SCENE 8
13 May, 2000
NEW YOR CITY
“Planning a Revolution from A Hot Tub in the Hamptons”

Nick Trikhovitch and I just bought his manual on guerrilla warfare from St. Marks books in the East Village. Simcha says a lot of what we’re organizing is playing out now in South America. The Cuban revolution, the FARC-EP rebels in Columbia, Shining Path in Peru. The Allende Regime in Chile, which the US toppled in 1973. Salvador Allende was neither guilty of having communists in his cabinet, nor of coming to power via the armed overthrow of the Chilean government. He was something more intolerable still; he was a democratically elected Marxist.

On September 11th, 1973 Allende’s socialist experiment came to an end. The military seized power and General Augusto Pinochet took power with the direct backing of the CIA. A brutal crackdown followed. The day after the coup the head of the air force proclaimed the need to exterminate “the cancer of Marxism.” Members of the Allende government were rounded up and placed under detention. Thousands of alleged leftists were detained, questioned, and tortured in the national soccer stadium. At least 3,000 Chileans were killed or disappeared in the aftermath of the coup-and this is by a conservative count. Simcha’s father had been one of them. In the place of a democratically elected socialist government Chile received a military dictatorship that would rule with an iron fist until 1990.

The guerrilla warfare manual teaches us how to convert a shotgun into a rocket launcher. It demonstrates how to ambush enemy columns and illustrates the best way to make Molotov cocktails. It makes me recognize something that wasn’t entirely clear in the beginning. Having a revolution may entail killing a whole lot of people. I don’t know how I feel about that.

Being that New York isn’t exactly known for its jungles, I suggest a trip out to Long Island, the closest thing to jungle light. Nick wants to fuck Lauren in my parent’s hot tub and I want to terrorize rich people in the woods. The irony of guerrilla warfare in the Hamptons escapes no one.
***
Nick Trikhovitch and Lauren Van, Izzy Vitz and his girlfriend Zivia, Simcha, Zoe Zapata and I take the LI Double R to East Hampton early Saturday morning. Zoe is a busty Chilean with a huge crush on me. Benjamin and my parents are already out there. It never ceases to amaze me how much Zivia has changed. She used to be a quiet, somewhat bookish girl with glasses and now she’s a Raver with platinum blonde hair and neon bright clothes. Zivia got hot while I was away. How she and Izzy ended up together is a mystery to me. By evening we’re all in the hot tub. Izzy is joking about an orgy, but he and I know he’s not really joking. Izzy and I are the kind of guys that can’t get into a hot tub without thinking about group sex.

“It really stands for ‘Y U Fuckin’ Everybody,” Izzy whispers to Zoe about my organization and I jokingly elbow him in the ribs.

Everyone’s been drinking Coronas and Red Stripe all day and I have to remind the crew that we’re not just out here for recreation. We, after all, have to learn how to kill the capitalists.

“So who’s a capitalist? Besides your parents I mean,” Nick asks laughing.

“My Dad isn’t a capitalist,” I retort. “These books would lead us to believe that a capitalist is anyone who exploits their workers.”

“So we’re supposed to kill all these capitalists?” Izzy laughs.

“All the ones that won’t come over to our side,” I say.

Izzy Vitz has read more about communism than any of us but doesn’t believe in any of it.

“In America that would mean killing a whole lot of people. Too many, if you ask me. By the time the revolution is over you’re talking Hitler-Stalin proportions,” argues Zivia.

“But you have to admit that there are a good chunk of people that profit extensively from the majority of the world being poor,” says Nick as he slaps the side of the hot tub, “like Sebastian’s parents.”

“Doesn’t mean you have to kill anybody,” says Lauren Van.

“Well what is it that you think a revolution is?” demands Izzy.

“That’s exactly what a revolution is, and that’s why I don’t believe in revolution,” says Zivia.

“It doesn’t have to go down like that,” I tell them.

“Oh, and what do you have in mind Mr. Wants-to-run-around-in-the-woods-to-practice-guerrilla- warfare?” asks Lauren.

“With Sebastian you have to separate his reckless adventurism from his politics every once in a while,” says Nick as he lights up a Newport.

“No, you don’t. If I have to kill a capitalist or two to free my people I’d do it. I’m just not about genocide,” I state.

“Who are ‘your people,’ Sebastian? Why do we have to kill anybody?” asks Zoe suddenly interested.

Zoe is the whitest Chilean I know and I want to fuck her brains out. Her orange bikini fits her nicely. She’s liked me for a while and Izzy is trying to get me laid. There’s something intense about these Chileans. Ronnie Lestor who robbed my house, Simcha the socialist and now this cute thing.

“Ah, the difficult questions. What will it be, Sebastian? How much do you want that omelet?” asks Simcha channeling Fidel Castro with a Coheba cigar in his mouth.

“Sebastian doesn’t want blood, he wants social justice,” interrupts Lauren.

“Let him answer for himself,” says Izzy.

“Let’s be clear with these terms first,” Simcha says, “If a capitalist is an exploiter, well fuck it then, they’re our enemy. If a communist is a freedom fighter for the workers and oppressed then that’s the side we want to be on. And if a revolution is the right means to end exploitation and suffering, then that’s what we want. If we have to kill a lot of people, then we didn’t do something right during the planning stage.”
“I’m well with that,” I say.
“Is YUFE the planning stage to a commie revolution?” laughs Nick Trikhovitch.
“We’ll just have to wait and see,” I say.
“Planning the revolution from a hot tub in the Hamptons. I love the irony,” says Simcha.
Two hours later Simcha, my brother Benny, Trikhovitch, Lauren Van, Zoe Zapata, and I are dressed in olive and black fatigues stalking through the woods with water guns and two dangerously realistic toy shot guns. We’ve played this game before. We call it Operation Reinhardt. In this game of vandalism and make believe, we are all transported back to Poland in 1943 as Jewish partisans behind Nazi lines. In the past we’ve dug up road signs, stolen flags, destroyed property and incinerated the local high school football goal posts. This time we’d be ambushing cars. Zivia and Izzy Vitz aren’t really into the whole game as much as they are into doggy style in the hot tub. They wish us luck and tell us not to get arrested. After crossing through several other properties placing many a chair into a pool, we arrive at a highway intersection. Using caution tape and orange neon rope we section off three sides of the intersection. With two Super Soaker 2000’s and several water balloons our objective is to lie in wait until a car stops at our blockade. When a person gets out to move it we’ll hit them with everything we’ve got.
I am crouching with Zoe and my brother in the woods, Super Soaker rifles ready. There isn’t any wind so the trees don’t rustle. Whoever stops at the blockade is going to get drenched. That in itself is a harmless teenage prank, a bunch of drunken kids fucking around on a Saturday night. Only I am somewhere else. To me, when that person stops they aren’t just some Hamptonite about to get soaked. I am suddenly in the middle of a great revolt and I am going to kill someone for the first time. I am engaging in political violence. Once I do this I can do it over and over again, kill as many people as I have to. I hear the car before I see it. I am in a trance. My enemy uses violence. I must use violence against my enemy. My enemy causes suffering. I must make my enemy suffer. I pump my water gun. It’s heavy like the biggest water gun ever made. 3000 won’t be out ‘til summer. In my mind it goes “click clack.”

Caught somewhere between the Holocaust and a violent future that I can see inevitably coming, I get ready to shoot.

In dreams I have seen buildings burning, I have had front row seats at an execution and I’ve seen children beaten with rifle butts. I’ve seen them in my mind, but what the mind makes real forms the basis of conviction. I see Nick ready to fire and I see Lauren and Simcha readying the water balloon launcher. And I hear the car coming. Maybe it’s a troop transport. Maybe it’s a tank. Don’t shoot ‘til you see the whites of their eyes. That one always stuck with me. It’s a black Escalade. The driver slows down, stops, and then gets out. It’s a dude in a sweater. It’s a soldier. It’s a capitalist. Don’t shoot ‘til you see the whites of his eyes.

I yell, “Fire!”

My brother Benjamin and I fire the opening salvo. He jumps in the air and yells out. The girls hit his car with water balloons and a girl yelps from inside. It all happens real fast. We don’t wait around to see what happens. All six of us tear ass back into the woods to meet up at the rendezvous point. I snap out of whatever fucked-up fantasy land I’m in and hightail after my brother deep into the tree line.

We repeat the process two more times at different intersections. Finally someone calls the cops on us and we have to hide in the woods for what seems like an unusually long amount of time as some cops walk around with a flashlight looking for us. The column gets back to base without any casualties.

I climb into bed next to Zoe and she starts rubbing my cock. Soon we’re going at. Zoe has enormous Chilean breasts. I lose my virginity to her about three hours later. It is exactly as special as I thought it would be. Believe me when I say I won’t be the first, nor the last high-minded rebel leader to cum on a girl’s face.