MY SEVENTIES A memoir of sex, drugs & videotape

CHAPTER ONE. VIVA LA REVOLUTION. May 1970

I have Richard Nixon to thank for the direction of my life. I was a month shy of graduating college in May 1970 when that filthy warmonger Nixon invaded Cambodia and four student protesters were killed at Kent State. A week later, I was walking out of a frigid studio in suburban Washington, D.C. where I'd taped a public television debate program with two other college editors and a Nixon Administration toady.

I remember my performance as incendiary, the long-haired embodiment of my generation's rage over the War. Watching a copy of the program decades later, archived improbably at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, I was surprised by my composure. I looked like an earnest kid trying hard to sound smart. Nixon's ghost even helped me write this memoir.

After the broadcast, we began to knock back glasses of the wine provided at an awkward, post-taping spread. Quite drunk, we headed to the limo with our handler, Carol Oughton, a petite blonde in a tidy blue suit and silky blouse, a Young Republican lookalike.

As we took our seats in the limo, one of the other editors poured the last of the wine from a bottle he'd purloined. Inside my woozy head, a battle was raging. Was I a gladiator, bloodied but victorious? Or a pathetic loser, unable to pierce the patronizing smugness of that Administration toady as he defended the expansion of the War?

"Can you believe that guy?" I sneered, gulping my wine. "That motherfucker is going down, like Nixon is going down. Once the revolution comes." Right on, right on, the other editors murmured. "Let's hear it for the revolution! Viva la revolucion!" I bellowed, holding my cup in the air.

FROM CHAPTER NINE. November 1971

I WAS SITTING ON A BENCH near the Dupont Circle fountain when I heard them -- Oh Mary. Oh, girlfriend -- a noisy gaggle of flamboyant guys approaching my bench. One of them gave me the hairy eyeball. He crooked a finger, and I walked over.

"Like some?" he asked, waving a joint in the air. His nails were painted to match his turquoise eye shadow. Though he and the others were unmistakably male, with beards, hairy arms, and tufted nipples, they'd worked hard on their patina of femininity -- hair clips and scarves, diaphanous blouses, clownish makeup. Like the ballerinas at the editors' conference the previous winter.

"You likee?" asked another, tiny butterflies bobbling from his ratted-out hair.

"I do likee," I said. He offered me a swig of cheap wine, which I gulped.

"Repeat after me. GENDER FUCK," he said. I nodded and repeated the phrase. "We are the gender-bender brigade. We like to play around with masculine and feminine. Warriors against the Patriarchy. Party bitches. Whatever. I'm Billy, by the way."

"Hi, Billy, I'm Nick."

"New in town?" he said, his eyes a millimeter shy of a leer.

"Not exactly. I only just came out. The week of Mayday."