The Illuminatus! Trilogy

Mavis motioned me to walk down the beach with her. A little ways ahead, far back from the water, was a small white-painted frame cabana. A woodpecker landed wearily on its roof like he had flown more missions than Yossarian and never intended to go up again.

"What's the plan, Mavis? A private execution on a lonely beach in another state so Sheriff Jim can't get blamed?"

"Don't be a dummy, George. We blew up that commie bastard's jail."

"Why do you keep calling Sheriff Cartwright a commie? If ever a man had KKK written all over his forehead, it was that reactionary redneck prick."

"Don't you know your Trotsky? 'Worse is better.' Slobs like Cartwright are trying to discredit America to make it ripe for a left-wing takeover."

"I'm a left-winger. If you're against commies, you've got to be against me." I didn't care to tell her about my other friends in Weatherman and Morituri.

"You're just a liberal dupe."

"I'm not a liberal, I'm a militant radical."

"A radical is nothing but a liberal with a big mouth. And a militant radical is nothing but a big-mouthed liberal with a Che costume. Balls. We're the real radicals, George. We do things, like last night Except for Weatherman and Morituri, all the militant radicals in your crowd ever do is take out the Molotov cocktail diagram that they carefully clipped from The New York Review of Books, hang it on the bathroom door and jack-off in connection with it. No offense meant." The woodpecker turned his head and watched us suspiciously like a paranoid old man.

"And what are your politics, if you're such a radical?" I asked.

"I believe that government governs best of all that governs least of all. Preferably not at all. And I believe in the laissez faire capitalist economic system."

"Then you must hate my politics. Why did you rescue me?"

"You're wanted," she said.

"By whom?"

"Hagbard Celine."

"And who is Hagbard Celine?" We had reached the cabana and were standing beside it, facing each other, glaring at each other. The woodpecker turned his head and looked at us with the other eye.

"What is John Guilt?" Mavis said. I might have guessed, I thought, a Hope fiend. She went on, "It took a whole book to answer that one. As for Hagbard, you'll learn by seeing. Enough for now that you know that he's the man who requested that we rescue you."

"But you personally don't like me and would not have gone out of your way to help me?"

"I don't know about not liking you. That splotch of come on your trousers has had me horny ever since Mad Dog. Also the excitement of the raid. I've got some tension to burn off. I'd prefer to save myself for a man who completely meets the criteria of my value system. But I could get awfully horny waiting for him. No regrets, no guilt, though. You're all right. You'll do." "What are you talking about?" "I'm talking about your fucking me, George." "I never knew a girl-I mean woman-who believed in the capitalist system who was any kind of a good fuck."

"What has your pathetic circle of acquaintances got to do with the price of gold? I doubt you ever met a woman who believed in the real laissez faire capitalist system. Such a woman is not likely to be caught traveling in your left-liberal circles." She took me by the hand and led me into the cabana. She shrugged out of her trench coat and spread it carefully on the floor. She was wearing a black sweater and a pair of blue jeans, both tight-fitting. She pulled the sweater off over her head. She was wearing no bra, and her breasts were apple-sized cherry-tipped cones. There was some sort of dark red birthmark between them.

"Your kind of capitalist woman was a Nixonette in 1972, and she believes in that half-ass corporate socialist bastard fascist mixed economy Frank Roosevelt blessed these United States with." She unbuckled her wide black belt and unzipped her jeans. She tugged them down over her hips. I felt my hardon swelling up inside my pants. "Libertarian women are good fucks, because they know what they want, and what they want they like a lot." She stepped out of her jeans to reveal, of all things, panties made of some strange metallic-looking synthetic material that was gold in color.

How can I know facts hard and sharp-edged in the sunlight and keep them straight when this happens? "You really want me to fuck you right now on this public beach in broad daylight?" The woodpecker went to work above us just then, banging away like a rock drummer, I suddenly remembered from high school:

The Woodpecker pecked on the out-house door; He pecked and he pecked till his pecker was sore…