I, Tania

“It almost feels like Davis is leading a palace coup.” SPIN MAGAZINE

Praise for Portable Altamont “An elegant, wise-ass rush of truth, hiding riotous social commentary in slanderous jokes. In Davis’s lyrical aphorisms, celebrity is a dazzling mirror of our most regal fears and dreams, as well as a dinky death rattle. . . . It almost feels like he’s leading a palace coup. A-” — Spin Magazine “By turns aggressive and hilarious, it’s a twisted assault on mass culture where nothing is sacred and nothing is safe. Blowing things up has never been so much fun.” — National Post “Portable Altamont is a validation of all that time spent stealing snippets from supermarket tabs when you should have been fudging the bibliography for your thesis. . . . The lowbrow is lifted to the implausible, the high-brow is brought down to the ridiculous, and instead of wallowing in the filth of our celeb-sniffing degradation, we feel oddly superior. Tantalizing.” — The Globe and Mail “Very funny.” — Ian Svenonius, of Weird War

“Portable Altamont is as smart and sneaky as a Nabokov novel.” —Calgary Herald “Innovative in form, striking in content, Brian Joseph Davis’s Portable Altamont loads a literary blender with pop-culture icons, both high and low, tosses in a jigger of surrealism and a pint of sardonic wit, sets the controls for hyper-mashup, and then decants a delirious, delicious smoothie with brainexpanding powers.” —Paul Di Filippo, author of Ribofunk

I, TANIA

I, TANIA Brian Joseph Davis

ECW PRESS

Copyright © Brian Joseph Davis, 2007 Published by ECW Press 2120 Queen Street East, Suite 200, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4E 1E2 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW Press. Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Davis, Brian Joseph, 1975I, Tania : a novel / Brian Joseph Davis. “a misFit book.” ISBN 978-1-55022-782-6 1. Fiction. 2. Symbionese Liberation Army—Fiction. I. Title. PS8607.A953i17 2007

C813'.6

C2007-903569-8

Editor for the press: Michael Holmes / a misFit book Cover and Text Design: Brian Joseph Davis Production: Rachel Brooks Type: Mary Bowness Printed by Coach House Printing This book is set in Adobe Jenson Pro. With the publication of I, Tania ECW Press acknowledges the generous financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council, for our publishing activites.

Distribution Canada: Jaguar Book Group, 100 Armstrong Avenue, Georgetown, Ontario, L7G 5S4 United States: Independent Publishers Group, 814 North Franklin Street, Chicago, Illinois 60610 Printed and Bound in Canada

The important distinction to make about the quality of a painting is not so much whether it’s a real painting or a fake. It’s whether it’s a good fake or a bad fake. — Clifford Irving

Introduction

I am still alive. I live in Simi Valley, in a house that could look quite like yours, but the ornate Moorish fence is electrified. Patrolling the grounds are Anatolian and Karabash Shepherd dogs. The door is steel with several vertical deadbolt locks set in a mesh and cement frame. The bay windows are double-paned Secureglass, designed to withstand everything from 9mm to military grade shells. If the residents’ association hadn’t voted down the moat of blood, there would be one here. It’s not that I don’t feel safe; it’s for your protection. From me. You see, this is a prison for one. I am Tania, acting General Field Commander of the Symbionese Liberation Army. Remember my old communiqués from my first assignment, years ago, posing as a kidnap victim? My troops are dead and for the last few years you have known me — from the books, the AM talk shows of the blighted, bland and mortgaged — by my cover name, my pig name. 1

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I’m let out for a daily routine and special events — nights for casing ballrooms at gala fundraisers, valet escape routes and weapons caches in potted palms. I have to be careful. After all, I have no idea if my yoga instructor is equally adept at assassination as he is the windrelease posture. And will my half-caf soy almond latte one day come with radioactive isotope shavings on top? That goth barista has Homeland Security written all over her pale face. Days are spent in fascist pumps and pig lipstick. Smile at golf humour. Hold the highball just so, with an air of ennui. Like this. To an outsider, I could be your mother with perfect, if slurred, elocution, who robbed and who was set free. “Yes, yes, my wild college days. Don’t make me tell that story again, dears.” But this is deep cover. A long novel of embossed, die-cut, beach reading. An assignment I chose of my free revolutionary will. I was not brainwashed to wear Dior grays and Tiffany leg irons. I was not. After the events of May 17th, 1974, we changed our tactics. We were rich (all of us, why do you think they recruited me?) and the cities we had wanted to see on fire were abstractions to us. It was a murderous mistake. We disbanded and returned to where we came from, to burn our own second homes, inherited New York co-ops, and cottages. Well, we’re planning to, someday. 2

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You see, Mao was wrong. A revolution is a dinner party, or doing embroidery. It can be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. That May 17th anniversary is coming up. My daybook suggests presents of pearl. I will send a card but I cannot, for security reasons, tell you everything even as I now write the words to my story (I’m donating my book advance to an organization that helps first time novelists injured by landmines). After all the other stories, this is Tania’s story, told through code and ellipses. It begins in a country that I have been the exiled leader of for some time — Symbia. Never heard of it? Let me explain —

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From Lonely Planet: Symbia History Symbia is an imaginary country founded by five academics, one ex–homecoming queen and one escaped convict in Berkeley, California. People and Culture The flag features a cobra with seven heads. Each head stands for a Symbionese principle: creativity, self-governance, cooperative production, collective work and responsibility, purpose, faith, and unity. (Which is eight, if you’re counting.) They found the symbol in a book. Many visitors to Symbia are confused by the language of pig English, a tongue that adds “pig” as a noun or adjective to almost every sentence. What makes a newspaper a “pig” newspaper? Find out, because context and metaphor are everything in Symbia. Ask,“Where can I find a pig hotel?” and you just might be thrown into the Symbionese People’s Prison, a 3 x 6 closet in an apartment above a florist shop — it’s a popular tourist attraction.

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Many hit songs from the west are re-recorded for the Symbionese market, such as “Cry Me a River (For Revolutionary Volunteers to Triumphantly Cross)”: You told me you believed in historical struggle Why did you leave me, all alienated Now you tell me you need traditional property relations When you call me, on the phone Capitalist I refuse, you must have me confused With some other guy Your banks were burned, and now it’s your turn To cry, cry me a river . . .

Or the number one hit (for forty-three weeks) by Destiny’s Child, “The Petit Bourgeois Laments to the Worker on Her Condition”: The shoes on my feet You’ve made them The clothes I’m wearing You’ve sewed them The rock I’m rockin’ You’ve mined it ’Cause the superstructure depends on me

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If I want the watch they’re wearin’ You’ll make it The house I live in? I rent it The car I’m driving? I’ve leased it The bourgeoisie depend on me (They depend on me)

Weather Symbia consistently delivers temperatures between 20°C (68°F) and 30°C (86°F) at any time of the day, any day of the year. Rainfall is moderately heavy for most of the year, but July and November bring hefty downpours.

Visas Overview U.S. citizens don’t need a visa to visit Symbia. Anyone else (except Canadians and those travelling on a visa waiver) must obtain a Symbionese visa in advance. Under Symbia’s visa waiver program, citizens of certain countries may enter Symbia for up to fifteen days for business or pleasure with6

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out a visa. Visa forms can be downloaded at: http://www.symbia.gov/immigration/visa

Important Facts — Symbia has the world’s largest Kmart. — The Symbia International Airport has recently expanded and now serves six air carriers with over 100 flights daily. — Symbia manufactures 80% of the world’s supply of Teak armoires. — There’s no need for art in Symbia. In fact, there isn’t even a word for it in Symbionese. — Actor David Caruso owns several nightclubs in Symbia. — Krokus broke up while recording in Symbia. Vocalist Mark Storace stayed in the country and eventually served as Finance Secretary. Monthly parties with the politburo during his time often featured the sight of Don Dokken and Hu Jintao shotgunning joints, with Jintao — the Paramount Leader of the People’s Republic of China — imploring 7

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Storace to,“C’mon, sing ‘Ballroom Blitz’! Yngwie and me will do backups.” — Vladimir Nabokov originally chose Symbia as the setting for Pale Fire. — Symbia recently signed a treaty with neighboring Narnia, pledging a unified defense against the axis of Middle Earth, Eternia, Woodstock Nation, Fraggle Rock, and Belgium.

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PART ONE

Time travel Lindsay Lohan . . . Katie Holmes . . . Alicia Silverstone . . . Winona Ryder . . . Molly Ringwald . . . James Brady . . . Olivia Newton John . . . Jodie Foster.

Chapter One

My father, the rich man with a name of American nobility. Cold, he was a mystery to me and perhaps the reason I sought love from overbearing m — “No! Wait! YuyuuytyyuiuHhhfgffkl;svbbbvvbvb” I apologize for the ghostwriter’s head slumping to the keyboard but I do abhor cheap psychological insight. Didn’t that go out of fashion with the ’70s? I suppose if I make any more ghosts of the writers the publisher sends, they will need to reconsider my substantial advance against insurance payouts. This writer was the best so far. His credits included Will by G. Gordon Liddy, Suzanne Somers’s Slim and Sexy Forever and his own little novel, London Fields. Let that be a lesson to all aspiring writers: don’t turn down the “as told to” opportunity. Other industries are much more relaxed about these things. If you recall, during the recording of Donna Summer’s concept album I Remember Yesterday, producer Giorgio Moroder responded to critics 13

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who claimed his work was vapid and escapist by publicly commissioning anti-psychiatrist R.D. Laing to compose words for “I Feel Love.” It’s so good for them They are good I want it to be so good for me They are not so good They feel love They are feeling like feeling love I must feel their feeling of love They are not feeling love I can’t feel love if they don’t If I get them to feel love, then I can feel love with them Getting them to feel love, is not feeling love It is hard work They fall free I must fall like they are falling free They are not falling free I can’t fall free if they don’t If I get them to fall free, then I can fall free with them Getting them to fall free, is not falling free It is hard work 14

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Moroder, unfortunately, went with a much simpler lyric. But even in the world of print, we all know that Ice T’s The Ice Opinion was ghosted by William Gibson, that Klaus Kinski’s All I Need Is Love was given a touch-up by Alice Walker, and that Reed All About Me by Oliver Reed was — perversely — composed by Michael Caine, author of What’s It All About? Michael Caine’s story as told to Michael Caine. But to pick up my narrative again. Yes, my father was a corporate pig newspaper baron liar — but he was my corporate pig newspaper baron liar. He was a pig second, but a father first, who always had the time for my sisters or myself. He taught me how to fire a gun. If you’re looking for a cheap psychological device, I did move out of the estate at age seventeen to live with a much older man named Donald Barthelme. “So the French invent revolution,” Donald would say to me in his drawl,“but they can’t play rock and roll to save their baguettes. And that don’t make you the least bit suspicious about their philosophers?” “The French don’t need our st-st-stupid rock and roll,” I sniffed, choking back tears. “They’re better than us. Better than us.” But let me go back farther than that, so you can under15

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stand why my eventual leadership of the SLA makes sense. My early actions consisted of pranks. Base anarchy. Nothing more than experiments in testing boundaries: nuns suddenly coming down with amoebic dysentery, ski chalets flooded, and cotillions trip-wired. Then a copy of For the Liberation of Brazil by Carlos Marighela was given to me when I was a teen by the exchange student staying with us. I would occasionally have flirtatious political debates with Guillermo. Nothing serious, just a little wink and a cute comment on how the transition to collectivization could be made easier for rural workers. One morning the Marighela book, slipped inside a copy of Oui, was slid under my door with a note attached that simply read, “Party?” The chapter titled The Mini-manual for the Urban Guerilla reads: Within the framework of the class struggle [are] two essential objectives: — The physical liquidation of the chiefs and assistants. — The expropriation of government resources. The most popular models are the bank assault (serving as a sort of preliminary examination for the urban guerrilla in her apprenticeship) and the political kidnapping. 16

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The highest display of ostentatious wealth and avarice most socialists get to witness is the lineup at the Olive Garden. Being raised in a media baron’s household provided a view into a world only dreamed of in the frothiest, most paranoid nightmares. One day while I was playing with my cats (Pufnstuf and Tapestry, if you must know) I overheard a conversation in the next room between my father and the head of his publishing division. “Sir, you’re going to love what marketing has come up with. As you know, the most popular paperbacks are the hospital romances and the soldier-of-fortune series. Combined, they’re 60% of the market. Marketing thinks they can grab the other 40% by literally combining the two —” “Keep talking,” my father replied. “— into an atrocity-romance series. The gist would be: soldiers, mercenaries, national guardsmen, etc., wreak havoc, Doctor A treats victims — passionately, altruistically — Nurse B falls in love with Doctor A, convinces him to enjoy life. We can mix it up, too. Sometimes it could be Stasi Agent A who tortures student leaders — passionately, altruistically — who then has to convince Nurse B that dissent must be crushed. And, here’s the cost-saving measure: real historical atrocity settings that can cut editorial time in half. We’ll just 17

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rewrite newspaper reports from archives we already own. In thirty years, they’ll call it synergy.” “Real-life atrocities? Can you do that?” “Try me.” “Hmm, okay, the U.S. firebombing of Tokyo.” “In a city of ash,” the executive intoned as he pantomimed batting flames out, “her heart smoldered while his went out to a hundred thousand dead. Could she steal the flame of his passion?” After several noncommittal hmms and clucks my father threw out “The Pinochet coup?” “She was a Marxist nurse who wanted a new world. He was a CIA agent who wanted to overthrow her heart. Will Cupid get these two in his crosshairs?” “The Spanish Civil War.” “She was a Catalonian communist republican with centrist leanings towards liberal democracy. He was a legitimist monarchist who wanted to break free of his ruffian Falangist friends. But in a country with 6000 dead priests, could they even find an altar?” “The Russian Civil War.” “She was damaged goods. He was a doctor in a country of 15 million dead, but poetry calmed his soul. It was a love caught in the fire of revolution and —” “— in a land of guns and ice, there is the great sound of

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battle and the greater silence of lovers. Blah blah blah. Cue ‘Laura’s Theme.’ Already done.” I went to my room to practice bayonet moves with a pen, striking out the pig eyes of the David Cassidy poster above my bed. I would have much to teach my brothers and sisters when they came to rescue me several years later.

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Meeting Minutes of the Symbionese Liberation Army War Council (February 1974; Berkeley, California) Present: Subcommittee on the Choosing of Codenames for Taking of Prisoner of War Operation Combat Cell. General Field Marshall Cinque opened the meeting by passing around The Definitive Book of Revolutionary Names. “I’ll take Fahiza, in honor of the Symbionese warrior who lobbied for the national anthem to be Cinderella’s ‘Don’t Know What You Got ‘Til It’s Gone,’ and when Skid Row’s ‘I Remember You’ was chosen instead, hurled herself off her high school roof rather than face defeat, only to have her story told in ‘Fly to the Angels,’ by Slaughter.” “I’m Cujo, which other than being a notoriously shoddy novel, even within the lax standards of the Stephen King canon, is Spanish, I think, for hombre.” “That means I’m Yolanda, named in honor of the first Canadian who did not mention insulin, Rush, or the space arm within seconds of meeting an American.” Cinque questioned whether the references so far were revolu20

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tionary enough, or even temporally valid. “What if I’m Zoya? She fought in the French Resistance . . . of 1901! In a world of garters! And high stepping ooh-la-la’s and anything goes where it can-can joie de vivre!” “I — am — Teko,” Teko said with rigid arms extended and rhythmically moving up and down, “named after a shy but kind-hearted prole-bot working in the U.S.S.R.’s office of zero gravity transportation in 2350.” “I take the name Gelina, in honor of the Gelini, the harmonious hunter/gatherer society living in Grosse Point, Michigan. Food is scavenged from bistros, wealth is scrounged from relatives, while Frank Lloyd Wright homes — considered common property — are traded as needed. Evenings are given over to lascivious waltzes and drunken religious throat chanting of hymns written by Boz Skaggs. Strange to our eyes, but in their simple world, guileless and innocent.” “I’ll be Gabi, the feminine of Gabby, in tribute to Gabby Hayes, the famous western actor who was blacklisted after translating The Communist Manifesto into cowboy gibberish — A specter is a hauntin’ Europe, a sidewindin’, bushwackin’, 21

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hornswaglin’ specter, th’ specter of Communism, an’ dad gum it, all them powers of ole Europe entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this hyar specter: Pope an’ Czar, Metternich an’ Guizot, French Raddy-cals an’ sheriff spies. All them pious candy-ass sidewinders!”

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Chapter Two

The kidnapping: late-night knock, door kicked, rifle butt to Donald’s head. Donald ducking, running yellow. Take his billfold. Blindfold. Over shoulder. Into car. Reader, you were read that part of the story every night of your childhood, to warn you away from strangers bearing petitions and organic couscous, but what you need to know is how I went from captive to General. It was easy. I’m rich (and descended from the Gelini, you know). In the back seat of the car, I asked,“Where are you taking me?” Without turning around, a man spoke with soldier cadence, “You have been taken prisoner by the Symbionese Liberation Army! We will use you to force your corporate pig newspaper-baron liar father to feed every poor person in California! You will be treated in accordance with the Geneva Conventions and guarded by a police informant, six academics, and an ex–homecoming queen! You will be taken 23

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to 1827 Golden Gate Avenue, apartment six, with a bright and sunny lounge that looks out over the street! Our neighbor is Rhonda, a pottery instructor! She watches our cat when we’re gone! It is only five blocks away from FBI headquarters! You are being driven there in a tan Chevrolet Impala! We will be taking the I-580 exit and turning left on the I-80 westbound for twenty minutes!” “How long will you keep me?” “I can’t tell you that! It’s classified!” Into closet. You heard that my captors were Marxist brainwashers. The reality was closer to a conversation I overheard between three woman talking outside the door. “Gabi, Zoya, make sure she doesn’t leave this room until I come and get her.” “Don’t leave the room even if you come and get her. Yes!” “No, no. Until I come and get her.” “Until you come and get her, we’re not to enter the room.” “No, no, no. You stay in the room and make sure she doesn’t leave.” “And you’ll come and get her.” “Right.” “So Zoya and I don’t need to do anything, apart from just stop her entering the room.” “No, no. Leaving the room.” “Right, we’ll stay here until you get back.” 24

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“And, uh, make sure she doesn’t leave.” “What?” “Make sure she doesn’t leave.” “The prisoner?” “Yes, make sure she doesn’t leave.” “Oh, yes, of course. I thought you meant Zoya. You know, it seemed weird, having to guard her when she’s a comrade and all.” After I was let out of the closet (they came asking for my help with the reel-to-reel tape machine — it wasn’t plugged in), I saw how small and squalid the apartment was. On the wall, a large banner with the SLA’s symbol. Insipid, but effective. My “captors” were no more than self-taught commies from suburbia. All buzzwords. Tired fatigues. Simple characters. They were in terrible shape, my bears, with much starchy porridge in those early days. And vile, dumb, damaged Teko screaming, “Eating pork is, like, for pigs” as if it were a pleasant, smart, together thing to say. Taking over this unit would be easy. As I was taught, the best way to network-up is to throw a party. The A-names came to that small apartment in the Mission District to revel, some for days, while the FBI searched for me.

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Symbionese Liberation Army “Black and White Gala” Guest List (March 1974; San Francisco, California) Charles Addams, Marella Agnelli, Edward Albee, Richard Avedon (took that horrendous photo of me with the gun in front of the flag, blech!), Lauren Bacall, Joan Baez, the Band, Tallulah Bankhead, Candice Bergen (who wore a fluffy, longeared, $250 white mink bunny mask), Blood, Sweat & Tears, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor (did not attend, will be shot as enemies of the people), Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Canned Heat, Joe Cocker, Claudette Colbert, Country Joe & the Fish, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Marlene Dietrich, Henry Fonda, Joan Fontaine, Henry Ford II, Grateful Dead, Greta Garbo, C.Z. Guest, Gloria Guinness, Arlo Guthrie, Keef Hartley Band, Richie Havens, Lillian Hellman, Jimi Hendrix (did not attend because he was dead — he will be shot as an enemy of the people), Audrey Hepburn, Incredible String Band, Christopher Isherwood, Jefferson Airplane, Lynda Bird Johnson, Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon, Slim Keith, Jacqueline Kennedy, Harper Lee, Vivien Leigh, Jack Lemmon, Anita Loos, Robert Lowell, Clare Boothe Luce, Shirley MacLaine, Norman Mailer, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Melanie, Country Joe McDonald, Roddy McDowall, David Merrick, James Michener, Arthur Miller, Vincente Minnelli, Marianne Moore, John O’Hara, Merle Oberon, Babe Paley,

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Gregory Peck, Cynthia Plaster Caster (did casts of Cinque, Truman Capote, and Fahiza), Katherine Anne Porter (badly wanted to come, but was ill and bedridden, will be held in the People’s Prison for eight years), Lee Radziwill, Philip Roth, Santana, Ravi Shankar, Sha-Na-Na (attended; regardless, will be shot as enemies of the people), Sly & the Family Stone, Bert Sommer, John Steinbeck, Sweetwater, Ten Years After, Diana Vreeland, Walter Wanger, Andy Warhol, Robert Penn Warren, Leslie West, The Who, Tennessee Williams, Johnny Winter, Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (Stills did not attend; Crosby and Young will be forced to shoot him as an enemy of the people), Darryl F. Zanuck.

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Chapter Three

The day after the party, while I dismantled a toaster (its elements are fantastic triggers for pipe bombs), Cinque came and asked, “What are you doing?” “Making a bomb.” “A ba?” raising a shocked hand to his mouth. “No, not a ba, a bomb.” Sitting down he said, “We are not one cell of hundreds. They,” pointing to the slumped, passed-out soldiers of the people’s army, “said they had friends who could help out — nutritional charts, taxes, book deals, some new uniforms, but I don’t see them. I keep asking,‘Where are these friends?’ and I don’t see them.” He was an embarrassed parent. We went to the living room to talk to the rest. “And who is the SLA?” I asked Cinque. “Refuse, found in waterfront communes.” “Shanghaied?” “Just lost, drunken men,” Cinque said, “who don’t know where they are and no longer care.” 29

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There was a muffled exchange from among the passedout bodies: “Where are we?” “I don’t care!” Interested, I moved along and asked Cinque,“And these?” “These are lost, drunken women who don’t know who they are, but do care. And these are women who know where they are and care, but don’t drink.” Again, hungover croaks: “I don’t know who I am.” “And I don’t drink!” Cinque crouched down to Yolanda, “Do you care?” “No.” Cinque looked up at me, “Put her on guard duty and give her a drink.” “What do you drink?” I asked her. “I don’t care.” Concerned, I asked, “How is their understanding of theory?” “These men,” Cinque said, “feel the pig emptiness of fascist America before they understand it.” Inevitably came the murmurs: “I feel pig emptiness.” “I don’t understand fascist America.” That night, Cinque made me second in command. We 30

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went to work on the announcement of my coming-out ball. But first, like my comrades, a new name. It had to be chosen in honor of a woman who revolted before me, and, as the members of the heiress class who took up armed struggle is not as small a group as one would think, it wasn’t easy to narrow down. With her elegant cigarette filters, Rothschild heiress Baroness Nica de Koenigswarter could be found in the early ’60s gossiping at many a back alley meeting of the Algerian National Liberation Front. The Salvadoran Movimiento Comunal only began in earnest after Francesca Hilton, resplendent in pearls and Yves St. Laurent mosquito net, was spotted trudging through the jungle with Sandinistas. The IRA was a mess of tweed until Consuelo Vanderbilt introduced sharp black tams to their look. Ann Morgan, daughter of J.P. Morgan, used her equestrian skills to teach Pancho Villa’s raiders better jumping techniques. PFLP hijacker Leila Khaled was a hopeless unknown until Mellon heiress Cordelia Scaife May snuck several scintillating items about Khaled into the columns. Cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post was known to visit Shigenobu (the exiled leader of the Japanese Red Army) in Jordan. 31

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And what was Sacco and Vanzetti’s untellable alibi for the robbery and murder they were falsely charged with? The two fishmongers had posed as an opera singer and a fascist count and successfully scored Geraldine Rockefeller at a deb ball. In the end I chose the name Tania. It was also the name taken by Haydee Tamara Bunke, who had spied her way inside all the mansions of the Bolivian aristocracy. When she lost her cover, she joined the guerillas.

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Chapter Four

How middle-class was the SLA? They bled Bon Ami, wept Windex, dreamt of Calgon. One morning at breakfast, Teko marched in circles, declaring what appropriate viewing and listening around the compound would be, based on his overeducated guesses of what poor people liked. “We, the SLA, watch the movie Convoy, because that’s what poor people like.” Gabi parroted, “We, the SLA, don’t listen to Tales from Topographic Oceans by mother-fuckin’ classically trained Yes. We listen to Edgar Winter’s ‘Frankenstein,’ because that’s what poor people like to listen to.” And Teko, now worked up, “We, the SLA, jerk off to Frank Frazetta paintings of muscular Martian women and clean up the mess with Wonderbread, because that’s what poor people like to do!” Everyone spat out their toast.

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Chapter Five

One can spend years in prison learning all there is to learn about banks and bank security. Or you can be seated for one night at a dinner party beside people who own banks. The average cash lost during a bank robbery is $4437. With my privileged knowledge, I knew I could double that. But I wasn’t instantly trusted as second in command. Jealous of my theoretical savvy (and upset that I attended UC Berkeley and they, the lowly backwater of Brandeis) Yolanda and Teko seemed to enjoy grilling me on my dedication.“So, rich girl. The direct theoretical of ummmm . . . of Mark’s, I mean Marx’s ideas on d-d-d-evelopment and change was the work of —” “Hegel. It was Hegel, you retard.” Calming down, I looked them all in the eyes, “You don’t know what it was like growing up the way I did —

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When I was just a little girl, My mother said what I could be. I would be pretty. I would be rich. And here is what I said to she: Patria o muerte, a free land or death, The future is ours to seize, Patria o muerte, a free land or death. The future is ours to seize. When I grew up and fell in love, My sweetheart told me What was ahead. He would not work, I would pay his rent. Day after day. And here is what I said to he: Patria o muerte, a free land or death, The future is ours to seize, Patria o muerte, a free land or death, The future is ours to seize, Patria o muerte, a free land or death.

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Chapter Six

Everything was planned to the last detail — positions, code names, my speech, keeping Cujo (who was notoriously incontinent) in the backup car — but I’ve never been good with deciding on an outfit. Choice is difficult, especially as the standards of fashion for radical action had recently been set higher. While Lee Harvey Oswald was famous for being the first person to smartly match an Italian rifle with Italian wingtips, praxis and Prada only truly met with West Germany’s Red Army Faction. None of us were worthy of even holding the RAF’s purses while shoe shopping. They knew the value of clean lines, well-chosen fabrics, and hair full of texture and bounce, not product. But I must say that they had the unfair advantage of being underground in Europe. There just wasn’t a Diane Von Furstenberg showroom in Concord. RAF leader Andreas Baader had the benefit of a lanky frame and a chiseled face. Combined with Yves St. Laurent aviator glasses and leather jackets from Biba, Baader was an 37

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avatar of stylish madness, with casual poise that said, “Burn warehouse burn” as much as it said, “Gstaad? Again? How boring.” His harshly bleached hair (after going into hiding) only ensured Baader’s place in the pantheon of proto-punk alienation. Gertrude Ensslin, Baader’s girlfriend and chief theoretician of the RAF, accentuated her smoldering eyes with daring heaps of Kohl. Bangs framed her fine features while loose gray and black clothing (colors underutilized by most blondes) gave Ensslin a needed grounding — her pallor could lean towards the excessive due to her left-wing anguish and hunger striking. Latecomer Ulrike Meinoff may have gotten all the press, but she made the mistake many slumming rich girls make — too many thrift and vintage pieces. I wouldn’t dare do the same for my debut.

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FBI Field Report — Timeline of April 15th robbery of Hibernia Bank, 1450 Noriega St., San Francisco Suspects believed to be the Symbionese Liberation Army. Transcription from witness interviews and by forensic lip readers of 1200 silent still frames taken by three bank cameras. At 9:50 a.m., five people enter the bank. They are identified as Cinque, Fahiza, Zoya, Gabi, and Tania. They are in blue coats and carrying carbine rifles. Cinque appears to say,“This is the SLA, this is the SLA. Get down on the floor or we’ll blow your heads off.” Gabi then drops her ammunition magazine, spilling bullets over the floor. For several moments all stare at her as she collects and reloads the bullets. Gabi seems to be muttering, “Stupid, stupid, stupid.” At this point, a bank manager walks towards the group with his hands up. Cinque asks if he’s the manager. “I am.” “Where’s the head teller station?” “It’s in the back, to the right.” 39

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“Excuse me.” A woman steps out, also with her hands up. “I am the comanager,” she says, “and the head teller station is in the back and to the left.” “The head teller station is to the right.” “The head teller station is to the left.” Cinque continues to stand, holding his gun. Gabi goes to each customer lying on the ground. According to witnesses, she is getting names for a petition against a new stadium for the San Francisco Forty-Niners. Tania is providing cover while Fahiza jumps from drawer to drawer. At this point a man now identified as Cujo enters. All activity stops. We initially believed him to be injured, as he is holding his groin and jumping side to side. He walks up to Cinque, saying, “I have to go. Now.” Turning away from the camera, Cinque is talking to the female bank manager. She gestures, and his hand mimics her gestures, suggesting he is receiving directions. Cujo runs into a room to the left, no, to the right.

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Looking at the camera, Tania begins to speak.“This is Tania. Keep lying down or I’ll shoot your mother-fudging — I meant fucking — heads off. Can we just, you know, start over?” At 10 a.m. Fahiza, holding a gym bag, rejoins the group in the center of the floor. After some deliberation, Zoya walks to the door that Cujo entered. Witnesses state, though politely whispered, that they heard Zoya ask Cujo, “How soon are you going to be done?” “I can’t tell.” “You can tell me. It’s Fahiza.” “No, I mean I’m not sure.” “Well, can’t you take a guess?” “Not for another ten minutes.” “You can’t take a guess for another ten minutes?” At 10:10 a.m., Cujo leaves the door wide open.

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Chapter Seven

After the robbery, it was time to relax. With the SLA, all their rhetoric could only painfully expose their deep, serious need to get laid. Or expressed in ideological terms: their mind-body split (a common after-effect of petit bourgeois upbringing) had been reified into their image of the revolutionary as saltpeter-eating stoic, taking cold showers, thinking about Fidel Castro playing baseball. But I had just the story to help them. While Karl Marx had, late in life, tarnished his early promise with those infomercials where he cavorted with babushka-clad women while pitching — “This is not a country club! This is my house!” “Are you man enough to get off your lazy American ass and go to Marx’s seminars?” “A lot of your friends will tell you,‘Don’t come to the seminar. It’s a get-communism-quick plan.’ Well, tell them, it is a

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get-communism-quick plan because life is too short to get communism slow.” “Today I’m gonna show you how to drive a sports car. First, you need the means of production!” “Do you think these girls like me? No! They like my means of production!” “At first I got lots of discouragement from friend and stranger who are loser! You know what these people kept telling me? They kept saying,‘Well Karl Marx, you a crazy nut. Here you are, a poor German, speak no English, no contact, on and on, and you trying to liberate working class! You crazy man! Look at people out there! They smarter than you are, they not even rich! Who are you to try?’ And you know what? I have to keep telling these people every time, I kept saying, ‘You are loser! Get out of my way! I make it somehow!’” — a little-known story of how Karl Marx presented his early and groundbreaking Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 at the Hammersmith Odeon, would convince the SLA of the sartorial pleasures to be had from the social sciences . . . That night, Marx came out with his curly locks teased, reading lines like, “Political economy conceals the estrangement in the nature of labor by ignoring the direct relationship between the worker and production,” while shuffling across the stage with a 44

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cocky two-step and looking directly at the audience after a particularly pleasing word. A simple, quick moue from Marx then sent the audience’s cries into climax register. As his bongo player launched into the chapter, “Antithesis of Capital and Labor. Landed Property and Capital (Get It On!)” a girl ran on stage, jumping on Marx as he started speaking the words of his hit thesis. After a paragraph, Marx signalled the breakdown with a banshee cry and the quick rhythmic thrusting of his pelvis three times. Slinging his book away, he raised his hands in the air, clapping joyously before picking up two tambourines to aid in frenetic response. Breaking a tambourine in half, Marx, increasing the tempo of his suggestive mince, joined on bongos while the bass player dove into a loud funk. With a roadie handing Marx another book, he arched his legs into his signature splits pose, and began reading loud random passages, scaling up and down the pages, forcing his book in and out from between his legs, his head vibrating and turning his hair into a black hole, the center of which was held by his pained face, suggesting cosmic love as much as the heartbreak of worker alienation. At a point where it seemed Marx had begun speaking every word ever spoken, all at once he stopped, and without a lost beat arched his back and flung his book into the audience. Collecting himself and taking the microphone from the stand, Marx sat down, his legs dangling over the edge of the stage. Calming the audience down with a raised hand, he began to sing, almost whispering, “Somewhere, over the rainbow . . .” 45

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Now, with theoretical support, we could move on to a meeting to establish the rules for . . .

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The People’s Orgy “Wow,” Teko exclaimed, “I didn’t know that anal beads were made under such exploitive conditions. Heavy!” Most of the meeting was spent deciding whether or not sexual aids would be allowed in the group grope. The argument that the implements could be interpreted as bourgeois exclusion-through-mechanization was supported, but it was decided that the state of permanent arousal would lead to permanent revolution quicker than strict adherence to theory. We agreed, when possible, to use low impact and artisan-made toys ordered from the back pages of the Whole Earth Catalogue. Toys like: The Malatesta “Discreet and attractive, the Malatesta is a lot of toy in one pretty package. Featuring an ergonomic handle and six settings, it’s the toy of choice for many revolutionaries because the design produces maximum strength with minimal noise. Made in the Brazilian Amazon by a cooperative employing twenty-five people in Manaus, the capital of the rainforest.” The Guartarri “The new generation of vibrators has arrived! Designed in

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France, this toy takes the best features from a range of vibrators and puts them into one. The purple ‘Gigolo’ add-on features a smooth, elegant, non-realistic, rhizomatic shape with a rounded head. Uses two AA batteries for a thousand plateaus of pleasure! An environmentally friendly product as it is made from fallen vines, with no live plants killed.” The Urban Guerilla “The most popular prostate toy on the shelves. After much success and word of mouth, the inventors of the Centrist have created a more angled version that promises intense and vigorous prostate massage. Handmade by a Hutterite community.” The Informant “A jockstrap made with high quality crocheted organic hemp. Features a studded removable snap-front pouch with adjustable snap thong back for a perfect fit.” The Fellow Travelers “These classic chaps are a very popular item that are as erotic to look at as they are to wear. Made of genuine corduroy by Streetvoice, a community upliftment project that seeks to empower unemployed Canadian writers and create opportunities where previously none existed.” 48

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The Bakunin 9000 “Mentioned in Glamour magazine and simply the most ingenious, discreet vibrator to date. Fits right on your finger with no battery pack, no cords, and so slender and lightweight it feels like a natural extension of your body. Five to a pack, they’re made in and around the Guatemalan market town of Chichicastenango, where the story is told that if you tell one worry to each vibrator when you go to bed at night, and place them under your pillow, all your worries will have been taken away by morning.” Given the danger inherent in some of the toys we also came up with a list of “safe words.” The first round included: • repressive tolerance • hegemonic control • use value • and realm of circulation. These were vetoed when it was suggested that they were commonly shouted by most people, even during low-risk intercourse. Our new approach then focused on finding safe words that statistically would never, ever be said during sex 49

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— low- or high-risk — anywhere, with anyone. The new safe word candidates were: • Burgess Meredith • Enya • TimRobbinsandSusanSarandon • Tiesto • Ben Mulroney • and Michael Chertoff.

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Chapter Eight

Unfortunately, after the orgy, the unit began exhibiting recidivist hippy tendencies, bringing strangers back to the compound for all-night “rap” sessions. The oddest visitor was a Frenchman with a nervous tick. He had arrived in town only to discover the commune he was going to stay at had burned down after a stoned resident knocked over the “Rain Lamp,” spilling the oil onto a still-hot batik print. The stranger kept to himself, working on his translations. On a morning when the maid hadn’t arrived (a maid was one of my stipulations for staying with the unit), I discovered this page torn up in the wastebasket: “Tawn. Yah. “She was Tawn, plain Tawn in the morning, standing fivefeet-seven in one combat boot. She was Tan-tan in a tactical vest. She was Tanja at re-education camp. She was Angel on the arrest warrant. But in my arms, she was always Tania.”

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Grody. And dead. My goal was to move the SLA away from their violent rhetoric — they were sorely unready for serious street fighting — into more practical, culturally based struggles. But as I discovered during the visioning workshop, they really had no communication skills. “Death to the fascist insect that preys upon the life of the people,” Teko suggested as a motto. “Yeah!” Cujo screamed. “Fuck insects!” “I’m a little concerned,” Zoya cautioned, “that by saying the fascists are ‘insects’ — which are often small — that prey upon the people, that you’re saying the people are really, really small and I don’t think that should be part of our platform. We want the people to feel really, really big.” “How about humpback whales?” someone said. “Death to the fascist humpback whale that preys upon the life of the people!” Cujo screamed. “Still doesn’t work,” Zoya said. “Whales eat plankton, which puts us back to —” Everyone mumbled, “Very, very small.” “What we’re looking for,” Zoya continued,“is a somewhat balanced predator-prey relationship. Like cheetahs and gazelles.” “Death to the fascist cheetah that preys upon the life of 52

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the people — who are much like gazelles — graceful, fast, but still vulnerable to capitalist predation!” Cujo screamed, pumping his fists in the air. To give the unit a renewed focus, and better analogies, I instituted rotating shifts of poetry workshops for two, one always on writing, the other on crit. As we already had evening “gut check” sessions where we verbally tore one another to shreds over the minutest details — “Leaving the room to fart is, like, so bourgeois, man!” “Well, not leaving the room to fart to seem more working class than you actually are, is, like, bourgeois times infinity!” “Infinity plus one!”

— the transition to prose workshopping would be easy. Cujo, the youngest, was the worst poet in the cell, possibly the world. He openly cribbed then-current rock lyrics as his own, with a slight, party-line addendum: Burn down the White House Burn it down to stay alive It’s our only chance of living Take all you need to live inside 53

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— but his feel for formal bravery and intuited application of Proudhon’s maxim “property is theft” showed some promise. Gabi wrote with a Ginsbergian, chubby gyrating shamanlike rhythm of paranoid wisdom. Watch shadows Watch all curtains (don’t brush up against them) Keep your handgun on you at all times Always know where your shoes are

Her work, stuck in these staccato incantations, could never support more complex poetics or linguistic voices. Zoya was certainly the most prolific, and before joining the SLA, she had “terrorized” the coffee house scene for some time. Her self-obsession put her squarely into the confessional school. My commitment must be total My pistol aim must bring death No nice girl No nice, groovy young women

And her dedication to themes of mortality was without peer.

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Now’s the time We’re all alive! Eat it, pig In our minds The bigger the trigger The better the target! The cool Cool palm Will smear heavy on the hit. Sucker pay!

At the heart of her work is great universal love, as evinced by this tender aside: That I might see you After this struggle Is well on its way And we can walk down Country roads Knowing the Man has been offed

If there was a Jacques Vaché, a brooding real-deal among us, it was Fahiza, who could write mysteries that only time itself could unravel.

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Oh scream Fuck, paper, words Fuck! Shoot, shoot, shoot!!!

After several weeks, the poetry had emboldened the SLA to look beyond their simplistic tactics. With much excitement we answered an ad I’d spotted in the Berkeley Barb: Are you a revolutionary interested in expanding and sharing your knowledge of poetry with like-minded people? Charles Olsen presents a workshop on “Projectile Verse” on May 17th, in Los Angeles. One workshop only, so sign up now!

It was decided that Cinque would lead Fahiza, Gabi, Cujo, and Gelina to the workshop while I would take Teko and Yolanda on a mission to find a safe house in Los Angeles. After we separated, I never saw Cinque and the others again, except on the news and — I warned you, reader, of ellipsis. You will have to be patient. I cannot tell you about May 17th yet. But in the aftermath —

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Chapter Nine

Teko, Yolanda, and I found a motel just outside of Los Angeles. The streets were an open pharmacy, strewn with empty methadone bottles, used condoms, used pregnancy tests, cotton swabs, used diapers, Bengay tubes, hosiery, and Wet Naps. Scattered here and there were echinacea capsules, Visine, Visine Triple Action, Bic razors, and several different lines of L’Oréal cosmetics. We took our room, Teko kicking a stray Ace bandage out from underfoot. For three days we watched the news reports. Yolanda was on the bed, in shock, struggling to come up with something witty about nearby Disneyland. “Leave it to a pig to glorify . . . a duck? . . . pirates? . . . Swiss mountains? No, that’s not right.” “You know, Tania, Walt was a Leninist,” Teko said. “I thought he was a Nazi pedophile.” “You mean he only molested Nazis?” “No, Teko. I meant, a Nazi, as well as a pedophile.”

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“That’s just what they want you to think. Dig this. What’s outside our room?” “An infinitely expansive and vast public toilet?” “Anaheim, exactly. Nightclubs, strip joints, and second-generation hot dog vendors. Why? Disney-fucking-land. No no, follow this. It’s heavy. An ex-girlfriend of mine used to work at Disney Corporate. Walt spent all his time trying to create this utopia and what happens? Parasites drawing the blood out of his vision. So what does Walt do? Disney-fuckinworld! The world rebuilt without pain and suffering and ghettoes. What do you get when you make an acronym out of Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow?” “Epct.” “No, you gotta count the ‘o’.” “Oh-kay, I see. And —” “And so Walt uses dummy corporations and fronts to buy 27,000 acres of land in Florida. Once the property was his, he started a huge lobbying campaign, which continued after his death, just like Lenin. They got exemption from state, county, and local authorities. So now there’s a buffer zone, just like Czechoslovakia, to work as a physical and political border to protect his vision.” “Teko.” “Yes?” “I just don’t care.” 58

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“You really hate me, don’t you, Tania?” “Oh no. I don’t like you very much, though.” “Tania?” “What do you want?” “You’re generous to a fault.” “Not to yours.” “You’re wonderful. There’s malevolence in you, Tania. “Now I’m getting self-conscious. It’s funny. I —” “Malevolence that comes out of your eyes, in your voice, in the way you stand there, in the way you walk. You’re lit from within, Tania. You’ve got fires banked down in you, Molotavs and burning cop cars.” “I don’t seem to you made of ice?” “No, you’re made out of flesh and blood. That’s the blank, unholy surprise of it. You’re the golden girl, Tania. Full of force and terror and tactics. You destroy — passionately, altruistically — but there’s more to life than that. Hey, you’ve got tears in your eyes.” “Shut up, shut up. Oh, Teko. Keep talking, keep talking. Look at me with those stupid blue eyes. Talk, will you?” Teko and I made love while inconsolable Yolanda searched for a successful end to her aphorism. “A deer . . . a cricket . . . chipmunks . . . Dalmatians . . . an elephant . . . a marionette . . . teacups . . . dwarves . . . a pixie. . . .”

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Chapter Ten

Love was a bourgeois mistake that would only drive what was left of the SLA to further despair. While Teko and Yolanda slept, I left the motel to turn myself in. Standing at a pay phone, I reached into my pocket for change, instead finding an intricately folded piece of lined paper. It was from Teko. I could tell because the “Yes? No? Maybe?” written on the outside of the letter had numerous spelling mistakes. I unfolded the note and read —

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It Takes A Bear To Defeat A Pig A People’s Review of The Bad News Bears Profoundly dialectical, The Bad News Bears opens on a scene of manufactured nature — morning sprinklers in a Little League baseball park. Driving into the edge of the frame is lead character “Buttermaker,” a man broken on the wheel of his major league expectations. That he is driving an out-of-date convertible suggests that Buttermaker is a wreck born of the dashed hopes of postwar American culture. Currently a pool-cleaning worker, he is portrayed as a slovenly alcoholic. While one chafes at first at this oh-so-expected clichéd presentation of workers, as we will see later on, director Michael Ritchie slyly uses those very clichés to undermine them. We are then introduced briefly to Kelly Leek, the motorcycle-riding nihilist. Is he the personification of rebellion co-opted into a broad, hollow gesture, or will his youthful energy be channeled into a revolutionary will that can inspire all? Again, a question elliptically stated by the director early on to be answered as the narrative progresses. Buttermaker’s bacchanal is broken with the entrance of city politician and capitalist Councilor Whitewood and his son Toby. Through Whitewood, we learn that “the Bears” have resulted from his suit against the exclusivity of the 62

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league. Buttermaker, because of his long ago squandered baseball talents, has been hired to coach Toby’s team because (it’s implied) the quest for municipal power has left Whitewood with little time for his son or to follow through on his liberal beliefs. This subtle plot point adds a level of theoretical savoir-faire. Whitewood is no caricature. He and his family, separated by the hours demanded of bureaucratic life, are victims representing a kind of bourgeois whose radicalization is both possible and, according to Mao, a vital part of revolution. Buttermaker demands his payment up front, and again we are faced with what could be a troublesome stereotype of the lazy and greedy worker. He then meets the rival coach, a stern militaristic rightist who, in a mock effort of friendliness with his new foe, demeans the Bears’ prowess and Buttermaker’s chances. We meet the team of “Bears” (a less than subtle nod to Soviet symbolism I’m sure we all noticed) that Buttermaker must coach. They represent a fragmented coalition of all oppressed people: Jews, blacks, gays, Hispanics, the overweight, and the radical intelligentsia. Ghettoized by the system, the team is a mess of internecine conflict while arguing and disparaging each other. While “badness” in conventional cinema usually denotes cool, fearless detachment, here Ritchie again brilliantly subverts proceedings by showing the damage criminal behavior causes to radical 63

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movements, revealing these “bad asses” as bumbling failures. It is theoretically correct to laugh at the scenes of the Bears hopelessly flailing about on the field as their counter-revolutionary behavior has brought them to this point. Some have argued that the use of cursing by the young characters is deplorable, but the language of the dialogue is realistic. I once took it upon myself to translate great works of English literature into the language of the proletariat. My first attempt was to translate Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure into the dialect common to Southwestern Ontario: The fucking schoolmaster fuck was leaving the fucking village, and everybody seemed fucking sorry. The fucking miller at Cresscombe lent him the fucking white tilted cart and fucking horse to carry his fucking goods to the fucking city of his destination, about twenty fucking miles off, such a fucking vehicle proving of quite fucking sufficient size for the fucking departing teacher’s fucking effects. For the fucking schoolhouse had been partly fucking furnished by the fucking manager fucks, and the only fucking article possessed by the master, in addition to the fucking packing case of books, was a fucking cottage piano that he had fucking bought at an auction during the fucking year in which he thought of learning fucking instrumental music. The fucking blacksmith, the fucking farm bailiff, and the fucking schoolmaster himself were standing in perplexed fucking attitudes 64

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in the fucking parlor before the fucking instrument. The master had fucking remarked that even if he fucking got it into the cart he should not know what the fuck to do with it on his arrival at Christ-fucking-minster, the city he was fucking bound for, since he was only going into temporary lodgings at fucking first. A little boy of eleven, who had been thoughtfully assisting in the packing, joined the group of men, and as they rubbed their chins he spoke up, blushing at the sound of his own voice: “My fucking Aunt has got a great fucking fuel-house, and it could be put the fuck there, perhaps, till you’ve fucking found a fucking place to settle the fuck in, sir fuck.” “A fucking proper good notion,” said the fucking blacksmith. It’s during the Bears’ first practice that Ritchie’s greatest technique is deployed: the continued use of musical passages from Bizet’s Carmen. An operatic piece being played overtop images of a banal American landscape is a textbook example of Bertolt Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt. Brecht theorized that instructing the audience that what they are watching is a performance, and denying suspension of disbelief, would make them question not only the artificiality of emotions provoked by theater, but also the artificiality of life lived under capitalist illusion. Theodor Adorno would go on to criticize Brecht’s packaged alienation by stating, “The illustration of late capitalism by images from the agrarian or criminal registers does not permit 65

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the monstrosity of modern society to emerge in full clarity from the complex phenomena masking it.” Wisely, Ritchie has placed his story in suburbia, a region of interstitial conflict (neither urban nor rural) to draw out those phenomena. After their first game, despairing of their chances of winning (and not realizing his own role in the construction of those conditions) Buttermaker searches for “ringers” to lead his Bears to victory. Buttermaker tracks down Amanda, the young daughter of one of his exes. Amanda’s notorious curveball — taught to her by Buttermaker and a lingering echo of his possibilities of leadership — could save the Bears. Like many women who feel marginalized from wider movements, Amanda has been made cynical by Buttermaker’s past loutish behaviour. Since he left her family’s life, she has begun to shirk her historical mission by clothing herself in the trappings of the upper classes. She will only play for the team if Buttermaker pays for her ballet classes, thus completing a circle of deceit and bribery. Buttermaker then recruits Kelly (the aforementioned nihilist) by appealing to his bloodthirsty desire for revenge and destruction. This is one of the more compelling lessons of The Bad News Bears, that the revolution cannot rely on “pure” intents and perfect leadership; that the damaged detritus of capitalism

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must rise up with what they have and by whatever means necessary. As Lenin said,“There are no morals in politics; there is only expedience. A scoundrel may be of use to us just because he is a scoundrel.” With their cell now complete and operational, the Bears defy all expectations and ascend. Yet, focused too much on improbable goals, the Bears fragment again during the championship game, ultimately losing and earning only second place in the league. Some have said this ending represents backsliding on the part of the director, that the film is just another entry in the condescending and paternalistic “cinema of the loser” that is quite popular this year with pig audiences (Rocky would be another example). To a certain extent that is true, but one would be missing the richer radical reading of The Bad News Bears. Initial revolutions often don’t work because of ill timing, the weakened morale of the proletariat, etc. But these fleeting skirmishes at the edge of the totality often force the State to show its brutal hand, thereby creating sympathy and class-wide affinity. During this climactic scene, the rival coach, upset that his own son has been too violent, hypocritically punishes him for behaviour that he himself has encouraged. It’s a chilling evocation of Orwell’s maxim: “To imagine the future, picture a Little League dad stomping his son to the ground. Forever.”

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That the Bears have grander plans — socialism on one diamond cannot be contained — is confirmed when the second-place trophy is hurled back as the fascist trinket it is.

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PART TWO

Time travel Leif Garrett . . . Matt Dillon . . . John Hinckley . . . Rob Lowe . . . Johnny Depp . . . Luke Perry . . . James Van Der Beek . . . Adam Brody.

Chapter Eleven

“Eh, I could’ve agented the Bible back to God you know.” My literary agent had a British accent picked up during one year spent at boarding school. I was in her New York office discussing sales. A spectre was haunting my head. Four cosmopolitans from the night before. “I’m sorry. The icy waters of self-interest, eh. Very well. Onto the maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhnuuuuscript shall we.” My agent stopped speaking english and started speaking English. “Mate geyser diddums.” It was a signal that the office was bugged. I picked up a bit of the language in jail, so I could translate somewhat. “Ta bap telly wellies.” We would be selling I, Tania as part of a two-book deal. An outline for the other title, Love, Comrade Mommy: Writing Love Letters to Your Baby (Maoist and Trotskyist 73

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translations) would be due in six weeks. “Trolley sweets spiffing scones bonnet peckish.” Forty-thousand-dollar advance. Not bad, but film rights are where the real money will come in. “Clingfilm knickers barrister sellotape refectory waistcoat ironmonger.” The publisher wanted to start on publicity right away. They were thinking the picture of me holding the rifle should be released as a retro brand. Poster. T-shirts. Coffee mug. Get the college kids worked up, then hit wider markets. “Blancmange knackered kippers bonkers.” Meet . . . Ronald . . . Reagan . . . tonight? I mouthed. My agent shook her head. “Blancmange knackered kippers bonkers.”

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Chapter Twelve

While waiting for the meet, my edited manuscript comes back to my hotel room. I read the notes: “You see, this is a prison for one.” “I’m Cujo, which other than being a notoriously shoddy novel, even within the lax standards of the Stephen King canon, is Spanish, I think, for hombre.” <Excuse me? Cujo the book was published in 1981. The movie was made in 1983, and the head of the chapter says, “1974.” You cannot bend time, even for a joke, and you could lose Stephen King fans as readers in the process. Unless of 75

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course, you’re trying to insinuate that Stephen King was peripherally involved in 1970s terrorism and that his later book was, in fact, a secret communiqué. If that’s the case, stet, and maybe we can insert this —

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The Dogs of Class War A People’s Review of Cujo The popularity of “horror” culture tellingly illustrates our conflicted issues surrounding not only our corporeal selves, but ideas and memory as well. The matter we “expel” from our bodies or minds is made abject and comes back to us as horror — no more so than in Cujo. A horror film directed by Lewis Teague from a novel by Stephen King and rumoured to be a “code” film meant for splintered SLA members in the early ’80s. The prologue begins with “red” water draining. Having absolutely nothing to do with the given narrative, we can only read this as a literal expulsion or abjection of socialist principles that will return in the film’s latter half. This dissolves into the title Cujo (obviously named in honor of the fallen comrade of the SLA), and is wittily drawn with hammer-andsickle-style curves and slashes. Profoundly dialectical, Cujo opens on a scene of manufactured nature — a St. Bernard chasing a rabbit through a barely disguised California industrial park meant to evoke a sylvan glen. Sticking its head into a cave, the dog is bitten by a bat virulent with rabies. Though questionable at first on the part of the author and director, they’re obviously invoking the hateful language used sometimes to discredit the “spread” of the socialist “disease.” 77

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Rather inexpertly, the film jumps to a world of upper-middle-class domesticity populated by television actors, including Dee Wallace (star of Wait Till Your Mother Gets Home!, Together We Stand a.k.a. Nothing is Easy, and The New Lassie), Danny Pintauro (featured on Who’s the Boss), Daniel HughKelly (the noted master of the “serious face” and star of Hardcastle and McCormick, I Married Dora, and Bad As I Wanna Be: The Dennis Rodman Story), the late Christopher Stone (who guest-appeared in every television show of the 1980s: The A-Team, Airwolf, Simon and Simon, Dukes of Hazzard, Whiz Kids, Dallas, The Fall Guy, Fantasy Island, Manimal, Matt Houston, Riptide, T.J. Hooker, Remington Steele, Hunter, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, Mike Hammer, Harper Valley P.T.A., etc., Stone died rich in experience); and Ed Lauter (B.J. and the Bear — but he’s better known for adding gravitas to the films Girls Just Wanna Have Fun and Real Genius). The presence of these kinds of actors indicates a severe paucity of quality, and it is perhaps the worst of a cycle of terrible Stephen King adaptations of the early ’80s (others include Cat’s Eye, Firestarter, Christine, and Silver Bullet). We can only assume the makers of Cujo were busy suffusing the film with a purpose altogether different from mere entertainment value. At a breakfast scene we meet patriarch Hugh-Kelly, who we discover is a high-powered advertising executive in a 78

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none-too-subtle allusion to media and then, by extension, newspapers. In a greedy search for cheaper, more exploitable labor, Hugh-Kelly finds himself on an impoverished farm, seeking the services of a car mechanic. This farm is also the home of Cujo, the dog from the opening sequence. There is a narrative lull as Hugh-Kelly has his car repaired and returns to his normal life. Through various circumstances — his wife, portrayed by Wallace, takes solace in the arms of a lumpen proletariat while Hugh-Kelly must attend to a work crisis, all very mid-period Fassbinder — the family is separated. With more car trouble, Wallace returns to the mechanic’s farm with her sickly son, but Cujo has gone “rabid” with praxis and already done away with his overlords. Wallace and her son are trapped in their car, held “hostage” by Cujo. While a quick reading might assume the underlying narratives of Cujo revolve around the conventional misogyny of an unfaithful woman being punished by fate in the form of a supernaturalized guilt, that is only because the filmmakers want you to think that Cujo revolves around the conventional misogyny of an unfaithful woman being punished by fate in the form of a supernaturalized guilt. The better to hide their ultimate goal of communicating plans to the regrouping SLA members in the audience. Importantly, mother and child are trapped in a broken down Ford Pinto. The Pinto, of course, is best remembered 79

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as being the focus of a major scandal in 1980, when it was discovered that the car’s design allowed its fuel tank to be easily damaged in the event of a rear-end collision, which often resulted in deadly fires and explosions. It was also alleged that Ford was aware of this design flaw but refused to pay the minimal expense of a redesign. Instead, it was argued, Ford decided it would be cheaper to pay off possible lawsuits for resulting deaths. One of the things forgotten about the SLA is their ahead-of-their-time focus on the role of corporations in the maintenance and manipulation of social and economic life in America and elsewhere. Having Wallace trapped in a fire-prone prison of bourgeois design says much to a general audience, but to SLA members it says, “Ford is next” or perhaps, “leave Pintos parked in front of strategic buildings and don’t worry about adding fertilizer, plastique, or timers.” After several days trapped in the Pinto, a sheriff ’s car drives onto the farm. With his quick death at the dripping maw of Cujo, the filmmakers have not only ridiculed law enforcement but also enacted a cinematic revenge for the events of May 17th. A worried Hugh-Kelly returns early from his business trip. Searching for his wife and son, he rushes to the farm, arriving only after Wallace herself — bitten and injured — has killed Cujo. The family is reunited, yet changed forever. The message is clear: Cujo’s path may have been one of sense-

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less violence, but the ruling class has been notified of the dangers inherent in their privilege and, in Wallace, possibly “infected” with a new consciousness that came not from an invader, but from within. Unfortunately, after a strong opening weekend, Cujo dropped from the screens and became known throughout the 1980s only as a Coke-and-Dorito party curio. King now claims — Manchurian Candidate style — to have been drugged and incoherent during the writing of his book and so has no recollection of its creation. > “Hegel. It was Hegel, you retard.” “. . . a cooperative employing twenty-five people in Manaus, the capital of the rainforest.”

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“. . . knocked over the Rain Lamp, spilling the oil onto a stillhot batik print.” <Should we describe what a “Rain Lamp” is? Those large lamps from the ’70s that looked like a gazebo with a nude statue in the middle, surrounded by wires that dripped hot oil “rain” that would invariably be used by parents trying to make their way through a midlife crisis. We don’t want to lose readers under thirty.> “I warned you, reader, of ellipsis and you will have to be patient. I cannot tell you about May 17th yet. But in the aftermath —” Notes All in all a good, clean manuscript. There are passages and techniques which may deleteriously affect some audiences

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and completely alienate readers who happen to be retarded Vancouverites under thirty from the South who are into Stephen King and afflicted with Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome. I need not remind you of the unsold skids of John Grisham’s The Last Retarded Vancouverite Under Thirty (From the South) into Stephen King and Afflicted with WernickeKorsakoff Syndrome. Thank god we renamed the soft cover John Grisham’s Geriatric Scat Party in time (and thank god they couldn’t remember). But all those names we went through just to come up with that one —

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John Grisham’s Hung Jury John Grisham’s Firm Offer John Grisham’s De-Briefed John Grisham’s Ramifications John Grisham’s Bare Ass Beach John Grisham’s Nasty Encounters John Grisham’s The Devil in Miss Jones 5: The Inferno and John Grisham’s Gone Wild.

Chapter Thirteen

“The funny thing is,” a drunk Judith Regan slurred into her near-empty sidecar,“is that I did my MFA thesis on Oulipo.” I had no idea why I was asked to meet Regan — the fallen mastermind behind Drew Barrymore’s Little Girl Lost, and hastily written, forgotten-by-December-28th tomes by Howard Stern and General Tommy Franks — in a faux-dive club at the bottom of Park Slope. We must have struck as an odd diptych of middle-aged femininity standing at the packed bar, surrounded by people too young to remember the first Gulf War as anything other than a show that was on the same year as Twin Peaks. “Ouvroir de littérature potentielle,” she continued. “Did you know that’s French for ‘Have you had that thing checked out by a doctor yet?’ No, I’m just shittin’ ya Tamara. Oulipo believed in writing constraints. A novel that was a palindrome, the same story written in ninety-nine different styles etc. So the funny thing is — it’s Trisha, right? — is that I had to become who I am in order to best Oulipo. You want to talk 85

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constraints? Try getting a coked-out fourteen-year-old actress to sign off on translation. Even better, have a book written in a weekend and on the shelves by next Friday, on a subject you just saw on Nightlina uhhhgghe with Terrrryyy Mooorrraannn in Washington and ack Martin Barrrrrrrshir and Cynthaaa-aaagghhhh McFarhallllfhhhhden. Oh my god. Did I just?” “Yes, you threw-up on my shoes.” Unfazed, she wiped her mouth. “And that’s including the time it takes to order transcripts. What I’m trying to get at here, Theodosia, is this. Your memoir is just too stiff and factual. If you can make up a country, you can fucking well make up a better ending. How’s this for a new one? Held captive and drugged by two Homeland Security agents posing as buyers for Costco-Midwest, Tania is near death when a man storms in through the window, breaks the neck of one agent with a twist, and with only an icy death stare, causes the other agent to fall to the ground. Walking up to an incoherent Tania he stretches out his hand and says, ‘I’m Don DeLillo. I’m here to rescue you.’” I backed away from the insane woman only to bump into a giant of a man. Turning around I saw silvery, curved hair — like an airline pilot — and a hand held out. “I’m Don DeLillo. I’m here to rescue you.”

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“Why is Don DeLillo giving me a popper?” I asked. We were in the back of a car driving down Varick as day was breaking. The last thing I remembered were those agents, and someone who I thought was an overly articulate ninja storming in. “Smelling salts. You’ve seen the movies.” “But do you actually know what smelling salts are? Besides a little brown bottle with a screw cap that, without fail, always wakes a person. Fast. Narratively expedient enough to get a hero or heroine back into action.” “Ammonium carbonate mixed with perfume. You’re right, Tania; things that work fast are popular. One-liners. Drugs. Latex paint. If smelling salts actually worked outside the movies, you’d see people in offices waking themselves up with salts instead of coffee.” He handed me a gun. Ceramic. Undetectable. Expensive. “A Glock. Can you use one?” “No thanks. Got one at home.”

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“Is this the way Tania talks? Like a matinee idol. John Wayne. Humphrey Bogart.” “Lung cancer and lung cancer. But you don’t have to specify what kind of cancer, any more than you have to say those first names. Wayne. Bogart. No one says ‘United States of.’ America is a surname and it suffices.” “We’re a country of surnames. Americana. Libra. Underworld.” “Where are we going, Don?” “Overboard. Tango and Cash. Escape from New York.” “But I just got here this week.” “Oh shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t actually mean that we’d be leaving New York. I just, talk like that,” he said, coming out of reverie. “You’re booked to appear on The Today Show. You’ll need the gun and your missing chapter. We rescued you. You owe us this. Then you’re free.” We were pulling up to Rockefeller Plaza. “Who sent you, Don? Acronyms? CIA? FBI?” “Google,” he answered. “And this is as far as I can take you.” “Don has killed enough for one morning,” I said from the sidewalk.

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Chapter Fifteen

The “Green Room” is also slang for the gas chamber at San Quentin.

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Chapter Sixteen

Standing in the wings of the stage, I saw the show countdown and the giant cameras scuttle into position. “I’m Katie Couric, here with Matt Lauer, Ann Curry, and Al Roker. Coming up, it’s our special Today Show literary supplement. Author John Grisham will be out later to talk about his latest success, John Grisham’s All Rise: Hung Jury 2. But first, summer is a time for many to slow down a little bit and catch up on some good reading, and each year there is a runaway hit. This year, I, Tania is poised to take the summer by storm. Or maybe I should say, take the summer by force, into a trunk and to an undisclosed location. Tania, good morning. Nice to see you.” “Nice to be here,” I replied. “Tania, after all these years, you’re talking about your — can I call it an ‘ordeal’?” “That’s what my lawyers would like to hear it described as. So yes.” “Why now?” 91

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“Katie, during those years I, like many other people in this country, realized how the rest of the world sees us, and at first I was angry. But after a while I realized that it wasn’t a matter of countries, or policies, but the entire mad phantasmagoria of the capitalist illusion, which — are you familiar with the Situationists and radical subjectivity?” “It’s been a while since my sophomore year, but I think I can follow.” “That illusion has us believe it to be the only world. Even though ‘the spectacle’ is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images, we thought we could fight it with images, code names, press releases. We were wrong.” “Duh,” Katie said. “After much thought and the inevitable turn our culture has taken, I just thought it was time to tell the whole story.” “Couldn’t you have joined something relatively harmless, like a punk band?” “Sell jeans like the Clash? Or write a halftime anthem like Crass’s ‘Reality Asylum’? Or like when the Buffalo Bills started singing Bikini Kill’s ‘Rebel Girl’ to psych up before each game? Even though the idea that the Bills have started making their own jerseys during silk-screening workshops — often getting into locker room scraps over whether Bratmobile was better than Huggy Bear — is kind of cool. 92

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Katie, punk was still better before the jocks liked it.” “Or maybe entertainment is entertainment, Tania, and athletics were better before punks liked it? You heard about Sparky Anderson right? With the Detroit Tigers’ sudden, freakish success between 1984 and 1991, sixty-two-year-old club manager Sparky Anderson became a major baseball and international celebrity — an uncomfortable position for someone who claimed to be ‘ill at ease with fame and illequipped to handle the responsibility that accompanies success.’ “Prior to an appearance at the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports in New York City in July of 1993, Sparky suffered a heroin overdose. Rather than calling for an ambulance, his wife Carol injected him with illegally acquired Narcan to bring him out of his unconscious state. “On March 6, 1994, in Rome, Sparky overdosed on a combination of champagne and Rohypnol, which Carol later insisted was his first suicide attempt. Sparky returned home and soon faced his friends and family at an intervention over his continuing heroin addiction. He agreed to check into rehab. “A few days after arriving at rehab in California, Sparky told the nurses he was going out for a smoke. After finishing his cigarette, he jumped over the facility’s six-foot wall and caught the next flight back to Seattle, uh, I mean Detroit. 93

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“On April 8, 1994, Sparky Anderson’s body was discovered in the spare room above the garage, commonly referred to as ‘the greenhouse,’ at his Lake Washington home. A shotgun given to him by Pete Rose was found at Sparky’s side. “In the suicide note, written to his imaginary childhood friend ‘Boddah,’ Sparky quoted a lyric from Michael Bolton’s ‘Love Is A Wonderful Thing’ — ‘Birds fly, they don’t think twice. They simply spread their wings.’ Sparky’s body was cremated, with one third of his ashes scattered in a Buddhist temple in Ithaca, New York, another third in the Wishkah River, and the rest left in Carol’s possession.” “Katie, insane sects grow with the same rhythm as large corporations. It is the rhythm of total destruction.” “Consider John McEnroe. While competing in professional tennis, McEnroe developed a unique playing style, reminiscent of his epileptic seizures. The resemblance was such that spectators were occasionally uncertain whether he was playing or having a seizure. With intense touring, he began to suffer from increasing collapses and declining health. “Many of his infamous interview quotes were filled with images of emotional pain, death, violence, and urban degeneration. These recurring subjects led fans to believe he was talking about his own life. “The effects of his epilepsy and personal problems may have contributed to his suicide at the age of twenty-three. 94

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The night McEnroe died — mere days before he was to play at the U.S. Open — he watched one of his favourite movies, Stroszek by Werner Herzog. He later hanged himself in his kitchen while reportedly listening to Loggins and Messina’s Sittin’ In. McEnroe’s final viewing and listening choices continue to generate speculation as to the true reasons why he took his life. Some commentators hold that he simply wished to die, merely in love with the myth of the tennis star who dies young.” “Death has been domesticated,” I replied, “dying merely confirms the absolute irrelevance of the natural organism in the face of the social absolute.” “You’d certainly be proof of that. But Tania, did you know that no punk or radical is more dangerous than Mary Lou Retton? By the mid-to-late 1980s, Retton was a heroin user and alcoholic, and generally abused all intoxicants given to her. She was poorly groomed and rarely cleaned herself. Defecation had become her regular finale, and her fan base of maladjusted and hateful teenagers followed her every move. Retton described herself as ‘the last true gymnast.’ By this she meant that gymnastics itself had started as an embodiment of danger, anti-authoritarianism, and rebelliousness, but had been taken over by corporations and business concerns. Retton’s performances were thus meant to return gymnastics to its roots. 95

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“After several talk show appearances cemented her infamy she declared, ‘The cops and the media are what made me.’ Police regularly stopped her performances, charging Retton with assault and battery or indecent exposure many times. The venue owners frequently had to close competitions after only a few grand jetés because Retton destroyed too much equipment. Her constant touring was only interrupted by long hospital stays — broken bones, blood poisoning, excessive trauma — or jail time. “When a 1992 competitive tour was stopped short by Retton’s arrest in Texas — after a lewd back-salto dismount — she was extradited back to Michigan to serve out the remainder of her jail sentence for an obscene handspring front. She had skipped parole the year before to go to New York for the filming of the documentary Hated: Mary ‘Lou Lou’ Retton And The Pas de Chat Junkies. After finishing her sentence, Retton told interviewers she no longer was considering committing suicide during a gymnastics performance. She explained that her prison stay had made her realize that being alive was both more beneficial to the sport and ‘more of a threat’ to her enemies and critics. Doesn’t that at least put her in the same light as the Clash?” “My ex-husband listens to the Clash because he’s too fat to reach for his Springsteen albums.” “Sorry, Tania, I guess you never saw that documentary on 96

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the Clash. Did you know that at dawn, Joe Strummer stirs, and if you listen carefully you will hear his cries as he greets the sun? Mick Jones then gathers the children and herds them along the branches. The chosen tree usually hangs over a river so that the Clash can relieve themselves from the branches without littering the ground. Some days, food takes precedence over mating. The troop moves out, leaping nimbly from branch to branch, searching for fruit. They like to eat all kinds of things — vegetables and fruits, insects, grass, roots, and small pieces of clay, which they chew and swallow, perhaps for salt and minerals. But they lust after crabs. When the urge for crabs comes upon them, Topper Headon, Paul Simonon, and the others will head for a mangrove swamp. They descend from the trees and take up positions in the water beside a crab hole. A crab comes out of its hole and Topper snatches it out of the water. He has a way to deal with the claws. He grabs the crab from behind as it emerges from its hole, and rips off the claws, then devours the rest of the crab. Sometimes Joe isn’t quick enough with the claws, and the crab will latch onto his fingers. There is a shriek as he shakes his hand, jumping around spasmodically in the water, trying to get the crab off. And this is why the Clash is the only band that matters.” “The culture industry does not so much adapt to the reactions of its customers as it counterfeits them.” 97

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“Maybe you’re right, Tania. Punk never changed the world. But what other options are there for people who want to be revolutionary without, oh . . . say, killing people?” “Dance music. Katie. Dance music. There was a reason the SLA’s national anthem was the easy listening hit ‘Way Back Home’ by The Crusaders. All music decreed as revolutionary — rock and roll, punk, hip-hop etc., are only temporarily so, because it’s all narrative music and all narrative order is in the service of the ruling ord —” “Huh?” “It’s simple. When something is deemed revolutionary it’s only because it’s useful at the moment to the elite. Dance music, on the other hand, is repetitious, evolutionary, and resists all narrative save for the individual listener’s own experience. Mass subjectivity. If you want a classless society, you can start with classless music.” “So Tania, you’re saying that Detroit techno or New York garage is more revolutionary than the Sex Pistols?” “Absolutely.” “Acid house, Madchester indie-dance?” “Yes.” “Bleep and bass, Belgium hardcore?” “Of course.” “Breakbeat hardcore, Goa techno, intelligent trance?” “Why not.” 98

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“Neo electro, gabba, happy gabba, terrorcore?” “Sure.” “Florida breakbeat house, ambient jungle, drum and bass?” “All of them.” “Gangsta hardstep, techstep, neurofunk, handbag house, speed garage?” “Whatever. Sure. “ “Awkward–European–guy house, electro-tech gangsta squelch, whack-shaff, aggro-beat, do si dope, allemande and bass?” “Now you’re just making them up, Katie.” “Dance music isn’t a living art, like poetry. Did you know I like to get stoned and write poetry? Here’s something that ran in the ‘Talk Show’ issue of Zoetrope: I should have been a pair of ragged roach clips Lost in the carpet of a silent IHOP. Should I, after marijuana and round discs of ice, Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis? To have squeezed the universe into crack cocaine To roll it toward some overwhelming blunt, And this, and so much PCP? — It is impossible to say just what I mean! 99

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We have lingered in the thirty-six chambers of the Wu By club girls in platform shoes and cocaine crowns Till ODB wakes us, and we drown.

“I like the last line. The rest is questionable.” “I find your actions questionable. Taking lives, bombs for a ‘better’ world. What could justify it?” “I tried to move the SLA away from violence. Given enough time, all violent political fictions become benign fictions. Ideas get tenure. They calm down. This is needed. Look at the word ‘anarchist.’ Eighty years ago it conjured up images of maniacal Italian barbers wheeling apple carts of cast-iron bombs into packed churches. Now it can describe a vegan juggler at a drum circle in Akron.” “I know, every time I look at a vegan anarchist juggler I think to myself, ‘Whoa, watch out church and state. Someone’s got your number.’” “But nothing could justify the SLA’s actions to your satisfaction, because we stopped halfway. Stalled at thuggery, too insane, spent — ten years of trying to stop imperialism and one million peasant farmers still died because they woke up on the wrong side of a geopolitical paradigm. But at the very least, the SLA and others openly declared war. A stuttering and badly articulated declaration, but an open one.

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Would you accept terrorism as legitimate combat if we had lied and called our actions peacekeeping, or observation?” “Oooooohhhh,” she said, shaking her hands in mock awe. “That’s sooooo deep, Tania. Like the moral summary at the end of MacGyver.” “Isn’t your next guest Haywood Jablowme? I’m a big fan.” “Sorry to our viewers at home. We’re getting a little off topic. I think it’s time to move along to Tania’s reading. Folks, this going to be special.” The lights dimmed.

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The Death of the SLA As Recounted by Coroner Thomas Noguchi M.D. (inspiration for TV’s Quincy, BTW) On 16 May 1974, SLA members Teko and Yolanda entered Smith’s Books in Los Angeles, California, to shop for safe house supplies. While Yolanda made the purchases, Teko, on a whim, attempted to shoplift a copy of Listen to the Warm by Rod McKuen. Foiled by a security guard, Teko brandished a revolver while screaming, “Death to the fascist cheetah.” The guard knocked the gun from Teko’s hand and placed a handcuff on his left wrist. At this time, Tania, on lookout in the waiting van, began shooting into the store from across the street with a submachine gun. Everyone in the store took cover and became confused as they pondered why it was such a distinctly American response to be turned on by the sight of a woman with gun. The three escaped as Tania reloaded and emptied the magazine again, only becoming more sexy and more confusing. While the whereabouts of Teko, Yolanda, and Tania were, after that, unknown, the rest of the SLA had gathered at a May 17th poetry workshop that was, in fact, a trap set to ensnare the group. That afternoon, more than 400 Los Angeles Police Department officers, along with the Federal

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Bureau of Investigation and Los Angeles Fire Department, surrounded the neighborhood. The squad leader of a Special Weapons and Tactics team used a bullhorn to announce, “Occupants of 1466 East 54th Street, this is the Los Angeles Police Department speaking. Come out with your hands up!” After several other attempts to have the SLA surrender, a member of the swat team fired tear gas into the house. This was answered by heavy bursts of automatic gunfire from inside. In total, thirty-five canisters of tear gas were fired into the house. Two hours into the siege, the house caught fire. There are several theories. The first is that the combined heat from the tear gas canisters (which use a chemical heat reaction to create the gas) ignited. The second is that of the over 3000 rounds fired by the besieged SLA, one stray struck their own bombs. Or both. The police again announced, “Come on out! The house is on fire! You will not be harmed.” Automatic weapons fire continued from the house. Two 103

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women charged from the burning building, still firing at the police, and were both shot — one in the head, one the spine — by snipers. The rest died inside the crawl space. Cause of death? Due to the heat of the fire, their rounds and bandoliers began exploding, disfiguring the bodies, but examination of the lungs showed scorching from breathing fire while still alive. It was behaviour in the face of living flames I have never seen in my thirty years of pathology. After the shooting stopped and the fire was extinguished, nineteen firearms, including rifles, pistols, and shotguns were recovered. In spite of the 3772 rounds fired by the SLA, no uninvolved citizens or police officers sustained injury from gunfire. They missed 3772 times. And. For hours after, while the fire smoldered,

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ammunition exploded, fiery, upwards, out of the house. Like toast.

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“If you’re just joining us, I’m Katie Couric and we’re talking to the author of I,Tania. You know, I just have to ask, what were you trying to accomplish? A people’s Oxnard? A collectively run Ann Arbor? Dope, guns, and bleeping in the streets of Greenwich?” “What would be wrong with a people’s Oxnard, or a collectively run Ann Arbor? And as far as I know, there has always been dope, guns, and bleeping in the streets of Greenwich.” “Maybe dope and guns, but never bleeping. No, not bleeping. Not in Greenwich.” “No, you’re thinking of Westport. They legalized dope and guns, but bleeping in the streets of Westport is pending a plebiscite.” “Whatever, Tania. You were like William Katt in The Greatest American Hero. You put on the clothing of revolutionaries but lost — no, that’s not it — you couldn’t even understand the manual. You were bad writers. Endless dialogue and sudden, pointless acts of violence because you’re bored with the stor —” Now! “Then let’s fly away on a wing and a prayer!” I screamed, pulling out the gun and putting it to Katie Couric’s head.“Believe it or not, I’m taking you off the air,” pulling her close as a shield in front of me.

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“You know,” I said to Katie, “it’s like a light of a new day, from out of the blue. Breaking me out of the spell I was in. Making all of my wishes come true.” I shot out the studio window and we stepped into the street. People backed away. Katie would be an excellent bargaining tool. And who knows, she might even come around to our point of view. “Where are you taking me?” “Oh, there are writer’s retreats we can hide out in.” “All of America’s heroes escape to some tropical or sylvan ideal after facing down ‘the man,’” Katie snarled. “New life. New Name. Escaping America only makes you more American. You think you’re living out Ten Days That Shook the World but you’re really living out The Firm.” “I make a mean piña colada. Organic too.” “Organic is the antidote sold by the poisoner.” “I think that last Botox shot slipped and went into your brain. C’mon Katie, there’s no place like a writer’s retreat!” “Thank god.” “There’s no place like a writer’s retreat! There’s no place like a writer’s retreat! There’s no place like a writer’s retreat! There’s no place like a writer’s retreat! There’s no place like a writer’s retreat! There’s no place like a writer’s retreat!”

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“And that,” I heard people speaking, “is the real reason Katie Couric left The Today Show, never to be seen again.” “I thought she went to CBS?” “Never to be seen again.” Something was missing. My world had gone gray. “Tania got quite a bump on the head. We kinda thought there for a minute she was going to leave us.” It was Cinque coming into view as I awoke. “But I did leave you Cinque — that’s just the trouble,” I said. “And I tried to get back for days and days!” Fahiza came over to my bed. “There, there, Tania. Lie quiet now. You just had a bad dream.” “No!” I said. But they wouldn’t listen. “Sure — remember me — your old pal Cujo?” “And me — Gabi?” Coming to the edge of my bed was Zoya. “You couldn’t forget my face, could you, Tania?” “No. But it wasn’t a dream — it was a place. And you and 109

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you and you and you were there.” “Oh, really, Tania,” Cujo said as all the others started giggling. “But you couldn’t have been, could you?” “We dream lots of silly things when we —” “No, Fahiza. This was a real, truly live place. And I remember that most of it wasn’t very nice. Prices were determined by market demand. And market demand was faked. The wealthy had been installed through hegemony as leaders of culture and commerce. No one could pronounce ‘aluminum’ correctly. All I kept saying to everybody was, ‘I want to go home.’ And they sent me home.” I looked around the room and their faces, though polite, were waiting for me to stop. Cujo whispered, “Dork.” “Doesn’t anybody believe me? Cinque?” “Of course we believe you, Tania.” “Oh, but anyway, Teko, we’re home! Come on up here.” “Ruff! Ruff!” Teko barked happily.

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THREE YEARS LATER

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A fantasy based ever so loosely on the real-life heiressturned-urban guerilla, Tony Scott’s film version of I, Tania is so over-plotted that it’s borderline incomprehensible. Without a flow chart, figuring out exactly what is happening in this film is a real challenge for much of the time. Of course, if you care about things like logic and coherence, you probably shouldn’t be watching I, Tania in the first place. Its director says, “This movie is about heightened reality,” which means it’s a chance for him to blow things up, employ a lot of stunt people, and fool around with a variety of film stocks and processing techniques. What I, Tania is really about is the opportunity to make use of one of the hot young things of the moment, British actress Dame Judi Dench, in a role that allows her to wear racy berets, brandish shotguns, give a lap dance, and make speeches about the inherent contradictions of third-way social spending in a terribly posh accent. Working with Dench is a frankly unnerving range of performers. Any film that finds places for Mickey Rourke (Teko), Delroy Lindo (Cinque), Jacqueline Bisset (Yolanda), Dabney Coleman (Zoya), Lucy Liu (Fahiza), and Christopher Walken (as Tania’s father) has got some serious explaining to do. I, Tania only wants to give you everything. Freeze-frames,

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blurred or stuttering slo-mo, fast-forwards, filters, strobe flickers, 360-degree pans (of mescaline sex), Dench’s pelvic cleavage. A jump cut splits apart a single facial expression. As played by Dench, Tania is a bratty tomboy, a toughtalking daughter of both privilege and the revolution. Sad Tania whiles away her adolescence sulking by the pool with her nunchakus before finding a surrogate father and lifeaffirming vocation in “legendary poli-sci grad student” Teko. There’s lots of shooting and fist-raising salutes, etc. It’s all part of Scott’s expressed desire to ignore facts and turn Tania’s life into “a punk-rock fever dream.” He delivers on that dubious promise with the same overcaffeinated camerawork that’s made much of Scott’s oeuvre — from Top Gun to Man on Fire — a numbing chore. It’s not that Scott can’t stage action. Pulses will pound watching Tania bust in on an orphan mill that kidnaps developing world children for Satanic celebrities. In this respect, I, Tania is abusively moronic enough to inspire something like pity as the movie staggers toward you like a jabbering tweak freak, reeking of chemical sweat, a feral blankness in his beady eyes. He corners you with jumbled stories of wild times and severed limbs and “this one time at a Foucault symposium” and, affronted that your attentions flag, throws a sucker punch

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about his sick kid in the hospital. You listen, and you feel yourself getting stupider. — Jessica Winter, The Village Voice (with files from Brian Joseph Davis)

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Acknowledgments

Michael Holmes and all at ECW, Conan Tobias, Kevin Connolly, Damian Rogers, Emily Schultz, and everyone I stole from. Sections from this work previously appeared in Matrix, Test, and Taddle Creek. The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the government of Symbia.

I, Tania is the highly fictionalized true story of the rise and fall of the Symbionese Liberation Army, as it never happened. Join urban guerilla and heiress Tania, the SLA’s real leader, as she relives one of the strangest episodes of the 1970s while writing her memoirs in the present day. It’s a crazed, bawdy and seditious charge through pop culture, politics and the meaning of fiction itself. Be prepared for ample “reeducation” on the following topics: •The hidden Marxist message behind Cujo •How Don DeLillo can kill...with his mind •Who’s scarier: John McEnroe or Ian Curtis? •What designer label to wear to a bank heist

Do violent debutantes have a place in political struggle? After Tania and Katie Couric’s climatic talk show battle, you’ll know the shocking, surprisingly funny answer.

ECW Press $19.95 Distributed in Canada by Jaguar

ISBN-10: 1550227823 ISBN-13: 978-1550227826