The American People, Volume 2

by Larry Kramer

  But The Prick isn’t alone. “There is sabotage. There is chaos,” said Dr. Tom Lee Tom, a virologist who last month had run away from Chattanooga and taken his experiments to another COD office in an unnamed city in the far west where he refuses to “speak for attribution.”

  Gree locates him. “The lack of response to this plague from the White House has been extremely unhelpful,” Tom Tom tells him. “Intentional tampering of laboratory equipment has occurred in every COD lab devoted to UC work.”

  “Is that so,” Gree said, hanging up. He doesn’t want it on the record to have heard any of this or to have even talked to this man.

  No one criticizes the hiring of Dr. Volker Heimat to reorganize the laboratories that Dr. Tom Tom vacated. Dr. Heimat has no prior UC experience and has been described by several sources as “another bully from another country.” No one calls anyone a Nazi anymore. Dr. Heimat is an expert on anal intercourse. “Of course it is good,” he says on his first TV outing. “One feels wunderbar!” Perhaps he’s not ready yet for prime time. Or perhaps this is just what Gobbel wants.

  “It’s like Russia down here,” a disgruntled employee of the COD home office says to Theodore Butler on The Chattanooga Evening News. After pausing for thought, the disgruntled employee continues, “And I thought it was gross working for Drs. Dye and Omicidio at NITS. COD is worse than NITS.” Then, after another pause, he corrects himself. “No, nothing is worse than NITS.” Then he corrects himself again. “It’s a toss-up. Pewkin is an asshole. But so is Omicidio.” A version is printed. Theodore Butler is fired. Gree Bohunk calls Pewkin from the White House and congratulates him. “The president wants you to know that you’re doing a simply wonderful job.”

  “The research is going much slower in our local COD branch than it should be,” said Bobbie Robertson, R.N., to The San Francisco Bridge. “The working conditions are brutal, and feudal, and disorganized. One research doc actually brings a whip to work.” This made it into print too, but Gree now knows that whips are no big deal in San Francisco.

  In Chattanooga, cultures continue to be thrown in the garbage, or spat into, or removed from incubators. Educational materials meant for distribution to the country have been sabotaged, lest information about prevention become available. “Somebody in here doesn’t want anybody out there to get anything but dead,” said the remaining COD senior scientist, Dr. Al Albertson, who brazenly announces, to heck with his job, “I don’t hear much talk about saving lives or being a big-deal role model like they used to hold up to us.” It’s the last time anyone will hear from him.

  Sam Sport calls Arnold Botts. “What’s really going on? Are we trying to dispose of COD and Pewkin?”

  “Stay tuned,” Arnold says, and then quite uncharacteristically he adds, “Be careful.”

  “Anal intercourse is acceptable under many circumstances” is added to Dr. Drydeck’s list for the president. Dr. Volker Heimat said so.

  Dr. Paulus Pewkin goes on one of those Sunday morning TV programs and announces “anal intercourse is not always a no-no.” In the following weeks, guests on these programs (four out of five) say the words anal intercourse. It’s noted fairly swiftly that newscasts in which someone says “anal intercourse” have higher ratings. Viewers tune into the programs they know will deliver an “anal intercourse” or two.

  Orvid announces in a banner headline, WHITE HOUSE OKAYS TAKING IT UP THE BUTT. And in the following article, “Clinics across the country are announcing a record number of cases of rectal gonorrhea.” And he quotes Fred: “I can’t believe this is happening!” Fred didn’t actually say that about rectal gonorrhea, but since he’s said it about everything else, Orvid figures he’s in the clear.

  Senator Vurd smiles. He introduces another bill into Congress, entitled: “Concerning the expectoration upon the American Flag and various other unpatriotic matters.” It doesn’t quite spell out everything. “Anal intercourse” is hard to rephrase in bureaucratic lingo. But it’s in there. Anal intercourse is not only unpatriotic, it’s a punishable offense, just like in the old days. You can go directly to jail if caught doing it. In a matter of months, police in Dallas arrest two men “in flagrante anal intercourse” in the privacy of their own home.

  DANIEL THE SPY

  Dash absolutely refuses to change the dosage, which is obviously too high. We had 124 studies mounted to go all over the United States. Their total enrollment was to be fifteen thousand. That fifteen thousand figure was seventy-five thousand until it was discovered that many of the entrants who signed up received their ZAP and went home and broke them open and if it tasted like sugar they never showed up again. They still make placebos to taste like sugar pills! So all the figures were fucked a month after we started. We’ve started a latest study with fifty entrants. Twenty-three died the first month. Seventeen died the second month. Except they are entered in the trial reports as three died and the rest dead from “other causes unrelated to the drug.” Which is a lie.

  I would not take this drug and I am recommending my private patients not to take it. A couple of guys, it is true, are seeing slight rises in their 729/s. Three guys. Out of fifty. This is what Dash points to. “See! It can work! We are not running a beauty parlor here!”

  One of my patients threw up on him.

  FRED VISITS ANOTHER HOSPITAL

  Beth Teresa is an amalgam of two very old awful hospitals into one smaller awful hospital. The names of hospitals have long since stopped conveying any clear heritage they once were meant to convey of long-ago hatreds when Jews and Catholics demanded separate places to die. Is this one Jewish? That used to signify excellence. Is this one Catholic? Ditto. So, no and no. There are no nuns running anything and there are no yarmulked doctors not working after sundown on Friday. Beth Teresa sits very far west in Hell’s Kitchen, and you wouldn’t be interested when passing it, so bleak is the exterior, with its barred windows more akin to a prison. The archdiocese refuses to run it, as do various Jewish boards, and so would the city were it not useful as a dumping ground for the mounting UC cases that have nowhere else to be dumped. I didn’t know the place existed.

  It is of course understaffed and underfunded. But so is every other hospital. Velma and everyone else knows there are bad hospitals in New York that you just don’t and can’t write about because too many rich people are on their boards, Metropolitan Mausoleum, Downtown Local, Vanderbilt Rich Bitch, Hospital for Special Nothing—they all have been given demeaning names, in most cases deservedly. New York is not a town where you go to a hospital if you are sick and want to get better. You come to New York to see Top Doctors, and they are here. And some of them are even good. But there is not a one of them that thinks their hospital is as good as they are, and they’re right. An interesting dilemma.

  I had done a Grand Rounds this day to the medical staff and students at Beth Teresa, all ten of them. As I’d been met at a special entrance and via a special hallway to a classroom, I was still in the dark about what was going on here. I’m still at the stage where I’ll talk to anyone who asks me. I try to scare everyone with the awful facts of the truth. I am increasingly convinced that fear is the best motivator for getting anything done, etc., etc., etc.

  Dr. Deena Tuttle is in charge of the place. She is big and tough and no-nonsense; I’ve met her at city UC meetings and I like her. She invited me to come and visit. After I finished speaking, she said, “You really wanna throw up, come with me.”

  When I hestitate, she challenges me, “Come on, Fred, you’re my hero. That’s why I invited you. If I can do it so can you. Norm, come on, show us in!” An armed guard appears from somewhere with his chain of keys and unlocks a couple of very thick doors and in we go. I can hear them clanking closed behind us. Very sinister. Dickensian. Deena has slapped a gown and mask into my hands and is putting her own on. “Get into these fast,” she says, and I do.

  The minute we’re in, I’m horrified. It’s a huge ex-gymnasium or some sort of once-great hall. A hundred guys are slitherin
g about on the floor. There are no tables or chairs or cots or any kind of furniture. They look at us as if we’re saviors and start lunging for us. Norm has his gun cocked, and when they come too close he actually fires a couple of shots at the ceiling, which I notice is pockmarked. This sends most of the guys scurrying back.

  “Bet you never thought something like this goes on in a New York City hospital,” Deena chortles.

  “All these guys are prisoners and all these guys have UC?”

  “You got it.”

  “Why? They haven’t committed any crimes and we’re not quarantining them yet.”

  “That’s what you think. I got emergency powers when a public health emergency reaches unpardonable heights of danger. These are all guys who have dementia, or for whom we have no way of tracing next of kin, or guys the police picked up soliciting or fucking in Central Park without any ID, stuff like that. Get away!”

  She actually kicks a young man reaching up to her for help. No, he’s reaching up to me.

  He stretches his hands, both of them, up toward my voice. I guess he can’t stand up. The place stinks something awful, and it gets worse with every breath. The floor of this entire huge room is full of these slithering guys rolling around in this stink. It is the most grotesque sight I have ever seen. Nobody seems like their eyes can see. Nobody is not yelling or whimpering or bawling. No one wears anything remotely clean. Everyone is caked with crud. If I’m not throwing up—well, I don’t know why I’m not throwing up.

  “Fred … Fred … Fred, honey! I am so glad you found me! I’ve been praying that you could find me.”

  I don’t recognize this wreck.

  “It’s your Bo Peep. Did you find a boyfriend yet? He’ll find you, Fred. Your boyfriend will find you, just wait and see.”

  “Bo!”

  “It’s your Bo. Bo Peep.” He’s crying, shaking, unable to stop.

  I hadn’t heard of any of my Fire Island Pines housemates in Grey Gardens for years. I’d written about them in Faggots. I’d wondered what happened to the ones whose names aren’t on any of my lists. Bo Peep had been a particularly sweet friend. Just like me he wanted everybody to be in love. I can’t recall now his real name or why we called him Bo Peep except he was short and cute and very angelic.

  “Fred, where am I? Why am I in Canada? Why would they send Bo to Canada? They said I have a Canadian passport and they had to deport me. I’m not Canadian. I don’t have a Canadian passport. I’m an American citizen. I have an American passport. No one believes me. No one believes Bo is from Alabama. Anyone listening to me knows I’m from the South and not from Canada.”

  He suddenly touches Deena’s skirt. “Ralph Lauren?”

  “Why, yes,” she answers.

  “Where is Tarsh? Tarsh used to call me every single day. He was my only friend. I don’t have any friends in Canada. Why am I in Canada? Can you help me get out of Canada?”

  He starts weeping uncontrollably. I am down on the floor holding this man in my arms as he blubbers and sobs and drools and keeps saying “Canada” over and over. I am trying to caress his head with my gloved hand. I can see he’s pissing from under his gown, his shrunken penis dribbling pee on the floor. He used to be so proud of his penis. It was a big one and his short frame made it look even bigger. He’d march naked around our living room in Grey Gardens singing “Dixie.”

  “I wouldn’t get too intimate,” Dr. Deena Tuttle is advising. She nods to Norm, the guard, who nods back and presses a few buttons. I can hear an alarm sounding somewhere and the clanging of doors being opened and slammed shut, and then a couple of cops come rushing over, one to pull Bo off me and the other to hold on to me, hard.

  “Don’t move, mister, please,” he says to me.

  Bo is squatting on the floor now. He is shitting. He is scooping up his shit and eating it, stuffing it into his mouth.

  And yes, I’m throwing up.

  “I told you you’d throw up,” Dr. Deena Tuttle says.

  Bo is screaming as two cops haul him away.

  I see other men I recognize. Teeter from the Public Theater and Billy Drosskopf from walking our dogs and … shit, I think I see familiar faces all over the place. I think I’m having a nightmare and I am. Many of these faces just stare, with their mouths open. The faces look like that Edvard Munch painting, The Scream.

  “Can I do something about getting my friend out of here?”

  Dr. Deena says to me, “He’s on high-dose ZAP. They’re all on high-dose ZAP. High-dose ZAP is supposed to cross the brain barrier. It doesn’t. High-dose ZAP is shit. Low-dose ZAP is shit. I have a policeman who’ll drive you home so you can shower fast. I’ll give you a protective coat to wear, then throw it down your incinerator.”

  Bo Peep died before I got home. Dr. Deena Tuttle called to tell me.

  “Any time you want to come up, come on up. We should stay in touch.”

  “Can I write about this?”

  “Of course I want you to write about it! No one will publish it. I’ve tried. I even brought Velma Dimley up here. She threw up too. Anyway, this lot is all going to be shipped out of here next week. Seventy-three of them. They are going to Canada. British Columbia. Did you know that British Columbia is home to the largest per capita concentration of organized crime syndicates in the world? I have no idea what this has to do with anything but I’ll just bet it does.”

  * * *

  I hadn’t been in touch with Tarsh, another Fire Island housemate, since I can’t remember when. I called to tell him about Bo. He started to cry and vowed to call me soon. A few days later he called back. He wanted to “catch up properly.” He proceeded to tell me all about his sex life, the sex club he belongs to. I asked how he could do this now and he said, “I’m not going to let this stuff get me down.” I asked him what exactly was going on out there in L.A. “Well, my particular club is certainly very busy. We belong to a chapter of Sex Über Alles.” I asked again what went on. “Well, we strip down and we just sort of hang out in somebody’s apartment. We take turns using each other’s places. It’s very laid-back. Yes, Fred, we’re all stoned. We still do that, too.” He was so in my face with all this, his tone, that it made me not like him, as if he was now another person when in fact he sounded just like the same old Tarsh I used to know. But that was then and now is now. How can he still be living like this? How can he and his sex club still be living like this? He didn’t once mention Bo, who’d been his best friend.

  WHAT IS JUNIOR UP TO?

  Junior Ruester, in an appearance on Saturday Night Live, says to the audience and the camera, “Hey, guys, write to my father and tell him how you think he’s doing.” Many letters are received at the White House. Many new names are added to Brinestalker’s list.

  WHAT IS VON GREETING UP TO?

  When Von is notified that gays are not infecting themselves with the rapidity that his master plan had … well, planned for, he again ups the production of Dridge Ampules and sees that they are distributed freely at the bars and discos.

  In fact, Dridge Ampules have never been off the market. They’ve just been out there under various other names, Sweat! Hot Gym, Crotch Odor Plus, redolent names like that. You won’t find these names in the G-D production reports (at the Yaddah School of Business Archives), but the references to “Product X” and “Product Y” and “Product Z” are telling enough. They’ve all been manufactured by G-D under one “licensee” or another.

  This company is working it from both ends—killing gays with one product, ZAP, and revving them up with another one, Dridge Ampules, so they can get there faster. Not to mention Factor VIII. This should be a case study at Yaddah Business School.

  THE HOUSE OF THE LIVING DEAD

  GRODZO: Okay, I try to write here what our life is like now, the three of us. We live in Daniel’s house. We take care of David. Out of nowhere he appeared collapsed at Daniel’s front door. I have more time than Daniel, who has much to do, many commitments, many patients, working at NITS besides. David
is now more out of comas than in them, which is progress. It is hard to tell, because when he is out of coma he does not talk. Daniel says he has been silent before. His system must be very strong. He does not like to talk, yet he is pleased that I am here. He holds on to my hand, a simple act that breaks my heart. He is not so good at eating either. We make him eat. Sometimes we have to hold open his mouth and spoon it in. I make puree of everything so he can swallow. His stools are very runny, which is not surprising. I have slides made of them, and they are filled with organisms the pathologist here has not seen before in feces. “Yes, they move,” he says; “but they are still unfamiliar.” I ask him do we try to get these out of his insides. He responds he is not so certain they are unhealthy. “Much of the world is filled inside with living microorganisms that free float inside us. The system accommodates. Where has he traveled to?” I have Daniel give the feces report to Omicidio, who is not interested because it is “not part of the big picture.” What a ridiculous answer. Medicine in this country is very strange. Did you tell him he is your twin brother? I ask Daniel. I bet then he will be interested.

  I sent some slides to the great Max Planck laboratories in Germany, in Freiberg. I am much impressed with what is happening there in many areas. There are many Max Planck Institutes now in Germany, everything there is called Max Planck this and Max Planck that. He would be pleased, old Max. I receive a warm reply from Dr. Karl Reichman, who was once my fellow student in Kiel. “I am glad you are still alive, my old comrade! Me, too! I am glad I am alive as well!” He tells me they are starting a division of “Developmental Immunology” that could be helpful to what we are trying to learn about David. “I must tell you that this UC in Deutschland, it is not here yet much so we are not too familiar. But we will be! We try to beat you this time!” So they make jokes now again! He, too, tells me he has never seen Scheisse like this but he sends some tablets, which we give David. His stool becomes not so runny and some color returns to his cheeks. I ask what is in these tablets. “It is nothing but an old Bavarian folk remedy, many centuries old,” Dr. Karl wires back. It is too bad David is not well enough to travel to Freiberg. Karl says they are looking for UC patients. What an irony that would be! When I tell David about this he does not smile. He speaks. “I do not want to go back to Germany ever again, even if it saves my life.” Then he commands, “Promise me!” I promise him. He still sleeps many hours. We take him for a drive on a sunny day and he seems to smile a bit. He holds our hands a lot. It is as if he must hold on to one of us all the time. Of course, I try to talk to him and he listens, but he rarely replies. Once he answered, “Later. Not now.” One night he crawls into Daniel’s bed and spends the night. I hear Daniel crying after David is asleep. They are big sobs and he is trying to hide them in his pillow. David cannot hear him because he is drugged to sleep. I look often at the boy’s scars. He is no longer a boy, of course, only to me. I tell Daniel he did not get these patterns of scars in Germany, at Mungel. Your country gives him these scars. We have no idea why and how and where. The only other place, he says, could be at Partekla. I try to research Partekla data but it has been what they call “disappeared” from the data banks at NITS. I can see that David’s scars will not go away or lessen. The ridges do not become softer and merge into the surrounding skin, even with constant salves and unguents. I thought they were scars from being whipped. Now I wonder if it was some kind of experiment. Another question for another day. There are many. I think now he may even live to someday answer them. This thought makes me happy. It has been a long time since I have been happy. That it should occur here, in this house, with these two brothers, is remarkable.