Original Sins (38 page)

Bud was challenging Morris's term “channel”: “The time has come for the current phase of disorganized protest to be replaced by a dedicated cadre of revolutionary visionaries. Lenin says, ‘A vanguard which fears that consciousness will outstrip spontaneity, which fears to put forth …'”

“Yeah, yeah, we've all read
Toward the Seizure of Power
, Bud,” growled Morris.

“It's not Lenin,” Justin informed him. “It's Guevara.
Guerrilla Warfare.”

“Fuck it man! I know where I read it! It's Lenin.”

“Wanna make a bet? Five bucks?”

“You're on, buddy.” They shook hands, glaring.

“That vanguard stuff always sounds so elitist to me,” mused Maria.

This triggered a discussion of Democracy, Fascism, State Socialism, and Communism. Raymond reclined on his pillow, feeling stupid. He'd give anything to be able to join in. He glanced at Emily, who was gazing at Justin's profile. Did she wonder why Raymond wasn't participating? Did she realize he wasn't able to? He sat up straight and assumed a severe expression. He sneaked a glance at Maria. Dating had never been easy for him. He'd held himself aloof in Newland. Now that this was no longer necessary for self-preservation, he didn't know how to behave any different. Whenever he tried to get romantic up here, girls always said, “Oh Raymond, let's just be friends.”

But goddam, he didn't
want
to just be friends, he wanted to get laid. Everybody's favorite kid brother. How had he gotten stuck with this image? Maybe he did need him a Pancho Villa mustache. He'd worked hard to get rid of the attitudes Newland had saddled him with, but he couldn't seem to overcome his courtliness in favor of a quick screw. Newland insisted that the sex act Matter. (Pleasure didn't matter.) In Newland it mattered because everyone eventually knew about it. The town offered no entertainment except sex, no birth control except the Ten Commandments. They used sex as a carrot over a donkey, to get people into marriage, babies, jobs in the factories. Witness Jed.

But this wasn't Newland. He'd watched the other guys in FORWARD for pointers. The glances, gestures, remarks that indicated they wanted a screw, but not babies, mortgage payments, and dinner parties. He had to get laid soon. It was getting ridiculous. It was interfering with his political work. FORWARD members had a responsibility to take care of their personal needs as efficiently as possible, to free up their energies and concentration for what was
really
important—the building of a just society.

Maybe Maria would be open to helping him out, now that she and Justin were on the rocks. He'd admired her right from the start, especially her sharp intelligence. Emily was bright, but in Newland she'd devoted herself to concealing it. Over the months he studied Maria closely, the way she drew so deeply on her cigarettes, the way she swung her head to get her hair out of her eyes. Ever since his documentary, she seemed interested in him too, jokingly calling him “our resident redneck.” She was a couple of years older, a junior in college, but seemed to respect him, often made comments about his “guts” and “backbone” for being able to extract himself from Newland. Possibly, he reflected, she could be persuaded to take an interest in other portions of his anatomy as well. He liked the notion of an experienced older woman who'd initiate him sexually, like the South Sea islanders. Of course Raymond, Maria, the actual individuals made little difference. The point was to take care of one's petty personal needs in a fashion that would be most beneficial to the group as a whole, and enable one to funnel one's personal energies back into the collective.

“Without vision there can be no strategy,” Justin was saying. “And without strategy, actions are meaningless flounderings.”

“We're not getting anywhere on this statement,” Maria interrupted.

“Christ, we're going to be here all night,” Morris grumbled.

“I need this thing for tomorrow morning,” Bud reminded them.

“Well, tell me how we can write a position paper when we don't agree on what we're doing?” Justin demanded.

“Obviously a couple of our theoreticians have to give in,” said Maria.

“We could vote,” Raymond suggested.

“Vote?” Morris sneered. “What do you think this is? A student council election? There's an ideologically correct position. It's just a question of allowing the consensus to emerge.”

Raymond felt humiliated. He thought he understood about Democratic Centralism. Clearly he understood nothing. He'd made a fool of himself. When would he learn to keep his stupid hillbilly mouth shut? Emily smiled at him with sympathy. Fuck her sympathy! She knew even less than he did. Where did she get off, giving him that Southern Belle smile?

“How about if Morris and Bud have an arm-wrestling tournament?” Maria suggested.

“Get off us, Maria,” Morris growled.

Maria, Emily, Ralph, and Raymond sat and listened to the debate as though watching a tennis match, with Justin as a linesman who corrected quotes and statistics.

“… democratic participation in the decision-making process and …” insisted Morris.

“No revolution is ‘spontaneous,'” replied Bud. “They're staged, manufactured by the few people with vision and courage.”

“Debray says, ‘It is always the movement which precedes the organization and the political strategy which follows, or which takes shape at the same time as the involvement in the action.'”

“… catalyzing energy among the most deprived …”

“… encouraging potential local leadership to adopt participatory methods …”

Raymond was impressed. He and the others, about all they could do was get out mailings and clean the loft. Here among Morris, Justin, and Bud was where the real action was. God, if only he'd read and understood enough to be able to quote Lenin and Marx like that. He vowed to study harder.

“Debray says,” Morris concluded with a smug nod, “'There is no separation between masses and intellectuals, movement and party, those who theorize and those who act, between “leaders” and followers.”'”

Justin looked at his watch. “I'm sorry, guys, but I've got an appointment in fifteen minutes.”

“Who is she?” asked Morris.

Justin smiled. “That's none of your business, is it?” Maria twitched. Justin caught her eye, then turned his profile to her.

“How about this statement? I need it in the morning,” Bud reminded them.

“Well, I hate to pull rank,” said Justin, “but …”

“Like hell you do,” murmured Maria.

“… I have been at this longest. FORWARD was my conception.”

“Yes, and you just happen to be paying the rent,” muttered Maria.

“I've listened to what everyone has to say. And I have to insist on this one point: FORWARD has no hierarchy and no inflexible ideology. You dig?”

Raymond listened with awe as Justin summed up the two hours of discussion in a handful of eloquent sentences: “… liberating ourselves from the assumptions of a racist society, formulating new identities based on a fresh analysis, changing that society's network of organization and control so as to include the dispossessed …”

He paused. “Are you getting this down, Maria?”

There was a long silence while Maria studied her fingernails. Finally she looked at Justin. “Why don't you just take your Brotherhood of Man and shove it, Justin?”

Justin, laughing, turned to Morris. “She's cute when she's angry, isn't she? So who
is
going to write this down?”

“I will,” offered Emily.

“Stay out of this, Emily,” snarled Maria. “Write it down yourself, you fucker. What was all this big talk about ‘training each other in our specialties so that we could become interchangeable and practice an equality lacking in society at large'? I haven't seen you exhibit any interest in learning how to run the mimeo, Justin, or go for Chinese takeout.”

“Let's face it: because of my ruling class privilege, I have skills and training it would take years to develop in someone else. We should think of the group more as an organism, each individual being an essential limb.”

“So you're the prick, Justin. And what am I? The asshole?”

Raymond stood before the mirror in his bathroom and practiced: “Uh … hey, baby, how bout you and me …

“Maria, it's come to my attention that, uh …

“Maria, I was just wondering if you'd like to …”

The strong silent approach: Alone in the loft he'd turn to her, put his hand on her thigh …

He'd shaved his beard, leaving the mustache. It definitely made him look less cuddly.

He should court her. Candy, flowers, singing telegrams. He'd ask her to dinner. He knew he was being childish. Certainly Justin never suffered from timidity like this. He marched to the phone, picked it up, and held it to his ear, as the dial tone switched to an angry whine, and then to nothing. She'd laugh at him, turn him down with a pat on the head. She might even mention it to the others.

He slammed down the phone, threw himself on his bed and masturbated. As he lay with his hand full of semen, he took satisfaction in the knowledge that he had no Kleenex to clean up with. He'd made an effort to reduce his life to the essentials. After a lifetime surrounded by his mother's gewgaws—samplers, plastic teepees, family trees, mugs from Ruby Falls and Rock City and Gatlinburg—it was a relief to live in one small room with nothing in it except a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling and a mattress salvaged from the incinerator room. He
chose
to live as Negroes in the South were
forced
to live, so that he would never become softened by creature comforts into settling for the status quo. His one indulgence was a trench coat like Justin's, which he hung with care on a hanger on the back of his door.

Wind off the Hudson was gusting around his windows and fighting its way into his room. He felt grim satisfaction as goose bumps crept up his arms.

He jumped up and stalked to the phone. With his free hand, he dialed Maria's number, clearing his throat. When she answered, he froze. After she'd said hello several times in an increasingly annoyed voice, she whistled through her fingers and nearly broke his eardrum.

He flopped onto his bed again and looked around the bare room. Cold terror began to creep over him. He recognized it from his first days in New York. He would die alone in this room, his corpse unfound and unmourned. He would simply cease to exist, missed by no one, having left no mark on the world. He breathed deeply, but the terror kept coming. He moved his arms, blinked his eyes, touched his tongue to his nose, to prove to himself that he still existed.

“Who
still exists?” he asked himself.

There was only one cure. He searched among some books on the floor by the bed and found the photo from his room at home of the hanging elephant. He stared at it and felt the terror halt Maybe he didn't know who he was, but he did know who he
wasn't:
He wasn't part of that howling mob of demented hillbillies.

As the terror slowly receded, Raymond began to remember who he was—FORWARD'S resident redneck, a regenerate Southerner who'd had enough brains to leave, a dedicated revolutionary who was devoting his life to the betterment of the lot of those dispossessed by the social system he'd grown up under. Maria, Justin, Morris, Ralph—they'd mourn his death, tend his corpse …

He laughed aloud. What a silly thing to be worrying about. He was nineteen years old, for Christ's sake, and in perfect health. He blew a huge sigh of relief, put down the photo, and picked up
Das Kapital.

Raymond stayed behind after the next meeting to stuff and address a mailing about the availability of his documentary. He folded, licked, and stamped with machine-like precision. Soon irritation was making his movements jerky and causing him to rip stamps in half. He stood up and lit a cigarette. Trying to let it hang from his lips, he paced the loft. The truth was, he was bored. The folding and addressing, frankly it was hard to see what it all had to do with restructuring the social system of the South. He drew deeply on his cigarette as he'd watched Maria do, and exhaled. And how come he was having to do this all alone anyhow? “It's your ego trip, man,” snarled Morris when Raymond had asked for volunteers. Well, if it was, then he might just as well trash the whole thing. Ego trips weren't what FORWARD was all about. If Emily or Maria had been there, he'd have taken the prints of the documentary and flung them from the window. As it was, he contented himself with kicking a metal waste can across the loft

The door opened and in walked Maria. “I got halfway home and felt guilty about you here slaving away in the night all alone,” she explained.

“Oh, no problem.” Raymond waved his Cigarette dismissingjy. “But I'm glad to have company.”

He worked for a long time with renewed efficiency. Maria addressed as he folded and stamped. He kept glancing at her. She knocked him out. A woman you could work shoulder to shoulder with. Of course they personally counted for nothing, but drop by drop their efforts would eat away the boulder of human misery.

When they'd finished, he took a breath, cleared his throat and croaked, “Maria?”

“Yes?” She looked up.

“Uh. I have
to
discuss something with you.”

“Yes?”

“Uh …” Jesus, how could he get out of this? “What's going on with you and Justin and Morris?”

She looked at him with surprise. “Why do you ask?”

“Uh, yes, well … Maria, I feel like my political work is suffering.”

“You do? How come?”

“Well, because of … you know, tension, and all like that.”

“Sexual tension?”

“Uh …well …”

“Between you and me?”

“Uh …”

“Well, so do I. But that's easy enough to deal with, isn't it?”