The American People, Volume 2

by Larry Kramer

  DANIEL THE SPY

  A few more words about Dr. Garth Buffalo. Both he and Dodo have trickled away from our narrative as they frittered away their importance to this history of UC.

  Looking back, studying the records, the various versions, I can say, in the case of Dodo, you were and are an evil manipulating monster.

  God, I assume we have made that clear.

  I know I am tardy in joining you to make this outright condemnation.

  As to Buffalo, who knows what he might have discovered before so many journalists and a wretched congressman named John Dingus start crucifying him? No one remembers that this is a country that invited a known Nazi, Dr. Wernher von Braun, to come here to supervise our space program! Why am I dredging that one up? Because Wernher, no matter what was constantly being written about him in yet another exposé, was enabled to never stop working in our behalf. Indeed, he got us to the moon.

  He was saved as my brother was being carved up.

  Rep. Dingus has been front and center in also eliminating Dr. Buffalo, who is, like Dodo, also considered by many a genius, a proud man, pompous and definitely self-serving, also terrible at relating to others, particularly with the media, especially when they are attacking him with such hostility. Dr. Buffalo might have helped save us had Dingus not been so obsessed with putting him out of commission as he has with Dodo. Dr. Buffalo, already a Nobel Prize winner (for helping to discover the very reverse transcriptase that has turned out to play so important a part in understanding the UC virus), was, until Dingus got through with him, the president of Rockefeller University. A most distinguished scientist, he’d said publicly that he believes UC can be cured and that he has ideas on how to do it. You’d think this alone, with a man of this caliber, would make someone of importance—like, for instance, the president of the United States, or certainly a congressperson, or someone at NITS, like my boss Jerry—jump at the chance to put Dr. Buffalo in charge of something. Well, think again. Dingus, who has great power in Congress, would allow no such thing. It’s difficult to believe that Dingus is a Democrat! (As is Boy Vertle!) Is his head screwed on straight? It’s truly hard to figure this man out, joining a growing list of same.

  Yes, Dodo is a guilty shit. Yes, Buffalo made a stupid call. But it will take hundreds of millions of dollars for the government to prove Dingus’s charges against these men. (This figure comes from an assessment by The American Lawyers Review.) Jerry could staff an entire army of new scientists.

  Buffalo’s crime, in the face of a plague that is heading for a billion people (that prediction in The Observer of London, if you recall) is so puny and unimportant as almost to not bear elaboration. He defended one of his students who may or may not have fudged some data on her thesis. (The latest “evidence,” I believe, is that she did not.) When confronted with this, Buffalo became stubborn and, like Geiseric, too much filled with hubris. Hubris makes congresspersons and the media go for the jugular. Dr. Buffalo’s been fired by Rockefeller and, like Dodo, is looking in vain for a way to redeem himself, not easy for a prideful person. (Fortunately, he has a very rich wife.)

  Dare one raise the possibility of a plague against us? A conspiracy of hate? Well, that is what this history should be telling us. Hermia, you have been telling us this all along.

  The Journey of Hate. For your Journal of Evil, Hermia.

  HAH’s Office of Scientific Oversight has just announced its “finding.” Dodo gets off scot-free from the charge of stealing the French virus. Buffalo is still unemployed.

  It has been nearly ten years since the French discovered the UC virus. Seven years have passed since the Institut Curie filed its lawsuits. Five years since the settlement was celebrated in Paris. Three years since … The White House had changed hands three times, a president was almost assassinated, wars had been fought, the Berlin Wall had fallen …

  And I have become even more of a helpless nit.

  May David, my very own twin brother, forgive me, wherever he is. I have let him down.

  I don’t think I’ve ever been so honest as in what I’ve written above.

  DONALD

  The McClintock Project, or the CURE UC NOW Project (we cannot get consensus which to favor), is toddling along rather well, much to Max’s and all of our surprise. We find a lot of support for our ideas and actually begin receiving inquiries from various legislators about it and what it is, and can it be useful to them. Actually, it is only one legislator, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, from New York, and of course we can be useful to him, he has a huge gay constituency. So we begin, with the help of aides on his staff, whipping this into a proper bill he can introduce on the floor of the House. We are so excited and we also swear each other to secrecy, the growing dozens or so of our group, especially since we know TAG is sniffing around Congress as well.

  A WALK IN THE RAIN

  PERRY’S VOICE: We’ve all been watching him lose weight before our eyes. I finally have the nerve to ask him. We’re walking from what’s left of a FUQU meeting when it starts to rain. We stand under an entrance to a pizza joint.

  PERRY: There seem to be more people coming back.

  FRED: Well, you were there again.

  PERRY: What’s wrong with you? We’re all frightened for you. How much do you weigh?

  FRED: One thirty.

  PERRY: Are you sick?

  FRED: It’s okay. Don’t cry. Come here and let me hug you. I’ve wanted to do this for a long time.

  PERRY: Remember when we first met at a FUQU meeting and walked in the night talking and it started to rain and we stood under this awning in front of this very pizza place?

  FRED: I do.

  PERRY: I wanted so much for you to ask me to come home with you.

  FRED: I wanted to ask you.

  PERRY: Why didn’t you?

  FRED: I’m old enough to be your father. You were just off the bus from D.C., where your lover died on Daniel’s floor.

  PERRY: I guess.

  FRED: You guess what?

  PERRY: I guess those are good reasons. I guess you’re right. But I wished it then.

  FRED: We all have a lot of “thens” in our lives. What are Sparks and Scotty up to?

  PERRY: I got fired. I wrote an attack on all the manufacturers of the D drugs, and Sparks said in his pissed-off high prissy voice, “I told you not to write stuff like this…” The only reason I went there was because he said I could write what I wanted to.

  FRED: Please stop crying.

  PERRY: Please, take me home with you. Please take me in your arms and kiss and hug me. I don’t want you to die.

  FRED: I guess that’s one of the sweetest off-the-wall offers I’ve ever had. Do you want me to say something to Sparks? Did he give you some severance at least?

  PERRY: No.

  FRED: Well, he’ll hear about this from me. How dare he not pay you severance?

  PERRY: He fired Spencer last month. Spencer was only working there to get health insurance.

  FRED: I’ll definitely have words with Sparks.

  PERRY: Spencer committed suicide because Sparks fired him.

  FRED: I hadn’t heard about Spencer. That’s heartbreaking.

  PERRY: He said he had no choice. He couldn’t pay for his meds.

  FRED: How come no one told me about it?

  PERRY: He went home to his folks in Louisiana and did it there. Sparks refuses to let anyone talk about it.

  FRED: He’s turned into quite a monster. The rain’s stopped. Which way are you walking?

  PERRY: I’ve got my own little place now. Actually, you got it for me, don’t you remember? Your friend who owned the disco … It’s $157.50 a month rent controlled. This is where you live …

  FRED: Good night. Thanks for the walk home. I love you, Perry.

  PERRY: I love you, Fred.

  FRED: I hope you find someone soon. What are you going to do for work?

  PERRY: Tommy said he’d help.

  FRED: Good. He will, too. Keep me posted. I’m tired. Good
night again.

  PERRY: Good night.

  FRED: Now stop that crying immediately! I’m not dead yet.

  PERRY: We have to find you a boyfriend quick to cheer you up!

  AT LAST

  He just shows up at a FUQU meeting. I don’t notice him right away. We’d never actually met in Masturbov Gardens. It was his brother that I’d been in love with and was still connected to. I was talking to Perry when I suddenly realized that this guy looked just like Daniel. Then it hit me. This guy in front of me is David! I just threw my arms around him and hugged real tight. We both started to cry, right there in the midst of this diminishing group of my stalwart fellow warriors. We went outside immediately and started walking and talking endlessly and for hours. We could not stop talking. We just had to plow on through so many years and so much shit, asking and answering questions and telling each other stories only some of which we knew or suspected. We didn’t even stop for dinner. We wound up down on the Christopher Street Piers just as the sun was coming up. We put our arms around each other and at the same moment we each reached out to the other and slowly and softly and tenderly began to kiss, again starting to cry. I asked him if he wanted to come home with me, and he nodded his head yes. The minute we entered my apartment we started kissing again, not just on our lips but slowly all over each other’s fully clothed bodies. I reached out to help him remove his shirt, which I saw was awkward for him. Then I took my shirt off, revealing my getting-too-skinny body. When I turned to him he’d removed his shirt and had his back to me so I could see the reality of what the world had done to him. I began to kiss that back, all over it, with tears in my eyes. Then he turned to look at me. “Thank you,” he said. “I didn’t know if something like this could ever happen.” I said something dumb like, “I am so very sad for your life.” He said how he should have come earlier, that he’d followed my life and I was such a fighter. Again I said stuff like, “You have fought far more than I have. I can’t conceive of what you’ve been through.” He told me to shut up and could we please make love. Which we did. And it was the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me.

  FRED

  TO TOMMY

  What am I doing! I’m on my way to dying. I haven’t told him that. Surely he’s been punished enough. I did tell him about Daniel. He laughed when I told him it never went anywhere. “He didn’t have the courage he should have had, letting you slip through his fingers. I shall tell him to his face whenever we all see each other. And thank him for being so dumb!”

  He said, “We are two wounded fellows. Why in the world has this happened to us?”

  “I haven’t been able to do much about what’s happening to us,” I reply.

  “Do you really believe that?”

  I didn’t answer him.

  He answered for us both: “I have yet to come to believe in anything.”

  So we have that quest in common.

  Tommy, don’t look so sad. Please be happy for us.

  INT. FRED’S LOFT. NIGHT.

  Fred is making dinner for David and Tommy.

  TOMMY: You’re making him very happy.

  DAVID: We share a long history.

  TOMMY: So I gather. I love him a lot.

  DAVID: I can see that. I understand. Then we must be friends.

  TOMMY: He taught me everything I know. I hope you’ll be very happy together. (He hugs David.) Happy to make your acquaintance. (We see that tears are streaming down his face. Fred comes and puts his arms around him and cradles his head.) I love you so much. (Pulls away.) And I’m jealous. Jealous as all fucking hell!

  This sounds so melodramatic that he and then they all start laughing.

  INT. FRED’S BEDROOM. NIGHT.

  David and Fred are naked in bed.

  DAVID: For years I couldn’t stay in one place for long. I must have driven in every state. I carry my scars every minute of every day, trying to figure out what was done to me. I can see what was done to me. I just have never understood why.

  Is it strange to have a desperate need to get at some truth of something I’m afraid is unexplainable?

  (Fred shakes his head no.)

  Why did I think that crisscrossing this country where I was born and looking at those who live in it could in any way satisfy my longing for some sort of answers? Were all the men like the ones I had to deal with in Mr. Hoover’s whorehouse? All the churches and cathedrals and temples I visited, all the books about Jesus and God and religion and philosophy and law that I studied in San Francisco, nothing comes close to really answering my questions. I looked at faces everywhere. I looked into eyes. I listened. Years of doing this and all I see are versions of the same thing. Over and over. The inability of fellow humans to deal decently with others as fellow humans.

  I come to wonder if I’ll know what I want when I find it, see it, hear it, perhaps even feel it.

  Until I met you.

  I went to law school. The law really doesn’t protect the likes of me. Of us. Why not?

  FRED: I think we’re both looking for the same thing.

  CUT TO:

  Moonlight. Fred and David have been making love. Fred touches his finger to spots of liquid on each of their chests.

  FRED: Is it yours or mine? Is it … poison?

  DAVID: It’s love. I love you.

  FRED: I know. And I love you, too. I’m frightened for us.

  DAVID: Do we have to give ourselves permission to just be in love?

  FRED: Why are there so many murdering us? When you were in Berlin did you know your father and Amos and that what’s-hisname were lovers and having sex?

  DAVID: No. I was very young. It was all very jolly. Pillow fights in a heap of bodies on this enormous bed by a beautiful lake. I didn’t find out about them until Gertrude told me in Florida. I haven’t told you but I’m a very rich man. Both Amos and Gertrude left me their money. We can do anything we want to! Why are you so skinny?

  FRED (after a very long pause): I haven’t told you that I may not have much longer to live.

  Fred, with his back to David, is crying. Fred’s tears become sobs. David takes him in his arms. Fred’s arms caress David’s scarred back. Then David starts to cry too.

  FRED’S VOICE: I realize that he’ll be there for me for the rest of our lives. We make love, over and over, we make jokes, I want a house, we start planning a house. Soon we are living together. “You feel comfortable. I feel comfortable with you,” he says. And we love each other more and more each day.

  Which of us said this?

  Both of us!

  * * *

  I hide in parts of your body that remain out of reach of any of your so-called anti-me treatments.

  CHURCH CALLS FOR VIOLENCE AT UPCOMING GAY PRIDE PARADE

  In New Trobe, North Carolina, Mayor Jordan Fandan refused to block a right-wing hate rally that the Smoky Mountain Church of the Mountains has again organized, which is to destroy the annual local Gay Pride parade. Last year marchers in the New Trobe and Central North Carolina Gay Pride parade were brutally attacked and beaten in the street when walking home after the parade. The parade was also firebombed with homemade “Molotov cocktails.” The leader of the church, Bishop Monte Fiore, urged everyone to “throw stones” at Pride participants and called for all politicians who support the parade “to be drowned in Lake Oligarchee with millstones tied around their necks.”

  “Stoning, firebombs, public drownings, sounds like it’s from the Middle Ages, not the twentieth century,” said Andre Banks, a director of the Raleigh, North Carolina, LGB rights movement.

  Last year at this parade, fifty persons were hospitalized with serious injuries, one pregnant woman had a miscarriage, one elderly gentleman had a heart attack, and one person died from rocks that struck his head. One local elected official, Ms. Natalie Olmstead, a town clerk, was indeed drowned in the lake.

  The national office of the church, Affiliated Fundamentals for Christ, in Saginaw, Michigan, refused to comment or condemn its member church i
n New Trobe.

  —Central Valley (N.C.) News and Views

  FROM THE NOTEBOOKS OF JAMES JESUS ANGLETON CODE NAME: MOTHER

  It makes no difference, the party. I’ve worked for them both, or all of them, for there are others. Tricky keeping everything straight, not letting others know. That’s the secret of this trade. That separates the men from the boys. It’s about experience, learning how cold and impersonal you can be, not giving a damn and all that, “that” including administering poison and shooting and—well, all that. And I’ve learned all that about myself, that I could do anything.

  Most of The American People were brought up in the bosom of a really wretched family, including me. Washington is full of people with wretched backgrounds. It’s the men more than the women who are more … I hate to use words like wounded but all the presidents I ever knew were sick in some inside part of them. I am too, but I learned how to use it, how to turn it on those deserving of hate. Presidents don’t have the latitude to hate so openly. That’s why I always have a job. There are always jobs for good uncomplicated all-out anti-haters.

  It’s the wives who usually are the pissers. Maude Vehemoth Vertle has said pretty much the same things to me that Purpura Ruester and Taddy Trish had. “Just try to do all that is not being done and can’t be done by overt means.” Maude is one tough cookie. So were the others going as far back as I can remember. But I smell that Maude’s much tougher and going to be around for a while.

  Tom Jones is the one who taught me the difference between “overt” and “covert.” “Covert is when they can’t see you and overt is when they can. There’s a usefulness for both of them,” he’d said. “The trick is knowing which and when.” That’s pretty straightforward, you would think, only it usually isn’t, and Tom taught me that as well.

  Interesting how it’s always the First Ladies who are really the pricks. Well, nine out of ten of The American People approve of what their husbands are doing, and it’s their wives who realize this fact and take it from there. Nine out of ten Americans hate homos. That’s a tricky thing for me personally to deal with, overt or covert.