What follows is a continuation of the previous entry

Last night, in Terry’s little cottage, we played a game called “Big Booty.” The most fun I’ve ever had with the word “Booty.” Four grown women clapping our hands, laughing and calling out in rhythm, “Big Booty Big Booty Big Booty, oh yeah, Big Booty #1, #1 #3, #3 Big Booty, Big Booty #2,” et cetera. And “Oh Shit!” (when we err).

In Sacramento, Summer camp is in session. And art camp. And church programs. This suburban sprawl of Sacramento might as well be Moorestown, New Jersey, where I spent my summers as a kid, but for the very occasional rainbow pride flag. It is June, after all. And I am holding my girlfriend’s hand in public. Occasionally we kiss. I am good at not seeing strangers look at us oddly. I do not know if those people exist.

I do believe more physical energy would greatly improve my lagging libido. Last night, I ingested a bunch of guarana, thinking that I was going dancing. We found the club closed, shrugged, returned home and I danced for my lover. I stripped for her, I moaned and cried. I fucked her sweetly and soundly. We are so soft with each other today. I remember this feeling, this way of looking at each other over the shoulder. Oh, now is the time to know and be known. I remember connecting like this that first summer of falling in love. When we were in Chicago, and I was on tour with the Morrigan.

As we approach the capitol building where the WTO protest is happening, there are cops on every corner. Helicopters fly low overhead. We can read the numbers on their bellies as they take pictures of us. Surveillance. Police in riot gear. “They love that shit,” my girlfriend says. “They do, they do, they do,” Alma echoes.

“Let them go! Let them go! Let them go!” The crowd converges before us, moves fast towards a point, screaming and chanting, angry, infuriated at the arrests happening. “Oh, man, that’s when the police start shit,” Alma says. “It was nonviolent until they showed up.” Two businessmen, politicians maybe stroll through the crowd with their briefcases, unfazed. We move closer. Stand in front of the line. I can’t make out what’s happening. Something smells foul. There’s a dense line of cops in riot gear preventing hundreds of us from joining others in the center of the rally. We don’t know why. “Protect the people, not the corporations! Protect the people, not the corporations!” we chant to the cops. We try to appeal to their humanness. Alma stands close to a cop holding a rifle with canisters of tear gas. She urges him not to shoot into the crowd. His back remains turned. His face away from us. She tells his back that tear gas causes miscarriages and cancer. That there are children in that crowd. “Our children. Your children.” She tells him to keep his conscience on, that he has the right to choose not to shoot into the crowd. That if someone gives him an order to shoot, he doesn’t have to; Let the one who gave the order do it. Don’t shoot. Please don’t shoot into the crowd.

We’re up-wind. If they shoot the crowd, we’ll all get gassed.

Those in the center are surrounded. We keep an eye out, so that we do not get trapped inside the lines of police. I am wary of the baton held ready in each cop’s hands. And the tazers at their sides. And the guns. I am so close to them. Without moving his feet, the officer in front of me could easily bash in my skull. I am scared. And I am standing.

This is not a party. This does not have the air of celebration as did the San Francisco war protest rallies. We very well could be arrested, gassed, or battered.

The cops are pushing people in the crowd. On the other side of the line. Where we are not allowed to go. We are trying to protect the others from over here. We are all just trying to protect our food. We are trying to keep from being force-fed poison.

“Americans will put up with anything as long as it does not block traffic.” --a hand-held sign

We sing “We who believe in freedom will not rest. We who believe in freedom will not rest until it comes.”

I don’t know enough. I am angry at my own ignorance. At my complicity in all of this.

Apparently, the Food Not Bombs truck was taken over by the police. Alma points out the irony of the cops taking our food as the WTO and the government move to take over the food production industry.

The police protect the Hyatt as if it were the Pentagon.

We gasp at the grandeur of the trees.

As we walk to another location, in a small parade of anarchists and activists, a woman in a car rolls up and offers us all apricots from a tree in her garden. We take handfuls of them, grateful. They are sweet and soft and organic and ripe.

We sit and rest at a corner, in front of the Clarion Hotel, which the cops are guarding. A car stops at the light. Window down. A woman asks if we are with the protest. “What are you protesting?” she asks. The multi-voice response: