CyberQueen at the While House Part 1

INDEX

Introduction
On The Train
The Gaint Woman
First Meeting With Paul
Back to the Train Ride
Da Vid
Back at Paul's House

INTRODUCTION:
THE PERSONAL IS THE POLITICAL

One of the commonest perversions of love is the effort to limit it to the private sphere. The Greeks had a special name for those apolitical persons who thought eros was appropriately expressed only in privacy. They were called "idiot." In its original sense, idiot signified a purely private person.

Sam Keen

There have been a number of different reasons why it has been difficult for me to sit down at the computer and begin writing my story of my visit with paul and to the White House. Today while in a doctor’s office (I was there because a welfare mother friend of mine had no means of transporting her sick son to the doctor), I read in Newsweek that Queen Elizabeth is being generous to Diana by offering her 30 million dollars in a divorce settlement under the condition that she not write a book about her memories. That is a lot of money to have to turn down in order to have freedom of speech! Good thing Diana’s family is wealthy so that the Queen’s bribe is not that tempting! But the rich never seem to have enough money no matter how rich they are. Maybe what Diana should do is to take the money and then write the story anyway. But there is something about the integrity of the Word that makes it very difficult for her to write such a book if she was to sign a statement saying that she swears to not record her memories of the Windsors and their palaces. Let’s hope Diana refuses the bribe and writes such a book so that the British Monarchy is completely destroyed. But she wouldn’t write such a book, would she? After all, she wants her son to be king!

When I told my mother that I was going to write a story about my date at the White House, my mother told me that I shouldn’t write about such things out of respect for UPI reporter at the White House, paul, who was good enough to invite me along, so my mother thinks. He had invited me to a social event, an event that shouldn’t be reported on. So, my writer’s block has been due partly by needing to write about a subject which is somewhat taboo for people to write about--the personal--what civilized society calls the private sphere of life. But as women around the world are beginning to tell their personal stories of the oppressive nature of their lives in whatever class situation they find themselves, they are practicing the most extreme and radical politics necessary to evolve this planet away from patriarchal/matriarchy co-dependency by writing about the politics of intimacy, by analyzing and exposing our sexual relationships or lack of relationships with men. The feminist slogan of the ‘60’s "the personal is the political" has become a political strategy for feminists to use in the struggle to build a liberated world. In the Frequently Asked Questions about E-mail privacy, Andre Balcard writes,

Whatsamatter, I’ve got nothing to hide. Why do I need e-mail privacy? Show me an e-mail user who has no financial, sexual, social, political, or professional secrets to keep from his family, his neighbors, or his colleagues, and I’ll show you someone who is either an extraordinary exhibitionist or an incredible dullard. Show me a corporation that has no trade secrets or confidential records, and I’ll show you a business that is not very successful.

He continues, “Privacy, discretion, confidentiality, and prudence are hallmarks of civilization...Privacy permits you to be yourself.” Balcard’s definition of civilization was one of the reasons I felt that I should not write about my date to the White House with paul. What happened between us was “private” information, just between him and me, so I shouldn’t write about such things, right?

I realize that I am certainly not a normal thinker. The more I have come to ponder what the “private” sphere is, the more I realize that I really don’t believe in the “private sphere,” that secret place where you keep hidden from everyone except those who you have chosen to confide in. I had been fighting all my adult life to become a public person and the culture is doing everything to keep me a slave to the “private” sphere. Modern marriage and family is about keeping the private private. If one of the partners breaks this sense of “trust”, then the relationship is over or seriously wounded.

Pro-family “feminists” argue that in the secret sphere of the family, we have a place we can exhibit our true personality since in the public world of privacy, it is difficult for one to expose their true self. If one is completely honest, then some time somewhere one would be caught in violation of some restrictive law or custom or their sexual habits or loves might force them out of a job. Or if everyone was really aware how much money someone like Caroline Kennedy inherited and could then blatantly see the basic inequalities such a rich/poor system generates, this information could be dangerous for the ruling class. In public we have a lot to hide, so pro-family “feminists” believe we must preserve the family in order to have a place where the true self can grow and be supported. But I ask the pro-family feminists, “where do we learn to compromise ourselves in order to fit into the molds of contemporary slavery of the self? Isn’t it in the family?” To free the cosmic self is to free us from the private sphere of the traditional family and hence of civilization.

I believe the computer and cyberspace is forcing us after thousands and thousands of years of living in a private, patriarchal society to build a truly open society where each individual is free to say and be all; all data open information. No more private secrets about money, sex, or power relationships. No more division between the private and the public. With the end of the secret society comes a change in the way relationships are formed and maintained. In the secret American society, primarily couples come together to share their secrets about how much money one has in the bank and share ones ambitions as to how they plan on getting more so that they can become participants in the America Dream--a house, children, and the private property needed to maintain it. Loyalty is not viewed in terms of freedom of the self and self- expression, but to maintaining the status quo of the family, the nation, and to God the Father.

In the Neutopian cybersocialist society that I foresee, one’s primary loyalty is to the creative self. Couples find each other in an open society through their good works which advance the development of the self loyal only to one’s cosmic truth. One is not only open with the other, but open to the world. So enough philosophizing for now. On with my personal story about my date to the White House!

ON THE TRAIN

My lesbian friend Maureen who comes from a working class family which is now on the edge of poverty because of the economic changes occurring as industry becomes globalized, came to pick me up and take me to the train station for my eight hour ride to DC. She had been polling her friends all week asking them what they would say to the President if they had a chance to meet him. Maureen’s woman friend said that she would say something like, “Hello, Mr. President, how are you doing?” Maureen thought that was silly and that if she was there in front of the President, she would ask him if he realized how much people are suffering because the government is not helping people survive. She asked, “Do you think the Presidents and the heads of the corporations lie awake at night thinking about what the workers whom they just laid off of work feel like? Do you think they care about the stress of living without a job and without a way to provide health care for the people dependent on you?”

Phyllis, my octogenarian friend, and I had given much thought to what I should say when I passed through what we thought would be a receiving line at the White House. We practiced me being the graceful debutante that my Southern mother had trained me to be. When I was to shake His and Her hand I would say to each of them in my sweet little-old southern drawl, “Mr. President, thank you in your efforts to create world peace.” And to Hillary, “Hillary, thank you for what you have done for women world-wide.” Well, we thought those polite statements would satisfy paul’s requirement making me promise not to lobby the President! My words would be sweet, nice, and supportive. But after hearing what Maureen would have said to the President, my words sounded too sweet just like what a brainless debutante would say!

I had never really wanted to vote for Clinton because I felt that he was not a great man of principle for the people, but a slick opportunist. Since I felt the choice between Clinton and Bush was between the lesser of two evils, I almost thought that voting for Bush would be better because his evil nature seemed so crystal clear, whereas Clinton was more seductive because he was a “liberal” who deceived us with saying that he wanted to support social programs to help the people when really he supported the “free-enterprise system” of competition and believed America needed military supremacy over the rest of the world. For example, when Clinton was first elected, he said that he would support a human rights foreign policy. Now his foreign policy supports big money and arms dealers. Clinton’s sincere words would be able to fool the people longer than Bush’s would have, so I thought that if the Republicans would have gained total power maybe then the people would feel the need to have a total revolution against the meanest nation with the biggest military force in the world, the United States of America. Most people in America knew that the root of the two-party system in America was the same, money rules and nothing gets in the way of global capital and the American way of life. I have even heard them called Republicrats--a word combining Republicians and Democrats to express that the two party system in the US was really the same party of the well-to-do. One could easily see Clinton’s devotion to profits over people in his Cyberspace policy. In “New Technologies Campaign--Comments on the White paper by the NWU, October 1995, it reads,

Unfortunately, the Administration has chosen to regard the NII National In] as primarily an economic instrument, rather than as a public resource. As a result, the participants sitting on the advisory and decision making bodies for the NII are overwhelmingly representatives of business and government bureaucrats. While we understand that the capital to construct the NII will come largely from corporate investment, substantial public monies, through direct government subsidy or regulatory oversight, will be expended on the NII. Moreover, the NII’s impact transcends one sector’s interests and, therefore, the public interest’s voice-- including that of individual creators--must be heard. It is not too late.

How tragic I thought it was that our President had chosen to see Cyberspace as a new economic market place for the global corporations to take control over everything, rather than the greatest educational tool the world has ever known, a world-wide public library. Why didn’t he know that Cyberspace had the potential to become the place where world democracy and the outcome of democracy, meritocracy, could finally evolve the world to arrive at a global, truly human consciousness so that we could build peace settlements of human rights and ecological happiness? Why was Clinton so deeply misinformed about the role education plays in global transformation? One could already witness the corruption of Cyberspace as one surf’s the World Wide Web bumping into commercials on their new electronic market place. Just like the television, the Eye/I of the world had become a place of indoctrination and consumerism. Now, Cyberspace, the brain of the world, could become a vast wasteland of commercials for those who can afford access.

Maureen gave me a hug before I got on the train and I took a window seat. It felt like a dream going down to Washington, but I really didn’t know if it was going to be a good dream, a dream of love, or more of the American nightmare. It always puzzled me why paul found me attractive at all. Establishment men never seemed to find me the least bit attractive once I opened my mouth. So why would this Establishment journalist be any different?

paul started writing me almost a year ago after an article in which I was quoted in Newsweek magazine. After my image appeared in a national news magazine about religion on the Internet, a local journalist from the Springfield paper that paul at one time worked for, wanted to do a story on me. paul’s friend Ken, who was also a UPI reporter, actually tracked me down in Cyperspace at my former Umass account. Then paul contacted me through email and from then on, he occasionally wrote me emails. But they were always light, fluffy letters of little substance. Then Spring ‘95 when I was staying at the Finder’s Commune in Washington, paul arranged a time to meet me. His friend, Susan, who helped organized the NOW rally on the mall about violence against women and his brother were staying with him in his Washington house.

I had attended the Now Rally Against Violence Against Women the previous day on the Mall. Ted Reis, a computer scientist who I met through the Internet on Usent newsgroup, alt.cyberpunk, suggested that I ride the Georgetown University bus that was taking students to the rally, so that is what I did. There was supposed to have been a march through Washington ending up at the Mall, but the city wouldn’t give the organizers permission to march because officials said that the Cherry Blossom Parade was happening the same day and apparently they didn’t want two marches to clash. So, of course, the Cherry Blossom took precedence over the women!

When we got off the bus, there was a group of socialists hanging out together. They were going to stick together during the rally and sell their papers, so I asked them if I could tag along with them. There was also a Polish woman, Dorota, a Georgetown University student, who was also with them and we befriended each other. It was wonderful to meet a new friend because being at political rallies alone can be a very lonely experience.

Dorota and I then broke company with the socialists and wandered around the rally. At the center of the mall, there was a T-shirt exhibit. There were thousands of T-shirts that women from around the world had made using a variety of mixed-media expressing some violence they had experienced from the opposite sex. It was chilling to see the murders, brutal beatings, incestuous relationships, rapes and how common these atrocities are. The T-shirt exhibit illustrated so poignantly how violence against women is our everyday experience.

Inside on the tents was a place with T-shirts and art supplies where one could make their own T-shirt about a violent action one had lived to tell. Dorota wanted to make a T-shirt about the date rape she had lived through and I wanted to say something about the psychological torture the men I had loved had done to me. The atmosphere inside the tent was solemn indeed as women worked to express the pain of living in a violent, unjust culture. I printed on my T-shirt “To all the men I LOVED, but who raped, lied, ignored, and killed me.”

After we were finished, we hung them on the lines with all the thousands of other messages about living in a patriarchal society. Dorota and I ended up hanging our T-shirts on a line which was going to be sent to Israel. It was a warm spring day in Washington and there was enough of a breeze to make one want to cry while watching the amount of pain blowing in the wind. But the sad part was that the suffering had not stopped. The violence still continues to wound the hearts and souls of young women like my soul had been wounded. Now, my pain had grown so deep and chronic that I didn’t know if I would ever be able to recover in this lifetime.

The thought of growing old in such a society was such an unpleasant, violent thought. So why weren’t the speakers telling us to start a social revolution? How else would we stop the violence? What would happen is that the thousands of people (mostly women) who had gathered there from all parts of the world would disperse after the rally was over and then go back into the violent culture. It seemed logical to me that we shouldn’t leave the Mall. What we should have done is to set up camp, get the word out that we are not moving until the government is changed to reflect the kind of society which is kind and loving to all people, which means the re-structuring of the cities, the educational system, the government, the way trade is conducted, the entire corporate structure. Yes! We would have to demand an entirely new life-style... non-violent, free, and completely ecological. Just going back to our isolated homes would put us back into slavery. Our power was in solidarity. We needed to set up a tent city. But I felt that strategically the first thing we should announce is for the crowd to storm the National Gallery of Art, which is one of the museums in the Mall, and declare it our revolutionary headquarters. We needed that place because they had a large dining hall which we could use to feed our revolutionaries. Also, we would say that by taking over the National Gallery of Art we would be creating the greatest conceptional art work of the century because what we would be doing is making art into life, the grand art of social change.

Towards the end of the rally, Dorota and I took the subway back to Georgetown. Before going underground some white guy who obviously got nothing from the rally, started saying how women needed to be put in their place and stop complaining about America. I saw this fellow as someone I couldn’t even talk with as if he was an alien from OuterSpace. When we got off our subway stop walking over the Key Bridge into Georgetown, I had this vision of the Giant Lady. I wrote the following poem to her:

THE GIANT WOMAN

There is a Giant Woman stepping over Washington DC.,
Leader of the Tiny Women holding a rally against violence
on the Mall outside the Capital building.
The tattooed punkie women with their innocent voices,
their fists raised over their heads chanting, "Women Revolt!”
The cult of communists are passing out their newspapers
as T-shirts blow in the spring breeze bearing messages
of child abuse, rape, incest and murder --
victims of thousands of lifetimes of patriarchal terror.

The Giant Lady weeps over us dropping puddles of rain.
One speaker declares the world is having a nervous breakdown.
The President of Now asks how many people
have known anyone who has been abused?
A quarter of a million Earthlings who are there
raise their hands to prove the daily violence
we have to face radiating from Capital Hill.
“Neuter Newt” is one of the popular signs.
“Capital punishment for Capital Hill” reads another.
I could see the Giant Lady lifting up the Capital
Rotunda, finding Newt in his Senate seat,
picking him up and bringing him on stage
as the millions of viewers wait in silence
for the surgeon to cut off his Old Testicles.
The Giant Lady’s voice echoes:
“We shall neuter any male who can not understand
that our world must be based on the principle that
all people must be given what they need to reach their potential!

After meeting Susan, I was curious to talk with her about how the Now rally had been organized. When I met her at paul’s house she said that it was like organizing any other large political rally. Organizations which gave money to make the rally happen, had to have a speaker. She said there was a lot of back-stabbing and in-fighting about who would get to speak and perform. How disappointing it was to hear that women’s organizations were following the model of the oppressors. But I had a suspicion it was that way. I had gotten to the point that when I heard of a rally that I thought I would like to speak at, I didn’t even try anymore to speak because I knew that what I wanted to present would not be judged by its merit, but by the fact that I was a nobody woman. Since I was a nobody woman writer, I didn’t have a chance within the feminist movement to become a leader of the ideology since I didn’t play politics the old-fashion way mainstream feminists do.

FIRST MEETING WITH PAUL

paul called me on the phone at the Finders to arrange a time for us to meet. We decided to take a tour of the National Observatory at the Vice- President’s mansion and that he would pick me up at the Finders. A group of us went: Susan, paul, Kristen, myself and paul’s brother. At the observatory we witnessed the way the government keeps time straight with the atomic clock, how they count every second of the day. The time clock, patriarchal time, has to be correct at every second of the day. Money is time and everyone is a slave to the clock, I thought to myself as our tour guide showed us the clocks. How do we get out of this time frame, I asked myself? What in the world will change the epoch? I recalled an art work I had done with an old clock some years ago. I painted the face of the clock with the words, “When would I see him again?” Then I decorated the sides of the clock with pictures of galaxies and stars in the universe. Would I ever find love, I wondered as I listened to the atomic clock guide. Please, Goddess, would I ever find my soulmate again? After the tour was over, paul and Susan came back with me to the Finders.

I explained to them a little about how it was to live at the Finders which was a place where everything appeared to be accessible to all. The Finders was started during the ‘60’s communal movement period by a millionaire, Marion Petty, Jr. who wanted to experiment in socialistic living. They said that the community owned three million dollars worth of real estate in the Washington area as well as a farm in Virginia. The W Street apartment complex is where I had been staying which was in the same neighborhood as pauls’ house. How unusual it was to be staying at a commune in the middle of Washington!

Petty is the “game caller” at the Finders. He is the guru and his followers are devoted to making him happy by feeding him information. They call him “The Student” since it is their job to keep him well- informed as his research assistants when he asks for further information. They tell the public that if you come to the Finders, you have found a space to do what you want to do. All you have to do is to do it, but the general philosophy is that every day is a new day and a new game. Nothing was permanent at the Finders, especially the place where you stay. Since people move around a lot, acquiring a number of personal possessions is unwise, since the Finders is not a place where you own places and things. You don’t rent an apartment. You pay by the day. They suggest a ten to twenty dollar daily donation. But there were several people who were “friends” of the commune like Ted who did not donate rent money and so they lived there for free. Ted, stayed with the Finders when he was in between jobs or working on a creative project which he couldn’t get paid to do. Even though the Finders say that you are free to do what you want, Ted’s complaint with the Finders was that to get members together to follow a certain course of action in a synergic way was difficult since members where doing their own projects and working on this or that outside job for income. Ted couldn’t find the communal support he needed at the Finders to make his dreams come true. Ted was hoping that if I was to join the Finders that together we could revolutionize them.

When I arrived, Petty asked the men of the commune who were living on W Street to pack up their personal belongings and move to their Maryland apartment so that the women of the commune could talk among themselves about what they wanted the future of the commune to be. The problem was that their membership was getting old and new members devoted to playing Petty’s game were hard to come by. Petty faxed a message to Kristen who was the woman who had lived at the Finders the longest and for years she was the only woman who was a member. It said that he was turning the power of the commune over to the women. It was told to me that Petty’s philosophy was that women should not be second-class citizens. Women at the Finders were in charge of allotting space. If a woman wants to have sex with a man or sleep beside him, she was given personal space to carry on such activity. At the Finders it was women’s role to initiate sex, not the other way around. Petty felt women were the one’s who really ruled the commune. So, he gave us the task of re-visualizing the Finders.

What a joyful task we all declared as we were shown and told about the space available for us. Just thinking about what we could do with the W Street apartment gave me chill bumps up and down my spine. We could become a revolutionary communal seed in the middle of Grover Park in the heart of the nation’s capital! If we could get like-minded people who believed in communalism and the spirit of creative change together, possibly we could have a way to change the patriarchal/capitalist regime in power in Washington, DC. in order to save us all. If we only didn’t have to worry about such patriarchal oppression like money and rent, then we could really find a way to create a society based on human values. Was Petty really going to finance our feminist revolution? Would he be our holy patron always providing us money and the things that we needed so that our wishes could come true?

I thought that our best strategy was to get involved in grass-roots politics, especially the cause of homeless, and work to give a vision of Neutopian cybersocialism and the building of ecocities as a way to solve the housing crisis. My April 6th letter to MDP reflects these thoughts. It reads,

Dear Marion,

I hope you don’t mind me calling you by that name, but it reminds me of my mother since it is my mother’s name! Well, now, I seem to be meeting most people these days through letters first, then in the flesh. Maybe this will happen to us. Let me begin this letter by introducing myself to you. I am a devoted lovolutionary epic poetess. Lovolution is a global non-violent spiritual revolution. It appears that we are experiencing it now at the turn of the millennium. Lovolution is the evolution of revolution, a romantic rebellion to save the garden which under mankind’s tyranny has almost been destroyed. The revolutions of the past have not provided us with a revolutionary model of living because women’s vision of the Neu World has not been given a chance to live. In other words, the problem with past revolutionary activity is that female leadership has not had the means--the resources, space and male support--we needed in order to change our insane, cruel situation. Thus, the time has come for us to create the Lovolution.

Before I came to the “Finders” I felt lost. I was in a complete trap and I could see no way out of the problem. Having this innate need to help organize the Lovolution, I knew that what was required was to create a communal group of like-minded talented and skilled cosmic individuals who would work with me to help the movement within us explode. I started a Usenet newsgroup alt.society.neutopia so that I would have a place in Cyberspace where I could become a cultural meme, but I quickly realized that a virtual lovolution is *not* enough. There is no substitute for the need for a real life Neutopian love commune. It became clear to me that the Lovolution has to happen not only in Cyberspace, but it has to be embodied in real life. I was at the point where it seemed totally futile for me to continue to write about my theories since what was needed was a way to practice living them. But it was impossible for me to do so without group participation. In fact, I started to realize that the Gaia Messiah (the hera/hero of my social fiction) is a group consciousness.

Since I have come to the “Finders,” I feel that we are finding a way out of the global/local turmoil. Marion, I sense that the “Finders” have the resources and the space here in this strategic location of Washington, DC to enact a massive change of heart. Using the Internet, we have the technology to make our movement global. So there is vast opportunity for us to rearrange the world into a more harmonious model of social relationships. If we are able to lovolutionize the monumental city of Washington, DC, the power center of capitalist patriarchy, then, I believe there is a chance we can save the plant and animal “kingdoms”. Yes, it is a great challenge, but I believe we have been called to action.

Plan of Action:

For the past several days, the women’s group at the “Finders” have been coming up with a plan which empowers women to re-organize the “Finders”. We have been working on a mission statement for the group. We soon realized that there needs to be a change of name for our neu organization, so we brain-stormed several possibilities. Personally, the one I think best represents our vision would be something like: Center for the Gaia Messiah, or Community for Neutopian Action.

How we visualized this community is that we will make up the nucleus of this world-wide movement. Much networking must be done in order for us to achieve this objective, but the infrastructure for such millennium activity is already present here. Our objective is not to simply maintain a small group of people who can function in a more communistic manner within the capitalist superstructure. Our mission is to destroy capitalism and build Neutopia, not create another isolated utopian community.

Now, how do we do this? First off, let me explain to you that as a social architectress, one of my personal tasks has been to develop an IDEOLOGY OF TRUE LOVE. This will be the core teaching of the Lovolution and the essence of our feminist perspective. Our first job as the Community for Neutopian Action is to articulate our purpose over Cyberspace so that we will start to attract other like-minded souls who have also been called to help us obtain this giant leap of consciousness. The power of this is that Neutopia which until now has been in the nowhere land of Cyberspace, has found a home, a place where the dream of global transformation is made possible.

In this group there are many computer experts. The first thing we want to do is to put them to work creating a World Wide Web page about the Neutopian Community. Ted has already said that he will help me scan in images of the “Finders’ space, but I need him and Chris to also design the Web page and maintain the site. We would also want our mission statement to go there and our philosophy of how a female-governed community would be organized.

Since everyone doesn’t own a computer, we would also need to start a newspaper explaining to the public what we are about and why we believe our life-style is a necessary step in developing a sustainable high-tech society. As the Center of the Gaia Messiah, we will also want to connect with other advocacy groups for the poor. Our particular focus should be on housing and starting rent boycotts. Please understand, that our final goal is to create a new kind of architecture which allows everyone equal access to the world’s wealth. Unless we can do this, we will never live in a Wisdom democracy. The purpose of both the newspaper and the Web page will be to teach people who we are and why it is important for the world to begin dreaming Neutopian dreams. Another good way to get our message out is by starting a cable TV show at the public access station.

It is after 4:00 am. These are just my beginning thoughts as they flow into the electronic currency. I am thinking about money now, and my heart is beginning to ache. Maybe in the morning I will have a better idea of what to do about the money monster. At times, I pray for a total economic collapse as a way to stop the money machine which is not programmed to take care of people’s basic human needs.

The male system is all pervasive. The four walls around me are a symbol of my oppression. I want to free the economy so that the dead will come alive again, so that all will be able to find their role within the Lovolution.

Yours in the Cause,
Doctress Neutopia

I never met Marion Petty. It seemed that he was hiding from me. He finally told Kristen that he didn’t want to meet me and that I should work with her instead. She could relay information from me to him. It was becoming very clear that “turning the power over to the women” of the commune was just another game to him and that he had no intention of giving us real power and the financial holdings of the commune to cover our Lovolution at this time.

Joelle, a middle-aged homeless woman, who had completely dropped out of the work force and devoted her life to advancing the spiritual, intuitive parts of life had been living at the commune about a week before I arrived. She couldn’t pay the rent. But she was playing a vital function in our Lovolution. She stayed at the W Street apartment, rented out the rooms to visitors looking for a cheap place to stay in Washington, and then she cooked the most delightful meals as well as giving us spiritual messages and back massages throughout the day.

However, she began to feel pressure from the rent collectors that she wasn’t paying her share of rent. By being our cook, she was doing work for the community, but it wasn’t the kind of work that women get paid to do. And that was exactly the problem. The traditional work of women, the necessary domestic work as well as women’s spiritual gifts were not being honored. Joelle felt that she was being pressured to go out and look for a job in order to bring in money. This is exactly what Joelle was rebelling against--wasting away her life in meaningless capitalist jobs-- and why she took refuge at the Finders hoping that she could participate in a commune which respected individual difference and honored everyone’s spiritual work to make the commune function properly. Joelle and I did experience some problems with perspective between my Neutopian politics and her New Age spirituality. Some New Age spiritualists feel that getting involved with political issues is a misguided direction and that such energy only lowers the possiblity of profound change. I have noticed when I am around New Age spiritualists, they act nervous when I bring a political perspective into the discussion. Some have even inferred that I give off negative vibrations. But perhaps in time things would have worked out between us when we got to know each other better.

Joelle and I also discovered that MDP had an apartment where he had a library, TV, and a planning office in which he lives when he stays at the W Street apartment. The loft in the apartment was filled with interesting books. There was also a skull hanging from the ceiling as well as a few disturbing books on the military. Seeing the contents of the loft made me wish that I could be part of Petty’s circle of friends so that I could participate in the conversations happening there. So everyone in the commune has to live on very austere terms, moving around every week or so to a new location within the property of the commune when Petty has his permanent space which isn’t opened to the public. We also suspected that the members of the Finders were taking notes about our daily activities and that once a day around 5:00pm, they each made a call to MDP to give him the reports.

It was becoming apparent that MDP was playing games with the women, that he was not taking our efforts seriously. He had no intention of giving the power over to the women. Our dreams of creating a place of revolutionary/spiritual growth and a healing center were lost. So, I wrote the following to MDP:

Dear Student,

I am your teacher, born to teach you about
the power of wisdom and Her Rulership of Planetary Peace.
All your knowledge has not taught you a thing
as you watch the Finders sinking into the
cesspool of Washington, DC.

So allow me to guide you into Neutopia....
Socialist Palaces of the World Dream

All that you have worked for will come together
if you honor and empower the CyberQueens!

Now, have you really learned how to love Her Wisdom,
or are you part of the political sewage of Washington, DC?

How do we make the world One?
Commune of Lovolution!

MDP gave me no response, so I was beginning to feel that the Finders was not a place to start my Lovolution. It seemed as though the Finders were not seriously interested in creating social change and advancing the idea of communalism as an alternative model to the American family. After talking with Ranny and Mary one morning before I ended my stay there, they told me that they didn’t see the Finders as a revolutionary organization. They just wanted to be left alone by the FBI and go on with their interdependent lifestyle. It appeared that their membership was about their devotion to MDP, not about saving the world. They didn’t want to make political waves or be visible to the public because many of them still remembered when the FBI raided them in the ‘70’s and charged them with child molestation.

According to members, child molestation was not going on at the Finders, but their philosophy of communal childrearing conflicted with the private ownership-of-children model of childrearing which most American couples practice. They felt lucky that the Feds had not stormed in and blown them away like they had done to other communes like the MOVE Organization in Philadelphia. If you recall, the Feds tried to destroy that organization by bombing the apartment house where many of the members lived. In apamphlet the mission of MOVE reads:

MOVE’S WORK IS TO STOP INDUSTRY FROM POISONING THE AIR, THE WATER, THE SOIL, AND TO PUT AN END TO THE ENSLAVEMENT OF LIFE - PEOPLE, ANIMALS, ANY FORM OF LIFE. THE PURPOSE OF JOHN AFRICA’S REVOLUTION IS TO SHOW PEOPLE HOW CORRUPT, ROTTEN, CRIMINALLY ENSLAVING THE SYSTEM IS, SHOW PEOPLE THROUGH JOHN AFRICA’S TEACHING, THE TRUTH, THAT THIS SYSTEM IS THE CAUSE OF ALL THEIR PROBLEMS (ALCOHOLISM, DRUG ADDICTION, UNEMPLOYMENT, WIFE ABUSE, CHILD PORNOGRAPHY, EVERY PROBLEM IN THE WORLD) AND TO SET THE EXAMPLE OF REVOLUTION FOR PEOPLE TO FOLLOW WHEN THEY REALIZE HOW THEY’VE BEEN OPPRESSED, REPRESSED, DUPED, TRICKED BY THIS SYSTEM THIS GOVERNMENT AND SEE THE NEED TO RID THEMSELVES OF THIS CANCEROUS SYSTEM AS MOVE DOES.”

It appeared MDP didn’t have a revolutionary agenda to make his commune a hub of the social evolution Washington, DC so desperately needed. But I was sad to leave the Finders. I loved living as part of a sort-of socialist organization in Washington, DC. in a non-materialistic lifestyle. Since it was in walking distance to Georgetown University, Ted and I would walk to Georgetown University everyday where he had a part time job and we went to work in one of the computer labs. Ted helped me design my Web page and taught me things I didn’t know about the computer. I was very happy working beside Ted until we started to argue about the differences between his utopia which he calls Xville and my vision of Neutopia.

Xville still works in the capitalist model trying to find ways to start cottage industries and virtual communities using the new communication technologies. Even though Ted is the King of Xville, the governance structure which he envisions is anarchical, a decentralized system of like-minded people coming together to support each other needs using computer and telephone networks. Also, Ted is not revolutionary, but believes in what he calls “continuous improvement”. He believes our capitalist system is constantly improving itself so there is no need for radical change. As a reformist, he believes that someday everyone would have access to the communication technologies with the cost affordable to all. But our conflict in philosophy become more pronounced after I attended a meeting between Ted, a Georgetown medievalist professor, and a commercial service provider who had started a Web page company.

One of their biggest clients was McDonalds. They were working on a contract to put McDonalds on the Web. I couldn’t help opening my mouth during the meeting and saying that I thought it was unfair that McDonalds had thousands of dollars to make Web pages when the opposition to McDonalds, the environmentalist and vegetarians didn’t have the same amount of resources available to them to spread their anti-meat message throughout the world. It was my understanding that if we wanted to save the Brazilian rain forest, McDonald’s had to be stopped. If the programmers wanted to be fair, they needed to use their profits and skills to promote the environmentals/vegetarians point of view as well.

The professor said that their Web company was like hiring a lawyer to represent your case. Ethical issues were not involved since what they were paid to do was to provide a service to the customer. So I asked, “Would you put the American Tobacco Commune’s Web page online without creating a page about the effects of tobacco?” The professor said that he would refuse a contract with the tobacco company, but he didn’t see the harm in McDonalds. Would that mean that the professor was unaware of how the meat industry is cutting down the rain forest so that they can graze cattle for American consumption?

Ted also was getting upset with me because I didn’t want to be his princess of Xville and work to promote his vision of the future of the Internet. He tried to have sex with me a couple of times, but I refused to get involved on that level because I just couldn’t submit to the new form of capitalism portrayed in Ted’s Xville. I couldn’t see the Internet being a liberating force without it’s total mission including free education and free speech for one and all. To me to believe capital and patriarchy was going to do that for us was a blatant lie. But Ted worked in a Machiavellian way. Later on when I had gone back to Amherst, during a “talk” session between Ted in Washington and me at my machine in Amherst, he said that my neutopia would never come true because I wasn’t Machiavellian enough to be able to play the power game. When he offered to help me become a CyberQueen by using his computer skills to create an Internet radio and video show featuring my ideas, I have to admit his proposal was very seductive! He also said that he was learning Java script so that he could make my Web site into one of the flashiest sites on the Web using animation. But I realized that Ted’s enthusiasm for my ideas was not exactly sincere after he admitted to me that he thought my dissertation was mediocre and unimportant. Why, then, would he want to promoted my ideology?

paul had written me an email while I was still in Washington at the Finders just after we had met each other. But I didn’t even bother to respond. After meeting paul, I felt that he was one of the white boys who really didn’t have the depth of soul to be able to correspond with me in any kind of meaningful way. I remembered the first day we talked on the phone while I was at the Finders. I had called him at a bad time when he was watching Bob Dole talking on TV about the possibility that he would run for the presidency. paul was having to report on the speech so he said he would call me back after he was done. I thought to myself then that he was just one of the writers who have nothing really to say except the party line whichever party it happened to be. I knew not to get involved which such men because I had found that they screw up your mind.

When I got back to Massachusetts from my stay at the Finders, I didn’t hear from paul until the summer after Jerry Garcia of the rock band, the Grateful Dead, died. paul wrote me a very heartwarming email about how he had been a dead head and how mournful he was about Garcia’s death. All of a sudden I had a different impression of paul. For the first time, I saw him more than just a nice guy, neo-liberal democratic hypocrite. Now, I saw him as a member of the counterculture, possibly even someone to whom I could relate who could understand our need to find a neu life-style of cooperation and love. But his email didn’t really catch my wholehearted attention until after he started writing me journalistic emails about his travels with the President and his opinions on what the President was doing.

Then I started seeing paul as someone with whom I could talk politics, as an equal in trying to discover the “politics of meaning.” When I really started to be turned on to paul’s email was when he asked me to write a 1,000 word essay about what I would do if I was President to solve the problems of the world. Then he would try to talk to the President about my ideas. No man had ever asked me to talk about my political theory before. So I spent several days thinking about what to write. Then one night I had a dream about what to write.

After I sent it to paul, he acted as if he was very impressed with my vision, even though he thought that the American people were not ready to embrace the idea of co-presidency which I said was essential for women’s liberation and the creation of a cybersocialist system. I was also disappointed to find out that he thought that competition was the natural state of man and hence he thought our economy had to be based on competition. I guess, at that point, I was so impressed with actually having communication with someone who had access to the President that I didn’t want to confront his world view in fear that he would stop writing me.

So, when I got back in touch with paul after I finally opened up my files that Umass closed when they terminated my computer account for allegedly violating copyright law, he invited me to come to Washington to a White House Christmas party that the President and First Lady were having for the press. They were having a series of such parties for the different groups of people with whom the President deals and he had been invited to the Tuesday night party from 5:30 to 7:30, 1995.

BACK TO THE TRAIN RIDE

I know that paul had no idea of my radical actions in the past and that I was capable of very inappropriate behavior, especially while in the company of the ruling class. paul more than likely thought I was a pretty, intelligent woman who wasn’t too radical to be controlled. Was I going to be able to fake being such a controlled woman for the few hours I was with him? The older I had become, the more self-knowledge I had gained, it was becoming very difficult for me to control my personality to fit in with the male definition of what a good woman was all about. I had become much more of an old street woman than a high society socialite. Battling with the Establishment for the crumbs they pass out at homeless shelters, crying out in the name of justice for the creation of a government which ELIMINATES material inequality, I had become much more of an artist than a high society socialite.

The closer I came to Washington, the more my head started to ache until I got a blistering headache. A woman in the seat in back of me started crying as she started trying to talk with her companion about how miserable her life was being a mother with no money and no time to be herself. He seemed very unresponsive and cold to her as she cried. I wanted to say to her that I sympathized with her situation and I knew how cold and heartless the patriarchy can be. But I think my headache was mainly caused by contemplating what I should do at the White House party. What a rare opportunity to do a radical action! And all the media would be there! What should I do? If I did anything other than be a “graceful” lady, then I knew my chances of a relationship with paul would be over. He was the only man I had come close to who had or wanted any official power, and I had been studying power all my life. Was this my big opportunity? Or was this my big opportunity to make a revolutionary statement by doing something radical at the White House?

Wade, a fellow doctor from the School of Education, was on the train and came and sat beside me after he saw me in the same coach with him. I told him about my dilemma about paul and the White House. Wade thought that it was wiser if I subdued my creative, revolutionary nature and played the game so that I would have other opportunities with paul to enter into the circles of power at other times. He thought that if I exhibited by true personality too soon, then paul would pull away and never again invite me back to parties with who paul calls the “movers and the shakers of history.” Wade thought it was better for me to hide my true agenda and get more psychologically involved with paul. That was the only way he thought I would ever get an in-road into political power and the media since I was in no position to get into the inside circle on my own merit in as much as that was not the way our so-called democracy worked.

As we got closer to Washington, while passing through the Philadelphia train station, I noted all the professional-looking black and white men waiting for the train in their Brooks Brothers rain coats and shiny shoes and gray suits with their newspapers underneath their arms. The Establishment men in their uniforms looked like clones. I started to feel sick looking at them as if they were military soldiers only they didn’t wear military uniforms. They wore suits and ties. I longed to see someone like Richard Stallman, a former email friend who I eventually met in the flesh, with his long black hair and casual, comfortable clothing. But passing on to the Washington station I saw more of the Establishment men waiting on the side of the tracks. I was preparing myself to see paul in the Establishment uniform, hoping I wouldn’t get totally sick if he was dressed in the Normal successful, professional male attire.

When I got off the train, I was so relieved. He was wearing blue jeans! Oh Goddess, maybe he is not conservative at all! We got into his car. By mistake when I opened the car door, it swang into the cement curve scratching his car door which was not the best way to start a relationship! Then he took me out to dinner at a vegetarian restaurant called FOOD FOR THOUGHT. It always takes me a while to get used to the flesh of someone I had been corresponding with in email. paul was no different. He was different than I had recalled, taller, looking somewhat older than I had imagined him to be. But, like all the others, he started talking about his former live-in-lovers, his editorship in London, his former girlfriend whom he got a job at UPI, and his job at the White House.

When I asked him how he got started in a career in journalism, he said that it started at Umass. He had been the news editor on the Collegian, the campus paper, where he had met Ken who wrote for a news wire service. Ken and paul had a wonderful time together gathering stories for the wire services. He asked me if I remembered the fires at Crampton dormitory. He and Ken had reported on what he called these “nothing” fires and then it got blown up by the police and the Administration. He said that he and Ken had really made the story when there was really no story. After the police arrested Yvette Henry for the fires because she was a black woman who studied chemistry, the Legal Services at Umass sued the university for her for one million dollars and won.

This successful court case against the university resulted in the Administration cutting out the students right to litigate against the university through Umass Legal Services. But paul stressed the fact, even though Ken and he had made a non-story into a story, he didn’t feel that he had lied about anything and he certainly didn’t have any guilt about what he had done. All I could say to that was that he had really got a taste as a student at Umass about the power of the press! Apparently it was good training for working himself up the ranks and into the White House!

Then he told me that during the summer, he had discovered that he had inherited a kidney disease from his father which would result in either loosing his life or a kidney transplant. There wasn’t much he could do about it except not drink caffeine since it sped up the process of kidney destruction. My fork dropped out of my fingers after I asked him if his parents went ahead and had six children who all carried the disease after they knew his father had the disease. paul said his parents did know, but that he was glad he had inherited all the genes he did from his parents. I played with the idea of having children with paul when I knew that if I did, my children would inherit a fatal disease unless future gene therapy could fix it. I also realized that a life with paul would mean having to watch him suffer the pain of having a serious disease. But I knew that with love, all suffering could be overcome. I told paul that we had one thing in common. Because of pains in my breasts, the doctor advised me not to drink caffeine. So, at least, we would help each other fight the urge to drink caffeine!

After dinner, we went to his house, played on the Internet from his laptop in his bedroom. When it came time to go to sleep, he sat on his bed said that I could sleep beside him and asked me if I wanted to sleep there. I don’t really know why I said yes. I guess I just thought that it was the thing to do. Maybe it was the false sense of intimacy which the email exchange with paul had created. After having engaged in several email affairs, all based on this false sense of intimacy, my rule was not to go to bed with a guy until I knew him for at least 24 hours. If not, it was like hopping into bed with a stranger because you really can’t get to know a person solely through email.

Yes, you can know the way that he, the potential mate, thinks and how he expresses himself through writing. But the vibrations that he gives off and how he interacts with people can not always be picked up over the Net. Also, I knew that my personality was disagreeable to most men after they got to know me, so I didn’t want to sleep with a guy and then have him start hating me after he got to know me in person. As an experienced woman, 40 years young, I didn’t want to engage in any casual sexual experience. I could have my own orgasms through masturbation and so I didn’t need to have a masturbation partner for an evening. I needed psychological commitment to assure some basis to build a future with a person, so we had some way to establish a dialogue which would last a life time or longer. I also had developed this strange relationship with writing that really made me wanted to connect with someone through the Word. My sexuality had become electronic. Not only did I want a physical relationship with a man, but I wanted a virtual relationship with him in order to keep my mind happy. I didn’t know if this was healthy or not, but my happiness on the Net had become just as important to me as my physical existence. To have someone to whom I could feel good about writing, who was interested in receiving my messages and from whom I felt equally good about receiving his messages, that was what my Neutopian state of mind was all about, or at least, that is what I thought it was about.

For instance, when my South African net lover, dumped me after he met me in real life and started hating being around me, what was so painful was to not receive intimacy into the other’s being which our email correspondence had created as part of my life. I missed his email more than I missed him, but when he no longer wanted to have sex with me, he no longer wanted to write me as well. I had found this true over and over again with men. As soon as they find out I am not the womb they are looking for, their interest in writing me wanes.

Well, our first night together, I wore my long silk underwear so that sex would be difficult. paul’s foreplay was very different than the way Stallman and I had approached it. With Stallman, we talked and talked and then we started being affectionate to each other as we slowly made out way into his bedroom/office at Tech Square at MIT. paul wanted to grind pelvises right away. But the big shock was when paul kissed me.

Kisses with Stallman were like meditations, long breaths into the souls of one another. At least, they were on my behalf. But paul didn’t French kiss. He opened his mouth, but then would not give me his tongue. It was very disturbing when I stuck my tongue into his month to find nothing there, just a hollow feeling. It was so disturbing that I thought that he might be an alien from another planet who really didn’t have a tongue and that the people who had jobs in the White House were of this breed of tongueless beings. When I tried to give paul my sacred breast to touch and fondle, he didn’t seem to understand how important it was for me for him to play with them. But then, when I was starting to touch his beardless shaven face, I got this ghostly image of a man with a black beard. Was this apparition Richard?

How much I enjoyed running my fingers through his black beard. In so many ways, I felt so natural around Richard Stallman. But I had to recall his words to me that he would never have a deep love for me. Finally, he said that if I decided to be a part of his polygamous circle, I would not be the favorite lover. The final straw with Richard was the morning after we had slept beside each other at his Tech Square room. The phone rang and rang waking us up early the next morning. It was his favorite girlfriend, Melinda, calling from Florida. She was feeling depression and wanted Richard’s help in making her feel like living again. Apparently, her husband couldn’t help her the way Richard’s loving words could. So Richard, awakened by the call, told her how much he loved her and how she was so special to him.

What a way to wake up beside a potential lover! I got up, went to the bathroom and when I came back I was hoping he would be off the phone with her so that we could go out to breakfast. He wasn’t. He was talking to her in a tone that I considered to be “baby talk” telling her how wonderful and sweet she was and how much he loved her and wished she was beside him in his arms. It was at that moment that I realized that I didn’t want to be girlfriend number 2 or an even lesser number on his girlfriend list. When he got off the phone with her, I told him that I didn’t like to feel in an inferior position to another woman and that unless he could convince me otherwise, then I should leave. He said that I should leave. As I was packing up my things, I found my social formulas on “the ideology of true love” on the floor with other junk and dirty clothes. I had left my precious work at Richard’s office by mistake from my previous weekend stay. Apparently, Richard hadn’t been interested in my ideas enough to have even have picked them off the floor to study them. He was too busy trying to cure Melinda’s depression than to take time to study by vision on how to revolutionize the computer revolution by true love. Richard had received a genius award from the McAuthor Foundation. So the genius wasn’t interested in hearing anything I had to say about how we could liberate the world. I thought to myself, if he was my generation’s genius then what hope was there for the future? Or was I thinking far too highly of the importance of my work and my ideas were simply junk deserving to be trampled on my Richard? Richard didn’t even bother to get off the phone with Melinda when I left his room. I entered the elevator with the fantasy that he would come running after me and at least walk me to my car. But this was just a silly fantasy. When I got to the ground floor, the security man looked at me as if he knew I had slept over in Richard’s room. When he did, I felt so ashamed of myself. Richard had not even respected me enough to even walk me to my car and the security man knew this. Enough of Richard; now back to paul.

Poor paul had more than likely had to spend so much time chasing this and that story to get himself a job at the White House, that he just didn’t have the time to learn now to really make love like an artist of eros. After a futile attempt to get me to take off my silk underwear, we went to sleep. Maybe I just hadn’t cleared Richard from my consciousness and therefore it was too soon for me to engage in another sexual relationship with paul since an image of a man with a black beard was still coming up.

The next morning he got up, got dressed, gave me a kiss and called me his “darling” before he went to work at the White House. Our plan was for me to ride the bus to the White House in the afternoon and meet him at the press room of the White House before going to the party. So I had the entire day to think about how I was going to act at the White House. These thoughts brought on the headache again, the conflict about wanting to have a revolutionary personality or being a traditional woman. If I wanted a relationship with paul, I knew I had to conform to tradition.

Finally it was time for me to get dressed. I had bought my dress at Umass at a crafts Christmas sale for 20 dollars. It was black velvet and I bought black shoes for 30 dollars. I just couldn’t go along with tradition enough to go out to one of the fancy dress shops in Northampton where the rich Smith College women buy expensive dresses. Every extra cent I had went to supplying me with the necessary things of my life like computer discs to help me further the Lovolution. I thought I might need a sweater since the White House might be drafty that time of year, so I went to a used clothing store. I found a sweater that I liked, but before buying it I decided to walk to Thornes Market to the store where wealthy women go to buy fancy attire.

As soon as I walked into the elitist dress shop, I got a sense of snobbery. After all, I was dressed in an old black coat with a zipper that didn’t even work and that had patches on it. I looked through the black sweaters each for 100 dollars or more until I started feeling sick. It was capitalism sickness. I had had it before and I knew when it was coming on when I get this feeling that everything in the world is utterly wrong. It is because of the inequality of wealth. I knew I needed to get out of the store at once before the attack got more severe and I might start going into hysterics.

I remembered the last time I had an attack when I was in Thornes Market some years ago in the ‘80’s at Christmas time. I was with Charles, my former husband. We were shopping for Christmas gifts. Charles was really into getting all of his family gifts for Christmas and I was getting this overwhelming feeling that I just couldn’t go along with it. I wanted to give spiritual gifts like poetry or painting to people, rather than material gifts especially since we didn’t have the money to buy them anyway. But he insisted that I pick out gifts for my family. When I refused to do so, I sat on a bench and started watching everyone else in the mall grab for the goods, everyone in the mall STRESSED OUT. Charles became very upset with me. I told him that I just couldn’t go on shopping for Christmas gifts and that I just wished that I was 90 years old and everyone I knew was dead so that I wouldn’t have to participate in the Christmas madness ever again. Charles looked at me as if I was crazy and said that I had very negative thoughts and asked why would anyone bother to like me since I didn’t care for anyone except myself.

Shopping to go to DC, Christman 1995, I realized that I was having another attack of capitalist sickness. So, I decided it was time to get out of the market. As I rushed through the front doors, there was the Salvation Army woman ringing her bell. Passing her, she said angrily, “I HATE my job.” “What?” I said. “You heard me!” she screamed. “I HATE my job!” I didn’t know if I should try to speak with her again because she might be one of those poor crazy people, but I overcame my fear and turned around and said, “Why do you hate your job?” She replied, “Can you image ringing a bell for eight hours in the cold for minimum wage? Do you know how utterly BORING ringing a bell can be? When I asked my boss today if I could get a 25 cent raise, she said, “NO.”” As she spoke, I saw that she was missing a few teeth and needed to see a dentist. But with her wages, it would be hard for her to afford to see a dentist. I told her that for her mental health she needed to find another job before the bell drove her crazy. Then I walked down the street back to the used clothing store thinking how glad I was that I didn’t spend 100 dollars on a black sweater for my White House visit when there were people in the world like the Salvation Army woman who was in such a dire situation.

I almost never wear a dress and wearing uncomfortable fancy shoes with a heel is something that I have not done in years, so the process of getting dressed for the White House was rather like taking a trip to my past. It brought back my debutante days and the year I spent at Mount Vernon College in Washington, DC, a college for wealthy women from “good” families. I had decided to go to Mount Vernon College because I had been interested in leadership since I was a small girl. Washington seemed like the place for me to go to school because I had decided that I wanted to change things and the way to do that for a woman like me was to become a politician’s wife and then work through him to accomplish the task of social transformation.

DA VID

Wow! How much I had grown since those days at Mount Vernon in 1976. What feminism has taught me! It had taught me that I would never gain any significant power through working as a sweet wife in a patriarchal system. I really found out that this was true when I had a brief affair with Da Vid.

Da Vid was running for president in the 1992 election as a New Age candidate. I had been impressed with him after reading a newspaper advertising his campaign for what he called the Human Ecology Party and had written to him that I wanted to know more about him. What had really attracted my mind’s eye was his idea of creating THE GLOBAL PEACE CENTER with beautiful geodesic domes and a pyramid on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. His agenda also included such things as universal health care for all, tax reforms, the “rapid transition from a fossil-fuel economy into a sustainable, global solar-hydrogen economy through the creation of The GAIA/Solaris Consortium, a national corporation which would invest in non-polluting energy technologies such as laser technology, fuel cells, solar photovoltaics, wind energy, biomass, ocean thermal energy conversion and the generation of hydrogen fuel.” But even with all of his good ideas, he still held some really bad ones like money and nationalism. Neutopia was much more of a global vision than Da Vid’s, but I thought we had enough of a similar vision that maybe we could work together in developing an alternative political philosophy. I tried to help his campaign vision by re-designing an image he had done of himself. Hovering over one hand as if he was a magician, was a sphere with the national seal of the eagle in it and hovering over the other hand was a sphere with geometric symbol of the star of David and a musical note. Feeling that if he was really going to be the New Age President, he had to evolve beyond nationalistic symbolism, I replaced the sphere with an eagle in it with a sphere from one of Paolo Soleri’s drawings of an arcology in it. Then I cut out the original grey background and replaced it with a picture of the ancient ruins of Athens, the Parthenon. My image of Da Vid represented the need for us to evolve beyond Western Civilization by building a network of arcologies so that we could begin to live in harmony with Earth. I felt that the essense of his campaign should be to inspire a vision of creating a network of ecocities as the way of entering into the New Age.

Da Vid was going to be in New Hampshire for the primary. So I went to meet him there at his press conference. After the press conference a number of us had lunch together at the hotel where that night Da Vid was hosting a party using computer art music videos which he had created. Projected on a screen in the ballroom were images of fractuals changing forms. Da Vid was quite a computer artist and his images and the music were enchanting. It enchanted us enough to us to find a solitude space where we could kiss and engage in other sexual actions. He would stop kissing me to fantasize about us being at his Presidential Inaugural Ball on board the U.S.S. Enterprise in the Pacific Ocean.

After the party, he got a hotel room where we had more time to engage in sexual activity as well as talk about our political philosophies. I quickly realized that Da Vid was a believer in the God of Light, Jesus Christ or some sort of patriarchal God and my ideas of the Goddess’ ultimate power was not going to set well with him. When I tried to explain my vision of Neutopia, he wasn’t interested, turned off the lights and then it was my time to provide him with good sexual entertainment. He wanted the old in and out, but while we were doing it, I started to get very anxious because he had failed to put on a condom. After we failed to reach organism, I got up out of the bed and started shrieking, “How do I know you don’t have AIDS?” Da Vid said that he didn’t believe AIDS was a sexually transmitted disease. He thought that if one takes blue-green algae, then your immunity system would not be effected by the virus. I have forgotten how much he was selling the product for, but blue-green algae was part of his campaign program. Of course, that made me even more nervous since I could image him picking up one woman at every campaign spot, having sex with them and carrying sexually transmitted diseases around with him even though he assured me this was not the case. The next morning, it was like waking up from a one-night stand. He didn’t even ask me out to breakfast. He was rushing off to do a radio show. When I expressed interest in being part of the show, he said for me to forget about it. This was his show. If I wanted to run for president and do radio interviews about Neutopia, then I should run for president and compete with him, not join in on his gigs.

The following day, driving back to Amherst, I was feeling major anxiety about my one-night stand realizing that I had to wait six months before I could receive an AIDS test and that Da Vid and I would never be friends.

BACK AT PAUL’S HOUSE

All day in Washington it had been raining, freezing rain. The cement was under a sheet of ice. I wondered how I was ever going to make it to the bus stop in those high heels that I wasn’t accustomed to wearing, but it was time to lock up paul’s house and make my way. After getting on the bus, I took a seat across from the bus driver so that he could point out the stop which would be closest to the White House. The driver was African-American and after I told him I was heading to a party at the White House, he became very talkative. He wanted to know about how I met paul and what paul did at the White House. What a contrast it was for me to be dressed in this black velvet as the poor workers of Washington were getting on the bus, each of them already looking tired from over- work to keep the rich on top.

The driver started talking about how so many people in the city didn’t have health care and that the poor were barely making it because the cost of living was so high and everything was so expensive. The people were suffering and the President and his friends didn’t seemed to be catching on that things were bad in the nation. When I told him how I had met paul, he thought it was the kind of story which could result in paul asking me to marry him. But he told me that first I needed to take over the White House. Take over the White House, what a thought! How was I going to do it? I didn’t really think that the way to do that was to marry paul!

At the closest stop to the White House, the bus driver directed me how to get to the White House. I was about a half-an-hour early for the party. So I dropped in on a book store across from the White House which seemed like the best place to spend the time. As I was walking across the icy street, a man approached me. His beard was full of ice crystals and he looked very cold. I don’t know why he started talking to me, but as we crossed the street, he told me that he was from the mid-west and that he was homeless. He had tried to get into a homeless shelter for the night, but all the shelters were full. He didn’t know what to do and was having problems with his health.

This poor man was about my age and I knew that I could have been him if it hadn’t been for my father’s support. Oh yes, I could hear Clinton’s rhetoric of how the economy was better than ever and that he had created millions of new jobs. But the truth was that right outside the White House people were freezing to death. It is always shocking and disturbing to meet a homeless and desperate person, but it was even more so when the person was outside the very symbol of power which was suppose to be helping us. The White House would not even admit that housing is a human right!

Inside the book store, I made my way to the computer section and there was Bill Gates’ new book out in front. There he was on the road. Was he really the one with the power, the architect of the future and had Clinton become a puppet to the “movers and shakers” of the information superhighway? I recalled an article I had read at paul’s house about a new house Bill Gates is building in Washington State. They called it a 21st Century smart house with computer technology running the nerve center of the house. His 21st Century nuclear family house, where he and his family would live, would be wired so that he could run the computer revolution from his bed room, and teleconference with Microserfs anywhere in the world. It seemed obscene to me that Gates was spending 30 to 50 million dollars on his house while the majority of the world’s population had little or no adequate shelter. But the rich have always spent their money in such selfish ways.

Just yesterday I saw a show on TV called the “American Castles” about the houses of the super rich which were built on Long Island during the Great Depression. Many of these houses had the most advanced technologies of the day as well as the most expensive art of the times. The TV show said that the rich and famous were in competition with one another so if one house had a ballroom which held 400 people, the next house would have a ballroom to hold 1,000 people. Not much has changed since then since “keeping up with the Joneses” keeps the high society in competition with each other, each out-consuming to impress the other in a race for the latest technology and home improvements. So Mr. Gates is spending a fortune on housing his wife and his upcoming family as more and more Americans become homeless. And the funny thing about it is that the press doesn’t even criticize his folly, using his wealth for his personal comforts. People just accept his spending 50 million dollars on the construction of his house as the normal thing that a King of Capitalism would do to build the American Empire of private wealth.

Brainwashed Americans say that it is his money and he can do whatever he wants to with it. Since he is the Chairman, the richest man in the USA, under the capitalist system it is he who decides how to spend his wealth, the wealth he made off of everyone who uses MicroSoft products as if he is also the wisest man in the world because he is the richest. But Gates certainly doesn’t have the wisdom to move us into the direction of creating a network of ecocities! Bill Gates has such an appropiate last name because his vision of the future corresponds with the vision of gated communities of the well-to-do. The haves know the passwords which open the gates of the exclusive communities, both real and virtual, which are inhabited by the rich and famous, movers and shakers of history.

I read in Newsweek about one of Gates “philanthropy” projects. He has given millions of dollars to the University of Washington at Seattle to build a new law school to be named after his father. Just what the American people need, another law school so that students will have another place to be indoctrinated with the idea that it is their patriot duty to uphold copyright law on the millions of digital art work images Gates says that he now owns as if he has the right to own the culture symbols of humanity!

Then I remembered the words of Richard Stallman after I told him that I wanted to write a story contrasting him to Gates. Stallman the cyberhero of the left, giving out his free software, is managing the GNU project from his room at MIT. Stallman has refused to play the marriage and money game to devote his life to advancing Emacs, a unix word processor, and giving it out for free. But look where Gates has arrived by marketing software! Now he has all the power in the world and Stallman has really dropped out of the power game, even refusing to be a revolutionary against the market economy.

After flipping through Gates’ book, it was time to cross the street to pass through the barricade to the side walk of the White House. I had such an aloof feeling looking at the White House from the side walk, such a cold feeling because the lawn had this glossy shine due to the freezing rain. paul had wanted me to meet him at the press room so I was to enter the White House at the guard station on the side of the press room. But when I went to the guard station to get through, they said that I didn’t have clearance and that I had to enter through another gate around the corner. I tried to call paul on an outside phone at the guard house. I couldn’t get through to him, so I slowly made my way over the ice to the other station.

I didn’t have a problem making it through the other station. They made the guests walk through a metal detection machine. I couldn’t help but feel that I was some kind of cosmic spy as I entered the White House. Good thing they didn’t have a machine perhaps called a “mental detector” with the ability to read my thoughts or they would have known exactly how anti-American Empire I really was. As soon as I entered the White House, I got a taste of the military as a soldier dressed in fancy military attire led me up the stairs to the coat room. The White House was very much of a Southern mansion with all the appropriate Christmas decorations. Oh Goddess, I said to myself, not only do I have to deal with being at the power spot of the State, but I was having to deal with Christianity, a much older disease than nationalism. Was I going to be able to hold my tongue so that paul would think that I was glamorous and sweet enough to love?

I made my way to the powder room. And there in the yellow room, outside of the toilets was a room where many portraits of First Ladys were hung. Jackie dressed in her pink evening dress looking so elegant, Pat Nixon and Lady Bird Johnson looking so dignified, just the way women should look in their ballroom dresses and regal jewelry around their American necks. The portrait which had personality was the portrait of Eleanor Roosevelt. Her portrait had different images of life. She is speaking, reading, writing surrounded by books and pens. It was the only portrait where the First Lady looked intelligent, so I could see why Hillary finds herself talking to Eleanor in front of the portrait. Barbara Bush’s portrait had made it into the hall way and I never could locate Betty Ford’s portrait.

The night before when paul picked me up from the train station, somehow we got to talking about my year in Washington when I was a student at Mount Vernon. That was the year I had become a social revolutionary after I realized that I never was going to be able to find a male politician who wanted to team up with me to trying to run for office for the sole purpose of revolutionizing the system. During my year at Mount Vernon, the closest to that dream was when I had a date with a George Washington University law student. But alas, when he said his dream was to set up a law practice defending the Mafia, my dreams of teaming up with him was lost.

I explained to paul that I had failed out of Mount Vernon College because I decided to quit going to my political science classes. Instead, everyday I would walk down to the corner store, buy a Washington Post, go back to my room and cut out articles on the nuclear arms race. I couldn’t believe the insanity of mutual assured destruction of the nuclear arms race! The only way I thought we could change it was through love, so I spend the rest of my day working on collages and thinking about true love as the power to heal the world. It didn’t take me long to realize that the Washington Post almost never reported on the love and peace counterculture perspective as the way to cure the world, so it became clear to me that searching for solutions of the problems of the world was not going to be found in the mainstream press.

I finished that part of my life story by telling paul that after I failed out of Mount Vernon College, I went to live with my parents. Of course, they were not about to spend any more money on my education since I had failed out of school. They thought that I had to go out and get a job. After searching the want ads and applying for a few jobs, I quickly saw that without a college degree and a career plan, I was destined to be a pink collar worker the rest of my life working for little money and putting in long, grueling hours. Having to join the slave wage class, I wasn’t going to have the time or the money to become the kind of person I wanted to be, since basically I would have to do some mindless job 40 hours a week just to pay the rent. Paid to follow the dictates of the boss. I could see no future for myself, only a life of wage slavery. When I refused to got out and get a job, my parents thought that I was insane. After all, everyone had to work to make a living. If I wasn’t a married woman, then I was going to have to become a working single woman, no matter if I would get a job of my choosing or not. I had to go out and make money to support myself and that was the end of the discussion according to my parents.

My parents thought that my anti-work-in-the-capitalist system attitude was really insane and threatened to send me into a mental hospital if I didn’t shape up. When I didn’t “shape up” they finally called the police to take me away. paul seemed very concerned after he heard that I had been committed to an insane asylum and asked me exactly what I did for the police to come to my parent’s house, handcuff me, take me away to a mental institution. I informed him that the final action which I did which made my parents call the police was when I tried to destroy a portrait painted of me, my mother and my sister. Studying the portrait after it was completed and hanging in the den, I began to detest the way the artist had betrayed me, as an upper-middle class young women in an English riding habit. There were diamond rings on my fingers and a riding crop in my hand. I couldn’t have looked more bourgeois and that was just not the kind of person I wanted to grow to be. When I tried to destroy the portrait, my parents called the police. After that story, I could tell that paul was getting second thoughts about me, and that I was not the woman he thought I was. I could tell that he was apprehensive about taking a woman to the White House who had had a history of being in a mental asylum.

But here I was in the most famous house in all the world. The first thing I did when I got into the White House was to call paul in the pressroom to tell him that I couldn’t get into the pressroom entrance of the White House. He said that he was still busy with work covering the government shut down and that he would meet me at the party when he could. So I wandered around from room to room looking at the portraits of the American leaders, the myth-makers in living oil paint colors on canvas in front of me. The President’s portraits were located in the prominent places in the rooms, like the portrait of Lincoln whose portrait of him sitting in a chair was over the mantle. In the room with the giant Christmas tree, there was a small portrait of Thomas Jefferson. I recalled the following poem I had written some time ago.

CyberQueen at the White House

by Doctress Neutopia

dedicated to Dame Phyllis Rodin who in her 80th year
traveled South Africa looking for the CyberQueen.

INDEX

INTRODUCTION:
THE PERSONAL IS THE POLITICAL

ON THE TRAIN

FIRST MEETING WITH PAUL

BACK TO THE TRAIN RIDE

DA VID

BACK AT PAUL’S HOUSE

CyberQueen at the White House

by Doctress Neutopia

dedicated to Dame Phyllis Rodin who in her 80th year traveled South Africa looking for the CyberQueen.

INDEX

INTRODUCTION: THE PERSONAL IS THE POLITICAL

ON THE TRAIN

FIRST MEETING WITH PAUL

BACK TO THE TRAIN RIDE

DA VID

BACK AT PAUL’S HOUSE

dedicated to Dame Phyllis Rodin who in her 80th year
traveled South Africa looking for the CyberQueen.

INTRODUCTION:
THE PERSONAL IS THE POLITICAL