Poor hygiene was an early symptom of schizophrenia my ex-shrink said. Schizophrenia landed you into hospitals where doctors shocked rebellion out of you. I was Antaeus, held aloft forever, weak unlike his supreme power when touching earth, living in fantasy. Taking showers in Kate's tiny bathroom proved difficult. Even alone, I thought of her barging in, though, if she did that and raped me, damn, that would be great.
The laundromat was blocks away. Neighborhood folks were there and I might have talk to them. They'd find me an outsider with a major Spannungriss ("stress crack"). I learned that word from German-born Maria.
The next few days I moped around, engaging Ted, the machinist, with politics, how the U.S. (the, not our U.S.—distance, always, as if I had nothing to do with it) was bound to lose "that murderous, imperialist war." I felt great rolling off those words, proud of my newly gained linguistic habits. I must've made the too lenient, hard-working guy feel like a schnook just because he wanted our country "to win the Vietnam war."
Dorr was taking courses in Manhattan, Maria going to pre-med classes, Kate overseas, Julia living on the Upper West Side. Alone with Ted, gabbing, I felt superior because he hadn't been accustomed to seeing and hearing faux-hippie bombast.
I shook an underground paper, Rat, one I grabbed upstairs, at him. "Don't you know they're people who could be your next door neighbors ready to blow your dream-world to smithereens," I said, voice raised, referring to an article by a woman castigating her sisters in the bomber-Weatherman offshoot of Students for a Democratic Society. Such a liberating feeling, screaming at a stranger, Werner's employee. Werner supported his daughter Maria, sustained her education and a lifestyle of an au courant bohemian radical. I failed to recognize my low standing at the marina, how Ted might tell Werner about my unpleasantries, evicting me for being a bother. I was non compos mentis.
I told Ted he was too weak, like the Frank Bigelow character portrayed by Edmond O'Brien in the film, DOA, a thug would gut-punch him in his soft belly, Bigelow collapsing to the floor. "I work, who do you think you are, all you do is bitch," Ted could've said to me, but didn't. Or kick me in the groin.
Rat printed a rant titled, "Goodbye to All That," by Robin Morgan, telling Weatherwomen and female supporters of the bombing Weatherman faction to regard their male revolutionaries as oppressors. "Goodbye to the illusion of strength when you run hand in hand with your oppressors," she wrote. Rat had once devoted a whole issue to the '68 Columbia University student rebellion, yet I held this particular invective in front of Ted's face. "You can kiss your comfy job goodbye after this county goes up in flames," I hectored, waving Rat back and forth, not unlike a conventional, old-time, Hollywood film version of a therapist would a fob chain, hypnotizing poor Ted into submission.
Had I become a man-hater in the style of Morgan? Had my lack of sexual initiative cast a dim spell over machismo itself? Ted didn't even flinch, and stated, "I guess I could earn a living making customized rifles whenever the shit hits the fan. We'll all need protection then."
WBAI announced a demonstration protesting Dow Chemical and Monsanto profiteering off napalm and Agent Orange used on Vietnamese civilians. The awful pain of searing flesh, the deaths from Orange's herbicide and defoliants.
The demo would be Saturday afternoon. This marked my first New York demo. In college I'd protested Bloody Sunday, the police riot in Selma, with the handwritten sign, "Ballots Not Bullets," but these days it was more apt to be "Bullets Not Ballots."
Kate and Julia finally ended discussion about their wardrobe, what to wear for the protest rally. Neither sister superficial, they acted out of habit, two sisters growing up with plenty of Midwestern beauty, bound by social conventions the Movement hadn't yet changed. Kate settled on a colorful, fringed Mexican shirt and Levi 501 jeans while luxuriant Julia opted for Raindrop suede boots, a sweater jacket over a velour blouse, a green feather boa, and butterfly floral pants.
Their chatter thrilled me. An interloper, hearing sisters revisit their small-town past, I imagined maple-lined streets, paperboys on bicycles, tailfins galore, cylindrical-blade hand mowers pushed by men in Hawaiian shirts, and, if I turned the sound system up loud, I'd hear the sound of a razor slashing across a person's carotid artery as a body sank downward into a nude bathtub.
We five took the subway, getting off at 23rd Street. The rally was at Madison Square Park, bordered by 5th and Madison Avenue and 23rd and 26th Street. This, the park where Herman Melville strolled ("How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall?"). That sentence wasn't a cliché.
Speakers denounced the Vietnam War, its atrocities and blood-money profiteering, as well as police killing militant Black Panthers in urban war zones. The few hundred cheered, and Julia climbed a railing, balancing herself on a tree, as if a fashion photographer were about to snap a camera on a model shoot.
"What are you doing up there?" Kate asked. Julia tossed the boa over her shoulders, and told her, "I don't want to miss anything." She jumped down when cops appeared at the edge of the park. Julia looked at me as I watched the cops, and said:
"Don't be afraid, let's meet them."
I would've never confronted them but Julia pushed me as she ran, point woman from our Bronx delegation, waving her boa above her head.
Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People came to mind. I witnessed Liberty herself, Julia's blondness, that bright green boa flailing its color in the foreground, rather than the tricolor in hand. Mentally, I'd already seen Julia's breasts, transfigured into high art.
The cops looked at us as we faint-heartedly taunted them, but the rally had dispersed, leaving only a small contingent. What we needed was a first class heckler, a Groucho Marx or Lenny Bruce, but it was cold and the cops didn't look like they'd laugh at anything.
Ben, Julia's and Kate's brother, paid a visit to the marina. He came from California just after a student rebellion torched a Bank of America branch in Isla Vista and burned it to the ground.
"It was really fun watching it disappear," Ben said.
"The Movement needs more mob actions," Dorr said, giving Ben a bear hug.
Ben and other resourceful arsonists ripped apart boards covering the Bank of America's windows. They found gasoline, and incinerated the building. Governor Reagan called the students "cowardly little bums." The anarchical blaze had the beauty of "Beneath the rhapsodies of fire and fire" as Wallace Stevens wrote. Anything extreme was revolutionary according to the Gospel of Saint Dorr, so his enthusiasm for Ben was high.
Kate and Julia hugged him. He was strongly built and good looking, and quickly Dorr and Maria joined them, walking on the dock. I saw a Moll Flanders lust go wild over Maria's face, and Dorr walked with Kate and Julia, rubbing their butts. "Come and join us. You're invited," said Maria, but I declined. The five jabbered lustfully all at once.
They disappeared into a yacht.
I drank a Rheingold, lay down, and stared at the ceiling.
