Charles Ortleb

Iron Peter: A Year in the Mythopoetic Life of New York City Charles Ortleb Rubicon Media edition

"If any one in the government had known why Peter was in Manhattan, a law would have been found under which he could have been put on the first train out. But one could still arrive anonymously in the Metropolis and be given the benefit of the doubt. Not that Peter had bad intentions. No, it was just that beneath his pulchritude lay an agenda that none of the city fathers or mothers could have embraced. Peter had come to New York to assassinate the AIDS epidemic."

"Some gay men seemed to think that they were junior members of scientific research teams because they were taking experimental AIDS medications. Peter wondered, are they all brain dead? Was the gay universe ending before his very eyes? Was this another inexorable moment in the dark history of the sacrificial lambs? Was he in a time capsule? Had he been transported back to the Middle Ages and were gay men now biomedical flagellants?"

Inspired by Robert Bly's Iron John, Iron Peter is a satirical novel about a handsome gay man who comes to New York City to try and save the gay community from being destroyed by the lies the government is telling about AIDS and chronic fatigue syndrome. It may be the only novel ever written that dares to tell the inconvenient truth about the politics and science of "AIDS." When people finally start to realize how much they don't know about the real epidemic, it is bound to become a classic.