You can't live with a paranoid radical revolutionary without coming under suspicion yourself. You just can't.
I was suspected of being a scheming whore who planted herself in Conspiracy's bed so I could tell the Powers That Be what he was thinking, feeling and doing – as if they still truly cared enough to plant a mole in the home of a man they had effectively neutralized more than 20 years ago.
That's not to say that Conspiracy did not have a secret government file several inches thick or that strange people did not still watch and follow him. We'd be in a public place, and Conspiracy would point a suspected informant out to me, surreptitiously whispering out of the side of his mouth. Sure enough, more times than not, I'd catch that person following us or paying an inordinate amount of attention to what we were doing or saying.
Conspiracy once explained to me that Yale was a hotbed of CIA recruitment, that the agency had a long tradition of hiring Yale graduates and promoting them to the highest ranks.
He also talked bitterly and at length about the role pretty, young college women had played in bringing down his organization by bedding and betraying the men.
So there I was. Young, pretty and attending Yale.
On the infrequent occasions when I was in the company of his former compatriots in the struggle, I could see them watching me with barely concealed distrust.
Conspiracy was estranged from nearly all of the people who were part of his now-defunct revolutionary group. The trial in New Haven had shattered relationships irrevocably, and he felt that he owed several of his local party members payback for the way they had treated him. On the national level, there were more questions than answers. Who had really been down for the cause, and who had been secretly working with the government to destroy the organization?
In recent years, he had reconnected with a former revolutionary colleague who lived in New York. Occasionally, we would take the train into Harlem and hang out with this friend, who plainly didn't quite trust that I was who I said I was.
Once I made the mistake of relating a recent incident I had witnessed on campus. During a discussion at the Yale Women's Center, some white student rubbed a black upperclassman I admired the wrong way. She got right in the flustered woman's face: "I'm tired of white women stepping on my foot, and then boo-hooing when I tell them to get off."
Harlem Revolutionary grunted sourly.
"White people are stepping on your foot? You must be lucky, because they're stepping on my neck."
If Conspiracy shared his friend's suspicion that I was a spy, he didn't voice it. I think he considered it at length, gave it a great deal of deep thought. And then presumed me innocent because there was no proof to the contrary. He probably set traps that I never walked through, such as dangling traceable information in front of me to see if it went somewhere else or leaving things lying around in such a way that he'd know if I snooped through them.
Or maybe there was just common sense. How could I be a spy, when he had pursued me? Who could I possibly pass information to when I spent most of my waking hours either in class, rehearsing for a play, studying or glued to his side?
So I was never accused, and I was sure that he trusted me.
But underneath, I could feel the thin tendrils of suspicion faintly painting the air. Years later, those paranoid smoke wisps firmed into an acrid cloud of smut that Conspiracy blew angrily and forcefully in my face.
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My story
There’s a young woman whose path often cross with mine at the bus stop, while we are waiting. She is sweet and her soft-spoken never fails to greet me. Sometimes we talk about the weather, when the day is too cold to speak about other things, but I never dared to ask her name, although I long for knowing it.
I sense it’d be a musical name and delicate songs will have it in their lyrics, and if ever my shyness would be cornered or curiosity would subjugate me, I would hear an unusual name that would please me.
I know she feels safe by my side, because she always come smiling where I am and there she remains silent until the time to leave arrives. And I suspect part of her calm resides in my apparent indifference on conversations invaded with questions.
I am glad when she’s close and I like to watch her when she seems not to notice. And I love her stillness and her absent happiness that invited me to crave for her reserved friendship. And that’s maybe why, because her quiet charm is haunting me, I guess I never desireth her name.
Such is her charm as she now is, that I could not bear that, because of me, she could one day change.
Growing Love
Some call love a grave disease,
Comes and goes, like a morning breeze.
To attain it, use your knees,
A shiny diamond and a please.
Few years later it smells like cheese,
To keep it fresh, you try to freeze.
Bills and payments, so many keys,
Love has mastered, the wallet squeeze.
Cleaning after those little peas,
Where’s this love that used to tease?
It hasn’t left to the far off seas,
Still beside you, with more expertise.
by www.prettylovepoems.com
A special world for you and me
A special bond one cannot see
It wraps us up in its cocoon
And holds us fiercely in its womb.
Its fingers spread like fine spun gold
Gently nestling us to the fold
Like silken thread it holds us fast
Bonds like this are meant to last.
And though at times a thread may break
A new one forms in its wake
To bind us closer and keep us strong
In a special world, where we belong.
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