by Larry Kramer
Slyme, of course, popped his head and self back in and screamed: “And we don’t ever want to see those words anal intercourse again!”
Dingus remained and, staring still at Dodo, announced very loudly: “And where is your esteemed director, Dr. Dye? His attendance record has become quite spotty. As has yours.” Why Dingus, who is a Democrat, is against whatever Dodo is doing is one of those good questions, the increasing number of which in this history is reaching uncontrollable proportions. Like why was Dr. Garth Buffalo excommunicated and sent out into some wilderness? He’s got a Nobel and says he has an idea how to tackle UC. I’ve asked around for any gossip, but my greedy hands remain empty. Buffalo was fired from Harvard, where he’d been picketed by a group calling themselves the Minutemen.
Jerry said to Dingus, loudly, “Dr. Dye and I are still waiting for some money.”
Dingus exited with the growing-too-familiar curtain line: “That’s not my committee.” Then he, too, popped back in to go and take a look at Jerry’s name card. “What kind of name is that! Too long to write down.” And he’s off.
INT. FRED’S LOFT. NEW YORK. NIGHT.
Fred and Tommy, their eyes filled with tears. There is still a big blow-up photo of Felix. By now Tommy is even more in love with Fred.
TOMMY: My brother’s sick now. Emma took Bruce out of Invincible and put him into Table. She hates Invincible, calls them butchers. She hates Dr. Poo. She calls him a charlatan quack.
FRED (kisses the blow-up): Felix, why are they letting us die? Someone’s letting all this happen, Tommy, and it isn’t God. I wonder how long any of us has. I wonder it every single moment of every single day.
CUT TO:
Fred and Tommy still in street clothes, asleep next to each other.
Fred suddenly shoots up from a nightmare.
FRED (screaming): Help!
Tommy is awake and looking down at him. Then they hug and start crying again.
THE WHITE HOUSE
OFFICE OF THE PRESS SECRETARY PRESS BRIEFING BY LARRY SPEAKES
MR. SPEAKES: Lester’s beginning to circle now. He’s moving in front. (Laughter.) Go ahead.
Q: Since the Center of Disease (laughter) reports—
MR. SPEAKES: This is going to be a sex question.
Q:—that an estimated—
MR. SPEAKES: You were close.
Q: Well, look, could I ask the question, Larry?
MR. SPEAKES: You were close.
Q: An estimated three hundred thousand people have been exposed to this, which can be transmitted through saliva. Will the president, as commander in chief, take steps to protect the armed forces’ food and medical services from these patients or those who run the risk of spreading it in the same manner that they forbid typhoid fever people from being involved in the health or food services?
MR. SPEAKES: I don’t know.
Q: Could you—is the president concerned about this subject, Larry—
MR. SPEAKES: I haven’t heard him express—
Q:—that seems to have evoked so much jocular—
MR. SPEAKES:—concern. It isn’t only the jokes, Lester.
Q: Has he sworn off water faucets? No, but I mean, is he going to do anything, Larry?
MR. SPEAKES: Lester, I have not heard him express anything on it. Sorry.
Q: You mean he has no—expressed no opinion about this epidemic?
MR. SPEAKES: No, but I must confess I haven’t asked him about it. (Laughter.)
Q: Would you ask him, Larry?
MR. SPEAKES: Have you been checked? (Laughter.)
OUR FIRST FAMILY
“Foppy, you were the first person I told I was gay. You told me I wasn’t sick and to keep my mouth shut. Well, I want to open my mouth. I keep wanting to come out of the closet and you keep pushing me back in. As a public personality I have a responsibility to my people. Our people! I want to be a contender!”
“My thinner Marlon Brando, my shorter Tommy Tune, your father does not like us.”
“But all you do is go to parties with Ma’s Dragon Ladies.”
“This makes me privy to much useful information.”
“Such as.”
“She looks good in red.”
“She must know you’re gay.”
“We do not discuss it.”
“Why not?”
“Why not, why not, youth wants to know? Because Mommy and Daddy are rulers of more than two hundred million people who look on us as freaks.”
“You deny your true feelings.”
“Better that than she deny me all her parties. One makes choices.”
“The Supreme Court makes its choice today. You want to bet we’re going to be officially declared null, void, and illegal?”
“The Supreme Court is voting today?”
“You can be locked up for making love in your own bedroom. I’ll blackmail him! I’ll tell the world about me. I am going to New York to dance with Robert.”
“Robert has just died from this plague.”
“Oh, no! It’s getting worse and worse and it’s my own father’s fault. How dare he! And you! With all you know, what are you doing to help? You have known her since she was a girl. Help us, Foppy!” They hug each other. “When Uncle Rock was in that Paris hospital and they found out with what, they wouldn’t call him back.”
“She told me she called him every day.”
“Foppy, you’ve got to wake up.”
“Your father was a cheerleader in college.”
“A cheerleader?”
“With pom-poms. And tight sweaters and white duck pants that … accentuated … the positive. In his early starlet days he would emerge naked from the ocean at Santa Monica looking like an Adonis. He was always exposing his … He was very popular … among certain sets.”
“Pop?”
“A little diddle now and then. One had a career to further.”
“Pop?”
“Everybody did it. Cary Grant and Randolph Scott and Tyrone Power and Errol Flynn. Well, Errol would do it with anything that moved. It was a different world then. Occasional transgressions did not require bombing Libya.”
“So why does he hate us?”
“Those who hate are usually guilty of what they hate.”
“Are you sure this isn’t only gossip?”
“Gossip! Gossip! Gossip is life! And death.”
“So these are the facts of life. What else? What else do you know about her?”
“In for a penny, in for a pound.”
“I knew you knew more.”
“There once was a man named Benny Thau. No, I cannot. We have known each other too long. I adore her. She adores me. Why, we are so close we know each other’s very thoughts.” The red phone rings. Foppy almost collapses on the floor. “Never underestimate the power of a queen.” He answers. “My Lady Macbeth, what is this surprise package I hear will be unwrapped at the Supreme Court?”
Junior claps his hands in silent glee. “Way to go, Fopp!”
His mother is heard on the speakerphone. “It has happened. The vote was five to four. Tough break. You are now and still illegal.”
“But I … we had so hoped.” Foppy’s voice cracks a bit.
“One of the justices was on the fence. But he fell off. Be careful, Fopp. Friends are one thing, politics another. History is what we make it.”
Foppy mimicks her. “History is what we make it.” He hangs up on her. “Which of us has a past that’s passed, my Mommy Dearest!” He picks up the phone. “Operator, I need a number in Pasadena. Is there an old farts’ home, folks’ home, for movie old-timers, you know, alta cockers … My dear, thank you. Don’t let anyone ever tell you again that your service stinks.” He dials and turns on a tape recorder. “Make way, Kitty Kelley, here comes Foppy!… Hello? Mr. Benny Thau, please … Well, don’t they have phones in Intensive Care?… Well, hold the phone up to the respirator!… Hello? Benny?… Benny! Was machst du? It’s Foppy Schwartz, First Mommy’s best friend. You remember us fr
om the old days? I’m so glad you’re still alive. What? You were just on your way to meet your Maker? Well, I know you want to go and meet him with a clear conscience. Listen, what do you remember about First Mommy? You know, the real dish.” He starts making notes furiously. “I know that. Something better … Not bad … A little better. Now you’re cooking! Go for broke, baby. It’s your last chance … No fucking shit! Benny, I love you, Benny. Yes, I know you’re not a fairy. But you are, Benny. You are. You’re the good fairy.” He hangs up the phone and shows the tape to Junior. “Our redeemer liveth. Although he didn’t sound so hot.”
Purpura appears.
“My Capital Concubine…” Foppy begins.
“Yes, my oldest friend, First Fopp…”
“… you have always surrounded yourself with the sensitive, the gifted, the amusing. You have even allowed yours truly to be among your most trusted confidants … You do remember your dear mother’s dear lesbian friend Zasu Pitts who was so helpful to you? Your Broadway career—such as it was—thanks to lesbian Mary Martin…”
“Such as it was!’”
“Oh, my Supreme Dictator of Right and Wrong, I have been thinking of how happy we were in those old days when we were young and carefree, swinging along Hollywood and Vine, gallivanting at homes and studios, with powerful moguls like Benny Thau…”
“Benny Thau?”
“MGM’s studio head has nominated yours as the best blow job he ever had.”
“My Beatrice Lillie, will there be fairies at the bottom of my garden?”
“You were a very ambitious starlet, my Eve Harrington.”
“‘Were,’ my Addison DeWitless?”
“Yes, it’s always been mandatory for you to get ahead. Soon, perhaps, historians will have the balls to fill in the blank with: whose?”
“You are treading on very tender toes.”
“You were kneeling on the most active of knees.”
“Since when have you become so interested in the politics of power, my Benedict Arnold?”
“Since you became so interested in fucking my people, my Linda Lovelace.”
“Then be careful you don’t go too far, my Alger Hiss.”
“I go too far? From your very first … screen tests … arranged by Benny with Spencer Tracy and Clark Gable—”
“Spencer Tracy was a drunken faggot who couldn’t get it up.”
“As was said of your husband and why he married you.”
“Now you go too far. Do you know that the penalty for exposing official secrets about officials is death!”
“My Ilse Koch, I have located dear Benny.” He happily waves the tape of their conversation.
“So you, too, are into tapes, my Tricky Dicky?”
“Let us try not to allow history to punish us so much.”
“Do I sense a negotiation about to transpire?”
“You do. Filled with junk bonds, my Drexel Burnham. Daddy has ignored all action on UC. It appears he cannot even form the letters with his lips. With three official commissions on this deadly matter, is it not time you taught him not only to read them but how to say our name out loud? Indeed, with your own son at such peril—”
“So you are going to tell the whole world about my Junior?”
Junior speaks up. “Junior is going to tell the world about Junior!”
“So everybody will know!”
“Aw, come on, Ma. Everybody knows. And I was born this way.”
“You were not born this way! You were just too young when I took you to see The Red Shoes.”
“And I also want First Daddy to propose legislation prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation—”
“And don’t forget: Mom, men are going to marry men and women women!”
Foppy says, “As long as we are negotiating, my Sandra Day O’Connor, Daddy must also petition the Supreme Court to rehear that wretched wrongful case that has made your own son and your oldest friend illegal.”
“Oh, Uncle Foppy, I’m so proud of you! I can’t thank you enough. Our brothers and sisters can’t thank you enough!”
“Oh, no, you don’t! It is not too late to marry you off to an understanding older woman or a dyke! In the old days all the dykes made movies. Now they play tennis. Junior, your mother is going to buy you a tennis player!”
Electra, the black maid, appears. “You have the highest disapproval rating of any First Mommy ever,” she says courageously.
“Be quiet, Electrolux, or I’ll take your drugs away.”
“Glory, hallelujah, it’s about time!”
“Not those drugs. Take all those drugs you want. I mean health care, medicine, education—that’s a drug for you people—and abortion! I’ve already taken away all your abortions. So you can never get out of your filthy rut, with your voracious appetite for sex and children and sex and more children and more sex—”
“Really, this is your Mad Scene, my Lucia. Is it not time to make your exit now and steal home to advise Daddy to—”
“Home! Home! I’ve swallowed enough. What do faggots know of home? You don’t have children. We won’t let you have children. We won’t let you get married. Unless you marry one of us and have our children. You call yourselves gay but you’re not happy. How could you be happy with all the laws we pass to make certain that you can’t be. Tell the world? You think the world cares? You think the world wants to know that my son is gay? That my daughter is a drugged-out hippie? That my husband’s children by another marriage are of little interest to us? That Benny Thau blabs how many times I got down on my knees and opened my mouth? All my people care about is that I’m a married woman and a mother whose husband is the most powerful potentate since Jesus. No one wants to believe anything juicy about Jesus!”
“Dishonor is the bitter part of squalor. But I have yet to play my ace for the world.”
“Your ace? That ridiculous tape of your alleged conversation with Benny Thau? No one will believe you. And no, Junior, you will not tell the world. No, you will not become a dancer. You will get married. To a woman. Lest your people be quarantined, put into camps after mandatory testing, with no research or treatments or insurance or jobs, and allowed to die. You think the United States of America has time for your people?”
“But soon there will be…” Junior seeks help from Electra.
“One billion…”
“… people infected all over the world. Mommy, please don’t do this to us. To me! I don’t want to pretend forever.”
“Why not? I have. After a while you can’t tell the difference.”
“I will never speak to you again!”
“I have to get us reelected! I have to untangle Iran! I have to win the Cold War! I have to end the arms race! I must sort out Israel and Russia and I don’t have time to end your filthy plague! You think the world cares if I sucked every dick in America? They’re amused perhaps, but The American People know that a person’s sex life is his own business. I have a man to rule! I have a country to run!” She dials a number on her portable phone. “Pootie Pie, it’s done. I’ve saved our reign for history. Now run along to the camera. Kiss-kiss.”
“Turn on the television set, Electrolux,” First Mommy commands.
“Turn the fucker on yourself,” Electra answers.
First Mommy raises her hand to strike Electra, but Junior stands in her way. He switches on the set. First Mommy comes and puts her arms through his and Foppy’s as they watch together.
“My fellow Americans. It’s been nearly three years since I first spoke to you from this room. Together we’ve faced many difficult problems and I’ve come to feel a special bond of kinship with each one of you. Tonight I’ve come here for a different reason. I’ve come to a difficult personal decision as to whether or not I should seek reelection. Vice President Trish and I would like to have your continued support and cooperation in completing what we began three years ago. I am therefore announcing that I am a candidate and will seek reelection to the office I presently
hold. Thank you for the trust you’ve placed in me. God bless The American People and good night.”
NOVEMBER 6, 1984
PETER RUESTER, PRESIDENT OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, IS REELECTED WITH THE BIGGEST ELECTORAL LANDSLIDE IN ALMOST FIFTY YEARS
THE REELECTION OF PETER RUESTER
IANTHE KEEPS US UP TO DATE
Yes, dear Fred, unfortunately we shall have four more years of Purpura to live through. She has proved herself indefatigable in every imaginable way. She is never out of sight, with him, without him. Her power daily extrudes more and more throughout the land from the White House, where she reigns supreme and where they are scared shitless of her. Polls indicate she is not liked. This doesn’t bother her. She even jokes about it. “They’ll accuse me of stealing all my dresses again,” she laughed. Of course she doesn’t pay for them. “The idea that I should pay to dress up for The American People when The American People want me to be dressed up!” Is she still giving blow jobs? You know, I don’t know. Patti doesn’t think so.
“She knows she now has more important things to do with the big boys. They are all certainly frightened of her, which is a new role for her, to have this much power and sway and authority. I’ve seen it coming of course, this unmitigated power, for many years, rising up slowly at first but firmly until now it is truly throbbing. What need now of blow jobs indeed! She is blow-jobbing the country—the biggest cock in the world.”
The second inauguration was as lavish as the first, with celebrities gushing like oil wells. She has learned how to look lovely. Her knobby piano legs have somehow been disappeared. Her hair is immaculate. Her makeup is excellent. She has perfected the role of devoted partner, two steps behind unless he’s holding her hand, which mostly he is. He can’t get along without her. Some of us can see that now. We forgot he was an actor. He was not a good actor. Now he is a good actor. The scripts are still as crummy as ever, but he long ago learned how to surmount mere words with his confident smile. Do I think she’s making policy? You bet. Do I think she’s running things? You bet. Do I think she’s heartless and bold, pragmatic and fully skilled at keeping her eye on the prizes of Fame and Posterity and making him into a Great Man? Dumb questions, all.