Last Visit with Dr. Duke

“I’ve had it,” Duke said, handing me an ice-cold Corona before I even stepped across his threshold. Tossing a slice of lime over his shoulder (I caught it), he plopped into his recliner and sighed deeply, like a man who has reached the end of a long desert march.

“With what?” I asked, taking a seat opposite him.

“The American corporate welfare state, the American military-industrial-intelligence complex, the American prison industry and incarceration complex, the War on Drugs, the War on Terror, the War on working people, and the endless assault on the environment. Had it. Game over. Moving to Amsterdam.”

I hadn’t seen or heard from Duke in months, not since I watched him toss a coin to decide which of two beautiful young women he would choose to marry. He looked wearier now, all of his 60-plus years, and with a heaviness in his spirit that had never been there before. Duke had always controlled his own environment and lived on his own terms; something was clearly amiss.

“Don Henley was right,” Duke said. “We’re ‘poisoned by these fairy tales,’ unable to confront reality, unable to rise beyond a tribal, siege mentality.”

“I’ve never seen you this down, Doc,” I said. “Last time I was here you were stone in love with two women.”

“Ah, that was hard, Tang, an absolutely untenable position and a dance I don’t recommend to any man, unless he’s as demented as George W. Bush.” Another heavy sigh. “I saw Sarah Palin on Oprah today. Sarah-Fucking-Palin. The woman is a twat – not a twit or a tweet, but a foul-smelling back alley VD-infested twat. She’s a walking, talking testament to the abject failure of our celebrity-obsessed culture. How many of our fellow citizens realize that we are on a one-way street to second-nation status? But don’t get me started.”

Too late for that, I thought.

Duke opened another Corona.

“Why Amsterdam?” I asked.

“No particular reason,” Duke said, “other than I’ve always liked the place, plus it has the benefit of being 5500 miles from this pig-fucked nation. Europe has problems, of course, but the continent remains reasonably civilized. So I’m turning my back on George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, on James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, on John Adams and John Jay. If I had bigger balls I’d end my misery with a bullet to the brain, like Hemingway and Hunter Thompson.”

“Jesus, don’t say shit like that, Doc.”

“Why not? It’s true.”

“Despair’s not your thing, Doc.”

“Maybe. But a man – a thinking man, anyway – reaches a point where what is and what should be cannot be reconciled. My despair is of the unshakeable variety. My sense is of things, people, institutions and nations slipping and sliding into the abyss.”

“Have you seen you physician lately, Doc? Maybe you need a prescription for anti-depressants.”

“I’m on Zoloft and Lithium already. They have no effect. I’ve even lost faith in pharmacology.”

“Shit.”

“Keep writing your flaming screeds, Tang-O, but never forget that you’re battling the most prolific propaganda machine this world has ever seen. It’s owned by the wealthy and in the service of the wealthy. Nonetheless, you can’t quit. Keep screaming from the balcony, the outhouse, the prison cell and the church pew.”

“You’ll be back,” I said.

Duke stared into space for thirty seconds. He seemed to age before my eyes; his passion, audacity and fire seeping out of him like blood from a severed artery -- this man who had resigned from a tenured professorship at UCSB because he disagreed with the chancellor on everything from the treatment of teaching assistants to the salaries of top administrators. (“Parasites on the body of higher education,” Duke called his bosses.) Resigned to become a successful marijuana dealer (suspected by the SBPD but never charged), owner of a large and rustic home in secluded Mission Canyon, and a man who largely did exactly as he pleased.

Duke chuckled. “You know what the last straw was, Tang? The Wall Street bail out. That’s when I realized that all hope was gone, even with an intelligent black man parked in the White House. A trillion taxpayer dollars for reckless financial firms that deserved to die not be rescued. Too big to fail is a crock of horseshit. A trillion dollars for politically connected banks and Wall Street firms, peanuts and crumbs for working people. Look at the banks and Wall Street now? Swimming in profits, paying huge bonuses to their executives, and laughing hysterically at how easy it was to bilk the taxpayers. The Mafia never had it as good. It’s beyond insulting.”

I couldn’t argue with his conclusion. The bail out soured me on the Obama Administration, too. All that talk about audacity and hope, the excitement I felt on Inauguration Day, hadn’t translated into much in the way of concrete policy. On the other hand, a president’s powers are limited.

“The people should be in the streets,” Duke said, “with axe handles and Molotov cocktails, baseball bats, machetes, kitchen knives, hunting rifles. D.C. and Wall Street should be engulfed in flames, burning to the fucking ground. I’m not a violent man, but I see no other way to disrupt and change the status quo. Political solutions can’t work because the system is irreparably corrupt. The cancer has been growing for years, but it metastasized when the Supreme Court installed W. Bush in the White House.”

“How come you’re not out there, Doc?”

“Me? Too old. Too tired. Too comfortable. My generation had its shot.”

“The 60’s?”

“Yep. We climbed part way up the mountain, and then we got corrupted and co-opted. We got fat, happy and greedy. We’re little more than advertising slogans and statistics now.”

“You’re depressing me, Doc.”

“Yes, I’m not fit for human companionship.”

“You’re really leaving?”

“Amsterdam bound, baby. The first thing I’ll do when I get there is take out my dick and piss all over my passport.”

We shook hands on his porch. I told Duke that we would meet again, somewhere in America, but he was adamant that such a meeting would never happen. He was leaving and not coming back.

“Keep writing,” he said before turning to go back inside.

I laughed. “It seems pointless. Nobody reads my shit, Doc.”

“Doesn’t matter. It’s an act of resistance and protest.”

Duke closed the door. The porch light went out and I heard the deadbolt slide into place. I stood in the dark of the porch for a moment, listening to the cicadas, the distant rumble of traffic on the 101, the howl of a lone dog. I never imagined that Duke would become a casualty of the American Dream.

And then I heard the single gunshot.