brunobaby

Sometimes with Daniel I argue about the sixties. He is nine years older than I am, and knows that time better than I, or differently.

"There's a real age difference between us," he says.

"Age-schmage," I reply.

"Unfortunately, there's also a real schamge difference. We made the sixties," he says, speaking in a generational "we" that excludes me. "We made the counterculture. You were twelve years old."

"But we inherited it," I say, "and as children we made ourselves around it, with it. We hung our own incipience on politics. The counterculture got on the ground floor with us, as children; it was the wood we were built with. We used to watch you guys, the eighteen- and nineteen-year-olds, on LSD at the public beach, or playing Duck, Duck, Goose in Horsehearts Park with your beads and long-flowing Indian smocks. But then we got to be that age, and we went to the park, or to the lake, and there wasn't a Duck or a Goose or a hit of acid anywhere. There was only Ford pardoning Nixon."

"Christ," snorts Daniel.

"But once upon a time it had been all we knew," I say. "Rebellion, revolution, and all those songs that went with them. We ice-skated to 'Eve of Destruction.' 'The western world, it is exploding,' and we'd do these little spins and turns."

Or something like that. I say something like that.

"But it was still ours," he says. "It came from inside of us, not you."

"Yes, you made it, but as a result it ws a thing outside of you. You could walk away from it. And you did. We couldn't, you see. It was in us. And when it was no longer out there in the world itself, it left us stranded, confused, betrayed, masturbating and doomed little outlaws."

"Masturbating and doomed little outlaws?"

"Sure."

"What are you talking about? You can't use the sixties like this. You can't use the sixties to explain yourself to yourself."

Of course that's what I want. I think of the lies and theft that cultivate the provincial heart. I had been beyond questioning authority. I'd felt unseen by it. But now, looking back, I want to fudge and say it was the time, not the place. "But which is more powerful, what you make or what you inherit? Which is more permanent?" I ask. "I realize that we're talking ridiculous generalities here, but let's face it, a discussion is always more fun that way."

"It's a sign," he says, "of a person looking for excuses. A hoodlum seeking politics."

"Perhaps a hoodlum is already politics."

"You're no hoodlum."

"That's true," I say, sighing. And in this lie I feel close to him, so grateful to him, so full of pity.

It goes like that. Our talk goes something like that.

// posted by Melinda @ 11:11 AM