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My dad had been in World War II, in the Navy--yeah, the Pacific theatre. The Japs did some pretty nasty shit back then. Just look at Nanking, or what was left of it when they were through. My dad fought in a war against pain and suffering and imperialism and tyranny--a real, just war.
But that ain't my story.
He came home to my mom after the Japs surrendered, home to Indianapolis, and four years later they had me. April 11th, 1949. At that point my dad was putting together cars at the local GM plant, and my mom was staying at home to take care of my other brothers and sisters. Working class Irish, scraping together a living wage. I didn't care all that much; I was too young, and everyone around me was poor too.
None of that's really important, though, until I was 13. Because when I was 13 a cat named Lee Harvey Oswald climbed into a window in the Texas Schoolbook Depository and shot the president. And maybe it was that, maybe it was growing up, I don't know, but all of a sudden the whole world felt like it was in sharp relief. Everything seemed real, and important. Up until that point I'd pretty much accepted what my parents told me; they were old conservative Catholics who hated niggers and kikes and blamed them for all their problems. Since, y'know, blaming them for why you have no money and you work long hours is easier than blaming the person who pays you. But when the President of the United States of America is fuckin' dead, you sit up and start paying attention. So I started reading the newspaper, listening to the radio, little things. I was learning.
I got beaten up some in school, I joined the Boy Scouts, I got okay marks. Yeah, man, I know. I was a goddamned sheep back then. And again, nothing's really important again in this story, until I hit college. I got together a need-based scholarship, took out enough loans that I'd be paying them off for the next goddamned ten years, and entered Purdue as an English major in 1967. I wanted to be a writer. I'd just missed the Beat generation, and I guess I wanted to make it up to myself by putting together words in a way that'd really move folks.
1967 meant I was 18, and that meant putting myself at the whims of Selective fucking Services. And when you send in your shit for that--and you know there's a war, and you've already watched a handful of your old friends from your working-class neighborhood heading off to it already, that's scary shit. But it's still all theoretical at that point. They didn't even have the lottery established by then. Plus I was a student, and they wouldn't draft me--right?
But I got anxious, anxious as hell. I couldn't sit by anymore; I'd caught the politics bug for good. After a few months on campus I ended up joining SDS. Students for a Democratic Society, that is. Did you know, I really used to believe in democracy? It was silly, and kind of sappy, but it was fucking important to me at that point. I was outraged at the injustices committed against unions, and against workers like my dad. I was repulsed that there were cats in the South spraying Negroes with fire hoses. But most of all, I was angry and scared that I might end up with my own government, cats my parents elected, sending me off to some tropical hellhole where I'd douse gooks with napalm, and...why? The world isn't a fair place, to be sure, but damn it, it's not like we can't try to make it fairer.
I didn't actually smoke a whole lot of pot, which I guess made me strange. I studied hard, but, well, not too hard--just hard enough to keep my scholarship. My degree had become a means to an end--both a way to get to a point where I could write professionally, and a way in which I'd hope I could get a deferment to stay out of this stupid war. But meanwhile I met a lot of cats through SDS, all of us vibrant and dedicated, through our protests and our sit-ins. We were real tight-knit. Hell, bailed each other out of jail a few times.
They were all important at the time, but in retrospect there was one that was particularly important. Her name was Maggie. And sure, I think we all agreed with Stokely Carmichael--"The only position for women in our group is prone"--but shit, man. Maggie could set the room alight, hold everybody like they were under a spell. We never knew for sure she was a student; she looked about old enough, and I think we kind of assumed. She was really something, and as time passed she kept on nestling closer to me. She was hot as hell, so hey, I didn't have a problem with that. We balled once or twice, just as friends.
And stuff went on okay, even though I ended up fighting with the 'rents and almost getting my tuition cut off for it. Everything was groovy until 1969's lottery.
I was 20 years old, and being born on April 11th meant I got a fucking 14. That's 14 out of 366. At that point all the protesting in the world doesn't mean anything, all the sit-ins, all the nights in jail. All the plans to move to Canada, to become a Quaker or a Buddhist or to join the clergy in a time when my faith in God was waning fast--they all fell down around my ears, fast, because I had to be into the SS office by the end of the week for my screening. I was in fine health, and I didn't know for sure that my student status would save me.
The night before I was scheduled to go in, I walked all over town, all night long. I didn't want to have to go and die in some pointless, stupid war, all about how a country can't adopt a harmless philosophy of government, just to fuel the capitalist machine with the blood of our country's children--yeah, I was a lil pink even back then. It wasn't even a legal war--war was never declared, so we'd never even have to leave. The public was beginning to rabidly react against the war, hating the fact that their brothers and sisters and children were being thrown into a jungle and it wasn't a sure thing they'd ever come out. And I hated it, and I hated the government, and I hated the people in the government, and I hated the army, and I hated everything that could have ever instigated such a stupid fucking war against a political philosophy that--as I considered it, more and more, that night--seemed entirely innocuous.
I sat down on a curb and just sobbed--I'll admit it. I was in despair. And when I'd finished slobbering on myself and cleaned myself up, I called Maggie, cuz I needed to talk, bad.
Maggie told me to come to her apartment that night, and I did. She cleaned me up and fed me something, and we talked. I told her about this stupid war that I hated, and I told her that I felt so useless, in every way, in the face of this monolithic, megalithic American monster. And I told her, right then and there, that I never wanted to be useless. Ever again. All my debating, my writing, my creativity, my heart and my soul and my mind--I wanted to use it all for something beautiful and constructive and good, not to shoot Vietnamese children.
She listened to me for a while, and did a lot of nodding, and finally said she had to make some calls, but she'd be back. She went off to her bedroom and I sat in her living room--her apartment was damned nice, and that should have been a tipoff, but whatever. I was sitting there and drinking coffee and chainsmoking, the last part a habit she hated and would only let me do when she was out of the room. It must have been half an hour total. But finally she came back and sat down next to me on her couch and said she had a way out of it, and I couldn't fucking believe a word she was saying, because I guess at that point I'd resigned myself to that total fucking despair.
Maggie leaned over, wrapped her arm around me, and kissed me on the cheek, and then moved her way down to my neck. I thought she wanted to fuck, and I kind of squirmed away, cuz I wasn't in the mood at all.
I don't really know for sure what happened next. Blood loss made me woozy as hell. I woke up, and she was standing a ways away and looking tired. I was cold, and I felt sick, and she explained to me, very patiently and slowly, that Selective Services would be conveniently instructed to forget about me, and that it'd be best for me to withdraw from school and be on the fringe of shit like she always was, because I was fuckin' dead. She'd been on the phone talking to the Carthian Prince of Indianapolis, and cutting a deal so she could finally have me. She'd be scoping me out for two years, and I'd never even fucking guessed she was anything more than a hot broad who could grab people's attention and get them to do what she wanted.
When the shock had worn off a few nights later, I withdrew from school and made some shitty excuses to my parents. It was okay; I could pretty much cut off contact since we'd been fighting so much in the first place, about the war and politics. They didn't want to see their kid falling in with long-haired hippies, even though I wasn't one. SDS dissolved that year, into Weatherman, and to this day I'm not sure just what Maggie was saving me from. Broiling in a jungle, or getting caught up in a revolutionary frenzy that would end with me blowing up government buildings? Either way, it was a second chance, a chance for change. Kindred life wasn't all sunshine and roses, I found out fast, but even amidst all the vitae and ash it offered me better chances than my mortal life would have.
So I shed away everything and I picked the new stuff up fast. I wasn't a fan of this "Dominate" stuff that was natural to my clan, but I was alright with it, and it'd be handy in a pinch. Maggie gave me a choice of covenants, but the Carthians were a natural choice for me--and not just because I wasn't interested in running off to the reactionary Invictus, or getting religion, or doing hoodoo, or any of that shit. I actually wanted to do shit, be that useful person fighting for justice and power to the people that I'd always wanted to be. There were a lot of deadbeat Carthians, sure, who didn't do shit, and I didn't want to be one of them. I wanted to do things, get people excited and fired up and motivated. Now that I was dead, I found myself gravitating more easily to the center of things--God bless that Ventrue charisma, or maybe arrogance--and I had a knack for public speaking. Combine that with my past as an undergrad English student at Purdue, and I could write. I wrote more than my share of treatises to post in Elysium, and was handy in a debate. I wasn't the best at first, sure, but I polished myself up fast. If you don't, and you slack off, you get thrown to the sharks.
The Movement in Indianapolis was basically experimenting with Maoism at the time. I was still holding out some hope for democracy, even though it was faint and slight. But then Watergate happened. And even though it was in the mortal world, a world that 'didn't matter' anymore, I finally gave up standing up for a system that had died. The United States' democratic experiment had failed, and tyranny was all too easy to achieve. It was the straw that broke the camel's back, amidst racial injustice, a brutal and idiotic war, the increasing class distress.
So I played some with Marxism, and so far I've stuck with it. Maoism's a little too personality-cult for me right now, although I love the Quotations, and Trotsky's got some appeal but I'm not sure the permanent revolution can really work when Kindred cities are so walled-off from each other, unless it happened on a mortal scale. Any system needs tweaking, and I'm not opposed to ideological fine-tuning, but man, in small cities, if you've got a few good cats, Marxism works.
So I shed democracy and theology both like a snake with its skin, and moved on. I wrote more treatises, got into some heated Beast-provoking verbal battles, and, well, it was productive, and good, and honest-to-Christ fun sometimes. Sure, it's not shits and giggles, but Carthian cameraderie is better than stuffy Invictus parties. I don't really have anything personal against the Invictus--I don't like 'em, but I ain't that kind of Carthian--but I can't put up with them for too long.
Now, though? Now I'm moving on. It's been fun, kids, but the time comes. The revolution's gonna move on without me. I wouldn't want my ideas to get stale and reactionary from being with the same group of people all the time. New blood is good--so to speak. No, I'm not going to be making a habit of travelling, but I feel like I've exhausted my possibilities here, we're set for a while, and I can move on to somewhere else where I'm needed. --hell, maybe that is Trotsky's permanent revolution.
I hear some Negro Prince down south is a Titoist...
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