Read Online First Citizen by Thomas T. Thomas - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Thomas T. Thomas
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love in those months was Mandy Holton, one of the teachers. Through all the scatter and the chatter of the Commune, she moved silently, gracefully, like a tigress among the monkey tribes.
I never saw Mandy wear anything but the same faded jeans—the sort that went white in the seat with wear and washing—an Army fatigues jacket over a rib-knit gray sweater, and waffle-stomper track shoes with white socks. She was utterly unconcerned about appearances. Her dark-blonde hair was chopped off just below her ears and, although it was always clean, she never brushed or fussed with it.
She was double-jointed, had to be, the way she could sit on the floor in full lotus for hours at a stretch. Other people got restless, shifted, fidgeted. But Mandy, absorbed in the lessons, forgot her body entirely.
There was a time, about four hours one Sunday afternoon, when I would have picked up an AK-47 and followed her anywhere. It was a rainy afternoon and we were shut up in Mandy’s room on the third floor of the Commune house. She was in a sharing mood and I was hanging around, moth to the flame. I had brought a bottle of not too young zinfandel and she broke into her stash of seedless stuff—hash oil for some twisted cigarettes.
Mandy rolled her wine around in a plain tumbler and talked about capitalism. The zinfandel got her on the subject of the wine country and the Napa Valley lifestyle, which she detested.
“… all the white pig and the super rish— rish —rich,” she slurred, high on my wine, then giggled. “But never mind. Someday, when we’ve taken the System apart, put it back together the way the people want it, I’m gonna have a place of my own—our own—up there. F’rall our friends. Place to get wasted. Swing all the facistas right at the gate. You’ll see ...”
And after we were floating off the floor, quiet for twenty minutes or so, Mandy just said, “Oh, shit!” and unrolled her sleeping bag. It wasn’t some musty old green Army bag, but one made out of red nylon, slick as satin, with a gray plastic zipper that didn’t cut if it got in the way.
While I was still contemplating the bag’s sexy fabric, Mandy was peeling off her jeans and a pair of green nylon panties. “Come on!” she crooned, trying to work my belt buckle around my waist. Then I had a chance to find out if she was really double-jointed. She was.
I left her wrapped in that red satin and sleeping like a baby. The last pull in the wine bottle wiped my throat out with acid and musk. I wrapped my pea coat around me and went walking in the rain.
Doing sex with Mandy, I had imagined, would be some kind of political anthem or maybe an impersonal tumble. Instead, she was sweet, and a little clingy, not to mention good fun, and almost certainly a virgin. Walking along with the big, slow droplets hitting my face, I began to wonder what my responsibilities to her were—a new thought for the brat. No way to tell until we saw each other again, I thought ...
But soon good sense, or my sense of humor, reasserted itself. Mandy would always be a person who fit into her lifestyle, her doctrine, her opinions, and her capabilities like a ballerina fits her leotards. There were no rough edges, no seams, no gaps for the Bourgeois Bandit, Jay Corbin, to fit into. Her completeness was frightening—and I would do best to keep my distance.
She must have had the same thoughts. Because when we did meet, the following Tuesday, the cadre leader was back in place, wearing her white-seated jeans and her seamless rhetoric.
A few weeks later, I graduated from the Alternative University. There was no formal ceremony, no valediction; you just learned as much as you could absorb and then drifted on. But the subterfuges of the curriculum committee made the credits earned there mostly transferrable. By that time, my head was settled and a mean streak of careerism had surfaced: I believed more than ever that law should be my career.
So I wrote to my father, who
I never saw Mandy wear anything but the same faded jeans—the sort that went white in the seat with wear and washing—an Army fatigues jacket over a rib-knit gray sweater, and waffle-stomper track shoes with white socks. She was utterly unconcerned about appearances. Her dark-blonde hair was chopped off just below her ears and, although it was always clean, she never brushed or fussed with it.
She was double-jointed, had to be, the way she could sit on the floor in full lotus for hours at a stretch. Other people got restless, shifted, fidgeted. But Mandy, absorbed in the lessons, forgot her body entirely.
There was a time, about four hours one Sunday afternoon, when I would have picked up an AK-47 and followed her anywhere. It was a rainy afternoon and we were shut up in Mandy’s room on the third floor of the Commune house. She was in a sharing mood and I was hanging around, moth to the flame. I had brought a bottle of not too young zinfandel and she broke into her stash of seedless stuff—hash oil for some twisted cigarettes.
Mandy rolled her wine around in a plain tumbler and talked about capitalism. The zinfandel got her on the subject of the wine country and the Napa Valley lifestyle, which she detested.
“… all the white pig and the super rish— rish —rich,” she slurred, high on my wine, then giggled. “But never mind. Someday, when we’ve taken the System apart, put it back together the way the people want it, I’m gonna have a place of my own—our own—up there. F’rall our friends. Place to get wasted. Swing all the facistas right at the gate. You’ll see ...”
And after we were floating off the floor, quiet for twenty minutes or so, Mandy just said, “Oh, shit!” and unrolled her sleeping bag. It wasn’t some musty old green Army bag, but one made out of red nylon, slick as satin, with a gray plastic zipper that didn’t cut if it got in the way.
While I was still contemplating the bag’s sexy fabric, Mandy was peeling off her jeans and a pair of green nylon panties. “Come on!” she crooned, trying to work my belt buckle around my waist. Then I had a chance to find out if she was really double-jointed. She was.
I left her wrapped in that red satin and sleeping like a baby. The last pull in the wine bottle wiped my throat out with acid and musk. I wrapped my pea coat around me and went walking in the rain.
Doing sex with Mandy, I had imagined, would be some kind of political anthem or maybe an impersonal tumble. Instead, she was sweet, and a little clingy, not to mention good fun, and almost certainly a virgin. Walking along with the big, slow droplets hitting my face, I began to wonder what my responsibilities to her were—a new thought for the brat. No way to tell until we saw each other again, I thought ...
But soon good sense, or my sense of humor, reasserted itself. Mandy would always be a person who fit into her lifestyle, her doctrine, her opinions, and her capabilities like a ballerina fits her leotards. There were no rough edges, no seams, no gaps for the Bourgeois Bandit, Jay Corbin, to fit into. Her completeness was frightening—and I would do best to keep my distance.
She must have had the same thoughts. Because when we did meet, the following Tuesday, the cadre leader was back in place, wearing her white-seated jeans and her seamless rhetoric.
A few weeks later, I graduated from the Alternative University. There was no formal ceremony, no valediction; you just learned as much as you could absorb and then drifted on. But the subterfuges of the curriculum committee made the credits earned there mostly transferrable. By that time, my head was settled and a mean streak of careerism had surfaced: I believed more than ever that law should be my career.
So I wrote to my father, who
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