Those were the years when desperate times called for desperate measures, when clever slogans and petition drives were nothing more than catnip for parents and liberals, when a little bit of damage was necessary to start the day.
Gramsci said so. Mother Jones said so. We were more than ready to pull up our face bandannas and go forth with our spray cans under cover of the night to paint the dreaded circle A for Anarchy, the brand of freedom so scary the Mayor denounced us as teenage hoodlums, the principal vowed to suspend us through exams. Idle threats for the papers.
We were so underground, they had no clue who we really were. Hoodlums, did they say? Like the wood shop toughs with their jacked-up Corvettes and girlfriends wielding lipsticked cigarettes? Or the drips and dweebs, the stoners denned up under the far end of the bleachers? Not us, my friend, not us. We were B-plus in chemistry and Twentieth Century history, a wiz at calculus, and a varsity fencing champion since sophomore year. Our level of class analysis took genuine brain cells. But Anarchy was nothing without action. Freedom wasn’t just for the books. Every few days our mark appeared on the Village Green war memorial boulder or in back of the pharmacy directly across from city hall. Under bridges and on the wooden signs for the zoo. The sad-faced hawks and owls forever caged for rehab deserved our revolution, too. When the uprising would start, no one could truly know. Where wasn’t so hard to imagine. Definitely not in the suburbs. So we piled into the train, all three of us bound for Trump Tower.
Remember, those were the years before the years we have now, which are, in fact, so much worse, the years before you had guards at every golden door dressed like snapping turtles in black armor while cradling a shotgun like a loaf of Parisian bread. In those days you could spin through the revolving doors without causing any alarm, take a gander at the salmon marble waterfall, take a whiff to wonder if it didn’t smell like recycled sewage water. You could buy a foamy cappuccino to sit at peace at the atrium tables. You could observe them in the flesh, true tourists from Indiana and other brainwashed, whitewashed plains of America, glad to ride golden escalators and dangle crisply edged shopping bags containing slave labor fashion from the Philippines. People who believed the answer to every evil was a good wholesome smile.
Who could disagree? Not us. Not with our rigorous study of human psychology. We knew that the revolution must start with the spontaneous combustion of the rigid and comfortable. We were set to commence at 11:23. Suggested operations: blood red dyes for the waterfall. Nails and tacks to jam the escalators. A banner of Gramsci two stories tall. One of us—okay, me—harbored the notion of releasing a white dove into the atrium sanctuary, a symbol of peace that wouldn’t be rapidly tackled and handcuffed, but the logistics proved too complicated and cruel. No bird deserved to be stuffed into a day pack for a train ride and long walk to Trump Tower. Maybe during the mayhem I could open a door to encourage a sidewalk pigeon to fly in.
As the time clicked close, electricity filled the air. Or maybe not. Maybe nothing changed, and that was the point. Guardedly, we eyed the atrium patrons in search of our fellow dark webbers—at least a dozen of us had been on the message chain—but it was hard to say for certain that anyone looked anything but moronic and content, which, perhaps, was the same as traveling undercover. Next to us sat a lively family with a cluster of shopping bags around their feet who spoke a language that sounded like fast talking hissing and meows–Arabic? Malaysian?—while three boys plopped on the floor loudly ground the plastic tires of their tinker toy trucks across the tiles. Surely, no revolution there. Nor off in the corner, a hunched bag lady with her laundry cart trying not to be noticed under a rubber tree. Were those government agents? A pair of suits with simple black coffees and plain black socks? Spies from our message chain? In our preparations, had we neglected to include the simple fact of paranoia? But action, true action, revolutionary action is nothing if not grand improvisation. Perhaps our allies, our fellow perpetrators had yet to arrive. A surprise invasion planned precisely for 11:23. Masked banditos tumbling through the golden doors with a megaphone shouting “La Revolución! La Revolución!” True revolutionaries from the jungle.
11:23.
11:24.
11:25.
Did we learn that morning we were cowards? Did we already know? Our hands deep in our day packs but not one of us daring to be the first with our masks. Never mind the spray cans. The dark web. Hadn’t we suspected we were trading secrets with liars. Even if we’d been bold, what could we have done? A giant red A painted on salmon red marble like a tacky tourist stunt. Not us. Our convictions too good to be wasted on Trump Tower where even the air smelled like the sewage of money.
11:27.
We bolted, liberated to do some true damage to this Capitalist blimp of a city. But where? Central Park? Those rock outcroppings humped like dinosaur-age creatures looked too old and noble and enduring for our monkey work. The subways, those rolling terrariums of graffiti not long ago, now so clean, their downcast riders deserving of a little respect. Now until we got out at Greenwich Village and wandered east and more east did we find ourselves reaching blocks ripe for the spray can. Vacant brick tenements. Broken windows. Burned out cars. Weedy lots. Hollow fire hydrants. And our mark, our circled red A here, there, and everywhere like the copyright symbol amid the faded graffiti foliage as if the revolution had sacked this city and moved on, leaving us, three newbies from the suburbs already too late to see anything but the abandonment that remained, the poverty of the ratopolis. Even then, we must have known our fatal flaw: We were destined to grow old.
Will Nixon’s poetry collections include My Late Mother as a Ruffed Grouse and Love in the City of Grudges as well as two town portraits in poems, Acrostic Woodstock and If Not in Heaven, Then in Saugerties. He lives in Kingston, New York.