January 28
by Amy
My Dad wasn’t impressed. He offered Jack some bourbon, which was turned down flat. The group was into weed, not booze. But Jack looked past it and continued talking to him about world peace and equality. How the working man was being exploited by the system.
Dad looked up at Jack and asked him what experience he had as a working man. Jack said he didn’t, but that he came from a proletariat family. He asked Dad to consider the precepts and the way society is structured. My Dad thanked him for his time and showed him the door.
Jack and I left that night and went to Nimby’s, a nearby coffeehouse. Then we went back to his place and I spent the night. He didn’t ask me what my Dad might’ve thought about everything. What we believed stood on its own merit.
The next morning, I called my Dad. He told me that he thought Jack probably had good intentions, but that he’d seen it all before. The road was a dead end, and that if I was going to involve myself with people like that, I should probably know what I was getting into.
I asked him what he meant by that. He told me he wouldn’t talk about it over the phone.
Later on, he told me about how he became involved with a similar group back in his day. How he saw how the poor were getting poorer and the rich didn’t care. How the way you go about doing things is almost as important as the reason you’re doing them.
He asked me if I was sleeping with Jack. I’ve always had that kind of honesty with him, so I didn’t hesitate. I told him yes, but I’m not in love with him. I could tell that he wasn’t pleased about it. There wasn’t any yelling or anything. It was more like a grimace.
The group devolved into something uglier. I didn’t like the methods and didn’t like how I was being treated. It was around that time I met Coleman. He’s more of a friend than anything. He’s a writer with an underground rag, so he knows everybody.
He got me the job here at the offices. He introduced me to other people in the Movement. I drifted towards better scenes, without leaving a bad trail behind.
I don’t regret my time in the other group, since it wizened me up. I’d like to think that It made me more effective. I don’t have as much fear, and I’m not afraid to confront authority. It was good training, I think.
