The XYZ-Bomber Journal: 1969-70

Author's note: This account involves revolutionaries and bad attitudes and is not a sex story although sex occurs, as does violence. If you want a stroker, look elsewhere. This story is probably mostly fictional. All sexual acts involve live humans of age 18+. Your thoughtful feedback is appreciated.

Editor's note: Revolution raged throughout Europe during 1918-23 and 1968-72. Americans learned from and participated in these and earlier Euro revolutions. Western Europe's prominent players around 1970 included the Red Army Faction led by Baader and Meinhof, and the young American the FBI called the "XYZ Bomber". This is part of his story.

-=-=-=- From the journals of XYZ -=-=-=-

I was not really involved in the radiation release in Heidelberg in '70. I was not building bombs then - just getting bombed, staying bombed, every day eating Afghan hash and opium cookies about the size of Baltimore. I was not in shape even to plant explosives, let alone make them. Not like in Paris, where I stayed pretty busy.

Paris with intense, black-haired, black-eyed, black-hearted Renée in '69, doing 69 - that was great. And she tasted so good! I think the pyrotechnics changed her flavor somehow, or maybe her excitement altered her body chemistry. She was pretty spicy.

Renée and I wandered around the city most of each night, from the dirty brick walls of Montmartre to the gray stone streets of Montparnasse, poking our little arson toys into obscure corners of official- or expensive-looking buildings. Then we went back to her tidy rooms off the Quai de Berry to fuck like weasels till dawn.

Somewhere in late afternoon we regained consciousness, crawled out of bed, came back to life. We cleaned up, fixed a meal and watched the TV news about all the fires we'd started the night before. If the pictures were especially exciting we might fuck again, but then it was time to make more toys.

Arson toys are easy. Just wrap some sugar and potassium permanganate into a square of gauze, wrap that with a rag soaked in petrol, put a breakable acid ampoule at the edge, and dip the whole thing in hot wax. This makes a three inch square package maybe a quarter-inch thick; a dozen will fit in a pocket. Pinch one side to break the ampoule, and toss the toy down under a building or police car or whatever. A few minutes later, the acid hits the sugar and it ignites, and the toy burns long enough to start a good fire. No problem.

Were we pyromaniacs? I know I felt real thrills, watching my targets burn. Yes, they were all political or cultural targets; they deserved burning for ideological reasons. But seeing flames consuming those structures, turning them into raw radiant energy - wow! The heat waves gave me shivers.

This was not just us. A revolution was happening while Renée and I torched Paris. Every day, students and unions and Algerians and Maoists were out in the streets fighting the fucking fascist cops and army, trying to overthrow the decadent capitalists-technocrats-militarists. There were concrete-brick-lumber barricades and burning car-tire trash heaps in the streets, and troops and tanks and police marksmen, and helicopters spraying teargas and bullets. That's when we met Maris, wary and sexy and Red in all her aspects. I think she was with Baader-Meinhof. Things ratcheted up when she appeared.

Maris came by our rooms every few days with money and a couple kilos of C4, that rotten but effective Czech plastique, and good little timers and fuses, so I could make some REAL bombs. Some Al Fatah hardware guys had shown me all the fabrication tricks. I must say that those camel-fuckers sure knew how to build bombs.

Maris regularly delivered the goods along with a little coke for motivation. Then we would all fuck 'n' suck 'n' slurp the whole night through, in endless variations. Maris especially liked taking doggy position with me pounding her from behind while she ate Renée's sweet pussy.

Yes, plastique day was always a lot of fun. When it was time for her to go, I gave Maris a few of the devices I'd put together since her last visit. She would leave for wherever, and Renée and I went out to watch the street-fighting fun.

I don't know for sure what Maris did with my explosive creations - maybe that refinery fire in Flanders? But by mid-October she hadn't shown for ten days, and I got real nervous. I sniffed around until I found that grey slime Alain, who'd connected Maris with me in the first place. He didn't want to talk about her, but after I cut off a couple toes he told me that Maris had been busted in Thessaloniki with a carload of weapons.

This didn't sound good - how long could Maris resist interrogation? Renée and I grabbed our few non-incendiary possessions, snuck around the lines of troops that were moving up from Charenton, and caught a ride to her uncle's glassware factory in Pantin. We borrowed a company Citroën and headed east, driving along canals and orchards and pastures and woods, avoiding the national roads.

After a couple days we were south of Strasbourg, then across the Rhine into West Germany, safely away from the fucking French cops. We drank schnapps and laughed.

Only a short drive northeast got us to Stuttgart and a change of car. Then we hopped over to where the Neckar River valley snakes out of the Odenwald's hills and merges into the Rheinland, to Heidelberg. This ancient university town hosts the most modern physics lab on the planet at the Max Planck Institut, and swarms of U.S. soldiers from nearby bases like Mannheim and Kaiserslautern, and the usual mix of anus-clenched Deutchers and acid-head anarchists, and enough Turkish workers from the Mannheim factories to keep the whole region awash with opium and hash. Just my kind of place, sure.

It was autumn, heading into a cold wet winter. We laid low. We still had a lot of Maris' money; we rented an apartment just below the Schloss, the old ruined castle dominating Heidelberg which looks like vampire movies should be shot there. We almost settled down.

Renée got a secretarial job at the Institut. I set up a small lab and sold mind-altering chemicals to G.I.'s. We stayed stoned a lot. Sometimes we would play our fugitive games on the wrecked bridge in the upper town, or wander through the Odenwald when it was warm enough, setting little traps of twigs among the green-grey trees, just practicing. This was the best of my fugitive lives. We were almost carefree.

But then in mid-winter Hein showed up, one of Meinhof's "friends". I don't know how he traced us. He wanted me to make more bombs. I told him, "Hey, it's easy. Just set up a nitre pit (it's best if you have a wine-drinking bishop piss into the dung heap.) Then boil out the saltpetre, mix in charcoal and sulfur, and you're ready to roll." Hein wasn't too amused, and he threatened Renée, so I slit his throat. This left a bit of a mess, and we knew more Faction guys would be around sooner or later, so it was time to move on again. Time to head homeward for awhile, maybe.

America was wild in early '70, with all the Vietnam protests, even back home around Chicago and Milwaukee; it was in all the papers. So we headed home. We drove down to Geneva, then flew roundabout to Lisbon and Dakar and Trinidad and New Orleans. It was February, and quiet there, and warmer. Such a relief after Europe!

We were nowhere near Heidelberg when the biophysics wing of the Institut was exploded. Maybe I left a few toys behind, and maybe Meinhof's backup crew found those, and maybe they applied some pressure to the war-mongering fascist pigs, I don't know for sure. But I wasn't there; I didn't do that. Some things just aren't my fault. Really.