socialist subscriptions and other early morning amusements

Thunk, thunk... two raps on my door, I jump up from my bed, open the window from the floor, hiding myself behind the damask curtain, for propriety's sake (God forbid it should be a child and they should glimpse me naked, then the world would surely end!)
Who is it? (my heart beats faster, I know it isn't anyone that I would like it to be, but my entrails are still atwitter). Silence.
Who is it? I call again. Nothing. I throw on a bath robe, pad down the steps, open my front door to a sunny fall morning. No one. I leave my door open, walk around the corner, scratch my head. I have visions of someone sneaking past me into my house when I turn my back, so I don't though the bright sunshine really ought not inspire such nervousness.

Last night, late, I went to the gym, I was doing my cool down when they announced five minutes to close. There was sweat pouring off me, my iPod had died after 10 minutes and I had managed to push through another 25 of running without calling it quits, without the musical crutch of Manu Chao, or Depeche Mode or Luscious Jackson... full consciousness, no trance-like state of self-deception. So I went out, to my car, yes, at night I try not to bike as I have no lights, and decide that I need to go look at the ocean. I drive along the edge of campus, park at the edge of the cliff and lean, sweaty and alone over the railing to look at the slow motion waves rolling in to the beach. It is low tide, but I don't descend the creaky wooden stairs, I don't trust my aloneness, am not free of fear. And suddenly I am crying, tears pouring down my cheeks, because I am looking at Goleta Beach, where we had our annual picnic that afternoon, and I am struck by how much I miss Tim. Last year that was the last time I saw him alive. Alive. The following Monday I got the phone call and he was already dead. His heart had swelled. I stood silently, composing letters that I would not write to him, letters to a dead man, remembering how he would listen. I wish I had listened more and talked less. I always wish that. I talk too much. I give too much, and I don't know how to receive. There were boys, hordes of them, looking for places to hide in the bushes, to smoke weed far away from dormitory smoke detectors. I smiled through my tears. The pain eased a little. Karmic retribution, I thought, that's what it is... I deserve this.

So maybe some of this uneasiness was still there, in the stark sunlight, because I didn't turn my back on the door, but stood waiting... waiting for something. When nothing materialized, I went back upstairs, cast off the bath robe, or rather, as I am trying to maintain order in my life, hung it neatly back on its hanger, and went back to my translation work. When the second round of rapping came, I was no longer scared, immersed in Ignacio's poetic universe, I repeated the actions previous. Who is it?
Muffled mumble. Socialist newspaper.
How can I help you? I call from above.
I can't see you. I hear back in that male voice, the high pitch of tight vocal chords. I imagine he is in his forties or fifties, slight. I am curious.
Ok, hold on.
This time I throw a dress over my head, pad back down, open the door. He has a black messenger bag, he is holding socialist papers. He rattles off a list of the paper's views. I nod and smile. I have no intention of buying a subscription, but I am amused by the possibility of a conversation.

So we converse.
He feels the need to say that the paper supports Palestinians, just because, he says, he noticed the mezuzah... I smile, impassive. One thing has nothing to do with the other, I point out, and he agrees. But, you know, just in case...

It really isn't much, but I have no desire to spend money on other people's political agendas and much less interest in a socialist rag, and I don't say this because I have particular disagreements with any (or at least very many) of the beliefs purportedly held, but I find that people with strident and radical political views are very infrequently compelling storytellers, and frankly, all I want any more is to be told a good story, to ease the pain of living.
What is your view on feminism? I cast the barbed bait.
Well we are against feminism. (That simple. Blanket statement. Here comes the apologetic explanation) because we believe that the principal struggle is a class-based one of the exploited worker against the elite ruling class.

Aha... I wonder aloud whether he has considered women as a class... he tries to instruct me on Marx's very precise definitions about the relation to means of production and I say, yes, that is my point, but I don't think he gets it, though in his defense he acknowledges that women suffer "special" oppression in every country in the world, but that socialist thought simply has a different approach to eradicating such oppression and I can't help thinking about what a pat answer that is, and how basic it is to human nature to oppress others. Seriously. Even without attempting to do so. Even in sexual relationships. And off I go, on my tangents of love and the terrible terrible thing which is abstinence, at least in my mind.

Don't you think... I pose... that there is more to it than a simple relation between workers and production? Who brings the sandwiches to the meetings? (I don't ask this, but I think it) Who scrubs down the stove after the dishes have been washed, half-heartedly and pieces of pasta or streaks of grease are still stuck to the sides of the pot? (I also don't say this, and I am already starting to not like myself for having these thoughts, but they are based on a life-time of observable fact, albeit, whose interpretation is colored by my particular choice of framework).

NOT that I am a radical feminist, because I am not, but because I love to riddle with holes any radical argument that is founded on wild generalizations (including my own) I continue to play, and we spar, in good fun. He has given up trying to sell me a paper, and I suggest that he updates his concept of what feminism is and that it isn't all Andrea Dworkin, porn-hating, men-despising women that want to oppress others to mitigate the oppression that they have suffered. And I giggle, inwardly of course, because I am thinking about the pseudo-socialists and their little pamphlets at Bryn Mawr, and Nell, whose studied punk-rock grunge look was bought at the finest of Seattle boutiques, and then of my girl friends in Mexico, and how there was probably more lipstick and leg showing than I have seen in one college classroom, and what the "new face of feminism" might look like if we were to do some artsy fartsy collage, and what fun consciousness raising must have been, and all the nights of red wine and sexual discovery and I wish I wish I wish I could be a starry-eyed left-wing throwback because I really and truly long for that time I never lived, but I am not.

I am a radical moderate, I apologize. I always have been, I think. Fear of action? Distaste for my own inevitable hypocrisy? Perhaps. But then I think of what I wanted to say to Tim last night, when he had the indecency of still being dead, and I wanted to tell him that I am trying to profoundly transform my life (but I am still falling short on many counts). And how can we even pretend to transform a whole society (and if we do, into what precisely would we transform it, and would that other thing be any better in real ways?) And I know this rampant individualism is the root of all evil, except that... well... shouldn't there be a way to balance one's individual needs, transform one's own life within the framework of the lives of others? But, there I go being a moderate again...