The American People: Volume 1: Search for My Heart

by Larry Kramer

  Monkeys are unlikely leading players in any important drama. We shall be discovering that leading players are an awfully big problem in life generally and with history in particular. And that many candidates for anything important are unlikely. Monkeys are even more of a problem because the ones you want are far away, hard to find, expensive to acquire and more expensive to maintain, and messy, very messy, to study.

  Not many people work in monkeys and never have. It is not a calling that’s called.

  Even after the plague arrives it will still be years before anyone notices monkeys. And it won’t be until almost the end of this history that their piss and shit will be studied (as Deep Throat literally begged be done at the beginning). Oh, a few scientists will make what other scientists will consider ridiculous claims about monkeys causing this and that. Scientists and their claims have always been ridiculed viciously by other scientists and their claims. Doctors call other doctors “crazy” all the time, so let’s get used to that right now. You’ll notice that scientist and doctor have just been used interchangeably. Nobody knows what to call themselves these days. Scientists treat patients and doctors work in laboratories. Doctor has become just another imprecise English word robbed of meaning and truth. Sort of like monkey itself.

  America’s monkeys first appear in Florida, in an Everglades that must have looked much as it did in its empty beginnings in the Etrusticene era, in the midst of a lot of tall trees, mostly pines and erovonous deciduous maltreasons, which aren’t around anymore but look pretty much like pines. According to calculations from the National Bureau of Geographic Measurements and Standards, this southernmost part of America’s landmass is as old as America gets. Dr. Bosco Dripper also believes that you can’t get much older than this part of Florida. Many geologists, archaeologists, paleontologists, paleoanthropologists, biologists, pathologists, geneticists, virologists, and just plain anthropologists don’t agree. There are so many different “ists” these days, one never achieves consensus. Everyone’s got his or her own pet “oldest” American everything.

  Well, the Everglades is Dr. Dripper’s.

  Though for the longest time no one thought to visit El Modesto to locate him, Dr. Dripper knows his monkeys better than anyone else knows his, or now her, monkeys. This is just a fact. Facts are as rare in medicine and in science as they are in history (or, for that matter, anywhere). They last only until the next fact comes along. However, no new fact has come along to lessen Dr. Dripper’s importance. Primatology is still not a calling that’s called. The current membership of the Primate Society totals thirty-seven, and most of them are women who refuse to work in the jungle. It is very hard to be a primatologist without working in a jungle. The few great ones rarely leave it.

  In the middle of the jungle that still exists around El Modesto are several battered wooden buildings hidden in the scrub pines and palmettos and labeled El Modesto Estancia de los Monos Primate Holding Center, or as is painted on its gate, “Yaddah’s Monkey House.” How does he live such an isolated and lonely and solitary life in a Florida swamp without going nuts? Perhaps he has gone nuts and nobody’s noticed. Perhaps he was nuts all along. Craziness, as already indicated, has little to do with anything in either science or medicine and the crazies should always be listened to. You never know. It’s not generally known that Yaddah University traffics in monkeys. (Few are cognizant of Yaddah’s beginnings.) It’s not generally known that monkeys have rights now and are expensive to maintain, and Yaddah, ranked by Academic Health & Wealth the richest university in America, appears to be cutting a few too many corners in this laboratory so hidden from view.

  Bosco Dripper, D.V.M., M.D., Ph.D., P.S., is America’s leading monkey doctor. For many years he was America’s only monkey doctor. A monkey doctor is correctly called a primatologist. Bosco has been a primatologist since 1940, when he received his Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine from Yaddah Medical School, the first degree of this nature that Yaddah conferred, although primatology was not then a word in use and would not be until 1957, when monkeys finally became of sufficient interest to various cancer researchers to bequeath the study of them a name. It was then discovered that there were few primatologists, anywhere, a major hole in this country’s defense system against fatal diseases, and one reason we have so many of them (fatal diseases, not monkeys; we never have enough monkeys). This lack of primatologists persists, which is why Bosco is still considered America’s leading monkey doctor and why America still has so many fatal diseases. It would seem an easy lack to rectify until you learn about 1) the politics of monkeys and 2) “the animal model.” There are a lot of reasons why we continue to die in droves that have nothing to do with actual physical disease.

  Dr. Dripper is a sad, disheveled, cranky man of indeterminate old age, who always wears a rumpled seersucker suit and a yellowed drip-dry shirt and a pale, limp, wrinkled, bespotted pink tie. Like almost everyone else in this country he is overweight. His eyes water constantly. As with all primatologists, a group that has yet to birth their Kluckhohn, their Lévi-Strauss, their Mead or Powdermaker, Dr. Dripper is little known. “Like the deepest secrets in a psychoanalysis, our lives stay hidden, harboring our precious information like a piece of decaying food behind a major molar in our country’s maw,” he has written. Dr. Dripper can be quite touchingly poetic.

  ACCORDING TO BOSCO

  EVOLUTION’S SAD

  Look at a map. Florida is America’s penis and the Everglades is its rectum and the Gulf of Mexico is what we pissed and shat into. All our primeval history started in this Ever Glade. The First American People started shitting their guts out right here. The oldest shit in America is under my feet. The ground here is the packed-down monkey shit of eons.

  Fight over this if you want. I don’t care anymore. Fight over any of it and all of it. I don’t care. Really. I don’t.

  America’s Underlying Condition started right here.

  It’s been argued, too frequently and by too many, that The Underlying Condition was not originally American, that it came from beyond these shores, brought to this virgin land from Another World. Waste of breath but I say it: we make our own shit. Throw the cream pies and fire the bullets and lower the guillotine. Plenty of other monkey matters are unagreed upon, but this is the big one. Tears us apart. The UC started here and please let’s have an end to it. Mad at myself for saying so again. Promised myself I’d stop fighting this battle. I can’t. Poor me. Never learn. Well, I wrote my book. Everything I know and believe and have seen. One hundred and sixty-three copies. You used to have to write a book to stay at Yaddah. If you wrote a book they couldn’t fire you. Now they fire you even if you write a bunch of books. Books are definitely not the saving grace they once were. Good luck with yours.

  They had sex in groups. That’s the key to everything. Doing it with lots of others. That’s the whole story. Don’t believe it at your peril. It’s a never-ending growth industry, those who think I’m crazy. Can’t prove it, they say. Can they prove I’m wrong? All they can do is call me names. There in a nutshell is what’s wrong with history. The Wrongs triumph. Well, it takes a tankful of imagination to have sex in groups. Especially when you’re monkeys. Especially when it’s thousands of years ago. Especially when you’ve never seen anyone else have sex in groups. Without … what’s that stupid term … role models. You get punished for having imagination. I should know.

  There are endless opportunities for anything to jump the barrier between monkey and man. That’s what you want to know, isn’t it? As if that’s the whole story. In fact, it’s the usual thing for many an organism to do, to pass from what Mirko calls its “animal reservoir” to a human population. Whatever “it” is. Hell, Mirko makes a point of telling us that some Native American tribes pepped up their libidos by injecting themselves in their thighs and pubic regions with male monkey blood for the gents, and she-monkey blood for the ladies. Good man, Mirko. Gets right to the heart of the matter. Mirko neglects to go into details on how precisely
they injected themselves, as the hypodermic needle was not invented until 1670, 1842, 1853, take your pick. It must have been messy however they did it. Mirko was not reelected to the Primate Society after he wrote this. Join the crowd. Those girls have now managed to get rid of all the men.

  Many many many many years ago—no one, I don’t care who, can tell you how long ago with anything approaching accuracy—in what will be called these Everglades, in what will be called this Florida, in what will be called our United States, what was and is called a goldmonkey stands in a group of goldmonkeys. Probably not far from this very spot. It would happen soon enough in other places. How come they are in Florida first? The monkeys are running away from something, that’s why how come, and get themselves cornered and are unable to find their way out. Just like old kikes and young fairies who come to the penis of Florida and won’t piss off.

  These goldmonkeys are what today is called a family. They get together because they like each other, not because birth and blood link them.

  In each grouping there is usually at least one goldmonkey who is a male and at least one goldmonkey who is a female and a bunch of goldmonkeys who are maybe offspring, maybe relations, maybe friends, maybe just goldmonkeyfolk passing through. They feel connected to each other. They have in fact granted to each other the rights of visitation, and to the biggest the right to host the party. Size counts with monkeys. If you’re bigger than the rest you usually get to host the do. Sometimes the hosts are males. Sometimes the hosts are females. Big is big. I’m talking bulk, girth, weight, heft here. Not the size of sex organs.

  They don’t know why they feel connected. They like each other and they don’t know why. People don’t often ask themselves why they prefer Manny to Moe. Oh, they could list reasons but usually the reasons don’t explain the kind of bonding affection evokes. For monkeys it could be smells, it could be spirits of some sort of animal ancestors, it could be what’s come to be known as genetic predisposition. We’ll Never Know. No shame in saying we’ll never know. More honest to admit it than make up some fancy gobble, which is what academics always do.

  The bigger goldmonkeys spring into action if the young or smaller ones get out of hand, or are about to be eaten, or wounded, or attacked, by bigger and stronger Thems, who also live in this jungle, this dark and dangerous jungle, which is where they all live, their home, this jungle which is so thick with growing vines and trees that there is little light from the sky or sun, ever, only the dampness in the earth from the rain that soaks into it and causes a cool moistness that never goes away even though the air is still and humid, dirty, stinky, what’s that word? Fetid. God, this place smelled. Still does. After it rains. Before it rains. It is the subtle currents of different odors and temperatures that maneuver monkeys from spot to spot and grouping to grouping. It is this fetid and humid atmosphere that also makes their limbs sore and arthritic and eventually renders it harder and harder for them to clamber from trees, so that they have to stay on the ground and learn how to walk upright with better facility. Walking on the ground upright is how they become us. Becoming us is considered evolution. But that’s another story. Well, maybe it’s not.

  Walking upright on the ground proves dangerous. The Chief Intruders from the Thems can eat you and your buddies. That happens every day. Greenmonkeys are the most fearsome Thems. They’re monsters. They’re terrorists.

  The chief chimps patrol around their families and supervise against attacks by Thems. Thems are any marauding intruders, who also live in this jungle, of course, which they love too, a jungle filled with a dampness that spreads the thick smells, the fearful odors of all Others and this steamy heat that makes them have more sex in groups. There is always more fucking when it’s hot and steamy. I can’t recall any study that’s disputed this. (Not that I recall any study that studied it. Outright sex never gets the grants.) There’s not much else to do on the ground but to eat and fuck and sleep. And of course to be afraid.

  Are you growing restless? No one is as interested in monkeys, fucking or otherwise, as I am, which is too bad. From all you’ll be learning from me you might think that monkeys can kill you, that one day a long time ago a monkey ate a man or a man ate a monkey and you could die for it. Well, that’s true. You can.

  Evolution’s sad!

  Why are the monkeys I particularly love called goldmonkeys? They’re brown. They’re called goldmonkeys because they can lead others to special places that are valuable for survival: streams with fish, pools of water, swamps with bugs, dead trees with snakes and rodents, decaying fruit vines. Amazing gift, this. Good sniffers, I guess, though it’s probably not that simple, because all species sniff. Why do birds fly? Think it’s wings, do you? I’ll put wings on you and you won’t fly. Then they ate the snakes and rodents and bugs and fish and berries and eventually died because they had no more goldmonkeys to follow. You follow? Probably not. The Thems always eat more than they need to. Lessens the supply, makes everyone hungrier. The fewer and fewer goldmonkeys left don’t want to fight back, and so they abandon their big fellows who host the do’s. They stop wanting to breed anymore. They stop wanting to live. There is nothing that stops fucking faster even in the heat than not wanting to live anymore. We’ll never know about that. Nobody ever really can understand death.

  Yes, evolution’s sad.

  I love to watch goldmonkey babies play. We still have a few of them around here. Boy babies are cuter. Girl babies whine. Their titties aren’t producing milk yet and hurt them. Boy babies don’t want anything to do with girl babies. Boys spend a lot more time with boys. Girl monkeys are only for babies and fucking, and most times, if there are enough boys around, not even for fucking, and that’s the way it is. You think we’re off the track but we’re not.

  Pay attention! Species eat other species. Eat their flesh, eat their young, eat their sperm, eat their cunts, eat their dicks. Once it’s out there, whatever “it” is, it’s usually inside you forever. You can’t just vomit it out when and if it makes you sick. You can’t have it cut out. You can’t irradiate it or chemotherapy it. You, me, we’ve got stuff inside us that comes from so once-upon-a-time ago it would revolt you. Gaping Adder. Redendums. Faltnow. Eviscer. Cannantrum. Plooblus. Dreckersluff. Shiessvol. No, you never heard of them. But you’re carrying one or another of them, maybe a bunch of them, a bouquet. Yes, you’re a carrier. We all are. For instance, faltnow mutated into Drenda fever, killed most of Eastern Europe circa A.D. 800. Could happen again. You could be the one who had the ancestor who ate the faltnow. It was very cold that year and he was especially hungry and he really pigged out storing up as much as he could.

  Why can’t people believe poison can live inside us forever and ever?

  And that the male is its primary transmitter?

  Picture this:

  There is a Them in the goldmonkeys’ midst. A bigger and hairier, taller and ganglier Them. A greenmonkey. Only one. It only takes one. Goldmonkeys are afraid of Others. The greenmonkey is doing something to the youngest and smallest goldmonkey. What he is doing to her is killing her. Her little life movements are petering out.

  Her family watch the terrified jerkings of this tiniest of tiny things, of her scrawny legs and tiny feet up in the air, scratching for space, clawing for purchase. The other goldmonkeys around that day, family, friends, passing relatives, stop to watch, and start to poke at each other and scratch themselves, which is the way they express their sadness—goddammit, they don’t know death but they do know harm: they anticipate it: they can feel its electricity in the air, which they ground, release, in just this way, scratching here and there, under the arms, under the nipples, scratching each other on their chests, their backs, or reaching their arms up in the air, toward the sky, a sky they can hardly see through the masses of leaves and trees, pointing, grasping at nothing that can be held on to.

  Yes, they can feel sad! Oh, the superior posturing of stupid people that denies my monkeys this! They can’t remember much, they can’t understand
birth, death, but they can, for the moment, for a moment, feel sad. No naysaying can prove I’m wrong.

  Oh, what is it all in aid of? All my work and rantings. Who is there to listen? I am an aging man howling against the unbreachable walls of incorrect “knowledge” and the silences of too much time. Do you care about any of this? Who are you anyway? Never know my audience. None of us ever does. Talk to strangers, we do. Over and over. Why not? No one else to talk to. Lonely work, this is. Glad you came around.

  My poor little monkeys. Who will fight for you when I am gone?

  Why is there always someone in power to say it isn’t so? Why is it always up to the powerless to have to prove everything only to have it disproved again, “this time irrefutably,” by those who originally named it wrong? And who don’t have to prove you wrong, only have to say you’re not right. All they have to do is say nay. Nay, nay, and they throw everything into doubt. There’s always someone to deny the truth. That’s the Primate Society for you. It’s ruled by Dr. Francine Punic, who is certifiable and used to be my wife.

  The little baby girl goldmonkey is dying because the huge hairy greenmonkey has inserted his penis into her tiny vagina and he is fucking her to death.

  Her father or protector or familyperson does try to stop the greenmonkey from doing this. This protector tries to stop the greenmonkey from feeling good, from releasing and spreading his genes. This protector goldmonkey snatches his (or her) little baby up into his arms and cradles her and licks her. Saliva is like dog’s piss. It’s a monkey marker. But the greenmonkey must show who’s boss. He’d better do it quick. The goldmonkey is loping away with his baby. The greenmonkey runs after the goldmonkeys and grabs the little baby back.