The American People, Volume 2

by Larry Kramer

  The distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.

  PUBIE’S MANIFESTO

  The important gay journalist Pubie Grotty is an unattractive package and he knows it. He is dumpy and sloppy and unkempt and happy about it, even though he knows that if he cleaned up his act he might like himself more. It’s a perversion, he knows, to be so stubborn about remaining in such a state. But being an intentional slob gives him energy, wonderful gism for the crusading gay muckraker, as he sees himself. Why, if he were attractive he wouldn’t be half so angry. He gets his best ideas and stories this way: he smiles at people and they believe his smile is beneficent. He smiles, people are charmed, they confide too much, and there it is, all quoted in The Village Vice. On such a rink has Pubie skated his way to a certain infamy. It extends throughout the Village. He thinks The Village Vice is the world.

  He is not without a kind of honor. He is extraordinarily proud of being gay.

  Long ago it had come to his attention that his gayness and some other people’s gayness are not the same. Well, there was nothing he could do about that. But now more than ever he believes there can be only one gayness. His gayness is the right gayness. Now, with this UC this difference in gaynesses has tried to spread itself like spilled varnish oozing irremovably across a garage’s cement floor, impossible to scrape off. (He does not have a garage, but he likes the simile.)

  It’s been no good his seeing that The Vice ignores UC as if it isn’t happening. Fewer and fewer read The Vice, even in Greenwich Village, and fewer still read Pubie and those few are either on his side already or are only reading him because they’re sitting on the toilet with nothing else to read.

  Before UC, gays read him. He even won awards. Why should his philosophy of gayness be any different now? Because of some illness in “malfeasant gays”? HE IS NOT SICK! HIS GAYS ARE NOT SICK!

  “This article is about Fred Lemish, who is gay and who has taken it upon himself to be our leader in the fight to call attention to an illness that’s been affecting parts of our community. Because of his prior total absence in the world of gay politics he has alienated a great many who were not absent when the rules by which we live were agreed upon and ratified by generations of gay leaders and their constituents and constituencies ever since.

  “What has troubled many has been Lemish’s implication, nay assumption, that this illness is of gay men’s own devising, that it’s spread by ‘our promiscuity,’ and that in order for it to be expunged gay men must live a life devoid of sexual pleasure. Lemish would have us give up our history. Lemish would have us deny not only our heritage but what defines us and what we live for. Lemish would have us conceive of a future in which the most important parts of our lives are eviscerated from us…”

  Out, out, damned Lemish!

  He hates Fred Lemish. The prose he’s written doesn’t reek enough of this hate. It’s too … too reasonable.

  Fred Lemish must be stopped!

  My name alone will stop him.

  “We will not change! We will not bow down before our enemies who are trying to tell us we are sick! We will not be told what we can and cannot do! We will not be flagellated into submission to the lives that our enemies want us to live!”

  The newsstand sales of this issue with Fred Lemish on the cover (“Is Fred Lemish Gays’ Very Own Gay Enemy?”) do not meet the editor’s expectations. Pubie is given notice he’s being terminated.

  “You’d think with all the people we know,” Cocker Rutt says to Pubie.

  “You’d think with all your fans,” Pubie says to Jervis.

  “You’d think with all your students,” Pubie says to Jervis and Cocker.

  “You’d think with all the gay readers and subscribers to The Village Vice,” Pubie says to them all.

  It is agreed they must join in countering the growing visibility and audibility of the likes of Fred Lemish. This is how Sex Über Alles was further germinated into the world. They and it will stem the tide of people too panicked to have sex. By not mentioning UC, it will not exist. To talk about it or write about it is to advocate for it, why, even to promote it, and we can’t have any of that!

  Now all he needs is a job.

  GOD NEEDS AMPLIFICATION

  Dr. Oswald Botkin is the new head of HAH. He, too, is preparing a speech, to be delivered to youngsters back home in Indiana who are meant to be straying. He, too, believes in lists. He sits down to pluck from his master inventory of phrases and feelings. Stuff that hits him where he lives. Stuff that were he up on a pulpit, which of course he is, or will be when he delivers this, he could send sailing out into the farthest crypt of the Temple with a booming resonance. When you hate hard you have to scream hard. His childhood playmates had made fun of him because of his religion. They don’t make fun of him now. Jesus has given him a lot. When you’re plain and poor Jesus allows you to hate.

  Today’s Jesus and Today’s Trinity are the two largest-circulation publications in the AAFF (All-American Fundamentalist Family) movement. Its division, Fundamentalist Families First for Victory (FFFV), has given Oswald visibility, given him TV guest appearances and radio interviews and plenty of being quoted in The Monument and The Truth. Today’s Jesus and Today’s Trinity are more powerful in every way than ever, particularly in the halls of Congress.

  This is Oswald’s stock boilerplate: “A virulent moral sickness is attacking The American People. Its name is unrestrained sex mania and its leading players are named homosexuals. They are trying to teach you young people to glory in and glorify all the forms of their sexual sins and perversions.”

  His fingers can’t type fast enough.

  “The long night of human barbarism is increasing.” Always a good one.

  “The Christian West in becoming pagan is headed for inevitable doom. There is little prospect of a sunrise.” Too negative.

  “To assume that an Anti-Christ culture will escape perdition is beyond lunacy.” Too complicated.

  “The enemy is gaining on all fronts. The hour is late. Christian civilization is in its death throes.” Too dramatic.

  “America is experiencing an epidemic—an epidemic of homosexuality.” Too true.

  “America is experiencing a plague—a plague of homosexuality.” Better.

  “The homosexual blitzkrieg has been better planned and better executed than Hitler’s.” Possible, but is it too controversial? Don’t worry, no one remembers Hitler.

  “It is now or never to take up arms for Jesus.”

  “They live in sin! The Bible says so!”

  “They are masculinity out of control, aggressive, powerful, unrestrained, raucous, perverse, orgiastic.” Too complimentary.

  “The gay man embodies a hypermasculinity, a maleness so extreme it literally explodes in a paganistic savagery.” Definitely too complimentary.

  “They steal our children.” This is always good.

  “Have they themselves not written in their very own newspapers, ‘We shall sodomize your sons. We shall seduce them in your schools, in your dormitories, in your gymnasiums, in your locker rooms, in your seminaries, in your youth groups, in your movie theater toilets, in your army bunkhouses, in your truck stops, wherever men are men together. They will come to crave and adore us.’” Where did I get this?

  “Promiscuity, seduction, and disease are the definition of homosexuality. The Big Three.” Hmm. “And homosexuals are both rich and powerful!” Expand on this.

  “You, my young friends, must not succumb!”

  “You must turn away from this dangerous deviance from God’s plan.” Good!

  Always wind up with: “God’s kingdom will be established on all of this earth! You must and will help make this so.”

  “The world will end in chaos but you as true believers will be raptured unto Heaven.”

  He feels better. He who dwells in the house of the president is blessed forever and ever.

  He then proceeds to also prepare his article for Today’s Jesus. He wil
l include the following in this week’s “Culture Shock” column:

  Sodom-on-Potomac

  WASHINGTON—Hundreds of men engaged in homosexual acts—including group sex—at a “leather” bar in the District of Columbia the night before the city’s “Gay Pride” parade, an investigation by All-American Fundamentalist Family revealed.

  AAFF president Peter LaBarbera witnessed these acts, which occurred at a “Dungeon Dance” party held June 6 at the Edge, one of several “gay” bars in southeast D.C. just blocks from the Capitol building. The Dungeon Dance was advertised heavily in the homosexual Washington Sword newspaper.

  An officer with the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department responded that the department is aware that illegal open sex is occurring in the homosexual bars but is reluctant to make arrests because of criticism for alleged “civil rights” violations after raiding several homosexual bars last year.

  According to LaBarbera, the group sex occurred in two corners of a “dungeon” room inside the Edge. The areas were set apart by large black tarps hanging from the ceiling. Throughout the night and into the morning, men would enter these areas and engage in various sexual acts in full view of other men, many engaging in sadomasochistic whippings.

  Besides the illegal sex at the Edge, AAFF reports that lesbians marched topless in the District’s “pride” parade—despite a pledge by Mayor Archie Pomplona to control public lewdness. AAFF had reported similar public nudity at last year’s march.

  INT. MINE SHAFT. NIGHT.

  Fred and Tommy push Emma through the crowded bar. Many of the guys are naked and playing around with each other. Emma frowns, shaking her head no.

  MACDONALD (naked): Hi, Doc. Fancy meeting you here.

  EMMA: Go home, MacDonald. You’re already sick enough. (To Fred and Tommy:) This is unacceptable. You’re all assholes. You must stop fucking each other to death.

  BURIED ALIVE

  In two towns deep in the country, one in the Tennessee Ozarks and one in the Florida Everglades, people with UC are reportedly being buried alive by their families. “I seen a dozen people with my own eyes,” said Mabel Adzen, a local health-care volunteer in Marble, Tennessee. “People don’t know how to take care of them when they get real sick, so they just bury them. And since they got no money for undertaking and funerals and stuff, they bury them alive. ‘They’s almost dead anyway,’ is what you hear.” In Dresden, Florida, Shane Lockster, another person who describes himself as “a health-care volunteer,” gave a different explanation for why these people were buried alive. “It is what the witches tell us to do.” He was referring to local practitioners of witchcraft believed to exist in this part of the state, which is very remote.

  —Ochonobee Drumbeat, Serving the Very Rural South for Coming on 43 Years

  A BROTHER’S LAMENT

  He can’t sleep, because he wakes up seeing his brother’s face before him, his cheeks sunk, his unshaved skin, his eyes desperately pleading, Please help me. Night and day he sees that face and those eyes and hears that plea. It never goes away. It never goes away. It never goes away.

  HIMMLER SAID MORE THAN ONE MILLION GAYS WERE EXTERMINATED

  “Himmler said more than one million gays were exterminated.” Brinestalker reads this sentence in one of his notebooks. He must get it to Linus Gobbel. He types it out on a plain piece of paper. Then he types it out in all capital letters. Then he types it out in all capital letters and boldface:

  HIMMLER SAID MORE THAN ONE MILLION GAYS WERE EXTERMINATED.

  He must talk to Linus and also to Dredd Trish.

  He remembers his father telling him, “There were half a million Jews in Germany before the war. In a country of sixty-five million people. Every single day we published twenty million copies of hate-Jew stuff. That was maybe fifty copies per Jew.”

  How can we achieve such deep penetration against the queers here?

  * * *

  David Jerusalem reads this sentence too. He writes it out on a plain piece of paper. Then he types it out. Then he types it out in all capital letters. Then he types it out in all capital letters and boldface and folds the piece of paper and slides it into his wallet:

  HIMMLER SAID MORE THAN ONE MILLION GAYS WERE EXTERMINATED.

  GO HETS, GO!

  In Sexopolis, Dr. Dorrida Mae Schwartz, their resident adviser on Sexual Matters, writes in her column: “I have many women who have intense vaginal intercourse almost daily, accompanied by intense kissing, and they are fine. Several even confide they enjoy rectal intercourse with their partner.” Mordy approves. He is relieved. He tells Dorrida Mae to run more reassuring information like this.

  At HAH, Dr. Oswald Botkin declares that a “Designated Investigation Unit” be established at NITS, under Omicidio, who would have it in his power, legally, to keep UC-infected patients incarcerated because they are “in advanced states of infection.” The White House point man on this is Linus Gobbel (now Purpura’s favorite), who announced on 60 Minutes that “these men are potential terrorists and their regional and worldwide networks must be eradicated, a mission we will carry out with our freedom-loving partners, The American People.” The moderator lets this pass.

  MONTAGE:

  Various churches and gay organizations to which Tommy and Fred appeal. End with black church. Tommy grows in intensity, to Fred’s approval.

  INT. MIDDLE-AGED WHITE GROUP.

  FRED: We must work together to fight! To save your lovers and sons and fathers and friends.

  The audience remains stone-faced.

  INT. YOUNG STRAIGHT ORGANIZATION.

  TOMMY: We must teach and preach and confront and raise hell in the streets until we are numb; then get up and do it again. They can’t make us disappear unless we let them. The power is ours. If you care to use it to help your gay friends.

  INT. MIXED BLACK AND WHITE.

  TOMMY: But we sure as hell don’t need twenty different boards, twenty executive directors and financial officers and program directors, twenty thises and thats.

  FRED: I beg you and all your groups to all work together! The power is ours.

  INT. BLACK CHURCH. NIGHT.

  The audience looks at Tommy with stern disapproval.

  BLACK WOMAN PARISHIONER: Our boys don’t do things like that.

  TOMMY: Some do, and I do, and did.

  ANOTHER BLACK WOMAN PARISHIONER: My Hilton and my Newton don’t do things like that.

  Applause from congregation.

  TOMMY: How touching and beautiful, your gay men of color suffer and die so nobly and quietly. But we must all force their lying murderers to disappear. The power is all of ours.

  FRED (later): Good job, Tom. It’s like some Greek tragedy where all the mothers are moaning. They know. You’re a hit.

  DEEP THROAT ON A SITE VISIT TO A CHICAGO HOSPITAL

  The kid was black and handsome and had rings in both ears and bracelets on both wrists, so I now can know he was gay. The pathology doc who called NITS for help said they can’t figure out what to do with the black bodies when they’re at death’s door and nameless. “It is increasingly hard to unload dead nameless black bodies. Emergency is supposed to take them. This is the biggest medical center in Chicago and thousands of black people come in and go out every day.” He would call up the special number until someone finally answered and a pickup was arranged and then truck drivers with wheelbarrows would come, take one look at the dead black body, and then wouldn’t take it. “Ordinarily, dead nameless bodies are taken to one of the old meat-packing plants, where they’re physically heaved and dismembered and their ashes surreptiously tossed into Lake Michigan. Emergency doesn’t want a part of any of this. They say let the niggers come and do their own dirty work.

  “No newspaper, of course, writes up any of this. Lately Emergency isn’t even waiting to be one hundred percent certain that these nameless cases are dead. If they looked dead and/or the pulse was erratic and they were covered with vomit-encrusted blood they just left them here. At one point I had
a stack of forty-three bodies right where we’re sitting now. Quite honestly, I don’t know who finally took them or where.”

  Just as the truck drivers arrived for this new one with the bracelets and for three other black men as well, a bunch of screaming women barged in, crying out in agony, looking for their Nestor. He was being piled into a wheelbarrow. The biggest woman, maybe the mama, tall, tough, strong, fat, waddled over and yanked her Nestor out of the wheelbarrow, and he fell splat on the cement floor, where his head split open. The other women, three of them, screamed. The truck drivers beat a hasty retreat with the other deads and the pathologist who summoned me was left with the one awful-looking kid splattered all over the floor and the four women still screaming. Now the four women tried to stuff the kid’s body into a big shopping bag from Marshall Field, which of course he wouldn’t fit into. “Ladies, please,” the pathologist tried to say. “White man killer murderer, you daid my son!” the mother screamed, lunging for him, but the daughters held her back. “Mom, he’s just a doctor.” “So what so what so WHAT, doctors meant to save not murder and maim! Oh my baby boy, my baby baby baby boy, you was so beautiful, you was so very beautiful, what happened what happened what happened?”

  The kid’s blood is now all over the four of them. The pathologist tries to tell them, “Ladies you must be careful, his blood is infected,” but Mama is rubbing the kid’s blood onto her body like it’s some kind of holy water, rubbing it into her arms and face, even licking it. The women try to pull her away from the body and out of the lab but she’s not going. They get her halfway to the door and she breaks loose and dives onto the boy’s body, covering it with her own. It’s a big mess.