Just Missing The Black History Month Cut-Off

by Duke Amboy

[Editor's Note: In contradistinction to the usual procedure - transcription of microcassette tapes sent to us in a manila envelope (sometimes also in the envelope - the residue of certain illicit substances, usually for the purposes of analysis and identification, though (it must be said) occasionally for the recreational use of the editorial staff...), the following was delivered in manuscript form and then proofread and edited by our crack team. Duke's compositional skills, although usually impeccable, seem to have suffered at the hands of prolonged incarceration.

What follows has not been edited for content. Only for legibility.]

At long last, they have allowed me access to a pad and pencil.

Why this might be so, I can't guess. Do they think, now that the worst is over, that I won't jab the No. 2 deep into my eye socket? Do they think I'm no longer a threat to myself and others? If this is indeed the case, they are sorely mistaken. I'll show them. I surely will.

Back when I was first working on this piece - in those early, carefree days when Giuliani's primary numbers were a source of passionate concern for me - I would've started the article this way. I'm quoting from memory here; they won't give me a tape player, so I can't play back my earliest dictation, though I did manage to secret the microcassette tape in a place no cavity search - however thorough - would uncover:

"At last.

Sweet respite.

After a pathetic, whirlwind tour of the Sunshine State's capitol, I was free (or at least reasonably inexpensive) to pursue my own wont for the next ten days. Free to zig and zag my way among the 22 states preparing for the colossal political clusterfuck that we have come to call Super (Duper) Tuesday.

Because I hadn't been there in years, and because I have always been in tune with the Selma and Montgomery Days, I decided to start with Alabama. And I decided to do it right -

It meant renting a car - the biggest, gas-hoggingest hunk of metal and chrome to come down the pike from Motor City in many a year: the H3 Alpha.

It meant lashing together a collection of illicit substances, proscribed political tracts, some stray polygraphic gear I've had laying around for years, as well as several coolers full of ice and fifths of Bushmill's. One must maintain a certain standard of civility at all costs..

And it meant recruiting one of the most demented, hell-raisingest mutant folk ever stomped into existence by the Foot of whatever demiurge or creator God you choose to invest your credence in. My lawyer and adviser: the 300-pound Samoan third-string NFL defensive end Elian Gonzalez Trudeau."

This is as much as I can recall. Suffice it to say, Trudeau and I never got to try out that H3.

We were holed up in his office in Montgomery, Alabama, far gone on some sticky hash he'd accepted in lieu of payment in a civil rights case - G8 protesters rounded up because they allegedly violated the terms of their protest petition: they were on a certain corner carrying more than their allotted number of signs and lingering approximately 15 minutes longer than their allotted time.

It was a Gitmo case, in this day and age. Gone were the glory days - Chicago '68, watching the kids take their lumps in Lincoln Park from the Hyatt Regency's second-floor bar, with Terry Southern and Jean ("Zese keeds, zey are ferry, ferry brav") Genet as drinking buddies. Southern was also whacked out on speed, and Genet - well, I can't really say what his bag was, other than routinely getting himself locked up in French prisons. In order, so he told me, to have the solitude in which to write. And - he would add - the hot man-on-man sex was also a plus.

But I digress.

We got the call at Trudeau's place from a source I can refer to only as Throatjob:

"Duke, get your ass up to Charleston, WV. Things are heating up. Electronic voting irregularities. Some crazed Bassett hound who's supposedly running for President. Should be just your kinda scene."

EG and I hopped the next flight out and that night were holed up in a La Quinta across from one of the contested voting sites - an AME church outfitted with electronic voting booths that looked like nothing so much as video poker machines. The parking lot was filled with local news vans, the entrance coagulated with lined-up voters and a swarm of cameras and extended microphones, hoping to sample the home-spun wisdom of the electorate in the face of this newfangled technology. We were watching it all on the 52" plasma TV fixed to the wall in our suite.

A woman - middle-aged, wearing a leather jacket and far too much makeup - was opining, "I don't like it none. Ya just go in there an' push you a button. Don't make no paper. Yer vote just flies off somewheres. To voter heaven, I reckon. Who knows where. Don't make no paper. Don't leave no trail. No, sir, I don't like it none."

Ah, the salt of the earth. The vox populi. You had to hand it to her. It was admirable that she would take precious time away from trawling Wal-Mart for bargains on tampons to participate in a process she knew, deep in her bones, was pointless, bankrupt.

I couldn't argue. I could drink. So drink I did. We were deep into our fifth or sixth fifth of Bushmill's when it happened.

A golden retriever came out of nowhere and smashed through one of the stained-glass windows in the chapel where they were voting - I think it depicted a lamb with a halo, or some such - and proceeded to maul three or four voters, trying - or so I gathered - to get at the electrical cords and unplug the machines.

This was what we'd been waiting for. EG and I dashed across the street, hearing - in the distance - the klaxon of approaching sirens. EG jumped through another window - why not bust up another one? EG delighted in this kind of mayhem.

I jumped in after him. The retriever was dashing around like mad, growling and trying to keep people away from the still-functioning machines. I saw several folks with microcassette recorders - though, I must add, NOT my beloved Coby - trying to distract the dog into giving them a quote.

But she refused and bounded away.

Before I knew what was what, the Man was upon us, and they lobbed tear-gas canisters into the voting area, then came charging in, gas-mask-clad and with riot shields aloft. Seven of them descended on EG and proceeded to beat him into submission. Gasping and nearly blind, I sank to my knees, hands raised, muttering as best I could, "All right, you motherfuckers! We surrender! You hear, we surrender!"

Nevertheless, one of the riot squad cracked me across the back of my skull with his truncheon. Everything went blank.

When I awoke, I found myself alone in a padded cell, trussed up in a straight-jacket. Where I have been for the last month. Every day a doctor - or so he says - comes in to have a little chat. He asks me things like, "Why do you lack confidence in our Commander-in-Chief?" and "Why do you scoff at the idea of the Surge?" He takes notes and shakes his head a lot. I get the feeling that I am a great disappointment to him.

Two days ago, after much begging, pleading, bargaining and cajoling, he allowed me a pad and pencil.

Which pretty much brings up back to where we began.

POST-SCRIPT: This morning, they sent me a woman doctor. Pretty. Just my type, in fact. She told me they were releasing me tomorrow. Into my own recognizance, as she put it.

But will I be free? Will any of us - when we are surveilled at every moment, prohibited from exercising our basic Constitutional rights, denied redress of our grievances, and encouraged only to perpetuate the status quo in the guise of "bolstering the economy"?

Will November bring anything different?

We can only hope.

It - like folly - springs eternal.

END OF DISPATCH