The American People, Volume 2

by Larry Kramer

  * * *

  In my life there is safety in numbers. We don’t kill each other off. We manufacture many more of ourselves. By now there are more of us alive than can ever be destroyed. So we have saved ourselves, certainly long enough to create more of our “perverted” selves. Have not you learned this by now from me, you how you say, dumb dodos?

  FRED’S BOOK

  I always thought that what would motivate me to set down everything I knew and had seen would be that I owed it to all the dead, not only the ones I’d had sex with but those yet to come. It’s the least I could do for all the hordes of friends and acquaintances from our crowd and the hundreds of thousands of guys from our kind of person, which is gay men, and the millions of people around the globe who joined us in getting UC.

  Responsibility to the dead, and the obligation to tell the truth, that’s all very high-and-mighty sounding. But on a practical level it’s hard to get up every morning to write of death and try to honor it. You kind of want to slit your wrists a little too often and end it all for yourself once and for all.

  The push that finally did it was something more specific.

  I went through all those boxes and all those clippings and all my diaries and datebooks and notebooks. Those places where you write down everything you’ve done and everyone you’ve seen. I’ve kept them dutifully since I left Yaddah.

  I made a list of all the men I had sex with in the years just before The New York Truth announcement, those early years before the discovery of the virus, which are the years when presumably I became infected.

  So far as I could decipher all my notes and scribbles, I believe there are twenty-four friends I had sex with during those years who I know are dead. It is said that anal intercourse was and is the favored means of entry of this plague’s cause. Well, I put my penis in the rectums of many of those twenty-four men and my semen went into them. I can remember what many of these men looked like. I can even sort of remember how they felt in bed.

  Then I made a list of all the men I had sex with over this same period whose faces and names I could not remember, even though I had written them down. There were fifty men who I knew had died who were on this list.

  Then I made my last list. I put down the names of all the men I had sex with after Emma said we should stop, before any official causative agent was discovered. There are twenty-six men’s names on that list that I know are dead.

  One hundred dead men. One hundred dead men I might have killed.

  I wrote “killed” but I deleted “murdered.”

  I can’t stop thinking I murdered them.

  I can’t stop thinking I certainly murdered some of them.

  I certainly murdered the ones I fucked with after we were told something out there was happening.

  This history is for all of them.

  This history is written by a murderer.

  I’m sorry. I’m sorry. That I murdered you.

  WHAT THIS HISTORY IS NOT ABOUT

  There is a chronicle from the Middle Ages that narrates: “After this, when the plague, the flagellant pilgrimages, the appeals to God and Christ and Rome, and the slaughtering of Jews and the free minded were over, the world once more began to live, and joy returned to it, and men began to make new clothes.”

  STATE OF THE PLAGUE

  EXT. FRED AND DAVID’S HOUSE IN THE COUNTRY. DAY.

  They are sitting next to each other on a porch swing looking out over a lovely lake.

  FRED: There were only forty-one cases when I started GMPA.

  DAVID: They still won’t call it a plague.

  FRED: We’re beginning to sound like each other.

  DAVID: All the best marriages do, I’m told.

  FRED: Who told you?

  DAVID (kissing him): I have never seen such wrongs as this plague says about us all. At least we have each other. Our work isn’t over.

  FRED: Thank you for our house. It’s beautiful and I love it too.

  DAVID: You’re welcome. I’m going to court next week. My turn at bat has arrived, the secret project I wouldn’t tell you about. You were its inspiration.

  DAVID’S PUNIC TRIALS

  I had decided it’s time to do another Nuremberg Trials. At law school I studied the Nuremberg Trials. These had been the first time in history that leaders were put on trial before an international court for crimes against humanity and/or genocide, each before then not considered as valid legal categories. I’ve been researching how to do this in America. It is essential that The American People face up to this great mass murder, and all gays learn about it so they might take more responsibility for each other. I said this over and over to myself, and of course to Fred, over our years of trying to figure out how this might be accomplished. His book will certainly address this. But his charges won’t be legally enforceable.

  Every survivor needs to confront the past. Inequality leads to terrible things. That lesson we both have learned.

  It wasn’t easy to locate a specific and recognized and accepted legal category to cover what I want to achieve. Poorly structured legal arguments and presentations can have unintended consequences, provoking the very wrongs they’re meant to prevent.

  I realized it all boiled down to this question: How could there be a law to punish mass killing?

  And what was the definition of mass killing?

  As successful as the trials in Nuremberg were in condemning to death some Nazi murderers, the outcome bought us nothing sustainable in the form of an effective all-encompassing law. They were willing to classify “crimes against humanity” as something an individual could be charged with, but they balked at the use of “genocide” as being too inclusive, that is, not specific enough. That is the most that the lawyers and jurors there could agree upon.

  Thus, how does one prove intent to destroy a population? It’s not enough to just say, as was said at Nuremberg, that those acts on trial were “obviously committed by crafty desperate men.” The notebooks of Hans Frank (which Angleton went on so about), who laid waste to much of Poland at the behest of Hitler, were certainly enough to hang Hans Frank from the gallows; but they weren’t enough to kill most of his additional cohorts who were his equal in craft and deed. I admire enormously the great Hannah Arendt and her historic report on the trial of Adolph Eichmann in Jerusalem. But, again, he was only one of many just as evil who got off scot-free. In our case, it is not enough for Dr. Monserrat Krank to state emphatically, as she has in my deposition of her, “This is a historic plague that need not have happened. It could and should have been prevented.” And she has certainly witnessed much evil in history. Where are her names of the guilty? She is too polite to share them.

  International criminal justice? Ways are still needed to hold all perpetrators of murders anywhere to be accountable to the same law. Torture and murder are universal occurrences. Judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys, all from different cultures and legal traditions, do not inspire agreements or definitions to be arrived at easily if at all. An effective worldwide criminal court is still a nightmare when it should be a dream come true. One has only to witness the folly that is the United Nations to witness how difficult it is to fashion worldwide agreements. America is quite bad in this area. Special human rights monitors are, depending on who’s in the White House, appointed or deemed “no longer necessary.” The first International Criminal Court in the Hague was not created until 1998 and did not open until 2002. And it has become bureaucratized and largely unsuccessful and will remain this way as long as such powerful countries as China, Russia, and America refuse to acknowledge or support it.

  So how to locate protection against the extermination of entire groups? How to punish for participating in genocide?

  Whether, from the outcome of either Fred’s history or my trial before the district court located at Punic Center, anything gets accomplished—a guilty verdict, a verdict at all, additional charges, a revolution, change—well, one can only hope. I’ve more than discovered that hope is one
of man’s great forms of denial. When you hope, blame is usually tossed out the window. The question of responsibility should constantly haunt any trial that is attempting to apportion blame. But it is not. Responsibility is a dirty word and relatively nonexistent in legal terminology.

  So I fear there will be a dispute whether such a trial as I’m embarking upon is even legal.

  And, since a number of the guilty malefactors are now deceased, how does one nevertheless get to the portal vein that fueled their engines of hate and still does? Herein again I fear is where this trial can be thrown out in advance as not being legal. Is a person liable after a war is over? Or before it officially began? Is a person liable after his or her death? Many Nazis with blood on their hands were released into freedom simply because the war was over.

  The case I am attempting is itself, as a matter of law, a peculiar one. It is not exactly a Nuremberg Trials kind of case, where there was worldwide opinion raging against a group of obviously guilty murderers, and it was just a question of presenting the evidence that visibly existed for their fates to be sealed. Also, mine is not exactly an Eichmann in Jerusalem kind of case, where there were enough people who remembered him and his deeds and these deeds were self-explanatorily horrendous enough to condemn him personally. In the case of the plague of The Underlying Condition, while there are plenty of witnesses to deeds, and perpetrators of them, and evidence of them, they do not jibe together into neat joists that can securely support a case that can stand up against any laws as they currently exist. And (although it comes closest to this) it is not exactly a class-action-suit kind of case, wherein a large number of aggrieved are permitted to band together to sue, as one entity, the object of their aggravation. This is more because the afflicted populations are leaderless, disorganized, and not, as a whole, anywhere near to being angry enough. This has been particularly painful for Fred to deal with.

  How can I locate ammunition sufficient to deal with all of this, aiming for satisfactory permanent legislation and punishment?

  * * *

  I have discovered something called the Black and White Act.

  Because Washington, D.C., is not a state and also has codes of law of its own, I discovered on its books that there has existed from its founding in 1800 an act known as the Black and White Act. Alexander Hamilton created it just before he died to protect “the little man of no importance in the eyes of naught save God.” Mr. Black or Mr. White, “with nary a penny in his pocket,” is entitled to “champion his beliefs against the mightiest of his caretakers should there be evidence to question the wisdom of those charged with his care and safety sufficient as to seek recompense and retribution as determined by the laws of our land.” That is all it says, no more, no less. Citizens are entitled to protection, is what it says. There are no codicils or addenda, no footnotes or wherewithals. There are no suggestions of what fines or punishment the accused, if found guilty, should endure. There are no suggestions of what rights of appeal exist, for either side. Hence, since its obvious intention is no different from many a more complicated law passed since then, it would seem a useless instrument, a vestigial one like our appendix. So far as I can locate, it has never been summoned into action on its own. Which I believe is what must happen.

  From reading Fred’s book, I discovered a possible reason why the act was never called upon or invoked. Washington, being a southern city, objected to the name Mr. Black. The prime objector was Thomas Jefferson, who owned many slaves. And he also hated Alexander Hamilton, his rival for George Washington’s attention. As Fred has written in The American People, Alex was a homosexual. He was also from the West Indies, where he was brought up and educated by two native gentlemen who recognized his great potential and sent him to America to study at what is now Columbia University. Obviously he was comfortable with people of color. Could he not have framed this new law to protect both homosexuals and blacks?

  To this day the Black and White Act remains on the books of the District of Columbia. While it does not appear to have ever been invoked, it also has never been removed.

  I have invoked it in my first foray into this lion’s den.

  With the help of my brother, Lucas Jerusalem, a Washington attorney with much experience maneuvering through this town, I issued charges of genocide against the following:

  Kermit Goins

  Peter Ruester

  Purpura Ruester

  Dr. Jerrold Omicidio

  Chevvy Slyme

  Manny Moose

  Gree Bohunk

  Dr. Stuartgene Dye

  Dr. Ekbert Nostrill

  Herod Furstwasser XX

  Dredd Trish

  Linus Gobbel

  Bart Shovels

  Mr. Brinestalker

  Dredd Trish, Jr.

  Mordecai Masturbov

  Greeting Pharmaceuticals

  Vonce Greeting

  Presidium Pharmaceuticals

  Dr. James Monroe

  Boy Vertle

  Dereck Dumster

  Cardinal Alphonse Buggaro

  Dr. Gordon Grodzo

  And the following from The New York Truth, entrusted with honesty in reporting the matter:

  Dr. Dearie Fault, Rodney Pilts, Ricky Twaddle, Manny Schmutz, Velma Dimley, Richard Flaste, Erik Eckholm, Dr. Lawrence Altman, Nicholas Wade, Philip Boffey, Gina Kolata, Philip Hilts, Jacob Flourtower, and Dunkelheims mother, son, and grandson.

  I have already deposed Dr. Krank, Grodzo, and Dye, all of whom have since died.

  Even Fred was shocked when I showed him Dye’s deposition:

  They said I committed thousands of patients to various clinics under my control where I had them killed in great numbers through overdoses of tranquilizers and amphetamines. They said I organized the murder of thousands of patients and inmates who were suffering from major depressions I myself was responsible for inducing. They said I mutilated all their penises, cutting them off, stuffing them and hanging them like trophies on my wall. They said I strung up young boys in closets and left them there without food or water for days. They said I extracted gallons of infected men’s blood and reinjected it into healthy people. They said I had intercourse with every male patient who came into my personal laboratory. They said I killed them after or I killed them during or I killed them before if they wouldn’t … whatever. They said I was responsible for murdering bureaucrats who were in opposition to my programs. They said I photographed and filmed and recorded everything, that my archives are huge and filled with only the most hideous and unimaginable stuff of acts made flesh made real. They said I was responsible for the plague in the first place because it was I, Dr. Stuartgene Dye, who saw to it that the tainted blood that made its way around the world was released during my tenure at NITS with my authorization that it could be administered to one and all. They said I got presidents to sign authorizations for the disposal of persons with an incurable illness and therefore unworthy of living. They said so many things and they still do and they always will. I now fear there is no way in heaven or hell that I can ever have a life wherein I am considered worthy and reliable, a scientist who fought so that others might live. A doctor. A scientist with a Nobel Prize.

  This is but one example of the fertile territory I must legally explore.

  Here is one more, from my once-loved friend Dr. Gordon Grodzo:

  I told you there would be more from me. This is more complicated and upsetting. It involves much history you would not know or were in no condition to remember. I try to make it clear. It does not speak well for my country or your old friend Grodzo.

  First I must tell you that by the time you read this I shall be dead.

  I am relieved to finally get all this off my conscience.

  Germany was the home that gave birth to the amphetamine, the morphine, opium, heroin, and all its derivatives that would both relieve and obscure pain but also elevate behavior to such a high level of energy and euphoria that even an injured soldier could stay attentive at his post for a numb
er of days without sleep or pain.

  We owe most of these derivatives to the pharmaceutical companies of Greeting, Gideon Greptz, Muck, Monroe, and Bayer and to their products developed going back to the last century. Greptz’s cocaine was thought to be the best product ever made. No one recalls anymore that Germany was home to many great chemists, educated in what was then the best education system in the world. Each of these companies comes into its major fortunes with its own version combining much of the above.

  Your friend Dr. Gordon Grodzo knew about all these tablets and injections, having for years prescribed them to his own practice of wealthy Berliners, many of whom of course were Jews. Hitler believed that the Jews were poisoning the soul of the German people. Many of these pharmaceutical manufacturers and their staff were Jewish. Many of these then went to America, establishing their old companies there for safety.

  Temmler, a German company, had discovered that Benzedrine could be fashioned into something stronger. Temmler synthesized methamphetamine and patented Pervitin, perhaps the most important drug in history. Temmler, as a Jew, would disappear, but no matter. He had sold his company to James Monroe, who was not Jewish. He was not American or British either. He chooses this name to protect him in America, where he knows he must go. Monroe’s crystal meth, which has become such an epidemic in America, is an only slightly less strong version of Pervitin.

  Next came Eukodal, an opioid synthesized from opium with a higher response than heroin and fewer side effects. Eukodal was manufactured by Muck, which also makes cocaine. Bayer had its own version but its effects were of shorter duration.

  Soon there were cocktails of several and all: morphine, Pervitin, Eukodal, opium, plus massive amounts of vitamins and even the blood and livers of various animals. I administered to Hitler many of these cocktails. Officials and officers were ordering any tablet they could by the tens of millions.