f. once said: there is nothing so depressing as the eccentricity of a contemporary.

I always wanted to be loved by the Communist Party and the Mother Church. I wanted to live in a folk song like Joe Hill. I wanted to weep for the innocent people my bomb would have to maim. I wanted to thank the peasant father who fed us on the run. I wanted to wear my sleeve pinned in half, people smiling while I salute with the wrong hand. I wanted to be against the rich, even though some of them knew Dante: just before his destruction one of them would learn that I knew Dante, too. I wanted my face carried in Peking, a poem written down my shoulder. I wanted to smile at dogma, yet ruin my ego against it. I wanted to confront the machines of Broadway. I wanted Fifth Avenue to remember its Indian trails. I wanted to come out of a mining town with rude manners and convictions given to me by an atheist uncle, barfly disgrace of the family. I wanted to rush across America in a sealed train, the only white man whom the Negroes will accept the treaty convention. I wanted to attend cocktail parties wearing a machine gun. I wanted to tell an old girl friend who is appalled at my methods that revolutions do not happen on buffet tables, you can't pick and choose, and watch her silver evening gown dampen at the crotch. I wanted to fight against the Secret Police takeover, but from within the Party. I wanted an old lady who had lost her sons to mention me in her prayers in a mud church, taking her sons' word for it. I wanted to cross myself at dirty words. I wanted to tolerate pagan remnants in village ritual, arguing against the Curia. I wanted to deal in secret real estate, agent of ageless, anonymous billionaire. I wanted to write well about the Jews. I wanted to be shot among the Basques for carrying the Body into the battlefield against Franco. I wanted to preach about marriage from the unassailable pulpit of virginity, watching the black hairs on the legs of brides. I wanted to write a tract against birth control in very simple English, a pamphlet to be sold in the foyer, illustrated with two-colour drawings of shooting stars and eternity. I wanted to suppress dancing for a time. I wanted to be a junkie priest who makes a record for Folkways. I wanted to be transferred for political reasons (l. cohen, beautiful losers).