IN '69, I WAS LESS INTERESTED in the domestic effects
of the Vietnamese conflict than in the devious
repercussions rumbling back at the dearest of all my country-sons,
especially on the most decadent shore, in evil's Avalon, a devil's
Mecca: California. Here are a few of my fondest memories from
the last days: an L. A. girl getting fucked by her G. I. guy against
the cold pane of a second-floor window while two youth teams of
astonished stickball players stare up at the cool lunar looming of her
rump and wonder what, in the heart of their pants, is up . . . a bunch
of doe-eyed Berkeley High brats getting the shit kicked out of them for
joining all the Cal drones and the broader law of dropouts in a protest
at the Oakland Induction Center . . . a cop barely escaping his
overturned cruiser in an action on Telegraph Ave--he runs pell-mell like
a blue-breasted chicken back and forth between posses of ecstatic
protestors.