Two of those boys from my class died the first chance they got too.
The third boy simply disappeared. The best his parents can figure, he was taken prisoner. Reverend Taylor still prays with the congregation every Sunday that this will be the week Jesse comes home safe.
I don’t pray anymore. I stopped last spring after I saw a photo in the paper of wounded soldiers being dragged through the jungle. One of them was writhing on the ground in pain. At the edge of the photo, one soldier had his arms raised to the sky. The newspaper said he was signaling for a helicopter to come get the wounded men, but to me it looked like he was shouting at God for leaving them behind. I wanted to shout at God too.
A new chant rises up from the crowd. “HEY, HEY, LBJ! HOW MANY KIDS DID YOU KILL TODAY?”
“Why isn’t anybody moving?” Floyd says.
Tom shrugs. “Still waiting on the march permit, I guess.”
“PEACE NOW!” The shouting from the crowd has changed back. “PEACE NOW! PEACE NOW!”
I nod along with them. There’s something hypnotic about a good protest. Standing with dozens or hundreds or thousands of people who all want the same thing you do. Calling out for it together from the depths of your soul.
“I’m getting in line,” I say. “Who else is coming?”
“I want to go talk to the marshals first,” Tom says. “I can’t believe they’re serious about marching all the way to the Amphitheatre. They’ve lost their damn minds.”
“Okay,” Diane says. “You guys go and we’ll wait here. We can meet up afterward.”
It’s a relief when Floyd unloops his arm from my waist and heads south with Tom. It’s always a relief. At first being with him feels just fine, but then once he’s gone I realize how much better things are without him.
It’s starting to get dark as Diane and I wade into the crowd. She smiles big at me now that the men are gone. I check to make sure no one’s watching us. Then I smile back.
I didn’t even know women could be with women until I got to New York. I was in government class the first time I heard about it. We were having a discussion about feminism and what it meant for society. A bunch of the girls — women — in the class, mostly the ones wearing the cashmere sweaters, were saying feminism would destroy the family as we knew it. Another woman, who had long hair and wore sunglasses even though we were inside, kept saying, “No, no, feminism is the future, man, get it?” One of the women in cashmere — the one with the blondest, curliest hair — said, “So why don’t you go try being one of those radical lesbian feminists, then, if you’re so keen on it?” and the girl with the sunglasses said, “Yeah, I tried out the lesbian trip. I don’t know if it’s for me, but if you’re curious, man, you should definitely give it a go.” Everyone laughed nervously, and the teaching assistant dismissed us early.
That night I asked Diane if she knew what it meant to be a “radical lesbian feminist.” We were smoking and listening to music in my dorm room, lying on the rug, staring up at the stained white ceiling.
Diane had already told me she was a feminist by then. This was our first semester, when the idea of being a feminist still seemed scary. It sounded almost as bad as being a communist.
“Yeah, I’ve heard people talk about it down at the women’s collective,” Diane told me. “They call it existential lesbian feminism. It’s about teaching men a lesson. The only way they’ll learn we don’t need them is if we really don’t need them for anything. Get it?”
I nodded slowly. Existential lesbian feminism. A political philosophy based around women having sex with other women. And I’d thought regular feminism was extreme.
I wondered how women did have sex with other women. Maybe they’d . . . oh. Oh.
I blushed harder with every passing minute. The political philosophy sounded crazy, but the women-being-with-other-women part didn’t sound like such a terrible thing.
“I think I get it,” I told Diane.
Two weeks later, Diane came over to listen to music again, and this time I definitely got it. We both did. It was amazing, actually.
I’d never felt about anyone the way I felt about Diane. I’d had boyfriends in high school, and I’d flirted with men at college parties, but what she and I had after just those first few weeks was something else altogether.
The problem was, by the time the spring semester started, Diane wanted to tell other people about it.
“The whole point of being a lesbian feminist is to prove a point to the man,” she said.
“Is this seriously just about politics to you?” I asked.
“Well, no. I mean, I also like you. A lot. But the personal is political, get it?”