The American People, Volume 2

by Larry Kramer

  There is a lot of blame to go around. As with the Holocaust, too many people had to know what was going on!

  What did people know and when did they know it and why weren’t we told and if they didn’t know it why didn’t they know it!

  Yes, I am afraid, for me, and for you, and for all of us. This is no idle plague that is plaguing us.

  Why in fucking hell were we not told any of this!

  As Dr. Pepin said to me: “It was all there to be known.” He is writing a book, God love him.

  PURPURA RUESTER

  A First Lady always finds time for the important things. That’s what I get laid for.

  AMAZING GRACE, HOW SWEET WAS HER SOUND

  Fred will never receive any of the above from Dr. Sister Grace. Sadly, she will be found dead in her bed at her beloved Mater Nostra Dolorosa. “Old age” and “bad heart” are among the “learned” opinions put forth by various investigators. Her papers? They are rendered in such foul language that Archbishop Buggaro demanded that her quarters be cleared and fumigated and all its contents, including Grace, be cremated. Is this to be the end of her great usefulness to humanity, to The American People? Hooker contributions had been nonstop since before the American Revolution.

  HERBIE IN BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA

  I want to cry so much. I feel so funny. I shake so, I can hardly write my name. My stomach bloats like a big balloon. I fart and want to fart and can’t fart and then I shit in my pants when I am not anywhere near a toilet. You’d think in a town this size someone would know what’s wrong with me. No one knows what’s wrong with me. I know what’s wrong with me. There’s something wrong with me! That’s what’s wrong with me. I want to cry and cry. A new doctor takes a lot of my blood. He sees I want to cry. He holds my hand. “It’s all right to cry,” he said. “I am doing it a lot lately myself. Strange things are happening in our city.” He says he wrote to our congressman but didn’t get an answer. I told him our congressman is my father and he hates what I am. I also told him, “And he hates you, too, because to him you’re a nigger.”

  INT: EMMA’S APARTMENT. DAY.

  She is making Fred brunch. She is wearing her braces and moves awkwardly but effectively around her apartment.

  EMMA: How you doing?

  He doesn’t answer because he can’t.

  EMMA: What have you been doing?

  Fred sort of shrugs.

  EMMA: You’ve got to do something. They need you.

  FRED: Oh, yeah.

  EMMA: Yeah. Stop feeling sorry for yourself. I know you miss him and I know they threw you out and Buzzy tells me you aren’t very popular.

  FRED: Old friends cross to the other side of the street.

  EMMA: Guess they weren’t very good friends. Why do you give a flying fuck?

  FRED: Were you in an iron lung?

  EMMA: I was.

  FRED: For how long?

  EMMA: Long.

  FRED: And then what?

  EMMA: Then I was in bed at home. I was connected to my classroom by a little loudspeaker. All the kids would be required to come and visit me. We’d say hello and then not know what to say next. “Oh, I recognize you by your voice.” “Oh, me, too.” They were terrified of me. Still are. I scare the shit out of people. The holy terror in the wheelchair. But I graduated first in my class at college and med school.

  FRED: You’re amazing.

  EMMA: No, I’m not.

  FRED (eyeing the food she’s laid out): Do you think that being Jewish makes you always hungry?

  EMMA: I don’t know. I’m not Jewish.

  FRED: You’re not?

  EMMA: I’m German.

  FRED: Everyone thinks you’re Jewish.

  EMMA: I know. In medicine that helps. Get to work.

  FROM THE POCAHANTI ARCHIVES

  ANOTHER ANNUAL MEETING FLADD DAJUSTE, RECORDING SECRETARY

  It is sad where we are and what we are going through and what we must now do to stay alive.

  We need new blood!

  We are still the Pocahanti. There are still a few noble Americans left proud to be connected to those who were here first.

  But what can we do, we hundred men of blue blood? We are running out of steam. We are not strutting our stuff sufficiently. We are meant to be a visible symbol of Our Country’s Valor and Victory and Vibrancy. I love the letter V. It is so American.

  Trace Vanden Schuville makes many an address to us about our torpor. “Get off your duffel bags” has been his charming way of challenging us. Age has always been a problem. All of us qualify as old farts. Such are the rules of admission that by the time a man has been qualified for membership to replace a fallen—i.e., dead—Pocahanti, he is often close to being a dead Pocahanti himself.

  “But a number of us want to do something before it is too late,” says old (eighty-seven) Basil Rummigen, without inserting any specific details into his very long (forty-seven minutes) speech of encouragement. Everyone nodded in agreement, that is, those who weren’t asleep.

  We at present have among us twenty justices of the Supreme Court, forty-three officers of major Fortune 500 corporations, and many assorted others who helped to run and fuel our country. We should be accomplishing something! We must reconnect ourselves to the seats of power. Each year there are fewer descendants of George Washington we can draw upon. The only way out is to change our definition of what it requires to become a secret Pocahanti. We have a new president, Peter Ruester. Our board has already, in secret chambers, elected Attorney General Moose to the office of our 293rd chief Corn-Gatherer. He gratefully consented. He sees in us something useful for the president’s vision of America. Quite right! Ruester stands for the same ideals as we do. Was not his campaign promise “I’ll put America back in America”?

  The secret word went out to our board, the one dozen Decision Makers. “Come to the clubhouse tonight at midnight. We have important matters to introduce.”

  “I am getting too old for midnight meetings,” a few of us were heard to mutter.

  “Don’t be an old codger.” I believe that was Cadwallader Rampage Trumpith. And then he added to those complaining, “Take a longer nap beforehand.”

  Manny Moose calls this, his first, meeting to order. He is a fine-looking American. He looks most resplendent in his robe of office, a long carapace made, of course, of corncobs, quite heavy, and so he’s sitting down on his throne. This throne, woven from stalks, is prone to invasions by rodents but the exterminator stopped by today.

  It is true that Chief Corn-Gatherer Moose is not in fact a Pocahanti, in that he has no ties to either George or Martha. But if we don’t do something we’ll die out like the Shakers. Our average age is eighty-eight and a half years. “What you stand for must not be killed off,” Moose said to us. “You just need new blood!” My very words! Already he’s seen to it that we’ve had an infusion of new capital “from like-thinking friends.” Tonight he’s meant to offer his plans for our new future.

  “I call this meeting, the 29,456th out of camera and the 378th held in secret even from our brothers, to order.” Moose is a big man even without his robe of office. Our investigations revealed that he is spiteful, vindictive, determined, unceasingly ambitious, dishonest, hypocritical, known to be all these things, and for Ruester’s administration the perfect attorney general. Well, they said many of these same things about our Founding Fathers. America, as Ruester himself tells us in his special mailing, is “heading into decline unless we extricate it ourselves.” If you were such a doddering ancient organization, wouldn’t you put the president’s chief judge in charge if you could? (I address this question also to our posterity that one day will read these minutes.) I am merely calling a spade a spade. I shall be the lifesaver of the Pocahanti! I believe I am the only one without a pacemaker or a hearing aid.

  I note Buster Punic sitting nervously at the far end of our ancient table, this huge piece of tree from just that spot on the bank of the Delaware where George crossed over to the other side. A
lthough Buster has been an automatic member since his birth (the first Punic arrived, we must not forget, and we have, in Easthampton in 1644), it’s only with Moose shaking us up that Buster has finally come around to putting on his tribal robe and taking his rightful seat in our midst. Because his lineage is not only ancient but can actually be traced, Buster is entitled not only to Pocahantidom but to Decision Maker status. To keep to our limit of a dozen we had to chop off some Ear of Corn to fudge Moose’s elevation. It was estimated that Supreme Court Justice Northrop Droppsie would be dead within the week. And he was.

  A tall and distinguished old man steps forward. His Ear of Corn reads: Brent Fairfax. I hardly recognize him. His ancestor … well, it is beginning to come out now, that unfortunate story. Fairfax, Virginia, was once their land. George was diddled by that original old Fairfax, who was such a poofter he was ordered by the king to get out of England. I wager more and more tidbits like this are going to be discovered in the hands of these wretched revisionist new historians. They will be calling all of us fairies if we don’t watch out.

  “The chief Corn-Gatherer has asked me to introduce several outsiders who have Precious Corn to place before us. I ask the Decision Makers of the Pocahanti to invite inside those who await outside.” Ah, yes, Mr. Fairfax is a friend of the new chief Corn-Gatherer.

  “Permission is hereby granted,” Chief Corn-Gatherer Moose replies.

  It was Fairfax who saved us in the Hoover years. His “friend” Edgar threatened to expose us for being “a hotbed of homosexuals unless you let us in.” So we let in Edgar and dear Clyde. They were active and distinguished Corn-Gatherers for quite some time. We gave them good value, access to a world they never knew or could otherwise know. And Edgar protected any of us who got in trouble.

  Fairfax manages to lead in three blindfolded (as tradition dictates) men, each of them (as tradition also dictates) carrying an ear of dried corn. Each is guided to place his ear of dried corn on the table and is then allowed to remove his blindfold.

  “Dr. Vonce Greeting. Mr. Arnold Botts. Mr. Linus Gobbel.” Reading from a card, Decision Maker Fairfax intones the names, and they almost sound well-born enough.

  Fairfax continues: “Dr. Greeting is head of the largest pharmaceutical company in the world. Mr. Botts is his assistant and is preparing to launch his own manufacture of lifesaving drugs. Mr. Gobbel is President Ruester’s right hand, and he has just been appointed, as well, the director of LOTS, that brand-new branch of our government that polices Law, Order, Theft, and Sex Crimes, the latter now coming under scrutiny at last. Now I think I have read all this correctly.”

  Murmurings of “Hear, hear” are heard, along with a round of soft hands clapping. (Or is it “here, here”? I have never known.)

  “I believe Mr. Gobbel wishes to say a few words,” Moose says.

  “Thank you. Corn-Gatherers, I am honored to be here tonight and to become a member of your historic organization. The president and I would be honored if the Pocahanti would take under their personal attention our new division of LOTS, which is going to be called the Tricia Institute, and is being spun off as something private and independent. It will be solely devoted to, shall I say, looking into certain things, meaning things pertaining to the wretched stain of homosexuality, which must be expunged before it devours our people.”

  Let it be noted that there follows a lesser number of “Hear, Hear”s, along with much clearing of throats.

  Linus Gobbel then says: “We also intend to reestablish that greatest example of America’s fight for independence, the Minutemen from the days of our Revolution and birth. Our president is already at this very moment converting our many state-by-state National Guards into Minutemen. I shall be in charge of them. I will name them Special Forces. Every country has them.”

  At this point Chief Corn-Gatherer Moose suddenly announces, “Will the recording secretary hereby cease his notation, acknowledging for the minutes that our decision-making is begun, so that we may all now proceed, in the secretive manner prescribed for us by our ancestors, to discuss how to effect the calling for which we now are being called.”

  I hereby attest to the accuracy and veracity of the above minutes.

  INT. MEETING ROOM. HEALTH DEPARTMENT. DAY.

  A big tacky room. Health Commissioner Glanz sits facing an audience of a dozen or so scattered attendees. A few familiar GMPA faces, Lee, Herb, Morton, busy making notes. Away from them all, Fred, with Tommy, is sitting bored out of his mind, with his eyes closed.

  GLANZ: I have been assured by the Center of Disease and by Food and Drug Supervision that this has not entered the general population of The American People …

  Fred’s eyes open suddenly and he will now go ballistic. He grabs a newspaper out of his attaché case.

  FRED: Dr. Commissioner Glanz, you have just uttered one fat fucking lie. And you know it! I hold up evidence to present to this stupid useless Inter-Agency Task Force the mayor has called into being to show the city that he is doing something, this copy of the London Observer newspaper, which has the following headline, and I quote, “One million people will become infected. Including heterosexuals.”

  He runs through the aisles shoving The Observer in front of everyone’s faces.

  Straight people. Men and women who fuck with each other. (Drawing out this word:) Het-er-o-sex-uals. Cocks into cunts. Infecting each other. Dr. Commissioner Glanz, have you talked to your friends in London? In Washington? Oh, I forgot. You haven’t got any friends in Washington. They killed you in Washington. How many gay blacks were in your syphilis study that murdered so many? Where is your conscience, our commissioner of health! Isn’t there some oath you swear in medical school? Or has someone sworn you to secrecy? The White House? Which secretary of what department? Our putrid mayor?

  He rams the paper into Glanz’s face and leaves. After he’s gone a second, he comes back in.

  By the way, Doc. I like to think I am part of the general population. An awful lot of us do. You might want to make a note of that.

  He grabs the newspaper back. Tommy follows him out. In the back of the room observing all of this has been Arnold Botts, who’s been making notes.

  INT. CORRIDOR. HEALTH DEPARTMENT. DAY.

  Fred collapses into Tommy’s arms.

  FRED: We’re not getting anywhere. There’s got to be a better way to make people pay attention. We need a fucking army.

  INT. FRED’S LOFT. NIGHT.

  Fred is staring at the large photograph of Felix. Tommy is with him.

  FRED: I want so much for us to be better than straight people. Where is everyone?

  RIVKA JERUSALEM IS FINALLY REWARDED

  Rivka Jerusalem realized she had no place to turn for help but to Gertrude Jewsbury in Palm Beach.

  When Philip finally died they’d been married fifty years. So now she lived alone in the tiny room in the Hotel Eden in Miami Beach.

  He’d told her many times over many years that he was waiting to die. Indeed, each day he waited for it and each night he went to sleep hoping for it and each morning he was disappointed when he woke up still here. Sometimes she thought Philip had been waiting to die for as long as she’d known him. Indeed, he had been.

  Clearing out his belongings she had found a letter to her. “Dear Rivka, my Rivka,” it said, “I am sorry I did not give you a better life. I am sorry it took so long for me to die. I am sorry that I often did not know what to do and did things I did not understand. Many times I thought I might be losing my mind. There is not a day I can remember when I did not feel sick to my stomach and wanted to end all this pain. I am sorry I never knew what to do with you. You were so beautiful I could not understand why you would have me. I often wished you would go away and leave me like your own grandmother had three times divorced the men in her life who she said treated her ‘rotten.’ I am sorry that because of me we have four sons who have not been good to us because I have not been good to them or you. I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sorry. I am sor
ry. I say this five times, one for each of you. I go to someplace where I hope you will forgive me.”

  She was not going to allow herself to think about any of this.

  Rivka hadn’t seen Gertrude since 1925. That was the year Amos Standing married Gertrude after one last time trying to convince Rivka to marry him. But Rivka married Philip Jerusalem, Amos went away, and Gertrude departed for what would become decades of world travel: postcards came to Rivka from farther and farther away until they came no longer. Yes, Rivka had turned Amos down time after time and finally married Philip, his best friend. Amos was a Christian, so she could never marry him even if she found him attractive, which she did not, and even though he had a great deal of money, which Philip certainly did not, and even though her own father, who was tired of being poor, suggested she might do her parents a favor anyway by marring the rich goy.

  Many times over the years Philip also told Rivka, “When I die, you won’t have enough money to live on. Find Amos Standing. Tell him I’m dead.”

  Rivka was running out of money. Gertrude must have all that money Amos had settled on her, money that would have been Rivka’s if Rivka had been Amos’s bride. Rivka only had two thousand dollars left in the bank. Philip’s benefits from his pension from working for the United States government since World War II would now be halved, and they’d hardly been enough as it was, even with her peanuts from her tiny pension from American Red Blood. She couldn’t afford to stay at the Hotel Eden anymore. She couldn’t afford to go anywhere she could think of that was remotely pleasant. She had long ago lost touch with whatever friends might still be alive and in any position to help her because she had always been so ashamed of her awful marriage. Yes, Amos’s money would take care of Rivka, as he himself had wanted to do so long ago, something she had never told Philip.