Everyone has their faults and special sins, and maybe this man kept a poor house, but that would be nothing so unusual. So he met us outside, my mother, my brother and I, because he knew enough to know it’s better to welcome people out in the nice oak shade than to invite them to an untidy home. Even as a child, I agreed.

My mother ended up asking about the missing beagle (my brother’s, I think) because when my brother and I tried, she couldn’t understand. Of course, the man knew right away (the man with the rattlesnake hatband) because he just always had this ability to grasp what people meant right out of the air. He spent so little time around people, mostly getting along with all his worthless dogs and pretty much everything around him that people didn’t have to even say much. There comes a point where people talking only confuses it all.

But the man hadn’t seen the beagle. That’s how he answered the question. It was a good answer. Answers, everyone knows, close things up. Two and two wander about all lost unless you package them up in four. You can’t put them in five because they will still roam, and they won’t fit in three. It’s not just two and two, you can do this with any numbers. Two, for example, holds one and one. I’ve tried to come up with the number that will corral all the others without getting roped in somehow to still another number. I suspect that the man living there under the oaks with those dogs has figured it out even though my mother, who isn’t much younger, probably’s never even thought about that sort of problem. Even if that man hasn’t figured it out, maybe I will. I’m still so young, and I’m sort of a thoughtful type like this man. I also know that you can’t answer, “what’s two and two?” by saying “three and one,” or “less than thirty and four,” even if they’re both true.

Whether he’d seen the beagle or not wouldn’t change one single thing about the beagle. Anyway, he hadn’t.

My brother and I never, I’m pretty sure, went back down to the creek after that. Maybe it was because the man with the rattlesnake hatband and all those lazy hounddogs, but also it just wasn’t safe down there. It’s full of water moccasins. When we did go there, before, we’d go carefully, slowly. It would take a while for us to adjust to the darkness of the oaks or to get up our courage. We’d just stand there. But then we would scramble over the pile of sandstone slabs by the little creek, rapidly getting more excited but always staying so quiet. Just two boys climbing and leaping in the splotches of sunlight that made it through those heavy oak leaves.

Away from the creek pretty much nothing lived well. For most of my life, the drought forced all the living things down to the creek, not that it has much water to go around. There are plenty of raccoons down here, even bobcats and a deer or two that hasn’t gotten shot. That man living out there hunts raccoons in the creek with his dogs and a .22 pistol. Lately, those mutts are about as useless as himself, but he still knows how to do it. Not many people do anymore, so it’s worth respecting him for. If my mother would let me, I’d ask him to teach me how because even if he doesn’t have all the education he’d like, he knows the things he knows better than most others know anything. My brother and I try to teach ourselves, that’s one of the reasons we would go to the creek. We’re young enough to still understand there’s more to read than books and faces. But we don’t know where to look, we don’t know where our shadows fall or what sounds carry, when to step quick or where to move slower than seconds. You don’t get a rattlesnake hatband the way that man did (he grabbed it and sliced off his head with that very knife he showed my brother and I before it even managed to rattle) without taking time to really study that place down there. I’m glad he showed my brother and I that hatband because we won’t forget that story, and as long as we remember it, we’ll remember that that man had gotten grasp of something that my mother and colonel Hodnet with his pecan orchard and doublewide hadn’t.

We’d (my brother and I) still go down to the bottom pasture, mostly to hack away at the scraggly mesquite along the irrigation ditch with a hatchet we’d take turns misusing. We would shoot at meadowlarks and doves with bb guns. We still couldn’t make out the words on the pages we were turning. With no one to teach us, it’s no wonder we didn’t understand. Like when you say a bad word before you know it’s bad. We did that all the time.

As time went by, we didn’t even get close to the creek anymore. We hardly went down to the bottom pasture. Just like most everyone we went from young and ignorant to being outright stupid. A few more members for that certain group of people known to be fools, that particular number that never gets full, the number of fools.

Even though idiots in our own right, we weren’t so cruel and dumbminded to call out the sheriff about those dogs. Probably Hodnet, my mother, the irrigation district, or just that ass-thinking sheriff. The man down there, living basically on useless land for most uses, not calling for anything other than what he’d earned rightly doing what  he’d been asked to do despite it being a fool’s order for a devil’s deed, he, for one, didn’t do any animal cruelty. His dogs were chained up so they wouldn’t get run over or shot or just get out on some trail and wind up not getting food and water which they couldn’t get just anywhere but that the man pretty much every day put out for each one of them because hunting dogs like them have to get their own or they’ll end up fighting without someone looking after them.

The sheriff already had all the questions and their answers laid out so that that man down there, who was really quite a good person, had to keep arranging truths in funny ways just so that they’d fit the packages the sheriff had brought along for them. He kept himself, though, even though he didn’t need to. He had a rattlesnake hatband, he had answers that didn’t satisfy their questions, he had fours that held more than two twos, and he hadn’t seen a beagle, something altogether different had occurred between himself and something nothing like a beagle.

Now that I’m older, I understand why that man went along with the sheriff. You can’t convince a four that two and one can fill it or that six and seven will fit nice inside it. So, he has taught me something, it’s just that I hadn’t known it until I got to understand it. Answer to answer, question to question, that’s how you have to go down there. With no solutions, no demands, just reflection and movement, like the tree’s shadow leads its leaves.

What is the itinerary for tonight? Some bunny play, gopher play, maybe house dog in the middle. Or egg hunting, that is always a fun one. Digging, we must do some digging. Even if we don’t have much to talk about, we need to hang out quietly to make the meeting seem long and important for those brave souls who dare to play during our time. My friends, you know the drill.

By now their presence slips our mind. We have Prometheus going quite strong after the typical nightly scare that he might decide to bail on us (more on Prometheus in an upcoming feature). Our attention crawls towards Club Bubbly. We love the lighting there and all the various stimulants that line the walls. The type of relationship we have with Club Bubbly executives is unlike any other. We can walk in any night we please regardless of the capacity. There is always a private booth waiting for us with a constant flow of drinks, none of which we need to pay for. This relationship is not the superficial type one might think of at most clubs where a regular client’s obese wallet is the reason for pseudo-royal treatment. The moment that wallet gets its physical condition in check, the relationship is dead. Nor are we celebrities who’s presence is appreciated due to the draw of social peasants the celebrity status seems to create. No no, my friend, once that celebrity status slips from A down to B, and from B to C, and so on, the relationship is dead. Our relationship is unlike any other. It exists because we are loved, and we love. Our performances at the Poplar Ink tournaments prove nothing less. This relationship, unlike any other, cannot be taken away under any circumstances.

The excitement and anticipation of Club Bubbly is interrupted by the signal of the Coyote meeting coming to an end. They get on their way, howling, yelping, trying to out-do and intimidate other gangs. We sit and listen though. We try to interpret their games, but it’s impossible with the chaotic back-and-forth calling. It’s distracting, dizzying, and causes our logical, structured minds to fall unbalanced. We have to give in to primal urges that we have tucked away in deep dark closets never to be seen by societies high standards. We fall to the earth. The same place we came from. Our spirit leaves us, and the Coyote move in.

“Oh, Pogo, we’ve got to go. It’s cold out and storming, no night for travel, I know. Come along, Pogo, let’s go.” Pogo snorts and shakes his mane, sending a spray in the last of the firelight.

We set off, clippity cloppity. Clippity cloppity. Every now and then thunder overcomes Pogo’s hooves, so it’s clippity cloppity BOOM BOOM clippity cloppity, clippity cloppity, clippity clop-BOOM BOOM. And lightning slashes through right before these big sounds, bright and close.

“C’mon, get along, Pogo!” I urge because Pogo seems to shy and lurch. Mesquite shadows reach out for Pogo’s hocks every time that lightning strikes, twisted and thorny. “Come along, buddy!” And we go, clippity cloppity, clippity cloppity over the cold, scraggly waste, running with rivulets.  

This rain hardly falls, it lashes about in the wind. It comes from the east, from the north, from the west, not from straight up. It falls in early summer, it’s for the ground. This rain just hisses in from the north then goes wild, stinging faces and beating at the sides of things, like cows and courthouses and jails. I think I see the hills, but it wasn’t the hills in this dark, not yet. The feeling that I’ve been staring with the devil creeps all over me. “Get on, Pogo.” Pogo clip clops along, looking down and abused.

Clippity cloppity. Clippity cloppity. Clippity cloppity. BOOM BOOM. Clippi- ”Ho-a, Pogo.” In the flash, the closest oak had stood skeletal, stalwart in the storm, fanning out for centuries. Slowing, we approached the thick cover of the blackjacks, clip clop, clip clop. Under the canopy, the wind and rain dissipated, replaced by a closer mess of hooves pushing through leaves. Looping vines and low branches strike out in a quick flash. BOOM BOOM. The storm is outside now, really. So, we go slow. Clip clop. Clip clop through this oak stand, where mesquite and cacti rarely grow.

When we reach a clearing (for it’s clear that the oak forest reaches further on), it’s apparent that we’ve passed the storm. It’s clear, the sky swept clean and the moon bright, the air a thrill. “See, Pogo,” I chatter, slapping down his neck with a good rub, messing his mane.  He shakes his forelock, excited. “Hey, look, ol’ pal!” There’s a cabin and shed tucked into the northwest corner of the clearing. We clip clop right up, and I slide down, leaving Pogo to stomp and snort. I want to check things out.

This is good! As good, no, better than it looked. “Pogo! There’s hay, hell, fresh grass and grain! Good water, and wood cut and dry. I think there’s food for me, too, buddy. This could be the best of luck!” I set about getting Pogie ready for rest, and have just got a well-placed stove in the barn roaring when it occurs to me that there might as well be whiskey in the cabin. Hunters stash whiskey, there sure as hell is whiskey in there!

Sure enough, there is. A fire cracks and exhales just right at my feet, and I hold the bottle to the darting light. I see wonders. The shadows across my face, I can nearly feel them. Sudden panic tears at my gut. Pogo! My eyes dart about, then settle under their lids. “Oh, Pogo is wonderful, like me.” I see him, munching away, fresh hay twitching out of both sides of his demurely gyrating jaw. I lean back, creaking in the leather-upholstered rocker. I blink at the ceiling-beam. My body tingles like I’ve been brushed by the devil. I lean forward, jabbing a poker into a wandering log. Little sparks gather and whirl up the stovepipe.

My coat is still on, so is my hat. Noting this, I stash the bottle under the chair and clammer outside. Opening the door, a big silence stands in my face. I noisily, on purpose, noisily, shuffle to the shed and duck inside. Pogo turns to face me, the picture of contentment. His tail swishes this way and that, slowly, nothing to bat away. “Howdy, Pogo.” Since everything is in order, I just say, “Just wanted to say, howdy.” I’m looking down, but I look up at the “howdy.” Suddenly I’m back at the door to the cabin. I go in quickly.

I make cornbread because everything necessary is there. While it cooks, I shove the little cot closer to the stove, displacing the rocker, but not the bottle because I’d already removed that. I settle in, the cornbread within reach on the rocker, and start to slowly feed myself. Between mouthfuls, I recite something I’ve got memorized. It’s always Second Timothy. I learned it as a child since was one of the shorter gospels.

If we suffer, we shall also reign with him. If we deny him, he also will deny us. If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful. He cannot deny himself.

I kept on with the rehearsal, but I was thinking of Jesus and his burro. I thought of Pogo, my pony, and I. I wondered if we’d feel kinship, Jesus and I, because of Pogo and the burro. “I don’t suffer,” I say, looking around. I’m not sure if I’m denying Him, though. I’m chomping on some cornbread when it occurs to me that I’ve stopped the recitation, and I mull over the implications like I’m chewing a cud. Inevitability and fate cover me like a blanket, and the sheltering forest and warm accomodations reach out to assure me. “Out of such a storm!” I think, bunching up around the pillow, “such bliss.” Comforted like Timothy, I know communion with Him is peace and warmth despite the cold and the rain, despite the terror and horror of the flight. Pogo sleeps well, a sure and protecting hand resting on his heart like mine. Sleep envelops me like peach cobbler around a gnat.

The next morning is bright and only slightly brisk. Dandelions and bluebonnets cover the clearing, marked here and there with bunches of indian paintbrush. I take several deep breaths, looking about and gleaming, before I go to check on Pogo. He’s doing well. He tosses his head, and a quick look at the feedpan and leaf of hay confirms that he’s had breakfast and more. 

“Pogo!” I scratch between his eyes and blow into his mane. “C’mon, little fellow!” I open the gate to his stall and out he goes, clip clop clip clippity cloppity into the clearing, tail just sticking straight up. He traces a tight, barrel-racing circle and lets loose a few bucks on the straight-away back towards me. I’m laughing. I feel like Pogo, we’re both so happy. I give him a rough and loving brush-down before slapping his haunches and sending him off for another run. I chuckle and head back towards the cabin, thinking, “there’s no sense leaving here until tomorrow.”

Inside, I find dried beans and chillis. After poking about a bit, I find everything I need and compose a nice pot of chili. Setting it on the stove, I wander outside, rolling a cigarette as I do so. I light up, looking about for Pogo through half-closed eyes. Not seeing the pony, I saunter around back of the cabin and look around.

“Pogo!?” But no sign. I start following the edge of the clearing. Close by, in the northeast corner, I see a hoof jutting into the sunlight. A sweet panic comes over me, and I call out, “Pogo!” knowing full well that ponies don’t nap in the shade. I rush to Pogo, but I startle back. The pony looks in agony, twisted from the inside. “Pogo,” I whisper, leaning but not moving forward. I stand and stamp out the cigarette. I look about. I scan the tops of the gathered oaks. They’re full of buzzards. I vomit and weep.

Back in the rocker, the bottle has melted. I’m sweating and it’s getting hotter. It gets hotter and breathing is just like drinking whiskey, and I’m tired, but by this point I’m sure I’ll not be sleeping. Not ever.

1997 Eurovision winning group: Katrina and the Waves…flash forward eight years:

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

no-way!

ayissor

I: They’re Going to do it to Me, Too, and it’s Partially My Fault

I remember learning not to strike a dog or any other animal. I already felt it was wrong, of course. It’s hard to watch a dog cower and wince, or a horse, or a cow, especially when you hadn’t ever hurt them. The pain crosses over, and you end up guilty. But that’s empathy and doing right and wrong. There’s another aspect, and that’s what I mean. You go hurting dogs, just beating them, and you get so that it doesn’t hurt to see them scared, even if you don’t even really like it. Well, it isn’t like that for the dog. It just gets more scared until it just gets helpless and to be a wreck. Then, it just takes a little shift. It’s such that it can always switch around, so you never really want the dog that way. Anyway, you’d never want another animal scared of you that way. I’ve seen lots of horses, dogs, cows, and such beaten, kicked, spurred at and slashed, and it got really clear what was at stake and didn’t have to be.

So, a stray, some mutt would wander up, and I’d always wonder what it’d be owed. Definitely, through abused animals first, I felt blood on my hands, and I learned not to strike dogs because of reasons not tied in with my not liking to see them suffer. In short, I knew how much it doesn’t work.

This all came to be relevant very recently. I was out in ice and snow, in trees, on beaches (only Coney Island, really, though the trees were in Texas). But I woke up the next day near frozen, my apartment fallen down, and I had no money.

“Oh!” I cried and howled, but that did nothing. However, I have a cat, and she’s got friends, and they pointed me right in the right direction. There was something about it, though, because where they pointed me isn’t generally a place where cats go.

So, I go, and it’s a dog pound. Lots of dogs, but I’m cold and don’t get any of this and no one seems to notice or think it’s weird so I go along because I did with those cats, so why not at the pound if it keeps going this way. Suddenly, it’s already happened in some flurry (pounds really aren’t all that bureaucratic) and I’m in some wire mess with pups and older ones.

It took a while for me to start getting scared. I was uncomfortable at first, but mostly I was thinking of all the implications. Also, I was looking at my penmates. Some were a little mangy and some looked like they’d always been mangy, but most of them looked well. I didn’t go stroking muzzles and groping necks, smiling for cameras. You know, these dogs weren’t much for smiles and cameras, and I knew it, too. I just sat there; I had my date and time just like them. I guess I thought, “I’m here, too, and they’ll do it to me, too. And I know people like me did this to you because they did it to me, too.” But that’s just unpersuasive. If you were in those dogs’ positions, many of them abused! I mean, they looked at me all ears and eyes and scruff hair, and they weren’t some incarnated revenge. Those pups were scared. I was scared. And so we, the dogs and I, sat and stared, thinking of threats.

The personnel came around once and murmured in a way that made me more scared of the dogs. I didn’t hear what they said or understand why I should get more fear out of it, but I did. After a while, everyone sort of settled on their haunches. There was still a lot of watching but less concern. It made me think of those trench troops playing ball on Christmas in Europe. It also made me think of G. Washington and the holiday Hessians.

I never hurt a dog or a cow or anything, at least not to hurt it! I know, too, that, though I’ve been trampled and butted and bucked and bitten, no dog or other animal did it really to hurt me in a mortal or moral sort of way. I know of people who’ve hurt animals that way. I’ve heard of animals doing that to people, too. But it’s never happened to me, I’ve never done it, especially not by or with these dogs here with me out of the cold. There were some things common among us, like among those trenchmen.

I came to realize, very specifically, that all of us loved much how spring made the world warmer. I guess I also thought of how, right now, all of us were thinking mostly of the past. The future, we all knew, wouldn’t be much to remember.

Thinking these things, and looking at all those dogs looking back at me, I started asking which one of them had ever accused me of what I hadn’t done, and I realized maybe I didn’t have their blood on my hands like I’d been led to believe. People I’d trusted in these things said to me:

They’ll smell that blood on your hands if they’re empty. They’ll smell it because almost everything you touch has their blood on it—it rubs off. Then they’ll know who you are and what you’ve done to them, and they will rip you to pieces. Who could blame them, after all? Sure, you didn’t want their blood on your hands, but they’ve shed it, and it’s on your hands.

Thinking this way, I pretty soon realized I was so scared because of what people said about guilty people making me guilty, too. If one person beat a dog, that dog would be scared of all people, making all people guilty in its fearful eyes.

Suddenly, I didn’t it want it this way. I didn’t want those dogs’ blood on my hands, and I didn’t want them scared of and angry at me for no reason. That didn’t make sense, and it was putting all of us in the actually bloody hands. And here we were, not much ahead of us, but not in those hands. It seemed so inappropriate to go at each others’ throats just because of what other people had done and said that we’d done.

I was very helpless at this point, and they were, too. We sort of stared and panted. I was glad not to be cold even though it didn’t make any sense. I was huddled up in a pound with my own time and number, and all of thse guys are just dogs and pups.

We don’t nuzzle or tumble, but I’m not as scared when I look at them, and that seems to make them less scared. They seem more calm, whatever the reason. The pound people walk by every now and then, but I’m through with them!

II: Stars Over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains Might have been Seen by Me, Too

I fell asleep, nonetheless, and I had a very strange dream. Now it has more meaning than it did then, but this is only because of how things would change how I would come to understand dreams. Events unfolded something like this:

We were all out in a forest, the dogs and I, but it was still a pound, too. We’d all become friends, I felt. After having had escaped the same thing, we should have been close. But the handlers, the pound personnel, came up to me and started acting very buddy buddy. I was thinking, “Hey! Get your hands off me!” But I hadn’t said this, and they hadn’t touched me yet by the time they had gotten across:

Oh man, they hate you. Really, you pissed them off. We wouldn’t do this, but if we didn’t We mean, gosh, they hate you, and we really have to do something when it comes to this. Sorry.”

They were already so close, and I couldn’t move. I was sitting on my haunches, and they started pushing the collar over my head. I couldn’t see it because of how they were putting it on, but it hurt a lot. When they finished, I felt it with my hands. I felt the sharp teeth of the stud brackets and figured what they’d done. The collar was inside-out, and the points were sharper than they should have been. I should have seen it coming when they came back shrugging, “Look, they’re wanting you dead.” I knew the dogs were there, but I only saw the handlers. When they said this last thing was when I got scared the dogs weren’t even there. For them to want this of me made some sense, but through the handlers, them? I started getting why unseen juries are frightening, and I began reevaluating Lincoln’s legacy in light of the habeus corpus issue.

By the time they’d returned, I had thought back to how easily they had let me in to the pound to begin with. At the time, I was so confused anyway, but at this point it was clear that they hadn’t mistaken me for a dog because everything they were saying currently assumed that I wasn’t.

They started striking the dogs. I couldn’t see the dogs at any point, but the sounds were clear enough. They beat the dogs all around me in places hidden by trees and shadows. The dogs were all howling by the time they came to me. Oh! They looked so much like executioners, their faces and eyes, how they moved in concert. All those pups just kept howling, but still I hadn’t seen one.

The handlers’ hands smelled like chemicals and blood, and they used them to stroke my face and knead the back of my neck. It calmed me down a lot, though I knew better. So that’s how they got me. That’s how they did it to me, too.

It didn’t make sense, how I’d gotten here. I’ve been well-educated, but there was dew on my knees and grass under my feet. All I could see, whatever I knew, was ultimately just a conspiracy of leaves and moonlight.

Maybe here, at this point, is when I realized how much I wanted and expected this moonlight and my posture and position in it all to validate it. The very hopelessness and absurdity of my situation convinced me of my martyrdom, however romantic the notion is. Ig you’re about to die or something, If you were in such a situation, you’d really want the things you loved, like stars and trees. You’d want to see them and to feel them making you better.

Oh! But they’re dogs! They’re wolves, you know! We were their scavengers, then owners. Fuck, this is all so beyond post-colonialism, what’s happening to me! Eghck! You get it? This is species-level!

The handlers stood around me, not in a circle, just clustered. Some dogs poked out into the clearing. The pound people threw things at them and yelled, but more dogs came. One handler injected me with, well because of how it felt, it was pretty surely doing something famous with all my dopamine. But then the handlers all just ran. So the dogs chased them off. But most dogs just stayed around, looking at me. I was in no position to start thinking of what they’d do. Importantly, I was in no position to care what they’d do. I was OK.

]]> http://discotejasdiscotexas.wordpress.com/2009/02/25/i-am-dog-tired/feed/ 0 discotejas/discotexas img00007 horse pound-puppy-small-brown pavlovdog-full virtual-soccer-ball trenchmen mountainstars1 spiked-collar abe http://discotejasdiscotexas.wordpress.com/2009/02/20/on-the-unrest-at-nyus-kimmel-center-or-what-gives-you-the-right-anyway/ http://discotejasdiscotexas.wordpress.com/2009/02/20/on-the-unrest-at-nyus-kimmel-center-or-what-gives-you-the-right-anyway/#comments Fri, 20 Feb 2009 09:21:25 +0000 discotejasdiscotexas http://discotejasdiscotexas.wordpress.com/2009/02/20/on-the-unrest-at-nyus-kimmel-center-or-what-gives-you-the-right-anyway/ ]]> What gives you the right, anyway?

Can students with trust funds protest? The question could make almost anyone, and pretty much any student, angry regardless their take on the matter. It is poignant, and it gets to the point. Milling about the protest pen outside Kimmel, it was the first discussion I heard:

“They just said, ‘give us pizza and we’ll leave’!”

“No, that was the College Republicans, but they left.”

However legitimate these claims may have been, the disavowal of wealth and elaborations of parental financial support so prevalent among those around me seemed to cast privilege and activism as ingredients for hypocrisy and ironically bourgeois politics.

There were thirteen demands, but what gives these students the right to make them? How can NYU students ask for social justice when too many of our peers in this city perceive anyone studying at NYU as temporary, fashionable leftists or outright pawns for the patriarchy? The question of whether or not middle or upper class people can protest is probably as unfair as it is relevant and important.

Getting an education at NYU does not inherently make anyone rich, but matriculating here as opposed to Brooklyn College or CUNY carries with it its own special implications and associations. Sextant may not talk to us, and NYU’s endowment might mean more than our tuitions to him. Maybe students didn’t ask for Washington Square Park to be torn up or for the ridiculous architecture of the Kimmel Center to mar the West Village. So far as I know, students were not asked about building a Green Zone style campus in Abu Dhabi. Personally, I have never met a fellow student so enthralled with Sextant’s intellect that they would agree that he is crucial enough to academia to ferry across the globe on a weekly basis.

James Dobson, the force behind the evangelical media outlet Focus on the Family, warned his donors that they would need at least three Christian men to replace him when he dies. Sextant displays the same self-aggrandizement. He brushes past student protesters at NYU in the way that Karl Rove ignores Code Pink. Sextant diminishes his role as university president in the same way that political strategists like Karl denigrate democracy. Sextant, implicitly perhaps, says, “the students are stupid!” Rove says, “the voters don’t know what they really want!”
Of course, Sextant works, undoubtedly hard, to increase the value of the NYU brand. The exotic campus in the Middle East and the posh campus improvements are all meant to preserve our very expensive degrees as intelligent investments. The dynamic is similar to that which lets the war machine claim that it is ultimately protecting our right to speak out against it. It’s patriarchal, and, in plain terms, it equates to something like this:

“They say, ‘No!’, but they really mean, ‘Yes, Yes!’”

Gawker, a Manhattan gossip blog, openly mocks the NYU protesters as inept refugees from cultural death zones (e.g., suburbs, the Midwest), but it admits that the barricaded students have some valid points in their list of demands. However, the Gawkers stop short of granting them the right to make these points. Their argument is old and effective:

“You were begging for it, so you can’t just turn around and say you really didn’t.”

Here, Gawker, and like-minded commentators, are saying, in other terms, “She was wearing a short skirt, so she wanted it,” just like any other cinema-stereotyped frat boy. Why?

We want our rape victims to all be virgins and our protesters to be poor and disenfranchised. Perhaps this helps us out because both groups are powerfully prevented from ever making their charges public. Let’s face it, a prostitute who cries, “rape!” is as easy to dismiss as, though hopefully not, a middle class American kid at NYU ranting about scholarships for Palestinian kids.

Interestingly, when Warren Buffet and Angelina Jolie go about with their philanthropy, we are expected to respect them. We are also asked, especially at such an excellent private university, to respect those who speak from poverty and oppression. We, hopefully, learn to value the subaltern. We do not want to, or cannot, be poor and abused, so we cannot hope to be actual rebels. We can only hope to be rich and powerful so that we can do real good. This is a polarizing political discourse, and it grants almost no ground to those of us who don’t want to pretend we weren’t privileged and do not really want to ever get rich.  NYU students, and many others, end up in political purgatory before they ever get started.

I was afraid, as I approached Kimmel, that the cops would outnumber the kids, but I’m not sure of the ultimate ratio. NYU had its best boot forward. The security in front of the student center was not NYPD; it was NYU and all white, female, or otherwise non-threatening for the parents and students. There was no riot gear. There were no flash grenades. Inside the building, I saw at least one well-fed, middle-aged white guy in a suit directing security. People in suits didn’t stand in front of the doors. Sextant did not seem to be around.

Protesters were pitted against the very same NYU workers whose wages the protesters hoped to secure. The security guard at the NYU building where I work had to stay around for an extra hour because of the protests. I feel bad about that. No one at the Kimmel Center was protesting campus security, and NYU security personnel were not antagonizing the students so far as I could assess. Maybe I didn’t see everything, but the conflict appeared to come from only one side. The students fought and tried to take power, but their enemies never came around and fought back. There wasn’t much power to take.

People like Sextant give us symbols to fight, like protesters were given cops at the D & R NCs, but they never come out themselves. For an honest person, this presents a problem. If we rush the police and call them names, we, in psychoanalytic terms, only displace our aggression onto a target that is available because our real antagonists are too scary and strong. A protester cursing a cop is not much different than me getting secretly mad at my roommate and then cursing my cat; it misses the point. This dynamic works for the actual perpetrator because the guilt of ruining the security guards’ night or kicking the cat gets displaced right back to the real threat.

That this gathering did not amount to a massive disruption of the Washington Square Park area and tantalizing videos of police brutality and window-smashing can be interpreted not as NYU students’ political complacency but as their general understanding that Sexton wouldn’t be there. Many people who agreed with several of those thirteen demands likely never showed up because they knew the fight could not be there. Occupying the Kimmel Center is a powerful statement, but it likely means very little to the people the protesters hope to influence.

Dave, in Richard Wright’s The Man Who Was Almost a Man, finally gets a hold of a pistol. Dave is overworked with nowhere to get to, and he ends up shooting trusting Jenny, a labor animal. It’s a power thing, but the only living thing for Dave to kill is Jenny. Dave destroys the only creature less powerful than him, and he doesn’t even know he means to do it. It’s a horrifying situation, and we should all want to avoid it.

As of this writing, there have been no confirmed arrests. More importantly, there have been no validated reports of direct attacks on police or security guards. Whether or not any of these things occur as the situation progresses, we should respect the protesters and NYU security personnel for recognizing that they are not real enemies. A violent conflict between students and security guards would bring media attention, but it would also obscure the purpose of the protest and widely diminish the credibility of its claims. It is awkward when privileged people protest, but privileged anarchists annoy pretty much everyone.

This protest highlights the inaccessibility of radical discourse to us lucky students. We are not oppressed or ravaged. We are the people between Carnegie and the violated virgin. We can gag ourselves with our symbolic insignificance, or we can challenge Sexton and his cronies like, though hopefully not again, a prostitute cries, “rape!”

However easy it may have been, or is, for those of us who weren’t protesting to read the thirteen demands/e-mail updates and subsequently caricaturize those students who were protesting as immature and stupid, we cannot honestly call them cowardly or malicious. In the same way, we cannot ignore that Sextant and his buddies handled the situation smartly, but we cannot deny that they have been disingenuous and patronizing the whole long time.