Excerpt from my novel-in-progress Desire Without Expectation

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That evening we go around the circle. Everyone has to introduce themselves and explain a bit about why they’re here, why they’ve decided to be part of this:



“My friend brought me. I wasn’t convinced I was up for it, but we took the bus here together. It was only on the bus ride that they fully convinced me. I’m always up for a cause. But… I don’t know… I wonder about my life. If I’ve been too much of a coward. The courage to put my body on the line, to be roughed up by the authorities, or to go to jail for my convictions and see what happens there. These aren’t the kinds of things I’ve done before. So on the bus my friend turns to me and really lays it on the line. If I want to talk the talk I’ve got to walk the walk. And they were right.”



“My first protest was when I was seventeen. I felt then what I still feel now. Everything has gone wrong with the world. Every time I get a chance, I realize I need this. I need to be out on the streets with others who also realize everything’s gone wrong and want to do what we can to oppose it. I’ve been arrested over thirty times. I don’t know. People keep protesting and the world keeps getting worse. But we can’t just watch it all getting worse without stating our opposition, without shouting out what we know and shouting is all together. I’ve been doing this since I was a teenager and plan to keep doing it until I can’t anymore. That’s why I’m here.”



“I wasn’t planning to say this, but I was just listening to you and realize I have to respond somehow. I have to say that I really think protesting is not enough. It needs to be one tactic among many. Of course I’m also here to protest, to take part in this protest, which we’re all hoping will be significant. But maybe it’s worth saying that what I believe in most is what we might call an inside/outside strategy. Some people pushing as hard as they can from the inside, other people pushing as hard as they can from the outside. That’s always what I think most has to happen. And right now, as I think we all know, there aren’t nearly enough people pushing from the inside. But I’m also not on the inside, and don’t believe I have any way of getting in there any time soon, so I have to do my best to push from where I am.”



“Hopefully this won’t take too long, but I just want to tell a little story that is important to me. That gradually became quite important to me over the years. I was taking the train, not a long trip, a few hours between cities. And a crew member came through, taking tickets, making jokes. There was a woman a few rows in front of me, the crew member seemed to have a problem with her, maybe there was a problem with her ticket, but from a few rows back something felt off about the interaction. It looked like he’d decided to be a bit of a bully, make use of the little bit of power he had in the situation. I didn’t think so much of it, the woman was standing up, he was asking her to leave, she was beginning to gather her things. But then a woman across the aisle stood up and spoke directly to the employee, said this woman hasn’t done anything wrong, you can’t just ask her to leave like that, it’s completely unfair. And to everyone’s complete surprise the crew member immediately backed down, apologized to both of the women and let the first woman return to her seat. And I was watching all this, thinking to myself: my plan had been to just sit there and do nothing. Even though my instincts were telling me I was watching someone be bullied. And there was someone else who had the guts to stand up and say something. And I wished that person had been me. Also because it worked. So every time I think of that story, I think I can’t just be a bystander, I better stand up and do something. Which is probably one of the main things that has brought me here tonight.”



“A secret service agency is paying me to infiltrate a variety of radical left-wing organizations and then report back to my superiors to tell them whatever I find out. Honesty is always the best policy.”



It was the wrong thing to do, but we all ignored this outrageous statement, perhaps thinking it was only a joke, and continued going around the circle.



“I haven’t put much thought into it until now. I heard something was happening and thought I’d check it out. Maybe it was something like: something important might happen here and I don’t want to miss out. I know that doesn’t sound like a very good reason. It’s not really noble or anything like that. Sometimes I hear about think that happened before I was born and feel bad that I missed out on them. Tell myself that if something significant happens in my lifetime I want to be there. So here I am. Trying to do my part. Play some sort of minor role as a foot soldier in the making of historical change.”



“This is all so interesting. So many different roles and perspectives. But tomorrow we’re going to go out there all together and we’ve got to have each other’s backs. If there are differences between us, we’ve got to put them aside. Not forever, just for the next few days. Because this is only going to work if we find ways to really work together. I have a tendency to become a bit of a cheerleader in situations like this. To loudly state how important it is we all work as a team. When we’re children in this culture, we’re not given nearly enough tools to work collectively, to work together. But every time we go through something like this, and manage to have each other’s backs, we all learn a little bit more how to do it. We’re learning this all together. I hope someday we’ll actually win. But, if I’m honest with myself, and I think it’s really important to be honest with yourself, I think winning is still a long way off. And there has to be a whole lot of collective learning to get from where we are now to some sort of more general victory. Which is another way of saying that, hopefully, I’m here to learn.”



And then it was Alfreda’s turn. Alfreda was sitting directly next to me, she paused for a long moment, taking in the fully scope of the circle and each of the people who constituted it, before saying: “We were in a house. We only stayed there for a week, a bit less than a week. They had two children’s rooms for rent and we each rented one of them. It was a rather strange situation. There had been some sort of conflict between the parents and the children, a conflict none of them had been able to resolve, which is why the two children were gone, and we were staying in their rooms. But just like the previous children had been expelled by the parents, we were eventually also expelled. The same patterns just continue repeating over and over again. Before we left that town I had one demand. I wanted to go back to the small-town diner were the previous night I had reunited with the one true love of my life. I still haven’t completely managed to process what it was like for me to see her again after all those years. Why we came here has something to do with what it was like for me to be in that very charged space of that small town diner, drinking that very bad diner coffee, the entirety of the space charged with my memories of that recent meeting with the life I could have had but didn’t. The life I would have had if, at the time, I had followed my true desires instead of listening to what I thought the people around me wanted me to do. That space was fully charged for me. And then we looked up and saw a tiny television screen broadcasting the news and telling us to come here. It was as if the desire to be reunited with the love of my life merged with the desire to be part of this protest, to be part of the zeitgeist. I know all of this doesn’t exactly make sense. But somehow it all makes sense for me so much more than so many of the other things in my life. There have been times in my life, too many times, when I didn’t follow my desires, and I now look back at many of those decisions as mistakes. So when I looked up at that small television, and it announced this protest, it was clear to me that this was a moment I should follow my desires. Which is what I did.”



Then it was my turn. I thought to myself that Alfreda was really a hard act to follow. And then I really had to wonder: why did I come here? Was I only following Alfreda and her spontaneous desires? Didn’t I have any desires of my own? And it was my turn to speak, everyone was waiting, I couldn’t just sit in the circle in silence when it was so clearly my turn to speak. As so often happens, I begin to speak before I fully know what I intend to say: “If it’s not already clear, I came here with Alfreda, who just spoke and is sitting directly to my left. We drove here together. I don’t know if that’s the reason I came here, but it’s definitely the method, the means of transportation. It’s a tangent, but being asked to speak like this makes me wonder a bit about my reasons for doing anything. Do I really know why I do anything? And in some sense I already know the answer. The reason behind so many of the things I do is to gather more information about the lost masterpiece. Since all of the information is plausibly unreliable, there can somehow never be enough. I don’t specifically know how this project is going to provide me with further knowledge about the lost masterpiece, but if I mention it here to all of you, that might at least open the question. In my mind, protest and the lost masterpiece feel very connected. But all of that is only a tangent. That’s not really the specific reason I’m here. There probably isn’t a specific reason. But, nonetheless, I feel it was the right decision for me to come.”



We then divide up into smaller breakout groups. Each group is three people and our group consists of myself, Alfreda and the person who announced to everyone he was a paid-by-the-government infiltrator. It was awkward, but somehow we were also very curious to find out more about him. Each breakout group was supposed to decide what we were and weren’t willing to do, how much danger we were willing to engage in and where we wanted to draw the line. We were put into groups based on what we had said during the introductory round, and it made me wonder what was it about what Alfreda and I had said that made the organizers decide to put us in the same group with this self-proclaimed infiltrator. I had the feeling that the three of us were the wild cards, the people who had said things that didn’t fit the acceptable overall narrative. It goes without saying that I didn’t much like being lumped into the same category as the infiltrator, but perhaps he also didn’t much care to be lumped into the same category as the two of us.



I say: “So how should we do this?”

Alfreda says: “Maybe we could list some of the possibilities and then each state whether or not we’re willing.”

Infiltrators says: “How do you mean?”

Alfreda says: “For example: get arrested?”

I say: “Yes.”

Alfreda says: “Yes.”

Infiltrator says: “Yes.”



I say: “Stay in the tear gas?”

Infiltratory says: “Yes.”

Alfreda says: “Yes.”



Infiltrator says: “Throw Molotov cocktails at the police?”

Alfreda says: “Yes.”

I say: “I’m not sure.”



When we’re not in complete agreement we’re supposed to discuss. Alfreda begins the discussion by saying we all know this event is planned as a nonviolent protest. Alfreda begins the discussion by saying we all know this event is planned as a nonviolent protest. Nonetheless, even at a nonviolent event a certain useful movement can be activated by the right act of violence at the right moment. But she didn’t come here to smash stuff. That’s really not the point. She only wants to state that she is open to the possibility. Having said her piece, she looks at me in a manner that suggests it is now my turn to defend my position.

I say: “I know there’s a history of agent provocateurs. They work behind the scenes to discredit peaceful movements by egging them on toward sensationalistic acts of violence. The media then only focuses on the images of violence and the societal evils being protested fade into the background. So when a person who has already admitted to being a covert agent suggests throwing Molotov cocktails, it of course gives me pause. Am I being manipulated and should I really allow it to happen so easily? The target of any activist violence needs to be so well thought out it hurts. Choosing the wrong target can so easily do more harm than good. If we were talking about blowing up an oil pipeline, I could really see the value in that. But I’m not sure who it benefits to throw bombs at the police. I worry it might actually benefit the police, giving them a pretext to request budget increases when I would prefer to see them fully defunded. That is why I said I’m not so sure.”

I look over at Infiltrator, expecting him to be, I’m not quite sure what: offended? rebuffed? put in his place? given pause? Instead he says: “As I mentioned before, I’m here to gather information, and I want to thank you both because you have now given me a good amount. I can clearly see how and why there is both openness and resistance to utilizing violence over the days to come. At previous moments when I was doing this job, I did so in the more conventional manner, doing everything in my power to conceal my true identity. But that almost never worked, people almost always guessed I was a cop, sometimes within seconds of first meeting me. So this time I thought I would try a different approach. Be completely upfront about it and see what happens. And, I have to say, so far I quite like the results.”



After the breakout sessions were over, Infiltrator pulled me aside and said: “Earlier you were asking about the lost enterprise. I have some information that might interest you. One of my very first assignments was in a room full of computers. Every day we all sat at our terminals and spread false information on the internet. And I was assigned to a unit spreading false information about the lost enterprise. Every day I would go there and make up things about it to post on various difficult to find websites. And I was amazed how many people would respond and how quickly. There really is a very large and active community interested in the topic. I suppose you are one of those people.”

I say: “Do you think any of the things you posted are things I’ve since come to believe?”

Infiltrator says: “It’s definitely possible. Many of the things I posted went on to be reposted and shared many thousands of times.”

I say: “So you might be the source of my beliefs.”

Infiltrator says: “I might be.”



Early the next morning we gather, line up in rows facing a wall of already assembled riot cops. There are a lot of helmets, a lot of shields, a lot of tear gas canisters and a lot of guns. That is the direction I’m facing, and it definitely sets the tone. It is more cops than I have ever seen before in my life. A cliché I’ve heard many times before shoots through my mind: if you want to know who wants a riot look at who came dressed for a riot. I am not dressed for a riot; it’s more like I’m dressed for a poetry reading. I didn’t sleep very well last night. It is a peaceful protest, so I know it’s only a matter of time before the police attack us. And then it happens, the dance, the rows shifting into circles and then back into rows. As slowly, almost imperceptibly, each police officer is added to the end of one of our rows. One cop then the row shifts into a circle and back again. Another cop then the row shifts into a circle and back again. One by one the riot cops peel away before our eyes. One by one they join us as we face off against them, so soon they too are also facing off against themselves, stepping into our action as the entirety of the dance curves. As we all do these steps, it is unclear if time is slowing down or speeding up. It is as if the steps are doing us, and yet it is only once the police are fully integrated amongst us that they begin to attack.



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