The American People, Volume 2

by Larry Kramer

  I called up the offices of our elected officials and asked them to send someone here tonight. They treated me as if I were ungrateful. “You got some money. Leave us alone.”

  So, what are we going to do? Time and time again I have said—no one is going to do it for us but ourselves.

  We have always been a particularly divisive community. We fight with each other too much, we’re disorganized, we simply cannot get together. We’ve all insulted each other an awful lot of times. I’m as much at fault in this as anyone.

  I called Bruce Niles. Those of you who are familiar with the history of GMPA will know of the fights that Bruce and I had and the estrangement of what had once been a close friendship. Bruce is in very bad shape now. He’s in Invincible Crewd-Harbinger. He and I spoke for over an hour. It was like the early days of GMPA again and we were planning strategy for what had to be done. We didn’t talk about the hurts we each had caused the other. He supported me in everything that I’m saying to you tonight, and that I’ve been writing about in The Prick. He asked me to say some things to you. “Tell them we have to make gay people all over the country cooperate. Tell them we have to establish some way to cut through all the red tape. We have to find a way to make GMPA and all the gay organizations stronger and more political.” This wonderful man who had been so frightened of becoming too political is now begging us to become too political.

  This morning’s front page of The New York Truth has an article about two thousand Catholics marching through the halls of Albany. On the front page of The Truth. With their six bishops (including one we know is gay). Two thousand Catholics with their bishops marching through the halls of government with their demands. That’s advocacy! Southern Methodist University gets on national television protesting something about their football team. Crowds of black people marched on Mayor Goins’s apartment after assaults on black men by whites and a murder at Howard Beach, and everyone in this city saw it on the news. Why are we so invisible, constantly and forever! What does it take to get a few thousand gay people to stage a march and get on TV?

  Some of them are looking away, either restless or guilty or what? I’m boring them. They’re saying, Oh shit, is he just going to yell at us again?

  We can no longer afford to live in never-never land. Without every one of us working together, we will get nowhere.

  We must immediately rethink the structure of our community, and that is why I have invited you here tonight: to seek your input and advice, in the hope that we can come out of tonight with some definite and active ideas about how to go forward.

  I want to talk about power. We are all in awe of power, of those who have it, and we always bemoan the fact that we don’t. Power is the willingness to accept responsibility. But we live in a community where no one is willing to take any responsibility.

  Every one of us here is capable of doing something. Of doing something strong. We have to go after FADS—fast. That means coordinated protests, pickets, arrests. Are you ashamed of being arrested? And NITS! NITS is full of nits! By not doing anything these people in these places are murdering us. Dr. Omicidio and his nits are murdering us! But no one knows it or admits it. Isn’t it time someone told everyone that we are being murdered?

  Look who is our friend: the surgeon general, Dr. Alphonse Garibaldi. A Christian fundamentalist is our friend. He said, “We have to embarrass the administration into bringing the resources that are necessary to deal with the epidemic forcefully.” He said a meeting has been arranged with the president “a number of times,” and each time this meeting has been canceled. President Ruester’s own surgeon general is telling us that we have to embarrass President Ruester to get some attention to UC. Why didn’t any straight paper across this country carry this news? You sure didn’t see it in The New York Truth, all the truth that’s fit to print. We’re not fit for The New York Truth to write about!

  What does it take for us to take responsibility for our own lives? Because we aren’t—we are not taking responsibility for our own lives.

  It’s our own fault, boys and girls. Two thousand Catholics can march through the corridors of Albany. Dr. Monserrat Krank’s UC organization has on its board Elizabeth Taylor, Warren Beatty, Woody Allen, Adreena Schneeweiss, a veritable Who’s Who; why can’t they get a meeting with the president? Why don’t they even try to get a meeting with the president? And if they get turned down, why don’t they try again? And again and again and again.

  And why don’t we!

  I love being gay! I love gay people! I think in many ways we’re better than straight people. We’re more loving. We’re better friends and better at friendship. We’re kinder to each other. I think person for person we’re more talented and creative and imaginative. I feel proud and grateful that I’m gay. I look upon it as a great gift. I do. I do. (Slowly tears are coming into his eyes.) I really do think all these things. And I try not to forget them.

  But we are dying. Somebody is killing us off. And we’re not fighting back. We are really bad at fights. (Suddenly screaming out in agony.) WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT! (Audience is stunned by this explosion. He takes a deep breath and tries to get a hold on himself. Then, pleadingly:) I DON’T WANT US TO DIE! (Long pause of silence.) We must find a way for all of us uniting to save our lives.

  That’s really why I have invited you here tonight.

  I want to start a new UC organization devoted to political action, to really fighting back. Do you want to start something like this too?

  (Cries of Yes! Yes! Yes!)

  I want so much for us all to live!

  Thank you. Thank you for coming.

  Now let’s talk!

  Look at them! Look at their faces looking up at me. Look again how many showed up to hear me. Nobody walked out. Look how young most of them are. Look how handsome and sweet and innocent most of them are. They applaud and applaud. They’re giving me a standing ovation! How interesting that it’s young guys who showed; the older farts are sick of me. Or dead. Or so frightened that they’re paralyzed. I recognize some of the faces. Thank you for coming to hear me. I want to say “An army of lovers cannot die.” I can’t get that sentence out of my head. I want to yell out to all of them, “AN ARMY OF LOVERS CANNOT DIE!”

  FRED TO TOMMY

  Does it look like we have our army? (They hug.)

  DANIEL THE SPY

  The ZAP trials have been stopped again. They were such a mess that Greeting wouldn’t release the results. They’ve got yet another trial ready to go. Everybody now wants to be on it, figuring they must have learned something from the previous tries. There’s a waiting list of 125,000 all over the country. Dash has said yet again that if he can’t be told who’s sick with an OI so he can turn them down in advance, he doesn’t want them to “muddy my waters.” He continues to refer to ZAP as “my baby.” What a nightmare!

  Half the patients receiving ZAP needed transfusions. Patients were stopping taking the drug. “You’re crazy, you must carry on, this is routine stuff we must get past…” Dash is over the top in his anger. He threatens again that if the government wants G-D to continue to contribute free drugs, “You are going to have to take the G-D package, all of you!” He is yelling this at Jerry, who does nothing until he’s called by both Nostrill at HAH and Gobbel at the White House saying the First Lady is asking what’s taking so long.

  INT. EMMA’S OFFICE. DAY.

  She is supervising Buzzy, who’s administering an IV to Fred. Tommy is with him.

  TOMMY: How many times and how many ways can Greeting test the same shit?

  EMMA: Until they find some itty-bitty speck of something they can manipulate and piggyback into a massive market for the desperate. Patients will die from a drug approved and provided to them by their own government.

  TOMMY: Rebby thinks their Dridgies are poison too.

  EMMA: We’re dealing with a company that’s using two drugs to kill you. Dridgies take you to heaven only to have ZAP throw you into hell.

  TO
MMY: Dash Snicker is a great carny pitchman. He came to sell GMPA on ZAP.

  EMMA: We were in med school together. Mark my words, Dash Snicker will single-handedly make ZAP the greatest drug in Greeting’s history, and one of the great moneymakers in the history of pharmaceuticals. Not bad for a drug that’s shit. (She builds herself into a fury.) Someone is out there determined to specifically smear shit on someone or something. Any protocol should have produced something by now.

  BUZZY: You think they want trials to fail?

  EMMA: My gut tells me this all smells like a desperate exercise for Greeting to prove that the higher dose is required when they start their next fucking “official” trial. I feel so helpless. Where’s this new organization you’re starting?

  INT. GAY CENTER. NIGHT.

  Even more packed. On the blackboard is their name, which Avram is finishing writing:

  FUQU

  FED UP QUEERS UNITED

  Cheers from the crowd. Then Avram and his group of artists unveil a big poster. It reads: SILENCE = DEATH. Louder cheers. Fred and Tommy sits to the side, smiling.

  EXT. WALL STREET. DAY.

  A huge crowd of activists is sitting in the intersection, backing up all the honking traffic. A dangling effigy of Dr. Omicidio is waving in the breeze. Next to him is an effigy of Peter Ruester. Posters: TIME ISN’T THE ONLY THING THAT NITS IS KILLING and NITS = NOT INTERESTED IN TALKING SERIOUSLY. A number of the many protestors are carrying SILENCE = DEATH signs. One by one police drag them off to a waiting paddy wagon. Tommy walks around surveying. Guys are passing out copies of Fred’s op-ed piece to pedestrians.

  Fred is being hauled away by several cops.

  FRED (to the cops lifting him up and toward the paddy wagon; he gives them copies of his column): Here. Read this. I wrote it. The New York Truth.

  TOMMY (to Fred as the cops are now carrying him): Your first arrest! Congratulations, honey. One hundred eleven arrests so far.

  INT. INSIDE PADDY WAGON. DAY.

  Tommy is comforting a very young and nervous kid.

  TOMMY: Don’t be frightened, sweetness.

  YOUNGSTER: What will they do to us?

  TOMMY: It’ll just be in and out.

  YOUNGSTER: Then why are they going to all this trouble?

  TOMMY: Because we’re faggots, hon! Where you been?

  Sparks, very smart and not friendly, moves to Fred’s side.

  SPARKS: I want to stay by your side every single minute. You’re smart. My name is Sparks. I went to Harvard. They didn’t teach me anything like this. I’ve got to learn everything. I’ve got to save my best friend.

  SCOTTY (very cute and also smart; to Fred): My group is planning a way to break into a secret location. Want to come? My name is Scotty.

  MAXINE (retired dyke professor, real leftie): I have been involved with every movement my whole adult life and you guys are already forming groups to do undercover stuff. Don’t you think the floor should vote on it? That’s the method we approved.

  SCOTTY: But affinity groups can do what they want to. Very cloak-and-dagger.

  MAXINE (to Fred): My name is Maxine. I’m organizing a dyke caucus.

  FRED: Dykes are that interested in us?

  MAXINE: Check your attitude. We get it too. I know half a dozen women up and down the coast who have it. And NITS won’t include us in their definition. I hope that’s part of our fight.

  RON (singing): “Everything’s coming up roses!” Sing out, Maxine!

  INT. CBS STUDIO. EVENING NEWS.

  Dan Rather is in the middle of delivering when a few activists from FUQU pop up behind him and yell at the camera. FIGHT BACK! FIGHT UC! Fed Up Queers United! FUQU! They hold up a poster with FUQU on it. Then another with SILENCE = DEATH.

  FRED EXULTS

  It was a wonderful beginning. All of America saw us! Or a nice part of it, anyway.

  As for my op-ed piece, I still can’t get over that The Truth actually allowed these words of mine into print in their hallowed bloodless pages. Here is a sample:

  FADS’S CALLOUS RESPONSE TO UC

  Many of us who live in daily terror because of the epidemic of The Underlying Condition cannot understand why the National Institute of Tumor Sciences has been so intransigent in the face of this monstrous tidal wave of death. Its response to what is plainly a national emergency has been inadequate, its testing facilities inefficient, and access to its staff and activities virtually impossible to gain.

  There is no question on the part of anyone fighting UC that NITS along with Food and Drug Supervision constitute the single most incomprehensible bottleneck in American bureaucratic history—one that is actually prolonging this roll call of death. This has been only further compounded by President Ruester, who has yet to utter publicly the words “Underlying Condition” or put anyone in charge of the fight against it.

  It’s little wonder that NITS and FADS flounder so grotesquely. From the first day of what now has become a national epidemic, the uppermost levels of the federal and New York City governments have chosen not to acknowledge UC. And when the histories of the Goins and Ruester administrations are truthfully written, this scandal will dwarf the political corruption in New York and the foreign-policy blunders in Washington. We need humanitarianism from our president …

  LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT

  Brinestalker has kept track of Fred Lemish’s call to arms. What can an old man do for his last hurrahs? Lemish is Daniel Jerusalem’s chum. Daniel is a son of Amos Standing’s lover, Philip Jerusalem. Brinestalker, Amos, and Philip once called themselves the Big Three at Yaddah. Daniel’s brothers are Sam Sport’s partners. Fred Lemish must be nipped in the bud. Brinestalker’s not dead yet. How cooperative is the human capacity for hatred. Americans have a hard time recognizing this, unlike the Germans from whom he’d learned this lesson. He must erase Fred Lemish and all he must know.

  One of Tricia’s operatives recently returned from a worldwide canvassing of the Far East, Southeast Asia, India, and even Russia. He reported how infected men by far outnumbered the women. He wonders what Angleton will do with this news. Things are still too slow on the home front.

  Yes, he’s an old man now, eighty-seven more or less. He’s been back to Switzerland and Germany so many times to remake his body that he looks much younger to himself and his mirror. He mumbles to himself out loud quite often. “I wasted too much time. I barked up some wrong trees.” Since the Ruesters will be leaving Washington shortly, his contacts in those corridors will become less useful. Dredd Trish’s new world orders are of a different nature. His past is far more putrid than Purpura’s. Nazis. Arabs. Purpura just sucked penises. Now the Trishes will slice them off wholesale via various Arab ventures. Exceedingly rich, Arabs. One has no idea how much they will terrorize everyone, including, thank goodness, each other, which will keep them busy for a while. Our big problem will be our inability to tell all their religious beliefs apart. They are awfully good haters of each other. Shovell told him Dredd will keep the Arabs in line. Bart Shovels, one of his best and nastiest Tricia operatives, is going to work for Dredd.

  Brinestalker continues his mumbling as he walks on Connecticut Avenue on this lovely spring day. He thinks he sees Ianthe Strode, so he crosses the street to avoid her. Now she is looking old. He could have given her his Swiss doctors’ names. He smiles, remembering the day he presented her with a leather-bound copy of volume XXX of his list of Washington fairies that included her husband, Strode. “I feel as if I’m carrying an American flag,” he said to her. “It’s now been officially published by our printing office,” he boasted. He autographed it for her.

  He decides to pop into the cathedral to receive a pep talk with “My Maker.” He walks into one of the luxury shops on the Avenue and asks to be shown to his pew. The stroke immediately follows, and his death in a bed of women’s hats that he’s overturned. Of course his death goes unannounced. The last of the Big Three at Yaddah departs our history of The American People. He’d learned finally what
happened to Amos. James Jesus told him that his remains had been found and identified, washed up somewhere far away on some unidentified foreign island’s shore. And Sam Sport had told him that Philip died in Miami Beach. The secrets people take to their graves, Brinestalker thinks as his own heart gives out.

  Brinestalker had almost brought off his last coup, delivering to his coveted old friend Purpura, with whom he’d fucked so many years ago, the information that when Peter was governor of California, Garrie Nasturtium had been part of that Midnight Massacre gay orgy and therefore knew too much about all who were there fucking with him. He was disappointed when she told him she already knew it. James Jesus and his CIA ops had beaten him to the punch. She no longer seemed interested. She’s too busy getting all worked up about Russia. Peter’s called it “the evil empire.” Russia had never been of interest to Brinestalker. He can’t understand why the Ruesters are so up in arms about it.

  The Tricia Institute, though he’d preferred their old name of Unnatural Acts, has certainly come a long way under him. Now it’s connected to first-level divisions of many agencies named just as mysteriously, wherein domestic and foreign scandalous behavior is telegraphed to interconnected missions at bureaus far and wide. Linus Gobbel had seen to that. Bart Shovels will continue it. Such expansions and their tributaries have blossomed everywhere in the turbulence following various postwar thises and thats. Few are those who can penetrate these labyrinthine gold mines. Brinestalker is proud to have been a part of this. Enough but never enough, he’d be the first to modestly tell you. He was also proud to learn this very morning that his men have been able to infiltrate little Freddy Lemish’s organization. Fuck you, too, Freddy, in memory of Amos and Philip who abandoned me so.