was an anxious place. And indeed I was an
anxious child within it. My parents were often poised at the edge of
divorce, and I tried to keep distance from whose drinking was at
the bottom of their troubles. At ten, I was a half-assed vegetarian
(iceberg lettuce, milk, and potato chips) and a lover of revolution (I had
heroized Tom Hayden although I knew little about who he was or what he
stood for). was a meat-and-potatoes man who voted for .
Although I was still an unmade person in many ways, ten may have been the
most important year of my life. Earlier that year I had called the police
as began to beat my mother. It may have been the first time he
ever hit her-- I don't know-- but it was certainly the first time I ever
stood between them. My intervention moved me further in the direction of
vegetables and Students for a Democratic Society.
And so when woke me up one Saturday morning to take me to meet
, I was only ten years old but I knew enough about the national
ambivalence toward figures like that I wore a peace symbol under
my T-shirt, ready to pull it out if the moment called for me to take a
stand. The stated reason for taking me to Newport Beach that
morning was to see 's boat--The Wild Goose, a World War Two-era
Canadian minesweeper which had been converted into a pleasure craft-- but I
knew that 's real purpose was to introduce me to
himself.