Confessions of a Long-Haried Aristocrat

What has always hurt most about fighting the "radical" fight is that it is so thankless. Every time "working-class" strangers bait us on the street for the length of our hair or the age of our clothes, we are struck with the ironic ingratitude of "their" nastiness. Don't "they" know that we're fighting for "them?"

Why do we demonstrate, why do we march right into riot sticks and gas cannisters, why do we expound on genocide abroad and corporate oligarchy at home if not for "them?" Is it worth it, we ask, to contemptuously thumb our nose at the avenues to wealth and power that a Harvard degree and modicum of ambition entail, if "they" don't appreciate our sacrifice? Could "they" hate us so much if "they" realized what true friends we really are?

If I'm going to get involved. I demand some compensation. If I'm donating my time, energy, money, and promising future to the liberation of non-elites throughout the world then "they" better damn well appreciate it. A pretty egocentric sentiment, to be sure, but an easy one to slip into in the absence of any gratifying political victories.

THOUGH I suspect that many of us share this periodic pettiness, I will henceforth talk about my elitism, rather than "ours." But it just might sound familiar.

There is a whole lexicon of rationalization for the working class' (a weak and hackneyed term, but a connotative one) seemingly illogical hatred of cultural/political radicals. "False consciousness," "Mass-media indoctrination," "Counter-revolutionary schooling"-I have used them all to glibly dismiss red-neckism. These polemies are particularly convenient because they can be used, in one form or another, to ignore just about any mass consensus that is adverse to radical programs.

When taken as a blanket explanation for the great preponderance of ideology (or anti-ideology) generated by the American public, the theories of "false consciousness" are ideological blinders. At best, they portray the very people whose banner I claim to carry as programmed cretins, hopelessly duped by ploys that are very transparent to me.

At worst, they let me escape the guilt of my own elitism. Isolated sojourns into political activism convince me that I am a bona fide "radical," constantly demonstrating my willingness to forego middle class affluence. Armed with that self-image, I can indulge myself with all kinds of goodies when I'm off-duty, and call every working man's sneer that comes my way an offspring of "false consciousness." Whenever this happens, a little introspection provides a plausible (and comparatively mundane) explanation of a working-man's hatred. One might even call it "logical."

II

DURING Christmas Vacation, I was smuggled into Mexico. I had driven down to the border station at Tijuana from my family's home in Beverly Hills, which is not in fact, an El Dorado filled with Beverly Hillbillies mansions. I was with two friends, one a Harvard freshman who had finagled his father's new Volvo for us. We had a simple one-day romp in mind, to pick up a few exotic Christmas presents and spend money. Just some college kids out for a little fun.

But the border guards had a different idea. After we had parked the car in a lot on the American side ("Last Safe Parking Here; Lock Your Car.") and walked through the American station, four Mexican federales rushed up to meet us.

"No," they shook their heads. "You turn round and go back to States."

"Why?"

"Hair," one of them said, pantomiming long locks down his shoulders. Another put his hand on a holstered pistol.

"But we're only here for the afternoon. We came all the way from Los Angeles just to-"

"No, No." The guards kept shaking their heads. "You turn round go back to States."

We turned round, looking like we were going back to States. We had been warned that the Mexicans weren't admitting "undesirables," but we thought it was someone's humor/paranoia fantasy. We were stunned by the absurdity of it all. Baja California opens its arms to U. S. sailors on leave from San Diego (so much so that they successfully petitioned the Navy to lift Tijuana's recent off-limits status). Sailors, we were sure, were almost always rowdier and ugly-Americanier than longhairs.

"But they also spend more money," my friend observed.

That made sense. We hiked two hundred yards back into the American side and stuck out our thumbs at the cars approaching the border station. A VW bus that had been converted into a surf-woodie picked us up after a half-hour wait. We climbed into the back, pulled the curtains, and stiffened up among the surfboards. The driver and his passenger, healthy blond sun-god types, smiled at the American and Mexican guards as they drove past.

We piled out of the bus near the center of town, thanking the surfers and congratulating each other on our slyness. As we walked towards Tijuana's business district, we were joined by a young-looking American hitchhiker who had a pack and a bed-roll strapped to his back. He was a freshman at Stanford (prepped at Andover) who wanted to see as much of the coast as he could before school started. He stayed with us all day.

The day and night in Tijuana was a lot dingier than we had expected, even though we had been there before. It is really a grim city. American cars without mufflers from the early 50's roar in zig-zag patterns down the gray, blotched sidewalks. Pre-teen hookers and wiry heroin-pushers alternate street corners. A lack of curiosity and daring kept us moving past them towards tourist shops.

A frantic hawker stands in front of each shop, jerking passersby inside with either a friendly tug or a non-stop, 78 r. p. m. sales-pitch. The walls, laden with shining guitars, pinata dolls, and obscenely fluorescent paintings of nudes and bull-fights, flash down aggressively at the customer. Mexicans sit behind the counters, talking and laughing, while middle-aged, paunchy Americans solemnly try on yard-wide sombreroes in front of the mirrors.

We soon rediscovered how sadly identical each shop was. The excitement of the border incident and the brightness of the merchandise wore off quickly. We got down to the routine business of haggling-the merchant quotes you a price twice as high as he expects to get, you feign shock and make a counter-offer of two-thirds what you're willing to pay, and you whittle each other to the appropriate price. It can be a sport or a chore, depending on the wit and passion of the shopkeeper ("Ah! $5 for hand-made, fine hand-crafted, really real peasant blanket? The joke of my life!").

We enjoyed all that. One of us would pull a $5 bill out of our pocket (where there were plenty others), assure them that that was the end of our money, so $5 it would have to be. The energy we invested in arguments over $50c or a dollar verged on the unbelievable. But none of it was strange in the context of the game.

After a couple of hours of shopping, we went back to the border loaded with packages of belts, vests, wine-skins, and serapes that we were moderately happy with. The Mexican guard wouldn't even look at us as we walked by. The American guards asked us our citizenship, stared at our bags, concluded that we wouldn't dare, and let us pass.

III

WE LOADED the car with our spoils and drove north to San Diego. We stopped at the Chuck Wagon, a minor legend in Southern California. The Chuck Wagon is the last of the great all-you-can-eaters, with the juiciest everything in town. We hadn't eaten all day, and spent a solid, lusting, bestial two hours going back for more and more food. After sitting around the table for a while to tell each other how much money the restaurant lost on us, we waddled off to the car and headed for Los Angeles.

The car needed some gas before we got to the freeway. We pulled into a service station, and the three others slid out of the car to take care of things. Not feeling particularly mobile, I pushed back the reclining passenger seat (a standard feature on the 1970 Volvo), put my feet up on the dashboard, and turned to L. A.'s psychedelic station on the FM radio. I closed my eyes and listened to Al Kooper's guitar, clasping my hands on my well-packed gut and thinking about the bargain I'd won that day.

When I opened my eyes, the gas station attendant, who had been wiping the adjacent window, was staring at me. He must have been in his mid-fifties. His tight, chalky mouth made a sharp contrast with the shiny brown-black of the bags under his eyes. A faded blue Standard cap, the soda-jerk style, was pulled over his bristly gray hair. He was clearly the veteran of many, many thousands of night-shifts at that gas station.

We looked at each other, our heads two feet apart but on opposite sides of the glass, for no more than five or six seconds. Then, his body still motionless, he rotated his head to look at the packages in the back seat, to the hood of our gleaming red Volvo, to the blaring stereo cartridge/AM-FM radio system on the dashboard, up and down my reclining body, and, just for a split second, back at my face. Then he stepped away from the window to pull the gas nozzle out of the tank, leaving a thick streak on the area he was cleaning.

I stopped watching him as my friends were climbing back into the car. Our driver walked over to the attendant and handed him his father's gas credit card. The man slowly took it with a grease-smeared hand and wheeled around towards the credit-card press as my friend got back into the driver's seat. There was a little happy talk in the back seat about the utter foulness of the bathroom and nickels lost forever in the fucking gum machine. The gas station attendant came to the driver's window with the credit-card on a receipt-board.

My Harvard friend signed the slip, adding "son" parenthetically after his name. The attendant ripped off our copy, dropped it into the driver's lap with the credit card and a wad of trading stamps, and, saying nothing, moved to the car that had pulled up behind us.

"Thank you," grunted our driver as he started the car and pulled out into traffic.

There was no conversation as we wound our way through the outskirts of San Diego to the freeway. I looked over to the driver.

"Did you notice that attendant?" I asked him.

"Yeah." He switched channels on the radio. "A real Orange County-type."

"Yeah," I answered.

IV

I WENT to a B. U. Weatherman meeting to hear Mark Rudd speak at the beginning of last fall. I was shocked, intimidated, and confidently opposed to their violent, quasi-Fascist narrow-mindedness.

I walked out after the second speaker had finished. The last thing I heard from the podium as I melted into the crowd that was pushing through the exits were the shouts of a Weatherman I didn't know. "Anyone who leaves now," he screamed, "is a wimpy mother-fucker who only cares about his white-skinned privilege! "

As I walked outside the auditorium, I remember having shaken my head at the childish brutality of Weatherman's oversimplifications.