by Max Cossack
Soren was transgressive himself. He was an outlaw. He was a dangerous dude, whose communism lent an aphrodisiac spice not only to the conversation, but to the sex, which in her case, turned out to be great for him too.
As this particular Saturday afternoon proved once again.
5 Struggle Session
Mason Offenbach waited for his chance to confess. Mason had started coming to DCA Struggle Sessions a few months go, imagining they would give him the chance to engage in a long-term inner battle to improve himself through recognition and correction of his failings. Confession and apology to others were natural tools of this training.
But so far this Saturday evening, no chance. Like tonight. Six people had come, but as always, four were spectators. Professors Soren Pafko and Claude Rivelle had taken over again.
“Of course I don’t denigrate teenagers,” Professor Rivelle said.
“Yes you do,” Professor Pafko retorted. “What else does it mean when you want us to stick to memes when we talk with young people and not try to confuse them with a lot of political theory. You’re saying they can’t handle theory.”
“Memes are effective,” Rivelle protested, his face pinking. “We all agree on that.”
“But the elitist thought underlying your words is that young people—the future of our Revolution—aren’t intellectually able to grasp genuine political theory. That’s really underestimating young people—”
“Who again and again I’ve called amazing, phenomenal even, because they are so bright and accomplished,” Rivelle said—
“Who you also accused of living in a different universe—” Soren countered.
“Which is something we have to take into account, that is, where the people’s consciousness is right now, as you well know, and which should settle your crazy insinuations against me once and for all.”
Soren retorted, “There you go again—using the word ‘crazy’ with its well-established historical arbitrary unfairness to women.”
“I never said a word about women,” Rivelle protested. His face shaded to red.
“But you play on the vocabulary of those who denigrate women,” Soren said. Unlike Rivelle, who seemed to Mason angry and defensive, Soren uttered each successive sentence with businesslike confidence, as if he were hammering one nail after another into a plank and Rivelle was cheap plywood.
Soren went on. “You ratify and endorse that violent language every time you use it. You give sexist terminology credence and weight and credibility.”
They were in the furnished basement of Soren’s big old house half a block up the street from the campus, where the DCA conducted all its biweekly Struggle Sessions.
Soren lounged on a brown bean bag chair. Rivelle sat opposite him on the beige carpet, cross legged, his mug of green tea apparently forgotten in all his tension. Mason hadn’t seen Rivelle take a single sip since he’d brewed the tea and set it down next to him.
The way Rivelle kept waving his arms, Mason expected him to knock over the tea any second. It was like watching two cars headed towards each other on a one-way street.
As always, Andre and Shaniqua huddled together silent in their corner, saying nothing. Deirdre sat on the floor leaning against the sofa, her tanned legs stuck straight under the coffee table in front of her. He couldn’t help noticing the sparse dark hairs sprinkled on the brown skin of her thighs. He reproached himself for his sexism—what if she caught on?
From time to time Deirdre sipped from the bottle of water she held in her lap. She had a small mouth. She hadn’t used it to speak tonight, but then, she had never spoken in her few previous Sessions. And Mason really wanted to hear her voice.
Even though Mason was now a full DCA member, he hardly ever got to talk in the Sessions himself. And as a living embodiment of overcoming privilege, he knew he had something important to say. Very important. He could set an admirable example for other affluent young people. As he worked on his ambition to become a better person, he wanted to share his process with others, especially Deirdre.
But with Soren and Rivelle consuming every session with their endless feud, Mason hardly got a chance to say anything ever.
Three nights previous, Soren and Rivelle had argued over whether the School of Engineering should teach tensor calculus, which Rivelle said engineers needed to understand in order to handle electromagnetism and continuum mechanics, subjects Mason himself had already mastered as an undergraduate.
But Soren said the school should focus instead on a correct theoretical understanding of the harmful role so-called “scientific” thought played in perpetuating white supremacy.
That argument monopolized the entire session, and Mason never got to explain his epiphany just that day about his own eurocentrism, so that everyone—including Deirdre, of course—could see how far he had come towards becoming the revolutionary human being he knew he could become in time.
After that session, Mason had asked Soren why engineering students shouldn’t learn something about calculus, “I mean, if we’re going to build bridges and other things that won’t fall down.”
Soren had barked at him. “You’re actually listening to Rivelle’s reactionary crap? That’s not what I brought you here for.” Then Soren suggested maybe he might have to revert Mason from full membership to provisional, which would have meant trouble for Mason, since Soren was not only the DCA Minnesota Chief Organizer but also Mason’s personal faculty advisor and day-to-day boss.
This night, as Rivelle’s arms and hands flapped about in ever longer loops under Soren’s relentless hammering, Rivelle’s elbow finally smacked his mug of tea. Rivelle scrambled up and grabbed a rag from the utility sink in the laundry room. He rubbed the rag around the carpet, absorbing some tea and redistributing the rest into a dark wet slop. He had to make three more trips and grab two more rags before he soaked up most of his mess and took his seat again.
Through the whole rigamarole, Soren smiling sat on his beanbag chair, beaming like a Buddha.
The pause after Rivelle seated himself again gave Mason his opening. He asked everyone, “You know what Chairman Mao said?”
The magic word “Mao” won everyone’s attention. Mao was the great revolutionary who had led the Chinese revolution and founded Communist China. His writings were sacred texts. Mason had studied them every night for weeks, trying to pry out whatever profound insights lay behind the maxims that seemed on the surface so simple-minded and obvious. He knew the insights must lurk in there somewhere. Why else would Soren and every single visiting DCA speaker talk about Mao so much?
All eyes turned to Mason. Even Deirdre’s. Better make it good. He quoted Mao from memory:
‘The fundamental question is always the same one. Who are our friends? Who are our enemies? That is the main question of the revolution’.
Soren didn’t seem hostile, just curious. “And that applies here how?”
Everyone looked at Mason. Mason hadn’t thought ahead. He had assumed his recitation of the Mao truism would satisfy the moment. Apparently, he had to connect up the quotation with the topic Soren and Rivelle were actually talking about, which he recalled, was correct agitation and propaganda.
To stall, he dribbled around in the backcourt. “Well, that’s what this discussion is all about,” he said. “And all our Struggle Sessions.”
“How is that?” Soren asked.
Mason said, “You don’t see?”
“Not yet,” Rivelle said. “Help us out, please, Mason.” He was a much nicer man than Soren. Mason wished Rivelle were his boss. Rivelle was always polite and kind, although he carried himself with a kind of secret sadness.
“Well, really, it’s about whether we ourselves strive to become friends or enemies, “Mason said. “Of the revolution. And that in turn requires us to appreciate both simple ideas expressed in simple pictures and more complex thoughts which we experience as political theory.”
“Okay,” Rivelle said. Deirdre nodded as if she were following. Andre
and Shaniqua stared through dark hooded eyes.
Mason went on. “You see, it’s dialectical. If Comrade Rivelle’s idea is the thesis and Soren’s is the antithesis—the opposite idea—then finding a way to combine them would be the synthesis. That’s Marxist dialectics. And it’s the internal contradictions that cause the thesis and antithesis in the first place, right? So to arrive at the synthesis, we have to resolve the contradictions.”
Rivelle asked, “Which contradictions?”
Good question. Then, as if a bolt from atheist heaven, came the lightning flash that lit Mason’s path.
Mason took it to the hole. “Take my own experience. Raised wealthy. Went to a so-called good school surrounded by high-achieving white people and Asian-Americans, satisfied with my plans for my life, going to follow the path my parents laid out for me, become an engineer or do something else other middle-class kids choose.”
Mason looked at Deirdre. “But there was a contradiction. I was ignoring the oppression. All around me. Ignoring the exploitation, the marginalization, the powerlessness, the cultural dominance”—here his voice rose—"the violence.”
Mason took a deep breath. “I grew up in a magic circle in the magic light. And the other day I’m looking at a picture from Venezuela of all those darker people who are stranded outside that circle, locked out in darkness. You see?”
From people’s expressions, they didn’t. Mason said, “I failed to grasp my own privilege until it came to me in both words and pictures. Theory and memes, both.”
Deirdre spoke for the first time. “Which means?” Her voice was surprisingly low and carried a throatiness which somehow encouraged him.
Mason spoke to her alone. Forget the others. “A comic strip. Words are the thesis. Pictures are the antithesis. A comic strip is the synthesis. A comic strip synthesizes words and pictures.”
Rivelle nodded. Soren frowned. Andre and Shaniqua gave slow suspicious nods. Deirdre smiled.
Mason recalled that he’d started this Session eager to confess. And he had, sort of. But the momentous event was that Deirdre Katzenberger had spoken to him.
6 A Madhouse Saturday Night
Saturday night, Gloria and Elinor stuck around the Madhouse for the rowdy music and a few more beers. The band in which Gus played bass seemed to have no name, but it pounded out a steady rock beat, and Gloria and Elinor spent the first part of the night dancing, mostly with each other.
Once in a while, they found themselves facing off individually with random clumsy men. In the crush of the crowded Madhouse dance floor, the challenge was to dodge the big rural bodies colliding in a human demolition derby.
When his band took its second break, Gus stepped off stage and signaled to Gloria. She and Elinor exchanged glances, shrugged and followed him through a back door out into the asphalt parking lot. He led them to the small pond on the edge of the lot. The pond shimmered in the pool of yellow-white light cast by the bulb from its tall aluminum light tower.
The air was cool and sweet. A myriad of white and yellow stars dusted the black cloudless sky. The evening beauty took Gloria to memories of other lovely evenings in other places. She didn’t want to disturb the moment by talking.
It seemed Elinor and Gus felt the same. For a while, the three looked out in silence over the pond through a sparse thicket of pine and leafless birch into the dark fields beyond.
Gus broke the spell when he took out a pack and offered Lucky Strikes to the women, who turned him down. Gus shrugged and lit one up and blew a series of thick O-shaped smoke rings out over the pond.
In response, Gloria reached into her jacket pocket and took out an envelope. She removed from it half a big cigar she’d started two days previous and lit it. She blew her own heart-shaped smoke rings through his O’s.
Gus grinned at her. Elinor rolled her eyes at the other two and made a show of stepping a dozen feet away.
Gus said, “You mind if I take a look at that painting of yours?”
Gloria asked, “Why?”
“It’ll be no trouble for you. I could come by your office anytime you want.”
Gloria said, “Or I could bring it out to your place.” She was eager to see a jackpine savage shack.
“Even better,” Gus said. “Tomorrow morning about eleven?”
“I’ll be there.”
He wrote his address on a slip of paper and handed it to her. They finished their smokes and went back into the Madhouse. Gus and the band resumed blasting out their rock covers and Elinor and Gloria danced another hour and then drove back to Elinor’s place.
7 The Lunker
The first time Soren mentioned money was during Soren and Flo’s second month.
One morning he sat at her kitchen table, dispensing aphorisms on Che’s guerilla war theories around sticky chunks of Flo’s vegan French toast, when she asked what she could do to help the DCA.
He blurted, “Well, you could join.”
Her eyes clouded over. In an instant, he corrected his near- calamitous blunder: “And there are many other valuable ways to contribute without taking that particular step, which of course isn’t for everyone.”
Soren spotted the quickening in her breathing. Soren had an unerring instinct for fund raising. His legendary prowess in landing donors was a skill that helped vault him to local DCA leadership in the first place.
Ned Olson—the chapter’s single outdoorsy comrade— nicknamed him “the master angler, because of the all the lunkers he brings in,” which led to talk of expelling Ned, until he apologized and explained that “angler” is a fisherman and “lunker” is a fishing term for a big catch.
To Soren, fundraising was a matter of timing. You had to know when to ask. So, when Flo asked what she could do, he let it go. He just let ideas float in her mind for a few weeks while he continued to stock the pond with subliminal suggestions about the financial challenges the DCA chapter faced, and so on.
The right moment came one afternoon when she was driving him back to her house, inspired by the anti-war rally they’d joined on the lawn of the State Capitol. An African American lesbian nun slammed a brilliantly seething eruption of rage in the form of a poem. A Native American tribal elder banged his drum and led the crowd in rhythmic chants they supposed was his aboriginal language. The didgeridoo quintet brought the event to an exhilarating climax.
Flo’s eyes glowed all the way home. Without even pausing for wine, she rushed him into the house and dragged him up the stairs to bed.
In the afterglow, Soren sensed his moment. He knew from one or two disappointing experiences that a single misstep could skunk his chances for all time. But he trusted his instinct. The time had come. With a relaxed flick of his mental wrist, he cast: “Remember awhile back when you asked me what you could do for the Movement?”
She nibbled his ear. “Of course. And I’ve been thinking about it ever since.”
Careful not to spook her, he said, “Really?”
“Of course.”
“I didn’t want you to think I’m putting any pressure on you.”
She nibbled again. “Not at all. I knew I was going to give something, but I had to consider how much. Look things over with my accountant. And you are sensitive. You stayed patient.”
Soren knew not to yank on the line. He said nothing.
She continued, “And now I’ve done all my homework.”
A gentle tug: “I’ll just let you be. I know your heart is in the right place.”
She bit. “No, I’m there.”
A clean strike, and Soren let her run. She continued, “I’ve settled on an exact amount. I only hope it will be enough to make a real difference.”
Careful to keep his voice steady, he reeled her in. “How much were you thinking?”
“Oh, how does five hundred thousand sound?”
“Five hundred thousand dollars?”
“Yes of course dollars, silly. It’s only a pledge for now. But I’m pretty sure I can make good on the entire amount in jus
t a few months.”
“That’s honestly wonderful,” he said, honestly. He grabbed her and clutched her close. She was the lunker of his life.
8 Sunday in the Jackpines
The Sunday morning after their Madhouse Saturday night, Gloria and Elinor breakfasted on cereal and yogurt in Elinor’s kitchen. Then Gloria drove to her campus office and retrieved the boxed-up painting and lugged the thing out to her VW and loaded it into her back seat. She followed her phone’s GPS directions out to the address Gus had given her.
Her drive took her past several miles of October farmland. Clumps of post-harvest yellow stubble were scattered over the dirty fields. When she reached the beginnings of the jackpine forest, she turned right down a side road and drove another mile until she spotted a black and white “Dropo” sign over the mailbox. She turned right again and drove up a long gravel driveway.
She arrived eleven AM sharp. Gus must have heard her coming, or maybe he counted on her being punctual, because he was waiting outside of a two-story frame house. The neat white home looked nothing like the shack Elinor had promised. Gus waved and directed her over to a green shed on the packed dirt nearby. The shed was maybe twenty by twenty feet.
Gloria stopped her car in front of the shed’s double doors. Gus walked in front of Gloria’s car and pulled the left front door out and open and then did the same with the right and walked into the shed. She drove in after him and turned off her VW and got out.
“Let’s see what we got,” Gus said. He opened the passenger door and pulled the front seat forward and leaned in and with no apparent effort lifted out the box and propped it on the floor against a shed wall.
Gloria looked around. Hundreds of hooks sprouted from the shed’s pegboard inner walls. Tools hung from nearly every hook, or sometimes lay across them. Gloria had never seen so many tools. A few she recognized, hammers and saws and the like, but many were mysteries. What were those long gray metal things with the hooked ends for? And the one that looked like clamps? What did Gus clamp with them? No clue.
