The American People, Volume 2

by Larry Kramer

  FRED: Thank you.

  EMMA: Yeah. Fred, your organization is worthless.

  EXT. WASHINGTON. ESTABLISHING SHOT. DAY.

  EXT. WHITE HOUSE. DAY.

  Fred at the gate, having his ID checked. He looks up at the place. He takes a deep breath and strides confidently forward.

  INT. OFFICE OF CHEVVY SLYME. DAY.

  A sign on his desk: CHEVVY SLYME, DOMESTIC POLICY ADVISER TO THE PRESIDENT. It’s obvious he does not want this meeting. He is tiny, red-flushed, beady-eyed.

  FRED: Just so I understand. What exactly does your title mean? In terms of our plague?

  SLYME: We prefer not to use negative terms. It only scares people.

  FRED: Well, there’s 3,339 dead cases so far. Sounds like a plague to me. I’m scared. Aren’t you? What does your title mean?

  SLYME: I come up with ideas for the president about what to do about what’s going on.

  FRED: Okay, good. We’re desperately looking for someone to be in charge of this. Sort of a czar. Could you get the president to appoint one?

  SLYME: We look upon the president as the czar.

  FRED: So the money’s there, then, right? It just hasn’t been spent. So there’s this new drug in France. Could you get the president as the czar to get NITS to study it? I mean, what I want … what we want … what we desperately need is for somebody to help us cut through all this red tape.

  SLYME: I can assure you that not a week goes by that I don’t bring new information and reports to the president. I’m told the progress that’s been made on this disease is unprecedented …

  FRED: Excuse me, sir, but what progress are you referring to?

  SLYME: Tell me again who you knew to get in here?

  FRED: The editor of Newsday and I went to Yaddah together.

  SLYME: Who’s the editor of Newsday? It doesn’t make any difference. Answer me one question. This shit, can hookers get it and give it to their … clients?

  FRED: Of course.

  SLYME: I was told no.

  FRED: You were told wrong.

  (Slyme makes a note.)

  But it’s contagious! Can’t you see! Because it’s contagious you have to work faster! And you’re not doing anything!

  SLYME: Do you really believe that anybody in a serious public policy position, in their heart of hearts, or even in their most closeted meetings, says to each other, “Hey, guys, let’s not get too upset about this.”

  FRED: Your boss still hasn’t even said the word out loud.

  SLYME (gets up and closes door to his office): Answer me one question. Um. This shit, can you prove that hookers can get it? Or someone who had a one-night stand?

  FRED: It’s a virus. It doesn’t discriminate.

  SLYME: You can’t prove that. I mean, from what I understand, from what I’ve read, female-to-male transmission through normal vaginal intercourse does not seem to be …

  FRED: It’s contagious. Sir, it’s contagious.

  SLYME: Yes, but it’s very difficult, isn’t it? It’s impossible for a straight, you know, regular heterosexual guy to get it, am I right?

  FRED: I’m sorry.

  SLYME: There’re no documented cases, am I right? There’s not a single documented case of a heterosexual man getting it. Not from fucking or a blow job …

  FRED: We don’t know that.

  SLYME: Great, that’s what I thought. Thanks. (Gives him his card.) Call me anytime.

  (A buzzer rings loudly on his desk. Slyme immediately rushes out through another door.)

  FRED: Wait!

  (He furiously rushes to follow him.)

  (Screaming into the hallway:) A million people are going to die! It was in the London Observer!! President Ruester, my new lover is dying! Help! Please help!

  (An alarm goes off. Guards rush in and haul him out.)

  SMELLS LIKE A BIG ONE

  Dr. Ekbert Nostrill is a Furstwasserian Brother of Lovejoy. Ekbert is one of many Furstwasserians placed in Washington’s high strategic places by the Vestry. “That’s how we get things done our way,” First Father Herod could still and always be heard whispering into the ears of all his placements. Ekbert belongs to the Second Tier of the Vestry, which is the next-to-highest secret part of this religion. Indeed, when he was placed here he had received a mandate from the Vestry, First Tier. See that no activities transpire which deal with homosexuality. Homosexuality is to be ignored as if it were not around. Make certain as little as possible is done to stop any behavior causing any illness among homosexuals. Ekbert is troubled by these instructions. Surely they are un-Christian. On the other hand, his predecessor had left him notes on lots of files of unfinished business “that quite frankly I did not know how to finish. I do not know how to say ‘don’t lick your partner’s asshole’ or ‘suck my peter’ in a way that would be acceptable to us.”

  Purpura questioned Manny Moose about Nostrill’s suitability for his special job as she envisioned it. While she knows that Manny is selling off key positions like they are pieces of land, she’s worried whether enough of them are decent acceptables to join her new home team. It’s always been a smart Republican tactic, layering the government forever with right-wing civil service appointees who by law can’t be fired. Furstwasserian Lovejoys have been especially good customers for Manny’s bounty. It’s been a tough haul for Manny. Peter Ruester had not been an easy sell. Purpura was not happy with Manny’s excuses and not a few of his choices.

  That the world as we know it will end is the goal for many of today’s religions. And so it is with Lovejoys and Furstwasserians, whose vision of the end is catastrophic. All the Herods and Ezras and Brighams and Josephs and Hesiods have talked about this with fevered fervor for over a century. They have been increasingly concerned with more precisely defining how to go out with a bang and not with a whimper. But there are now more liberal Brothers of Lovejoy who don’t want to go out either way. It is still a youngish religion and Ekbert wonders if this particular thorny theological aspect of their joint future can somehow be manipulated in a more life-affirming, positive way. Getting rid of homosexuals once and for all would certainly be a step in the right direction. Both conservative and liberal Lovejoys would be in favor of such a clean sweep. Then they could live forever and not have to worry about it. There are few religions in America that did not and do not exhibit similar behavior.

  Ekbert’s HAH job description calls for him to track down the root of whatever evil lurks in the bodies of men. More or less. That’s how he reads it. Smells like a big one.

  Will this big one make him happy or sad? Sometimes diseases come along that make him happy. They kill off poor people who have no money to eat and never will. Ekbert thinks then that this is God’s way of calling His children home to Him. I will feed you now, He seems to be saying. This here new one that smells so big is different. Homosexuals aren’t poor, at least not that he’s heard of. He knows they’re different. He knows they put their little dickies in places where he doesn’t. This doesn’t sound like something God would call His children home to give a home to. What would the Original First Father Herod say as he led his people across the swamps of Naugatauk? “Get rid of the fairies” comes immediately to mind.

  “So what do you think?” Ekbert quietly asks Dr. Paulus Pewkin at an all-department meeting at HAH.

  “The fairies?”

  Ekbert nods.

  “Smells like a big one.”

  “My very words.”

  “What do we do?”

  “Smells like a big one.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Smells like a big one.”

  Dr. Nostrill nods and starts to leave, feeling filled with empowerment.

  “And, oh, Doctor Nostrill…”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “This illness is a gift to our people.”

  THE WHITE HOUSE

  OFFICE OF THE PRESS SECRETARY

  PRESS BRIEFING BY LARRY SPEAKES

  Q: Larry, does the president have any reaction
to the announcement from the Center of Disease that there is now an epidemic of some sort, hundreds of cases?

  MR. SPEAKES: What’s some sort?

  Q: It’s known as “gay plague.” (Laughter.) No, it is. I mean it’s a pretty serious thing that one in every three people that get this have died. And I wondered if the president is aware of it.

  MR. SPEAKES: I don’t have it. Do you? (Laughter.)

  Q: No, I don’t.

  MR. SPEAKES: You didn’t answer my question.

  Q: Well, I just wondered does the president …

  MR. SPEAKES: How do you know? (Laughter.)

  Q: In other words, the White House looks on this as a great joke?

  MR. SPEAKES: No, I don’t know anything about this, Lester.

  Q: Does the president, does anybody in the White House, know about this epidemic, Larry?

  MR. SPEAKES: I don’t think so. I don’t think there’s been any—

  Q: Nobody knows?

  MR. SPEAKES: There has been no personal experience here, Lester.

  Q: No, I mean, I thought you were keeping—

  MR. SPEAKES: I checked thoroughly with the president’s personal physician this morning and he’s had no—(laughter)—no patients suffering from whatever it is.

  Q: The president doesn’t have gay plague, is that what you’re saying or what?

  MR. SPEAKES: No, I didn’t say that.

  Q: Didn’t say what?

  MR. SPEAKES: I thought I heard you were in the State Department over there. Why didn’t you stay there? (Laughter.)

  Q: Because I love you, Larry, that’s why. (Laughter.)

  MR. SPEAKES: Oh, I see. Just don’t put it in those terms, Lester. (Laughter.)

  Q: Okay, I retract that.

  MR. SPEAKES: I hope so.

  Q: It’s too late. (Laughter.)

  * * *

  Why is everyone making fun of me? I am in so many of you now that you would think I’d be taken seriously. Of course, I am thankful that you’re not. It just tells me what kind of people you are.

  EXT. EMERGENCY ROOM. NYU MEDICAL CENTER. NIGHT.

  Fred and Tommy help Felix get out of a cab. Emma is there to meet them. Felix is wrapped in a blanket so we hardly see his face.

  INT. INTENSIVE CARE. DAY.

  Felix is connected to many devices. He is holding Fred’s hand.

  FELIX: You want me to get better and I’m not getting better and I feel so fucking guilty.

  FRED: You’re going to get better.

  FELIX: Fred, let me die.

  FRED: I can’t do that.

  FELIX: Please learn how to. I’m so tired. (Fred holds him tightly.) You are such a bunny tiger. Please, God, give us one more year. I promise I’ll eat my spinach.

  TALLULA AND THE FOOD HANDLERS

  Tallula Giardino is a tall and breasty and bossy lesbian, with long ballerina’s legs that make her look top-heavy. She is lovingly intimidating, in that she speaks her mind, and how, though you don’t feel threatened by her. Fred, who adores her, wonders how she will be handling this one. How will she get her constituency to listen, the people she cares so much for? She makes them listen, she’s that convincing, and she’s particularly good at getting rich gay men to part with a few bucks for her organization, the Lesbian and Gay Union (LAGU), though never nearly enough, no, never enough. She is passionately committed to the rights of gay people and can make you feel ashamed when you aren’t too. She’s a good leader of her small group of volunteers. In the straight world she’d be getting paid. When people say there are no gay leaders, they should know that it’s hard to get good people to work for nothing. Tallula works for nothing.

  “The blood supply. We’re here tonight to speak about the blood supply. What are we going to do about it?” She’s a forceful speaker. She gets invited to speak all over the country. There are a few gay groups out there, struggling themselves, wanting, needing to be inspired by her energy and presence. How many other gays are willing to go out there and speak forcefully and pointedly to their own? Quite frankly, none. “I am tragically before our time has come,” she jokes, “I am pathetically against the tide,” only half-joking, following up with “And our time will come!” which of course is what her listeners want to hear as they erupt in spontaneous applause. “Someday maybe they’ll put me up at a decent hotel. I can’t tell you how often I have to sleep in the guest bedroom with a dog or a cat. Maybe both. I like dogs but I’m allergic to cats.” It’s hard to get elected anything as a lesbian. She refuses to get elected to anything by not being a lesbian. A gutsy lady. “America is so awful to its disenfranchised,” she tries to remind people every chance she gets. “We can’t even pay for our very own salvation.” These are not arguments many understand.

  Fred loves the way she can parry and thrust, knocking down fools without them feeling they’ve been anything but vital to the cause. He wishes he had that gift. His gift, he’s beginning to see, is “I get angry. I give good anger. Can’t do what Tallula does. Can’t not litter the ground with blood.” Which is how he now thinks we should be playing this one.

  “We have to consider the food handlers.” What’s Tallula talking about? “They will lose their jobs.” What are food handlers anyway? “People who prepare, cook, serve, buy, sell, and deal with the food of our city, the food of our country, represent a large number of our gay brothers and sisters. We are very heavily invested in this field. And think of how many gay waiters there are!”

  Fred’s losing her. Food handlers doesn’t top his list of what we’re heavily invested in. What a peculiar cornerstone.

  “Let’s choose something straight people will sit up and pay attention to,” she tells him.

  He thinks there’s something ass-backward about to happen. Why are we protecting potentially sick people’s jobs when they may in fact be infecting others, and not fighting to protect their lives before they do?

  And so the first ad hoc meeting composed of some hundred gay men and lesbians who do not belong to GMPA, and who will have nothing to do with those elitists, votes this early morning to tell gay blood donors to continue to give blood.

  There are one or two who believe this is strategically and morally wrong. “We must take the offensive, not the defensive,” they argue. “Tell gay men to stop giving blood immediately! Take our marbles and stay home. They’ll miss our blood donors soon enough. And at least we won’t be killing people.”

  “Oh, stop talking like Fred Lemish! You’re assuming that we are transmitting something to each other.”

  Fred’s pariah-dom is continuing to extend its reach.

  “WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK WE ARE DOING!” shouts Fred Lemish himself at this very meeting, shocking Tallula and others.

  Fred, who came for help, finds himself loaded for bear.

  He does not like arguing with Talllula, who is his friend. But here he is arguing, mightily, with Tallula.

  “You all are crazy!” Fred continues. “Food handlers! This is what you choose for your first Waterloo!”

  The meeting is over. The group disperses. Tallula Giardino flips Fred Lemish the finger as she walks out, saying, “Kisses.”

  WE KNOW WHO WE ARE

  “Those of us who have lived a life of excessive promiscuity on the urban gay circuit of bathhouses, backrooms, balconies, sex clubs, meat racks, and tearooms know who we are … Those of us who have been promiscuous have sat on the sidelines and by our silence have tacitly encouraged wild speculation about a new, mutant, Andromeda-strain virus. We have remained silent because we have been unwilling to accept responsibility for the role that our own excessiveness has played in our present health crisis. But, deep down, we know who we are, and we know why we’re sick.”

  So wrote Michael Callen and Richard Berkowitz in The Prick. It is an astounding, brave, and unexpected public confession that you’d think would shake up lots of things in all worlds, gay, straight, public health, government circles in general …

  It didn’t. It was as if it hadn’
t been written. Rebby was their doctor. “At least I am proud of you,” he said.

  DR. DANIEL JERUSALEM BREAKS DOWN

  Francis is dead on my floor.

  I am waiting for the undertaker.

  I’d had a good night’s sleep. There was no horror show of dreams. Each day and night I fear for the worst and wonder when the next one will come and the flood will take control.

  I went into medicine to help people. I think most doctors do. Too, because I loved men, my mission was even more resplendent. I don’t mean in any salacious way, although there are certainly pleasures in handling, so to speak, one’s own kind. Indeed, there are more men in medicine to touch the ladies than anyone would believe. Most doctors have difficulties in personal relationships, difficulties with words, sentences, talking out loud. It’s no wonder that the calling to medicine, to bodies, to investigations, can be so appealing to the socially maladapted. And I just mean that one is doubly blessed not only to be able to help people but also to help those people one instinctively loves the most.

  I fall in love with my patients all the time. Oh, nothing ever happens and they don’t even know it. These are my silly romantic fantasies. They hurt no one except perhaps myself, for I’ve had precious little of anything permanent. I assume this must be the way I’ve wanted it, that I’ve discovered I’m relatively shy, and this shyness, more than anything, makes me live alone, even though unwillingly. I think it must be hard to overcome shyness successfully. We keep so much inside ourselves, doctors. And the fantasies get worse, not better. When nothing comes along to take their place, the prospect of love becomes an even greater goal, further from possibility. No! It still can happen!

  I fell in love with Francis, who is dead on my floor. Not that I would have said to him, “I love you,” even if I’d had the chance. I fell in love with him as he was dying. I diagnosed him with this new thing when he showed his body to me, hardly a few months ago. I can sense now when someone has it. It’s got to do with the look of the skin. There’s some sort of light purple glow, almost invisible, as if it’s radiating from deep inside. This is not an easy burden for the body or mind or soul of either patient or doctor to bear. Francis is the seventeenth death in my own practice with this.