Free Short Century by David Burr Gerrard

Father that we’re not going to the Chappine this year. He’ll just have to cancel the reservation.”
    â€œDon’t worry about it, Emily.”
    â€œWe’ll get out of the Chappine. I promise. So what are your plans for the week?”
    â€œLady Bird Johnson is giving a talk today, so I was thinking about going to a protest rally against her.”
    â€œThat reminds me. I just read this amazing book called The Dominion of Pleasure , by Jersey Rothstein. He says that politics is a waste of time. Politics are? Politics is? Anyway, a waste of time. He says you should focus only on your own sexual gratification.”
    â€œWhy are you reading something like that?”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œI mean something about…”
    â€œYou mean something about sex? I’m going to be sixteen tomorrow.”
    â€œSixteen is young.”
    â€œToo young to think about sex? That’s a boring rule, and boring rules aren’t for us,” she said. Already she was back to her provocative self.
    This reminded me that James Hickham, an eighteen-year-old college freshman, had touched the breasts of a fifteen-year-old girl. Maybe it was unnecessary to feel sorry for assaulting him.
    â€œJames read the book and said it was a masterpiece. I read it so I could argue with him, but he turns out to have been right about that, at least. Anyway: sex, not politics. Don’t go to the protest. Go out and get laid. Unless you’re going to the protest to get laid. In which case I don’t know what I think.”
    â€œHappy early birthday, Emily. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
    â€œNot at the Chappine.”
    â€œIt’s not a big deal.”
    â€œRead Jersey Rothstein’s book so we can talk about it. I’m really sorry about what I said.”
    She apologized for a few more minutes before I could get her off the phone.
    f
    I intended to walk to the library, but instead I just took a long, aimless stroll around campus. I knew that there were things motivating me that I couldn’t name, or at least things that I didn’t want to name, things that left my actions soggy with psychology.
    The protest itself was well attended, by Yale men and by girls from various women’s colleges. Fifteen hundred people, according to later estimates. We were all jammed together outside the Commons, the building inside of which Mrs. Johnson, rather ill-advisedly, was giving a talk entitled “Beautification in America.” The attire at the protest would have been unimaginable only a year or two later, with most of the boys in coats and ties. People jostled me and, twirling an unlit cigarette in my fingers, I surveyed them. Many looked engaged and hopeful, like they might taunt Lady Bird into divorcing her husband and blowing some guy with long hair and a beard on the White House lawn, or perhaps on the steps of the Capitol, on the theory that steps would be harder on her knees. Many others stood slack and chatted with their friends; this was just something to do for an afternoon. Signs jutted and bobbed over heads: “Lady Bird Beautifies While Lyndon Burns” and “How Do We Beautify Vietnam?” Many of the signs depicted burned children war victims.
    A bone-thin, sandy-haired girl paced a small stretch of concrete; she was wearing a blue sweater and she had her arms folded over her breasts as though she were awaiting the results of a medical exam. Beyond the quad was the law school tower, decorated with thin spires. From the sky, the tower and the quad would look like a watchtower and prison courtyard.
    Almost all of the guys at the rally came from families that were just as wealthy as mine or wealthier. Among them were guys who would later talk about blowing things up. Other guys were standing apart in clusters and mocking the protesters, laughing with that laugh they all had, the one where they threw their shoulders back and raised their chins. I could never