The Last Lovers on Earth: Stories from Dark Times

by Charles Ortleb

  When Gregor finally awoke from his coma, there was only one nurse in the room and her name was Candace.

  There were literally thousands of coma specialists who wanted to be in that room, along with countless scholars of the Holocaust, but the team of experts who had been following Gregor’s coma—some for decades—thought it best if only one person communicate with him. Candace was chosen to be the attending nurse partly because she had some psychological training. She probably was picked mostly because she was a lesbian, but that wasn’t discussed openly.

  A number of doctors had suspected that Gregor was bilingual because, even in his coma, occasionally he could be heard mumbling both English and German words. The doctors had also selected Candace because she had majored in German before she left college to attend nursing school.

  Candace couldn’t believe he was a man in his late seventies because Gregor still looked like he was in his early twenties. His facial coloring was still ruddy. He looked like he was a sleeping Ralph Lauren model.

  The doctors all agreed that it was the strangest coma they had ever seen. There hadn’t been one quite like it in all of recorded medical history. Gregor was lucky that one of the guards chose to hit his head exactly where he did before the concentration camp had been liberated. Ever since scientists had tried to determine how Gregor’s traumatic brain injury caused both a coma and a virtual state of suspended animation so that he didn’t age a day in fifty-three years. Gregor was living proof that one could launch human beings into a state of suspended animation if one could traumatize the brain in just the right manner. Mankind could learn a great deal from Gregor’s long, mysterious survival. It might even lay the basis for biological time travel.

  For over a decade, coma researchers had been trying all kinds of new drugs and surgical techniques, and the field of coma therapy had expanded exponentially. There was the expectation in the field that comas would soon be as easy to treat as bacterial infections. Gregor had recently been given a radical new form of magnetic stimulation of his cerebral cortex, as well as a new drug called anti-melatonin, and the scientists had become very excited when they began to see dramatic changes in his MRI scans. Word had begun circulating in the neurological community throughout the world that the gay concentration camp survivor might soon come out of his fifty-three-year-old coma.

  Holocaust scholars were soon doing cartwheels and gay politicos were elbowing each other out of the way to be the first to meet him.

  Candace had been asked to begin spending long hours closely observing Gregor because the coma recovery experts didn’t want Gregor to panic when he came out of it. They wanted someone comforting, one of his own people, to be at his side. They expected him to have one hell of a headache.

  Candace had been training for a year on how to ease Gregor psychologically from being a gay man in a concentration camp in 1944 to being a gay man in 1997 in New York City. Candace had been reading as much as she could about Nazi Germany and the gay lifestyle in the concentration camps so that she could easily bond with Gregor when he came to.

  Candace was on the phone talking to her girlfriend Della the day that Gregor started to stir. She put the phone down when she heard Gregor try to say something.

  Then miraculously, he began to make sense.

  "Horst? Horst? Horst?" were the first words that Gregor said.

  "Horst is not here right now," said Candace who was hoping that he really did know English so that she would not have to use her rusty German.

  "Where am I? Is this London?" asked Gregor.

  "No, Gregor. You’re in America."

  "Where is Horst?"

  "He’s not here now." Candace did not know who Horst was, but she had a troubling intuition about who he might be. She decided to be vague about some things because she didn’t want to give him the kind of shock that might bring about a relapse of the coma.

  "Hitler, where is Hitler?" asked Horst.

  She thought it would be helpful to give him the good news. "He’s dead."

  "Who killed him? The Russians?"

  "No, he killed himself."

  Gregor started to cry. Candace gently touched his hand.

  "Am I dreaming that Hitler is dead?" he asked.

  "No, you’re awake. You’ve been asleep for a long time."

  "How long?" he asked.

  "Fifty-three years."

  "I don’t believe you," he said.

  "Yes, it’s strange," she said. "But it’s true."

  "Where are the guards?"

  "There are no guards here."

  "Where are the guards?"

  "They are all dead."

  "Who killed them?"

  "The Americans."

  "Where is Horst? Is Horst here?"

  "No."

  "I want Horst."

  It was many days before Candace could break it to him that Horst was dead. He said he knew it in his heart, but he didn’t want to believe it. He wept the tears of someone who has held them back for half a century.

  The doctors thought it would be months before Gregor could get out of bed, so it was Candace’s responsibility to sit and talk to him, read to him and try to give him a sense of what he had missed for the last five decades.

  Gregor was amazed at the things that Candace told him. She showed him all the modern devices that had been invented since he had been beaten into a coma. She showed him VCRs and microwaves and cell phones and personal computers. Orderlies wheeled a big television set into his room and they let him watch it for an hour a day while Candace tried to explain current events to Gregor.

  Candace encouraged Gregor to talk about Horst in order to work through the grief. Gregor was totally bereft. It was as if Horst had just been murdered.

  Gregor explained that they had been lovers for a year before they had both been taken away to the camp.

  Gregor told Candace that Horst could see what was happening in Germany, that he hadn’t been fooled. Horst had warned his friends about what was coming, but no one believed him.

  Gregor and his friends, one by one, began to disappear from Berlin. Their families made up stories. Some said their sons were studying overseas.

  Horst had a sneering, sardonic way of talking to Gregor about the disappearances. He would say, "It’s a matter of public health. The Fuhrer is trying to rid the country of an infection. Soon the blood of the nation will be clean."

  Horst would refer to Hitler sarcastically as "Herr Doctor."

  As Candace listened to Gregor, she was glad that the doctors in the hospital had kept their distance.

  Gregor told her that when their closest friend, Wilhelm, was taken away, Horst notified Gregor by saying, cryptically, "Wilhelm is undergoing therapy. He is infected with a virus that threatens the German people. They will render him non-infectious."

  Gregor told Candace that when he asked Horst if they were on Hitler’s list of infected people, Horst told him, "Herr Doctor has everyone on a list."

  Gregor was stunned as Candace recounted the progress that gay people had made all over the world. She told him about Stonewall, Bette Midler, the Castro, leather hot pants, and The March on Washington. She even tried to explain lesbian feminism to him.

  "It all sounds like one of the Fuhrer’s tricks," said Gregor.

  "What do you mean?"

  "He always liked to make people think they were going one place, when in reality, they were going to another."

  "Hitler’s really dead, Gregor. Everything’s changed. It’s a new world for gay people. Just look at me and Della."

  Candace’s lover Della had been artificially inseminated but there had been a slight mix-up and she was about to give birth to quintuplets.

  "This is America!" she said. "Lesbians can even have five babies at once, if they want to."

  Gregor nodded, but he looked introspective, as if his mind were really still in the old world.

  As Gregor was adapting to his new circumstances, unbeknownst to him, an enormous political battle was being
waged.

  Every gay organization in America was clamoring to get Gregor as a spokesman as soon as he left the hospital.

  Needless to say, the most vocal and demanding of all were the AIDS organizations. For years many of the AIDS activists had compared the AIDS epidemic to the Holocaust. Now they had the opportunity to recruit someone who had really been there and done that.

  The activists threatened to cover the hospital with a giant lubricated condom if their demands were not met, so their demands were met.

  The AIDS activists were the first outsiders allowed to meet with Gregor. They wanted to prepare this very important post-comatose gay citizen for the AIDS Millennium. They insisted that the first gay people that he would encounter in fifty-three years should be fully-accredited AIDS educators.

  They were concerned that Gregor had been in a coma during the formative years of the gay movement. They were very concerned that some gay activists from the liberation era would get to Gregor before they did. They were eager to recruit Gregor to do public service announcements, in which he would look into the camera and say, "AIDS is a holocaust, I ought to know."

  Candace was not happy about the AIDS activists meeting with Gregor. He had only recently been able to sit up in bed. He continually talked about Horst, and from what he told her, she had a feeling that these activists might not be the best people for Gregor’s health. But the hospital administrators were afraid of the commotion the activists might make if their demands were refused, so they insisted.

  When the activists first entered Gregor’s room, all of them were wearing black T-shirts with angry slogans. Their fists were in the air. Gregor began to tremble. Candace had to reassure Gregor that they would not hurt him. She reminded him that they were Americans in the 1990s, not Germans in the 1930s.

  As soon as they were all in the room, they began to chant, "WE’RE HERE, WE’RE QUEER, AND WE’RE NOT GOING SHOPPING! WE’RE HERE WE’RE QUEER, AND WE’RE NOT GOING SHOPPING!"

  The AIDS activists had a wild look in their eyes and the whole scene felt vaguely familiar to Gregor.

  One of the AIDS activists immediately gave Gregor the universal AIDS orientation lecture. The basic point of the talk was that everyone would die if they didn’t do what the AIDS activists told them to do.

  Gregor was quite shaken. And then it happened: All of a sudden a golden cloud materialized before Gregor’s eyes and he could see Horst standing at the foot of his bed looking imploringly at him. Horst looked as tall and handsome and wonderful as ever.

  Gregor motioned to Candace to come over to the side of the bed and then he whispered into her ear, "Horst is here now. Please, take these people away."

  Candace turned to the AIDS militants and said, "I’m sorry, but Gregor is suddenly feeling very sick. You’ll have to leave now."

  "We’ll be back tomorrow," said one of the activists. "AIDS is a crisis. Everyone must get involved. Even people who have been in comas. People who have been in comas who don’t fight AIDS are murderers! Anyone who isn’t dead must join in our crusade!"

  As soon as the activists left the room, Horst was no longer there.

  Candace had to give Gregor a sedative to calm him down.

  The entire coma treatment staff was very apprehensive that Gregor might have a relapse.

  But they were even more concerned about the activists who threatened to stand outside the hospital singing AIDS folk songs until they were allowed to see Gregor again. Most of the top administrators had heard AIDS folk songs. They were very, very afraid.

  Gregor begged Candace not to let the activists back in, but when she explained how the activists had threatened the welfare of the entire hospital, Gregor had a flashback to a time in his life when he heard stories about what happened to all the patients in some hospitals in Germany. He didn’t want to be responsible for anyone getting hurt. He sadly acceded to Candace’s request.

  When the activists marched into Gregor’s room the second time, they were in an even more aggressive mood.

  They were accompanied by a woman who was the leading AIDS folksinger. She carried a large guitar and her hair was festooned with red ribbons. One of the activists proudly told Gregor that the woman was the Joan Baez of AIDS, which didn’t mean much to Gregor.

  The woman immediately began strumming her guitar and she started singing songs about the triumphs and tribulations of AIDS activists. The song celebrating the fact that now every single government committee on AIDS contained AIDS activists was catchy but seemed to go on forever.

  Then she sang an up-tempo song celebrating the HIV test. Everyone joined hands and sang the chorus which was simple but very affecting: "AZT should be free, AZT should be free, AZT should be free."

  The activists urged Gregor to sing along, but he really didn’t seem to understand the words, because it sounded like they were singing "Zyklon B should be free, Zyklon B should be free."

  When they were done singing, the most important AIDS activist in the group made a speech to Gregor. He told Gregor that as a gay man who had survived the Holocaust, he had a moral obligation to help them end the AIDS Holocaust. "If you don’t help us, you’re a murderer!" the man screamed at him.

  The activists told Gregor that he had become an international role model for young gays, and they wanted him to go on television and urge gay people all over the world to stop hiding from their doctors and to go and be tested for the virus that the government had declared the official cause of AIDS. And Gregor should urge them, if they tested positive, to allow the government to treat them with all the new experimental treatments. And if they were not positive, they should all volunteer for vaccine experiments.

  Every time they used the word "experiment," Gregor began to shake.

  They told Gregor they wanted him to go to the White House to meet the President and be the first person to take the new AIDS vaccine.

  Gregor turned whiter than the hospital sheets on his bed.

  Suddenly, Horst was standing upon a golden cloud there in the room again. Gregor recognized a familiar look of barely contained horror on Horst’s face.

  Horst was saying something inaudible, but Gregor could read his lips.

  "Candace, Horst says these people are kapos. He wants you to get these kapos out of here. GET THE KAPOS OUT OF HERE!"

  This unnerved the activists, who looked at each other sheepishly.

  Candace begged them to leave quickly.

  As they shuffled out, they sang an AIDS folk song about how gay men should be medically proactive and devote their lives to AIDS activism.

  When they were gone, the golden cloud and Horst disappeared again.

  That night Gregor developed a terrible fever and night sweats. When Candace came in the next morning, her worst fears had materialized. He had relapsed into his coma. The doctors rushed to his room from all over the hospital. They tried all the new drugs and innovative anti-coma electronic therapies in their arsenal, but nothing seemed to work. It was perhaps the most unusual and intractable coma in history and, to this very day, they are still trying to get him out.

  The Last Lovers on Earth

  The phone began ringing on Monday morning and Kyle couldn’t get a thing done. He was sure that it was their friend Enola who had spilled the beans to one of their neighbors who worked in the media. They had both begged her to keep it a secret. She hadn’t realized the significance of their status until Seth, after one too many glasses of chardonnay, had underlined it all too well for her. She suddenly got the point that it was really big news that they were both still alive.

  The first call came from the local ABC affiliate. It was a blond woman whose name Kyle recognized from the evening news. She said that she was sorry to be asking such a prying question, but was it true that Kyle and Seth were lovers, and was it also true that they were the only gay people on earth who were still alive?

  "Last time I checked," he responded.

  "Do you realize how amazing that is?" she asked.

  "Well, I g
uess it is slightly unexpected."

  "We’d like to lead with you tonight on the five o’clock news."

  As soon as Kyle hung up the phone it rang again. It was NBC. Then CBS, CNN and several internet news services called. Then an aggressive reporter from the New York Times, and after that just about every major paper in the country.

  And all this was happening simply because Kyle and Seth were gay and alive.

  Throughout the day on ABC they promo’d the evening spot: "Tonight at eleven, we’ll have an interview with the last two gay men alive on earth."

  All day long hyperventilating reporters called AIDS researchers around the world and asked them to explain why these two men could possibly be alive. The phone lines at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta were constantly tied up. What was going on? For several years now hadn’t the top AIDS researchers insisted that, as a result of the government’s unprecedented multi-trillion-dollar federal effort against AIDS, all gay men were dead?

  Now word of the confirmed spotting of two gay men who were still alive was spreading all over the globe.

  Was there a cover-up going on? What did the government know and when did it know it?

  The media was not ready for another major government scandal, especially one that involved a minority group that was supposedly history.

  For the press it looked like it could become a story about criminal negligence in science. If the top scientists could not be trusted to tell the truth about AIDS, what could they be trusted to do?

  But for scientists who were informed of the bizarre fact that two gay men were still alive, the question was purely scientific. Calmer heads had to prevail. The right questions needed to be asked. The correct scientific procedures needed to be agreed upon in order to get to the bottom of this new gay men’s health crisis. In science, method and careful data collection are everything. What was different about the two gay men who were the only ones still alive? Did they have unique immune systems? Were they genetically different from all the other gay men? Had they forgotten to take their medications? Had they failed to understand the complexities of treatment compliance? Had someone forgotten to give the two men one of the experimental vaccines? Was this an exception that was going to prove some disturbing rule? The matter called out for well-designed experiments with proper controls to determine why all the other gay men on the planet were dead and these two were still alive.