Gates of Eden

Chapter 50

Up Against the Woodstock Wall

Boston

August, 1969

“I can’t do anything with this.” Sam Saltonstall held Madeline’s article up to her. “'Woodstock: The Real Tragedy'? You want us to run this?"

"Yessir, mister editor, I do!" Madeline felt her anger rise.

"The people you trash in here... “ Sam rattled the pages at her. “They bought a full-page ad in the Rat. You think they’ll do that again?”

“Wow.” She batted the manuscript away.  “Listen to you! What an asshole!”

“Listen to me? Shit, man, listen to you!” He read aloud:

Nature can be elegant. Nature can be messy. Woodstock was messy. Why? Because it was promoted by guys who wear their hair long, smoke dope and are in it for the money. At Woodstock, the peace train rolled for profit. It showed.

“You know these promoters you kick around in here are the guys who paid your way up there?”

“They bought an ad to push their sleazy event. Big deal. What am I supposed to do? Suck dick or write what I see?”

Sam Saltonstall, the Rat’s aristocratic editor and publisher, was unused to such resistance; money had accumulated steadily in his family’s coffers since Massachusetts had become a colony. Despite his blue-blood, Brahmin entitlement, Madeline liked him. He espoused a soulful political stance, had cast off his family’s patrician values, he commanded a thorough understanding of history and journalism and was a walking encyclopedia. "Maybe you're supposed to do both," he snapped back. "Suck dick and write what you see. He continued reading:

If swimming nude in a muddy cattle pond, picking up acres of garbage, or fucking everybody in sight spells freedom, then we were all free at Woodstock.

“Look,” Sam said, “we’re trying to make this paper turn a profit for a change.” He forced indignation into his voice. He felt on edge. What had begun as a work partnership had turned sexual only days after Madeline joined the staff of the best of Boston's scruffy underground newspapers, The Back Bay Rat.  He adored Madeline, but he also felt vulnerable; she knew how to fight in a way that his Yankee upbringing had never trained him for. Shouting was not allowed around the Saltonstall home; Madeline raised her voice whenever she felt provoked and could argue circles around him on any subject.

Madeline was angry with herself. She had — once again — glommed on to a man, albeit attractive, from whom she could learn. Now she was paying for it, more than it was worth.

“Look, we have to give a little here, Mad. You want us to keep running girlie ads?”

“Yeah.” Madeline leaned forward. “I’d stick with the girlies, honey. They don’t tell us what to write.” She felt betrayed, unclean. This guy, her lover, was bullshitting her. "Aren’t you embarrassed?”

“Embarrassed?” Sam reddened. He always flushed when he angered. “About what? Trying to keep this paper solvent?”

She  could feel Sam's patrician instincts, generations deep, pushing him back into the system -- where he belonged. Did everyone want to jump ship and go home? Couldn’t somebody get it right? She couldn’t, but she desperately wanted somebody to show the way but there was no “way” to be shown. It was all too new, too different. She grabbed the copy pages from his hand and threw them on the desk. She paused, then picked up the last page. “Let’s get to the point, Sam.”

For those who think that revolution means peace and love and rock and roll and living in mud and bum tripping on bad acid and getting the clap…

“You think that’s the whole story?” Sam shouted. “Hell, never mind the ads, these guys could sue you for slander.”

She continued reading, more insistent now.

The sad part is, they’ll have to settle for that hippie rip-off in upstate New York as the only evidence that they were part of a revolution. And that, brothers and sisters — given the critical nature of our struggle — is the real tragedy of Woodstock.

“There.” She threw the single last sheet at him. “Just print that paragraph and I’ll get off your case.”

“No,” Sam said. “Absolutely not. Unacceptable. You can’t fight a revolution if you don’t have a press. And this press won’t exist in another month if we keep going the way we are.”

“Okay.” She picked up the pages. “Shit, man, we don’t need the FBI to raid the Rat. You’ve already raided it. And they won’t have to tell you what to do. You already know. You’re part of the same club. You’re white. You got a dick. Just like them. You’ve been bought, Sam Saltonstall. You were bought before you were born.”

She picked up a large manila envelope from her desk. It carried no return address but was postmarked Philadelphia. She pulled out an official-looking paper with an FBI seal at the top.

United States Government

Federal Bureau Of Investigation

CointelPro

Memo: Project Omega

Objective: Disruption of the New Left

Recent issues of the underground press have been squabbling over a split that has developed within the Free Speech News Service (FSNS). One faction remains in New York. The other has relocated to Apple Valley, near Amherst, Massachusetts, a university hotbed of radicalism.

Take advantage of this split. Introduce Project Omega (Egyptian Beetle) to further disrupt the underground press and attack the New Left.

Scrawled across the bottom in thick pencil: Madeline — There’s more where this came from. It was signed simply, “the boy from Chicago.“ She knew who that boy was. Head swirling with the stark authenticity of the government document in her hands, she stuffed the memo back in the envelope. “To hell with Woodstock,” she said. “This is a real story.”

“Lemme see.”

“Nope. I’m taking this to the Free Speech News Service. They don’t have to answer to a bunch of hippie entrepreneurs.”

“Fuck you.”

“No, man,” she sighed. “Fuck you.”

*  *  *