"How are you feeling?" a voice rang low, somewhere in the house. Feeling. It was not a word that I could relate to at the moment. I had not felt for the past month; such was the goal. Keep from feeling, Todd. Drink until everything gets blurry...forget about it.

"Think you'll ever see her again?"

"Fuck, I hope not," I answered. "It's not in my script."

"At least she's not dead," Marcus said.

I thought about it for awhile. "How long did it take for you to get over Suzy?" I wondered.

"I don't know. Let's talk about something else."

Mom dropped a copy of the Arizona Republic into my lap, January 3rd, 1985. "There's an article I thought you might want to read," she said, softly. "What do you two want for breakfast?"

I didn't want anything. But misery and hunger only bring sickness, so I relented as Marcus shrugged. "Two omelettes and coffee. Please."

I couldn't remember the last time I'd been awake and functional at 6:30am. Probably it was the morning of the SAT exam as a high school senior...but that didn't count, because our all-night study session included about three grams of cocaine, and I had never gone to sleep. This was different. This time I had no real excuse, other than that the dreams were awful, and I would rather be conscious. You can't fight dreams. I needed some semblance of control, shitty as it was to think about her laughing on the beach, with some Lacoste prep going down her, and....

At the bottom of page 1, the subheading read: "Birch Patriarch Robert Welch Dead at 81."

"I thought you might want to read it," she said. "Maybe they need a replacement."

To her credit, she did understand--that eerie kind of perception that makes them the object of every son's ire. Because, liberal as she was, her son's well-being transcended politics. She knew I had been fascinated with the prospect of a Grand Design: that behind every major fuck-up, stalemate war, lunatic debt increase and act of national cowardice...there just might be a plan.

I think the first time it hit me was on September 1, 1983, Dan Rather's grim face appearing on CBS, saying something about a Korean jetliner getting shot down by a Soviet MIG over the Sea of Japan. Which was interesting, but not something that could immediately affect my life. Until he mentioned something about a U.S. Congressman being aboard.

I waited for days to see what our reaction might be: stiff retaliation, or a full-grain embargo. Maybe just a simple eye-for-eye exchange? Yeah, we could shoot their UN Ambassador, shake hands, and that would be it. But nothing. Not a goddamned thing.

His name was Lawrence Patton MacDonald, U.S. Representative, 7th District, GA (D). A four-term Boll Weevil. Totally obscure. The oddity skewed my interest...all the talk of a "spy plane" and "violating Soviet airspace," and a lot of High International Politik jargon that, frankly, I knew was gibberish, but would inevitably mean something once it all came to a boil over the sacred Negotiating Table. And having listened to Dad's rantings over McGovern and "The Pinkos" for most of the 1970s, I was almost genetically right-bent. Father knew best, so it seemed at the time (still does), as he fashioned seven or eight True Value painter's stir-sticks to cardboard signs which read "Nixon Again" and "No Pinkos," and sent a small army of Young Republicans out onto the corner, to brave the angry, honking mob of a Washington state mill-town, circa 1972.

Nothing else provided that feeling, of reporters and staff photographers, fascinated with the obvious leader of the young GOP clan: the odd base-hit; straight "A"s...all very small change, insignificant bits of youth. Seeing Dad read about his son was the charge. Wait a minute?...Who's the new star in town?

And I found myself incensed that the Soviet Union could gouge one of Our Own--a military man, fer Chrissakes--from out of the sky, sans penalty.

They called it an accident. The passenger craft had strayed over international waters, but it looked like a reconnaisance plane. Could have happened to anyone. And we sat neutered, under Ronald Reagan, no less.

Then I caught a blurb from a Maryland wire dispatch:

"Thousands Mourn Slain Congressman":
4,500 people turned out to protest the death of Congressman Larry P. MacDonald today at Constitution Hall. The mourners, drawn chiefly from the John Birch Society, turned out en masse to pount out what one man termed, `the ongoing, International Communist Conspiracy.' MacDonald, a four-term Georgia Democrat, had taken over as Chairman of the right-wing Society eight months ago, with founder Robert Welch stepping aside after a series of debilitating strokes.

...egads, a Hit. A fucking assassination, no less. I had learned of the John Birch Society in high school, mostly in disparaging terms, and found myself sympathetic. But I had no idea its Chairman was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives. And by the time college came around, I had sided with Reagan's "Kitchen Cabinet" of Ed Meese, whose children I passed daily in the hallways of Valhalla High School; Cap "The Knife" Weinberger from Reagan's California governorship; Richard V. Allen, et al., over the Eastern Monied Establishment of George Pratt Schultz, Brent Scowcroft, Malcolm Baldridge--the Skull and Bones brigade from Yale.

And when your college is a mere two-hour drive from Orange County, the chance of meeting dues-paying members of the John Birch Society in your own dormitory runs as high as contracting chlamydia after some zombied toga orgy. And after several hash-addled, all-night discussions on this nefarious Conspiracy Theory, I began to formalize two possibilities: That the Orange County water supply is tainted with a vicious, ranging, paranoic substance, and has been since the 1950s, and that the offspring, however brilliant, are genetically mutated and just one accusation away from the White Coats;...or, that There Just Might Be Something to this whole business.

And I hated to call good friends freak and liars. These were, after all, The Reagan Years. The entire hubris of the college Republican scene was in a state of incubation--waiting for the right person or group to grab scrota and pull. Santa Barbara City College's Republican krewe had already been captured by the Right/Birch element, with no sign of open resistance or hostility by faculty or fellow CR's. They were willing to follow a strong lead, however philosophically extreme. And that was where I fit in.

Having already read Gary Allen's None Dare Call It Conspiracy, with a system full of blue mushrooms, every murky, accidental, incomprehensible mishap seemed to crystallize in a long, continuous pattern. I understood why Reagan had chosen George Bush from out of the bowels of the Council on Foreign Relations and Trilateral Commission, over, say, Jack Kemp or Phil Crane. And I knew that, with a little polishing around the edges, I could have led the cry for UC-Santa Barbara. The only unknown component was whether I could maintain in a state of normalcy for four years. How long would it be before I dragged a group of gel-headed Lacoste junior Repubs into some empty administration building, to lecture them on the merits of a good LSD vacation in freeing the mind of the Go Along, Get Along/Get Ahead, Give Head morass. How long?

But none of that mattered, because Tami crept out of my bed, as she had every morning for many months, to shower, this time leaving to the Bay Area for Thanksgiving vacation...only she didn't snuggle back under the comforter with me for fifteen or so minutes of warmth, hair still wet and smelling so much like a wife that I used to cry for no good reason at all. Just so fucking happy. She ended my hazy California political dreams then and there...but many of us have felt that stomach-knot of knowing the only woman you've ever loved is gone and has no plans of returning, so let's just fuck it right there and get on with the story.

I understood why the Republic derided Robert Welch, calling him a "McCarthyite, a kook, a crackpot...hunting for communists under every bed." I understood, and felt obliged to replenish the ranks, in my own small way. I was beholden to keep America safe from another Korean Airlines flight 007.

"Thanks, Mom," I smiled.

While Marcus was out sunning himself, I got into the phone book and scanned for the John Birch Society and found: "See: American Opinion Books," which I dialed and got a very old woman on the other end. She seemed confused.

"Yes, my name is Todd Fahey, and I'd like to join the Birch Society."

"Oh, uh, um, well...lovely!"

I could tell this kind of thing didn't happen often. Of course I'd like to become part of the most maligned and ridiculed organization since the Christian Temperance League. Every young man's dream. Naturally, I drove downtown, Camelback Road and Central Avenue, early January 1985. At least I could cautherize my wounds; seal them over. State coordinator Dr. Guy F. Roberts was waiting. Lincolnesque and ruddy-handsome, he laid me out with a fierce stare. What was I made of? What are you looking at?

Nothing.

Tami?

I was just wondering what color eyes our babies will have.

I started to mist, but shook it off quickly. No need to let them in. It's your own head, that's all.

"Todd, I'm glad to meet you. There's a lot to go over before you join," he said. "The John Birch Society isn't for everyone. But if you're here already, and you've read our literature, you'll be okay."

He showed me around the small bookshop, across the boulevard from the law firm of O'Connor Kavenaugh, loading my arms with texts, pamphlets, journals, political novels by Birch-adherant Taylor Caldwell, all-the-while telling me how the JBS is truly one big family, and to call him Guy, because, "We're very informal," and that every local resource would be at my disposal, just make a few calls.

"Read this over, and if you can agree with it, or if it makes you angry," he said, handing me a copy of Robert Welch's Blue Book of the John Birch Society, "...if you find yourself getting pissed off, there's probably a place for you here."

I thanked him for the personal attention, but told him I wouldn't need much convincing: "I want to start a chapter at Arizona State."

God, you are so ambitious. You really are going to be Governor someday, aren't you? His face went slack, and for a moment I thought he might lose his balance. But he remained aright, a peculiar, glazed tinge to the face. "Do you know the kind of merciless hell you'll catch at a public university?", and then he told me of his years at the University of Michigan, having earned a Ph.D. in clinical psychology.

"I don't mind," I answered. "I'll just take some of my aggressions out on the faculty."

Marcus left for California that night, to spend the rest of vacation with his folks in Orange County. Santa Barbara had been no kinder to him than to me, and he was glad to get out. Just get out, anywhere. But, like most things having to do with him, our plan of another school--A New Life--fizzled, and I never heard from him during the break.

Meanwhile, fairly fearing for my head, my parents left me more or less alone, to pour over thousands of pages of writings by Gary Allen, Robert Welch, Dr. Antony Sutton, the Hoover Institute wunderkind expelled from Stanford's Inner Circle for his monumentalTechnological Treason series, chronicling U.S. aid and trade to the Soviet Union at a pace which can only be described as nationally suicidal. And I found one true insider-turned-conspiracy theorist in Herman Dinsmore, former International Editor of the New York Times, who resigned to write All the News That Fits and The Bleeding of America.

Through the research and dogma, I decided that FDR's oft-repeated remark, that "nothing in politics happens by accident," was painfully accurate, to the detriment of mine nation. And if the John Birch Society was wrong?...well, it's like mistaking a mallard for a snowy egret. The eye just doesn't make errors of that proportion. Besides, why would a Ph.D. with a lucrative clinical psychology practice give up ship to become a JBS State Coordinator, making, maybe, $28,000 per annum? And why would a bright, handsome future leader risk his political 'nads for a life of cynicism and frustration? Why indeed?

As far as I could tell, nobody was getting rich in the JBS. No Rolls Royces or temples. Its National Council members serve without pay, and donate phenomenal sums on a regular basis. Bunker Hunt is rumored to have cut checks for up to a million bucks a pop at the behest of Robert Welch, who died "penniless," having given over $63 million of his own fortune to the Society before his death.

So, in short, I joined. Why not? How often does a young man with almost no connections get the chance to make tidal waves within his own campus, be treated like some kind of newly-crowned Prince by a national organization, and just generally run amok, stirring up the brewing hornet's nest in the last bastion of Barry Goldwater?

However, several, including my father, wanted me to give it some heavy thought. So I agreed to meet with one of his friends, an erstwhile politico who shall remain nameless, since his total involvement in my twisted career was to buy me lunch at the Velvet Turtle.

Sawing through a piece of Martinized Cordon Bleu, I found myself answering rapid-fire questions as to the merits of the JBS, the quality of its leadership, particularly of the late-founder, and defending Welch's famed comment that Dwight David Eisenhower (Ike, the Instant General, who never admitted for a minute to even being a member of the Republican party before the Rockefeller wing snatched him up in urine-soaked terror of having Douglas MacArthur as President) was a "conscious, dedicated member of the International Communist Conspiracy."

God forbid, we should actually win the Cold War. What would happen to the apartments at Red Square?

Finally we parted, concluding that it was my decision, for good or ill. But did I want my political future ruined? He understood that I had drive, intelligence and charisma, and that if I wanted to rub elbows with the Big Boys, I was welcome: but not as a member of the John Birch Society. That much was made clear.

I nestled into my low-rent, roach-infested dormitory room in the Sin City section of Tempe, Arizona, and prepared for a meeting that Guy had set up with the Business and Professional Briefing--the high-rollers of the JBS in Arizona. They were to give the newly-formed Students for the John Birch Society an operating cash-flow of several hundred dollars at the touch of a "red phone." Which I felt was deserved, given the hell-storm publicity spectacle I was cooking up for them, free of charge.

Scanning a seed-sheet of phone numbers, I picked out Zane Smith, liking the name from the start. So, I called him first...and found a soul-mate. His husky voice huffawed through the transom, extolling the virtues of the Right, paralyzing me with the knowledge of just what a duo could wreak upon the hapless masses. A connection is not the proper term, for when a plug is placed into a wall socket, the action necessarily coordinates opposing currents. We were fission. One political body from the beginning. Son of a millionaire gentleman-landowner, Zane was Christian, though a militant patriot; humble to the Lord, but expressive of the good:damage ratio that some low-level A-bomb would have wrought in foothills of Hanoi to that great and bungled debacle called Vietnam.

Over the next several days, mid-February, Zane and I fleshed out Students for the John Birch Society--a group whose expressed creed was to spread the Good Word to students, faculty and administrators alike, in hopes of diffusing a growing number of Students Against Apartheid-style Soviet adherents. It was a grandiose scheme, which caused even the most skeptical to groan against its obnoxious possibilities.

I came up with a series of ads, trying out a bit of copywriting, while Zane penned the art, and placed them in the State Press to run Monday-Thursday of the first school week. Zane's father reimbursed us $179.82, as it had become apparent that he was not simply dealing with a couple of malcontents: These were two serious propagandists and tacticians he had on his hands...and in his livingroom, and out in the office, and in the back-forty, squeezing rounds out into the cotton fields from Zane's MK-10 and Uzi when everything else got hazy.

After a week, JBS Headquarters in Belmont, Massachussetts called, to ask if they could use the ads in their own internal organ, The Bulletin, with a story to run on our student chapter. I humbly submitted to an interview, followed closely by another, when Campus Press Service (CPS), some Christian/Right wire service out of Denver, called, to see just what all the fuss was about. I was taped, and then JBS publicity chief John F. "Jack" MacManus weighed in with his $.02, as it were, and the story ran in syndicated columns from Anchorage to Atlanta. I was caught up like sturgeon on a #1 tri-barb.

We fully expected to have our shit tossed right back into the University fan, having learned that the official whose decision it was to approve or deny our student charter was a black, Democrat, ex-football player union-type, named Art Hamilton. But as soon as Zane and I had begun fashioning a legal challenge, with help from the ACLU,we received in the post our stamp of approval. It was time to enter the War.

Together with the son of a Catholic/Hungarian-exile during the '54 uprising; an engineering grad student; a future CIA man, and a couple fraternity boys, Zane and I set up our booth on enemy ground. The buzz out on Cady Mall flew for hours, as members of the Black Student Union--a pro-African National Congress/Louis Farrakhan-style outfit--dispatched representatives from its office within the Student Union, to make certain, we guessed, that the hoods on our designer Klan robes were clearly visible. And there was one moment when an aged professor in a tweed jacket did a double-take, smiling wryly: "Bob Welch's group," he glimmered, to another aging man, "Good stuff." And then something about sterling examples of how the "youth is not yet lost."

But, as impressed as we were with ourselves, not all campus conservatives understood our efforts. For many minutes, two preps scouted the booth, listening in on the arguments being exchanged to and fro, until they met up with another youngish man, bespectled and sporting a George Will haircut. The two said something to the third man, then split. The George Will lookalike stepped up to the table and shook hands with Zane and myself.

"Hi, guys," he said. "Name's Gray Echols. I'm the Opinion Page editor of the State Press."

"Who were your friends?" I wondered.

"Oh, that. Yeah." None too happy. "Len Munsil and Matt Skully..." He needn't gone much further. I knew the names. Len Munsil was Editor-in-Chief of the State Press and Matt Skully its Chief Ideologue, Conscience and Main Columnist Vitriole. ...quite heavy Men on Campus, as it were; and conservative to the bone. But not right-wing in the JBS sense. And by the looks of it, we were muscling in on the act.

It's the same old split dating back to the mid-Sixties, when William F. Buckley finally gave Robert Welch the frozen shoulder and rendered him persona non grata on the pages of National Review and anywhere else the Yalie might be found, raving like the original Mad Hatter.

Munsil and Skully liked Jeane Kirkpatrick and Bill Kristol and the neo-conservatives favored of the early-80s; which Zane and I might have found intellectually challenging, were it not for their vigorous insistence on hob-nobbing with Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Henry Kissinger and others of the high-brow detente ken, when it served their ambiguous interests.

Gray Echols became our lone contact in the State Press. He seemed amused that I could somehow afford to tell the Establishment to go wank it, and told me, specifically, to look him up whenever I had anything interesting to say, possibly being intimidated by Zane's size and the fact that, while talking to us, a couple of Zane's wrestling buddies approached the table, clicking their heels together in unison and exhorting a Sieg Heil!, to which Zane offered a stiff-arm salute and waved them on.

"Zaaaane, that's no fucking good at all!" I whinnied. "That's the last fucking thing we need. Jesus."

He just chuckled and blew it off.

As we disassembled the booth, around 4:00pm of our first day of action, I locked onto a small, sketchy figure walking erratically down Cady Mall. Just a blip out of the corner of my eye, but it struck me as being wrong, and I banged on Zane's arm. "Look!"

"What? Hey!, whaddryoufuckingdoing?" Zane bellowed, at a rough-hewn man of fortysomething, who stuffed a lens into my face and began cranking off a volley of shots.

I made for the man, disliking him instinctually--greasy pouch slung over his shoulder, Birkenstocks slapping at the pavement, the tattered hunting shorts and sickly green vest, topped off by a brown beret, perched on a head of kinky hair that matched his filthy beard. He was not a photographer for any journal I would ever subscribe to. Zane held to my arm as I began to scale the booth and wrench his film out by the root.

"Leave it alone, Todd," Zane whispered. "Not everyone likes what we're doing."

Who the fuck was that?" I shivered, suddenly feeling dirty.

"I don't know. And I don't think we want to know."

We towed the display off-grounds, back to Zane's Jeep, where he ripped a parking ticket into several small pieces, and then squeezed everything we could into my cramped dorm room, where my new roomie--a pimply-faced, bass-playing, heavy-metal carnivore--stood in agitation, realizing that I would be taking over the room for which he had paid good money to become an unwelcome guest. And after leaning into a twelve-pack, to get rid of the vision of an alien creature with a roll of film bearing my image, I didn't honestly give a good goddamn how much room he needed to be comfortable.

I hogged the phone until 5:15, calling every radio station, broadcasting crew and journalist I could find within the Yellow Pages. Several people hung up on me, not sure what kind of sick crank would boast about having started "that kind of group." One DJ even said, "What would you be doing that for?" I told him it was none of his fucking business: Did he or did he not wish to get Scooped by the rest of the state media, while the station president castigated him for being Soft On Communism?

He clicked on the tape machine and sent the story to thousands of commuters braving rush-hour traffic.

Around 10:00pm, after another dozen beers, a trash-can full of half-thoughts and a decent guideline of refined ideology, so as not to embarrass the JBS with my own bent vision of the world, I heard a jangle behind the harmonies of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Neat effect, I said to myself; pretty good engineering trick. But it became obnoxious, and I ripped off the headphones and saw that it was the telephone.

"Todd!!!" The voice was drunken but familiar.

"Yeah, what?" I growled.

"Hey, where have you been?" it asked stupidly, behind heavy, constant clanking of 60-ounce glass pitchers. I knew the sound well.

"Fuck, where have YOU been. You asshole. I'm stuck with some miscreant of a roommate, thanks to you."

"Hey, I'm really sorry. Really," he said, "I lost your 'rents' number. I tried five hospitals, but your dad's unlisted. I tried!"

"...ssshit! I guess that's possible. But...goddamn, Marc, do you realize where I'm living? This place is filled with roaches and black football players with names like Darnell and Theotis...and mutants. Where are you?"

"Drinking at the Dash! Come over!"

"Huh-uh, Not in the mood. You come over here."

"Can't do it, Todd. It's initiation! I'll be drunk for another week!"

"Initiation? You didn't. You couldn't."

"I did! Hey, three meals a day, no cooking...little sisters. Todd, they wanted me!"

"So what. I thought we had a plan."

"Yeah, but I couldn't get hold of you!"

The argument had gone full circle. Marcus was now a Frat Boy. Dreaded, aimless hedonism. I shuddered. "Whatever," I said. "Call me when you dry out." I mashed the receiver down on its axis and put the headphones back on, and passed out to Neil Young's squeaky drone about tin soldiers and four mutilated college students somewhere in the Midwest.

Hungover, sweating profusely, jittery, I powered down a pot of coffee and the rest of a bag of stale Nacho Cheese Doritos, left over from a mid-evening bout of the munchies. Who the hell am I? I slipped on a hooded madras shirt, unironed, totally inappropriate for the kind of scrutiny I would face throughout a long afternoon at ASU, but the last remaining laundered item in my wardrobe.

Zane gave me a quizzical look, his 400-pound frame ducking into my musty, asbestos-reeking, 1973 shared-room prison cell. He resembled one of der Fuhrer's own war vehicles. "Ready to go?" he wondered.

"If you'll lug this stuff into your car. I don't feel so hot."

He gazed over the beer-strewn livingroom, but didn't ask: Just doing what was necessary to win The War.

We stopped at the guard gate on campus. "Excuse us, ma'am," I remember hearing one of us saying. "Where can we park for the day?"

The gate-attendant, a black woman in her forties, stared out at Zane's Jeep Cherokee--an eight-foot American flag and half-ton of propaganda loaded carelessly in the back.

"You'll have to turn around and park in one of the metered areas," she said, not enthusiastically.

I shook my head. "No, I don't think you understand. We'll need to be here all day.

"There are a lot of groups setting up today," she said.

Zane's forehead began to redden, sweat appearing on a 37-degree morning, blowing steam. "Not with this much crap, they're not."

I broke in, that we had film crews waiting, and that it would take the better part of the day to cart our junk across campus.

Giddy to the sight of Armageddon brewing so close to her portable stool, the guard let us unload directly in front of our apportioned site. "But you've got to bring your car back as soon as you're through. They tow."

Zane laughed harshly. "Watch what happens if they tow me."

Ben Winton, staff reporter for the Tempe Daily News, was a sympathetic listener, never looking twice at my beatnik garb or seeming to notice my spacy head wandering or the hand placed perpetually on our booth, so that I wouldn't fall over in one of my hunger head-rushes. Zane looked over a couple times to see if I needed help, in one of my train-of-thought lapses. I didn't. The rush passed as someone fed me a sugared donut.

When the interview ended, Zane wandered toward the center of the main walk and ripped down a Xerox from some corkboard, and stared at it for a long time. "Jesus, they're serious," he muttered.

The Phoenix Communist Party Club had homed in on our operation, leaving off the photo of me, but had my name smeared all over the lead paragraph, pledging an end to this "jingo-imperialism," "by any means necessary." "What do we do?" I wondered aloud.

Zane shrugged. "Not much we can do. We're about to get our 15 minutes."

The next morning, I was staring at myself on every newsstand from Mesa to Scottsdale--an unbelievably favorable article, and a cozy sort of feeling, just south of a really good gram of cocaine shared with friends on a yacht off of Shelter Island, after watching Spyro Gyra in concert, the bow of the boat pulled up closer than the third row of seats... You know the feeling.

I called the folks to see if they had seen the story. By their non-tone, I knew that they had. I could imagine Dad's blank face, as he sipped his morning OJ, turning the paper over to find his son's face staring at him, directly under the photo of the new Soviet General Secretary.

Not that it would really surprise him. For years, I had been the portrait of the model underachiever--the punk who would shoplift a copy of Cliff's Notes on Macbeth, digest the eight sample essay questions at the back, disregarding the fact that these yellow-bound pages from a kindly god were "for supplementary use only." They were my lifeline to an A- average.

So much the pain in the ass was I in high school, that one senior English teacher struck a deal to keep me out of the classroom. Weary of having me slosh into 1st period after an early morning of guzzling Boone's Farm Apple Wine, she agreed to let me try to pass her class without attending the final three weeks. In retrospect, it was the dumbest thing she could have ever done; because, if I had failed, I would have had to return the next year and take it over. College was never an issue: I would get in.

Fortunate for a birthright photographic memory, I pulled a 93% on the final essay exam, written on the significance of the witches to the inevitable fate of Macbeth--not only earning an "A" for the course, but the highest score in the class.

Math was much the same, although I cheated my way through, for reasons I'd rather not get into here. I have two fears in life: public speaking and mathematics. Two years after finishing high school, while on Christmas break with the folks, fairly in the hypnogagic zone, I stumbled into their bedroom at 3:00am, crying that I wasn't ready for my math test. Mom tried to tell me it was over, Todd. Like a psychiatrist to a Vietnam vet experiencing flashbacks after seeing his buddies turned to chuck-roast by a land mine.

And so much for that.

I left the Roach Motel and hooked up with Zane, who felt that we should get connected with the legislative Right. He had booked us an appointment with State Rep. Trent Franks, announcing our intention to become trustees in the search for Truth: two sonsobitches the freshman pol had never before met--one probably suffering near-DT's; the other, so massive he had to stand, for lack of a chair large enough to house his auspicious girth.

Mr. Franks opened our meeting with a benediction, then straight into his pet crusade--abortion...something I believed in, to this point, for the most basic of economic reasons: a kid on welfare was preying on my wallet, and I didn't want it around. He needed help in matters of State, but could not pay us--a fact that didn't bother me. He was also a born-again Christian and fiery, non-drinking Baptist--a fact that did bother me.

I sloughed off by natural attrition, rarely lending a helping hand, not because I couldn't agree with the Christian basics, but that Adolph Coors reigned as my Supreme Being.

What did sound like a good time, was to party with the Young Republicans. I objected to actually joining such a dating club, but found it perfectly within my craven nature to meet them at The Backstage, downtown Scottsdale, to see if there might be a GOP'ette wanting of my lewd affections.

And then there was one Saturday morning when Zane brought me to the Barry Goldwater Center--a low-budget brick mass of rooms, full of green telephones and cheap IBM Selectrics and, on the dark brown faux-paneling, photos of Reagan and Bush and the local mucky-muck. I wasn't impressed. But as the full contingent of YR Board members were meeting, to talk about who knows what, we needed to make a move quickly. Zane had convinced me that a tandem Birch/Republican operation would win the state Party structure over to the right.

I remember being hungry and nervous, and sickened by Phoenix Club chairman Peter Brantingham's cheap cigar, left over from the birth of his first child. He looked like a used-car salesman--replete with short-sleeve poly/blend Arrow shirt, tieless, a mousy brown caterpillar inching its way over his upper lip.

State Chairman Craig Doyle looked much the same, only his moustache was fuller and more dignified, and he sported a polo shirt over a stocky build. Both dangerous, but Brantingham was also obnoxious--easily, the most arrogant man in the Young Republicans. Self-serving, self-righteous without a cause, Brantingham claimed to be conservative, but shuddered at the Birch moniker. His father had been a John Bircher, and I got the feeling the two suffered bad blood.

Craig Doyle was just sketchy. He had trouble maintaining eye contact for more than a few seconds, played constantly with a large gold school ring on his bachelor's finger, and hung around with a pal named Robert Wexler, an apostate Jew--not that it made any difference to me; only, that he was heard to have told a friend, eyeing a Jewish holy book on his coffee-table, "Oh, it's mine; but I never practice." You know the type.

Wexler bounced from job-to-job after graduating ASU with a serviceable 3.47 GPA, and had now picked politics in some hazy, last-ditch kick. He was the ringer. The friendly neighbor who drinks beer with you during the World Series, then shimmies up the lattice-work in the middle of the night and fucks your wife. The hand-picked crony to give Doyle the continued edge. I felt it, and told Zane.

"That motherfucker is going to give us problems," I whispered.

Zane shot back, laughing: "That's what they're saying about you."

Doyle and Wexler were a duo on every front. The swing vote. Exasperating, because they sat on their hands, not on principle. They loved the Contras because it was in vogue to do so; they believed in the Federal Reserve System because it represented the Great and Benevolent Government they so earnestly wished to be part of some day. They stalled, switched and swayed with the breeze of public sentiment. They were the type that Zane and I despised.

The only two women present were Georgia Hargan and Jerri Teets. Georgia, a raven-haired beauty and Baptist-against-abortion, was three kids removed from the field and married to a sometime politico and stern believer in the right to keep and bear arms. Jerri, black-sheep daughter of Greyhound chairman John Teets, was a bit, too...well, voluptuous all over, besides the fact that she hated me instinctually and seemed comfortable only whilst pandering to Fortune 500 types.

The Arizona Young Republican League would see many a star simply flash in the pan, disillusioned through all the bickering, or realizing that a worthy husband would never be found in such a charade. But Zane and I accomplished what we set out to do, which was, to sell me to the fold, billed as the former acting-President of the College Republicans and UC-Santa Barbara--a flat-out lie, but one we felt reasonably certain nobody would bother checking out. By meeting's end, Zane had convinced the Board of its need for a Judiciary and Civil Affairs Committee, which I would naturally chair, being a criminal justice scholar and distinguished College Republican leader.

Slipping out of a drunk isn't easy, under any circumstances. But when you're responsible for spawning an entire movement, there is no flip-side option. It is singularly unacceptable to stumble into a Birch Society gathering smelling of a Milwaukee grain refinery. Birchers are not partiers in the contemporary sense. They understand that the Void yawns daily for humanity's flesh, and that sobriety is next to godliness. I agree, in principle, but it just never seemed to work out that way for me.

The Carnivore had spent all night practicing bass riffs from various Ozzy Osbourne songbooks, jarring my goodwill with the loud and ugly undertones. I had tried to ease him into some Steely Dan, or something at least a little humane, but he was bent on heavy metal at 100 decibels. Tired, my ears ringing from the late-night jam sesh, I retired poolside with a Stroh's fifteen-pack, shivering in the dead of March, alone, save for a tanned beauty in a French-cut bikini who showed no interest in me at all.

I pulled out of a spiral around 4:30pm and dressed for an evening fundraiser to be held at the penthouse suite of JBS National Councilman Wayne Watson, whom I had already met through the Businessmen's Briefing. My fear of public speaking was running around loose, as the clock ticked down toward the fundraiser, and I debated tapping a can of Valium left over an injury sustained in a full-contact softball tournament in Santa Barbara. Then I remembered Karen Anne Quinlan: bedsores...matted hair...sobriety is next to godliness.

When I pulled up to the Clarendon Towers on Central Avenue and made it into the lobby, Wayne Watson was already leading the pledge, ...for which it stands, One Nation under God...pit, pit, pat, tat, thump, debilitating aortic aneuryism...indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, our guest speaker tonight is Hilaire DuBerrier, distinguished foreign correspondent and advisor to the late Congressman Lawrence Patton MacDonald. But before the main address, I'd like to introduce Todd Brendan Fahey, the former Young Republican chairman in Santa Barbara, California. He's starting a student chapter of the Society here at ASU, and brings with him a great deal of organizational ability. So, would you please give Todd your undivided attention."

My reputation had grown without my permission. Shit. What now? The room started to spin, so I made it over to where Wayne Watson stood and bought myself a little time. Money. That is what I was after...but it always sounds so petty. Zane made it look like some natural birthright.

"Good evening," I said, breaking into a sweat. "I'm Todd Fahey, and, as Wayne said, I'll be forming a student Birch unit at Arizona State..." keep it going, Todd, you're doing fine..." I could say a lot about our goals and objectives, but what the student group needs most now is a bit of financial support from the more well-established Birchers..." good, Todd, straight to the point.

"And I know you get asked for money often, mostly from Uncle Sam..." laughs, you're about done... "but this is the first time a chapter has been officially registered at an American college, and I feel confident we can spread JBS principles campus-wide. I'd like to make this a true power-base, and a little support from you good people will do a great deal toward helping us achieve our goals. Thank you."

Haaawhhh...breath, fresh air, nobody staring, people clapping, fuck, Todd. I grabbed a seat and began intercepting twenties and fifties, stuffing them into my wallet and taking down as many names as I could before the shit began to rain.

What, or what little, that follows will have to go somewhat excused. Seems certain individuals present, or involved, or actually taping DuBerrier's talk have expressed professional reservations in turning a transcript over to me. Seems my Work In Progress befits not the local hierarchy: Sour grapes, and potentially distracting from the grim root of the speech, which drilled me right between the eyes. I understand now what a premier the Zapruder/Kennedy video-shoot must have been.

In sum, Congressman Lawrence Patton MacDonald was murdered like a dog. He was heavy into the State Department's files, ran a clandestine Intelligence operation through no less than four international embassies, filtering successfully and probably illegally scads of anti-communist dollars through his Western Goals Foundation, and was hunted down and killed with no less cunning and no more civility than was necessary to extricate him from Establishment hair. Maybe captured and tortured, maybe not; but, nonetheless, dead.

The gallery seemed stunned. It took a few minutes before anyone could think to speak up. Finally, a senior citizen said, "But why shoot down an airline?"

DuBerrier nodded. "Lenin once said, `The easiest way to hide a fork is between a knife and a spoon."

A busty old lady wriggled into the seat next to mine and tried to comfort me. I was staring at MacDonald's photo in some Birch periodical--so very handsome and alive and just the fucking American we needed to pull things around...and I was feeling very much alone.

"God bless you, son," Mae Riley said, as I nearly lost it on her shoulder, eyes misting, and choked up such that I could barely speak. "Oh, I think it's marvelous. My grandson just doesn't care..."

I stared at a Ben Franklin.

"Now," she continued, slapping at my hand, "we all loved the man. But he's gone. He is gone, and we will fight to protect what he stood for. I do a fair bit of research at the University. If there's anything you or your group needs, I probably have it. Here's my number. Call if you ever need help," she said, hugging me until I was flushing with embarrassment and sadness and total acceptance.

Wayne Watson collared me and had me count out the donation total, I guessed, to kick back some of it to the host chapter, which I didn't mind doing. I felt privileged to even be included in such circles, given my shoddy past performance as a human being. One-hundred ninety dollars. He drew out a checkbook, covered in calf-skin, and signed off on a matching sum, and told me to call if I needed more.

I staggered to the door, unable to grasp the fact that grown men and women were listening and talking to me, and thoroughly taken by me, and that, someday, I might become something more than a simple parasite on the Food Chain.

Soon after my transfer from UCSB to Arizona State, the folks said they'd pay for half the cost of a semester in London if I approached grades like Mike Tyson does the average human ribcage. Which was not as much of a feat as they thought...all it required was that I pare down the daily bong-load intake from twenty to maybe just three or four. I knew the trick back in Santa Barbara, but it just wasn't practical--not with the varied strains of head pounding at my door at every hour, night and day, to get high or get me high, in the most timely and cost-efficient manner.

My gift as sage seer and diviner of good, green bud, over a two-tower, twenty-storey area...provider of pot, the non-profit Good Will Ambassador of Ganja, kept me constantly on-call. I gladly have my grade-point average over to the "B-" rung: steep in most-high decadent student culture.

And I was damned good at it, too. Some doubted my abilities early on, but the slow start paid off at the End-of-the-Year Francisco Torres Dormitory Awards. The competition was tight, until third-quarter finals, when the weak and less confident dropped out like sick horses at the Derby. It had come down to myself and a short Jewish boy, who resembled Yassar Arafat. Marshall Stern was Bud King, but his habit of dropping classes like hot dishes nearly disqualified him.

What it takes to be voted Biggest Partier at a private dormitory on the glowing coast of California is not so much a chronic capacity for chemical, or a huge stash--but an iron drive to party before every academic episode, as a matter of principle: See just how malleable the System really is. And I was realistic. I knew I had a forty-fold chance of snapping before the System did. But the contest ended as the Awards Committee caught me at around daybreak, an embarrassed crinkle at the corners of my bloodshot eyes, stooped over a candy-striped bong given to me as a going away present by a high school buddy--as I desperately tried to rid myself of the coffee-shakes from an all-night cram session before my 7:00a.m. final in Chicano Studies, where I sat next to the door...

Perry's Pizza, downtown Isla Vista...a rough day of one or maybe no classes, sprawled out on a picnic table in the hot sun, about six blocks away from the beach, drinking Schlitz pitchers for $1.89 with the regular cronies, or for free if Big Rob showed up: my suitemate, the school's quarterback and resident nightmare. And usually he did--taking his primer-gray Corvette convertible onto the sidewalk, the Infinity deck cranked to the zenith, for that extra atmospheric edge.

All bets were off at that point. Because after you blow a .20 in the free Breathalyzer machine near the door, things begin to get hazy; and with Big Rob there, a .30 or potentially fatal .33 was all but guaranteed, when the watermelon-breasted young barmaid began pouring something like Watney's or Bass for free, at least to us. Rob paid later, in goods and services. We were always grateful to Rob for those humanitarian tendencies, wherever he may be. And it was anyone's guess who would end up where, with whom, in what condition or under the jurisdiction of which police department, sheriff's station or animal control officer on those carefree afternoons.

Of course, there were always risks. A fractured hand on one outing; cactus spines embedded in the fist and a cracked ankle after another spree. Rob received a bruised tailbone in the same melee (told later that we were fighting for territorial rights on an 11-foot painters' scaffolding; the cactus spines remain a mystery...there exist very few clues, and not many people like to talk about it.)

And then you could meet Tami. Same frothing blood/alcohol content,different day. Just run into this little Oriental doll, and rant about some James Dean movie after class and how badly you'd like to just nuzzle into that long, black hair and go to sleep. And pretty soon, you have a full-time girlfriend, and the friends don't really mean that much...

I was desperately trying to recapture the feeling, and I knew, deep down, it was inside one of the beer bottles--I just hadn't drunk the right one yet. Zane had entered my room in Sin City, and was finding it difficult to reach me in such a forlorn state.

But then the phone rang, jerking me from the stupor.

"Hey, Todd."

"Marcus, what's going on? How's SAE?"

"Oh, it's alright." Blank silence.

"How're the classes?"

"I don't really want to get into it," he said.

"Well, that doesn't leave a whole hell of a lot for us to talk about, then, does it?" I chided. "Thanks for keeping in touch."

"You know how it is."

"No," I said. "I don't. How are the grades?"

"I told you, I don't want to talk about it."

I hung up and started planning next week's events on the human battlefield. Zane had added some group called The Arizona Breakfast Club to our fundraising list. The phone rang again. I was expecting a reporter from the Phoenix New Times, an Art/Lib giveaway rag with a penchant for hard, investigative journalism. But the call never came. It was Marcus again.

"Well," I wondered. "What's up?"

"Fuck! Nothing. That's the thing."

"Spill it, man, I don't have time for mind-reading."

"I don't know," he whined.

"Aren't you supposed to be in class now?"

"Yeah, but they're having a midterm," he said, meagerly.

"So...isn't that a pretty fucking good reason to be in class? "Goddamn, what's wrong with you?"

"Well, I mean, I missed the first test, and--"

"And you haven't been since," I interrupted, cutting through his lame excuses, "have you?"

"No, but--"

"But bullshit," I screamed, starting to tear. "You're the smartest person I know, Marcus."

"Todd, Suzy's dead...hey, I dropped my chemistry class."

"Do your parents know you've dropped out of school?"

"No, they're going to Europe next week. Why ruin their trip, right?"

"What about classes?"

"Fuck it, there's always next quarter."

"They wouldn't understand...Hey, Todd, no I haven't told them yet...Hey, Todd..."

"I know, but I was up all night partying, and I thought the prof would let me take a make-up."

"Which class is it?" I asked, beginning to get edgy.

"Psychology," he said.

"101?"

"Yeah."

"Jesus, my Dachshunds could pass that class...with B's. What's wrong with you!?"

"Don't yell!"

"Fuck you, I'll yell if I feel like it. Nobody else is getting through to you," I shrieked, rounding the bend into personal judgement and outright hostility. "Alright. OK, what about the others? How are you doing in the others?"

"Well," he said, "the Anthropology teacher sucked...it's humanism, you know: the Earth is 8 billion years old, and that kind of shit."

"So, you blew that one off, too?" I asked, trying to keep a running mental tally. "Math. What about math?"

"I'm behind one test, but I can take two next week and make up for it."

"Okay," I said, trying to shift into something positive, "how 'bout English?"

"Huh huh. That one didn't work out. You know I can't write."

"Yeah, but I can!" I screamed. "Why didn't you call me? Do you know how many people have passed English because of me?"

"I thought you were pissed off."

"I am pissed off. But I'd be less pissed if you had called me before your second set of midterms. Jesus, Marcus, so out of 12 units you may pass one class. Is that it? Am I hearing you straight?"

"That about sums it up."

I took another breath. "What's the problem here?" I asked him, for about the twelfth time in three years, at three different colleges. "Come on: You graduate with a 3.9 in high school...shred me on the SAT's by four hundred points! You study for one night in a upper division Econ class, and set the curve...talk to me!"

"I dunno," he mumbled.

"You've got to forget Santa Barbara--about Suzy. We've been through too much together to blow it. It sucked, we fouled out, and it's over," I shouted. "But I'm the one who was gone on pot, Marcus. Not you. I'm the one who doesn't remember last summer."

He cut me off. "Yeah, but remember? We used to joke about it. Yeah, yeah...Todd, with the beer mug surgically implanted in his fist. Todd, with the broken hand, scaring the shit out of the girls, washing a big, red Darvon down with a six-pack. Gulp! You had it wired; you still do."

I did, and not much more could be said on that count. "Okay, from the top: When did you start bailing classes, and why?"

"Fuck, man! It's not so much the time...it's the feeling."

"What feeling? What are you talking about?" I asked, starting to get annoyed again. Zane was shifting positions on the couch and looking at his watch.

"I can't leave the House," he said. "For days, I just sit here."

I stared at the ceiling, and tried to cool down. "It's called agoraphobia. Panic disorder. You would have learned that in Psych 101," I sniped. "Sorry. Today!! Go to the school shrink and get some Valium. I know you won't abuse it."

"Yeah, they wouldn't dare give it to you. Not with your track record."

We had a good laugh, and he promised to look into it. I had wasted twenty minutes of Zane's time, and he was in a rush for the Capitol building, to research some bills for the Honorable Trent Franks. But from the blue,we were jangled from a brief political discussion by a volley of bloodcurdling screams. They were coming from somewhere down the hall, and were getting louder and faster by the second. I began laughing. The sound wasn't new.

In the madness of partying, some idiot was performing impressions of his latest sexual conquest or fantasy. A very funny skit, if the moment is right. And I had no doubt that three or six guys were holed up in an adjoining room, smoking a fatty and getting rude.

The Resident Assistant, a black man named Eric, charged out of his suite and into hallway. "What the fuck's going on?!"

I filled them both in, and we got a perverse belly-laugh. Until the screaming stopped, and chocolate-hued football player named Tiny exited his room, followed closely by a very sexy, sweaty blonde, about five-foot three, who smiled sheepishly as she adjusted her miniskirt.

Now...blame it on some recessive Arkansas gene, but the situation left me a tad antsy. And by the low-throated gurgling noises coming out of Zane's neck, I knew he was right there with me. But, in deference to the company, I had the prescience of mind to remain civil.

The R.A. shook his head, staring at the ratty blue carpeting. "The brothers are slummin' again, I can't figure the motherfuckers out." Then he walked stiffly back to his room and shut the door.

I waved Zane off, as he walked dejectedly out a side exit, muttering, "I know...I know."

I stumbled outside and across the volleyball courts, to check my mail at the front desk, feeling the symptoms of an early hangover coming on--sweating, palpitations, a ringing headache in the eyes.

I debated throwing the letter away, knowing no good could possibly come of it, but opened it anyway, like I knew I would, and read slowly...

Dear Todd,

I thought by now you would have written, or called, or something, but I haven't heard from you. I never said it was over, just that I needed time. And I still don't know what happened. I'm sorry. I know you don't understand, but I don't really either. But please keep in touch, ok? Maybe something will happen if you do.

Love,

Tami

Yeah...maybe something. Like coming back from another vacation to a vacant smile and a lame explanation about how we're still too young, and then some statistical abstract on the divorce rate for twenty-year olds not yet out of college. Fuck You!

I crammed the note under a burner and set it aflame, and then dragged myself to Psychology, fifteen minutes late, knowing from experience just what an introductory prerequisite had to offer...not that I needed anymore Psych units. I had already taken the toughest undergraduate courses UCSB had to offer: Brian and Behavior, Perception, Abnormal Psychology: and had emerged unscathed. So original was my thesis on LSD, composed directly under the influence, that the instructor said she had to try it herself. No. What drew me to an otherwise rudimentary refresher course that my or may not apply toward my major was the one hundred seventy-five freshman girls packing the lecture hall every Monday, Wednesday, Friday.

And I was glad I went. I nailed some brushed-and-teased brunette with my own unique sonar, and convinced her to get helplessly drunk with me at The Dash--the classic college establishment, home of many Greek parties, where they rarely card minors, which Lynne was, by Arizona law. As we held some meaningless conversation as to the ages of her past few boyfriends and she told me that that I was one of the few guys her parents might actually like, I felt the need to take her back to Sin City for a tumble on my single, standard-issue college cot.

We jettisoned The Dash and she broke out a cigarette, which sent me into some sort of Puritan-frenzy, until the sweet fragrance of cannabis sativa wafted up into my nostrils, and, well, I just couldn't help myself. I'm a weak man. She showed me a roller, carried in her purse at all times, which explained why it looked like a filterless Pall Mall.

On the totem of importance, the roommate had to be dealt with. He and his cronies were playing "quarters" with Old Style beer, and one seemed to be coughing up chunks of pancreas in my sink. I started kissing Lynne in front of them, and, when that didn't work, began to disrobe her. We both hoped that that would work, because I was perfectly willing to throw the carcasses of mid-pubescent Sammy Hagar fanatics out the window and onto Scottsdale Road. They gawked for a few seconds and left without incident.

Our first official Birch controversy began with rumors of an organized protest. The "fascist connection" had already been formed in our opponents' minds, and we had to act quickly to neutralize the Black Student Union, so that anything they accused us of in later days would seem passe.

Back at the ranch, Zane and I rummaged through crates of literature given to us by the State Coordinator for every black, Jewish and Hispanic member, finding first Charlie Smith, of a deep tan--a long-time JBS speaker-turned-restauranteur. His speeches such as "The Created Energy Crisis" and "What Are They Protecting Us From?" are legend among Birchers, as is his assertion that America should develop an alternative energy source using attorneys as a sort of Soylent Green. Which is amusing to some, but not really the kind of thing you want to emphasize in the public prints.

Pamphlet upon pamphlet emerged, the most famous being the essay, "Color, Communism & Common Sense," by former U.S. Communist Party secretary Manning Johnson, a black man and son of a slave, who, while riding his bicycle at 73 years of age, had been given a high-quality Michelin rub on an L.A. side-street. His assailant was never found.

I called the president of the Black Student Union, Victor Bryant, and asked if we could speak to "his people," catering to the ego. His V.P., Carlos Thomas, a militant student of the Panther era, objected, but was out-voted, and we were allowed fifteen minutes at their monthly Board meeting inside the university.

As Zane and I climbed the stairs, I began to seriously identify with an old man named Daniel. A combination of jive, African and Queen's English, wrapped in dreadlocks and dashikis and not a few camouflage fatigues, greeted us, stopping dead from where it was they stood, and stared. What is Whitey doing here? Do you want to see your families again? I shuddered and grabbed for a big tape recorder, which I somehow felt safer holding, and waited for Zane to finish reading from Manning Johnson's frightening account of how the Soviets were using blacks to create racial foment, and would thereafter dispose of them once Kremlin aims were served. I heard a couple of "bullshit"s, but the audience as a whole listened attentively. Bryant seemed to nod, and I clicked on a rousing invitation to join the John Birch Society, issued by Charlie Smith, which packed a wallop too extreme to be countered, and forced their more racist element to accept the fact that there would be no opportunity for violence or hostage-taking in protest, nor the occupation of an administration building. Tough tits, Sambo, one of "your people" just asked you to join the John Birch Society. Yeah. What say 'bout dat?

In the end, Bryant gave us each a hip, three-part handshake, and must have called off the March on Cady Mall--a PR coup for both sides which had us featured the next week in one of the local newspapers, shaking hands on campus for some hokey, overblown photo-Summit.

As the Black Student Union rated just south of the Baltimore Orioles on the tough/bad-ass scale, Mark Reader, professor of Political Science, was proving to be a burr up our collective bunghole. He was as leftist as our campus advisor was conservative. But our advisor, to our knowledge, had never been arrested whilst scaling the wall of the Palo Verde Nuclear Facility, a dozen students cheering him on, during a field trip taken in the name of Academic Freedom.

Dr. Reader and his views on our student Birch unit were conveniently represented in an article in a short-lived "underground" newspaper, which I should have known to treat like any other cold sore. The interview should not have been granted. Firstly, the "reporter" was female, and hispanic, and twenty-one years old. Secondly, Campus Weekly served explictly as the liberal alternative to the very rightist State Press. Now, I don't doubt that somewhere in America there might be a young Latina just aching to pen a fair portrayal of the John Birch Society--only, coupled with the rag she was fronting, I saw the Big Three Strikes in my face. But I clung to the adage that "all publicity is good publicity, as long as they spell your name right."

That is about the only thing she got right. Ms. Perez took my side of the story over the phone, then tipped the scales heavily to the left with some standard disinformation heaped high by Professor Reader, Women's Studies Director Mary Rothschild, and an unnamed critical professor who "wished to remain anonymous." The article took up all of page one, with a smug photo of myself splayed in front of our oversized American flag, Zane looking on, menacing the camera crew.

And despite the patent editorial jab at our group, I managed some spin of my own--namely, to explain to La Senorita that I had left UC-Santa Barbara because "the professors had long hair and smoke pot...where a John Birch Society chapter could not have survived." Whereas, truth be told, UC-Santa Barbara was the site of the first documented student JBS haven--a Paraguay of sorts. Offspring of local Birchers had financed and formed the Freedom Club in 1965, which was nothing but a thinly-disguised Birch front-group. That was in Robert Welch's heyday, when the Society averaged a thousand mentions per week in press reports nationwide...a far different climate than today: when S&Ls were solvent and kids could still trick or treat alone.

No, I would not have survived, at such a frantic pace as five bowls of indica before breakfast, a shower, a couple of beers and an omelette, one class, a pitcher of beer for lunch, then another joint or two...the customary nap before hitting an evening lecture, followed by three or eleven parties on Del Playa before picking Tami up, just south of passing out, and then working myself into a hormone/adrenaline frenzy for five hours...to do it all over again the next day.

My strategy for casting Santa Barbara as a harbinger of Red agitation and chronic, drug-sucking zeal, was deceptively simple: Shift the accusations on someone or something else (in this case, a town and its professors) and away from my own dumb lifestyle. I came away, at least on paper, as any other clean-cut, Reagan-era Young Republican, albeit farther to the right, but respectable as hell in a land overshadowed by Barry Goldwater for twenty-five years.

My only fear, by making the papers so often, was that some meanspirited former drug-crony might find himself short of money and blackmail me down to the plasma. We had all been snakes-in-the-grass, and probably I deserved it.

Professor Reader presented a more complex problem. The depth of his committment to thought control was staggering, and I knew that not everyone could be counted on to be a serious student of Huxley and Orwell. So, I decided to pay a visit to Gray T. Echols, distinguished Opinion Page editor of the State Press, who had an open-door policy for like-minded Americans. I handed him a letter and watched a smile form to one side of his face.

I was not about to waste my time playing into the game plan of a full-throated fan of the Soviet system. Reader needed to be shed like a humping dog from so many legs. His type would merely exchange letter-for-letter, interview-for-blah, blah, blah, until The Better Man one out--which would not likely be some peon-student/fringe-Rightist.

I tapped into a raw nerve ending and played with all the buttons in the good Doktor's Fear Control Center:

"I love illogical, liberal thought--the kind that departs on a progressive course of change and ends up setting its cause back light years. This mentality was recently well-exemplifie by Political Science professor Mark Reader, in his reaction in last week's Campus Weekly to the new student chapter of the John Birch Society at ASU.

Reader says, in his liberally tolerant view, `right-wing thought, more so than left-wing, tends to suppress ideas and knowledge and stands against what a University represents.' But in the same breath, he states that, since there are more than fifteen (sic) chapters of the John Birch Society on college campuses, `the University should go out of its way to educate students about what extreme groups stand for.' And in the same vein of censorship, he blatantly asserts that, `its [the student chapter] presence is indicative of the University's inaction in countering radical, right-wing activities on campus.'

Who is the oppressor, Dr. Reader? Since the John Birch Society is no more radical than the Constitution itself, leftists such as you have nothing to worry about. It is this left-wing double-standard which should be the American concern. We'll never achieve `free-inquiry, tolerance, openness and general pluralism' (in your words), so long as hypocrites are representing the University.

Big Brother isn't watching you, Dr. Reader...we are.

(signed)

Todd Brendan Fahey, President--Students for the John Birch Society, ASU

Months prior to our starting Students for the John Birch Society, Professor Reader had had the scare of his life--maybe four or five--when a violent neo-Nazi offshoot of the Aryan Nations Brotherhood, called the Bruderschweigen or, simply, the Order (the group responsible for Denver radio-guru Alan Berg's early arrival to the pearly gates) called to wish him Happy Chanukah. Seems they didn't like Reader's brand of patriotism. And while I hold no more affinity for any National Socialist spinter-group than I did for the good Comrade, I knew a clean opportunity when I smelled it.

Reader had lately abandonded his Birkenstocks-and-bermudas uniform for a more professorial look, of knit ties and cotton pants. His rabid frothings were drawing attention, which might not have been a wise thing for his Cause. In any event, he eased off the Soviet line until the the Bruderschweigen gave up the grudge.

I saw the cue, and cranked up the rumor-mill. Casually, to various campus journalists and heavies, I began linking our student Birch unit to Accuracy in Academia, Reed Irvine's vehicle, after the more well-known Accuracy in Media, which, together with Senator Jesse Helms, once attempted to buy out CBS. Accuracy in Academia was into some fairly heavy campus terrorism at the time, and I marveled and its cut-throatedness.

Reader was spending his days recently nursing an unnatural phobia of tape recorders, though, unlike Alan Berg, he exhibited an advanced instinct for self-preservation. So, I linked the two elements in a string, and mentioned to all to whom I spoke that Reader might like to hear copies of his own lectures...after I had sent a few dozen cassettes to concerned civic leaders, leaving the agit-Prof to complete the puzzle. This is the story he was to have heard:

Three guys holding very large and conspicuous listening devices plan to invade your lecture hall--one young man so large that he will need to bust out a chair-arm just to sit down and listen to the brainwash. They will be merciless, though probably not armed...:

Dr. Reader: "Young men, I'm going to ask you to put your tape recorders away."

Zane--"Dr. Reader, is it not true that we, the taxpayer, pay for your salary?"

Reader: "Once again, I must--"

Zane, laughing menacingly: "I asked you, sir, if it is true that--"

Reader, irritated: "Young men, you have two choices--"

Zane, butting in vociferously: "Yes, it is true, and the way we see it, YOU have THREE choices. Here's Todd to tell you about Option A:"

Me: "Option A: You can continue with your lecture and we will record it as planned."

Anonymous Bircher: "Option B: You can conclude your fine lecture and deprive these young minds of your wisdom. Zane, would you care to tell him of Option C?"

Zane, grinning: "Option C: You can walk up here and try to take these tape recorders away from us." Chuckling like a blood-gorged vampire: "I don't recommend Option C."

We fine-tuned the performance, debating on such points as campus security, possible expulsion and the ramifications on our futures, et al., and in the meantime, took up a frustrating assignment from a cadre of disenchanted Birchers--just an odd little piece of legislation called House Resolution 97. The cannon-fire it drew was among the heaviest things I would experience in three years, and vaulted us onto the Most Dangerous Individuals List, as defined by the country-club set.

H.R. 97 had been introduced to Congress by Phil Crane (R-ILL), and stated, in detailed terms, that the United States shall not aid, trade with, loan to, represent diplomatically the Soviet Union or their satellites or Warsaw Pact allies in any form, for any reason. It was the stuff of Cold War, which Zane and I revelled in and hope some day would return.

Unfortunately, Crane, who ran for President in 1980 as "the perennial darling of the far-Right," was cursed with the chiseled face of Clark Gable and about the same wanton abandon for drink, having recently been pulled over and cited on the Golden Gate Bridge for an illicit blood:alcohol level. A real Heineken-sucking terror. Certain nameless pols having had occasion to tipple with him claim to always dread the final bar-tab.

Then again, most sane men who experience that much pressure, such as comes to the True Conservative in the hammerlock of Congressional politics, are bound to cave into something sooner or later. At least it wasn't to a seventeen-year old male page in and around the Senate bathroom, as happened to Massachussetts' Jerry Studds. Or to failed Nixon Supreme Court nominee G. Harold Carswell, who blew his own brains out over something far too heavy for this light-hearted piece.

The sick double-standard that reigns via the Press/Liberal lobby has done in many a fine conservative--Crane's brother Daniel, case in point. His affair with a female secretary cost him a Congressional seat, as his stodgy Illinois constituency wouldn't swing that way. And Robert Bauman--famed homosexual right-winger from Maryland, who would stand tall with the best of them during daylight hours, then bend the rheostat in the bathhouse around midnight with the Boys--canceled all bets, retiring to pen his autobiography.

But Studds won vindication. Why? Well, primarily because the Media tippy-toed around "The Studds Affair," while homing full-bore in on Crane and Bauman; and also, that the People's Republic of Taxachussetts tends to be a tad more "sensitive" in these areas. Everyone's welcome...except, of course, The Conservative, who is treated as graciously as any tax-collector in places like Wikeyup, Arizona and Heber Valley, Utah...but maybe this isn't the time or place for such close-to-the-bone regional analysis. As far as HR 97 was concerned, Zane and I lobbied the jibbers out of the offices of Congressmen Bob Stump, Eldon Rudd, Jim Kolbe and John McCain, but found only the former two to be supportive or registering any pulse at all over the idea.

Stump and Rudd were institutional standard-bearers of the political Right, Stump going so far as to cross over from the Democratic party over the widening chasm in the Party of Jefferson; and on one fine Spring day, 1985, we gained entrance to their offices with two simple phone calls and were greeted respectfully by chief aides Bruce Bartholemew and a person whose name I now forget, for pressing such a hopelessly American idea.

Eldon Rudd was a bit of a character to figure. Not a spellbinding speaker; not particularly attractive...large, with kind of that Walter Cronkite all-over father-feeling about him. Even the press forgave him of certain sacreliges, here and again. A simple man, with basic ideas--most importantly, that the Reds need no more help, no how, N-O, not from me.

Bob Stump struck me as just the kind of man this country needs. A low-key, non-drinking Seventh-Day Adventist...sharp as an errant fingernail--almost everything we wanted from Reagan and, well...what we got from Dutch deserves critical analysis from a perspective that is probably doomed from the start. A failure in 1964 that has skidded down Bandini Mountain ever since. If I decide to vote in 1992, it will have been as a Libertarian. Fuck the two-party notion. It has failed us ever since Lincoln was knocked off.

Within days, we poured over two hundred letters into the mailboxes of the four Republican congressmen, using a well-oiled agglomeration of Birchers, Eagle Forum members, Arizonans for National Security adherants, students, parents, and anyone else who wanted to see Soviet testicles crushed like black walnuts on harvest morning.

Our game plan struck the .500 mark, when we received two phone calls from the Stump/Rudd team, saying they had jumped on the Crane resolution. John McCain, however, proved to be an evasive, fence-straddling SOB. A prisoner of war in Vietnam, he was pulled out of a North Vietnamese tree by the enemy, after lodging in it from 4,000 feet, and taken back to Charley HQ. His hotel room doubled as dungeon and torture chamber...apparently, reservations got lost, and the local Motel 6 was booked up.

McCain had his arms and legs broken by Charley in the throes of some cruel communication breakdown. His captors didn't understand McCain's broken Viet-dialect. I would have to guess that "My father is the Fleet Admiral" came out sounding like, "Your mother has done our whole Fleet"...but this is mostly conjecture.

I was new to the Game, yearning for acceptance and knowledge and keen wisdom; so Zane took over as Lobbyist/Liaison with a dozen political office nationwide, leaving me to some flat-out terrifying press-releases and assorted pieces of propaganda--my only marketable function thus far.

Meanwhile, the darker aspects of my personality crept to the fore, as Lynne continued to feed me full of a particularly mean, paraquat-free Mexican red-hair blend at regular intervals: in the school parking lot, before school, during lunch, and, invariably, whilst engaging in pseudo-cohabitational carnal activities--a misdeameanor in Arizona. On one such stoned session, she confessed that her mother was anxious to meet me; which, I thought, was a fine idea: parents, as a rule, like me. And I was anxious to see just who had reared this pretty, young pothead.

Head-mom was a hairdresser and, I gathered, totally schizophrenic. She skittered room-to-room, avoiding all contact with her bloodshot slits-for-eyes, concealed under a pair of opaque sunglasses, pouring for herself triple-shots of Smirnoff, before retiring to the bedroom to pass out.

"Did you like her?" Lynne wondered.

"Well..."

"I think she likes you."

For all I knew, she could be honing a scale cutlass, until such time that I began to get comfy with her daughter...then, pounce!! I wanted to leave.

Lynne dragged me into the bedroom, I guessed for some heavy mid-day sex, but I wanted none of it. Probably she was plotting with her deranged mother to have me castrated. Or, even worse, maybe Truman Capote hadn't died: He finally got that sex-change operation, and was now hiding in the master bedroom to gather information on me, with which to write another long-awaited bestseller. Hidden cameras, purchased with laundered KGB funds, reeling in every toke-bump-and-grind, would air over CBS, with Dan Rather sneering, "And in Arizona, we have a genuinely weird race for the State Senate..." The window was open, and Lynne was in the bathroom. It was my chance to leave.

But the escape was foiled when she returned smiling. "I want to show you something."

The top shelf of her closet housed a mind-altering collection of glass bongs, water-pipes, hookahs, emu-feathered roach clips...all functional and capable of getting the Haight stoned once again. This chick was no recreational user--I had a serious Head on my hands.

"Where did you get this shit?" I muttered.

"Shit? You're looking at a couple grand!"

Happy Trails is the local head-shop/rock-ticket outlet...and she fucking worked there, for something like three years. The Head had turned into a genuine Liability before my eyes. I had to get out...she knows where I live.

"Lynne, I've got to go."

"Something wrong?" she wondered.

"No. I have an appointment." I was shaking and sweating. "Do me a favor...I think my phones are tapped," I shivered. "So, just keep marijuana out of the conversation, ok?"

"Okay." She looked hurt--her pride and joy unnacceptable to me in such ravenous form.

And then I said, "I don't think we should see each other for awhile. It's getting too heavy."

"Hey, Todd, I would never--"

"I have to go."

She must have heard my car squealing out of the complex. And if she didn't, the three pounds of rubber I laid over knee-high speed bumps would give her the clue. If Zane ever found out, I'd be axed from the Coalition. I could just picture...nevermind, it's just just too ugly.

My best-laid plans threatened to travel the path of the porcelain suck-hole, as I answered the phone one evening, toward the end of the semester. I had feared the worst when Zane began evading my questions regarding his mid-term exams.

"Todd, I just can't make it onto the Mall tomorrow." There was sorrow in his voice.

"You might as well tell me," I moaned.

He gave an audible sigh. "Screw ASU. I don't need to pay for somebody to tell me lies--I can just turn on the News."

The conversation mired on. He couldn't fathom the direct value in collecting a piece of paper after four years; evidently, his father had made it pretty well without the state's sanction. But I was worried about the student group we had slaved to form against incredible odds.

"Don't worry," he assured me, "you can handle it. I'll be out there pretty often."

He became vague when asked when his schedule might allow for heavy involvement. Burned. My first taste of political defeat, offered up by a friend. I was pissed off. But then the anger turned into some deeper void. Zane had the Young Republicans. He had his dad to finance just about anything he wanted. I wasn't so lucky.

I asked him to do me one last favor on the JBS student front: serve as emcee to Otto Scott, a distinguished veteran columnist for several right-of-center Christian publications. He couldn't say no. Mr. Scott was to speak at ASU on the subject of South Africa, to counter Randall Robinson, Chairman of the pro-African National Congress TransAfrica Corporation, who was to be on campus the same day.

Not certain of whether Zane would actually show up that morning, I got involved with a bottle of Valium, left over from a full-contact softball tourney at UCSB. It would turn gruesome as the drug took effect; but worse would have been standing at the podium, my knees banging away at the laminated pressboard, fumbling words, embarrassing myself, our speaker, the student group, in a span of three Fear/blackout-minutes.

I remember I hadn't eaten; or, that it was something so innocuous that my stomach didn't register to it. More likely, though, I had sucked down the better part of a six-pack, as I was in the habit of doing in the a.m., to let my system know that it wasn't really morning. Nobody gets that hungover. It was still evening, and I am having a rip-roaring time...

But suddenly, I was out on ASU's main walk, handing out fliers with three others I barely knew, in a last-ditch attempt at packing the oversized room I had booked. No idea how I'd gotten there. The barleys had sent me into one of my infamous blackouts and now the Valium was taking over. I heard voices. Something to the effect of: "Are you okay? You want me to call the paramedics? CPR? Yeah, I know how."

Donning a black, double-brested Yves Saint Laurent I had just picked up for my impending semester in London...deeply tanned by artificial UV-A rays, I must have resembled something of a horribly zombied Ken-doll.

Zane showed up to the lecture, and my mission now was not public speaking--as that hope was lost when my tongue atrophied to the roof of my mouth--but simply to stay conscious. I was seeing the backs of my eyelids all too clearly, and when they did manage to flutter open, I saw our speaker casting about for some source of liquid refreshment.

I had neglected to place the customary pitcher and glass alongside the podium, and this old man with his distinguished reputation was forming a crust of saliva something thick at the corners of his mouth. At this point, I was too stoned to be concerned with the breach of etiquette. But when Mr. Scott told me he needed a lift back to his hotel room...that shook me up. Everybody had left, Zane included, and now this near-OD Valium-victim had to drive across Phoenix to some hotel near the airport, in rush hour traffic.

I could have taken countless lives, plunging from an overpass and onto a school bus filled with happy, innocent children, only to see their college hopes cut short by some ego-driven, fame-seeking, misanthrope-of-an-irresponsible who knows what. It's all too dangerous and ugly.

In succession, though, I drove him back to the hotel, sat in the bar as he changed for a 1 o'clock interview with KTYR, sunk further into my own private coma, left him stranded, and woke up in my bed to the smell of hamburgers cooking.

It was now morning...two days later. I told my roomie that if I ever smelled meat cooking before noon, I would personally seek out a bottle of pure sodium nitrate and turn him into his favorite brand of link sausage.

The semester deteriorated after that, as I went into hiding and avoided all phone calls from both friends and media.

When my self-respect returned, I was yearning for another slot in the action. Students for the John Birch Society was, for all intents and purposes, a memory, as I failed to stomach campus alone, and Zane had retired from the adolescent episode. We returned to the John McCain/HR 97 ordeal, as it held the largest payoff for press coverage. When a corrupt United States Congressman and POW is called into question on his patriotism, you can bet there will be a few days' negotations, with both sides coming out smelling like Lauren on a long, sleek neck.

Initially, our plan was to form a self-regulated group, only tangentially linked to other conservative organizations. The John Birch Society was stifling Zane, who felt it lacked the balls to handle what we were about to stir up. The Committee for American Freedom & Enterprise (CAFE) would be an empire, eventually taking up office space in Washington and Los Angeles. Its potential was enormous, and Zane's first goal was the formation of a national advisory board to add legitimacy and prestige to the CAFE acronym. For added weight, I drafted a positions-platform on 15 issues, ranging from U.S. withdrawal of the United Nations to the abolition of the private and wholly unconstitutional Federal Reserve System and concomitant reinstitution of the gold standard.

Zane sought out the JBS as a starting base for our Board, ignoring a rigid policy which discourages National Council members from lending their names to other organizations, lest it contract anything contagious which might tarnish the Society and lead to expulsion. But we snared two Birch-players for CAFE's early banner:

Brigadier General Andrew J. Gatsis (U.S. Army, ret.) said he didn't need further proof, upon hearing Zane's name, which was well-circulated by this time as being a responsible, if boisterous, member. And Katherine MacDonald, wife of assassinated JBS Chairman Lawrence Patton MacDonald, wanted to see us in Tucson, where her current group, The Conservative Digest, would take her later in the year. In doing so...a strange experience, the description of which could go on for libelous lengths, the luscious Ms. MacDonald, by the randy glint in her eye and looking very much like Liz Taylor in her better years, smoothing a skin-tight dress of baronial purple, apparently had satiated her need to probe our credentials, along with, maybe, a few other desires taken care of by Conservative Digest publisher Bill Kennedy in lieu of her usual speaker's fee.

Which is scraping it, here, boy...but it's not often one gets to cut loose with this much gossip.

I sat in the kitchen of the folks' new Scottsdale home, telling Mom of this. All that had happened, minus everything she didn't want to hear--which left out a fair chunk of life, but I'd decided early on not to complicate things. I was just talking, like any normal son, as she sat in the sewing room, getting a dress ready for Baby Sister for some sorority function or other. I was trying to hunt down a beer. Neither Mom nor Dad drink--Dad as a matter of near-fanatical conviction, Mom in deference to Dad. But they never blinked at a missing Coors left over from a party seven months ago, or maybe cracking a couple Sun Country wine-coolers stored for company. But I couldn't find even a goddamned drop of decent alcohol in the house. Not one drop.

Sure, there was the Maneschewitz, with which to pickle the year-end fruitcakes, and a bottle of stale Triple Sec from who knows where. But, barring breaking the top off of a split of sherry, I couldn't find a freaking drink in the house.

Mom didn't seem to notice my agitation, only commenting that this was "an interesting sojourn" in my life. And not in any lackadaisical tone, but very approvingly, as much as she could express over the drone of a Singer 12-Stitch. The phone rang.

"Honey, could you get that?" she called out, from the sewing room, "and if it's Dad, tell him I'll meet him at the Hyatt at 7:00. This damned dress is taking me forever."

An interesting sojourn. I hadn't thought of it that way. More like, the difference between getting the shit kicked out of you in junior high school and winning a regional middleweight belt, where your promotor tells you it was only a tease: the real money comes next June.

For some, like myself, college is the first big break. A chance to spread the wings, as it were. To bloom and emerge on one's own. But there is also that element, often born of affluence, which sees high school graduation as the End of the Road. I believe Marcus thought that way. And I can't blame him. And I felt the most hollow sadness as I thought of my small triumphs against his goddamned black nightmares.

When you go from being an all-League miler and budding academic scholar, earning ten-dollars an hour in the family business at the age of 17, living in a cozy, five-bedroom Orange County palance, with a pool and jacuzzi, and you're regularly penetrating a lovely, slim daughter of a ridiculously successful surgeon who loves you like a son--then dorm food and slobbering keg parties are apt to look kind of bland.

And when the girl of your dreams takes the final 8-count on the steps of her own dormitory, 2000 miles away, and leaves no note and doesn't call you or tell anyone at all that she's checking out, and leaves behind only a wastebasket full of tissues and a door locked from the inside and a methodically-sliced window screen, and the Coroner's report shows no drugs or alcohol in her system...then the nest back home in Orange County starts to look appealing again. Especially when you're pre-Med and faced with the fact that there are thousands of persons who'd also like to become American doctors, and they've literally floundered like rats across the varied international waterways to get here, zig-zagging to avoid the hot chunks of lead being fired upon them by the Khmer Rouge...you find yourself with a sobering new outline for your entire frame of reference.

The mind gets tricky at that point. You begin examining your old high school papers, to see if they were actually any good; or, if, somehow, by some fluke of human nature, the word got out that, "Hey, this kid's pretty smart," and away we go on a spiral of bias and non-expectation, because everybody knows you're smart, and no teacher wants to look odd, when the others know so definitely that you are exceptional.

That's one theory, anyway. There are probably many. And who knows why some people snap, like so many rotted limbs in the wood? I certainly don't; but I can venture a guess.

And it probably doesn't help any that your brother is also an academic whiz and bound for the Seminary. Uh-huh. And that the folks don't quite grasp the importance of sleep around church-time, after a rough night of primeval debauchery, running up unmanageable tabs on five or eight Visa cards to places like The Crab Cooker and Anaheim Hilton and Liquor King.

No. And around the ninth bail-out, most responsible parents start to question things like Morals and Priorities and Stability, especially when they haven't seen a report card since early high school and said offspring is now twenty-one and uses the family house like a motel...stopping in only to refuel on decent chow and switch into a blue blazer that doesn't stink and a change of khakis, for yet another stomp on the tarmac.

And so, I wasn't too taken aback when the phone proved to be Marcus, telling me that he'd bailed out of ASU, dropped his classes in hideous shame without bothering to talk to the professors--no incompletes, just a fat, black slate of F's.

That he hadn't called to give me the skinny wasn't a big deal, either.

"Hey, Todd...so, can you go over to SAE? I know my stuff's still over there. I left it on top of the dumpster when I was reorganizing the shit in my trunk."

"The thing I do for you."

"I know. Thanks."

"But just tell me why? Why would you bail out?"

"Well," he said, "it's my mom. They found another tumor in her lymph glands. It's inoperable."

"Malignant?" I wondered.

"Obviously," he hissed. "And I've got a lot to patch up with her, before...can you just run over to the House, Todd? My contacts, and all my cologne..."

"I'll give you a call in half an hour."

Summer loomed, and the asphalt shone with those weird oasian heat squiggles. A couple of SAE's were tossing the pigskin around, surrounded by about forty half-naked brothers, sucking out of long beer spickets, laying like walrus over the hot grass.

As I drove into the resident parking lot, a group of guys suddenly packed it in. They recognized me from a couple of aborted trips to see Marcus, huddled up in his room like Howard Hughes in less sociable years, listening to The Cramps and Dead Kennedys. But I didn't care to follow the gents inside. The situation was obviously regrettable and ugly, and I had no business meddling in Greek system grudges.

A pewter toiletry tray, with its bottles of Grey Flannel and Halston, and Bausch and Lomb saline solution, and his contact case and replacement set were mashed and twisted and shattered and just generally squirted all over the pavement, amongst hot-black tire marks and what looked to be spittle and urine stains, and I turned directly around and called him from my Sin City dorm room, to tell him the unfortunate news. Afterwards, I penned a letter explaining my real feelings, which I had suppressed on the phone for a variety of good and humanitarian reasons:

Marcus,

I'm sorry to hear that you flunked out of ASU. I told you not to join that fraternity--that SAE would bode you nothing but ill, and you found that out, obviously.

No, I don't see any reason for leaving the contents of your bathroom out on a baking slab of asphalt, like so many gopher snakes. But that was a weird breed of human kind you dealt with. Definitely not something I could ever put my trust in.

In answer to your other question: No, I don't feel a wriggling gourd-tumor in the hollow of your mom's shoulderblade was any reason to cut short your chances of earning incompletes from your more sympathetic professors. Your relationship with the 'rents has been anything but cozy. I can humor you no longer.

When you get a handle on that agoraphobia, let me know. Meanwhile, Oscar's Farmacia in Tijuana (I forget which street) dispenses Xanax like Pez candy.

Pay off your Mastercard balance.

Todd

Lynne called out of the thin blue, asking me to join her and her mother and stepfather for champagne brunch at the Hyatt. I balked initially, but having never been to the Hyatt for a champagne breakfast, I felt that if her folks had that much class, probably I ought to give her a second chance.

On the drive over, Lynne told me that her stepfather was a minister, and that I should be on my best behavior. The two greeted us as we made it up the escalator. Jim, a large, gruff man, who could easily be mistaken for Paul J. "Bear" Bryant, wore a stylish glen plaid sport coat, shirt opened one notch, over grey slacks and black wingtips. Her mom was relaxed, and held to two glasses of the bubbly. She wore normal glasses--not the pine-tar specs of the previous engagement.

Brunch was uneventful, beyond stuffing ourselves on fresh melon and crab crepes. Basically ordinary...boring, even, had Jim and I not ripped through two bottles of nondescript California brut. The conversation centered on me, which I appreciated, and felt at ease talking the right-wing line that had become my world. They invited me back to the house, and I accepted. I thought, well...maybe I just overreacted the last time.

As we entered the condo, I noticed something was very wrong, five of Lynne's prized bongs and a squid-hookah sitting center-stage on a make-shift cabinet. Now, most persons of the late-twentieth century are sophisticated and street-wise enough to know the difference between an illicit waterpipe and your grandfather's Meerschaum; but I said nothing. I heard Lynne whispering through the kitchen's double-doors.

"You will? I'll see, just a second. Todd," she was jumping up and down, "we're going to get stoned!"

"Who's we?" I wondered, the thought sending me into a right-proper Fear.

"Jim and mom and us, stupid! I can't believe it!"

As she raced for her bureau drawer to pluck a fresh skunk bud from a new quarter-pound, I told her, No. Categorically. N-O. Finis. I would not smoke pot with parents, I would never smoke dope with a minister. No, no no.

"But you don't understand, they've never smoked with one of my boyfriends before. Never! They like you!" She was serious, and barely able to contain her joy.

I had just completed a rite of passage, and the prize was to get completely baked with a schizophrenic hairdresser, a minister, and their head-daughter. Not only was it ugly, it was illegal, immoral, unethical, completely out of character...breaching my security and placing my very being in jeopardy.

Jim, I reasoned, must be from Anton LaVey's First Church of Satan, and they were getting ready to mind-fuck me--twist my morals around with angel-dust, force me to participated in some very demented sacrifice using the cute little cockapoo puppy from next door. The possibilities were endless.

And then Truman Capote popped into my brain again. That evil little hermaphrodite is behind the double kitchen doors, giggling, and is about to emerge in the form of her mom!!!

Get a grip. This is a perfectly natural head-family, partaking of nature's own perfect weed. God-given, perfectly normal. ...I had to say these things, because my lips were puckered around a lobster-fat bomber and I was inhaling. Done for it, I knew it.

The emu-feathered roach clip made the rounds five times before the butt was placed into a pipe and smoked between Jim and Lynne. "Waste not, want not!" he smiled, beatifically.

Trouble loomed from on high. Her mom donned again the double-density black-light lenses, and Jim started uttering something like, "Oh, what a great age in which we live!"

Lynne's cheeks were covered in tears. "Mom, you've got to throw those glasses away"

"Oh, shit!" blurted the patriarch. "We've got to pick up the new cabinet."

"Yaaaayy! I finally get a decent place to put my bongs."

Leaving was the only option. I had to forget about this...sleep it off for a few days. But I had grown roots, and they were coiled around the springs of the sofa-bed. Bastard thing had me. I'd become just another meaningless fixture in their House of Fun.

"I'm not going anywhere!" Head-mom sounded firm. She looked like Whistler's Mother after twenty-two years at St. Elizabeth's.

"Oh, come on, sweetie," Jim pleaded.

"No, I'm too stoned."

Lynne was squealing, "Fuck-let's-get-out-of-here-the-place-is-going-to-close-I-want-my-cabinet NOW."

The only thing more dangerous than driving with a minister dead-high on strong dope, was staying here with Whistler's Mother. Who knows what evil tricks she'd picked up in the psych ward.

I couldn't stay, and didn't dare drive, so I had to go with them. Lynne's mom was scared to stay alone, fearing some wild-eyed ex-newspaper delivery boy might come poking around about a five-year old bill: "Listen, bitch, I want my money. No, fuck the money, give me your credit cards. All of 'em. Do it, DO IT!!! Now the car keys..."

Jim rolled off a steep curb, cutting off two lanes of traffic. Keeping one eye on the speedometer and the other in the rear-view mirror, Lynne acted as eyes. Lady Whistler had hers squinched closed. "Watch it!" Lynne shouted, "thEre's a MOngoLoid RIGth iN FroNt OF uS! Close."

"Just tell me if you see any pigs," Head-minister barked.

Jim let go of the wheel to fish for a brick-wad of Grape Bubble Yum, and Lynne grabbed it just in time to avoid colliding with a large clan of Mormons on their way back from Temple. I saw no end in sight.

The car must have reeked like exotic fumigant, because more than one couple stared at us as the doors of Jim's Lincoln Towncar opened.

Head-mom looked like a Marine on seek-and-destroy mission--darting in and out of doorways, behind cabinets, snug in tiny little bookshelves...anything to avoid being dragged into conversation: "A large assortment of marijuana paraphernalia, you say? Perhaps this little designer piece, perfectly tailored for your daughter's hobby. Even has an upgrade package for a mere $200. It grows as your head-daughter gets deeper into the drug-scene."

I sat down to read a dog-eared copy of Contemporary Furniture. Possibly the cabinet salesman didn't know I was with these strange people. Maybe I could just mind my own business, claim that I'd checked three magazine stands for the new issue, but that they'd all sold out... But then Lynne dragged me between a bunk-bed and four antique serving trays for to neck. The minister smiled approvingly. Head-mom had crawled underneath a canopy. What did I have to lose at this point? So, we stood unconcealed for an hour and sucked each other's tonsils out.

The adrenaline and testosterone pushed some of the THC from my fat cells, and by the time the furniture man had boxed up the cabinet, I had pretty well straightened out. Lynne's mom returned to the Lincoln, put on the Sunday brunch lenses, and all was again fine in America.

Out of a mixture of blow-off courses, rehashed Psychology, and some fairly introductory Criminal Justice, I negotiated my way onto the Dean's List, earning an unprecedented 3.75 GPA.

Summer held the promise of maintaining that average--as I enrolled at a local junior college, to take two classes I knew I'd have trouble in, but whose physical marks, I was assured by University by-laws, would not transfer over to the Official Record. The only other outstanding event was the graveyard-shift security job at a posh Scottsdale resort.

Having Xeroxed the bar key, I would wait for the evening shift to close up, then storm liquor cabinets and beer taps...slip into a mean-drunk, clutching a stein-full of Sambuca Romana in one hand and two-dozen fresh-roasted Colombian beans in the other, for to chew on and sober up before my morning Sociology class:

It was clear that I was leading a double-life.