July 19, 2023:
I'm in a club, an extra-curricular one. Why on earth? Hard to say.
Drawn to it in wake of a leader in one of my non-overlapping social circles, the right-wing short-haired wargame players I gravitate toward from love of wargames. It's a different kind of simulation, a large-scale role-playing game, the Model U.N., a kind of Dungeons & Dragons for straights intending college. I on the other hand am typically dancing with speed or LSD, so that my participation, already strangely unreal, often seems downright hallucinogenic.
It's all compartmentalized. Wargames, bikers, Model U.N., UCSD, drugs & alcohol. I am everywhere false, all pretense, where the role-playing extends far beyond D&D and M.U.N.
Except, something real is beginning to emerge. The students at UC are good to me. They treat me with respect, and they tell me the truth as they understand it. They're striving for something with a kind of nobility: justice, peace, democracy. They believe. They're willing to risk careers and futures to fight for the very things our high school sociology textbooks have told us are important. Over time I find myself there more and more, in the dorms, at the Che Café, in the study groups, at the demonstrations. This is meaningful, and purposeful, and principled.
High school is none of these things.