by Larry Kramer
A few First Cases of whatever this might be had also cropped up inconveniently in San Francisco and Los Angeles; The Truth prefers New York locales so doesn’t mention them. Five of them were indeed reported in JOD on June 5, 1981, and JOD will claim years later that these are the first reported cases of UC in America. But no one paid any attention to them because it takes The Truth to stir up the pot and Velma had ignored these “first” cases in JOD. Doctors on the West Coast, unlike Jews in the East, also prefer anonymity, even if it means breaking the law. To be mentioned in The Journal of Death, which is published in Milwaukee, is a surefire way for a West Coast doctor to lose half his practice. And The Truth, where a mention is worth at least a dozen new patients to a New York doctor, is little read in the West and thus a negligible commodity there. To be written up in Dr. Arden Morron’s New England Journal of Spots (NEJS), which of course is published in Boston, is worth at the very least a couple of dozen new clients anywhere in the country. But NEJS will not write about this, whatever it is, for quite a while. NEJS and JOD do not suffer each other gladly, each aiming for the scoop. JOD broke this one, so NEJS will punish all by not writing more fully about this for another three and a half years. Also, Arden does not trust Hokie, who once, when they were students at a postgraduate seminar in Switzerland, made a rejected pass at him on the slopes, no easy trick, causing Arden to break his leg and limp badly for the rest of his life. Had Emma Brookner been the sole reporting doctor, NEJS might have picked up on this story right away. Arden relates to her, she being confined to a wheelchair.
A nervous man, with a twitch in his left eyebrow and a tremor in his right hand so pervasive that it is difficult for him either to type upon his computer or to see with clarity what he’s written, The Truth’s Dr. Dearie Fault once worked for COD, an institution with fascinating if still murky early years that dribble back a long long time. Since the end of the nineteenth century intrepid heroes have manned its desks and laboratories, its microscopes, test tubes, and decompression chambers, and trod its bleak hallways. But over these many decades the once so highly flown banners of epidemiology have sagged and COD’s weekly tally of America’s Most Morbid is not much noticed except by Velma, and by Dr. Fault, whose heart, truth to tell, is still in Natchez, and who constantly chronicles his former employer’s doings for The Truth as if it were the only government agency involved in saving The American People. COD can do no wrong in The New York Truth even when it does, which it will now commence to do with increasing fevered regularity. “As officially reported by the Federal Center of Disease in Natchez” appears in nine out of ten of Dearie’s stories.
If Velma’s heart is a wayward and unfocused one, Dearie is a fluffer of facts. It is always safer to be imprecise when dealing with disease for so many millions of readers lest they catch you out in some way, and there are always many who try. The unspecified number of early cases reported by JOD (“early reports have not been confirmed as of yet as to the exact number”) and headlined as forty-one by Dearie’s report in The Truth of Velma’s revision, could not be said, as Dearie did say (or was it really Velma?), to be a true indication of what was out there. Hokie had said, “I’d estimate there are already thousands!” and Velma, accustomed to readjusting the hyperbole of ambitious doctors, had written “in the hundreds,” and Rodney, whose eyesight is also dreadful, for some reason saw, or wrote, fifty-one, and Dearie reduced it to forty-one.
So The Truth headlined forty-one cases (it is now known that there were more than four thousand) and Ricky removed “presumably all” from Velma’s “in presumably all gay men.” (“Who told anyone that?” Hokie Benois-Frucht screamed into Velma’s answering machine after this added bit of information appeared; he had said his cases shared a similar symptom profile with some of his gay patients.) And in later editions, where the cancer was actually introduced more fully, Rodney smoothed out Velma’s “cancerous manifestations” into outright “cancer”—Hokie had identified it as a “skin cancer” (after all, he is a dermatologist)—and Velma had changed this to “body blemishes” and Dearie had whipped it into “cancerous-like skin growths” and Ricky had clarified this to “apparently malignant cancer-like bumps on the skin” and Velma made one last pitch for glory with “purple lesions embossed upon the flesh,” which in fact did make it into print, though only in some editions. Further, according to Rodney, who, along with Ricky, is vitriolically homophobic, as is Dearie, although less vitriolically, this disease imparts—and he literally makes this symptom up—“a repellent odor to the victim’s smegma.” Smegma is an accumulation of excretions that gathers under the foreskins of the uncircumcised, and this is certainly the first time the word has come anywhere near to appearing in The Truth. Fortunately Adolph Arthur “Pish” Dunkelheim, who is son to Adolph Arthur “Push” and Clytemnestra Dunkelheim and grandson to Mesopotamia Starker Dunkelheim, daughter to the world-famous Conservative Jewish Rabbi Herkules Starker, who will shortly be heard from herself, and is currently being groomed to take over The Truth one day—Pish, that is—queries both the germaneness and validity of the smegma attribution, so that Ricky, who had sneaked it up to Pish in his usual ass-kissing way, smells a not-right-time to take a stand; otherwise this new disease might have been launched into the belief system of The American People as a cancer of the smegmatized and uncircumcised.
Rodney Pilts, in his own bylined report on WRAH, The Truth’s radio station, claims outright, along with Velma, no bones about it, that “this new cancer occurs only in homosexuals because of their sexual practices.” Note that he does not make any distinction between homosexual acts and homosexual people, between which, as any expert on etymology or logic will tell you if he or she is unbiased, which he or she is usually not, there is a world of difference. Note too that already there’s not a scintilla of “alleged” or “suspected,” no linguistic softeners just in case this truth might not be so truthful.
This new Whatever-It-Is is thus set in concrete before it’s even got a base to stand on. This baby has happened. It’s launched. It’s out there. So sayeth The New York Truth.
Well, it’s always better to err on the side of bigotry and bias, lest The Truth’s legendary reputation for correctness be in jeopardy under its editor in chief, Jakie Flourtower, with his tendency to see a Communist plot for world domination under the ass of every East European diplomat as well as every New Yorker living on the Upper West Side (while he lasciviously eyes every full-bosomed woman not his wife in the same neighborhoods and naturally on the job). Jakie, feared by one and all who daily write The Truth, is ignorant, as most Jewish heterosexual men are, of smegma, but with it or without it, he’s certainly happy with this article and its subtle subtexts. He hates pansies the most, and since he’s the boss, the most effectively. If Dr. Dearie Fault and the gang had not included as much antihomosexual innuendo as they did, Jakie would have demanded a rewrite. The Truth is not a place where gay people remain employed.
So Ricky Twaddle, as supervising editor in charge of Science, by initialing Dearie’s final initialed draft, launches into The New York Truth the first worldwide story about what, a few years hence, will be named The Underlying Condition. Faggots are dying from a fatal cancer. Hokie, a tasteful closeted fairy who collects good art and has never been to Fire Island, much less its Meat Rack, or attended anything remotely resembling an orgy, is immediately accused by GAAAH’s (Gay Association of Academic Alliances of Homosexuals) spokespersons Cocker Rutt and Muxter Questlos along with Pubie Grotty of The Village Vice of being self-loathing, antisex, and puritanical about Dridgies. “Dridgies? I never talked to Velma about Dridgies! What in God’s name are Dridgies?”
The Truth’s subtext, of course, is that it’s contagious. “Each of the victims who have died of this rare cancer has a long history of other venereal and sexually transmitted diseases,” Rodney maintains (speaking from certain dungeon clubs along various stretches of waterfront where he vents his misogyny on petite women he ties up and harshly whips before fucki
ng them in front of the crowd). Rodney should know a case of clap when he has one.
There’s something else. The tone of The Truth’s prose is that of a man holding a stink bomb in one hand and with the other a clothespin on his nose. It conveys, and this will become a plague propelled less by text than subtext, “These filthy homosexuals do unpleasant things to each other and the worst is finally happening to them and we really don’t like writing about any of this in a Family Newspaper.”
So sayeth The Truth.
And while no one is saying outright, “And they’re spreading it to Us!,” from this moment on everyone across the globe, as fast as reading Dearie, Rodney, Ricky, dear Velma (who by the way lusts unrequitedly for Jakie Flourtower, for whom she’s not nearly buxom enough), and Manny (when he comes back from vacationing in Thailand, for the prepubescent girls) allows that everyone under variously located full moons will think it, and will be thinking it, and won’t stop thinking it.
So much for The Truth.
CLYTEMNESTRA DUNKELHEIM ERUPTS
This is our America! This is what my ancestors slaved for! This is what my beloved father, the great Rabbi Herkules Schwartzer Starker, prays and worships for! It is for this that my beloved husband, Adolf Arthur Dunkelheim, publishes each and every day our greatest newspaper in the entire world! So that homosexuals and their diseases can be paraded for all the world to see!
Already several dear friends have called to say, “Clytemnestra Dunkelheim, what is this in your newspaper today!” I am the proud daughter of Mesopotamia Schwartzer Starker, whose great-grandmother founded the Daughters of the Other Confederacy while still in high school to shame Jefferson Davis. That is my proud heritage!
How dare Dearie Fault, my lovely old friend, write such as this? Someone else must have done it and only used his name. I want all details of how such a story got into my paper! I want the name of every single person on my payroll who contributed to writing this disgusting filth about disgusting fairies and their disgusting habits on my pages of my greatest newspaper the whole wide world has ever seen!
* * *
Clytemnestra Dunkelheim is no passive anything-goes woman or just any majority stockholder or wife or mother or Jew or American. She will tell you, “I am The Truth,” of course meaning, “I am the truth.”
Yes, she is also the daughter of the famous Rabbi Herkules Schwartzer Starker, who is also an outspoken critic of homosexuality, “a repellant aberration that does not occur in Jewish people.” He is so famous that some people think he isn’t even Jewish. A Jew could never have such fame that gets him invited, president after president, to the White House. How many other Jews can make that statement?
Jakie Flourtower, who edits her paper, is a balm for Clyt (the nickname by which she’s known) and her husband, Push (that’s what Adolf Arthur is called), who runs their paper. Jakie can calm Clyt down. Since subscriptions are at an all-time high, she allows his ministrations. Flourtower is fat, obstreperous, ambitious, a swell dresser but still slovenly. He is a survivor of Wienerblut, a concentration camp on the Austrian-Swiss border much hushed up because of the widespread belief in its Swiss neutrality. Though so many German Jews, including the Dunkelheims, claimed Swiss origins for their imagined safety and, yes, the racial purity such a “heritage” imparts, The Truth and its owners are still perceived as putting out “a Jewish paper.” You spend so many generations cleaning up your act only to fear someone will smear the same Scheisse all over you once more. For this reason, Rabbi Herkules Schwartzer Starker, Clyt’s own father, is as well-kept a secret as such a great and famous rabbi can be kept. You will never find his name in the religious columns of The Truth.
It is interesting to search in all of this for any reality. This lot really does believe the world now thinks of them as, if not gentile, no longer Jews. A non-Jew called Dunkelheim. You want to yell at them, Get Real. But of course no one does. Clytemnestra and Flourtower are vicious payer-backers of all slights, imagined or otherwise.
Clytemnestra continues to go on. “I never want to see the word homosexual in my paper again! Perversions and perpetrators! I want them all expunged! All! We are not amused!”
A notice appears that afternoon on the bulletin board in the main newsroom of The Truth.
Attention all reporters. From this moment on there will be no further use of the word “homosexual” in Our Beloved Newspaper of Record without clearance from the undersigned.
—Flourtower, Editor in Chief
The immediate effect of this dictum is that there will be no further mention of or information about the fast-festering plague of what is not yet ready to be called The Underlying Condition in the world’s most important newspaper until further notice. And when such information does appear, several years hence, it will be so stingy and mingy and cringy as to be hardly visible at all. When the truth doesn’t want to be told, well, there’s no one better than The Truth at not telling it.
Other newspapers across America, indeed all over the world, follow suit. What’s good enough for The Truth is good enough not only for New York, not only for America, but for the whole wide stupid undereducated and fucking world.
Yes, The Truth so sayeth.
VITAL STATISTICS
February 1982. COD reports 252 cases, 99 dead. In March there will be 285, located in seven states.
* * *
Wrong.
COMMUNIQUE TO FRED
MICHELANGELO SIGNORILE
The UC plague arose within a period of time in which Jacob Flourtower had created such a chill throughout the newspaper around the issue of homosexuality that it had become institutionalized. Flourtower just had grade-A anti-gay, over-the-top homophobic sentiments. He came back from overseas sometime in the ’60s and was suddenly running the Metro desk, and it was a new New York. He looked out and he saw homosexuals on the streets, holding hands. It scared the daylights out of him. He assigned one of the most homophobic stories The New York Truth had ever written, a story that ran on the front page in 1963. It was all about this rise of homosexuality in New York and its visibility on the streets. He headlined it “Growth of Overt Homosexuality in City Provokes Wide Concern.” On the front page. That says it all, about Jakie, about The Truth, about what’s going to happen to us. And then came the Stonewall riots, and the 1960s led into the 1970s. Yes, we were scaring him to death.
INT. DR. EMMA BROOKNER’S EXAMINING ROOM. TABLE MEDICAL CENTER. DAY.
EMMA: Who are you?
FRED: I spoke to you after the article in The Truth.
EMMA: You’re the writer fellow who’s scared. I’m scared too. Take your clothes off.
I hear you’ve got a big mouth.
She is in an electric wheelchair. She is a small and pretty woman of thirty-four. She dresses beautifully, with long skirts that cover her legs.
FRED: Is big mouth a symptom?
EMMA: No, a cure. Take your clothes off.
FRED: I only came to ask some questions.
EMMA: You’re gay, aren’t you?
FRED: Yes.
EMMA: Then take your clothes off.
(As he hesitates:)
Don’t be nervous. I’ve seen more men than you have.
CUT TO:
Fred stands naked before Emma. She is examining him. First with stethoscope to his chest. Buzzy, her cute nurse assistant, is taking some blood. When Emma isn’t looking he winks at Fred.
FRED: Hi, Buzzy. Didn’t know you worked here.
EMMA: To answer your questions, I don’t know. Not even any good clues yet. Whatever it is, it stinks, and it’s scary as hell. Never seen or heard of anything like it. And I think we’re only seeing the tip of the iceberg. And I’m afraid it’s on the rampage.
FRED (to Buzzy, who is still drawing blood): You opening a store?
(Buzzy finishes.)
EMMA (listens to his back): It takes years to find out how to prevent and cure anything. Turn around. (She lifts his testicles with a throat stick, taking him by surprise.) Easy.<
br />
She pats the examining table. He jumps up on it. She grabs his foot and starts inspecting between his toes, carefully.
EMMA: I’m afraid nobody important is going to give a damn. Right now it only seems to be happening to gay men. Who cares if a faggot dies? If we don’t stop it early it will be too late. The cat will be out of the bag. It may be out already. Does it occur to you to do anything about it? Personally? Buzzy says you’re well known in the gay world and not afraid to say what you think. I can’t find any gay leaders. I call gay organizations. No one ever calls me back.
FRED: None of them are any good.
EMMA: Have you had any of the symptoms?
FRED: Yes.
EMMA: Which ones?
FRED: Most of the shit The Truth said.
EMMA: Which ones!
FRED: Amoebas. Syphilis. Gonorrhea. Hepatitis … You don’t know what it’s been like since the sexual revolution. It’s been crazy, gay or straight.
EMMA: What makes you think I don’t know? Any fever? Night sweats. Diarrhea. White patches in your mouth. Loss of energy. Shortness of breath. Chronic cough. Weight loss.
FRED: Don’t I wish. No. But they could happen with lots of things …
EMMA: And purple lesions. Sometimes. Open your mouth. (Looks down there, in his ears, up his nose.) It’s a rare cancer. There’s a strange reaction in the immune system. It’s collapsed. Won’t fight. Which is what it’s supposed to do. So most of the diseases my guys are coming down with—and there are some very strange ones—are caused by germs that wouldn’t hurt a baby, not a baby in New York City anyway. And the immune system is the system we know least about. So where is this big mouth I hear you’ve got?