Kill the dove!

by Francis Kroncke

  Chapter 30: Aaren’s visit—Milan, FCI

  Witson wants to fuck Jared. Not his body—no, he’d never seek that passage of pleasure. He doesn’t even want to fuck with Jared’s soul. Rather, he wants to mess with his mind, just the logical synapses. How else but his Wargasm buddy? Ha.

  Aaren blames Jared for “All the shit that’s come down! That asshole motherfucking pacifist wimp cock-sucking altar boy . . .” Nasty words without end. Amen.

  To Aaren, Jared’s always been a “revolutionary barrier” and—because of his commitment to nonviolence—an “anti-revolutionary obstructionist.” She joined the draft raiders to topple him from within. She rejoiced when it appeared that events were going her way. But once Jared was arrested and off the streets, “the People” failed her or “failed themselves!” as she saw it.

  Jared, who was a leader for so many in the Resistance, vanished from their sight as jail, the trial and then prison swept him away. After the trial, the streets of protest became increasingly empty. She watched other activists and burgeoning leaders retreat and recede in proportion to their praise of the imprisoned Three.

  Aaren herself found Jared guilty on counts the government could never have trumped up. She was furious as she watched him—almost mystically from his jail cell!—weaken the Sisters. He weakened them by being the male they respected. And by respecting him, they lost the violent male warrior that Aaren has found within herself and which she knows her Sisters have to find to become true revolutionaries. Aaren seeks to transform every Sister into a violent female warrior, a Goddess of Iron and Strike. She despises the counterculture Earth Mothers who daintily hand-hoe their herbal gardens—although, deftly, she doesn’t alienate these Sisters since each is a potential convert.

  As fervently as a nun at prayers, she proclaims every day, “God, I hate him!”—him being Jared. God the Father is a distant second.

  Aaren’s hatred of Jared is fiercer than any love and extends beyond the throes of death. She wants him obliterated, squashed, delivered in bottles of blood and ashtrays of bones. From within her, at every waking moment and truly in every dream, rages a firestorm with which she wishes to incinerate him. She is napalm hungering for fetal flesh.

  So after hanging up on Witson, she laughs. It’s a brief chuckle that doesn’t convey the depth it caps. Just a short burst of air, quickly stopped, kept mostly inside, swallowed back like a cork settling atop a magnum of champagne that’s released only a slight hint of its effervescence. Her fearsome rage she presses inward, directing it towards a plan of revenge.

  “How can you work with Witson?” is a question Aaren ignores. Even her most terroristic comrades are taken by the question. They who bombed the Federal courthouse, they who burned down a black church and a synagogue, they who leaked the raid information they knew would drift towards the FBI and snare Jared.

  “Have you forgotten? Do you cower, now?” Aaren castigates. “I act to heighten the contradictions!”

  For sanction, she quotes from memory from their bible, Quotations from Chairman Mao, that ever-at-hand Little Red Book of the truly disciplined.

  Contradiction and struggle are universal and absolute, but the methods of resolving contradictions, that is, the forms of struggle, differ according to the differences in the nature of the contradictions. Some contradictions are characterized by open antagonism, others are not. In accordance with the concrete development of things, some contradictions which were originally non-antagonistic develop into antagonistic ones, while others which were originally antagonistic develop into non-antagonistic ones.

  These revolutionary dwellers inside the barrel of the gun, these Maoist aspirants, they could now understand her discipline, her sacrifice of working with the snitch, the turncoat. “Witson’s part of our plan now,” she says ever confident in the correctness of her own self-criticism. “He’s screwed on so wrong that now he’s opened a door for us!”

  Witson sets the meeting at the Black Forest, a south Minneapolis drinking hole where he’s met with her before when in deep Weathermen undercover. He knows she’ll feel safe there, although the place is bug heaven. He does it because he feels safe there.

  “The Forest,” as it is coded, has been wired since the beginning of the local Honeywell Project, formed in 1968. The Project confronts the major anti-personnel bomb manufacturer, Honeywell Corporation. “Marv Davidov. Check him. Russian Jew. Redlined long johns. Walrus moustache. Smokes like the fiend he is!” The Forest was wrapped even tighter with video eyes right after the break-in at the FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania. March 8, 1971. For Hoover, J. Edgar—a day of infamy!

  Witson is pleased that the Forest electronically hums. Especially since, over the last several weeks, the Feds moved to place an ear against, cast an eyeball upon, and goose, juice, drill, dope or tap any source however remotely related to the Pentagon Papers.

  Aaren appears in the way Witson always likes to remember her: black on black, severe, all in all looking like a starved witch. He’s always been fascinated by that hollowness of eyes which others try on only as cosmetic, but which, for him, defines her special allure. Aaren strides over, moving towards him on muscles about to explode. He senses, She’s primed!

  A few beers, a lot of bullshit bravado, awkward remembrances, and then, “What do you want? Drugs, get him to escape . . . rape me, what?”

  Witson grins like a kid, amused because she’s just as they first described her: How much the trained canary.

  “Hardly. Nothing like that.”

  Aaren’s eyes are vaguely visible, cloaked by the smoke of her desire to kill. Witson’s seen such eyes among the Phoenix Program teams, assassins who sport gentle killing eyes.“No. Listen. I want you to seduce him!”

  “Fucking what?”

  “Right. Good. Yessir, seduce him . . . with your Innocence.” He says it with a capital I. Then he pauses, slowly fills a glass with a high head and blows at the foam. “Right. Good. Seduce him.” Two breaths’ pause. “But not with sex. With love . . . adoration . . . saintly desire.”

  “Don’t fuck with me, shithead!” Aaren slaps him. She reaches across the table and rocks him with an open-palm whack! on his right cheek. He spills half of his beer. Only the darkness and smoke keeps them from becoming a scene. Witson is startled and a bit unsettled but his lightning-quick memory immediately compares forecasted alternative scenarios and thus he assesses this as victory. In response—a response that puts her in check—he leans closer to her but with no comment about her violence. “Right. Good. Yessir. Just like that. I want you to slap him silly with love.” Witson flops back into his chair, satisfied, observing. Aaren doesn’t respond.

  Later he’ll report, “Like a beaten dog, she was waiting for me to be her master!” exuding an air of success. But right now, “I want you to fuck his mind, blow his every cortical connection, and suck his soul dry! Get me? Right. Good. Yessir. I think you’re just getting me now, aren’t you. I want you to be Eve. Become the substance of his Innocence. Have him desire you beyond his lust for God. Slay him! Slay him with his own heart!”

  It sinks in slowly. Understanding seeps out slow and long, almost a whistle, “Jesus . . .” again, “Jesus!”

  Witson is patient.

  “Jesus, you’re fucking good, do you know that, Witson? You’re fucking good. Too bad you’re such a running dog. You’d’ve made a great Revolutionary. You really know how to work the contradictions.”

  Finishing on her own terms, Aaren gets up and quickly exits the Forest. There’s nothing more to say. She’s to become the shiv of ultraviolence that she’s always wanted to be. Hers, to enact the primal mythic revenge. Now that this role is granted her, she doesn’t care to consider its source.

  Early next morning Aaren draws up her plans of preparation. She’s charged up with commando ferocity. She works out with every armament available to her soul. She pages through her family’s photo album, her high school yearbook, gleans every feminine charm and wile from Ladies Home
Journal and other sputum of The Man’s Woman. Cleverly, she closely observes her Sister, Char.

  Although they’ve been living in the Bread and Roses commune, Aaren has kept her distance from the clique of Earth Mothers who spend their time talking about gardens and herbs, giving one another massages and—fools!—exploring erotic rituals for nonviolent sexuality. So during the next month Char doesn’t know what to make of Aaren’s sitting in the outer row of the weekly Sisters Weave meeting. Especially her joining in the singing, “Tis a gift to be simple, tis a gift to be free . . .”! She’s been coming faithfully. It’s strikingly clear to everyone that Aaren is—all of a sudden!—listening to the Sisters. She’s even taken to dining with them at their monthly “Bread of Life” meal—a potluck reeking with leeks, garlic, aromas of curried Indian delights, and littered with homemade breads, flat, round, and multigrain. To all accounts, this is a new Aaren. Not she of the bombast denunciation, the snicker and black humor. The new Aaren is a quiet, absorbed, attentive Sister.

  A rumor of hope sallies forth among those who want to believe that Sisterly love is converting and healing this slave of the Weathercock. When they dine with her—these once derisively called Earth Mothers—they pour her healing herbal teas. Touch her affectionately. Tenderly embrace her as “Sister Aaren.”

  Aaren loves it. What a gas! Like Judith infiltrating the Assyrian camp of King Holofernes she plots using their own arms to breach their security. Within, she continues to hate them as much as him. “Sissies,” she spits the words, reporting to her Revolutionary cell, “just dumbass broads who fuck nonviolently!” She spits again, for she wants only Sisters who are true “Sexual Revolutionaries!” Not just lesbian or gay or bisexual. She wants to destroy all those labels, those categories. And sexual violence is the way to shock, break down and break through the “false consciousness” that separates male from female. Shame, humiliation, ecstasy, pain, even gentleness—whatever is necessary to achieve orgiastic ecstasy, these are each and all the Sexual Revolutionary’s weapons. Aaren wants Sisters who embrace each other atop the bodies of slain cocks and cunts. Warrior Sisters who dream in blood.

  Aaren doesn’t tell Char about her upcoming visit with Jared. She doesn’t reveal anything to anyone outside her Maoist cadre about her plans. Even among these comrades she doesn’t reveal her full intent. This is a task that calls for a special Revolutionary discipline. It’s a mission that she believes only she herself, alone, can properly execute. For she knows Jared’s erotic desire, has received and repulsed it with ridicule and revile. Out loud to the Sky Goddess she swears, “I’ll suck his cock . . . with my ass! And chew him up with my foul mouth till he’s sucked into my bowels. And I’ll crap him out on Lake Street like a mound of dog shit! Steaming, like a cold-teat Sunday morning in January!” During this preparation Aaren majestically becomes the incarnation of Jared’s poetic tag, Liquid Fire.

  As Aaren watches Jared enter the visiting room she doesn’t notice the scar. She’s too self-conscious of her own looks. It’s been years since she’s worn a dress. She’s uncomfortable, blushes—an affect that she could not have commanded but which serves her well now. To the Watcher, Aaren appears embarrassed by the tryst, but in fact she’s momentarily overcome by a flush of inadequacy. Then, as Jared sits down, the slash appears. She gasps and reaches towards him. “Oh, dear, you’re hurt!”

  “All kneel at the Sixth Station of the Cross: Veronica wipes the bloody face of Jesus. Veronica steps forth to ease his pain with the coolness of her veil.”

  Jared reflexively recoils from Aaren’s advance. Not from an aversion to her, rather from her unintentional imitation of the cutter’s slash. He flinches and lurches sideways, almost toppling over and just misses plunging into another seat. Avoiding that, he does manage to grab the top of another chair and stand but only to trip over another chair leg, catapult backwards, ass dropping all two-hundred-forty-odd pounds of himself onto yet a third chair and, with the impact of a small boulder, it cracks. Painfully, but humorously to the Watcher, Jared crashes to the floor.

  Before he can recover his composure, the Watcher is on top of him. But realizing that they’re alone, and since this visit has a peculiar authorization, he uncharacteristically bends down and helps Jared up. Without words between them, the Watcher abruptly leaves.

  Jared motions Aaren towards a pair of seats by the back wall. He’s rubbing his bum. “Sorry, fuck, I’m a little jumpy. Sorry ’bout that. Shit.” No handshake, no embrace, no touching: these all lost their appointed places. Now they’re simply here, visiting, he and she.

  In the queer way that prisoners get over time—a queerness marked by a nervous directness, imbued with the undercurrent, “Are you going to kill me now?”—Jared asks, “Why are you here?”

  It’s accusatory and to him appropriate. It carries with it a subset of vigorous questions: How did you know I was here? When did you know? What do you know? Who do you know? But Jared frees only one and waits. He’s too stunned, happily paralyzed to even remotely consider that Witson has a hand in this.

  Jared is a prisoner. He yearns for redemption, forgiveness, absolution. So when she comes at him like a log floating towards a drowning man, he’s euphoric. She loves me! It conjures a fantasy image: She’s battered down the walls to rescue me! In a reversal of roles, she’s the brave Princess, atop a snorting stead, come to free the Prince from the Tower.

  Both are drawn into the play. Each is the other’s audience. Both suspend reality for the sake of the daydream. Together, they are willing playthings of the gods.

  Jared senses Aaren’s desire to touch him, to be touched by him. She struggling to find a way to convey, “I’ve changed”—but as a tactic, a ploy.

  He doesn’t know what to make of her apparent change. More, he’s frightened to know her here in this place. Warily, he shrinks from her touch, and all they embrace is the void between them.

  Jared squirms. It’s obvious that he’s tremendously uncomfortable. His anxiety makes him rub the scar.

  “Jared”—the way Aaren says his name almost sedates him—“Jared, I love you.” She says this with such genuineness, conveying such acceptance and invitation, that it doesn’t spook him as under past circumstances it would have.

  Jared looks at her with eyes distant, a bit entranced. She repeats, “I love you. And I bring you Char’s love. So much has happened since you were locked up. So much that I’m not sure I even want to try and explain it all. But know this,” he’s enrapt, “there are many, many people who are concerned about you. Who are attempting to keep track of you and who yearn for your release.”

  It’s a sweet sermonette, almost a bouquet. She’s showering him with the fragrant delights of a hundred rose petals. But Jared is still Lazarus in his wraps.

  “Who are you?” slingshots them back to their last meeting.

  Unexpectedly, Aaren bursts into loud laughter. Tears come to her eyes, not of sorrow but of comic release. Prepared as she is for this question, she prolongs her laughter as she stands up and moves one seat closer to him. “I am you, aren’t I?”

  It’s just too much, too quickly. All his dreams, all his wild imaginings, and here right now in this place! she’s rushing with bridal innocence into his arms. Sweetheart Aaren is smiling. Jared is the drowning sailor, paralyzed in his decision-making by the suddenness of the capsize.

  “That’s true, metaphysically speaking, we are,” Jared responds. Instantly, the oddity of his reply causes him to laugh at himself, bellow, sniggle, and through bombast of shared laughter they relax into the moment. “Metaphysically!” Jared repeats to himself, shaking his head, wondering what she’s thinking. He jokes, “Jesus, I’m a fucking professor even at the moment of my execution! Metaphysically, man! Fuck.” He watches her, grins. “You freaking crazy Weathermen are all metaphysical.”

  As if cued, Aaron moves quickly, states, “I’m not a Weatherman anymore. That’s over. You can ask Char.”

  Although her name was already spok
en, this is the first time it snags Jared. “Char? Why would you think I’d talk with her? In fact,” and here he starts to unravel again, agitated, “if you’ve spoken with her, you know how we last left each other.”

  Aaren is pleased. My plan . . . Perfect!

  Aaren reaches over and touches Jared’s hand. “I know. I spoke with Char right before I came here. The biggest news I have is that she and I are Sisters. It’s the most wonderful, incredible, totally far-out thing that’s ever happened to me . . . I am truly loved—by her, our other Sisters, and the Goddess.”

  Jared is deeply moved by her tone and the passion in her words. He’s aware of her touch, the smallness of her hand, her warmth penetrates him.

  “You are changed!” he says. It’s almost a benediction.

  Not missing a beat, Aaren responds to this next cue. “It’s true, Sweetheart, I am . . . and so, so many people are being changed. It’s almost like a new world being born.”

  New world. That’s what he heard from Carmody—another former seminarian— just about a year ago when five of the guys came to the Men’s Consciousness Raising Group all decked out in light purple silks. All they could talk about was, “It’s a new world out there. A gay world!” Then later that same night, the rugged, fearless, fuck the government! Dave said, “If you couldn’t sleep, you should’ve woken me. I’d’ve beaten you off.”

  Just during that single night, there were so many flip-flops. Not just from the dopers in the group who always seemed lost in time tunnels but from the in-the-street Resistance activists. It was like one day this, the next, that. Flip-flops from being a Baptist Jesus freak to a Maharishi devotee. From being a laid-back hippie to an evangelical small businessman: “Organic farming—this is pure!” It seemed from that night forward, flops were flipping from straight to gay, or actually for most to bisexual. Whatever!

  Yet Jared knows that stage center in the revue of the Best Flip-Flops is “Jared’s Great Escape.” And right now he doesn’t want to go there. So he shifts the topic.

  “Hey, the war’s still going on! Right.”

  “Oh, yes, right, I see, true. The war . . .” she says, almost blissfully. Aaren’s tone baffles him.

  “Hey, Maoist Momma, man! The war. Remember? Fuck. Like why I’m in here. There’s a war going on, or shit! did I miss something in the paper today?”

  His irritation conveys his need for a connection. Of course he needs the war, she figures. It’s how he’s still linked to us. This opens a new avenue of attack.

  Aaren shifts to a topic she’s confident concerns Jared greatly. “The Pentagon Papers have been having a dramatic impact on things. I really believe they’ll hurry the end of the war. Have you been able to keep up with them?”

  “Papers, schmay-pers. Who cares that now ‘We know that they know that we know that they knew all along that they’re lying’?”

  The symbolism of this radical action, like the one against the FBI in Media, Pennsylvania, is simply stacked in Jared’s shelf of bygone moral acts. “I mean, man, I admire this guy Ellsberg. Shit, he’ll probably get buried in here for life. Or worse, get shot. He hasn’t been assassinated, has he? Fucking-A. Great, cool, but like us—and I mean this, unfortunately it’s true—he’s just another great sacrifice to the God of War. We’re all too fucking late, too many body bags too late. Shit. He’s just another fuckhead for the grinder,” and as he pops this image, Jared rotates his arm, grinding an endless line of faceless convicts into prison mush.

  “Tsk! My, my Jared,” it was a touch of sarcasm edging a feigned shock, “I certainly never thought I’d hear you be so cynical. Are we changing roles? Like you’re becoming a heavy-duty disciple of the inevitable class struggle and I’m preaching a spiritual optimism? Isn’t that rich!”

  She’s set him up, positioning for a strike. Aaren’s aware that she has limited time on this visit, that she has to move quickly, dramatically. She readies to move in for the kill. She draws closer to Jared. She grasps his right hand and places it upon her belly. “This is not a murderer’s womb!”

  Jared is totally blown away by this tactic. He’s instantly angered, shocked, dumbfounded. Aaren has stabbed him in the heart and dredged up the worst of his fears.

  He rips his hand off her body. He wants to but can’t ask, “She’s aborted?”

  She deftly draws his hand back, this time to her heart, and speaks with concern and compassion. “This heart brims with love for the Sister, not of the Sisters.”

  Jared’s eyes tear up, for he hears the message within her message, tastes the forbidden kisses of his dead son. That bitch Char killed my son!

  Aaren senses his thoughts and moods with the instincts of a twin sibling. She half-rises and nestles Jared’s head upon her breasts. She pats his head as if her child and whispers, “I love you. I love you with all that I am and will ever be!”

  Aaren silently releases him, kisses his forehead. She smiles a wispy, sweet smile, then stands, crosses the room to pour two coffees. She’s a chocoholic and pours four bags of sugar into her hot brew. This interval releases Jared from their shared romantic reverie. Like being slapped awake, in a click, it’s brutally apparent that he’s once again in prison. Not wanting the visit to end, he looks around the room, checks the time, only to discover that he has a hard-on. It came deceptively, rose quickly without the fanfare of small pleasures and conscious mental images. It’s bound so tight and stiff that it pains him. He has to spread his legs to adjust his pants. Aware of the Watcher’s eyes, he stands, turns his back to snatch a bit of privacy and jostles his trousers. In vain—he can’t hide it. It jerks on its own. The erotic pressure from inside is intense, the arousal on the outside frenzied.

  Jared turns to look at Aaren. Her dress works its transforming magic. On legs that once only wore black denim, that gloried in appearing rough, mannish, even military, now her full-length, paisley cotton Earth Mother dress clings and reveals her soft sensuality, even exposes the gentle fullness of her ass. Paisley flowers waterfall gracefully down and around, cascading down her thighs, ending with a kiss of a jade bracelet-laced ankle. By every little thing is Jared being drawn to her, seduced. The glint from silvery earrings. The faint, sweet smell of lavender. Aaren is a dazzle of scents and whispers of succulent surrender.

  Jared springs upon her, slamming her to the ground. Her head bounces on the floor. He tears at her dress, no bra to deter him. He licks her teats, roughly strokes her belly, side, reaches down to open her pussy. Pain screeches to her head but flees into an alley of numbness. His cock is gouged in small rips as he wrenches his zipper but feels no pain.

  The frenzy revs and revs. Unrelenting, he drills her, pokes her, prods her, poles her, clanks, sinks, yanks.

  All done!

  Like the whipped remains from the high-speed churn of a kitchen blender, he licks her from his fingertips and says, “More!”

  “Hot stuff!” Aaren warns as she sets Jared’s cup on the table next to his chair. She looks up and is momentarily confused. But then not! Jared’s stare evokes that shock, that reflex response of women sighted as prey in The Chase. She captures in that fleeting exchange all the communication, all the messages, all the power she sought during her Weatherman years. It’s what she thought Wargasm would bring—men who are raw! She had desired to sip their raw juices, dribble them onto her belly and smear them all over her aching nakedness. But not now, not Jared! Not at this time. Not here. Distraught, she can’t escape—she’s trapped!

  Aaren freezes, wordless. Jared’s straining to restrain himself, exuding an energy field of tortured lust and unrequited passion. Through this field’s fierce erotic-ohmic resistance she extends her arms and grips Jared’s shoulders, grips strongly, firmly. He is as close as a glove. Aaren the short and Jared the tall merge—she stretches on ballerina tiptoes, teeters, almost topples into his arms, but her own fierce resolve holds her steady.

  Together, for this moment, they are a palpable mythos— a Real Presence. He and She. Male a
nd Female. God and Goddess.

  She steadies herself and says, as if making her wedding vows, “I . . . love . . . you!”

  This echoes within him and he happily whispers back, “I . . . love . . . you.”

  The Watcher observes these events but judges them unrecordable. This day is, all in all, quite peculiar. When first briefed, he was advised to expect a blow-up. To anticipate the strike and anger of physical contact. If such happens, he was told to turn away. Against the basic rules, the Captain took pains to state that, “If sexual things happen—you know what I mean,” he was to look away. More unusual was the directive to not stop copulation in any of its degrees. Despite all this, it’s turned out to be a ho-hum visit. He’s eager for them to call it a day.

  “I . . . I . . . I can’t deal with this!” Jared sits down, sips his coffee, sets his cup back down. Aaren sits, pivots towards him. Her knees are touching his, her right hand rests on his left knee.

  “I understand. Really, I do. Sweetheart, I sometimes think I know what you’re going through, then I realize how stupid it all is. Like we thought we knew what it meant to be oppressed. We were just full of shit, like we weren’t dealing with who we really are.”

  Aaren releases a short laugh, “Words are funny, aren’t they?”

  Jared turns, releasing himself from her, stands up and begins to pace. “I . . . I guess I can accept this. Fuck. No, well—maybe—man, should would be a better word. I always hoped you’d change. Shit. I don’t mean that to sound as stupid as it does but I always thought there was something you and I were sharing. Damn. But now, well, sure, maybe there is, maybe there isn’t.”

  Jared wants to go; realizes how much he craves to be back isolated in Seg. But how crazy it would be to turn to her and say, “Would you please go now, I want to be alone!”

  As if on cue, his wish is fulfilled. Aaren checks her watch. “Oh, dear, Sweetheart, they said I have to be out of here by four.” She gets up, gathers her things, gives him a peck-kiss on the cheek, and leaves as if this was a staid, timeworn, daily routine. The casualness of her exit confuses and baffles him. It throws everything that’s just happened into a jumble. Cleverly—wickedly?—as intended, she’s leaving him feeling more alone, more solitary than he’s ever felt.

  Her objective is fulfilled: “Rush to the edge of the cliff . . . then pull back!”

  Midway on her walk towards her car, she starts to skip. It’s a childish romp. She’s more than quite pleased with herself. She’s triumphant, “He’s mine!” That’s all she reports to Witson, then hangs up.

  Every day, month after month, Aaren writes: loving letters, adoring letters, letters of promise. “We will begin anew! We’ll go to Oregon. Raise children. Lead a normal life. You deserve that. You deserve the best!” Words, phrases, adjectives, subjunctives: all lies!

  Aaren’s letters have the censors laughing. Not a word do they strike nor a thought suppress. The Warden’s Directive #437 is clear: Aaren’s mail goes through unopened, but in the same bureaucratic memo they are charged to reject Char’s letters, few that they are. To stamp hers, “Subversive and Incendiary.” They are not to be returned, simply retained in Jared’s file—the one forwarded to Witson at month’s end. Witson arranges for Aaren to visit twice a month, no matter where Jared is on the Ride.