<\/a><\/p>\n

Photograph by guest arts editor, Peter Ahn. <\/em>
\nRead about the\u00a0art selection process<\/a> for this piece.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Watch this piece performed live<\/a>\u00a0by actor Alix Alias.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A struggling actress in between auditions, I was grabbing a hotdog at Gray\u2019s Papaya on West Seventy-second in Manhattan when David Gilbert recognized me. A driving force in the Weather Underground, Gilbert was dedicated to overthrowing the U.S. government. He\u2019d seen my performance in \u201cThe American Pig,\u201d a satirical review put on by Yale drama students at a rally against the war. We\u2019d spouted meaningful spoken word, danced, and sang Country Joe and the Fish\u2019s, \u201cFixin\u2019 To Die Rag.\u201d (\u201cOne, two, three, what are we fighting for? Don\u2019t ask me. I don\u2019t give a damn. Next stop is Vietnam!\u201d) David loved the show and dubbed my performance \u201cout-of-sight.\u201d Hell. The guy was a fan. I was amazed he knew who I was because instead of army fatigues and wild Janis Joplin hair, I was dressed for a commercial audition in a neat ponytail and a sleeveless sheath. I still had revolutionary consciousness, but I needed cab fare. When I saw David, I plastered my arms to my sides so he couldn\u2019t tell that I\u2019d shaved my armpits\u2014it was enough that I was wearing nylons. I wanted the job badly.<\/p>\n

Then again, David barely resembled his former self. The seedy phantom before me was haggard, disoriented, and frail. I\u2019d been previously impressed\u2014no, mesmerized by the passion of his rhetoric. But now, his Rasputin eyes were red-rimmed and puffy; his clothes were dirty and torn. He smelled of cigarettes and stale sweat. Yet as he lightly grazed my shoulder with tobacco-stained fingers, my mind went blank. The man was hypnotic still. If he\u2019d told me to run in front of a bus or do him in the nearest phone booth, I would have.<\/p>\n

\u201cDavid, is there anything I can do to help you?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSure thing. Give me whatever cash you have on you.\u201d<\/p>\n

I reached into my purse and quickly handed him two twenties. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThanks, comrade,\u201d he said, stuffing the money into his sleeve, \u201cThe New World Order won\u2019t forget you.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was a major relief. Recognition always appealed.<\/p>\n

Asking for my phone number and address, he drew so close I could see the moth holes covering his shirt. Without hesitation, I wrote the information. He then disappeared into Gray\u2019s. Through the store window, I watched him pick a half-eaten bun off someone else\u2019s plate and stuff it into his mouth.<\/p>\n

The next morning I was taking a shower with my long-haired Texan boyfriend Clint, whom I\u2019d met when we were both grad students at Yale. As he ran his soapy hands down my leg, the doorbell rang.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll get it,\u201d I told him, expecting my photographer neighbor with my new head shots. Instead, standing in front of me in the same clothes he\u2019d worn the day before, was David Gilbert, accompanied by a stunning, dark-haired woman. She was the legendary Bernadine Dohrn, whom I immediately recognized from a recent picture in The East Village Other<\/em>. A law school graduate turned political street fighter, she was the most powerful Weatherwoman of all.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHello,\u201d I whispered, painfully aware of my liberal puffball status. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cCarol, this is Bernadine,\u201d David said offhandedly as he gestured toward her, not so much an introduction as a statement. She raised her eyebrows as if to acknowledge that yes, that was who she was\u2014but even that small amount of information was more than I deserved. David spoke with his back turned away from me. He was tapping the walls to judge their thickness.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need your place for meetings. It\u2019s small, but it\u2019ll do.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat do you mean?\u2019\u2019 I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cA safe house, that\u2019s what\u2014you into it or not?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

A safe house? I wasn\u2019t a safe house kind of a person. I was a \u201cdeep in my heart I do believe that we shall overcome\u201d (without an AK 47) kind of person.<\/p>\n

Panic blew a hole in my belly.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh\u2026I guess. Sure\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0I was saying yes?<\/p>\n

\u201cBeautiful,\u201d Bernadine said and put her hand on my shoulder. She was shorter than me.<\/p>\n

\u201cTold ya she\u2019d be cool,\u201d David said. With their \u201cbring the war home\u201d fury and a lot of hallucinogens, Weathermen and women felt that only acts of violence could bring down capitalism. But they needed a meeting place.<\/p>\n

I couldn\u2019t catch my breath. I was a people-pleaser and wanted everyone to like me. If actor friends asked me to recommend them to my theatrical agent, I did\u2014even if they totally sucked. If someone needed to crash at my apartment with Mr. Muffy, their not-yet-spayed tomcat\u2014I let them. But this man, with his serious zap power, was now standing in my sacred space, my Westbeth, a bona fide New York City Artists\u2019 apartment, subsidized and everything. The newly installed parquet floors and pie slice view of the Hudson screamed out to me to be at one with my truth.<\/p>\n

\u201cUm\u2026guys\u2026actually, it might not work out\u2026ahhh\u2026you see\u2026.my mother wouldn\u2019t really \u2026she\u2019s not exactly into\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

I was beating away domestic terrorists with the threat of a sixty-eight-year-old woman who\u2019d just undergone hip replacement surgery and also paid half my rent. God help me.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019ll be eight of us,\u201d Bernadine informed me. \u201cWe\u2019ll use the stairs instead of the elevator so as not to attract attention.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a0Or I wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

\u201cEight\u2019s okay.\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t stay while we\u2019re here,\u201d David added. \u201cAll Weather Underground meetings are strictly closed. We don\u2019t want you to know who we are or what we\u2019re saying.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want to know either. If I never see another Weatherman again, it\u2019ll be too soon.\u201d<\/p>\n

There, I\u2019d said it. But David continued without missing a beat.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll be here early tomorrow and leave at dark. Make an extra key and stock the fridge. No junk food, just the basics.\u201d<\/p>\n

I was going to feed them too? It was a wonder I didn\u2019t ask what kind of dressing they wanted on their salad. I hated their violence but couldn\u2019t bring myself to stand firm and tell them to leave. I was a deer caught in their headlights, paralyzed by my bourgeois guilt. I shivered, thinking what plans they might concoct in my sweet, little home. It had barely been a month since three Weathermen, all in their twenties, were assembling a bomb in a townhouse in Greenwich Village and one of them accidently put the wrong wires together and\u2014bang! Nothing remained of them except bones, teeth and a fingertip.<\/p>\n

Steam from the bathroom floated toward me and brought with it the smell of Zest soap and peppermint toothpaste. Clint. He\u2019d just finished his shower.<\/p>\n

An oversized bath towel, imprinted with a Zuni pottery design, that I\u2019d bought at Bloomingdale\u2019s annual White Sale, was secured around his waist. Water dripped from his long chestnut hair down onto his shoulders. He\u2019d overheard us and knew about the Weathermen, just like everyone else who passed the bombed out remains on West Eleventh.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re not meeting here, so just go,\u201d he told David calmly.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo way brother, we were just promised we could \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Before David could say another word, Clint lifted David up by the back of his shirt and dragged him to the door. Before Yale he\u2019d spent seven years in the Naval Air Force, where he\u2019d learned how to make and follow through with quick decisions. In old snapshots he was a clean-cut uniformed young man, with a square chin and broad shoulders.<\/p>\n

\u201cGo on now buddy,\u201d Clint demanded. \u201cJes git!\u201d<\/p>\n

With one hand, he opened my front door and with the other pushed David into the hallway. Clint then turned his attention toward Bernadine.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t you dare touch me,\u201d she growled and stomped out of my apartment to join David.<\/p>\n

\u201cFuck you co-opted Yalie Pigs!\u201d David screamed back as they walked away from my apartment, where the wind took them in another direction.<\/p>\n

Clint and I stood together in the door jamb. He wasn\u2019t even breathing hard.<\/p>\n

\u201cThank you,\u201d I whispered.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Texas, babe, we don\u2019t invite the rattler into the barn.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTell me again why you left,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n

\u201cDidn\u2019t care for it much and I wanted to get out any way I could, so I quit football and joined the Navy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut you love football,\u201d I mumbled, nibbling my way across the chewy rim of his ear.<\/p>\n

\u201cLove to watch it, that\u2019s all. It\u2019s a blood sport, they make you into a gladiator.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCouldn\u2019t you have gotten hurt in the Navy just as easily?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, but the Navy was real. If I was gonna git all busted up, it had to be for somethin\u2019 more than a game. Besides,\u201d he continued, \u201ceven if I hadn\u2019t been here, you could have handled them by yourself. You\u2019re that strong. I\u2019m sure of it.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

He might have been sure, but I wasn\u2019t. I sank to my knees, but he wasn\u2019t having it.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo way,\u201d he said, lifting me to my feet.<\/p>\n

\u201cReally?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cReally,\u201d he answered, \u201cyou\u2019re more powerful than you know and I love you for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

With that we went at it, but I\u2019m leaving that part out because I get easily sidetracked and because in a Manhattan moment, a realization came before I did: The fine man in my arms believed in me, but just as far-reaching was the understanding that the Far Left, whom I\u2019d always thought to be protecting angels of \u201cthe people,\u201d were as murderous as the Far Right. The Weather Underground was a nightmare; their fury cannibalizing itself. They didn\u2019t care if I lived or died. To them, I wasn\u2019t really a human; I was a thing to be used and it had felt beyond shitty. They were no kin of mine. We were in no way related, not by thought or action. Hard line politics were not for me. Protest\u2014yes. Murder\u2014no. I was just a young woman who no longer felt represented by or at home in her own country.<\/p>\n

Yet sooner than I\u2019d thought possible, even protest felt useless. I no longer saw New York as a beautiful, dynamic home for diversity and culture. All I could see were its cracked sidewalks strewn with garbage. The subway, which I took every day, became a clanking crypt filled with the seated dead. The best solution was to drop out of \u201cAmerika\u201d and live freely in nature. Clint agreed. He\u2019d previously visited the Northwest and considered it the best place to live on earth. So deep was his conviction, that he left before I did.<\/p>\n

I missed him like a wildfire misses rain.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Post Script<\/em>:\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

In 1981 David Gilbert<\/strong> was involved in robbing a Brinks armored car, which resulted in the murder of a guard. David is now serving 75 years in prison. His writing collection No Surrender, Writings from an Anti-Imperialist Political Prisoner<\/em> was published during his incarceration.<\/p>\n

Until 2013, Bernadine Dohrn <\/strong>was the director at the Northwestern University Children and Justice Center. Pardoned, she lives a quiet life in upstate New York.<\/p>\n

Clint<\/strong> and Carol have been married and organically farming in Oregon for 45 years.<\/p>\n

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