or there; street actions, explosions, provocations, property destruction, sand
in gas tanks, hiding deserters from Vietnam, the occasional
deal. We had a politics o f making well-defined chaos,
strategically brilliant chaos; then we made love. We did the
love because we had run our blood together; it was fraternal
love but between us, a carnal expression o f brotherhood in the
revolutionary sense, a long, fraternal embrace for hours or
days, in hiding, in the hours after when we wanted to
disappear, be gone from the world o f public accountability;
and he whispered Andrea, he whispered it urgently, he was
urgent and frantic, an intense embrace. He taught me to cook;
in rented rooms all over Europe he taught me to cook; a bed, a
hot plate, he taught me to make soup and macaroni and
sausages and cabbage; and I thought it meant he was specially
taking care o f me, he was m y friend, he loved me, w e’d make
love and he’d cook. H e’d learned in the N avy, mass meals
enhanced by his private sense o f humor and freedom, the jokes
he would tell in the private anarchy o f the relatively private
kitchen, more personal freedom than anywhere else, doing
anything else. He got thrown out; they tried to order him
around, especially one vicious officer, he didn’t take shit from
officers, he poured a bowl o f hot soup over the officer’s head,
he was in the brig, you get treated bad and you toughen up
or break and his rebellion took on aspects o f deadly force, he
lost his boyish charm although he always liked to play but
inside it was a life-or-death hate o f authority, he made it look
like fun but it was very dark; a psychiatrist rescued him, got
him discharged. His parents were ashamed. He joined real
young to get aw ay from them; he didn’t have much education
except what he learned there— some about cooking and
explosives; some about how to do hard time. He learned some
about assault and authority; you could assault anyone; rules
said you couldn’t; in real life you could. M om m y and daddy
were ashamed o f him when he came home; they got colder,
more remote. Oh, she was cold. Ignorant and cold. D addy
too, but he hid him self behind a patriarchal lethargy; head o f
the clan’s all tuckered out now from a life o f real work, daily
service, for money, for food, tired for life, too tired to say
anything, too tired to do anything, has to just sit there now on
his special chair only he can sit on, a vinyl chair, and read the
newspaper now, only he gets to read the newspaper, which
seems to take all day and all night because he ponders, he
addresses issues o f state in his head, he’s the daddy. D ay and
night he sits in the chair, all tuckered out. H e’s cold, a cold
man whose wife took the rap for being mean because she did
things— raised the kids, cleaned the floor, said eat now, said
sleep now, said it’s cold so where’s the coal, said we need
money for clothes, terrible bitch o f a woman, a tyrant making
