“Let me give you an example. There was a case of a black man from Harlem who was arrested for throwing garbage into the street around the City Hall area. When the police questioned him about it, he said he had volunteered his services to the City of New York as a garbage recycler. When the police tried to humor him by asking how long he’d been on the job, he told them since the anti-litter campaign when Mayor Lindsay came up to Harlem and started things off by picking up the first piece of litter. The mayor then handed the trash to an aide, who handed it to another aide, who passed it on to another, until it ended up in the hands of—you guessed it—our boy, who threw it back out into the street. As a result, he kept on throwing garbage into the street, but only around City Hall. He said he didn’t think he was breaking any laws, since he was only trying to keep pace with the garbage the city was handing him…

“He got thirty days, but the point he made was absolutely brilliant. There are laws against littering but none against the conditions of the poor, of which littering is only a symptom. So the rule of law we pay homage to is an abstraction used to divert our attention from the fundamental ills of this society, which that black man was attempting to dramatize by violating the sanctity of the law. Your case is similar, in that your breaking of the law was not directed against other victims but against one of the primary exporters of the American empire—the armed forces…

“Since you’ll be going to jail anyway, we should build a case that will get you the most time. So what I’d like you to do is write me a two- or three-page statement of your position and let me do the rest. And if you were willing, I could give you some scenes to act out that are guaranteed to get you a few contempt charges and bound and gagged, Bobby Seale style. How about it?” His bronze face glowed as if he were imbued with not only the revelations from the burning bush, but also from one that had been barbecued. “You don’t know how glad I am that you came in. This case could put me back into the front ranks of advocates of lost causes.”

“Lost?” I asked in disbelief.

“I mean that figuratively speaking, of course.”

I told him I’d be back, but I didn’t return, content to take my chances in court as my own advocate. So far, I had been one of the principals in doing myself in. I don’t believe I would have ever forgiven myself had I relinquished my top billing in my own undoing for a minor supporting role in Cecil Pendergrass’ scenario.

BELOW SAN JUAN HILL between Tenth and Eleventh avenues was the building that housed the film footage on the dominant male image in America for over thirty years.