by Larry Kramer
I realize that writing this is my way of doing so.
A “MANHATTAN PROJECT” FOR UC
Yes, I got another op-ed into The Truth. I won’t bore you with the whole thing because you’ve heard most of it from me already, but it’s ironically interesting how much they allowed me to say. I have no idea why. And who let me.
Here are some snippets:
“I am so frightened that the war against UC has already been lost … Everyone presently infected can reasonably expect to die. So desperate is the situation that Dr. Garth Buffalo, president of Rockefeller University, has called for a ‘Manhattan Project’ for UC, an equivalent of the scientific effort that produced the atom bomb … President Trish has done as little about UC as President Ruester … Ten years into the plague, the Federal agencies dealing with UC are mired in such bureaucracy … Exchange of vital information is often nonexistent … NITS laboratories have twenty-seven vacancies … Huge areas of UC still aren’t understood and are prohibited from being studied by new Congressional regulations … Anything less than an all-out effort by the Federal Government will condemn millions to death.”
I’M REALLY FRIGHTENED
TRACY: I know there are people here that shouldn’t be here. I walk around the room each meeting to look for faces I can’t trust. There are always new faces. Every week. We’re the hot and happening thing. We have six, seven hundred at each meeting. So it’s hard to tell what everyone’s motivation is. There are fewer new women, so I can pretty well tell that we’re all okay. The guys, I come to see what new ones there are from week to week. I don’t think anyone is paying any attention to this. I mention it to Fred and he nods. “Don’t know what we can do about alleviating your fears, Trace. Get up and talk about it.” So I got up and told the floor that I was frightened. There was another swastika painted on my front door, bright red paint, thick, hard to get off, scared the shit out of me. I’m not Jewish, why are they after me? I don’t think the floor believes us, the bunch of us who week by week become the objects of attacks, Harriett and Marsie, Paul J., we all live near each other in Alphabet City. No, Paul lives on the Upper East Side. His phone and mine were connected to each other somehow so that we get each other’s calls. The phone company says they don’t know how that happened. “Someone’s trying to tap your phone, miss,” the phone person said. Harriett gets hate letters, dyke hate letters. “You lick poison pussy and are going to die.” Fred got sent a box of dried turds with the return address of a fake pharmaceutical manufacturer in New Jersey. Jim F. got up and said, “We shouldn’t be surprised. Whoever they are, they’re after us. We have to get used to it and not let it tear us apart and start accusing each other. That’s what someone is trying to make us do, rip ourselves apart. It always happens after a while when they see we’ve got so many members.” And he cited a whole long list of gay organizations that were “destroyed by outside hate.” He got a lot of applause for telling us to “hang tight.” Paul J.’s written this song, “Last Dance, Last Chance for Love.” He says he knows the Angel of Death is ready for him. I’m afraid I totally lost it at the end of my talking to the floor. I suddenly started to cry and I screamed out, “Who is doing this to me and to us!” There was dead silence. Then, thank God, Jim F. and others started applauding and somebody yelled out, “Yay, Tracy!” I broke out in a grin and they all applauded even more. I love this place. I really do.
IDIOTS’ DELIGHT
MAXINE
My history of women and UC is a history of criminal neglect by a government and its agencies, including those charged with public health and treatment research. It’s a history of unscientific and unethical behavior, of white male science, of indifference to women. It is a history of racism, sexism, classism, homophobia. Straight men are too stupid to understand our world or the choices we’ve been forced to make. The history of FUQU is about forcing people to look at what we know is here. Experts and politicians make all our decisions for us. We don’t want them to. That’s why I’m here.
Why are lesbians told we can’t get UC and can’t transmit it sexually to one another?
Researchers applying for grants to study UC in women are constantly refused any funding.
Men in FUQU now are meeting with NITS and pharma representatives.
In order for women UC activists just to get a meeting with NITS has taken us, so far, almost three years of constant pressuring: NITS, FORM A WOMEN’S COMMITTEE NOW!
Our women have demonstrated on trips to Chattanooga and Natchez to confront Pewkin in his COD offices, trying to convince him to include us in his official definition. It’s incomprehensible to us why COD and NITS and HAH persist in stonewalling our existence. They know there are cases. How could they not? Omicidio and Pewkin are still insisting that the definition of UC can’t be changed to include infections women get, because there isn’t enough evidence.
We took a dozen UC-infected women to Pewkin’s office and wouldn’t leave until he looked at them. One woman after another stepped forward to give him evidence, telling them about their infections: cervical cancer, bacterial pneumonia, pelvic inflammatory disease, yeast infections, and passing out copies of their medical records as “evidence.” They stripped down naked so he could see their nimroids. That scared him so much, he ran from his office and in five minutes the cops came to carry us out. The cops saw the sores on these poor women’s bodies and they turned and ran too. I’d say it was a hoot but it really isn’t. It’s just awful.
So we finally got our meeting with monster Head Honcho Omicidio, who’s supposed to be in charge of UC. A meeting room in Franeeda at NITS was packed with UC Women’s Committee members, now from all over the country, plus just women who were sick and willing to pay their own fares to beg for help. On his side, they had all men. I mentioned that, so someone went out and brought back a poor black secretary who was so tired she fell asleep right after we started.
Here is a representative excerpt from the transcript that I recorded of our interactions:
OMICIDIO: Let me make some general points. Now, about your approach toward me and my institute, maybe it will serve as a basis for future interactions, if, in fact, there are future interactions, and that’s one of the points I want to make. That is, I think, as is always the case, and has been the case with people who are activists and who are very dedicated, but have the disadvantage of not being in the field, even though you say women know women better than anyone else knows women—that’s true but in the scientific, medical, physical problems there may be an area where it may not be that women know more about it, even though the women’s appreciation has to be taken into account because I don’t think … and I agree with you that one shouldn’t make statements or policies regarding women unless you have both a solid scientific base wherever that comes from, a man or a woman, as well as the real input from women, be they straight women or lesbian women, okay? However, as has been the case before, when you put a menu of ten things, several of the things that are said are completely incorrect. And if I were to close my mind to them immediately, I wouldn’t have heard a couple of what I think are good points you made that would probably be productive. You’ve got to be able to accept that, if we point out to you some of the things that are not so incorrect that you’re stupid, but incorrect that I think you may be looking at from the wrong perspective, so that we can get to the things I think are really important. And again I’d like to have the time sometime to be able to go over some of the statements that were made that just factually, I could understand how you came to that conclusion but may not really be scientifically correct, although some of them really are quite correct.
MAXINE: Do you want to dialogue with us about women and UC?
OMICIDIO: Well, no, because I want to tell you the ground rules of how we interact, and if the ground rules aren’t the right ground rules we’re never going to talk about women and UC. That’s something you have to understand, because that transcends everything we’re talking about. We won’t talk about women wit
h anything unless you understand that. But you’ve got to cut the attitude that “we’re going to get to you because we’re gonna, you know, march around your buildings.” That’s the point I’m trying to make.
MAXINE: Well, the point we’re trying to make is there is a supposition on your part that having dealt with certain people in FUQU specifically, which doesn’t represent all the FUQU members around the country, and having dealt with a specific group of people according to some agreement you have with them, that we come with the same agreement, and frankly, you haven’t proved anything to us. That the basis of trust that you say you have built up with them over time with those people has not been built up with this particular group of women, and, therefore, at the same time you are telling us what you expect of us, we are telling you we have no reason to trust you in terms of women’s lives. So, let us talk about how coercive you are being. It is unethical and irresponsible for the head of a government agency that is responsible for the entire population to tell any specific group of women that you are not going to do anything about women and UC if they don’t “act nice.”
OMICIDIO: I never said that I won’t do anything about women with UC unless you’re nice, I said I will not deal with you unless you do it in a productive way.
MAXINE: We resent your tone, like you want us to demonstrate that we’re trained pets or something.
OMICIDIO: If you are going to deal with me you are going to have to learn how it is to deal with me the way I would like to learn about what is the best way to deal with you. You could hate me, that’s all right. But it will be better if we do it in a way that’s—
MAXINE: We have no interest in hating you. We just want you to do your job.
OMICIDIO: I’m doing my job. I’m doing my job better than you can imagine.
Et cetera, und so weiter, yadda yadda …
It basically boiled down to this:
OMICIDIO: Like you said, you don’t know how many UC-infected women there are … Well, that requires screening the whole population because a lot of the so-called infected women that are silent and don’t know they’re infected until they get a severe gynecological infection because nobody thought of the fact that they might be UC-positive, they may be going a long time without appropriate care, which has much more to do with the whole policies of screening and finding out what populations are infected than it does the biomedical research at NITS. So, although that is an excellent point it’s something perhaps we can help by discussing it at levels that are responsible for it trickling down to whoever is supposed to be doing it, than it is for us to be arguing with you whether we should be doing it or not. It is very unlikely that we have any avenue to answer that question, although I think it is a very valid question.
This from the man who is meant to be in charge of this plague.
Changing the COD definition of UC to include women does not happen.
Who is behind this and why?
We’re being treated like idiots. Once again.
ASSHOLES
PERRY: Omicidio summons a meeting for activists to pummel Howie Hube, to crucify Howie with questions about the UCCTG that he can’t answer. I’m suspecting Jerry’s trying to take the heat off Jerry. Jerry just sits there, stern-faced. Hube’s revealed as the dumb asshole he is. It’s a very painful meeting for Claudette. She hasn’t seen Jerry in action before. “This is the man who’s in charge of UC?” she said. “But he’s an asshole.” Then, when Hube is transferred somewhere else, far away, she says, “Jerry brought his lackey for us to tear down so he can go and fire him. He’s a double asshole.”
WHAT PERRY LEARNS ON THE S.S. SCOTTY’S BROTHER’S YACHT
Scotty took a bunch of us down to the Caribbean for a week on his brother’s yacht. Scotty wants to get started up again since neither one of us has found anyone else. As he whispers this while we’re trying to sleep mashed together in this bunk bed with Barry and Gregg snoring in the berth below, I don’t tell him No Way. (Melvyn has spent this entire trip trying to get his hands in everyone’s pants. He’s becoming quite obnoxious.) The next day when we’re alone making salad for lunch, Scotty tells me “confidentially” that he’s officially incorporated a group that he calls TAG, for Treatment Action Guerillas, and he wants to leave FUQU because he sees nothing but grief coming from the Women’s Committee, and from the floor, which always gives T+D a hard time when we ask for money for trips. He says he wants to run it himself, with Sparks and Barry and anyone from T+D who wants to come, but no Fred Lemish. I tell him I love Fred too much to do this to him. Then I just look at him like I don’t know what to say. “What are you thinking?” he asks. “I think I never knew you before,” I answer.
I don’t know what to do. Sparks already arranged me a paying job in this TAG, keeping a record of everything and putting it out in a newsletter. Scotty got that Presidium pharm to give TAG more money, enough to rent an office and pay salaries to a few people (not me!), including Sparks. Scotty’s billionaire buddy Sammy Sircus makes a lot of passes at me on Fire Island, and on days when I am really hungry, I’ve come close to accepting. It’s just that I know his record of bed tonight and gone tomorrow. My unemployment’s run out and I’m tired of sleeping on other people’s couches. Scotty says to keep everything secret until he announces to the floor about TAG. “And by the way,” Scotty asks me, “what about my offer?” I guess that’s one way to keep eating, but I’d rather go hungry.
No matter where I fall asleep I’m holding Francis in my arms. I miss him so. You’d think by now I could have found somebody. Oh, I have sex, but I close my eyes and it’s always Francis I’m with. I talk to many guys who lost their lovers and everyone says the same thing. You either find another lover right away or you don’t find one at all.
Tommy was in love with Fred something awful, he says, and it didn’t work out like I know Scotty and me won’t work out. Tommy’s kept me going with jobs at GMPA since I got here but he can’t do that anymore. He’s got a “pissing board of directors who have to approve every time I go to the toilet. You know why, don’t you? Because they know I’m still in love with Fred.” But I told Tommy I think Fred never knows when someone’s in love with him. I see how guys cruise him and he doesn’t notice. What’s wrong with his generation? I know what’s wrong with mine. We’re all scared to death. I guess his must be too.
FROM THE BOOK OF THE DEAD
FRED: Vito dies at 1:30 a.m. on November 7. I couldn’t go to see him. I’d said my goodbyes to him on the phone. I couldn’t go to see him so shriveled up and … When Vito was offered the morphine drip for the first time in the hospital, his great friend Arnie asked him, “You know what this is for?” Vito nodded yes. Then Arnie asked him, “Do you want it now or do you want to stay a little longer?” Vito somehow found strength to whisper back, “I want to stay a little longer.”
At some point we’re all going to face that question and we’re all going to want to answer it with the same words. “I want to stay a little longer.”
The next morning O’Trackney Vurd is reelected to a fourth term. And it’s announced that fifty-five thousand people died this month. And that 35 percent of all black churchgoers believe UC is a form of genocide. One in ten believes UC was deliberately created in a laboratory in order to rid the world of black people.
Oliver Johnstone, Kevin Smith, Ray Navarro, Phil Zwickler, Terry Beirne, Tom Hannan, Ortez Alderson, David Liebhart, Parker Gunn, Paul Jabara, Alan Robinson, Lee Arsenault, David Lopes, David Byar, Jerry Jontz, Trudy Nabb, Marshall Fosterman, Antony Grossbart, Laurent Michel-Gros, Rex Brown, Carter Trimmer, Alfred Hammer, Dennis Levin, Alvin Christianson, Albert Zipp, John Tripp, Gary Bass, Fred Berlin, Andre Blandford, Tony Allegritto, Louis Bruno, Vaughan Brooks, Scott Cannican, Charles Seymour III, Christopher Churcher, Alberto Alvarez, Derrick Luhrlong, Douglas Dobbs, Karl Robinson, Ector Fuchs, Parker Erlichman, Emmett Fischer, Leon Fisher, Vincent Fischer, Paddy Fisher, Corey Stoltz, Steven Adams …
TOMMY’S POLLS
Hunte
r College Poll of Lesbians, Gays, and Bisexuals finds that homosexuals do not bond with each other as a group. “Our study has found that many gays do not share a strong sense of shared fate with other LGBs or think that their membership in the LGB community is particularly important. Only 41 percent of LGBs agreed that their lives were affected by what happens to other LGBs in the United States, and only 29 percent said that membership in the LGB community was an important reflection of who they are. Furthermore, 57 percent agreed that their membership in the LGB community had very little to do with how they felt about themselves, and nearly half (47 percent) said that their LGB identity had little to do with how they vote.”
I also had another study taken in which a group of homosexuals were asked whether they called themselves homosexuals, bisexuals, or heterosexuals, and a majority claimed to be bisexual. This is out-and-out lying and self-deception. It just goes to show how few of us self-identify first and foremost as gays. Like Fred keeps saying, none of this bodes well for us getting where we must get as a population; that is, if we are to stay alive and get anywhere.
FRED’S JOURNAL
I speak at a FUQU meeting in Washington. A hundred people. They look at me apprehensively as I speak, like little Bambis in the headlights’ glare. They know, because I certainly tell them, that I want more of them than they are able to deliver in our nation’s capital. They know, and I know, that they are not going to deliver it. And I know that they are not going to lose any sleep over it. The following week only ten people show up for their weekly meeting.