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LARRY KRAMER WAS AN
AIDS ACTIVIST BEFORE AIDS EVEN WAS KNOWN ABOUT. HE WROTE A BEST SELLING
BOOK IN THE 70S WARNING ABOUT A DISEASE THAT WOULD APPEAR ON THE HORIZON IF GAY PEOPLE DIDN'T MODIFY THEIR BEHAVIOR.
WHEN AIDS CAME ALONG HE WROTE A TRUE HEART RENDERING BOOK ABOUT THE
AIDS HOLOCAUST. HE STARTED ACTUP WHICH GOT AIDS MEDICINES AVAILABLE MORE EASIER LY AND QUICKLY TO THOSE
WHO COULDN'T AFFORD IT AND THE GMHC TO HELP THOSE WITH AIDS. HE WROTE AN AWARD WINNING PLAY "THE NORMAL
HEART" WHICH WILL FINALLY BE BROUGHT TO THE SCREEN THIS YEAR. HE
WILL LIVE TO FINISH HIS NEW 4,000 PAGE EPIC AS LARRY DOESN'T GIVE UP
WHEN HE HAS A CAUSE.
The
Fresh Bile and Sex Life of Larry Kramer
An hour into my conversation with iconic HIV activist and author
Larry Kramer, he paused and said “Darling, you’re getting an interview
out of me that no one else has ever had. Your editor should be well
pleased with you.”
We had been talking about the seventy-four year old Larry Kramer’s
sex life!
I consider Larry Kramer’s perpetual
insistence that we not sweep AIDS
under the rug to be heroic. Others take an opposite view of a man whose
voice has been the constant deafening siren of an ambulance since his
days as a founder of both GMHC and ACT UP in the 1980s. In 2007, he said
that Ronald Reagan is responsible for more deaths than Adolf Hitler.
Having read his book Faggots when it was new in 1978, I had
decided he was not a great writer. I changed that sour opinion many
years later when I read his Florida based “Mrs. Teffilin,” a short story
that is one of the best ever written. When I told him this, Larry
Kramer corrected my pronunciation. “Teh-FILL-in,
not TEH-fuh-lin” he
schooled this goy.
Larry Kramer continues to work on his 4,000 page history of the
strife of homosexuality to be published in two volumes with the title
“The American People,” a phrase often used by Ronald Reagan whom he
despises. He has been tackling this mammoth project off and on since
1978 and its destiny has become a contest between death and his
publisher. Kramer who tested positive for HIV in 1988 gives evidence
that the publisher may win. He survived a liver transplant in 2001, and
uses his fresh bile to attack the same enemies.
“I don’t like Mr. Obama. He is just another in a
long line of
presidents who have dumped
all over us. He is not honoring his campaign
commitments. I really think he hates gay people and we are not dealing
with this in an effective way. It’s nice that he wants to protect our
right to hospital visitation but it’s no big deal.
“We are too passive and too invisible and too unwilling to demand
our
equality. This continues to be very painful for me. When I speak
about
this, people either say ‘He’s right’ or ‘There she goes again’. I’m used
to it.”
I steered him back to speaking about longevity.
“I’ve been thinking a lot about older gay men because I’m almost 75.
I’ve suddenly started being horny again! My partner and I have known
each other since the late 1960s. This is our second time together.
Seventeen years this time. He gave me permission to explore, but what
does a 75 year old do when he wants to crawl in bed with a hot young
body? I think this is the biggest unwritten thing and there must be an
awful lot of older men like me who are hungry for another sexual chapter
before they die. I don’t think we talk about it enough.”
When I asked him how he handled his new vigor, he surprised me.
“Almost as research for my book, I joined two hook-up sites and
posted my profile on both of them. I get a lot of views but I get no
takers. Only a couple of old ACT UP members wrote to say they recognized
me.”
I checked out his profiles. His photos are impish, happy and
attractive. I suggested that the lack of response might be due to
intimidation by the prospect of being in bed with the formidable Larry
Kramer. He laughed when I offered that my own hands would be shaking
under his covers.
“I take a lot of pills for my HIV and my liver transplant. Erections
are a sometimes thing, but I can still have an orgasm. I’m grateful for
my favorite gay porn sites. In the old days I’d just go down the street
to the baths.”
These days, Larry Kramer worries about the appearance of his body,
distended and scarred by disease and surgery. He explained his signature
overalls as a way to hide his lack of a waist. When I assured him that
many men find scars sexually attractive because they are evidence of
experience, he said “Well I’ve got plenty of stories on my belly.”
He is well aware that some will find the idea of a sexually active
Larry Kramer at odds with his insistence that gay men learn to police
their own sex lives.
“People think I’m the one who demanded that gay men stop fucking
altogether but you have to realize that in 1981 or 82, one had to be
something of an alarmist. People would say you’re going to scare us to
death and I’d say that’s what I want.”
He says that his research and interviews with the owners of hook-up
sites lead him to believe that younger gay men are having more sex, but
this does not alleviate the enormous loneliness that applies to both
young and old gay men. He is also quick to say that new gay sex is
hardly carefree.
“Somewhere in your unconscious brain the
specter of AIDS lurks, no
matter how stoned you are and even with a condom. When ACT UP was in its
ending years, I remember one of its most important members Jim Eigo saying to me that we haven’t finished our work until we bring sex back
again.”
Never the shirker, Larry Kramer fears not finishing both sex and his
book.
“I worry that I won’t have enough time and good health to finish this
book. I always wanted to write a really long book but you have no idea
what it is like to even edit 4,000 pages. I worry that I will lose some
sort of mental facility before I’m done.”
Let those who respond to his online profile be forewarned. For
the
sake of the book and because we need his strong voice, do not tire him
out.