The American People, Volume 2

by Larry Kramer

  The single room was Brinestalker’s. He’d painted it all black and hung maroon drapes over the windows. He had lamps, but the place was dark as a dungeon, and not a dungeon of fun, just a truly depressing monastic cell. Neither Philip nor I enjoyed “visiting” him in it. Perhaps that was the beginning of his drifting away from us, not that I would have noticed, because of my growing obsession with Philip. We had occasional threesomes of course in our double bed and let him go on his way when he didn’t wish to join us. How did I remain friends with Brinestalker for so long, and partners with him as well in that nefarious project? I sometimes think we were out of our minds. Perhaps it was Philip’s passivity in our midst that kept us together and perhaps I’d like a little of that now. It’s a nice thought. I can only say that those crazy projects didn’t seem crazy at the time. Brinestalker and I thought we were revolutionaries. We were committed to new ways of living, to new ways of being homosexual. Kim and the rest of the Cambridge spies thought the same way.

  I left my bed, crossed the campus, and walked to a rougher section of town, which in New Godding was still not very far. I located the gay bar I remembered from my youth. It was still here! A burly young man who appeared out of nowhere followed me in. He tried to strike up a conversation with me, tried to buy me a drink, blocked me when I tried to walk away, which I did several times. I finished my beer and went to the men’s room to pee. I didn’t look at him or his cock. When I turned to leave a policeman snapped handcuffs on my wrists and said I was under arrest for soliciting sex from a minor. I said he was not a minor and I was not soliciting, to which the officer replied, “Resisting arrest, additional charge,” or some such. I was taken in handcuffs to the station, where I was treated equally harshly, if expeditiously. “Why don’t you old geezers stay out of New Godding? You think you’ll get into some kid’s pants? You’ve been under observation for the past day. You have two hours to get out of town.”

  I would say that the experience surprised me but it did not. I have been arrested for one thing or another not unlike this, traveling around the world and this country many times. For this I have not tasted a single cock or felt another’s flesh. All I’ve tasted is the bitter hate of this world for the homosexual male. In the past I had papers of identification that would set me free. I no longer have these.

  I finally drove to Miami Beach. By the time I got there Philip could hardly move his arms and legs. “My boy has still not come back to me. My wife no longer talks to me. My other sons are uninterested in me. What did I do to deserve all this? What’s this?”

  “A sterling silver napkin ring. Mr. Hoover left many like this to Clyde. I thought it might amuse you. They loved each other very much.”

  I waited for an answer. He stared at me for a very long time without speaking. And then in my arms he died.

  I was too late. I had gathered him up into my arms as best I could. I kissed his lips. I wished him well. I said, “I’ll see you on the other side.” And then I left. I did not wish to face Rivka when she returned.

  I called Gottschalk in Cincinnati. It is time to execute the other half of my plan, I told him.

  I now could reach finally for my answer. My ever-faithful companion that I knew would never let me down would take me there. I will not tell you where you’ll find me. That’s spy talk too.

  DR. EKBERT NOSTRILL VISITS NORTHAMPTON, MASSACHUSETTS, WHERE JONATHAN EDWARDS BEGAN HIS GREAT AWAKENING CRUSADE IN 1734, AND READS TO THE LARGE ASSEMBLY FROM ROMANS 1:27

  “And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient: being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity; whisperers, Backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death.”

  SHITTY POO POO ASSHOLE BALLS TWATS CUNTS PRICK FUCK

  I am thinking that women’s reproductive systems hold an unexplored potential clue to what I am looking for in my blood and piss samples. Congress forbids NITS from following through on my superb suggestion. Women’s bodies are a no-no. Shit on Dr. Stuartgene Dye for ignoring someone much smarter than he. He of course blames Congress. Why do we constantly dispose of placentas after birth? What secrets are we flushing down toilets with these? Fetuses shed little pieces of DNA into the bloodstreams of mothers-to-be. What shit from the fucking male was she thus carrying on with?

  WHAT TO DO? WHAT TO DO?

  So Fred Lemish writes a novel about gay life and where it wasn’t going. It was not well received. In fact it made many angry. For what seems an unending time, he will not be much fun, which is why everyone will be avoiding him. He will go out rarely, not even to a gym, and what friends remain will be so bored with hearing about his concerns that they no longer inquire, “How are you?” for fear he’ll tell them, again. You would think that at his age he’d be better at accepting rejection, but his novel is certainly being rejected and his hurting lonesome would-be creative heart doesn’t seem to repair itself. He is blue. He is depressed. He will wonder, How am I going to live the rest of my life like this? “A day at a time, please,” Dr. Homer will remind him, citing the age-old advice of shrinks and the many programs of self-help.

  Yes, another analyst will be sought and found, a nice elderly gay man with the remarkable name of Dr. Odysseus Homer, who will work mightily to reinstill in a not-getting-any-younger would-be hero a modicum of courage. Fred can be very stubborn. He does not let go easily. Also, writers are a gnarly bunch. Just like Jonathan Swift, the more he dislikes the world he dislikes himself or anyone in it. Will he be of any use to his people in this time of approaching plague?

  Who will be?

  Fred doesn’t know that he’s already been exposed to The Underlying Condition.

  * * *

  No comment.

  DR. MUXTER QUESTLOS

  Fred has been totally ignorant of what gay politics was doing or trying to do. Our forces were so tiny and absent from the white-bread mainstream that he lived in. He had never been black, poor, a female, or trans, he had no unusual sexual peccadillos, nor had he given any of these issues much thought. That’s why a lot of us at first paid him no attention and then, when it was obvious he wasn’t going to shut up, turned against him. He was truly a one-issue loudmouth.

  Gay left, gay right, who knew how best to define our movement? One thing we all were was radical. We wanted things and we resented things and we wanted to change things. But one guy’s “normal” appetite was another guy’s fetish and it was hard reconciling such divergences into a movement. One set wanted marriage and complete assimilation, and another wanted to expand the range of sexual expression for and to everyone and everything. Which of us were actual revolutionaries? There was GLF, whose mission was to challenge and change heterosexual “norms,” and they rejected all efforts to acknowledge our differences. All groups refused to accept heterosexual definitions of what is good and bad. When gay male sexuality is attacked as sick and degenerate, no one should apologize; we should rejoice in what our homosexuality bestows. Gay people were not like everybody else! And society must be transformed to admit it. We’ve developed—necessarily in self-defense—our own set of values and perspectives. If the straight “mainstream” doesn’t want to hear it, we don’t care. We don’t want to be like you anyway.

  As Fred will find out, there aren’t many in any of the radical groups, all of which give up just prior to Stonewall anyway, to be replaced by the much more limited GAA, whose single goal was to get civil liberties for gay people. Nothing radical in
that.

  GAA wanted to win their place in society as it is. Stonewall wasn’t bringing many out of the closet. It was evident that too many wanted to live within a society defined by the way things are rather than work toward what it might be.

  It was all much more complicated than this, of course. The gay movement as it’s come to be known had a lot more and a lot less than can be argued about here. Cocker Rutt maintains that the reason the movement was soon reduced to only fighting for sex is because that was the only issue everyone, one way or another, would support. It allowed for no discussion of just what in our sexual lives we were talking about. Drag queens, bears, S&M activists all had their champions and their detractors. Try making a political movement out of all this! GLF and GAA bite the dust with no resolution to the never-ending question of how we present ourselves to both the mainstream and each other when making any demands. Take them on a tour of the Pines or the Mine Shaft or the Toilet Bowl? Fred has just done that and exiled himself to Siberia.

  So our “movement” becomes single-issue, catering solely to our own primary concern, first, last, and foremost of which is sex, in any way, shape, or form.

  I write the above with sadness, which I will come to share with Fred. I return myself to Yaddah, where my English Lit department has just fired two of my faculty. For being gay. And rejected my course on Walt Whitman if I made him gay. So I told Yaddah to stuff it and went off to New York, where I started my own institute.

  BELLA GOES TO PRESS

  This is the Divine Bella reporting to my legion of fans all over the globe. I am here, still and yet and may it last forever, on our beloved Isle de Feu, where frankly I have not been feeling so well. Memories are so painful. They make us want to run back so furiously to embrace the past. I am alone, as dear Greta always said. I do not vant to be alone. I walk these sands, now gray and hardening as winter comes. Why did I not, as with all my friends, rush my return to the mainland? To the fashions of the fall? I cannot tell you. I can only say that when it came time for me to leave this year, I could not. I simply could not. For the memories, the passions, the adorations, the arrivals of this past summer, when all of us reached Heaven at last, could not be jettisoned so swiftly. I needed Time!

  Those who know their Bella know I like to muse. Have we not been living the Summers of Our Lives! Our just desserts! After so many eons of pain and suffering, of rejection, of hatred, have we not arrived! Yes, it’s so hard to leave.

  I sigh. Bella Bellberg, your Divine Bella, has excreted his column only monthly in a biweekly Avocado that still hasn’t the courage to put itself out every single week of our important lives, for are we not each and every week embracing from sea to shining sea even greater gobs of glory, goodness, and gorgeousness than the very week before? Magnificence must be recorded! Each single minute demands reportage to and about the ever-increasing millions of us now joined visibly in a stunning ever-apparent army of beauty, arms locked as we kick-step toward our future. Let the whole wide world know so many of us are here! We’re here! We love and love and love and love each other at last! And Freedom is ours! Here, now, waiting, reach out and touch it, it’s there, it’s almost here, it’s almost ours, CAN WE WAIT UNTIL NEXT SUMMER?

  Can we wait for our next summer of Gaydom! Of Faggotry Triumphant! Of Pansies and Penises! Of Fairies Flitting Furiously and Fashionably and Flagrantly and Famously! Not a day goes by in which another famous faggot doesn’t come out of the hated closet. Why, it will only be a Matter of Moments before presidents will be gay!

  I bring you news. The opening soiree of next summer’s season will be held at the oceanfront home of Heerkie Odongo (Heerkimer Odongo IV). At his palatial opalescence, Fort Tie-Condor-Ogre. He has bought an entire tract of land on the ocean. He has torn down the ancient adjoining shacks and built his palace, his Shangri-La, his Xanadu, his Taj Mahal. It will be ready for our viewing come next Memorial Day! Can you not wait! Bella knows he can’t!

  * * *

  How long can I write this stuff? I am so tired.

  When the Oil of Turtleshit didn’t take away his bothersome blemishes that just don’t seem to go away, Bella dragged himself back to the mainland to see Hokie Benois-Frucht, dermatologist to the stars.

  “Hokie, tell me what this is, I’m scared.”

  “It’s serious, Bella.”

  “Serious to die or serious I can’t afford it because I have no health insurance or serious like in chemotherapy and I’ll lose the rest of my hair?”

  “I think it could be serious all three.”

  Bella takes Hokie’s hand in his examining room at Table Medical and gets down on his knees before his doctor in an impetrating fashion.

  “Save me, Hokie. Please keep me alive. I feel so awful. And if it’s awful please don’t tell anybody. My empire will crumble. How much money do you need to start looking for the cure for whatever it is I’ve got? I have so many, so very many of the richest of rich readers!”

  And then, almost in passing, it occurs to him.

  “Has anyone else got it too?”

  AN EARLY CASE? IF SO, OF WHAT? IF SO, SO WHAT?

  Josie McGluck was a short guy, a little over five feet tall, and very likable and popular. Josie’s lover was Dom Dom, who was as tall as Josie was short. Fred knew them both on Fire Island. They were quite a pair seen side by side. Mutt and Jeff, if anyone remembers those comic strip characters. Dom Dom was called “the Nazi,” which drove him nuts because he quite rightly didn’t think this funny because he was half German, tall and blond and buzz-cut like in a war movie. But he was also very persistent, always demanding his own way, another reason for his nickname. They were a very popular couple on Fire Island and in the Village. They had a share in the house in the Pines with gorgeous Bruce Niles, who was an old friend of Fred’s, his neighbor in the city.

  When Josie came down with a mysterious something that made him so weak he couldn’t stand up, Dom Dom carried him in his arms from doctor’s office to doctor’s office. He went to anyone and anyplace that would let him in a door. He would take Josie in his arms and offer him up for observation for some clue to what’s going wrong. He didn’t care that everyone stared at them and moved out of their way fast when they saw that Josie was very sick-looking and Dom Dom was heading toward them. When he had seen maybe a couple dozen doctors in New York, he went to Philadelphia because he’d heard there was someone down there who might help, and then to Baltimore because their hospital was so famous. In each place, when guards tried to stop him in a hallway or entrance, he would hold up Josie’s body, which was runny and smelly, and say, “Get out of my way!” and they usually did. Doctors were terrified when he stalked into their offices and practically rammed Josie’s body in their faces. Everywhere he went, no one knew what was wrong.

  Finally he heard about Dr. George Gist at NITS. In all America, NITS was the place to go, and Dr. George Gist was in charge of infectious stuff there. So he carted Josie to NITS, arriving, as everywhere else, unannounced and without an appointment. They’d had to drive there in a borrowed heap from New York and get there early on a Sunday so the NITS campus, where Gist lived in one of those ivy-covered director’s houses, would be sleepy enough that they could slip through. Dom Dom had done his research. His mom was a nurse who knew a nurse down here. There wasn’t much in the way of security anyway. By the time they got to the NITS campus Josie had thrown up a few times and shit and pissed on himself too. Dom Dom was out of clean stuff to change him into.

  Dr. Gist was not pleased. He was a stern-faced man, about sixty, and in his bathrobe and pajamas and slippers. There was another man, half his age, hovering in the background, also in pj’s and robe. They both stared at the strange couple that had accosted their house and their sleep.

  “I do not see patients without referrals. Who referred you? Why are you carrying that young man? Put him down immediately. Come in, come in, before someone sees you. Put him down! He is blue. Why are you blue, young man? Don’t just stand there. Take his clot
hes off. He has a nice face. Is he a kind person? Are you a kind person? How did you get onto our campus? Dr. Herky, help this tall young man undress this youngster. I think I must put on a pair of gloves. Dr. Herky, get me some gloves and find a pair for you. No, there aren’t any gloves here. This is my home. Well, we will try to be careful. He is covered with spots. Those are cancers. I have not seen this kind in a long time. He is boiling hot. I would suspect pneumonia. Let me see his records. You have brought me his medical records? Let me see them. You have certainly been to a great many doctors. You are certainly a desperate man. You must love him very much. I do not think I have witnessed such public devotion between two men before. Have you, Dr. Herky? No, of course you haven’t. What is this diagnosis from Dr.… at St. Hollyhawk’s in … Sayville, Long Island? Cat scratch fever? What a lovely penis. Dr. Herky, note the lovely penis. I think it is true that short men often have extra endowments. You are so tall that yours is probably short. Is that so? Is your own penis short? I ask only because if you are fucking him that might be important to know. Not that it is short but that you are fucking him. He’ll be dead very soon. Do you have a cat? You both certainly smell.”

  “He has three. He’s dying from cats?”

  “It’s very rare. Something peculiar is obviously going on. You just can’t say it’s from cats. That’s not very scientific. I wouldn’t respect a scientist who diagnosed a death from cats.”