The American People, Volume 2

by Larry Kramer

  “Look who’s here!” he yelled out to the small crowd. “Our founder’s been brought back from the dead!”

  There was a small scattering of applause.

  ROUND ONE

  Fred went to his Yaddah reunion. His classmate Von Greeting was on a panel of successful classmates talking about their great careers. This was the only reason Fred came back to this damn thing, to publicly accuse Von of starting the worldwide plague of UC. That being head of the company that knowingly sold tainted blood products had started the plague in America, certainly and without a doubt. Von Greeting was a very popular classmate. He’d been football captain and Skull and Bones. After my standing up and making this accusation you could hear a pin drop. Von, looking very aged and tired, stumblingly defended himself poorly and inaudibly and disappeared immediately after my accusation and from New Godding. Fred, shaking that he’d actually done this, thought everyone would now exile him into purdah. But Von’s own roommate, Phelps Rundle, now pretty bent over from Parkinson’s, came over to him and thanked him. “Somebody finally went after the Golden Boy. All his life, and he still lives near me, Von has hated two things, Jews and homosexuals. He didn’t think there was anything wrong with hate like that. I am married to a Jewess. He refused to be my best man. My best friend from childhood and prep school and Yaddah refused to be my best man because I was marrying a Jewess. I don’t know if you remember, Fred, but Von wouldn’t talk to you when we all lived in the same entryway in Standing. He said you were a queer even then. He used to joke he wished there were courses here that taught how to eliminate people like you. Yes, I thought he was joking. When he bought into G-D he told me that time had come. He felt as happy in anticipation as he was before any big game at Yaddah. ‘You are all going to be dead,’ he recently said to me before he was booted off Yaddah’s board. I have no idea how he finally figured out that I am homosexual too. In his eyes I was the same as a Jew. He believed that many Jews were also homosexuals. He said things like, ‘It’s bad luck Hitler didn’t finish his job.’ And he’d roar with laughter. It never occurred to him that he was turning against the only person who ever really loved him. And that was me.”

  ROUND TWO

  Herbert, Tusher, Albertino, Mucosi, about a dozen of them, are crazy. They’re certifiable. Their brains are fried from drugs and dope and coke. They’ve broken off from FUQU/San Francisco. No, that’s incorrect. They’ve hijacked FUQU/SF and stolen that name for their own, while FUQU/SF stood hopelessly by in the face of off-the-wall idiots, once their own brothers-in-arms. FUQU has never had a mechanism for expelling anyone, even members who steal money from it, as happened on several occasions in New York. Herbert and his buddies hate Fred Lemish for recommending ZAP, which isn’t true. But it’s always best, says Herbert, “to hate the leader; that’s how you get attention.” They also believe Fred’s in bed with Jerry, which certainly isn’t true. It’s difficult to discern just what they’re trying to achieve. They’ve opened stands all over the Castro to sell “medical marijuana” and they’re cleaning up. When Fred accepts his next invitation to speak, this one from San Francisco Gay Pride, Herbert and Tusher storm in with shouts and whistles as Fred’s building to his climax. Fred knows who they are. From the dais he furiously throws himself on top of Herbert and, quite respectably for an aging nonathlete who’s recovering from a liver transplant, beats the shit out of him as best he can, “for destroying my organization!” He’s amazed his rage can mutate into something so physical. He’d never beaten up anyone before. Of course, he was really punching back at Sparks and Scotty and Claudette and Spud and his once-considered-children now playing TAG, another hijacked organization of dissidents. Hotel security has the intruders out in no time and Fred gets a round of applause. David picks him up off the floor and gets him back to the microphone. “Honey bunny, be careful. This was meant to be an out-of-town tryout, not a closing night.”

  As chapters of FUQU start falling apart or closing up, Fred visits Shmuel, now an old man. They sit in Central Park near the Plaza. Fred won’t go up to Shmuel’s office, which is on the twenty-third floor. Fred is disconsolate: I’ve failed. I’ve failed my people. I can’t save us. “And of course I’m not getting much help from my people either, saving themselves.” Shmuel reminds him of the story of Exodus, and of Moses unable to lead his people to safety in the Promised Land. His people were awful to him “after all he’d done for them. You can imagine.”

  After the session Fred realizes he doesn’t know what happened to Moses.

  THE DEATH OF VON GREETING

  Von Greeting is found dead by his cleaning lady in his apartment in Waldbaum Towers. Autopsy reveals he’s been poisoned. By himself? By another? He’d been seen at Tolly’s last “secret” meeting, watching, saying little, which is unusual for him. Of all the people there, he alone knew that the first drug coming that actually works, which sadly will not be one of his, now called a protease inhibitor, is shortly to be announced by Presidium, which tested it on cohorts in Outer Mongolia, in Timbuctoo. Do not laugh. A sophisticated-enough population lives there that’s both infected and geographically available for a secret clinical trial.

  Von’s residence in Waldbaum Towers is put under lock and key until Arnold Botts can clean it out.

  There are a number of notebooks. No one will read these notebooks. They’re still there to be read, embargoed in the Greeting Foundation’s cavernous archives in Malt-on-Rest. The news of his death is not announced, by order of Galworthy Jenkins, the new director of the U.S. Office of American Security (OAS). As with the mysterious disappearance and death of Garrie Nasturtium, also never officially announced, nor was Dr. Herschel Vitabaum’s or Dr. Sister Grace Hooker’s (announced but full of lies), we still don’t know how and why.

  In one notebook, Von had written: “I’m ready. I’ve done what I wanted to do. I’ve proved you can come out of the sticks and turn a piece-of-shit company into a billion dollars manufacturing poison they beg you to sell them. Greptz’s protease will come out first but it won’t be strong enough. Presidium’s will be. So there’s nothing left for me. I killed off as many of them as I could with ZAP. Too bad kikeface Lemish blew my cover about Factor VIII, but maybe no one will believe him. America’s the greatest land of all!” He leaves his fortune to Cambridge University to administer as part of the Greeting Foundation. Arnold Botts goes to England to run it. Dash Snicker is left a number of what turn out to be exceptionally valuable patents for secret drugs in the G-D pipeline. Just when these start turning into multimillions, Dash dies from lung cancer. The patents return to the Greeting Foundation, now one of the richest foundations in the world. Just go to Cambridge and see how many buildings are named “Greeting,” after Lord Von Greeting.

  When his death is finally announced it’s by a decrepit and raspy-voiced Sir Norman Treadway in London. Among other nuggets of new information about this mysterious man he reveals is this: “Lord Greeting is survived by Arnold Botts Greeting, the great-grandson of the world-renowned interior decorator, Lady Syrie Maugham, the wife of the famous writer.”

  TWO TIDBITS

  Jon Cohen writes in Science magazine:

  “There never is to be a Manhattan Project for UC. One had been promised by no less than a successful candidate for president of the United States. High-powered meetings with leading scientists, policy makers, and activists had been held to package it. The name had been changed repeatedly to make it more palatable. A respected congresswoman and the White House’s own UC czarina tried to sell the idea. The New York Truth ran an op-ed by a famous UC activist that pleaded for it. Two congressional bills tried to legislate it. But a Manhattan Project for UC—no matter what it was called, no matter who sponsored it, no matter how it was packaged—is not to be.”

  John Mohr, age eighty-six, Hoover’s “third man,” dies. He “played a central role in the mysterious disappearance of Hoover’s legendary files,” according to one of Hoover’s biographers. Hoover’s office was sealed off when he died, but
Mohr never mentioned that the director had eight other offices crammed with files. Helen Gandy, Hoover’s longtime secretary, pored over them under Mohr’s supervision as truckloads kept arriving. Were all of the files destroyed? Betcha not.

  COLLOQUY

  DAVID: Why did millions of human beings allow themselves to be marched unresistingly into the gas chambers? Is it significant that those facing death didn’t attempt to take one of their executioners with them? Is that like what I did or didn’t do? There were scarcely any serious revolts. They had no one like my honey, angry Fred.

  * * *

  FRED: They would have shot your honey, angry Fred, first thing because of his big mouth. No! I would have found a way to fight back. I wouldn’t let them shut me up. And honey bunny yourself, give yourself some credit for still being here. Think about it, sweetness. Somehow you wouldn’t let them get you.

  * * *

  HANNAH ARENDT: To destroy individuality is to destroy spontaneity, man’s power to begin something new out of his own resources, something that cannot be explained on the basis of reactions to environment and events.

  * * *

  FRED: Our fight has destroyed the will of many of those still among the living.

  * * *

  HANNAH ARENDT: Hitler knew that the system which succeeds in destroying its victim before he mounts the scaffold is incomparably the best for keeping a whole people in slavery. In submission. Nothing is more terrifying than these processions of human beings walking like zombies to their death.

  * * *

  DAVID: Then the very existence of UC is essential for the functioning of a totalitarianism that allows “them” to maintain we’re sick. It kills off our moral value and usefulness in our own minds and in the eyes of the world. It obliterates the consciences of those who should help us and don’t, liquidates our individuality and spontaneity, our ability to fight back, to hold our oppressors to task. They want to make us superfluous. Enforced superfluousness is the essential tool for perpetuating what Arendt means by absolute or radical evil. God, she was a brilliant lady. Thank you for telling me to read her.

  FRED: Thank yourself. You’ve certainly been doing a lot of figuring out. I love that.

  DAVID: You’re my inspiration.

  FRED: And you are mine.

  DAVID: We mustn’t get too gloppy!

  FRED: Why not!

  * * *

  DR. JAMES OLESKE: You’ve got to stay with it. You can’t take the next job. I try to tell medical students, once you make a commitment to a community, if you’re really going to be an effective person, you’ve got to stay there, you can’t give up; that’s why I don’t believe in this burnout thing. Because patients can’t say, “I’m poor. I don’t want this disease, and I want to leave Newark.” They can’t take the bus and leave Newark and go someplace and be well and healthy. And I don’t think as a health-care provider that you have the right to say, “Well, I’ve seen too many kids die. I’ve seen too many problems, I’m going to change my job.” I don’t think we have that privilege. I just think that UC was my problem and I was called to deal with it. Not called. I was sort of there when it happened. I was called to stay. (Bayer and Oppenheimer’s UC Doctors. Dr. Oleske is medical director of the Children’s Hospital UC Program at the University of Medicine and Dentistry in New Jersey.)

  * * *

  FRED: By now UC doctors are falling by the wayside everywhere. It has just been too much for many of them. Some have contemplated suicide, many have retired, many have turned to administration or even working for the pharms. For many of them, burying patients for more than a decade is more than they can bear.

  * * *

  DR. WILLIAM FERWILLIGER: The degree of human misery and suffering associated with The Underlying Condition far exceeds anything I have witnessed during my fifty-year professional lifetime. (Dr. Ferwilliger is the chief doctor at Bethlehem Redistrict, the largest medical complex in east-central Pennsylvania.)

  * * *

  DAVID: I’m told that when I was at Partekla they’d find me walking through the corridors in the middle of the night looking for a way to get out. I don’t remember that. What did they really do to me there?

  * * *

  DANIEL: It’s funny sitting in Punic Hall. Everyone working on UC was ordered here to “meet and greet” Fergus Frisby, the new deputy head of HAH, already acting like a pompous ass, as if he’s the new Messiah and not just the acting one until a new permanent one is chosen by Boy Vertle and Donna Do-Nothing, who are definitely not in a hurry. Boy’s been a real loser on UC issues, dethroning the notion that it’s only Republicans who won’t touch us with a barge pole. And now here comes the Democrat Boy Vertle to do just that. “My old buddy Fergus from the plains of Arkansas will now have his very own shop to call some shots that I know he’s been wanting for ever so long,” Boy drawls, in anointing this hillbilly who is ten degrees lower than Hoidene Swilkers. HAH’s become a joke. The Department of Health and Happiness. Who thought that one up? Why does no one want HAH to do anything of major importance, like, for instance, maybe saving lives? This is the kind of question you’re dead if you ask in Washington. Study after study “reports that” another awful result has been tallied. Infant deaths are up. Hospital failures are up. Early deaths in seventy-three major categories are up. Unfilled vacancies in every single department at HAH, at COD, at FADS, at DOD, at NITS are up. Employees hired with substandard educational résumés are up. Numbers of Americans without health insurance are up. Public apathy is way up. In 1982, Dodo announced he knew the cause of UC. In 1983, Dodo announced he’d discovered the cause of UC. In 1984, Dodo announced he’d discovered another cause of UC. In 1986, Dodo announced his first cause was the only cause. In 1988, Dodo announced he’d discovered the cure and would tell us shortly. In 1990, Dodo announced he’d discovered the cure and would tell us shortly. In 1992, Dodo announced he’d discovered the cure and would tell us shortly. In 1994, Dodo announced he’d discovered the cure and would tell us shortly. In 1995 there is no more Dodo. I look at my president introducing his new buddy Fergus, who speaks English that sounds like a yodel.

  Why do we all continue to sit here and listen to such shit?

  I open a desk drawer and reread from Francis’s letter of so long ago:

  Dear Dr. Jerusalem, I love you. I want you to hold me and kiss me and make love to me. All this time we’ve wasted. I haven’t had the courage to tell you my feelings. All this time neither have you. Like we’re both afraid. Why are people always afraid?

  Starting with my parents, every minute of my life has been about people doing hateful things to each other. And David’s now back to remind me of it. My twin. A much healthier David, thank God. We’ve talked a mighty amount. At last something feels right.

  And he and Fred are in love and are living together.

  I wonder if it’s ever going to be my turn! What a schmuck I was to let Fred go.

  BOY VERTLE IS IMPEACHED FOR GETTING BLOW JOBS FROM WHITE HOUSE INTERN

  SEXOPOLIS

  Sexopolis über alles!

  EMILY LAUDA HANNIMAN OMICIDIO PUTS HER THOUGHTS DOWN ON PAPER

  Daniel and Fred think they know a lot about Jerry. They don’t.

  My husband has just killed another young man. There’s always a lot of killing going on at NITS. Medicine is about death as much as it’s about life.

  The young man is in Jerry’s private ward. There are twenty beds. In each bed is a dead man covered with a sheet and waiting to be collected. Jerry’s injected sufficient morphine commingled with his own mixture of various tinctures suggested by his pharmacist father. The young man is quickly dead. The young man is about twenty-five. The dead young man’s legs are lovely legs. Jerry is a big runner. Jerry massages the dead calves, feeling the muscles that still feel alive.

  Doctors are meant to bring mercy and surcease from suffering, even lapsed Catholic doctors taking care of fairies.

  I can tell Jerry feels dead. It happened after the first couple hundred.
For a couple years after he took over he was proud of what he was going to do. Now he hates the White House and the men who command him from there, the Mooses and the Gobbels and the Shovells and and and …

  Now he only feels alive with his dead bodies. They’re his friends. They understand what he’s going through. He talks to them more than he talks to me or Daniel or … anyone. He’s got doctors on his staff he doesn’t know their names. Here, in his ward of dying young men, and in his lab, where something so monumental is out there waiting to be discovered that if he could figure it out he would be the most famous doctor in the world, this is where he wants to be. He wants to be written down in the history books as a savior of men, a good Catholic, after all.

  He doesn’t want to know why he’s being asked to do the things he’s asked to do. If he knows too much, there’ll be trouble. Then he’ll have to lie more than he already has. If COD won’t call a plague a plague, Dr. Omicidio’s not permitted to do so either. Fred Lemish heckles him publicly for not doing so. He’d never been forced to work on so much that’s meant to be secret.

  When Dredd Trish offered him the job as Number One, replacing Stuartgene, he turned it down. “No,” he says publicly, “I want to remain in my lab. I want to stay with my patients. I want to see this through.”

  Ordinarily this means finding a cure.

  A cure for UC doesn’t seem to want to be found.

  He’s known all along that Dodo is nuts and Stuartgene too … strange.