44 THENEWYORKER,JULY27, 2020
assertion that Abraham Lincoln was
gay, and continues into the present. “He
has set himself the hugest of tasks,” Will
Schwalbe told me. Schwalbe, who is the
editor-in-chief of Hyperion Books, will
become Kramer’s literary executor. He
is so far the only man to have read the
entire manuscript, which he described
to me as “staggering, brilliant, funny,
and harrowing.”
Despite that, Larry Kramer will al-
most certainly be remembered above
all as the signature activist of the age of
AIDS. By the end of the eighties, he had
started the two most effective AIDS ad-
vocacy organizations in America—both
of them conceived in flashes of pure
rage. Just after New Year’s Day in 1982,
Gay Men’s Health Crisis was formed
at a meeting in his Greenwich Village
living room. Several years later, Kramer
started the AIDS Coalition to Unleash
Power—more commonly known as ACT
UP. Dozens of chapters were formed,
from San Francisco to Bombay. Each
was filled with desperate, aggressive, and
often exceptional young men who, in
the end, made Gay Men’s Health Cri-
sis look like a sleepy chapter of the Ro-
tary Club.
I
had not seen Larry Kramer for nearly
a decade when I visited him last fall
at his country house, in northwestern
Connecticut. It was an unusually warm
afternoon, but Kramer, swaddled in
Oshkosh overalls and a big woolly
sweater, looked as if he might disap-
pear into his clothes. Kramer has al-
ways seemed large and loud; in truth,
he is only loud. He’s a slight man with
dark, soulful eyes framed by wild and
often unkempt eyebrows. His voice is
unforgettable: like a shrill, high fog cut-
ter. No matter how many times you
have experienced it, and no matter how
pleasant he means to be, when you pick
up the telephone and hear the words
“Hi, it’s Larry” it’s enough to startle a
Delta Force commando.
When I arrived, though, Kramer
could barely muster a whisper. He is six-
ty-six, and he believes that he has been
infected with the AIDS virus since the
late seventies. There was no test for
H.I.V. until 1985, however, and it was
only in 1988 that he stated publicly that
he was infected. (“I took my first AZT
in Barbra Streisand’s john,’’ he told me,
with what sounded like pride.) Ever
since that announcement, his death has
been predicted, expected, and even, by
some, awaited. Yet Kramer has watched
as dozens, then scores, and finally hun-
dreds of his friends and acquaintances
have died. He long ago stopped attend-
ing their funerals. He still has his apart-
ment in New York, but he prefers to
spend his time at the country house,
which was designed by his longtime
lover, David Webster. It has a large open
study, where Kramer writes, and where
he has a view of a misty lake and roll-
ing hills behind it. “The New York I
love is gone now,’’ he told me. “The world
of ‘Faggots’ that I found so intoxicating
is over. When I walk down the streets
there, all I see are dead people.’’
AIDS has never made Kramer par-
ticularly sick, which he attributes to a
variety of superstitious and emotional
causes. It is also a fact that the disease
attacks some people more rapidly than
others. Kramer knows that, but these
days he is draped from neck to toe in
turquoise. He wears a thick ring on
nearly every finger, and he has pendants,
bracelets, and other charms, too: “It’s
silly. When I first came to New York,
in 1957, after I got out of Yale, I went to
a fortune-teller and she said, ‘You should
always wear something turquoise; it will
look after you and keep you healthy.’ As
STILL-LIFE WITHP OTATO E S , PEARLS,R AW M E AT ,
RHINESTONES,LARD,ANDHORSE HOOVES
In Spanish it’s naturaleza muerta and not life at all.
But certainly not natural. What’s natural?
You and me. I’ll buy you a drink.
To a woman who doesn’t act like a woman.
To a man who doesn’t act like a man.
Death is natural, at least in Spanish, I think.
Life? I’m not so sure.
Consider the Contessa, who in her time was lovely
and now sports a wart the size of this diamond.
S o, ragazzo, you’re Venice.
To you. To Venice.
Not the one of Casanova.
The other one of cheap pensiones by the railway station.
I recommend a narrow bed stained with semen, pee, and sorrow
facing the wall.
Stain and decay are romantic.
You’re positively Pasolini.
Likely to dangle and fandango yourself to death.
If we let you. I won’t let you!
Not to be outdone, I’m Piazzolla.
I’ll tango for you in a lace G-string
stained with my first-day flow
and one sloppy tit leaping like a Niagara from my dress.
Did you say duress or dress?
Let’s sing a Puccini duet—I like “La Traviesa.”
I’ll be your trained monkey.
I’ll be sequin and bangle.
I’ll be Mae, Joan, Bette, Marlene for you—
I’ll be anything you ask. But ask me something glamorous.
Only make me laugh.
Another?
What I want to say, querido, is
hunger is not romantic to the hungry.
What I want to say is
fear is not so thrilling if you’re the one afraid.
MAY 23, 1994
