The American People, Volume 2

by Larry Kramer

  * * *

  MOTHER: The torture and punishment every country perpetrates is not so very different from one place to another. Even “informed consent” on human experimentation is a load of crap, no matter the legal and constitutional “protections.” That makes my work all the more important. Somehow I must ascertain who’s doing what to whom and where and what’s the least harmful to The American People. My job is to shape new ways to hold perpetrators accountable. I believe our Founding Fathers would be in total agreement. But none of this can be said out loud, of course. Spies are not meant to talk like this.

  TEN YEARS OF P-L-A-G-U-E

  It is a testament to how many of these diatribes Fred is churning out that he can’t locate where, when, or how this appeared.

  We have been fighting this plague for ten years.

  In a recent press conference, restricted to reporters who write about religious matters, President Trish denounced FUQU. He called us “outrageous” and “counterproductive.” He said: “It is an excess of free speech to use—to resort to some of the tactics these people use.”

  Talking to students at the University of Michigan, Trish continues his whining. Free speech, he said, is “under assault” throughout the land. The American Way is threatened when various minorities, in desperate and last-ditch-stand attempts to be heard, make so much noise. The downtrodden should be more polite. “Political extremists roam the land, abusing the privilege of free speech, setting citizens against one another on the basis of their class or race.”

  The president, a white, heterosexual, upper-class male, desires that everyone “use reason in settling disputes.” “Crusades … demand correct behavior.”

  “Let’s trust our friends,” recommends Dredd, “to respond to reason.”

  Dredd Trish is not my friend. I hate his fucking guts. And I figure he sure as hell hates mine.

  Mr. President, what else can we do when we’ve tried every polite tactic in the books and still people like you don’t listen?

  There are fifteen hundred new UC infections every twenty-four hours.

  There is one UC death every nine minutes.

  Four of every thousand college kids are now UC-positive.

  There are 8 to 10 million UC-infected people worldwide.

  The fastest-rising risk group in the major cities is now heterosexual women.

  The first 100,000 American cases of full-blown UC took nine years. The next 100,000 will take two years (one year of which is gone).

  One out of four households in America has now been somehow touched by UC.

  5,815 health-care providers have full-blown UC, including 42 surgeons.

  The UC research program at the National Institute of Tumor Sciences has been condemned as totally inadequate by the National Academy of Science.

  Sixteen percent of the supervisory positions at NITS remain unfilled.

  Three presidential reports and more than a hundred congressional oversight hearings have condemned the inadequacy, in every possible area and field, of Food and Drug Supervision.

  The Center of Disease is in such bad shape that one of its top directors just resigned, claiming publicly that he could no longer endure working in and with such “decaying facilities.” Twenty other top COD scientists preceded him in resigning in the past two years. Ten of these positions remain unfilled.

  Ten million children will be UC-positive worldwide in the next ten years. Eighty percent of all UC infections will be heterosexually transmitted.

  UC is a plague.

  As I hate my president, I grieve for my country.

  Dredd Trish—you are, pure and simple, a murderer, as was your predecessor.

  But President Trish doesn’t have to worry.

  Because our ranks are being depleted faster than we can replenish them.

  UC is a plague.

  And it need not have happened.

  Happy Tenth Anniversary of your plague, President Dredd Trish.

  * * *

  Frederick, Freddy, Fredchen, they don’t care. Goody goody.

  DAVID CONTACTS FRED

  I have been following you. You will hear from me. I will find you when I am ready.

  ANOTHER GAY SON!

  WHEREIN WE LEARN SOME INFORMATION ABOUT THE SON OF THE MAN WHO’S NOW OUR PRESIDENT BY JOSEPH KIDNEY

  In the voluminous diaries and correspondence housed in the Dredd Trish Memorial Library in Devotta, Texas, all in her own clear New England boarding school handwriting, Mrs. Dredd “Taddy” Trish records a remarkable number of entries concerning her son Dredd Jr. These are, of course, not open to the public. Only tired old muckrakers like me know how to get in for a good read. Of particular interest to your history are her diary entries from the pre-Ruester days:

  “I told Daddy that I keep finding photos of naked young men with erections in Junior’s room. He has never been neat. He has always been sloppy. They didn’t teach him anything at Paulson. I know he takes drugs, because I find evidence of this too. Pills that Dr. Dan tells me are ‘mood-altering, and dangerous.’ Little tins of powder that Dr. Dan says is that cokane stuff that is even ‘more dangerous.’ I have confronted Junior. ‘How do you know so much, Ma?’ he asks me with that big open grin of his that is so hard to confront, much less surmount. I tell him what I have found. I urge his father to deal with him about the drugs and naked boys. I always thought that being a cheerleader at Paulson was a suspicious activity for a healthy young man to be involved in. I have also always suspected that hanging around constantly with that Pinky Birch could only lead to trouble. I will not detail the photos I found of them together.

  “After repeated reminders, Daddy Trish tells me he has spoken to Junior Trish about the pictures of naked young men with erections. ‘Yes, I told him what you told me. He said that all the young guys have such photos now. I told him I found this hard to believe. He told me that I am out to lunch and should “get with it.” He said, in fact, “Get with the program, Pop.” I asked him to elaborate on what this program entailed. He said he would take me to a place called Studio 54 in New York where they take these pills and smoke these “joints” and … “Pop, Pinky and I get sucked off in the upper balcony. It’s really cool.” … Taddy, that is what he said to me, word for word. Taddy, I don’t know how to deal with all this. I told him these sounded like activities and friends that could ruin his future career, in anything, if he ever has one, which I sincerely doubt as you know. He certainly could never get elected to anything. Again he said something like, “Pop, you just don’t get it.” And I told him that indeed I did not, that I thought he should see a psychiatrist. He reminded me that he and we had already “gone down that road.” I told him, and I tell you, Taddy, I don’t want to have anything more to do with this young man. He appears a lost soul to me. What did we do to have such a son? He’s never going to amount to anything.’”

  And I thought Junior Ruester was an unbelievable problem.

  My book about Ruester the father is coming along. Talk about unbelievable!

  FRED’S JOURNAL

  This weekend I had a secret meeting with several officials from the U.S. Department of Health and Happiness. All of them are concerned about UC. They asked for this meeting to be confidential. They came to me as the founder of FUQU. They came to me because they don’t know what else to do. They told me horror story after horror story. How nothing can get done because they are not permitted to do it. So all the offices set up to deal with UC are not functioning. How inept many of those placed in charge are. It was terrifying to hear. Everything one suspected, of course, only worse. And they came up to New York on their own time and money to try and get us, the activist community, to do something!

  Mysteriously, miraculously, my T cells have gone up! “You could get drafted with them,” Dr. Greene says. What does this mean for my life now? I have been spared yet again. My liver is apparently coping. What should I do with this gift of time? Are you crazy? What kind of question is that? Get to work. You have your own Ho
locaust opera to write, you stupid person who does nothing but waste time.

  Brad Davis, who played me in my play and did so heartbreakingly, called to say goodbye. He’s going to kill himself tomorrow. He refuses to talk of new drugs. Tommy had sent him everything he could get his hands on, over and under any counter or from any country. ZAP made Brad really sick. He told me, “Please tell Tommy not to call me with any new experimentals.” Next day Susan calls: Brad’s dead. He got infected with UC heterosexually. Half the cast of a movie he was making were shooting up. I wonder how any of the rest of them are doing?

  PERRY TELLS ABOUT THE BIGGEST CONDOM EVER MADE

  I knew this was going to happen. I just knew it and it makes me sad. Charlie F. says I should stop worrying, Fred is a big boy and when things happen they happen for a reason. It won’t be long before Fred finds out. I just know Fred is going to hate me and think I’ve gone over to the enemy. That’s how he thinks. And I think that way, too. He’s taught me so much, Fred has. Sparks is already bossier than ever. What else did I expect?

  It’s getting harder to be in this fight without … more fights. I don’t like fighting my friends.

  The latest of what’s just happened is this:

  Scotty had the idea of putting a giant condom over Senator O’Trackney Vurd’s house in Arlington. The money to pay for the condom and this action came from Sammy Sircus. Sammy doesn’t want it known that he handed Scotty a big wad of bills, three thousand dollars’ worth, on the beach at the Pines. I was there with Scotty and saw it. (We fucked again that night, Scotty and I, and, well, it just isn’t going to work, so I don’t know why he’s so insistent.)

  There were a couple of dozen of us who did all this. All of us are from FUQU. And I guess all of us now are from TAG as well. Although Sparks and Scotty say they’ll let us know when TAG can officially be said out loud. When he gets wind of the condom story Fred is thrilled because he thinks it’s a FUQU action. He doesn’t know about how far along TAG is already in its development behind his back. A confrontation has been avoided only by sheer luck. This action was to have been TAG’s official media launching. Vurd has one powerful media network, which is heavy-duty controlling what’s said about him. Like that he and Sam Sport are bosom buddies. As they both were with Senator Joe McCarthy, who was also gay. I heard this from Artie, someone I fucked with at Fire Island who’s been a fuck buddy with Sam Sport.

  We got a big U-Haul to transmit the condom, which is really huge and heavy and was made to order by some company that makes them for horses and I even think elephants. Its manufacturer said it was the biggest condom ever made. He wanted to submit it to the Guinness Book of Records. We knew Vurd’s daily schedule, so he wasn’t there. We set up a portable generator, climbed to the roof with the condom and a cold-air blower, set up a second blower on the ground to inflate it from the bottom, and that was it. Inflated, it went up like fifteen feet in the air and covered most of Vurd’s house, which was one story and surprisingly modest. There was lettering laid on it at the factory, saying SEN. VURD, DEADLIER THAN THE VIRUS, and WE NEED PROTECTION AGAINST VURD’S HATE! and VURD MUST BE STOPPED! The cops were there in ten minutes. But we’d managed to get the whole thing on and it settled down by itself. Claudette and Spud filmed the whole thing. But no one in the media would touch it.

  I’m relieved our condom story didn’t make the news to launch TAG. But I know it’s only a matter of time before Fred finds out.

  LIKE FRED HAS NOTHING BETTER TO DO

  The Editor

  Dramatists’ Guild Newsletter

  I would like to register my distress over your publishing “Ten Golden Rules for Playwrights” by Marsha Norman in your October issue. Why do writers write stupid things like this, which can be so harmful and detrimental to beginning writers looking for help and grabbing for straws from any source? I cannot for the life of me understand what possessed Ms. Norman to compile this list, and I cannot for the life of me understand who at the Guild was foolish enough to think it contained anything of wisdom.

  Rule 1. “Read four hours a day. A noble ideal but ignored by many.” Georges Simenon prided himself on not reading while writing, fearing his mind would be cluttered up and his famous style unconsciously tampered with.

  Rule 2. “Don’t write about your present life.” Then I never would have written The Normal Heart or Faggots. Or this history.

  Rule 3. “Don’t write in order to tell the audience how smart you are.” Then Oscar Wilde never would have written. Or Proust. Or George Bernard Shaw. And War and Peace never would have seen the light of day.

  Rule 4. “Cut out characters you cannot write fairly about.” Dickens’s novels are filled with characters he was out to get even with. Restoration comedies are filled with grudges repaid. Shakespeare’s villains were often based on real people.

  Rule 5. “There can only be one central character.” Who’s the one central character in Long Day’s Journey? Much Ado? What about Ms. Norman’s own ’Night, Mother?

  Rule 6. “You must tell the audience right away what’s at stake in the evening.” Tell that to Beckett, Pinter, Stoppard, Ionesco, Genet, Agatha Christie, Stephen Sondheim.

  Rule 7. “Never consider your audience or friends while writing.” Tell that to Noel Coward, who fashioned parts specifically for his friends.

  Rule 8. “Don’t talk about your play while writing it.” Maybe. But sometimes I get my best ideas from discussing a problem with certain trusted and respected sounding boards.

  Rule 9. “Keep pads of paper near all your chairs.” Gee, I wish I’d thought of that.

  Rule 10. “Never go to your typewriter until you know what your first sentence is, since it’s unhealthy to sit in front of a silent typewriter.” If writers followed this one, nothing would ever get written at all.

  Well, as I say, and certainly must now say again, and very loudly, after reading Ms. Norman’s useless list: RULES ARE MADE TO BE BROKEN.

  When the above letter is not printed, Fred resigns from the Dramatists’ Guild. He guesses that in the scheme of things his life is full enough now and that this is small potatoes, but it makes him feel better, telling this useless guild that doesn’t even provide health insurance to its members to stuff it.

  SHIT IN CINCINNATI

  Manolo felt guilty. He felt guilty he was alive. Gil was dead, and he was alive. He’d made Gil have sex with him over and over because he loved him so much. He didn’t want to be alive now. So he took a big kitchen butcher knife he stole from the restaurant where he worked and he fell on it. He’d seen that on TV. You hold the knife to your stomach and you fall on top of it. It worked on TV and it worked on him. The knife went through him and he was dead soon enough. His roommate Tino came in later and found him and called the police. The police wouldn’t touch him so they called an ambulance. The ambulance guys wouldn’t touch him so they called an undertaker. All towns this size now know what kids with UC look like. “They got that look.” Manolo was an illegal immigrant and Gil Standing was an assistant district attorney and Tino was an illegal immigrant too, so he left before the police came. But Manolo had no papers on him and the police found some card with Tino’s name on it, and so they reported the dead man as Tino Marchesi, and when Mrs. Marchesi in Turin, Italy, heard about this from a cousin in Cincinnati who saw a story about the “hara-kiri suicide” on the evening news, she took an overdose of some pills she had, “to join my Tino in heaven.” That assistant district attorney, Gil Standing, was related to one of the oldest and most famous families in this city, which was uncomfortable with you if you weren’t straight Caucasian. The cops found Gil’s dead body in a closet, covered with spots and vomit, his eyeballs all runny pus, with papers in his pockets that told exactly who he was: Gilbert Standing, assistant district attorney. Gil’s body was delivered to his wife by a messenger. This wife of this assistant district attorney gathered up their eight-month-old baby and jumped from the roof of Procter & Gamble, which an ancestor had founded. Gil’s boss, also a St
anding, didn’t want it known that someone on his staff was dead from this crud and was therefore a faggot. “I would lose my federal grants if it was discovered,” he had told his wife. “You are a bigoted pig,” this wife had said to him. “You are a shameful representative of our country.” He swatted her hard across the mouth and she had to have a lot of stitches. Her daughter wouldn’t talk to her. “Why you don’t leave that pig, Ma? How many times I beg you?” And the daughter left home and went to another city a little bigger than Cincinnati. St. Louis. She didn’t have any money and she hoped she would find a job so she wouldn’t have to turn tricks to eat like one of her sisters had done in Cleveland and wound up dead from UC herself. The Standings of Cincinnati aren’t what they used to be.

  PERDITA

  The GMPA board member Perdita Winthrop Pugh is married to Parkinson Pugh of the Boston Pughs. This lineage makes them very important. Perdita and Parkinson Pugh live on Fifth Avenue overlooking the Metropolitan Museum. She is very beautiful. She has gorgeous clothes and jewels and loves to wear them. She keeps a hairdresser on staff because she also has beautiful hair. She devotes all her energy to doing good deeds for GMPA.

  Tonight is a good deed that doesn’t sound much fun. “We know all of this. Why are you allowing him to speak!” Parkinson asks as he helps her connect her Pugh diamonds around her neck.

  “I have this hunchie it’s going to be awful,” she agrees. “But Tommy insisted.”