I don't think everybody's gay. But I think a lot more people are than the world knows about.

Back in Kansas City, I associated Harvard with sort of gnarly guys who wore capes for effect in a kind of Oscar Wilde scene. Even though I also knew there was such a thing as the Harvard-Yale game, I was still a little surprised that Harvard had a football team. I just assumed if there were such a thing as gay people, that they were nothing like us. Little did I know that probably half the swim team at Yale was gay.

I think basically what The American People is about is that we've been here from the very beginning, and that has never ever been acknowledged in the history books. John Winthrop wasn't off the boat ten seconds before he passes a law that homosexuals should be hanged. And then he hung 'em, including an attempt to hang his own son when he found out he was gay.

I wrote an essay too, and mine started something like, "When I was asked to contribute to this book, I said, 'I could do a piece on [Larry] Kramer as a pain in the ass, but I suppose you have too many of those, as it is.'" And Sarah's began something like, "When I read about America's angriest AIDS activist, I can't believe they are talking about my sweet Uncle Larry."

I have never heard that referred to before, that term: Jewish men from Yale.

[Larry Kramer] even wrote this angry letter to the president of Yale, and in it he said what he said to us, that he was so disappointed in his straight friends because of AIDS and everything. He wrote the letter around March. And in it he wrote, "I usually go to the Trillins for Christmas, but I just couldn't do it this year."

There was a lot really awful about that time [in fifties] if you were gay.