (Another reader suggested it should be called “What I Did on My Summer Vacation.”) Matura Nelson Swife, who edits both science and cooking, or cookery, as she prefers to call it, for both The Monument and “our sister” TV station, MONU-TV, has a soft spot for “really good, solid scientists and their really good recipes,” so Dodo’s been on her show a lot.

  Dodo’s next present to the world, via Matura, includes this announcement:

  “I sincerely and sadly believe that anyone can be a carrier of The Underlying Condition. I know that most of the cases are in homosexuals and drug folks and a few women, although I am not supposed to say that out loud, about the women, I mean. Our president doesn’t like it known that our fair ladies might not always be so fair, and I’m going to get into deep trouble for telling you this. But you got to know, fellas and gals. You got to know. So you tell your congressperson, Hey, guys, you give that Geiseric more money, you hear? He needs all the money he can get to refine his discovery. In the meantime, I want all the fellas to keep it in their pants a little while longer. Dodo will take care of you. And ladies, you make sure he does keep it in his pants, you hear?”

  It doesn’t make The Monument but it does make the noon news on MONU-TV, which is good enough. This is the first semi-sort-of-official word put out that women are at risk for UC. (Dr. Mulch’s five women in 1978 never made a dent on anyone’s consciousness because for some unknown reason no journal published it even after he changed their sex to male.) No journal publishes this new news from Dodo either but MONU-TV is better than any old journal and certainly better than The Prick, where his last announcement of this female infection was buried. There he said that anal intercourse was probably the most effective way to catch UC and that straight women already have it, both of which are probably true. Grace certainly thought so. Interesting how a truth can often come by way of the strangest journeys.

  He quickly follows this up with Hoidene and another national TV announcement, another “historic breakthrough,” another “landmark discovery in the history of American science and medicine,” another “major, major discovery by America’s leading scientific genius” (Hoidene is getting good at this), “the cause of The Underlying Condition, KDG-One!” (She will shortly be reassigned to our consulate in Northern Ireland.)

  No meeting in the White House.

  By the next day there have been so many damage-control press releases barrel-assing out of NITS and the White House press offices saying, Whoa, this guy is way off base, he’s unloading unproven “cures” on The American People. Even Velma Dimley is commanded by Clytemnestra Dunkelheim to “expose this research for the sham it is!” In no time flat the spin on Dodo’s story is that the government is trying to deny that this shit is only happening to fairies when in fact it’s been saying all along that it’s only been happening to fairies. That’s quite a spin. Who’s got this kind of reach? And of course it works, because no one is interested in fairies. Anything to do with fairies is a killer.

  I must get down to Jerry’s office. This is when he changes his clothes to go jogging and showering. Don’t scold. It’s the only honest fun I’m having these days.

  * * *

  DEEP THROAT: He’ll get the money as long as he’s willing to be made out by his government to look like a fool. Which of course he’s prepared to do because he doesn’t know any other way to appear. Even Mother has said to me: “I enjoy watching this asshole in action. Unfortunately, I am uncertain how to get involved in this. While I am accustomed to cesspools, I see no way how to muck this one out. We must continue to follow Mr. Lemish’s bouncing ball.”

  * * *

  DANIEL: By now everyone in every lab in the world has seen Jacquie’s report of her great discovery, JFV-1. Poopsie has “discovered” that JFV-1 is real and well and alive and living in Paris, France, and also in his lab in Franeeda County, Maryland, where Dodo now demands that it live. “This is mine! Mine! Mine! Mine!” Dodo walks the halls muttering this. Poopsie is ordered to “lose” all earlier pieces of paper detailing his work. Destroy all evidence! Poopsie, in the manner of the old country, had written everything down on little pieces of paper, which he’d thrown into a drawer.

  English is not Poopsie’s mother tongue. He is Romanian or Hungarian or Albanian or one of those. He speaks pretty good French and he’s fucked Jacquie at some international conference. She even came to Dodo’s lab to learn certain tricks, like separation, and folding. Dodo wondered if he should screw her on his lab floor but decided she wasn’t smart enough for him. Jerry got a kick out of telling me this. I wonder who told him.

  What is a chief lab assistant without any legal status in this country and a wife and two kids here and another two kids back in Hungary or Albania whom he also feeds and whose English is rotten at best to do? Poopsie is getting very confused. Dodo has “leaked” his KDG-1 and it’s been written up in NEJS. Poopsie knows he’s bad with English. But show him a formula or any lab result and he can bake a cake out of its ingredients, so to speak. Dodo had found him in Czechoslovakia, where he’d seen his work and hired him on the spot. Now he’s baked that cake with Jacquie’s isolates. Dodo gave him a nice cashmere sweater. Poopsie understands this much English: the French lady Dodo didn’t fuck but Poopsie did has beaten his boss to “this great discov
ery,” which Dodo is claiming as his, and Poopsie knows he and his should take the first plane home if only he had enough money to pay for it and for their life there ever after.

  Meanwhile America can’t utilize Jacquie’s virus (for that is what it’s now being officially called in France), or use her blood test that she’s made to test its presence in the blood and that thereby and therein and therewith could save an awful lot of lives. I ask my patient Joe Madison at Kohlhaus Drumm why the pharms aren’t after Jacquie for her test, and he says, “Are you kidding? What do the words lawsuit lawsuit lawsuit mean to you?”

  “Why?” I ask him.

  “Because Dodo now has his own blood test and is going to sue if her work is recognized.”

  “How can he sue?”

  “Grow up, Jerusalem. Aren’t you learning anything at NITS?”

  BACK AND FORTHING WITH MORE PIECES OF THE PUZZLE

  FRED: Emma told me that she diagnosed seventeen women last month, although this has been vigorously denied by COD and doubted by Omicidio. Herta Glanz told me that Bohunk called Mayor Goins and yelled, “There are no infected women in New York City! Do you hear me!” And the mayor turned to Herta and said, “I think we better not know anything for a while longer.”