by Larry Kramer
Henry leaves Groyne, North Dakota, for Pittsburgh in 1898. He graduates from its Dispensary in 1900, first in his class. He leaves immediately for England, home of that Sir John Greeting he’d read about. No one remembers Sir John Greeting, but there is all that junk in various museum warehouses that he’d brought back from all over the world. Henry hears about it, goes to look at it, and senses that he knows this man who assembled all this, and why he assembled it, and why it interested him in the first place. And that indeed and therefore he must be related to him. From this moment on he considers himself a true Greeting. There is no one, and no Foundation yet, to say him Nay.
Back home, word of whatever “it” is that makes men feel so good, with such firm erections, has spread much faster than any malfunctions it is being peddled by the Dridge Company to sate and cure (dyspepsia, fatigue, the vapors, catarrh, skin eruptions, gas, depression, loss of appetite, etc., etc.). Not that the Dridge people are silent on what Horatio and Clarence had discovered firsthand. Included with every package is a discreet sealed envelope in which reference is made to such key terms as “potency,” and “renewed personal vigor,” and “marriage glue.” (How generous of Mother Nature, if she it be, that a similar concoction was also “created” in an attempt to cure syphilis. Do you remember those appallingly fervent exercises on Fruit Island?)
“It” of course is the Dridge Ampule.
This word spreads faster than the very blood that not so long ago covered the ground of America from north to south. Rumor, hearsay, and the use of the stuff by many happy consumers naturally spurts out uncontrollably. Never before had a product reached the country with such dispatch.
This Dridge Ampule, manufactured by the Dridge Pharmaceutical Company, Horatio Dridge, founder, Clarence Meekly, president, is the hottest item any place it’s sold.
Farrell Pushnow hears from his contact, one Edinburgh Jesus Pushnow, of a young man, now living in England, a graduate of the Pittsburgh Dispensary, who has discovered a way to reduce soft or liquid compounds into tablets and then, by a process he has also invented, dissolve the resultant tablet into an inhalant that has a longer shelf life than the Dridge Ampule, with which, having himself heard of its remarkable efficacy, this Greeting has been tinkering. How did he hear about the Dridge Ampule? He had been to Amsterdam, already a safe meeting place for closeted homosexuals, and been introduced to it. Once again, this experience with another man scared the shit out of him, but even frightened he recognized what a future fortune was being rammed up his nose at the height of his suddenly no longer discomfiting passion, and he took a few ampules back to study in London, where he had formed a partnership with his Pittsburgh Dispensary classmate, Thomas Actim Baxxter.
All Pushows around the world had been alerted to the Dridge Ampule. Farrell’s got this tube of salve, you see, and he knows what it does but not how it does it. Henry Greeting sounds like just the kind of man who can tell him. These Pushnows don’t mess around. Never have. Never will. They are still around today.
So Edinburgh Jesus Pushnow (he had a Mexican mother, which is a story in itself, how she got to Edinburgh and met his father, etc.) meets Henry and likes the firm resolve and unsmiling nature of the young man. Farrell Pushnow then travels to London and shows Henry the precious salve that has journeyed so far to this historic moment, a salve that must be compounded into a better and longer-lasting product, to rouse man up time after time, effortlessly and without muss. Well, sometimes a little muss. Henry immediately comprehends not only the similarities between the salve and his Amsterdam ampule but also how valuable his own contribution can be to this development.
Farrell Pushnow makes the young Henry an interesting offer.
No fool he, Henry drives a hard bargain with Pushnow. Hence, the launching of the Baxxter-Greeting Pharmaceutical Company. Naturally, Pushnow has been careful enough to know about and take care of Clarence Meekly and his Dridge Ampule. In fact, Clarence Meekly has died, mysteriously, leaving rather recently signed documents deeding his company to the “Fehl Trust” in Switzerland. No, there is little that money cannot buy.
Thomas Actim Baxxter commences his partnership with Henry Greeting. They will not get along. In fact, they will hate each other. In fact, they will each wish the other dead, since by the contract Farrell Pushnow negotiated between them the survivor inherits it all. By the time of The Underlying Condition, Baxxter will have been long gone and Greeting will have been long the sole owner and the Greeting Pharmaceutical Company will be the largest pharmaceutical company in the world. You want to know why? Two words will tell you. Dridge Ampule. But you know how unhappy families have a way of carrying on; Tolstoy will tell us all about that. The hate and enmity and jealousy between Baxxter and Greeting is in the genetic blood of this company, and no matter how many times it will rename itself through the remainder of this history, it will be a totally miserable place to work and deal with.
The tablet itself, just mentioned, is a mighty discovery on its own, so Henry Greeting cannot be accused of being a one-trick pony. Think of all the tablets each member of the human race ingests every day and you have some notion of the value of his invention. Thomas Actim Baxxter maintained that he discovered the tablet. But he wasn’t around to fight back.
Henry becomes so rich that he is knighted. Sir Henry Greeting then marries London’s most prominent interior decorator, Syrie Maugham, as cold as he is, recently divorced from another closeted iceberg/genius, Somerset. They will have a son.
The Dridge Ampule is one of the most important products ever launched into the world. It will not only be responsible for more cataclysmic orgasms than all the hookers ever known to mankind, it will also, when it really gets its footing on the ground in the burgeoning homosexual “community,” in another fifty or so years, become one of the primary facilitators of the plague of The Underlying Condition. Does Henry Greeting know what lies ahead? Does anyone?
We shall see.
* * *
I knew what was happening and I was euphoric! If enough people sniff this stuff and then fuck each other I can get a bigger wedge into America. And elsewhere. I know that if I get into enough of them and they keep fucking each other I will survive.
The more people I kill, the longer I live.
Isn’t that the way of your world?
DISCIPLES AND ALLIANCES
I should point out the peculiar desire for so many Disciples of Lovejoy to have the same Christian names. There are soon so many Ezras and Hesiods and Brighams that we are forced in our relating of their unusual history to abide by the increasingly astringent regulations set forth by the Sacred Archives of the Princely Bountiful Pearl of the World Trust (oh, this is such a mouthful!), which are out to protect the anonymity of all, and to just call everyone one first name or another. This is a religion based on uniformity and follow-the-leader. But you must remember that every single one of them has talked personally to God and to Jesus and their favorite angels and received reassurance from each that their desires, their way of doing things, as rewards for their … well, righteousness, will be taken into Divine Consideration.
Hesiod Whichever is ordered by the Secret Chamber of the Nineteen Men of Superior Wisdom to put more grist into the Tally Office. The efficacy of earlier Hesiodic plans is petering out. It always comes down to the same boring problem: even with a name it’s hard to find enough of the guys to go after. They all have wavy arms and high-pitched voices and swivel their hips when they walk. Only they all don’t, or so it would appear in Washington. There have been several awful items that actually hit the Monument. Swishes were picked up and hustled off to Buffalo (literally) only for it to be discovered they were married men with wives and families and, mirabile dictu, got erections big and plenty when tested by the Altheimer Criminally Active Penis Tester, which displayed naked women and cunts. (See A History of Biostatistics and Bioethics in the Field of Human Sexuality, Nuland et al.) Word has been sent from Oxonia, and from its Secret Chamber of the (now) Twenty Men o
f Superior Wisdom, to get a move on it.
Hesiod decides that the answer is for the Tally Office to find a powerful affiliation in addition to the Disciples of Lovejoy itself, which, a renegade religion, is still a religion distrusted, even with 150,000 members and growing fiercely. As the century proceeds to turn itself into a new one, who can be found to partner in the growth of such an activity as the Disciples desire? Ezra’s determination has always been quite clear: “the extermination of all the homosexuals in America.” It looks good in print, on flyers. The subtext of all this remains unvoiced: not only will this deed be applauded by the multitudes, which he knows hates the fairies, but also the more concentration placed on getting rid of the homos, the more the Lovejoys can get away with all the polygamy, which they really want. In Ortho, the northern community of the more militant, and even Oxonia, the hunger for polygamy only grows stronger. Many will not give it up come hell or high water. Jesus and God have promised it to every single man among them. Once you’ve fucked as many women as you want, it’s really hard to go back to just one.
Yes, another religious affiliation would be helpful. Does not religion speak for everything in America that is good, and right, and just?
Hesiod wonders if the Catholic Church would be interested in climbing on board. The Catholic Church has consistently spewed enthusiastic hate for homos, as well as, unfortunately, for the Disciples of Lovejoy. “Upstarts,” “heathens,” “hicks,” “parvenus” are a few of the kinder condemnations rained down from what they consider their higher and superior altars. The question for them would thus have to be: Which do they hate more, homosexuals or Lovejoys? Hesiod makes the pitch.
Homosexuals, of course, win by a wide margin. The Vatican itself signals approval to its man in Washington, Monsignor Dmitri “the Angry Pole” Pfaffy. Secret talks commence. These are unsatisfactory. Pfaffy has counted his Holy Beads. On the orders of the pope, Pfaffy instructs the Hesiod he is dealing with: “Come back when you have more million members.” When pressed by Hesiod for more details, Dmitri gets up from the gilded throne in which he is sitting in St. Catheter’s; he is very tall and stands even taller: “You are talking to a wideworld religion of great portions. You are too poopsy. Come back big. Then maybe Pole tell Poppa talk and we help you deal with poofies.”
Ironically (or perhaps not), as the century turns, the idea of using a “lethal chamber” for the removal of “degenerates” begins to grow into a movement called eugenics. Even George Bernard Shaw passionately lectures about the use of such chambers for the unfit. (Much more on this to come.) Hesiod correctly senses the turning of a tide. Why, he and his might be on the right side after all. He and Ezra Jr. join hands in this new crusade to find the million new Disciples so their “poopiness” will be eradicated, they will appear puny no more, and Poppa will come dance with them.
What does Tom Lovejoy think of the religion that bears and bares his name, kills all his brothers, turns against doctrine God had promised him would be sacred, sacrosanct, untouchable until the end of time (not that he believes there is any such thing as the end of time)? “By now I see,” he says to Jesus, “that my people are believing wrong things. They forget that the Gospel must truly be known unto each and every one. I have talked to Ezra. Ezra talked to Hesiod. Hesiod talked to Brigham. I ask both You and God why no one any longer talks to me. My principal commandment that makes Lovejoy Disciples different from all the rest is that we are allowed to talk to God and Christ and me directly. I have been forgotten. I am no longer talked to. I am being left out of what one day will be called ‘the loop.’”
It’s true. Tom Lovejoy is the last person on any Disciple’s mind as they begin to grow even more. The Hesiods will shortly give over to endless Brighams (which will be followed by a bunch more Ezras). These stern, unsmiling taskmasters are all one and the same. They all wear the same underwear. In fact, it becomes a no-no not to wear the same underwear. What an unusual requirement to write into your sacraments. Underwear?
Brigham preaches passionately that every male Disciple must take as many wives as he possibly can. More Disciples are required. The bigger their Church becomes, even if they are looked upon with disdain, the more they will meet the deadline of the powerful ally in that Outside World that currently shuns them. More and more young men are sent out into the world as missionaries. Indeed, it is now required of them to go. Pairs of young elders cover the world. The more remote the territory, the more foreign the tribe, the more converts they acquire. People who speak no English are easy to convert. Lovejoy congregations dot more and more of the globe. Catholic missionaries report back to Rome that they are being outconverted. The pope wants to know: What are they giving out that we’re not? He is told (more or less): as much pussy as any man wants to eat. Ben-Ezekial points out that this outmaneuvering indicates “the extraordinary youthful potency of this new American religion that can only lead them toward the fulfillments of all of Tom Lovejoy’s eschatological predictions.” He is awarded a Sterling Professorship at Yaddah, the highest honor it bestows. With the tenure it guarantees, Ben-Ezra will be a little less restrained in sexually pursuing his pretties, as he calls them, “my scholarettes.” Again, we are ahead of ourselves. The juicy stuff just has a way of intruding.
As a sad footnote to the above, Vivo Marpo is sent out by Turpa and Eagan on his first assignment as a master circulator, to distribute, wherever he can, all over town, as many as possible of those flyers that say: “JOIN OUR CRUSADE for the extermination of all the homosexuals in America!” Quite a few of these flyers do manage to paper the city. In fact, he runs out a few times, and Turpa and Eagan have to replenish them with a rush order to their mimeograph operator. After several weeks of this, Vivo doesn’t come home. Turpa alerts the police. Vivo is found happily living with a young man his own age in Chevy Chase. He writes a letter to Turpa. “Dear Grandma, please forgive me I have found my very own homosexual and it is fine and ok and nice and I send love Vivo.” Vivo and Randolph Geyser are found drowned in the Anacostia River below that old piss hospital, which, also as a footnote, is in use again as an infirmary/reform school for destitute and/or wayward children, one of the first. President McKinley comes to the ribbon cutting. He usually doesn’t give two cents for anything healthy but he’s lost two young daughters and so he comes to the opening, along with an assistant who conveys to the home’s director something along the lines of: “Don’t read anything into the president’s attendance here today. He will not give you any money.”
THE WASHINGTON MONUMENT
Note is made of the appearance on the stage of history of Theodosia Template, daughter of Alvah Schwartz Template, born in 1900 in Chattanooga.
On the day of her birth, Alvah, in celebration, fulfills a lifelong dream he has had since his father settled in Tennessee, a woeful state for Jews, most of whom are reduced to selling furniture, groceries, or clothes. He buys a newspaper. This newspaper, even better, is in Washington, D.C. It is called The Washington Monument. It is a boring and uninteresting newspaper and so it will remain until Thea takes over and spruces things up a bit after World War II.
Alvah is a smart businessman. He sees all around him that more and more people now have wealth, often for the first time. He has seen his own father’s tailoring shop mushroom into seven men’s clothing stores around the South. He sees, in every southern town and city where he travels with his merchandise, other Jews from his and other congregations, Jews whose families had been, only years before, poor and struggling, now building large homes and large wardrobes. Price seems to be no object. The sense of growing prosperity for his people is palpable. And why not? It is time. The Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers (John D. will die in 1937 leaving almost a billion dollars), the Astors, Carnegie, the Harrimans, the Punics—these are already and will remain the hugest of fortunes. These are all gentile fortunes. They like to show off to let everyone see how rich they are. Jewish fortunes have been less visible. Alvah knows in his bones they will become no less mighty, b
ut he will not parade his religion or his bank account outside his front door. His family went through too much Sturm und Drang to get here in one piece. And so far most southern Jews have been able to avoid the lynchings that have so beset the Negro, although it was touch-and-go for a while. (As Dame Lady Hermia would proclaim: Where is the historian of the lynchings of Jews?!) No one has to know the Monument is owned by a Jew. He considers removing Schwartz as his middle name. After all, his wife is a rabbi’s daughter. “Alvah, my cherished husband and protector, not only must you cease using your full name, but in Washington we will become pillars of the gentile community and go to a Quaker or Unitarian church every Friday night and Saturday morning. With this newspaper we must flaunt our newfound place in this New World the same as Mr. Vanderbilt and Mr. Rockefeller, neither of whom I hear is a very nice man at all, as you are a nice man.”
“Are you telling me, my beloved Mesopotamia, that it would be more worthwhile for me to be not a nice man?”
“Do not be so imbecilic! I am telling you that in Washington it is time for us to show our faces outside at last. We can get out of this wretched state of Tennessee. Why should gentile fortunes be more in the newspapers than half-Jewish ones?” No sooner do they leave Chattanooga than seven Jews in their neighborhood are murdered by white men wearing white robes.