The American People, Volume 2

by Larry Kramer

  Presidium believes it has the ammunition ready to shoot.

  But as we know, sometimes action in one place is not the action others want someplace else. Complete portraits of the viral DNA now cover the globe. We’ve already seen Dash Snicker in and out of action at G-D with ZAP. Now more Dashers (and Donners and Blitzens) ride in with their slays. Fehrheit Dienstag at Interswiss Pinkus is at work on what will be NOX. Pecker Drum, Dinkens-Savoy-Trailheim, Talbott, Uriah, Audacia, Muck, names that earlier spiced an occasional entry in this history, now enter it again. Industrial espionage has not yet visibly entered this playing field, but sure as shooting, it’s going on. For now arrives the mighty giant of them all, Greptz, just plain Greptz, which stands alone in the history of pharmaceutical manufacturing in America, in the world. The company, like so many of its competitors, was founded in Germany. Sometime in the late 1700s the first Gideon Greptz, a name that still graces the CEO, determined that Greptz will always be first to birth the important drugs, such as Pervitin, the heroin derivative that kept Nazi Germany on its toes. Of course the current Gideon Greptz wouldn’t admit to such a past. As he says from his world headquarters now located in New Jersey, “Ich bin ein Americanisher.”

  Once Greptz enters the fray, the cat is out of the bag and it’s now a race and money’s no object. Everyone has now taken on board chemists to pore over Dodo’s dirms and Jacquie’s VLF-1 (for Vive la France). (There are a great number of each one’s dirms, and they do appear to resemble each other…) They pay top dollar for top talent because now there’s a growing gold-rush mentality, which is also why medicines wind up costing so much. Dash Snicker had not been silent about G-D’s “great financial success” from still-not-FADS-approved ZAP. Despite Concorde’s failure desperate people keep taking ZAP. ZAP and ZIP and ZOK are somehow already out there in one kind of combo or another. Dr. Levi Narkey is still secretly at work on his own cohort of gay patients, using more sophisticated unapproved combinations. No one else is as far along this trail as Levi, breaking the law again. Levi’s trials bring better results, and sooner. He’s already slashed Tallu Sve’s eighteen-capsule daily dosage of ZIP down to two, causing Nordlinger Astor to have a minor stroke. “How will we make money on only two!” he screams. He fired Sve, who was prepared to quit anyway. Scientists at pharms are rarely treated with decency. “A shitty pox on your decency!” screams Nordlinger. “I pay you one hundred thousand dollars a year. I need medicine I can sell in big glass bottles, not teeny tiny plastic vials! I do not care if eighteen capsules kill them! Give me eighteen capsules that don’t kill them!” Sve is immediately hired by Greptz. The round robin of bench scientists has certainly begun. When Gideon Greptz sees how much he must ante up to stay in the game, he calls in James Monroe, who tells him about Presidium.

  Why doesn’t Jerry feel this fog-enshrouded air still wafting from Berlin? He’s still in charge of NITS.

  “He is mingy,” Sparks had said. “He has no courage of his convictions because he doesn’t have any convictions. Once again and as always Jerry is only saving his ass by not doing anything. These actions by the pharmas are happening because of FUQU’s nonstop screaming at one and all, now more than reinforced by TAG coming along. Our newfound power in actually getting our very own legislation passed by Congress—fucking faggots got a fucking bill passed by fucking Congress!—everyone is afraid of us, especially Jerry. The activists now have power!”

  It turns out that no one out there really knows the difference between FUQU and TAG. All they know is that we’re UC activists and we’re getting it done. And there are a lot of us, as they finally notice because the pharmas have read the tea leaves. ZAP is making a shitload of money, for shit’s sake. There’s been nothing else out there for the desperate dying to take!

  DAVID (who has been listening to Fred and Perry read the above): It’s far too complicated to follow. Who can keep all those pharmas and their drugs straight? No wonder you don’t get results.

  ANOTHER SAD ENDING

  Darcus Charles Graves and “a beautiful pregnant wife” are discovered in a double suicide pact inside a derelict abandoned church on the outskirts of Masturbov Gardens, where Fred grew up. Fred’s bedroom in the Lemish apartment had been directly across the road.

  Darcus had been to Africa. He’d actually been taken there by Dr. Sister Grace along with a bunch of students from the University of Southern Jewry, on the faculty of which had also been his poppy, Felindus Max, who wanted his son “to please go out and see the fucking goddamn world and do something useful, you wastrel!”

  Autopsies of their bodies revealed abnormally high titers of ZAP. Sam Sport had gotten it for him via Purpura. Imagine taking an overdose of ZAP to commit suicide, and leaving a note for “Dear Poppy.”

  HERMIA FINDS THIS IN ONE OF GRACE’S NOTEBOOKS

  “I have just received word from some contacts I made in Africa—you must excuse me for not remembering their names any longer; I barely remember my goddamn own—that confirms what I posited, that fucking semen in a fucking male infected with fucking syphilis contains more UC than the fucking semen in a male not infected with syphilis. This certainly bears out every goddamn thing I have said for shit-eating centuries. I said long ago that this is a fucking plague of syphilis and shit, amoebas and piss. For those hordes who refused to believe me, they have had what they deserved, though of course that is not what I mean in punishment terms, only intellectual ones. They have been proved royally wrong, and there’s nothing a true scientist loves more than to stick it up the ass of those who all along cried nay. My vel was the yardstick that they all laughed at. Fucking Greeting took it off the market. Let them all break their asses trying to fashion a drug that really will work without my vel test.”

  * * *

  What Grace was referring to in the above note in her journal was a study she conducted at Partekla that was rejected for publication by The New England Journal of Clappe and Chancre (one of the oldest of the New England journals). What she isn’t mentioning is that this syphilis study was conducted in Africa on black men because ever since that hideously inhumane syphilis study on your black men at Tuskegee, Alabama, there exist residual prohibitions against any study involving blacks and infectious diseases. It’s now known that the African men were infected with UC through infected prostitutes. The men were paid modest pennies each time they came to the “boudah” (collection depot) to masturbate into a small glass bottle, which most of them complained were too narrow-necked to accommodate them and too tiny-bulbed to contain all their ejaculate, so that invariably they got messy. It is very difficult to do academic studies of any sort in Africa. While Clappe and Chancre is a publication adhering to the highest standards of peer review, it’s doubtful that any of the “peers” knew much about customs in small native African villages so far away from northern Idaho and Partekla.

  Oh, Grace, come back! I miss you so.

  FROM THE BOOK OF THE DEAD

  BRADLEY

  Dreece died. And Harold died. And Morgan died. And Taylor died. All last week. CarolyAnn died. She’s the first woman in FUQU who dies from this. Gerri tried to write her name on the FUQU blackboard. But our meetings are now so screwed up, deaths aren’t acknowledged on the floor. We are forgetting what we are here for. Oh, my. At least I can include these names in our official minutes.

  An old-timer, Ann, got up to “shame us for this omission.” Some new chick got up and said something like, “It is time to stop dwelling on our deaths and concentrate on freedom for all peoples.” There is a big round of applause for “freedom for all peoples.”

  Yes, the “crazies,” as Fred calls them, are taking over. And we no longer have the ballast to stop them. Who is “we”? I no longer know.

  EXT/INT. INVINCIBLE CREWD-HARBINGER OFFICE. DAY.

  A FUQU picket line. Signs read: INVINCIBLE, WHERE IS YOUR UC RESEARCH! ALL YOUR BEDS ARE EMPTY! Tommy and Jim Eigo and Mickey are looking out the window at this. They each wear Invincible lab coats. They see that Fred is ma
rching with David and try to wave to them. Tommy turns to face Dr. Marks, the head of the hospital.

  DR. MARKS: Those are your people?

  TOMMY: Yes, Dr. Marks.

  DR. MARKS: They’ve been picketing us around the clock for three days and nights now.

  TOMMY: I believe they’re going to do it for a whole week.

  DR. MARKS: I see.

  TOMMY: Around the clock.

  DR. MARKS: I see. The last time your folks did this it was more time-limited. Can’t you do anything about it?

  TOMMY: No, sir. It’s an activist organization. Very democratic.

  EIGO: Invincible has enough ZAP plus newer D drugs to test them on a two-hundred-person trial. Only twelve have been enrolled. That’s what this FUQU picketing is about.

  DR. MARKS: I see. You know our board chair, Mr. Belly?

  Mr. Belly, very rich and contained, enters.

  TOMMY: How do you do, sir. It’s an honor to meet you at last after working here for a while. I believe our friend Fred Lemish met your son when he was president of Yaddah.

  BELLY: Our board feels you are not quite the proper fit for Invincible.

  TOMMY (to Belly): Dr. Mickey Marcus and Eigo here and I created a city-funded program for you to educate New York about prevention. I fully staffed a city-funded program for you employing one hundred social workers. I put you on the map as the place to go to in every network that …

  BELLY: Nevertheless our board feels …

  CUT TO:

  Tommy with Mickey alone.

  MICKEY: You and Fred were absolutely right to summon us to organize and I was absolutely wrong not to have also warned us not to fuck without a condom. Whew. I’ve wanted to say that for the longest time. It was just bottled up inside me.

  TOMMY: Thanks, Mickey. Why are you crying?

  MICKEY: I just had to say that. Tell Fred. I’m sorry they kicked you both out of GMPA.

  TOMMY (looks out at picket line; sadly): Our friends are being allowed to die. And I’m out of another job.

  INT. TOMMY’S APARTMENT. NIGHT.

  In his tiny apartment, Tommy is lying on his mattress smoking a joint and looking out into space, thinking.

  INT. GAY CENTER.

  A reduced attendance. David is observing the room, sitting with Fred, holding his hand. Tommy sits beside them. Camera pans around faces. We recognize fewer of them.

  FRED: My comrades in activism. Why aren’t we trying to save ourselves? (Stands up and pleads with them): I was given a gift. And it was all of you. I beg each of you to find each other again!

  INT. TOMMY’S APARTMENT. NIGHT.

  He has tears in his eyes.

  INT. FRED’S BEDROOM. NIGHT.

  Fred and David are asleep in each other’s arms. The phone rings. Fred jumps up to answer it. He listens for a moment before giving whoops of joy.

  FRED READS TO DAVID SOME FINAL THOUGHTS BEFORE HE GOES UNDER THE KNIFE, PERHAPS NOT TO EMERGE ALIVE

  It takes a certain ruthlessness to be a leader. To perform well.

  I haven’t been ruthless enough.

  Pollyanna me, for the longest time, thought anything wrong could be put right. I wanted us to be an army, the kind of army Hannah Arendt blamed the Jews for not having always at the ready.

  Have we seen the best of it, or just the worst?

  I sound like I am writing about my own death.

  Maybe I am.

  Please stop crying, honey.

  EXT. RURAL AIRPORT. DAY.

  Fred, David, and Tommy are being bundled into a small emergency plane, which then takes off.

  LIFE OR DEATH?

  Fred is going to disappear for a while. He is having a liver transplant in Pittsburgh. It will save his life. Dr. Fung (“the minute I saw you walk in in your bright red cowboy boots, I knew you would be important in my life…”) predicts “at least another twenty years of life. We got you just in time. Your liver was on its very last legs, the end. It was pitch-black and shriveled almost into nothingness. From here on in you will be as old as your new liver. The liver I have transplanted into you is from a forty-year-old man in excellent health who did not drink or take drugs. He died from an embolism. To my mind, it is an excellent liver. I hope you will be very happy together.”

  Fred had made David promise to be the first thing he sees if he opens his eyes. And when he does, there indeed is David, and Tommy, and Fred, even in his very doped-up state, wants to cry, does cry, and is of course euphoric, very euphoric with all drugs considered. He’s lived through it! He’s the fourteenth UC-positive and Hep. B patient to have received a liver transplant, and the third one to have lived through it. From this point on, it will not be so easy for doctors and medical centers to refuse to transplant UC-positive patients. Infected people who need transplants and are afraid to sign up for them can now look at Fred. Once again he’s called a hero. What kind of hero? he says to David and Tommy. I was almost dead!

  In fact, for a moment the world thought he was dead. AP and UP and Laurie Garrett announce his death. It’s a few hours before this mistake is righted. How it happened in the first place, no one knows. David thinks “your enemies got to the wire services!”

  David decides they must stay in Pittsburgh until every possible thing that could go wrong is seen not to have gone wrong. Fred is out of the hospital in eight days, but David’s rented a furnished apartment. They are to stay here six months while Fred recovers. Fred sleeps massive numbers of hours with David beside him and slowly regains his strength. Never has Fred enjoyed such attention from a loved one. He does not think of UC, he does not think of FUQU, he does not know he’s being screwed by Yaddah, he does not think of gay anything. He is not in touch with the Outside World at all.

  * * *

  TOMMY: Wait. Don’t rush it! He almost fucking dies! From the dumbest reason. After the transplant the fucker wouldn’t eat. Sometimes that happens after surgery. The patient has no appetite. But usually you can make them eat something. Not Fred. He just would not eat. I’ve seen behavior like this a number of times in survivors. Pittsburgh is the first place Fred’s allowed himself to plop himself down, even though it’s out of necessity. He’s certainly never had such attention from anyone as David’s been showing him on the whole lead-up to and into this transplant thing (and quite frankly as I’ve been showing him—neither one of them has a notion of all the paperwork and phone calls and locating who the fuck to talk to one step higher up the ladder when you’ve been turned down by insurance companies, and Fred was turned down, a lot). Now, here, having survived a procedure that quite frankly neither David nor I thought he’d survive, Fred’s not eating. Finally, John Fung pulls David aside and tells him he is frightened. “If Fred doesn’t start eating something fast, he’s going to die.” It was New Year’s Eve. It was snowing outside. David had been all over town buying sweet stuff he knows Fred likes. He stomps into Fred’s room at Presby, his coat and boots all caked in snow. Boots and all, he climbs up on Fred’s bed and sits beside him and opens his gifts of goodies. He offers them one by one but Fred won’t eat. “I’m not hungry” is all he finally says. David started to cry. Fred heard him say things like, “Honey, we haven’t come this far in our lives together for you to die because you won’t eat! Please eat!” The tears were running down his cheeks. “Please eat for me, for Fred and David, who are together finally and at last.” And then he grabbed some hunk of chocolate cake and practically stuffed it down Fred’s throat. Fred by now was crying too. Fred ate. I left them sleeping in each other’s arms. David still had his boots on, so I took them off. He opened his eyes and winked at me before going back to sleep. His eyes were still full of tears and so were mine.

  DAVID IN PITTSBURGH

  While Fred was sleeping soaking up enough energy to start his life with his new liver I was thinking about something that’s been occurring to me. Fred had been given a new life. I, too, had been spared. But at what cost? The lawyer in me was curious. Why are we not protected by law? My thoughts took me to
one of Mr. Carnegie’s libraries in this city his wealth created after doing who knows what crimes to acquire his fortune.

  My thoughts of course led me back to Germany and this to curiosity about the Nuremberg Trials that had transpired a few years after I’d left Mungel to return to America.

  Why were there no protections in existence that would have saved all of us in different countries with different laws but actually still a part of international humanity?

  There was much fuss made at these trials about the use of the word genocide, as against the use of the words crimes against humanity. The reasoning went something like this: “if one emphasizes too much that it is a crime to kill a whole people, it may weaken the conviction that it is already a crime to kill one individual.” There was also much made of whether the Nazis could be punished for acts committed before the actual and official start of the war. Crimes committed before the war were entirely ignored. Thus those individuals were now protected, and their state as a contributing entity was ignored.

  Those condemned were convicted for committing crimes against humanity. None were found guilty of genocide. That word was discarded. This, then, became the definition to forthwith be used in international law—“crimes against humanity.”