The Nix

In the summer of 1968, at the University of Illinois Chicago Circle, Faye meets Alice. Intrigued by Alice’s role in the student underground movement, Faye accompanies her to the small offices of the Chicago Free Voice, a radical underground newspaper. There, Faye meets Sebastian, the editor in chief. When Sebastian addresses the group about the upcoming protest, Faye is impressed by his passion and his sincerity. The students are aware of the surveillance of the so-called Red Squad commissioned by the mayor to keep the peace at all costs during the Democratic Convention. One cop, Officer Charlie Brown, is particularly officious. He understands his duty as simple: “Target and annoy the bad elements in the city as far as the law allowed” (475).

When Sebastian runs into Faye the next day during a student protest against ChemStar, the factory back in Iowa where Faye’s father works, a conglomerate responsible for the production of napalm that American troops use to incinerate Vietnamese villages, he claims he feels a deep empathy for Faye, senses a strong around her. Faye is intrigued. With little warning, however, police cars swarm in. Sebastian impulsively hops on the hood of one of police cars. He is arrested. Faye runs. The next day, she seeks out Alice in her dorm the next day. As Alice casually pages through Playboy, Faye asks about Sebastian, who has already been sprung from lockup.

That night in a dark neighborhood along Lake Michigan, Alice meets her secret lover, the much-feared Officer Charlie Brown. Officer Brown has a fetish for dangerous sex that involves domination of the woman. The two engage a role-playing game that involves Alice being “arrested” by Officer Brown before having rough sex in the car. Officer Brown is married, but, after six months playing out rape fantasies with this college rebel, he has become addicted to their game: “It felt like his chest and guts were held together by a single wooden clothespin that she could remove by simply not showing up” (505).

Faye comes under the tonic sway of Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, a visiting lecturer. He provides spiritual counseling to the underground activists. His classes draw on Buddhism and challenge students to free their minds. Initially Faye struggles to touch the “white pristine light of total awareness” (516). When Alice introduces Faye to recreational pharmaceuticals, Faye embraces an entirely new reality. Suddenly rural Iowa, marriage to Henry, even the nisse she believed haunts her seem unimportant. What Alice and Faye do not know is that Officer Brown is listening to them through an illegal wiretap.

The next day, even as Faye prepares for a night of intimacy with her “fairy-tale prince” (544) Sebastian, out in the streets what started as a relatively orderly anti-war protest collapses into chaos when one student suddenly discharges a gun. The cops shoot the student dead. Over the next news cycle, it is Sebastian who hypes the confrontation in print—what Faye does not know is that Sebastian is actually in the employ of the Red Squad and his job is to incite students by publishing incendiary reports full of lies about the cops: “He had learned something important: What was printed became the truth” (539).

Alice is drawn to Faye and tries to break up with Officer Brown despite his protestations that he loves her. She says matter-of-factly, “I want to try girls” (542). That same night Faye, leaving her dorm anticipating a night of life-changing lovemaking with Sebastian, is confronted in her dorm lobby by none other than Officer Charlie Brown. Faye is handcuffed and arrested on the trumped-up charge of prostitution.