The American People, Volume 2

by Larry Kramer

  The first batch of questionable blood arrives in Lot 21098xcv458trn/abedfrish Vat 69, from GreetingBaxxterDridge Pharmaceuticals. It is sourced “from twenty-seven ‘donors.’”

  Grodzo evidently doesn’t like what he sees.

  What’s interesting to him is not from whom the blood comes but from how many it comes. Indeed, twenty thousand donors per lot of pooled plasma are required to concoct a batch of what will shortly be marketed by Greeting as … I must remember the name of this drug: Factor VIII. Twenty thousand donors needed per batch. No wonder things get so out of hand.

  “This is not so good,” Grodzo writes, “as I look through my microscope at a coil of rants. No, no, no! What I see in here. Bad!”

  He writes a letter expressing his concerns to GreetingBaxxterDridge Pharmaceuticals, which had sent the blood to Grace for testing for (she told them) a potential cure for the mismitosis she suffers from. She had developed several profitable products for them in the past, such as Vel, a hormone-measuring technique that won her the Nobel Prize.

  “Your blood is not so clean. Your blood should be more clean. You have in your blood a number of Grade 98723l032l impurities (see attached list). It is my strong recommendation that before you put your blood into further testings all of said Grade 98723l032l impurities (see attached list) are removed from your blood.”

  For an old Nazi, Grodzo seems to be harboring awfully good American instincts. Grace advises him to keep his mouth shut. “Aber dieses Blut ist immer noch Scheisse,” Grodzo protests, meaning, “But this blood is still shit.”

  “So is everyone in Washington” is Grace’s knowledgeable reply.

  Also noting that the blood is shit is Dr. Rebby Itsenfelder, a young gay doctor from South Africa at NITS on a fellowship. He cannot believe his eyes. This blood from GreetingBaxxterDridge is not only Scheisse, it’s triple Scheisse. Are these people serious? He tells Monserrat Krank, with whom he’d done cancer research at Cambridge (for a few years they thought they’d discovered its cure), and who, more important, is very rich. How did Rebby see this blood? Grodzo is also at NITS. Blood is so complicated.

  In due course, A. W. Napp, the executive in charge of “New Blood” at GreetingBaxxterDridge, replies:

  “Our blood is clean enough. We have followed the guidelines promulgated by the Federal Government on 17 Sept 1928. It is not necessary to obtain your approval. We sought it only as a courtesy to Dr. Sister Grace Hooker, and at the same time to show to you and others what important work we are doing. Please be advised that we have received approval from Dr. R. S. Napp (no relation) of FADS for continued development of our product pursuant to its sale to the public.”

  Neither a Napp at GreetingBaxxterDridge nor a Napp at the Department of Food and Drug Supervision can I locate on any personnel list of this era.

  “Our product”? What product?

  Blood is very complicated.

  A DREAM COME TRUE?

  FRED: Indeed, for many who knew about it, Partekla was a dream come true, a veritable ground zero for the killing fields, to utilize current palaver, imposing itself insidiously on our daily life. Can we not begin to sense, to smell, as Hermia does, how all the little bitty pieces of paper are coalescing into the evil that is this postwar world? The notion of “for the sake of humanity,” which our Florence Nightingale and your Clara Barton fought so valiantly to introduce into all matters of health, is not taking root.

  Yes, blood is very, very complicated. It cannot be stated enough.

  * * *

  I have learned many tricks to survive. I keep hoping a brilliant person will appear with a discovery we all can live with. It has troubled me that we are all traveling different journeys that do not allow that to happen. More than ever I now see it is either me or you.

  I thought I could infect the world during this past Great War, and then live forever. I killed many but evidently not enough.

  I will not fail this time.

  THE COEUR D’ALENE RATTLESNAKE

  The Coeur d’Alene Rattlesnake reports, “Dazed young men are wandering about the North West, bruised and speechless. Their bodies are covered with black and blue marks and scabs. They drift off into the distance. Good luck to them. We did not want them here but we nevertheless wish them well.”

  DR. ISRAEL JERUSALEM WRITES IN HIS LAB AT ISIDORE SCHMUCK

  I am reminded of Kristallnacht in Germany. This was the first big sign from the government of Hitler that Jews were not wanted in any way. Partekla reminds me of this. Someone is saying that homosexuals are not wanted in America in any way. I have a patient who works for that Hoover in a top-secret job. He confides in me that 3,500 young homosexual men have been imprisoned at Partekla—at least—and that few of them survived. I tried to discuss this with Grace but she would not talk about it. Indeed, she became hysterical. “How dare you imply I know details about something so awful! How dare you, Israel, not trust me after all we’ve shared with each other!” I hope she will calm down so we return to our work, which was beginning to prove interesting. I am seeing more new infecteds no one knows what to do with or what is wrong with. They are infected with strange things. I believe I have seen such before.

  The war is over but it is not over! It is really never over. Where is the congressional hearing about any of this?

  At the center of all history there is always a terrible secret. I am too familiar with this feeling of warning.

  TWO OF OUR LEADING CHARACTERS MEET EACH OTHER

  They’d seen each other many years ago when perhaps they looked sufficiently different to keep them from remembering each other now in the Masturbov Gardens drugstore.

  “Do you remember me?” Daniel, now twenty-one, asks Fred, now all of fifteen, who is staring down at a turquoise Estabrook fountain pen in a display case. “Isn’t it beautiful? I use ink the same color. I write everything in turquoise ink. It’s my color.”

  Fred looks up at him and answers. “It’s my color too! But you must have it!”

  “No, no, I use a Parker Fifty-one. You must have it!”

  “I haven’t got enough money yet, but I will after I babysit a few more times.” Then, “You remember me?” Fred asks.

  “Of course I remember you. Grace Hooker babysat us a couple of times together when our parents went out to the same blood thing. Our moms know each other from their work.”

  “Pudgy Waffle!” Fred exclaims. “I wonder what’s happened to her.” He looks at the pen again, and then back at Daniel. “He said it was the last one ever.”

  “Here, let’s put a deposit on it, so they’ll hold it until you can get the rest.” Daniel summons the clerk and hands him a dollar bill. “We’d like to place this deposit on this beautiful turquoise Estabrook fountain pen that you say is the last one. So you can hold it for Mr.…”

  “Mr. Fred Lemish,” Fred tells the clerk. He’s disappointed that Daniel doesn’t remember his name. He corrects the salesman’s spelling. “One M. I promise I’ll pay you back. Do you still live in Masturbov Gardens?”

  “Yes, but I’m away at college now. I go to Yaddah. I’m going to be a doctor. Would you like to go for a walk in the park across the street?”

  “What were you reading so seriously? I saw you there before.”

  “Come to the park and we’ll sit down and you can read it.”

  Homosexuals in government, 1950

  Congressional Record

  Volume 96

  Part 4

  81st Congress 2nd Session

  March 29–April 24, 1950

  (pages 4527–4528)

  ON THE FLOOR OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES:

  Mr. Arthur L. MILLER of Nebraska. Mr. Chairman, I realize that I am discussing a very delicate subject. You must know what a homosexual is. I would like to strip the fetid, stinking flesh off of this skeleton of homosexuality and tell my colleagues in this House some of the facts about them. But I cannot expose all the putrid facts, as it would offend your sensibilities. Make no mistake several thousa
nd, according to police records, are now employed by the Federal Government. It is amazing that in our Capital City of Washington we are plagued with such a large group of those individuals. Washington attracts many lovely folks. These are not they.

  In the Eightieth Congress I was the author of a sex pervert bill that passed this Congress and is now a law. It can confine some of these people to St. Purdah’s Hospital for treatment. We learned two years ago that there were around four thousand homosexuals in the District. The Police Department the other day said there were now between five and six thousand in Washington who are active and that 75 percent are in Government employment. There are places in Washington where they gather for the purpose of sex orgies, where they worship at the cesspool and fleshpots of iniquity.

  You will find odd words in the vocabulary of the homosexual. There are many types such as the necrophilia, fetishism, pygmalionism, fellatios, cunnilinguist, sodomatic, pederasty, sapphism, sadism, and masochist. There are many methods of practices among the homosexuals. Some of those people have been in the State Department, and some of them are now in other departments. These people are likely to be known to each other.

  I ask you to bear in mind how many of these homosexuals have had a part in shaping our foreign policy. How many have been in sensitive positions and subject to blackmail. If all the facts are known, homosexuals have been used by the Communists. I believe many of them are Communists.

  I believe there is physical danger to anyone exposing the details and nastiness of homosexuality, because these people are dangerous. They will go to any limit. These homosexuals have strong emotions. They are not to be trusted and when blackmail threatens they are a dangerous group.

  They are now not knowingly kept in government service. They have been locked up in a place called Partekla.

  Upon their release they must not be employed in Government. I trust both sides of the aisle will support my amendment that will prohibit them from so being.

  Daniel watches as the young Fred slowly and intently reads the pages with bowed head. “Do you understand it?” Daniel asks. “Do you know people like this?”

  “Do you?”

  “The people I know are mostly nicer,” Daniel answers, as he adds to himself, “Yeah. Like Uncle Hyman.”

  “Our neighbor across the hall disappeared last week. He and his friend were gone. They took all their belongings in the nighttime. We didn’t hear a thing. They’d left their door wide open. Mr. Nelson was teaching me how to type. I’ve bought a Royal portable typewriter from my babysitting.”

  Now Daniel remembers Fred’s sad and lonely eyes, with which he identifies.

  “So you know what a homosexual is?” Daniel asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you have feelings for other boys?”

  “Yes. I want a friend. A boy friend. Do you have one?”

  “No.”

  “So you have feelings for other boys too.”

  “Oh, yes.”

  Fred confesses. “Have you had them for as long as you can remember?”

  Daniel smiles and nods. “For as long as I can remember.” Then he stands up. “Excuse me, young Lemish. I must get going.”

  “When will I see you again?”

  “Oh, we’ll meet again. We’re bound to.”

  “But when? I don’t want to let you go!” He grabs for Daniel’s arm.

  “When the time is right. When you get your lovely turquoise Estabrook pen will you write to me? Your mother and my mother can find me.”

  And then Daniel is gone. He cannot bear to look at young Lemish and his eyes and his bowed head a moment longer for fear it will break his heart. He reminds him of his young self who had also wanted a special fountain pen to write with to a boyfriend.

  And young Lemish longs to see Daniel Jerusalem naked. Now he knows they both belong to a people the House of Representatives doesn’t want to see at all.

  LONG LIVE THE QUEEN!

  “A fucking virus is a fucking virus if we’re at the fucking right place at the fucking right time.”

  “Yes, yes, I learned this from the Iwacky! Please, why necessary are so many fucks?”

  “Because there are so many fucks is what this is all about!”

  “You know this for certain?”

  “I am Dr. Sister Grace Hooker! I am the Queen of Blood. You are Dr. Israel Jerusalem. I have studied under a stronger microscope the samples that you sent me. We’re going to get another fucking Nobel Prize!”

  Then she asked him: “Tell me again. What did you win your Nobel Prize for, so long ago?”

  “The cause of an ancient disease.”

  “And with what proof?”

  “My Iwacky boys eat each other.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You have lost much weight.”

  “I have had much stress. We will be in touch. I must go somewhere far away at present.”

  TWO OF DORIS HARDWARE’S WHORES

  Today’s girl is Jinx Seeley. When Mordy Masturbov hears her name on the phone from Clothilde, who does the bookings for his mother’s Hardware House, he doesn’t recognize it. Mordy has his own first home away from home. A very large and elegant house, built by one of Abe’s companies in one of his big-deal neighborhoods near Isidore Schmuck. Mordy is just over twenty. He’d decided to start Sexopolis. Instead of going to college, he just tells Abe he’s launching a big enterprise and Abe’s sufficiently intrigued to let him off the hook. After all, he never went to college himself. Claudia helps Mordy decorate. He’s still in love with her. A lot of good it does him. He knows she’s working for his mother. He’d been writing articles about her for Sexopolis before it was even in print. He figures loving Claudia was all the pre-on-the-job training in the romance area that he needed to get. So he started Sexopolis. From its very first issue it’s been a roaring success.

  When Jinx arrives she turns out to be unexpectedly perky and amusing, qualities unfamiliar to him.

  “My name is Jinx Seeley and my parents are Mr. and Mrs. Horace Plotkin and my real name is Rebekkah Regina and my aunt and uncle are the Chesterfields, he’s the famous rabbi and I believe she’s dead. I lived for a while in India. Seeley is for the soul I didn’t find there. Jinx is for the mess I’ve made. You sure are younger than the usual. Where’s the bedroom?”

  Can my cock handle funny?

  She walks around the house. “It’s like George Washington at Mount Vernon.” She gawks and studies and admires and occasionally sighs. “I know how much that’s worth!” She’s impressed. She walks through the foyer and into the dining room with its enormous table peopled by dozens of stern high-backed chairs (“for some dinner party you won’t invite me to”), and then back to what she calls “the main lobby,” and again, without invitation, she goes up the curving staircase to the floor above. Mordy follows, not knowing quite what to say.

  “You’re a very charming act,” he says finally. “You have a very charming act,” he repeats, trying to keep up with her.

  “Is it? I’m glad this hugeness is yours. It’s right and proper that a man of your prominence should have this house all on your own. You’re so young, though. You certainly are a prodigy. That’s a new word I just learned. Do you know what it means?”

  Is she putting him on? He has little sense of humor, Claudia has told him on more than one occasion, and he seems unable to do much about it. He never remembers jokes; he usually fucks up the punch line of those that he tries to tell. “It’s not about jokes,” Claudia said when he asked how to right his deficiency, “it’s about lightening up,” which he understands even less: he isn’t heavy, he’s very light on his feet, he’s a good dancer, he can swim a hundred yards in no time. “Forget it,” she finally said when she realized he didn’t get it. Which of course he picked up on. He doesn’t like this feeling. How do you get a sense of humor? Does he even want one? He sort of likes being stern and unsmiling. Shouldn’t a powerful editor/publisher be both?

  By the time he enters his bedroom
she’s already yanking off her clothes. The bedspread is still on. This she rips off, making him feel that the order of things is slipping out of his control. In this baronial room—his lair, with the huge phallic mahogany bedposts, the thick black carpet, the gaping fireplace that could receive a pig, the canopy of drapery protecting the bed like a bulletproof vest—in this room, there she is, inattentive to him, not paying him one fucking bit of attention as she neatly folds her clothes and places them on a small armchair that she talks to. “So thoughtful of you to be here just for my undies and the undies of those who still wear undies and who come here to take off their undies.” She’s still smiling and being perky. “I genuinely do like this house,” patting her palms together pleasurably, like a flapping seal or a kid in a sandbox. She is now completely naked, which he sees pleases her: she’s comfortable in and with her body, which he isn’t. He’ll call his article “My Adventures with Jinx.”

  “You’re a Jewish girl?”

  “You’re Jewish too.”

  “I haven’t had much experience with Jewish girls.”

  “Most Jewish men haven’t.”

  “It’s been my experience that Jewish girls are rarely hookers. And Jewish girls are never so relaxed naked as you,” he says, sitting on the edge of his bed and bending to untie his laces.

  Now commences, as always, his consciousness of what he considers his deficiencies: the slight roll of fat that bulges a bit as he bends down, the looseness of all of him because he hates physical exercise, loathes the outdoors; the strange patches of his red body hair that display little regard for symmetry (a right shoulder with a smaller blotch than the other, a left nipple sprouting, the other bare, the chest with little settlements, rare villages in the desert, his pale white legs, and the effusive tuft around his penis that sprouts upward and cascades forward). He displeases himself aesthetically. He’d waited so long for his body hair; why, when it finally came, did it arrive in such a disorderly fashion? Claudia told him if he didn’t like it to take a scissors and trim it, or take a razor and shave it off, or visit an electrolysist, or make an appointment at Elizabeth Arden for a waxing. Or forget it. He will observe it. He’ll write about it. This problem must be others’ too. He is always composing new feature stories as he lives them. Perhaps men’s bodies should be styled as much as women’s. Is there an Elizabeth Arden for men?