The American People, Volume 2

by Larry Kramer

  Slyme clears his throat. No one knows who he is and he’s annoyed. Dr. Dye starts to speak. Slyme dives right in: “The president wants you to know—” he starts out in his high squeaky voice, but several voices interrupt him to get their own items on an agenda that Grebstyne is preparing. Grebstyne’s sort of a jolly-looking neater version of Rebby Itsenfelder. Jewish brain (from the Bronx) but said to be mean as a snake. He wants Dye out of the way so he can take over NITS. But that’s a presidential appointment, so he’s screwed because he’s a Jew.

  Again, no one’s really in charge of this meeting. Dye is just sort of a presence, but he’s not directing us to anything. That’s the way of most meetings. A dozen or more other divisions and their heads could be right here in this room for all I know. And they never meet with each other!

  Omicidio sits on the edge of his seat, not wanting to miss a trick. I love looking at him and trying to imagine what his neat compact body looks like naked. Jerry’s taken over from Gist officially. Gist was caught sucking off one of his interns, and Jerry’s appointment finally got Moose’s (i.e., the president’s) approval. Gist’s labs had long since fallen apart and are not worth running as is and I know that appeals to Jerry.

  Dr. Dye is cold to everyone. But then, so is Omicidio. Come to think of it, almost everyone is cold to someone or other. I can’t imagine what in the history of this place made it into this.

  I notice that a Dr. Grodzo is looking at me intently. He suddenly gets up and leaves. I don’t know much about him.

  “The president wants you to know—” Slyme starts up again.

  Dr. Dye cuts him off again and announces the following. “You tell the president and his Mr. Moose that I was not amused by his treatment of me and we’re going to get nowhere attending to the health of this country if I am to be treated in such a fashion. I called Ruester personally to tell him about this shit when it first broke, so he would hear it from me first if he had any questions. He grunted and hung up. Almost immediately Moose called me back. ‘I think it wise, the president thinks it best, to let this one follow its own course. Perhaps it will just burn out.’ ‘There is no way it can burn itself out,’ I replied firmly. ‘Well, let’s just see what happens, shall we? And by the way, there is a chain of command here and the president does not like to be confronted directly.’ ‘This is a Chain Blue emergency,’ I said, ‘which allows me to call the president.’ ‘I am not familiar with that.’ And he hung up.”

  “I am here today to further this discussion,” says Slyme. Everyone now turns to him. His eyes are bulging even more. Slyme—well, you’ve met him—in his scrunched-up body he looks like a dwarf and you just know he was called a sissy when he was a kid and he’s out to pay us back for it now, big time. He starts to stutter and cough. We wait. Hoidene gives him a glass of water. He finally manages to scream it out in his high-pitched voice. “The president is in no way interested in anything whatsoever that pertains to homosexuals! Do not call us again about this shit!” And he bolts up and leaves.

  “Lady and gentlemen, the meeting is adjourned,” says Stuartgene, and everyone gets up and gets out fast. But not before Omicidio comes into Dye’s line of sight. “And when are you going to say something out loud?” Not to be outdone, Omicidio snaps back, “When I have something intelligent to say.”

  Meanwhile, over at the White House Stockman and Gobbel and Moose are cutting everybody’s budget in the entire government. Pewkin’s COD has been really slashed after that Chattanooga “choo-choo” stuff. COD now has a ton of vacancies in every single lab and division. The White House definitely doesn’t want anyone to know about this shit.

  When I point this out to Jerry, I get his increasingly all-purpose “That’s not our department.”

  “How can you say that?” I ask him.

  “Got anything better for me to say?” He winks and grins.

  Not good. Any of it. Three years going on four.

  I have left the best part until the end. Dr. Middleditch brought around a Dr. Dash Snicker to meet with Jerry, Hube, Debbi, and yours truly. He’s with Greeting and yes, they have a drug and Stuartgene’s already given the go-ahead to test it in trials without telling or asking anyone. It’s called ZAP. We’re not supposed to talk about it because you’re not allowed to test a drug for something (virus?) that you’re still officially looking for and haven’t sufficiently identified. Except that, in certain desperate situations, you can. It’s under the Wartime Emergency Powers Act, or something like that. I haven’t the vaguest idea how G-D and Dye got approval from FADS. Maybe they didn’t. The jerk Nutrobe who runs it has already said: no virus, no causative agent, no clinical trials. Maybe that’s why nobody talks to each other. They’d all kick each other in their balls.

  Okay. Now we’re up to date.

  HOME ON THE RANGE

  PURPURA: I found a note in Junior’s wastebasket.

  FOPPY: You read his basket?

  PURPURA: It said, “I’m going out into the world to dance, you bitch.” What do you think it means?

  FOPPY: First Mommy Mary’s son, Jesus, also spoke in parables.

  PURPURA: Foppy Schwartz, answer me, is Junior a confirmed fairy?

  FOPPY: Confirmed in the sense of accepted into the faith? Bar mitzvahed?

  PURPURA: Answer me!

  FOPPY: As Tallulah Bankhead once said, “Well, darling, he’s not sucked my cock.”

  PURPURA: Are you telling me Junior hasn’t quite found himself yet?

  FOPPY: Am I telling you that? Yes. Why not?

  PURPURA: I tried to explain to him that running a country is more important than flapping around the White House like a fairy in Swan Lake.

  FOPPY: There are no fairies in Swan Lake.

  PURPURA: There aren’t?

  FOPPY: Swans. There are swans in Swan Lake. We were flappers once. Don’t you remember?

  PURPURA: Junior has quit Yaddah and is going to ballet school!

  FOPPY: There are numerous ballet dancers who are not homosexual men, although I can’t think of any at the moment. (To himself, aside:) Junior, my young sweet friend, at the rate we are going we shall be shot at dawn.

  DANIEL AND JERRY

  Jerry says, “I guarantee I am the only one who wants to take this piece-of-shit division and work on this piece-of-shit new disease and make the whole thing work.”

  “Why do you tell me everything?” I ask him.

  This catches him off guard, as I wanted it to.

  “I got no one else to talk to. And you can’t hurt me. And I need a witness for whatever I do from now on. Besides, you’re cute.”

  This makes him laugh out loud like he’d told a hilarious joke.

  “That’s what you wanted to hear, right? You don’t have to answer that.”

  I asked Jerry how anyone could ignore what was obviously happening to us. Jerry didn’t answer me for a while. Then he replied, “Do you think anyone cares?”

  I hope it doesn’t shock you that I’m sexually attracted to Dr. Jerrold Omicidio. There’s no question he shows warmth toward me that he doesn’t show to anyone else. I wonder if he has anything he doesn’t want to talk about? Maybe if we went to bed together I could find out. Only joking. I wonder if I should ask his help in finding David.

  FRED TO DANIEL

  DON’T YOU DARE FALL FOR OMICIDIO! REBBY ITSENFELDER AND DEEP THROAT AND MONSERRAT KRANK AND BENOIS-FRUCHT AND DR. SISTER GRACE HAVE ALL SAID HE’S NOT TO BE TRUSTED!

  DEEP THROAT

  You’re not learning fast enough, Daniel. You’re too naïve and innocent. NITS is a cesspool of suspicion. Always has been. Since this place was only bungalows. There are plenty of docs and nurses still here from earlier years. They get to wear gold pins so you can identify them. But you can tell them by their sour pusses.

  Finally, a first patient with UC was admitted yesterday. Jerry didn’t tell you that? This is more than three years since the JOD and N.Y. Truth articles. Jerry and Grebstyne don masks and gloves and poke at the poor guy. Jerry
calls me over and I can tell from his look he wants me to “refresh” him about what he’s looking at again. Without mask or gloves I point out everything that this kid is manifesting. The whole menu of shit. The kid is terrified. I’m naming all this stuff out loud and by now other docs have come closer but not too close. I caress the kid’s cheek to comfort him. When I touch him, you can hear the group to a man sucking in the breath of fear.

  Daniel, this is not the real world in any way, shape, or form. I think your Mr. Goffman was barking up the wrong tree trying to find out what human monkeys are like in captivity. This is Stephen King material!

  DANIEL THE SPY

  Dr. Sister Grace has died. It was quite some time before this was announced. No one knows how. A fire destroyed her wing at Mater Nostra. Her body was not found, nor her research. Boy, has that all been hushed up. Not even an obituary anywhere placed by someone. Deep Throat told me that she was onto something. He said that she’d been picking his brains about shit. “Shit can be used as a surrogate marker for certain kinds of illnesses,” she told him, which made him happy to hear acknowleged by a Nobel laureate. She reminded him that polio was carried in feces. “Feces and vaginal bacteria can harbor an illness and carry it through the body via the rectum or the urethra or the penis or the placenta.” He was so fucking happy, he said. “This is what we had to find out!” And then he said: “Big-time shitstorm ahead, young Jerusalem and Lemish. Grace also said that Factor Eight was killing homosexuals. And that Von Greeting knew it.”

  DAME LADY HERMIA SENDS FRED A BOOK

  I am enclosing a most instructive volume for your perusal, M. Scott Peck’s People of the Lie. I particularly commend to your attention this passage: “Those who are evil are masters of disguise; they are not apt to wittingly disclose their true colors, either to others or to themselves.”

  Does our new “spy,” Dr. Daniel Jerusalem, whose reports you have been sending me are so riveting, realize he is in a swamp and in danger of being sucked in? Medical bureaucracies are like that, you must know by now. Beyond a certain point, there is no escape. He is in a heart of darkness. It is this heart that I believe has murdered our Grace.

  I do not wish to discuss Grace. I am in deep mourning.

  GREETING PRODUCTION REPORT

  Von Greeting orders the production of Dridgies tripled. Factor VIII sales figures are disappointing. He then travels to New Godding to be sworn in at Yaddah as one of its board of directors. It’s a great honor.

  WHAT IS DAVID JERUSALEM UP TO AND WHERE IS HE?

  I’m interested in spies. I’m reading everything I can find about a lot of names I want to know more about. I was used as a spy. Mr. Hoover was a spy. He spied on the whole world. Mr. Hoover was gay. I am too. Are many spies gay? Why would a gay man want to spy? British spies appear to be more famous than ours. Burgess and Maclean and Kim Philby each knew each other since they went to Cambridge University. They seem gay to me, but I can’t find anyone who’s written about this as being important. These guys all worked in Washington. Mr. Hoover must have known them. I’ll bet Mr. Hoover stayed in touch with them like he stayed in touch with me. After all, they each share the other’s biggest secret, don’t they?

  There was an obituary in the San Francisco newspaper for a guy named Garrie Nasturtium. He was found in the woods of Rock Creek Park. They said he committed suicide. They said he was very important to Mrs. Ruester. I recognize him as one of my clients at Mr. Hoover’s whorehouse. Is that why he killed himself? Or did somebody else do it for him? Does that mean that someone will be coming after me because of all I know? I’ve seen a lot of famous men’s faces in the newspapers that I recognize from the whorehouse.

  I do not have any friends. I don’t trust anyone. They could never understand what I have been through and I don’t want to tell them when they see my body.

  I bought a car. I’ve learned to drive! It’s exciting. It’s great having so much money!

  I miss Gertrude. I got sick and I didn’t want to burden her. But then I got better. I should go back to my twin brother at last. I am still angry with my whole family for abandoning me. What is wrong with me that I still live in such a prison?

  VON GREETING AND ARNOLD BOTTS ARE IN BED TOGETHER

  “It’s interesting, is it not, how little attention there’s been in the press about Nasturtium?” Von said.

  “Who cares if faggots die,” Arnold replied.

  “Or Dr. Sister Grace’s ‘disappearance.’”

  “She was a faggot too, you know.”

  “I didn’t know that. You’re overdue for a major punishment.”

  “Not tonight.”

  “Stuartgene wanted you particularly.”

  “Yeah? Well, he’s really sick when he gets going.”

  “People with great power exude great energy to get what they want. What are you doing with that drug I gave you?”

  “I found a partner. Knows his way around. Tell me again why you gave it to me. Isn’t it any good?”

  “I need a dummy front to disguise what else we’re doing. Who knows if it’s any good. You and your partner will find out. My scout bought it in Czechoslovakia. Who’s this partner?”

  “One of those Nazis at Partekla.”

  “Be careful.”

  “He has a couple drugs of his own too and is looking for a setup. And Sam Sport is our lawyer. You must know him.”

  “I’m impressed,” Von said.

  “Unusual for you to be impressed.”

  “I have Nutrobe in my pocket. Gobbel’s ordered him to behave or else.”

  “I’m impressed,” Arnold said.

  “Ruester came to town with a shitload of expert behind-the-scenes terror mongers.”

  “All the great presidents do.”

  “Well, I wasn’t a hundred percent certain about Old Peter. Now I’m certain.”

  “Anything you want to share with me?”

  “Not yet. It’s best that you not know yet.”

  They both said that.

  Von said, “You look real cute tonight. Give me a kiss at least.”

  * * *

  Arnold Botts is employed by G-D. Working with the men he has, he’s become fascinated by their methods of control and domination to get what they want. With promotions at Greeting-Dridge he was given power to do certain things. He and Von will have only so much time to get away with them. Someone honest might actually get elected, although he’s learned enough to doubt this. He sees the path his country is hell-bent on taking. It pleases him a lot. Could anyone who knew him growing up in Masturbov Gardens have seen this survivor coming out of that childhood?

  How can Arnold have known Old Peter? Well, if Ruester was G-D’s public pitchman for so many years, he and Manny and those Kaffeeklatschers would come to know Arnold Botts really well.

  A SCENE IN THE COUNTRY

  It looks like a full moon, Arnold thought, as they tried to walk to the cabin over the debris-littered field without getting their polished shoes filthy. Each was walking forward with different memories. Arnold’s contained visions of pleasurably torturing his boss Von, and Mount Vernon Pugh’s of how Sam Sport had so pleasurably allowed him to fuck him. Mt. Vernon, still in his twenties, is compact and cute and dresses like he still lived in England.

  “Okay, now what do you want to tell me?” Arnold said almost immediately after stepping out of his sporty little MG, which he parked behind the now-boarded-up Deltoid’s barbecue. Once upon a time he thought he’d fallen in love with the babe who worked here, name of Velvalee. She ditched him and he still hates her for it wherever she is.

  “Listen to me. I got only peculiar things to say,” Mount Vernon said as they entered a back door that went into the basement. “We discovered a new poison in blood. We didn’t do it on purpose. I mean it presented itself to us unasked for. Two little girls out Littham Grove way. They died. Pathologist said it was because they’d had shots from our whooping cough serum. Whooping cough serum contains one iota persumatin, which has maybe
got a touch of plasmatene in it, one tiny speck so microscopic it wouldn’t hardly be known to be there if it weren’t known to be there.”

  “How did you get through science in school, the way you talk?”

  “I didn’t get through science in school. I’m the boss’s cousin, remember? My English grandma was a Greeting. They had to put me in charge of something. I own too much stock. I built the whooping cough division, one thousand, one hundred and ten percentage. People didn’t know their cough was whooping until BaxxterDridgeGreeting convinced them it was not just an ordinary cough. You know our commercial. ‘Not just an ordinary cough.’ Scared everybody to death.”

  Yes, Arnold knew it. He got Velvalee to make it.

  “What about the poisoned blood?”

  “What about it? This seems different from the shit we had in that Factor Eight Alpha. The shit you told me about.”

  “You mean this is new shit?”

  “I guess.”

  “Jesus, don’t you know? Did you get rid of the old shit?”

  “Of course not. You ordered me not to.”

  Then Arnold took Mount Vernon into the secret room in this hidden cabin, where he punished the kid real good.

  INT. FORT DETRICK OFFICES/LABS. VARIOUS. DAY.

  MICKEY’S VOICE (screaming):… top-secret experiments at Fort Detrick, Maryland, that have produced a virus that can destroy the immune system. Its code name is Firm Hand. They started testing it in 1978—on a group of gays!