by Larry Kramer
NU SHIT (IN WHICH A BRILLIANT YOUNG SCIENTIST IS FORCED TO SOUND LIKE CHARLIE CHAN)
The history of Catholic medicine is a special one. As I am a Catholic this section falls to me by default or squatter’s rights. I am going to try to relate it without resorting to one tidge of profanity, with two hopes, one that God will forgive His Sister Grace for telling it like it is, and the second that its profanity speaks for itself. I shall try to get the sound of Nu, but that’s a toughie.
Over the centuries the Church has preferred to tend and minister rather than to investigate or to cure. This attitude has naturally made life miserable for many of us. But cures are tricky matters. If one is intent on proving the existence of a loving God Who heals, then it is a problematic occurrence when a cure might possibly be attributed not to miracle but to medicine. Pope after pope has felt it best to stay out of irony’s way and stick to miracles, which, in Catholicism (and perhaps in lay life as well), have about as good an average as unguents, ointments, pills, and invasive lacerations of the flesh.
Washington has never been thought of as a particularly Catholic town. Compared with Boston, say, or Florence, it isn’t. But those committed to the True Faith have a way of making their powerful presence known, no matter where. At this point in the District’s history, much of its Northeast quadrant is, to all purposes, owned, controlled, and pervaded by my Church. Here in the Northeast can be found the many institutions of low, middle, and higher learning, the cathedrals, grottoes, shrines, and relics, and the enormous hospital and medical center, Mater Nostra Dolorosa, where I am myself enshrined in all my glory so worthy of respect, and of course the Great Shrine itself, the Epostes of the Most High Regard, where St. Trusst is said to have said her last prayer and died (and where I had my first visions of the Virgin Mary and my first orgasm).
In May 1937, The New England Journal of Feces publishes the findings of Dr. Flo Hung Nu, of the Laboratory of Fecal Hematology at Mater Nostra Dolorosa. To coin a phrase, the shit hits the fan.
Dr. Flo, in her own practice, which is confined to nuns, has noticed that when withdrawing blood from several sick sisters, this blood is exceptionally dark, almost black. (She is never to know that this blood matches the fedema fluid Israel has drawn from Cousin Mercy and Evvilleena Stadtdotter.) You almost wouldn’t think it was blood. It is also extremely toxic. Dr. Flo’s version of Israel’s Abner trick, involving a Burmese tincture of beet mixed with ordinary tonic water (or anything with quinine in it), shows the blood to be about 65 percent poison. Nun One dies shortly after her blood sample is taken. Within hours, Dr. Flo has the dead religious under autopsy. She sees nothing she recognizes. Both The New England Journal of Blood and The New England Journal of Poisons, not to mention The New England Journal of Feces, to all of which she reports this, refuse to publish without more information.
The Laboratory of Fecal Hematology deals exclusively in the study of blood in feces. Feces is viewed as the barometer of the body’s health. Many parts of the world, particularly those most distant from America, hold firmly to such theories and it was only because of pressure from mushrooming Catholic outposts in Southeast Asia and South America that this small lab was set up in Washington for Dr. Flo. Dr. Flo finds the just-dead nun’s intestines were ready to explode from impacted shit. Nothing life-threatening, under ordinary circumstances, but certainly something to keep an eye on if the patient were still alive and hopefully dosing with milk of magnesia. But the nun is dead. From what? The second dead nun’s shit is 25 percent poison, which is just short of fatal and would probably not have killed her had a heart attack not presumably done so first. The 63 percent poison in the third dead nun’s feces is obviously what did her in.
Very mysterious. A bit too mysterious for the archdiocese, which does not view feces as a barometer of anything but unpleasant. Particularly when it is Catholic shit that is written about in The New England Journal of Feces, a publication heretofore unknown to the Church.
Since she’s reporting from a Catholic hospital, Flo’s research should have been submitted first to Mater Nostra’s Board of Procedures for approval before she released it to the outside world. Naturally, such approval would have been denied. As one of the monsignors remarks, “The Church does not desire the world to know it deals in shit.” Dr. Flo, smiling, always smiling, as those uncomfortable with the American language often do, nods energetically. “Yes, yes, shit,” she grins. The monsignor realizes he’s not getting through. Dr. Flo realizes he’s going to be trouble. How can she convince these holies of the importance of her discovery when she doesn’t speak their language and when she does she sounds like Charlie Chan?
All this medical research business is new for Mater Nostra. As well as for the Mother Church in Rome. Hospitals, yes. The sick must always be tended. But twentieth-century medicine is becoming vastly too incomprehensible. How to justify paying for shit is a question soon on the agenda of covert ecclesiastical powwows. Experiments to find answers that the Church must condemn, by doctrine writ in stone, seem a big waste of money, a public relations nightmare, a pain in the holy asses.
It makes no difference that most of this era’s prominent doctors and researchers—all advocating progress (a word the Church is coming to dread as much as condom)—are men (except for Dr. Flo and me, not that long out of Masturbov Gardens).
Dr. Flo, whose entire education since her birth in a missionized distant land has been financed by Catholic money, understands the monsignor. “You are hereby forbidden to study any more shit!”
“Ne, ne!”
With a piercing cry of protest Dr. Flo runs from the board’s convocation room inside the Quadrangle of St. Catheter’s Cathedral and out into the quiet streets of this part of the Northeast which in some ten years’ time will turn even darker.
“Dr. Nu! Dr. Nu!” The young monsignor, who has been so thoughtless with his tone of voice and who is quite handsome and who (for a change) is attracted to the young Oriental lass, runs briefly after her.
But she runs on. (Americans do not understand that it is quite rude to address her as Dr. Nu, because she is from that part of New Chang where the first name is really the last name.)
She writes requesting a dispensation from the next higher recourse, the Jesus and Mary Board of Oversight.
Jesus and Mary reject her as well. There remains the archbishop of the city himself.
Dr. Flo is not a quitter. “I find way. I not come to New World to be flunky.”
The chief residence of the Washington Archdiocese adjoins St. Catheter’s Cathedral on the corner of Guam Street and Perth Amboy Place, N.E. (not far from the Most Holy Soul Junior and Senior High Schools where Mercy Hooker went and Grace did, too), a huge, four-story pile of irregularly shaped stones and boulders stuck together with various centuries’ mortars, dark red in hue from the roof’s dissolving lead. It is a forbidding place and children in the neighborhood refuse to play nearby. This house was many things in past lives—a rich man’s palace, a gangster’s den, a whorehouse, the headquarters of an international theosophical society—until the Webb family deeded it to the Church in 1920. Earlier Webbs always had reasons to want God on their side; they were usually leaving town fast but wished to be well remembered in higher places. Daniel Jerusalem will be very smitten with the Webbs’ granddaughter, Claudia, who was not yet born, nor was he, when this mansion had to be unloaded. In any event, picture Dr. Flo Hung Nu, her tininess and skin color all peculiarly unexpected in a visitor making her way up the long landscaped driveway to lift the heavy knocker.
This would now be a cardinal’s residence if Rome liked Washington more, but Rome doesn’t much like America, so an archbishop lives here. He is said to be a flaming queen called Missy, and perhaps he is, though there are those who say as much of every prelate in a dress. Missy or not, some business on this occasion has sent him out of town. Although the curt letter strenuously objecting to Dr. Flo’s research bears the signature of His Holiness, Cardinal Nerr, of the Vatican itself, h
er appointment is with an underling, Bishop Sheeney. He, too, is said to be a flaming queen. He is.
In truth, Bishop Sheeney had smelled something funny and written the letter over the fictitious Cardinal Nerr’s name. Discolored blood in shit was not a matter the bishop thought any cardinal would like to hear about. Forgery is nothing when it comes to covering one’s ass.
“We do not wish to concern Ourselves any further with your findings,” the bishop, also a small person, says to Dr. Flo after she kneels and kisses his ring. “Oh, you needn’t go down so far … oooh, that’s sweet.”
She misses in this new world the less insistent Catholicism of her homeland, where the poor people live with God because they need Him, not because rings require kisses. Before she was born, her parents were converted to the Church by French missionaries sent to their tiny village (now deep in Communist territory and renamed), and she remains a grateful Catholic because they made her a doctor. She is not unaware of the many medicines derived from the plant and animal life of that homeland, which have benefited all mankind, and she is motivated mightily to repay her benefactors with the certain fame her discovery will bring. While there is no medicine inherent yet in what she’s found, one never knew, one never knew. Feces as a fecund foundation for fostering a future free from famine, well, many are the people in her part of the world who live on some form of bodily waste made into patties and stews and soups.
“Your Bishopship,” she says, still with her head bowed, “what is being found by Dr. Flo is something the Church will someday make me saint.”
“Do not succumb to the sin of Pride, my child of yellow skin.”
“My discovery honor Him!”
“How can that be! The bloody … fecal matter…” He quotes from the issue of Feces clutched in his hand. Something must have gone very wrong with the catechism of her homeland. He always knew it was a mistake to cast the net so wide. No grocery is required to sell every brand. Perhaps he should quote Scripture. If only he could think of something relevant. “My brother is a hairy man…”
She says simply, “Bloody shit kill them.”
He replies swiftly, “You must cease and desist!”
“Something in bloody shit contagious.”
Contagious? He steps back. “Nevertheless.”
“If contagious then homofruits all kill each other.”
This is shit of a different color. “Please, my butterfly, come sit on the floor, as I believe is your custom, and we shall have tea in the tiny cups of your homeland, with no handles. And you shall tell me what you mean by … homofruits.”
He rings a tinkling bell and sits down on the floor in the middle of the room, crossing his cassocked legs, which are shapely and recently waxed. She wishes to tell him that, among other things, he has his countries confused, not to mention his cultures. After the old female retainer, at first flustered by serving tea at floor level, departs (for some reason she exits the room after serving by crawling on her hands and knees backward), the youngish bishop, putting aside the offending publication, assumes his most unctuous smile and takes her tiny hand in his tiny hand.
“Homofruits?”
“Poofters.”
“I know what they are. What about them?”
“This blood shit come from them. This blood shit poison. It pass all test for killers. My cat die from eating this blood shit.”
“How do you know that … homosexuals—we must call them homosexuals … much as we dislike them, of course … still, that is what they are to be called—how do you know this is happening only to them?”
“I not say only. Contagious is contagious. I say only that my samples come from nuns.”
“Nuns!”
“Nuns.”
“You consider nuns … homofruits?” He seems relieved.
“Yes! Yes!”
“Very interesting.” The bishop wonders if an investigatory purge of nuns might be useful to his advancement. “Please continue.”
“I see them…” She blushes and waves her free hand meaningfully. “They use man’s penis made of wood. All covered in shit. They die soon later. I take blood from them and shit from them and shit from wood penis. All poison. One kill other.” She shrugs. She makes a face, scrunching up all her features from chin to brow. “My cat lick. Bye-bye, pussy.”
Suddenly, at this moment, Bishop Sheeney, who is not Irish, and who is sick and tired of the wisecracks about his name, among other things—no, only one other thing, his correctly suspected homofruitiness—and who has never before sensed that he had a calling or would ever be called, succumbs to a summons. He knows that this yellow-bellied wog, er, child of the Holy Father, is the messenger. He asks her to wait a moment. He rises and goes around a corner and up a few steps to a small chapel where he gets down on his knees. He is going to speak to Mary but upon reflection thinks he might embarrass her. To Jesus, then; but his love for Jesus is too complicated sexually as it is. There is no alternative but to speak directly to HIM.
“Our Father, if what Dr. Nu has discovered is true, the Church is now in possession of a capacity to kill off the dreaded sin of … You know, once and for all. Everything You have always wanted can come in one good shit. The only thing that is worrying me, Lord, is that … I know that many of Your Personal Servants are among the … So, in killing off the sin, You would be killing off the nunhood … our sisters, I mean, Tell me what to do!”
He waits for a sign. He is on his knees on a cold marble floor and the incense (Heavenly Scent #5) is being distributed automatically throughout the mansion by the Dial-a-Smell machine, a recent gift from the parishioner who makes them. It is a noisy machine but it saves much work. He farts. The machine clunks off. Is this a sign? He is prepared to accept it as such. He reasons that without the incense the farts can be smelled. This may mean that God wants Flo’s shit discovery to be smelled. (Catholic mysticism is complicated.) He locks the door. He crosses himself. He prostrates himself. He turns over on his back. He lifts up his frock. He has a huge erection. Ah, the cause and effect of it all! He begins to masturbate. Now God speaks to him. As God always does (if he only waits long enough and isn’t such an impatient puss) when there is a pressing urgency.
God says: “Do both. Kill ’em and save ’em. That way I can’t be blamed for heinous deeds, only for Noble Attempts. Tell that slit-eyed doctor to carry on with her work. Give her some money from one of our nameless funds. Let her publish any findings. The fights which ensue will leave plenty of time for all the fruits to get poisoned. Then our famous Catholic charities will step in to take care of the dying. But it will be too late. Heh heh heh. It will look like I’m trying to save them. But it will be too late. Too late. Yes. Yes. Those who play with shit must die!”
Bishop Sheeney ejaculates generously. There is semen all over his pubic hair. He is messy. He wipes himself off with his handkerchief, which he must remember to throw away, into the incinerator, where it will burn! He doesn’t notice the tears in his eyes. He smooths down his dress and gets up, walking awkwardly: the pubic hair all stuck together with dry semen hurts. He unlocks the door to go help Dr. Flo up from the floor. He tells her that her request to continue her research has been granted.
Billy Sheeney, now in one of our retirement homes, replayed this scene for me with great gusto.
* * *
Yes, darling Grace can be right. Matters can look silly.
Dr. Flo extracted the poison from three nuns. The important leap (of faith, as it were) has been made. Whatever is happening with this blood, this poison, this fluid, this shit, is happening to and in homosexuals.
These were days long before epidemiologists and epidemiological studies were plying their wares, days that some still hark back to with a longing for the relief of their innocence, a longing for that naïve ignorance. The likes of Drs. Ekbert Nostrill and Elmo Tabernackle and Stuartgene Dye are mercifully still some years away. In days to come, studies would prove that, if you took enough polls and completed enough questionnaires
and tallied enough answers and jiggled enough numbers, why, anything could be proved. But in those dog days of the summer of 1937, scientists are way behind in their less ecclesiastical but just as worshipped determinations of the Truth.
What Dr. Florence Hung Nu (she is to Americanize her name in 1942 so people will stop thinking she caused World War II) of the Laboratory of Fecal Hematology has discovered (not that she knows it) is that what will become known in the 1980s as The Underlying Condition makes its first home in the bowel (as will be confirmed for the first time, by the remarkable Dr. Donald Kotler of New York’s St. Luke’s–Roosevelt Medical Center, in 1983). The blood she isolates in the feces can spread throughout the rest of the body, causing massive deterioration and eventually death. This is clearly contagious and transmissible.
Dr. Nu (she succumbs to being so addressed although it goes against five thousand years of her heritage) does not hypothesize how the blood gets into the stool. (In fact, she assumes, incorrectly, that it is deposited there by malfunctions in some other part of the body.) That remains to Dr. Sister Grace and not Israel Jerusalem, still shilly-shallying somewhere in the wings, hearing “glause” in his head and unaware of Grace’s devotion to finding out all she can, particularly from him.
As of now, there is no disease, nothing that anyone can see. We are still decades away from people dropping dead all over the world from The Underlying Condition, which is still a little too underlying. Of course, Dr. Flo is not exactly on the right track (which is why Grace will be able to claim credit): she is only interested in the blood in the feces. She has gone in the wrong direction (and it will not be until 1983 that Dr. Dodo Geiseric comes along to redirect this wrong direction, only, however, then going off in another wrong direction, thus robbing himself of a Nobel Prize). But what’s a little thing like a wrong direction? Discovery is all! “And I shall make it and prove it!” Grace says out loud to her empty laboratory, aching to work on something juicy.