“And did you also pipe bomb the Santa Monica headquarters of the Socialist Workers Party?” I pressed.
“They were both successful missions,” Joe confirmed. “We been goin’ out to the desert to practice on trees and things, but dealing with crowds is different. I can’t expect my men to be perfect without live practice. We need hands-on experience.”
I studied Joe. “People could have been killed in the SWP building or in a stampede during the tear gassing...”
“Just Jews or Trots,” Joe snorted. “They ain’t people.”
My breath caught. I slumped in my seat. I was running into violence, or the threat of it, on almost a daily basis being a radical activist and reporter for the Left, struggling with “the question of armed struggle,” as we called it. One day someone on my side would ask me to prove my loyalty with a gun. I had to know—before that moment occurred—what would I do? My personal problem with violence was that it didn’t stay political. Political principles got lost when you killed somebody’s family or friend, or even a bystander who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Perhaps I was capable of bombing a political target, but could I ever point a gun and shoot someone, even if they were clearly “the enemy”? Shit, I couldn’t even feel good about violence against Morris on a picket line.
“I got a garage full of guns,” Joe offered. “In case you were gonna ask.” He leaned toward me, looking to the left and right, and whispered low to me, “Nazis see the human race divided into different breeds. Man is part of the animal world, not above it. He has to perform within nature’s laws. The Chihuahua is different from the German Shepherd. They are not equal; each breed has its own role.” Joe’s features seemed to come together and formed a volcanic crater. Gone was his lost-boy affect. In this moment I saw that hatred formed the core of Joe Tomassi. Here was the mean in him. He hated everyone who wasn’t on his side—Jews, blacks, gays and Catholics were just at the head of his list.
In a moment of recognition, I realized that hatred for one person or hatred for all of humanity must be made of the same essence. Then came the disturbing thought—maybe my motivations and Tomassi’s were similar. I hated my father. Hated him for twenty-six years of humiliating me for who I was. And on top of my anger toward him, I’d also accumulated a rage at the heterosexual world for its humiliations of my people. Was my hate somehow the same as Tomassi’s? Was that why I was able to recognize it? I shivered in the booth’s summer heat. Joe was studying me, his eyes fixed on mine. Perhaps rage was always a cornerstone of activism.
What I really wanted to ask Joe was what made him go to war against the world. I knew he would balk at this personal question, but it was also one I asked myself. I was sure that the political wars of my life were good ones. I was on the side of human rights, the right side. But I knew I had little understanding of my internal war between BeJo and Rachel, safety versus sexual attraction, or the subcutaneous war between my father and me. In these wars, I wasn’t sure who I was fighting or why.
Trying to move out of my own confusion, I asked, “How many men have you got in your Nazi Liberation Front?”
“Enough,” Joe hedged. “And they’re all young guys, ready for action.”
“Can we expect more bombings?”
Joe threw his arms up and laughed. “Do you want an invitation to the next one?”
I twirled the flat Coke at the bottom of my glass and decided to call Joe’s bluff. “Why not? Since I’m now your favorite reporter. Yes, I would like to be on the scene.”
My dare excited Joe. He leaned forward, bringing his face close to mine. “We’re looking into that Commie center, The Midnight Special Bookstore,” he whispered.
I pulled away from Joe, shocked to hear the name of the well-known activist bookstore in Santa Monica. Like Sisterhood Bookstore was for feminists, it was a haven for Leftists.
Then he stopped and leaned back away from me. “Let’s slow down and see what you write about me first.” Joe waved again for the hapless waitress.
“Do you want to order German chocolate cake with me? I love German chocolate,” he added.
I broke bread with Joe, wondering if he knew there was nothing German about the cake in front of us. Between bites, my Nazi detailed his goals. He told me he thought whites were an “occupied people.” He and his kind would build an international coalition which would act as the leadership for all of Aryan Nation in America. At the coalition’s core would be a leadership organization composed of his NSLF, which would meet and plan political strategy. “We have workshops on weaponry and how to use explosives,” he explained. “The anti-war movement has taught the Establishment what can happen when the masses get their shit together. Now the government is aware that the possibility of revolution exists. Only what we have in mind is white-power instead of this power to the people crap.”
I noted on my pad the parallel of how both the far right and the far left had come to the same conclusion, that violence was the only effective means of forcing political change. The goals of the two were opposite, but the strategies similar.
The strategy, according to Joe’s gospel, would be “to incite blacks to riot in the streets.” This would get white people riled up enough to put down the blacks. “The whites will say, far out!” he explained. In the confusion, National Socialists will move in and take control of the government. Law enforcement people from federal to local would turn his way once they saw that his Nazi army wanted to preserve the domination of the white race.
In his diatribe I recognized our own FBI’s strategy of using white people’s fear of anything black or brown, even Martin Luther King’s peaceful NAACP, as unspoken permission for the government to kill minority activists like the Black Panthers. But Joe’s thinking that all whites would approve a fascist take over of their government struck me as farfetched as the SLA’s philosophy that all workers in America would side with them in an inevitable socialist revolution.
“Leaders of revolutions get killed,” I said to Joe, pausing to let my words soak in.
His mouth fell open and he stared at me as if I’d just taken away a toy. A wrinkle of little boy vulnerability moved almost imperceptibly across his forehead. Then the glassy-eyed look brought the curtain down over whatever humanity Joe had left. Abruptly he slid out of our booth and stood up. “I don’t think I’ll see my thirtieth birthday,” he said, staring down at me.
I reached out, alarmed that he was leaving. I had more questions. “What about a second interview? We just scratched the surface today.”
Joe reached into his pocket and tossed a bunch of dollars on the table. That’s when I saw the pistol in his belt, a square-handled gun that looked like a German Luger. I could swear I almost heard his heels click together.
“I’ll call you when I can,” he said. “Just remember, the future belongs to us who are prepared to suffer the consequences of disrupting the silence of darkness.”
Later that night, I awakened from sleep bathed in sweat, frightened by the remnants of a dream. Trucks on a freeway were chasing me down a long narrow exit ramp. Nazis were taking over the Hollywood gay community.
Throwing back the covers over BeJo’s sleeping form, I saw the clock: five a.m. I searched the darkness for something to take my mind off the truck terror, and then I remembered Rachel’s letter. There had to be some sweetness there.
Tiptoeing out of the bedroom, I entered The Tide’s office, closed the door behind me tightly and turned on the light.
Earlier BeJo had made me a big dinner and we’d talked all evening. I’d had no privacy in which to read the letter. Over the meal BeJo had had told me that Pody had called her.
“I think she likes me.” BeJo had smiled, her chestnut eyes blinking coyly.
I’d winced, deciding not to tell her that I’d given Pody permission.
BeJo had also asked me, “Are you getting serious with this woman, Rachel?”
“No,” I’d answered. “I may be seeing someone else too.” The senten
ce had fallen out of my mouth, appropriate to nothing and no one.
“Good, I don’t like it when you focus on just one woman. Besides me, that is. I worry things might change.”
I tried to correct my lie. “I’ve decided that this woman, as you call her, is going to be my next. Nothing to worry about,” I’d concluded, “Just another affair.”
There it was—slippage over a fine meal of meatloaf and potatoes.
“Then stop sneaking into the house at midnight like you did last week,” she continued.
I picked up the salt and shook it vehemently. “You think Pody’s cute, don’t you?” I tried to sound casual. “Did she ask you out?”
“She’s not bad.” BeJo also tried to sound casual. “A little silly, but cute.”
“She’s been hinting around, trying to ask me if you were non-monogamous too.”
“Why wouldn’t I be, if you are?” BeJo pounded the table with the pronged end of her fork.
“So, I told her you slept with any butch that asked.”
“You what?” BeJo swatted me hard with a kitchen towel “Tell me you didn’t say that!” she menaced.
I ducked further blows. “Of course I didn’t say that.”
We’d both fallen asleep a few hours later, but now, in the early hours of a new day, I was awake and alone. Opening the drawer I had stuffed the letter in, I brought the folded yellow sheets under my desk lamp and read,
Jeanne, after each time we see each other i can only think of you with delight and joy. i walk around my house, around the streets, in the hills, thinking of you. i find it is absurd for me to try to do anything else. my mind is one track…
but in today’s dawn, i am filled with many mixed feelings, remembering the joy and pleasure i felt with you and inside myself when we made love…my thoughts and feelings are as scrambled as the eggs I would like to be making for you right now…the caution and withdrawal that is inside me…the wanting to protect myself and knowing that in some ways it is too late. i already have let the feelings i have for you“out.” my agenda had been to not care about anyone beyond a certain point. lying with you in bed last night, i realized that i have crossed over that point, i guess all that i am saying is that it is scary to me now, jeanne. i see that fear on your face too.
i want you to know: i like you, love the feel of you, think you have a beautiful smile, love looking into your eyes, care about you and your feelings a great deal, and…i love you.
i want to hurry and wake you…but i will wait.
Rachel
Whoa! I dropped the pages on the black lacquered desktop. So much in a short paragraph that stepped over so many lines. My chest felt suddenly expanded. She liked me as well as loved me! And yet…I pushed back away from the desk. Wasn’t this too much, too soon? And Rachel also sounded more afraid of love than I was. I had assumed I was the wingnut in our relationship and she was my rock. But this letter wasn’t written by a rock person.
Rachel seemed afraid of being involved and involved with me in particular. I was sure the lesbian grapevine had informed her of my past, so perhaps she was afraid of being just another in a long line of Córdova’s ex-girlfriends. This I could understand, and could prove to her otherwise. Yet the other fear she was talking about seemed to be a deeper caution that was her own. “My agenda had been to not care about anyone beyond a certain point.” That sounded like a decision rendered before we’d ever met. When? Why? And over who? Rachel had never talked to me about such a “certain point.”
I slumped in my chair, conflicted between confusion and joy. The woman said she loved me. But, Christ, did I want that? Lust was one thing, love was another.
I heard sounds from the bedroom. Quickly I tossed the letter into my briefcase.
BeJo’s head poked through the door, “Good morning, honey, want to go out to breakfast?” she said.
I turned my back to her afraid she’d see the ambivalence written all over my face. “Sure,” I called to her, “that sounds like a good idea.”
Chapter 18
The Picket Line
[Los Angeles]
June 10, 1975
It took me a week to get Tomassi’s story out of my insides and into an article. Penny had bumped it up to a cover story, my first! I’d paid the price internally, but was now excited about seeing Joe’s evil deeds, and my byline, splashed all over the front page of next week’s paper. Working late that night at The Freep, I ended up passing out on the cot I kept stashed along the wall in my office.
My ringing private line woke me. Falling out of the cot, I stumbled to my desk, and managed a disoriented, “Hello?”
“Is that you, Jeanne?” The intimate tenor of Rachel’s voice soothed me. “I thought you would be long gone from the office by now.”
“No, I’m still here.”
“I guess I need to schedule myself in as a story,” she said. “Did you forget it was Friday night? We have a date…I mean…we were supposed to see each other.”
“Of course I didn’t forget.” I tried to remember what day it was. “It’s still early…isn’t it?” I rubbed my eyes, looking around for my watch.
“It’s ten pm,” Rachel said.
“Really?”
“Do you still want to see me?” I heard the doubt in her voice.
“Of course.” The thought of crawling into Rachel’s bed and holding her felt reassuring. I paused, not sure I wanted to describe, or re-feel, my time with Tomassi.
“Is something wrong?” Rachel asked.
“I’ve had a tough week,” I said, my voice dropping low. “I saw good and evil staring me in the face. Only the good guys lost and the bad guys won.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I just finished writing about a Nazi who wants to kill everyone who’s not white, and he’s still walking around free. But this afternoon, I listened to a judge sentence Z Budapest to jail and forbid her from ever reading the Tarot again. The LAPD is trying to criminalize goddess-worship, yet it can’t put a Nazi behind bars. Where’s the justice in this country?” My words fell out in a small, tired voice. I was hunched over, my chin resting on my desk. “I’m so tired of fighting the pigs, Rachel, and seeing our side lose. I just want to sleep for days,” I whispered hoarsely.
“I heard about the Z trial. I’m sorry we lost that one, babe.”
“The good guys are supposed to win in the end.”
“You need to get out of that office.” Rachel’s voice was firm. “Come over here right now.”
I wiped my eyes with my shirttails. “Okay, I’m coming.”
I opened Rachel’s kitchen door without knocking. Her apartment felt like the only safe space in my universe. She hugged and kissed me before I collapsed onto her yellow padded chrome chair.
“We don’t need to talk politics,” she said, scrambling eggs at the stove.
“Good,” I mumbled.
“Besides, I’ve been wanting to ask you something about our relationship.” Rachel brought plates and took the chair beside me. She reached over and brushed the hair out of my face.
“Our relationship?” I mumbled, concentrating on getting my fork to bring the eggs to my mouth. I was so tired, I couldn’t see straight.
“There’s something I don’t understand.”
I watched Rachel’s mouth move. I loved watching her lips when she spoke. They were fine, thinly shaped, ribbons of seduction.
“Jeanne” She jostled my arm. “Are you listening?”
“Sure.” I leaned back against the kitchen wall. I could stay awake if I just rested there a bit. “Go on, sweetheart.”
“What I don’t understand about our relationship, Jeanne, is that when you’re with me, you are usually totally with me.” Rachel’s voice slowed as if she were aiming for precision. “And I love that. But when we’re not together I feel like there is no connection between us. Like, I don’t exist for you. You haven’t responded to my letter. You are on my mind all the time. But I don’t know that I am on your
mind at all. That you even think of me.”
Think of me, think of me. The words bounced in a row through my mind like sheep jumping a fence. How peaceful life would be if I only saw Rachel’s lovely face in front of me. Such a sweet thought I remember thinking as my eyes closed.
A loud knock woke me up. I sat up in Rachel’s bed, the morning sun daring my eyes to open. Rachel must have put us to bed last night. Now she threw on a robe and scurried out of the bedroom.
I heard another voice. Then, Rachel gasped, “Oh no!”
I put on a bathrobe and boxers I’d taken to leaving at Rachel’s and made my way to the kitchen. Delene, a friend of Rachel’s and still an employee at GCSC—one of our several moles there—sat on my yellow chair, huddled in tears with her head on Rachel’s shoulder. The soft-spoken butch lived in the fourth bungalow a few doors down.
She looked up, startled to see me; her gaze drifted behind me toward the bedroom, and then returned to me.
“Oh. Hi, Córdova,” she said, her tone flat as a piece of lumber.
“What’s going on?” I asked the two of them.
“Delene just came to tell me…us…that GCSC is going to file an injunction and a restraining order. They want to stop the picket line in front of the Center.”
“Fuck,” I said, leaning against the kitchen’s doorjamb. Delene didn’t seem to want me interrupting her moment with Rachel.
“Can they do that?” Rachel asked me.
“They aim to try,” said Delene. “This morning I overheard Ken Bartley and Don Kilhefner talking about going downtown to the courthouse.”
“That surprises me,” I said to Delene. “Kilhefner is supposedly sick and on leave.”
“I’m sure it was him,” Delene answered without looking at me. Seeing me in a bathrobe seemed to bother her.
Rachel looked up at me. “Can we do anything, Jeanne?”
I moved to Rachel’s side. “Have you told anyone else on the Strike Steering Committee?” I asked Delene, using the protestors’ now more formal name.
“No, I came here first.”
“Then I need to make some phone calls now,” I said.
When We Were Outlaws Page 22