I spotted Alice in a Greek dinner on 2nd Avenue. I sneaked inside and snatched her pocketbook. Her arm bent and she caught the straps inside her elbow. She has become more city than I imagined and swore, “You asshole.”

I rubbed my hand. I had hurt my fingers on my attempted joke and sat at the table.

“I guess I wasn’t cut out to be a purse-snatcher.”

“It wasn’t funny.”

“I was just testing.”

I hate test. You know I do.”

“I wasn’t testing you. I was testing me to see, if I was any good.”

“You sucked, but sit down and have some coffee. It’s all that I can afford.”

THE PENULTIMATE SOCIETY

New York City became a metropolis in the 1880s. The gentile class robbed all the money from the immigrant masses happy to have fled persecution in the Old World. They even imagined themselves free.

Nowadays the robber barons have destroyed the city and are cashing in their century-old chips.

The neglected parks have decayed to crime wildernesses, the sidewalks are buried in uncollected trash, dog shit paves the streets, and the burst water mains flood the gutters. Squat new condos rise over the deteriorating tenements, which had houses the construction workers of the last century. Not a single ship is moored to the waterfront docks on the Hudson, populated at night by rats and queers seeking sex. There is no middle-class in the East Village and the creme de le creme elite’s quarters of the Upper East Side are protected by the NYPD who act if they had ‘shoot to kill’ orders from the mayor.

The Soviet Empire and the Red Chinese restlessly await the collapse of Capitalism like the Huns on the Roman Empires borders and the Turks before Constantinople, although the Russians have been financially bled dry by the Arms Race trying to figure out how to build $10,000 trench shovels and $40,000 toilet seats for strategic bombers. There are none to be found in the Army-Navy Surplus stores on 42 Street. The Chicom Army hasn’t enough mechanizations to transport their troops farther than the frontier and are still licking their wounds after a border was with Vietnam.

There is no threat of revolution from within. Our wage slaves have been infected with addictive drugs and their bodies poisoned by cheap junk food. The White Race has total control of the police and government and army as well as schools and churches, but lacks any urge for equality.

I reject everything. I have no followers, No believers. Bible-Belt Christians pray for the Second Coming of Christ to achieve spiritual rapture and escape the sins of the 1970s; homosexuality, atheism, hedonism, and race mixing. They are too lazy to protect their values and I told Kim about my fears for our freedom.

“They will try and change us back to who we were.”

“Most people accept the status quo, because it doesn’t challenge their way of life; hot dogs, baseball, and White Power. The failure of the struggle is like rolling the perfect bowling bowl and getting a 7-10 split. Getting a spare is almost impossible.”

“What about a Civil War?”

“One Civil War was enough.” The north barely remembers the battles, even though the impact of those five year has determined our history for over a hundred years. The South refuses to believe in defeat and worships the dead and fallen of Petersburg and Gettysburg as saints.

After ten years of the Vietnam War our country’s unity is very fragile. The Right has battered the Working Man with the anti-communistic rants of Joe McCarthy, the corruption of Nixon, the betrayal of democracy with Watergate, the voter repression, and political assassinations of anyone calling for peace or liberty or the pursuit of happiness. Southerners want to secede and many northerners have been brain-washed into the same mind-set. A national dissolvement fueled by internal dissent and external threats transform America into a giant stature fallen into the sea. The first thousand feet don’t hurt, but like the USS Thresher the pressure will collapse steel or stone.

A time for national resurgence is in order, although without the purge of commies, faggots, drug dealers, and poets. The purge is mandated for the Rich, who have everything to lose. This call for National Unity appeals to my friends; Ro was an immediate recruit to the crusade, but wants it now. It can’t be now, because none of us have lost everything and no one will rise until they realize everything they love is gone.