Youthful Indiscretions

158 The usual excuses: spring untethered its feathered pollen up my nose and everyone else was doing it. Forgive me, father, this was like jumping off a cliff because others did, my streaking down Main’s hot tar. I wanted to do my part to end the war, so I bared my end and waved a flag— “Look,” I said, youth’s tragic logic in the terminal smoke of Nixon’s years, the world unhinged as were my jeans and reason. When the loud crowd hushed, cop cars jumped the curb but kissed white pines and thus our pale rears. We ran, as criminals do, preferring life on the lam to a life term, imagining the precarious political prisoner jailed in his nefarious buff. My buddy, world’s fastest white guy, didn’t beat me to the Chevy van we sprawled belly-up under, plaid-skirted sorority girls pointing, cops’ black flashlights as dull as they—our great escape. Dressed, we mingled with that sweaty throng, the riot squad plodding comic lockstep and thudding heads we’d laddered into higher clouds. Our school, unranked on any scale, catapulted to #3 on Playboy’s infamous Campus Streaking Poll, Youthful Indiscretions Kevin Stein 159 Kevin Stein a heady blip before unrolled fire hoses washed the starch out. America, to be but young and naked, to wear our best intentions like skin, to erect an insurrection that flops. Is this not foreign policy? Two years later my pal photographed Nixon on sunny San Clemente Beach after the Prez died in office or resigned, pick your metaphor. Our act of conscience, or lack thereof, hadn’t brought the big man down, but my friend sold those flicks to buy a turntable his will bequeathed to me. America, if you need me, I’m spinning the needle atop stacked Grateful Dead LPs. I’m weeding a garden, recycling, coaching my son to turn the double play. America, you’ll not hear from me. I’ll not wave our flag nor burn it. I’ll not eat quiche or wear a raspberry beret, nor will I vote for a third party candidate. America, you can bank on me. I will not grow a ponytail or top off my tank with Marxist Venezuelan oil. Citizens, you have my promise. I am rehabilitated. I will not run naked through the streets again—unless today’s war lingers bloody and pointless as the last we swore was last. ...