I remove my cell phone from its hiding place under the seat-the parking lot is constantly prowled by newly freed convicts on the make for a quick score-light my joint, and dial my voice mail as I merge onto the highway. I have eleven new messages and eighteen saved messages. Must clear those out.

Predictably, the first nine new ones are from my agent, who prefers monologue to dialog, at least in dealing with me. The calls started coming in precisely at 10:02, immediately after I was due in class, so missing me is no accident.

My agent contrives to avoid any direct conversations between us, perhaps out of deference to my own style as a novelist, which is the extreme example of one-way communication; or likelier out of disdain for my well-known “mental eccentricities”-what in a less successful personage would be called, “craziness.” I personally don’t think much of the mental health of a man who endures the same voicemail greeting nine times in a row, just so he doesn’t have to talk to people, but this oddity suits me just fine, as it insulates me from making snap decisions.

He may not like me, but he’s making us both wagonloads of money off the product of my diseased mind and his own psychologically questionable persistence. The studio, he informs me in crackling, excited tones, has made an offer on Desert Trance. One million. In-house screenwriter; I won’t be needed on the set, but I should make myself available for consultation calls if I expect it to be true to the original. The succeeding eight calls detail the arrangements in full, legalese not excluded. I erase/advance past them.

I sincerely, if dubiously, bid my unknown heir good luck. I’m not sure if I should be skeptical or impressed at the chutzpah of whoever agreed to undertake this project. If Desert Trance were meant to be a film, I’d have made a screenplay of it myself instead of tearing my hair out in the much more demanding medium of print.

How did they expect to convey the self-conscious stream of consciousness, the subtle symbolism, the nuances of delusional abstraction, the word games? The puns, for chrissakes? Had any of them actually read the thing? Did those illiterate studio hacks realize that ninety percent of the action happened in the protagonist’s head?

Not my problem. I don’t have to be there. Afterward, I can get even more sympathy and sales for the original, by denouncing the desecration of Hollywood. I can hear thousands of moviegoers, advising their friends, “yeah, but the book is better.” And I can look angry and aesthetically wounded all the way to the bank.

Barnum, that great theoretical physicist of human nature, fixed the constant ratio of suckers born per minute at one to one; but that was over a century ago, and the birth rate is much higher now. I thank the Goddess for filling the world with fools, and blessing them with bounty for me to tax.

My communications with Divinity have been increasingly more financially oriented, and lately as one-sided as my agent’s messages to me. I used to sit solemnly down to my ficting, lighting a stick of incense and praying for a good, inspiring chapter of prose, which She would whisper into my ear; now my literary demands are much more meager. All I crave now is a signature on the check, and the only place it really excites me to see my name in print is immediately following “Pay to the order of…”

If incarceration is the best nurturer of literary proclivity, then sudden wealth can be the worst. I can barely write a letter on time these days. Why bother? There’s no particular shame in being a one-hit wonder. Look at Kesey, look at Heller. The hunger that drove me to inscribe Desert Trance, with the eagerness a of prophet taking dictation from Gabriel, the unheated apartments, the unsexed nights, the menial jobs, the seedy pot-all seem part of someone else’s life. I was writing for my life, for my freedom, staving off exhaustion throughout the night with acid and amphetamine before forcing slumber with Soma or Trazadone; and having won the Game of Life, I see no real reason to break myself again, just so critics could say, “none of the spark and energy that so distinguished his debut effort,” or some such snotty shit.

The tenth call is from the doctor’s office; naturally I skip that. They still want me to call about the outcome of last month’s lab tests. I still don’t want to hear them. An impasse, though the nurse’s sweetly concerned insistence only encourages further delay. They don’t hound you like that to deliver negative results.

It’s not real if I don’t hear you say it. Like a child, I will clap my palms over my ears and blab nonsense noises until you stop trying to tell me the truth. I’m not too proud. Wa, wa, wa wa wah wa!

The final message is from Llewellyn Reece, postponing our appointment until five, which is okay by me. I can go home, order a thirty- dollar Vietnamese feast for lunch, floor myself on some superdank from Rug Country-I mean Afghanistan, then pick myself up with a thin line of ja-jo from Panama before heading down to the Row. I know it’s bad, but I do it anyway, because I have the money to waste and emptiness to fill or at least numb. An international afternoon of conspicuous consumption, with a theme: countries my government has invaded illegally.

I can be perverse like that.

* * * * * * *

Trombone turns to me. “What it means, teach, is we don’t need you telling us what to think about anymore. No offense, we know you’re down with us. You’re only here because you caved in on a pot rap. But the only freedom we’ve got left is between our ears, man, so do not fuck with it, okay?”

That shuts me down cold. The last crime I thought I’d ever be accused of is censorship, for which I have a lifetime of hate, yet here I am, in the heart of the gulag, telling the dissidents to hush, lest the guards overhear. And I don’t even live here. Where have my balls gotten to?

Rebellion is in the air. Rather than stick around for the riot that I smell brewing-if I were taken hostage, wouldn’t the cops take an extra sip of coffee and chow one last donut before lackadaisically strolling into the yard in time to watch me get stuck with a shank?-I issue an assignment and beat a hasty retreat.

“I think he’s right,” somebody calls out, earning a murmur of agreement.

I think so too, or at least I have to say it bears consideration, but I’m certainly not going to admit it to my class, every one of whom has a substantial sentence that might be reduced in exchange for juicy information, such as subversive comments by the instructor supporting a conspiracy theory implicating the President in the greatest crime ever committed in this country.

I’m scared to even know the kid, let alone to have assigned this spook-magnet of a fairy tale in the first place. CIA spooks, not “I’m an ignorant redneck” spooks.

Particularly if he’s right.

Naw, couldn’t be. Nobody’s that evil.

Except Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot…

“I like that line about ‘procession of demons,’” someone says. “Reminds me of 1984, how they put the mythical villain Goldstein on the screen every day so everybody could hate him together. Makes you wonder if these guys are even real. Like, if Hitler hadn’t existed, someone would have had to create him, to end the Depression. If the world ever ran out of real tyrants, they’d have to make them up in Hollywood. How would we know the difference?”

All of this is making me very uneasy. Sunny Oaks doesn’t seem to be an appropriate setting for the the founding of a revolutionary cell. At least, not my cell! “Now, back to techniques-” I begin.

A bald prisoner sneers impressively. “They don’t need to fake megalomaniacs. The world is full of them. They just have to give the nutcases they want to put in power an edge over the Extreme Liberation Front of Popular Music or whatever, riding the bill for coupe day tots around the world while making them unthinkable here, and let them individually flip their lids with power and ideology.”

“I remember thinking, all those flags, it was like everybody was hypnotized. I knew this crazy hippie guy, on the outside, had this theory that the news was full of subliminal messages that patriots were sexier and flags attracted money. He also said that the Bush family was dedicated to carrying on Hitler’s work, which according to the hippie had nothing to do with racism. The real reason the Nazis were killing Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and drug users, was that these groups were likeliest to contain magical practitioners. Rivals, who could oppose black magic efforts to bring extraterrestrial psychivores-”

“What the hell is a ‘psychivore’?” calls out a grizzled old biker.

“A soul-eater,” the bald man explains. “The idea was that Hitler was into raising demons, but hell is actually this other planet. Enough simultaneous slaughter creates a vacuum here that can suck the psychovores through a wormhole,”

“Hey, where’d you score mescaline?” a young prisoner demands. “Swear to God I thought ‘bout shit like that when I did some mescaline!”

“Who can tell me what metafiction means?” I interject, hoping to return to the harmless topic of fiction theory before men in black step out of the shadows, but the class has tuned me out. They have a new laureate, one of their own number, and I am last week’s book review.

Another convict pipes up. “You reminded me of something else from that book, 1984, the way the three supercountries maintain a state of continuous war, so as to keep their populations tethered to martial-law conditions. When’s the last time, really, the U.S. was at peace? And now, can we expect to ever be at peace again?”

The Murican flag appeared all over the Kingdom, in stomach-turning ubiquity, as if people were now proud of their country for inspiring enough hate and bile to provoke such a vicious attack. Grumbling about the King diminished, and for good reason; peace protesters had begun to be jailed for insufficient patriotism.

Martial law loomed. The witch hunt for conspirators justified every type of privacy invasion, and, generally, the Murican people stood still for it. After all, they lived in the freest country in the world, did they not?

Hadn’t the barefoot Towelheads driven a couple of dragons into the Pair of Pavilions because they hated freedom? Murica stood for bare heads and covered feet, but so free was this glorious land that you could wrap your head in a roll of Bounty if you chose.

Mr. Pink again appeared at the Beige Palace, and this time there was no delay in being admitted to the Elliptical Chambers. The insubordinate squire had been dispatched as part of the package deal with the Hash- fiends; enough bonus points had been accumulated for a free “accident.”

The King was in much better spirits. He got to be on the Magic Mirror nearly every night; what’s more, the people listened, and not just because they expected him to make mixed-up comments for them to laugh at. “So what’s next, Mr. Pink?”

Pink grinned evilly. “Well, Your Majesty, I’m glad to report that the Society’s stock holdings in flag manufacture companies has increased fourfold in value since the Pair of Pavilions went up in smoke. The economy’s a wreck, which is excellent, but we’ve made a killing. No pun intended.” He smiled ruefully. “The Guarantee of Rights isn’t worth the illegal paper it’s written on. Murica is finally becoming the police state the founding fathers intended. We’re poised for martial law at the slightest provocation.”

“Also, I think now is the time to get people used to the idea of canceling the next elections. Such an un-Murican institution, don’t you think?”

The King was nodding. “All those people saying bad things about the King, making him leave the Throne! Who the hell do they think they are? I’m the King.” Shrub the Second had bitter memories of Dad’s experience. If only they hadn’t had that pesky election…

Pink refrained from rolling his eyes and produced a scroll. “Ah, yes, of course. Now, here are your orders from the Society. Do exactly as we say, and we’ll let you come to our annual party in two, maybe three, years. Naked and blindfolded, of course, due to your low status, but it can be fun that way, too…”

Pink refrained from calling the monarch a moron; after all, secret society or no, the King is the King. A year of his home world’s planetary product had been invested in training him and his failed father, from birth, to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Pink’s own sister had been sold into sexual slavery to Sirian Satyrs to help finance the infiltration. If Earth were invaded, Centuri would no longer be the grimiest toilet in the quadrant. This planet was already half ruined; finishing the job would turn it to a crushed dusty pulp in just a few stardates.

“Nobody is going to bomb Murica. Who could be so stupid? So, we arrange to have it done ourselves. That way, we can blame it on whomever we choose.” He paused. “I was thinking of Assume Ibeen Plottin’, but we can throw some blame at good old Madman Insane, too, if we need to. Why not? Two enemies for the price of one. The beauty of it is, they’ve both been making so much anti-Murica noise that no one will believe them even if they deny it, which they can’t because they’ll lose face. Hell, we can pin it on every Towelhead in Sandland.”

The King frowned. “Does it have to be Oyster Bay, though? I was planning on retiring in Ha-wow-ee, and I don’t want the beaches all tore up when I get there.”

“No, you id-idyllic, uh, ruler. I merely meant that the attack, the outrages it inspires, will be on the same scale. The target will be the Marketplace in New Yoke City, which according to a survey of one hundred randomly selected households, was the site of the most popular terrorist strike of the past decade. We strike right at the heart of the Murican people, which is most readily accessed through its wallet.” Mr. Pink rubbed his palms together gleefully; he had no more malice against Shrub’s Kingdom than any other, but he was a very mean man (or alien!) and enjoyed causing suffering in general.

The King hesitated. “But aren’t those, you know, our people? I mean, the Marketplace! Won’t a lot of rich people die?”

Pink shrugged. “The place will be cleared out of Gull and Crones members that day, you can be sure, except for those we decide to purge from our ranks by not warning them. As to the others-well, they’re not with us, so they must be against us. Would you rather stage an attack on a military fort, and risk destroying valuable equipment?”

So it was settled. Mr. Pink departed for Rug Country, and there contacted the top leadership of the venerable Hash-fiends, who agreed to provide some of their members for the attack. Secret society professional courtesy kept the fee to a nominal level, as the Hash-fiends enjoyed sending their less desirable members on periodic suicide missions anyway, just for kicks. Large bets were placed on which kamikazes would lose nerve and need to be executed by their fellows. It was a source of great amusement.

And so a promising trading day in the early harvest season was rudely interrupted, just as it was getting underway, by two flying commercial transport dragons crashing into each of the Pair of Pavilions of the Marketplace. The hearts of transport dragons pump explosive jet fuel instead of blood, and the damage was total. Thousands perished, including of course the hijackers, and what’s more, some extremely valuable real estate was destroyed. A bona fide tragedy.

Two additional dragons were commandeered at the same time, directed not at New Yoke but the Kingdom’s capital; one crashed into a fortuitously underinhabited section of the Pentacle, Murica’s military headquarters, while the other missed by just several hundred miles its intended target: King Shrub II’s Beige Palace. The immediate comparison was indeed with Oyster Bay-the current disaster far outshadowed that naval ambush-and even the most cynical were shocked.

Of course. From time immemorial, monarchs had instigated conquest to consolidate power. Shrub the First had finessed foreign conflict within the first year of his reign, initiating a hate campaign against a former Murican puppet named Madman Insane, dictator of I’mcracked, who had the planned misfortune to invade his tiny but wealthy neighbor, Heywait, right when the elder Shrub sought an international demon to crucify.

The timing of this hostile action was no coincidence; Insane had innocently made his move with false assurance, from clandestine Murican authorities, that they would not interfere with Insane if he took Heywait. Naturally, there was no one to complain to when King Shrub welshed on Madman and used the incident as an excuse to begin the prolonged and expensive Golf War, the centerpiece of his brief reign.

At first, this strategy was successful; the Muricans, always needing someone to hate, took immediately to Madman Insane, with his swarthy desert features and alien-sounding moniker. King Shrub was suddenly quite popular.

But as the Golf War approached the eighteenth Hole, it was obvious that most Muricans were dissatisfied. Sure, Madman had been driven from Heywait, but he still held power in I’mcracked and looked to do so for some time to come. The Murican people, robbed of their bloodlust, felt vaguely duped and subsequently dumped King Shrub, for the Lord Horny Hick from Ark and Saw, who ruled reasonably well and kept the people entertained with his sexual antics.

The economy, which had seemed so hopeless under King Shrub, was miraculously restored without special measures, and grew steadily until Horny Hick was forced by statute from the Throne. Weapons contractors screamed bloody murder at the draft-dodger’s cutbacks, but most Muricans were out shopping and ignored the missile-mongerers’ moans.

The fact was, the Murican people were disillusioned with foreign war, particularly when their massive armies displayed an embarrassing reluctance to win. Too often they found themselves peeling off bumper stickers and lowering flags with gritted teeth, as once again their vastly superior military effected an equivocal withdrawal from a much smaller territory where the enemy would continue to rule as before.

Even Horny Hick-who was much more interested in domestic affairs- had tried his hand at the meddling game, agitating against the genocidal Sloppy Don Lousysonofabitch in Yourup, the latest in the procession of demons promenaded before the Muricans’ Magic Mirrors for hate purposes, but, finding little interest in the intervention at home, he allowed the issue to quietly drop. Ratings were not good, even though the headlines screamed, “Systematic Rape” and “Ethnic Cleansing”. Halfway around the world, who gives a damn? Besides, there’s plenty of sex and violence in the local news, thank you fearless leader.

A war? Yes, certainly! But what foe? They were running out of bloodthirsty foreign lords with funny names. The senior Shrub had won the Throne originally in a contest against the hideously named Duke Cockkiss, which sounds like shit in any language, while summoning up equally disturbing images of fellatio. And the King had learned from his father the vital importance of having an enemy with a funnier name than yours.

Mr. Pink was waiting impatiently for the glassy look to leave the King’s eyes, tapping his fingers on the armrest of the Throne. “We need another Oyster Bay,” he said carefully. The King needed his explanations in slow, short words. “Something to whip up a frenzy. A war even long- haired radicals would be ashamed to protest.”

“The King was distraught. He paced anxiously about the Elliptical Chambers.The latest Royal popularity ratings lay crumpled in an angry ball on the floor beside the Throne. Something needed to be done! Frustrated, the Liege tore down an ancient draft of the Guarantee of Rights from its hallowed enshrinement on the wall, and this made him feel much better. Still, his Reign was off to a dismal start; and time was slipping away.

“Sire? The man from your, uh, ‘college athletic club’ is here.”“So why are you talking to me about it? Send him in, instantaneously!”

Muttering subvocally about his Monarch’s manners and malapropism, the squire went to the reception and signaled the visitor’s admittance. The man brushed by with a huff, vowing to see the squire hang, or at least lose his federal pension, for detaining him from his audience for nearly a full minute.

“Mr. Pink!” the King exclaimed. “What a pleasure!”

The Chamber door securely shut, the two exchanged secret recognition symbols, a mere formality; the two knew each other quite well. Then the King kneeled and kissed the ring on the other’s finger, for Pink was superior in the hierarchy that they both observed above the formal government of the land.

For the “athletic club” they owed allegiance to was Gull and Crones, a secret society dedicated to mysterious goals and evil conspiracies. Not even the most steadfast members knew much more than that their hidden leaders required world domination. Pink, who hailed from the slums of Alpha Centuri, had not even met the group’s leaders, but took coded instructions from a highly placed aide to the Grand Muck-a-Muck, whose face was never seen. Mr. Pink’s function was to transmit guidance to King Shrub II from the Sirian High Command, who was following the liege’s career very closely, determined that this opportunity to colonize system Sol not be fucked up like the last.

King Shrub I, the current ruler’s sire, had also been a member, a fact which had been rather too well publicized at the time. Murica was a constitutional monarchy; not only was royal power restricted by an elected council, but the Throne itself was subject to jeopardy every four years, subject to the whims of every blacksmith and midwife, uneducated brutes without the slightest concept of the Crown’s responsibility. Shrub the First had lost his Seat to a smooth-talking, lascivious peasant from a backwater province who seemed like a whole lot more fun than the moralistic, cliche – spouting incumbent, who had reversed his most passionate promises and brought the economy to rapid ruin. Vengeance had been vowed.

The two former Princes-Gorge and Yep-consolidated their power, biding the day that the Shrub name would rule again. They each gained regency of a large province-Gorge taking Dad’s old region of Tax Ass, while Yep carpetbagged over to For-I-Duh.

The brothers whooped it up, ordering executions the way drunken salesmen with expense accounts and a pair of prostitutes order room service. Tax Ass and For-I-Duh led the kingdom in application of the death penalty. This sat quite well with their older-than-average constituencies, who resented those with more years of life remaining than they could hope for, and were moderately cheered by outliving anybody.

But controlling two mere provinces could not satisfy the genetic powerlust that flowed in every Shrub’s veins. Gorge knew that he had no chance against the horndog who had toppled his Dad, but made his plans to avenge his father against the designated successor. Victory was imminent.

The elder Shrub had had entirely too much confidence in his popularity, and did not tamper with ballots or their tally when his reelection occurred, or, rather, failed to. This mistake had not been repeated by his son; Junior’s election had been almost openly rigged, the victory margin emerging, by odd happenstance, from errors in For-I-Duh.

There had been some grumbling about this, but not enough to overturn the results. The opponent-a bland golem named All Blood-was not that popular, either, and in any event it seemed the majority of Muricans didn’t believe that election fraud was involved in the contest for the highest office.

These people, known within the advertising guild as “suckers,” also tended to believe that the evening news via Magic Mirror routinely reports facts as opposed to propaganda, and that only criminals wound up in Dungeons. Some of them even believed they themselves would be protected from Royal abuse by the Guarantee of Rights. A tiny minority were delusional enough to imagine that their paying taxes was somehow for their own good, or that tithes sent to MM priests would be put to God’s work, or that expensive kits could make them landed lords with no money down.

Shrub II had tried to garner some instant popularity by leading a tariff rebate through Council, which had hurt his enemies, the Free- spenders, while helping the large merchant interests that had helped him get elected. But as with his father, the financial health of the kingdom proved allergic to the Shrub, who no sooner moved in to the Palace than he began to issue self-fulfilling prophecies of economic doom.

The economy itself wasn’t the problem; part of Gull and Crones’s master plan demanded the Murican people be financially strained, producing a labor surplus which would be available to serve the new alien order. But this could make the public ill-tempered in the meantime, and some malcontents might even blame King Shrub II for their difficulties. So a distraction was necessary.

Cleevenhoff, as it happens, is a lifelong devotee of true crime novels, which led quite naturally to his vocation as a jailor. A fan of true crime journalism would have had to be a cop or criminal. Throughout his career as bibliophile/guard, he had coveted most the tomes authored by the scumbag perps themselves.

Unfortunately, many of the most interesting stories belonged to those who could barely spell, let alone construct a scene or sketch a character. A great deal of work “by” prisoners was necessarily ghostwritten, compromising authenticity.

The Warden has a vision: reams of passable prose produced on yellow legal pads, propped on prisoner’s knees, in every cellblock in America. Let the monsters spell out, in painstaking detail, just how sick and vicious their troubled souls really are, for the world to see and know how vital correction work is.

Cleevenhoff himself has the soul of an editor; the two professions are not as diverse as one might first imagine. Both are in the business of taming the wild and free, making oddballs acceptable to society.

He certainly acted like he worked for a publisher when we met, pumping my hand as if he thereby expected to extract water, claiming to have read and enjoyed my book. He probably had. The Warden struck me as the sort of Top 40 reader that does his novel shopping in airports and grocery stores.

I had just hit number three on the New York Times list.

“I want you to feel totally at ease with my boys. There’s a Stephen King in there, and your job is to bring him out. I mean, real, untapped talent. And nothing but time to write, write, write! Incarceration is an author’s dream, if you know what I mean.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” I said stiffly. “I still have nightmares.”

The smile fades. “Well, indeed. I suppose I meant a developing writer. So as to be free of distractions while learning how to spin a yarn. There are a few I want you to keep an eye on. Encourage. The one they call Trombone-”

He owed his unusual moniker, not to the jazz/brass band instrument of the same name, but to a much more recent invention: the cellular phone. Trombone’s father had been using a very early analog model when the phone call came in from the hospital, informing him of his new status as a child-support provider and requesting suggestions for naming his son. “It ain’t my kid,” he’d bellowed into the mouthpiece. “Call Tyrone!”

The cold basement is silent, and I realize my mistake. Although he is by far the best of my student authors, Trombone is plagued with a fierce stage fright which cripples him when called on to read. But if I change my mind and call on someone else, he’ll look bad to his homies. That could have bad long-term consequences back on the block. The inside is no place to lose respect.

Trombone’s brown face turns crimson, and his knees wobble. He clears his throat as he shuffles through his papers, obviously regretting opening his damnfool mouth. His voice crackles as he begins, but picks up strength as he realizes we are rapt.

~ )))0((( ~

“Hi, Victor!” the class chants back at me.

“Okay, this week I’d like to discuss some techniques.” A moth flits in and out of the flickering light cast by one of the dim fluorescent tube bulbs ruining our eyesight in the dank dayroom. “Can anyone tell me what an ‘objective correlative’ is?”

Just as I was about to start gibbering with fear and urinating all over my freshly pressed court-date suit, the judge bared his teeth, a predator’s grin. He is, after all, a lawyer. “Or…” he drawled.

The light bulb goes out. “We discussed this when we were reading Updike,” I prod. “He’s very skillful at it.” I write the words on the whiteboard. “Think about the words separately,” I plead. “Objective, as in something an outside, or objective, observer would notice. Correlative. Like correlate. Relates directly to.” I hesitate, having run out of hints. Repetition, that old standby of the incompetent, seems my only recourse. “Objectiiiive. Corrrrelatiiiive,” I drawl, hoping against hope that condescension will bring comprehension.

Mercifully, Trombone, my star student, raises a cautious hand. “Is it, like, when the description of the scene includes carefully placed parallels to some theme or the silent monologue of a character? In order to reinforce semiconsciously the deeper meaning? Like, they’re thinking about the Trinity, and there’s three of everything around.” The light clicks back on.

I almost rush to hug him, but of course that’s stringently prohibited. Kids like Trombone make me almost glad to teach this course. “That’s exactly right, Trombone! As a reward, why don’t you read first today?”

“I’ll need to discuss this with my client,” my lawyer said, hope creeping into his voice. Indeed he did.

“Certainly,” the judge said, smirking. “Go ahead. You have until the foreman tells me the jury’s come to a decision. After Clarence Darrow’s little performance, it shouldn’t be too long now at all.”

“I can’t plead,” I plead. “This is a test case. The underlying law’s on our side.”

My lawyer stared at me stonily. “The fat bald little fuck wearing the graduation robe, that’s the ‘underlying law’. Did you hear what he said? He wants to cornhole you with a two-by-four. He can do it, too. Think he’s scared of being overturned? By a panel of constipated marionettes just like him? Be grateful he’s giving you a way out, enter the plea before he changes his mind, and let’s get the hell out of here. I’m starving, and, besides, I’m absolutely dying for a line of good coke. Do you know where I can hook up a teener or so?”

“But I promised myself and a lot of others I’d never put it on record that I was guilty. I didn’t commit any crime.” I wonder who I’m trying to convince. My attorney’s opinion is kind of irrelevant at this stage.

“For chrissakes, it’s a misdemeanor, like a parking ticket. If you want to spend tonight lubricating your asshole, that’s your business. Myself, I’m going to get wired, drunk, and laid-by a female-in that order, no matter what you decide. Make up your mind: party, or prison? Dancing till all hours of the night in a club with beautiful women, or an hour of exercise in a chained courtyard under rifle guard with a guy named Junkyard? Fucking, or getting fucked?”

In the end, I wound up copping a nolo contendere, something my genius lawyer would have thought of earlier, had he not directed his meditations so single-mindedly on the evening’s blow and blowjobs, highballs and high times. I was given a sneezable thousand-dollar fine and 100 hours of community service, to be performed during my year’s probation.

That was how I ended up teaching a weekly creative writing class at Sunny Oaks Correctional Institution for Men. I might have had better luck, not to mention more fun, in a women’s pokey; but I have nothing to complain about. In two hours I’d be leaving; in two hours and two minutes I’d be sparking the doobie under my dash, driving away in perfect freedom in my own overpriced status machine.

~ )))0((( ~

I spoke for two hours, and sent the jury out with a final reminder of the precedents that authorized them to render verdict as they saw fit.

Twelve ordinary taxpayers sat raptly as I urged them to criminalize tyranny in the United States. To restore meaning to the Bill of Rights. To free millions of harmless people whose only crime was preferring an ancient herb to imbibing disinfectant solvents or prescription poison.

I had barely taken my seat before the judge called my attorney and myself to accompany the D.A. and himself into chambers, no doubt to get an early start on the champagne celebration.

“Well, Bill,” the judge told my lawyer, “we’ve got a real serious problem. Solzhenitsyn here has got the jury full of civil liberties and making the world a better place and all that hippie shit, ready to bring back a not guilty verdict. That’s going to interfere with billions of dollars worth of law enforcement and correctional institution budgets, not to mention some highly placed unmentionable concerns that I’d better not mention.”

I knew better, but the intoxicating flurry of laying my rhetoric on the courtroom, every word entered on the permanent record for future legalists to pore over, overrode my caution. “So?” I blurted. “It’ll be nice to live in a free country.”

The judge’s hairless head turned purple as he stood, pointing an angry forefinger my way. “YOU! Shut up! You think you’re so smart. You think you’re going to undo seventy years of law, without spending a single hour in a law library. Change the world. You cocky sonofabitch. Well, I’m sure you know what a mistrial is?”

I did and do, but I barely nodded. “Well, I’m going to be goddamned if I’m going to let my name be on the case that legalized marijuana. So it doesn’t matter how well you charmed that jury. I’m dismissing them. Your closing statement advised them to ignore the law.”

“You can’t do that,” my lawyer protested quietly. “We’ll appeal.”

The judge shrugs. “Do that. Meanwhile, Tom’s free to press charges again, and I’ll refuse to grant bail. Your client can rot while we go through this all over again.” The prosecutor nods. His cooperation in this plot can be taken for granted.

My lawyer and I looked at each other helplessly. Disaster, so close to total triumph! I never dreamed of being so utterly fucked. Appeals take years.

Years. Of my life.

Because some judge with a bug up his ass about me doesn’t want his friends to think he’s a wuss.

We reach the end of the hall. A key is fitted in the lock. I am ushered inside. The door crashes shut behind me with a terrifying, final-sounding boom.

A gang of thirty convicts glance up at me, popping bubbles of chewing gum, rapping tables with pencils. A hush falls as I stride into the room, hulking my shoulders to provide the illusion of breadth, puffing out my chest to appear manlier than I am.

Trying, in other words, to look like a badass.

~ )))0((( ~