The American People, Volume 2

by Larry Kramer

  The facts remain these: that so far millions of Americans, human beings, were helplessly dragged to their deaths. The method employed was that of accumulated terror. “We hate you.” “We have no cure for you.” “You go to hell.” First came calculated neglect, deprivation, and shame, when the few weak early birds died together. Second came outright ostracization as people died by the tens of thousands. Last came the death factories, that moment of “hope” when “cures” were pumped into us—and we all died together, the young and the old, the weak and the strong, the sick and the healthy; not as people, not as men and women, children and adults, boys and girls, not as good and bad, beautiful and ugly—but as detritus brought down to the lowest common denominator, plunged into the darkest and deepest abyss of primal inequality, like things that had neither body nor soul, just piles of medicated corpses who’d all been given drugs that didn’t work. Seventy thick FBI files are finally cleared for eyes to see how the Ruesters’ hatred of us started this. Purpura had us infiltrated by Hoover’s paid informants. He, old noble Pete, had once named the names of seventy of his best friends as Communists and destroyed their lives. He was their president then, of the Screen Actors’ Guild. The San Francisco reporter Seth Rosenfeld successfully fought an FBI that spent $1 million to prevent the release of these damning files. It was always believed that what Ruester said was true, that he never turned anyone in. Rosenfeld calls him “a Hollywood informer.” FUQU was visited by informers. Almost from our very beginning there was someone or other sending in reports. It’s amazing we were able to accomplish so much while being so interfered with. There’s a memo in a Dredd Trish folder that says, “Cut back on the moles. They will murder each other on their own.” Shovels referred to us as his “mass indoctrination program.” There are many bits and pieces, half letters, like this from Purpura to someone: “I very much appreciate the help of yourself and your associates in providing the true facts in this matter of the perverts.” And this from Dredd Trish, Jr.: “I wish I could keep them in my sight.”

  It almost seems too late to learn. The damage has been done and there’s no visible impetus for how to repair it. Next weekend gay men of San Francisco will march around the Castro naked with their cock rings and leather outfits on display for … what? The controversy brewing locally is whether cock rings can be displayed so blatantly. Boys will be boys who play with each other. And monsters will be monsters who forbid it. It is in this inequality without humanity that we see the image of our continuing hell. March on, you cock-ringed warriors. Eighty-six countries have laws punishing gay sex with jail, and seven of them allow the death penalty.

  A hundred million cases of gonorrhea are estimated worldwide, of a disease that has been known since antiquity. Cases are now reported that are resistant to all known treatments, and this superbug is growing rapidly all over the globe. It is being spread primarily by oral sex, which has become, by default, the “safe sex” of choice.” Mordy, Mordy, where are you, Mordy? Are you in despair yet about your contribution to the spread of UC? What will you ever do to help us? He shows up at Masturbov Gardens with busloads of Sexopolis girls. “This is where it all started. This is where my fortune came from!” He builds a huge tent for the mightiest photo shoot in its history. Sexopolis girls through the years. From barely exposed tits to gaping cunt holes, he acts like Mr. Ziegfeld presenting his Follies. Then he burns down Masturbov Gardens. Yes, another fire! Everyone dear to him has been consumed by fire. His parents. His grandfather. The brother he never had. Claudia. Velvalee. It is almost as if this trait of pyromania is inherited.

  Jerry’s ward is pretty empty these days. Cases don’t wind up in the hospital. Jerry had sat down on dead Daniel’s bed. He is so tired he falls asleep taking his pulse. Daniel had caressed his forehead with his last bit of life. Jerry snapped to attention. Then he reaches out, Jerry does, as if to say to Daniel, I want your hand too. But Daniel is dead now. Jerry jumps up and starts to bawl. “You were not meant to die on me! Not yet.”

  And The New York Truth has actually printed a piece by some bozo that insists that UC really does not happen to heterosexuals.

  Hermia says, “I think it is time for this old Dame to return to England. What use are all my answers here? America doesn’t want another Hannah Arendt. Awfully sad and sorry, old chaps. I was onto something!” She retires to a comfortable adult residence in St. Simon’s on the Wharf. “The neighborhood’s become quite fashionable now. I shall have nothing else to do but to contemplate evil. It’s a never-ending tale to tell. And something quite spectacularly important might yet emerge to further enlarge my view of history. Always observant, Dame Lady Hermia Bledd-Wrench is ready.”

  I wanted, somehow, to be a hero. I failed. Artists are meant to create with the intention of ennobling the human condition. I can’t do that. I think the human condition isn’t noble at all. I had hope once. Up until 1981, when hope was slowly taken away from us.

  INT. FUNERAL PARLOR. DAY.

  Daniel is laid out in a coffin. David and Fred, holding hands, look down at him. Lucas joins them. David takes Lucas’s hand.

  DAVID HAS A MEMORY

  DAVID: Mommy. RIVKA: My God, it cannot be, is this at last my David? Let me feel you. I cannot see. DAVID: I am happy that you found a comfortable resting place at last. RIVKA: Yes, Gertrude has been very good to me. As your father told me she would be, perhaps one of the few truths he ever uttered. Why is your back so rough, just as Gertrude described you? Oh, who did that to you, my son? Did that man that I married do this to you, our son? I have been waiting for you to come before I can leave this wretched earth. Your twin? Your brothers? You have seen them? Tell me, why have you all ignored me so? DAVID: I look for similar answers to unanswerable questions, too. I think we are all put here to suffer in our own ways. RIVKA: It should not be like this. DAVID: Would you like to come back and live with me? RIVKA: Thank you for your offer. No, I’m ready to die now, and I’ll stay here and be buried beside Gertrude, the only true friend I ever had. It won’t be long now. Just give me a big hug and kiss and say goodbye. More words will only bring on more memories I’ve tried hard to forget. DAVID: Goodbye, Mommy. RIVKA: That’s a good boy. I never should have married your father. I never loved him. Your father was very cruel to both of us. Amos told Gertrude that Philip was a spy for Mr. Hoover. Imagine that. I can’t.

  THE LAST NOTEBOOK OF JAMES JESUS ANGLETON

  Why did Mother become a spy? Because like all those Brit spies, I loved other men and my country would have punished me for that love. I had to find a way to protect myself and my fellow beloveds, for I knew there were many of us who would be unable to defend themselves. The rules and laws of The American People demand unlimited hypocrisies just to stay alive. Counterintelligence at its best understands hypocrisy. Edgar was only interested in protecting his own skin and that of Clyde. It was quite selfish of him. I like to think that my motives and actions were humanitarian. I wanted all of The American People to flourish.

  FRED AND HIS FUCKING BOOK

  I’ve worked on this fucking book for many years. It’s a mess and I know it’s a mess. As I got older and learned more and more it’s grown harder to handle. Like life itself. But I’m almost there. And I know I have written what I wanted to write. I hope it lives after me. I’d once figured I’d finish the last page and keel over dead. Like Proust. More than forty years ago I wrote another history called Faggots in which my attempts to deal satirically about gay life in Manhattan were still hot on my fingertips and tongue. And then, before anyone knew it, came the fucking plague. It’s painful when the good times decide not to hang around. One, two, three, five, ten, twenty, a hundred, a thousand, a million, and now of course many many many millions, all around us, everywhere, the world over, have died and will die from UC. Crazy madcap lives can appear funny and silly and in the end they’re easy to write about. Plagues are just depressing. It is very difficult to write about a plague. I hear too many voices fighting to be heard. Then, somehow, I think rather
miraculously, but then David says I’m much too sentimental (he who cries at weepy movies and TV shows), he and I came together. And now we live in the country house with the white picket fence overlooking the lake in colonial Connecticut, every single bit of the fantasy I’d had. We ask each other all the time, “Why am I alive?” Or we make it a statement: “I don’t know why I’m alive.” And of course we don’t know why, either one of us. Just being infected was supposed to be the certain sign of death. Just having unprotected sex with someone who was infected was supposed to be a certain path to death. It still can be. Yes, “God knows why or how we’re still alive,” we say, especially when we’re holding each other at night in bed in each other’s arms. I know I sound like a kid when I talk about him. Curmudgeons like I’m thought to be aren’t meant to mellow so. I like to believe in powerful spells between us. I like to think that he and I are special and have been since the first moment we saw each other, in another lifetime, on a day hundreds of years ago, even though it wasn’t and I can see it as if it were yesterday. He’s still trying to teach me to not only talk about love but to feel it on a more universal basis. I tell him we are brothers in a great brotherhood of gay men who have existed since the beginning of time. They are in our blood. They are why we are able to love each other. I didn’t think it was ever going to happen, happiness. It almost didn’t …

  Fred enters, exhausted, and rushes toward the bedroom …

  FRED’S VOICE: Once upon a time there was a little boy who always wanted to love another little boy. All his life that’s all he wanted.

  INT. BEDROOM. NIGHT.

  David enters. We see what he sees: Fred has lost control of his bowels. A trail of diarrhea heads to the bathroom.

  INT. BATHROOM. NIGHT.

  David runs in, Fred is half sitting on the toilet still shitting and half vomiting into the sink. David grabs him before he falls over.

  FRED’S VOICE: He’s supposed to use gloves. He’s not supposed to do this. He’s supposed to not kiss me. (They kiss.)

  FRED: The newest fucking greedy 150,000-dollar Presidium drug has too many side effects!

  David leans Fred into his body, grabs some toilet tissue, wipes Fred’s ass. He then grabs a washcloth and wipes Fred’s face. Cleanup done, David tenderly kisses the top of Fred’s head and hauls him to a standing position …

  FRED’S VOICE: I remember when I had to do this for Felix.

  INT. BEDROOM. NIGHT.

  Fred is in bed. His eyes are filled with terror. He never takes his eyes off David. Suddenly Fred does a projectile vomit, so that the wall is spattered with it.

  CUT TO:

  David wiping and washing down the wall. Fred watches from his bed, tears in his eyes.

  FRED: I know five guys who left their sick lovers last week. Just walked out on them.

  DAVID: I hate them for that.

  FRED: You can leave me. You have my permission. You’re still handsome and could find someone.

  DAVID: I don’t want to find someone. I found you. Shut up.

  INT. LIVING ROOM. NIGHT.

  David and Fred in pajamas watch an old movie, eating ice cream from cartons. Fred turns to silently look at David.

  DAVID: I told you—never for one second do I think of leaving you. Please believe me.

  INT. SHOWER. NIGHT.

  David is giving Fred a shower. We see the wreck and tragedy that is his body now, from head to toe, as he sees David’s back. Fred starts to sob. David holds him, sobbing too.

  FRED’S VOICE: You cry and you cry until you think you can’t cry any more and then you cry some more.

  INT. BEDROOM. NIGHT.

  David crawls into bed and holds Fred.

  FRED: Dr. Brown said you saved my life.

  DAVID (yelling): You are not ready to die! Besides, I am going to have a big surprise for you.

  FRED: What?

  DAVID: I’m not quite ready yet. The mark of the good historian is a deep curiosity about the world outside your head. I read that somewhere. That’s what I’m working at.

  FRED: So we have another historian in the family. And here I thought you were just a lawyer.

  DAVID: Same thing, really. Or so I am discovering and out to prove.

  FRED: Okay. Whenever you’re ready.

  WHAT IS THIS HISTORY ALL ABOUT…?

  All of us are made up of history and few of us are likely to study it nearly enough. I sometimes think, so anxious are we to move ahead with everything, “to get on with it,” as the English say, that we are, also as the English say, hoisted with our own petards. Even now, as too many think the worst is over, I am still making notes, knowing that it’s not.

  There are many ways to relate a history, to organize and structure the information a foolish man labels “the facts” his research has “discovered.” History is never so neat and compliant as to allow itself to be rendered that coherently. I am trying to finalize what you’ve read. I have included a goodly portion of my own history, not because I have had such a noteworthy life but because I still hear voices. I can’t get them out of my head. Dead lovers. Dead friends. The murderers. Lots of murderers. I write our history because it is an obligation I owe to myself, my past, my people, my husband, David. There was never a day when I wavered from this decision.

  The people who have written most histories must be dreamers. They look for sense where there is none. They look for patterns. They look for hope, which isn’t there either. Hope is the thing with feathers, Emily Dickinson said. I have been a dreamer to believe it could be otherwise. And, yes, I am still a dreamer. It’s all either right or wrong. It’s all there in black and white.

  The real truth about all my people’s never-ending horrors? The consortium of people, through the ages, that met and intentionally willed, called for, and arranged the past and continuing deaths of everyone gay? The way of life as solidly seeded into our earth at Sagg, Fruit Island, New Bliss, Abbator, Nantoo, Mungel, Partekla, and NITS, that goes on and on, traditionally? Be it Furstwasser, be it Dye, be it Omicidio and Geiseric, be it Botts, be it Greeting, be it Greptz and Presidium, be it all the suppliers of tainted blood, be it Ruester, be it Trishes big and small, be it the most evil and wretched Dereck Dumster, and on and on? Have I got it all? How could any historian get it all?

  Today’s NITS comprises thirty component institutes, employs more than thirty thousand physicians and scientists and support staff, has one 317-acre and twenty satellite campuses around the world, provides more than 40 percent of all money allotted for the support of health research and development in the United States and nearly 70 percent of the total federal funds expended for support of medical research in universities. Except for homosexuals. Vurd’s Law still prevents federal funding for anything to do with homosexuals, and year after year, president after president and Congress after Congress decline to reverse this.

  So the plague hasn’t gone away, of course. People may not all be dying like flies in this country but they certainly are in the rest of the world. So there’s no glory in any contentment. If you’re infected you never forget that death still has a hand out that can grab you at any minute. When I think about this out loud, David yells at me yet again: “You are not ready to die!” Yes, he took the look of fear out of my eyes. Love and hope can do that if you’re lucky.

  I am finally lucky.

  DAVID’S WAR

  I have been slowly putting pieces of my case together.

  * * *

  The Founding Fathers wanted religion to have no part in their government. It was Benjamin Franklin who said, “Lighthouses are more useful than churches.” John Adams said, “This would be the best of all possible worlds if there were no religion in it.” And “Christianity is the most perverted system that ever shone on man” was said by Thomas Jefferson. George Orwell, who died at forty-six, said this: “If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”

  * * *

  These are thoughts that echoed in my head as I w
andered haphazardly around America. Where was this God so feared by our Founding Fathers? Where was the deadly disease predicted by our enemy Russia?

  * * *

  I checked the many notes I made from my years of wandering in hope of finding something to belong to. From Tarpon Springs to Manusha Falls to O’Keefe Center to Marigold Farms to Detroit to St. Rudolph’s to Little Ogunquit to Marine Harbor to Mount Rainier to the Abadibgee Reservation … looking, talking, asking, trying to absorb some insight from all these people who have settled in these uncomfortable places. Why do you stay here? I continue to ask this question even when I learn the response is predictable and dispiriting. “Where else could I go? God must want me to stay here.” In every place they stayed there was a different God they believed in.

  * * *

  Beginning after World War II (ironically, not long after I had been set free of Hitler), Russian counterintelligence by way of their Stasi forces in East Germany commenced a disinformation campaign to convince the world that the United States was waging germ warfare with a biological weapon it had created to infect the entire world. Russians had experience with covert campaigns like this. Their modus operandi was always the same: identify where local strife was occurring, point to inconsistencies and ambiguities in the news reporting, fill these cracks with “meaning,” and repeat, repeat, repeat. From an article planted in a little newspaper in West Africa, which was not so coincidentally secretly financed by the CIA, it was not long before this first “official” warning was picked up all over the world. This campaign aimed, according to the Kremlin’s chief of disinformation Dmitri Norbtrekno, to generate “a warning to other countries that this biological weapon is the result of out-of-control secret experiments by U.S. scientists and the Pentagon involving new types of deadly diseases aimed at targeted populations.”