Welcome to Prague

"Who but a bad, fearless, strungout, crazy motherfucker would come to Czechago? And we were motherfucking bad. We pissed and shit and fucked in public; we crossed streets on red lights; and we opened Coke bottles with our teeth. We were constantly stoned or tripping on every drug known to man. We were the outlaw forces of Amerika displaying ourselves flagrantly on a world stage." -- Jerry Rubin.

*****

The city was burnt and beaten, but it hunched alertly before Connie, a vast, bleak expanse of carbureted, incinerated metal. Some iron slabs stood tall and blunt like monoliths, while others had been forged and twisted into fanciful Gothic forms. She stood near the departure queue and heard the jake brake screech on the next bus in line to depart Chicago, many yards from where the buses heading into the city had dropped her off. Her shoulder ached already from having carried the knapsack through the rabbit warren of the bus station from the arrival depot.

The Loop was bustling, but impersonal and hurried: Nobody spoke a word to her, and no cabs came to pick her up. Workmen crowded the stations, but she could only overhear their gossip, not join in. They said both of the main cabbie companies were striking, and she wasn't surprised. Not a single taxi had driven past her since she had headed out the revolving door of the station, and she was dead in the middle of Chicago, surrounded by faceless robots and workaday zombies, and only a few hippie stragglers, dressed in the dregs of Salvation Army gear.

This was not what she had expected upon heading to cover the Convention.

She hadn't been writing for the paper a long time, but they had sent her on assignment anyway. Chicago was a place she'd wanted to see for a while, and the convention had seemed the perfect way to see it. There was something strangely isolationist about the city, though, and she shivered a little as she left the station, trying to hail a CTA bus to Halsted and the Stock Yards.

*****

Tan and in his early twenties, the guy would have been good-looking if he had gotten a haircut. His dishwater blond hair was stringy and too long, but he was clean for a Yippie, and he could have been handsome a few years ago in a school yearbook. He was about her age, and he had been on the bus to Halsted. She hadn't noticed him, though, so when they went out the front door of the bus, Connie offered the stranger a smile. Visions of Janet Leigh in Psycho flew through her head. This is how bad things start, she thought, but she had already smiled, and he was smiling back by now.

Back at the bus station, the hippies had been dressed far worse than he was. The shoe-length coat, army green and a few sizes too big, was of course a requirement, but his jeans were clean, and only one knee was ripped. Besides the too-long hair, he had a nice face, with deep-set, sparkling eyes and an energetic grin. 'Property is Theft,' proclaimed a patch on his motorcycle bag, and true to his word, it arced wide around him as he turned away from the bus, making him an easy target for pickpockets.

"Cop?"

She shook her head.

"Cop's secretary. You look like a secretary."

Another headshake. Maybe he was teasing her. She wasn't sure.

"What, then?"

"A reporter. From Cleveland."

That got a reaction, but not the one that Connie had expected. She had expected her occupation to be met with either boredom or questions of where her loyalties were. Instead, a flicker of impressed delight twinkled in his eye. "Huh. How 'bout that. I used to write for my school paper." He said that like he thought it might impress her, but continued when she didn't reply. "Tom Moreno."

"Connie Schultz."

"That's a hell of a newspaper name." He might have been teasing her again; his tone was suitably light, but his face was set in a hard line. It quirked upwards, and he repeated, "Connie Schultz, it's nice to meet you. I don't suppose you can get me entrance to the Center the next few days. I'd love to meet McCarthy."

So would I, Connie thought, but she shook her head. "You've got as good a chance as me. I'm just going to be in the press box. You'd get a better view on TV."

Tom didn't seem bothered by the denial. He started walking, the army bag swinging alongside him, his booted feet clunking as their metal soles hit the pavement. A hand reached up absently, scraping away his long hair from his face. "I can promise you something better to watch than a whole bunch of suited fascists and a few honest guys. Come with me."

Was this how Peter Pan had gotten Wendy into so much trouble? He had the same boyish enthusiasm as the eternal youth, and she stared at him for a long moment, feeling squarer than she had ever imagined.

"It'll be an adventure," he added.

Connie nodded, although her head felt light and she felt dizzy. "All right."

His grin broadened. "All right!" he repeated, although it was more approval than agreement.

*****

If this was where they were living, Connie wondered how they could have made it through the week. From the look of their camp, though, they had done just that, and she grimaced at the sight of it. The hippies were supposed to be all about saving the planet, but the litter and debris and the tents that sat there, scraggly and straggling, made her think of only destruction.

Margaret Mead would have a field day in this camp, she thought, and watched Tom as he stopped at one tent to say something quickly and quietly to them, and murmured to another group of people. There was a strange feeling of conspiracy, something that bothered her but that she couldn't quite put her finger on.

"What's going on, Tom?" They'd stopped off for Cokes before they made their way to the parks on Clark Street, and she took a sip from her glass bottle as she waited for his reply. "These are your people. Got that. They're your friends. But there's something going on."

He scoffed at her question. "There's not enough going on. Not yet." He clapped his hands together, rubbing them as if he was a stage villain in preparation for a deathblow, and she wondered about that. These folks were as weird as she had been led to believe, but at least they were earnest, and at least they would make for good writing.

He stopped at a canvas-and-pegs structure that she might have believed to be a tent if it hadn't been in the process of falling apart. No one was in there, and he flopped out on the expanse, arms and legs akimbo.

"There will be something going on soon, though," he told the ceiling of the tent, and she moved to sit down next to him, Indian-style, resting her hands on her knees. She didn't dare touch anything in the park. God only knew what had contaminated it. "I'm not one of the big guys, but I've got my own stuff going on." He propped himself up on an elbow, studying her. "Get ready. The times, they are a-changing." There was dripping sarcasm in the Dylan quote.

She had expected to be in a hotel near the International Amphitheatre, and now she was ten miles away from the convention, in some crappy park with a stranger she'd just met, but she felt less bothered by it than she had expected to be. "The convention?"

He nodded. "Fuck 'em all, man. McCarthy's all right, but they're all fucks."

She longed to tell him that the hatred solved nothing, but she would only earn scoffing. She kept her mouth shut, as much as she longed to talk.

Silent and seemingly thoughtful, Tom reached up into the ceiling of the tent, drawing down a plastic sandwich bag. She thought it was strange that nobody had stolen anything. At least the hippies and Yippies were honest -- grungy, yes, but they weren't thieves. He held the bag up with pinched fingertips, showing it to her.

"You ever --?" Tom began, but she cut him off by snagging the bag. At least she would have the opportunity to surprise him now.

Tip and papers naturally followed, even if Tom handed them over uncertainly, unsure of what she was about to do. Moments later, he clearly was impressed that she knew how to roll her own joint. He sat watching her silently, motionless, but as she licked the paper to glue it together, he let out a low, impressed whistle. When she set fire to it and stuck it in her mouth, he told her, "I didn't think you'd ever smoked before. You look like you work for the Man."

"I do," she said, and exhaled.

*****

War. That was all she saw when she made it to the convention center. A red-lettered sign, its font jagged and harsh, caught her eye: "Welcome to Prague." Its holder was unremarkable, a Yippie with a flying pig button, and she felt straitlaced in the crowd despite wearing jeans and boots.

The barbed wire and checkpoints turned Connie off as much as they must have annoyed the demonstrators that swarmed around her. She had a press pass, but she was tired, and not looking forward to being searched. Some kid, barely fifteen and with bad teeth and acne, grinned at her from amongst the mob. She turned away from him.

"Up against the wall, motherfuckers!" She couldn't be sure if that was a cop or a dissident. She figured it didn't matter. The crowd surged forward, and she heard the convention building roar with anger, saw it bristling like a wild beast. Carl Sandburg was right. Chicago was alive.

*****

"Here," he said, finishing a bottle of beer with one hand, and holding up a piece of paper to her mouth with the other. "Taste it."

Connie bit the paper and held it on her tongue to let the acid dissolve, and then moved to kiss him. It was a pathetic place to make out, here in this trash-strewn, freewheeling park, and she could instantly envision cops with batons rapping on the fabric on the tent, but no one came.

Tom's lips met hers, and his eyes were large, unearthly, luminous blue. His tongue touched her lips and then parted them, and she let the blotter paper rest on her lip. He tasted like cheap Schlitz beer and the earthy flavor of marijuana, and she wanted to pull away at first, but he was insistent, and she was more willing than she had thought. He was surprisingly insistent, and as they broke the kiss, he slid the blotter paper off her lip and swallowed it, blinking hard.

"I bet you've never had sex in public," he said suddenly, his voice half-muffled as he stripped off the T-shirt proclaiming the Monterey Pop Festival. While he wasn't a boxer, his body wasn't bad, beneath the shirt. He was tanned at least to the waist, and he was built as if he had done some manual labor in the past.

Connie laughed abruptly. She didn't know what to say. Her mouth moved for a few moments before she could find her voice. "You're stoned, you asshole."

His mouth rose in a twitchy little grin. "And high, yeah. So are you. You still haven't had sex out here. He patted the ground, his voice easy. "Come on."

There was a strange hopefulness in the request. Was she high? She didn't feel high. Was LSD supposed to kick in right away? She knew he was on something, had known it from the moment his pupils started to dilate, and she wondered if that was what she'd look like in a little while.

"Free love and all that, huh?" She started to unbutton her blouse.

"Something like that," Tom replied carelessly, watching her alertly.

She dropped her shirt atop a Schlitz can, and didn't worry about it. It wasn't as if she was going to the convention center today. She had meant to, but things had gone strangely from the moment that she had set foot in the Loop. She wasn't too concerned about it. Let the editor yell at her tomorrow; she felt alive now, and she could feel her pulse racing in her veins as she reached around to the small of her back to unfasten her bra.

He watched her, his head cocked a little, birdlike, high but at least able to focus. She thought so, anyway. She pulled the bra away, the hot August air hitting her collarbone and the top of her small breasts. She had never thought of herself as particularly attractive, but he was gazing at her appreciatively, lids lowered above his too-wide eyes.

Connie felt that she should apologize. "I'm sorry that I'm not that -- "

"Shut up," Tom said, and moved a hand to her nipple, perking it to attention. His touch was cool from the beer can, and light, teasing, and she could hear her breath quicken. His fingers moved -- now, to touch along the curve where underwire had lain, and then, to pull gently at the tip of her breast. "When I turned in my draft card last October, there was this girl there, at the station." He slid his thumb across her breast, and she gasped at the suddenly softer touch. "She said I could become a priest and I wouldn't have to get drafted. I'd make a bad priest, though -- there's nothing holy in me."

He slid his hand downwards, and she felt her heart sink into her stomach. She had had sex with her boyfriend after the senior prom, and had slept with a few guys since then, but it had been a good year or so. She felt tense, nervous at her own inexperience.

"If the cops come, Tom..." Her voice was a warning.

Tom shook his head confidently. "They won't come. They don't care about us." His hand drifted off from where it had lain, atop her bare stomach. "If you don't want to... your hair is on fire."

She knew from the solemn intonation that it was just a vision from the drugs, and ignored it. "N-no! I want to." She hated the stammer that started the words, and ran her tongue against the flat palm of her hand in preparation for his needs.

"Then shut up," Tom repeated lightly, grinning, but there was a definite order in his words, so she fell quiet. His hand returned to where it had flown from before, and pressed downwards, sliding between the fabric of her jeans and the warm skin just above her legs.

Connie's hands found the buckle of the belt around his pants and unbuckled them, whipping the belt off with an audible rustling. She fumbled with the zipper, but managed to reach inside and get a grip on him. He was already starting to harden, and she freed him from his jeans, her hand stroking the underside of his shaft, softly, teasingly. His own hand had dipped lower upon her, and she could see it moving in her pants, his touch sharp, insistent, tough. He was not as much of a pacifist as he claimed to be, she realized, and scooted herself closer to him, her legs twining with his.

Every stroke he made between her legs brought a small amount of pain with the pleasure, and she let out a half-choked cry as his touch built up, quick and intense. The hand atop her clitoris paused for a moment, before it unzipped her jeans and moved lower still. His fingers played with her labia, toying with going inside, but not venturing there yet. She was thankful for the lack of direct stimulation; his masturbation of her had been intense, and she was already starting to ache.

"You look like a goddess," he murmured to her as his tongue traced the outline of her lips. She couldn't figure out if that was hallucination or the truth.

She lowered her lips to his shaft. "Thank you," she said, and she was surprised to hear that she meant it. She licked him lightly, letting her tongue drag even as her lips popped off the surface. He moaned, and set down two elbows to stabilize himself, his hand drawing out from inside her, fingertips glistening.

The tent was gone, then. Chicago was gone, and they were in a field somewhere far away. Tom's skin was perfect, and he glowed. His hair was on fire too. She put her back down, and strangely enough thought for a moment that she was floating on water, not on grass. Strange designs etched themselves in the man's body, and she watched them for patterns as they shifted and transformed. Her mouth grew drier. She started to shake, and he drew her close, sliding out of his pants. His cock didn't look any different than Connie's boyfriend's had, just a little more tanned and a little wider, standing at full hardness.

Maybe she should have brought a condom, but it wasn't important enough for her to ask him if he had one, either.

"Never been high before?" His hand held one leg aside as he slid towards the wetness between her legs. "It's just a little Lucy. Nothing dangerous." A devilish grin stole across his face, and he looked like Clark Gable before he looked like himself again. "Except me."

He punctuated the words with a sudden, sharp thrust, as needy and fierce as his hands had been on the surface only moments ago. Connie cried out, and her cries sounded like the calling of a bird looking for its mate. Tom said something in response, but all that she heard was cooing, soothing and facile.

Tom drove himself up within her, thrusting, and it took her a couple of tense seconds to realize that he was not going to hurt her. His hands rested on her shoulders, and he guided her to the ground atop her shirt, the Schlitz can crunching beneath her shoulder blade. He stayed within her, and then he started to move even sharper and faster. It was the giveaway of desperation, and she wondered what made him so afraid. His hands played with her breasts, smoothed her stomach, and she held him close, her lips finding his, nibbling on his lower lip.

"It's all right," Connie said. He looked relieved. What had she said to reassure him? Tom moved more confidently now, whatever the case, holding her close. She kissed him, and moved her lips onto his jawbone and neck, lips curving around his jaw line, tasting the hot, sweat-slicked flesh beneath her lips. He showered. He tasted like it, perspiring but at least clean. She was thankful for that much.

His thrusts quickened now, back to the same sharp pace at which he had started out. Electricity raced through her veins, and her breathing became shallow as he thrust himself inside her, bobbing on the surface. Something sparked within her, and she shivered, stiffening, her feet pointing to the edge of the tent. Her light breaths became gasps, and she saw the tent sparkle before her eyes.

A scant few seconds or maybe hours later, Tom groaned and released himself inside her, throbbing inside her, his lips pressing down hard against her mouth as he lost control. She held him tight inside and against her, and stammered out what she'd realized: "Get me pregnant and you can skip the draft."

He would have responded, looking stunned at the idea. He stared at her, high and orgasmic, and his face was slack and stupid. His lips tried to form words, but it was taking a few moments for him to think. To Connie, as the drugs surged forward eagerly to replace the orgasm that they had fueled, something else would have to happen. They'd been high together, and they'd fucked in the middle of the park. They would have to create a new sensation.

Tom pried himself out of the haze first. He didn't address her offer. He had a new concern in mind. "We fucking act," he told her, his voice sharp and angry. "Tonight. We go with the rest of them to the Hilton. You want a story? You'll get it."

*****

The Jackson Street Bridge was unguarded. The first two bridges that they had visited were thronged with Guardsmen and .30 caliber machine guns, and they had fled those, but now, Connie could hear Tom laughing in delight that they had a way down to the convention center again. The peace platform had been voted down, said the people with the transistor radios.

Shit had started to happen.

Things were going down.

Connie felt that familiar reporter's urge for something to happen, some sort of story to the events, and as she saw the Poor People's Party moving south on Michigan, and felt herself run towards it with the others, she knew that she was in the middle of the story. Next to her, Tom, long blond hair flying out around him, was running, not paying any attention to her. The Hilton sat near the bi-level street, and she could already see a gang of demonstrators there. They would join the group, and what would happen then? A protest, she was sure of it. Something angry, loud, and just as alive as things had been at the convention center. Tom's eyes were shining again, and this time it wasn't due to being high.