Finally, we put all our junk down in order to rest for a moment. I was on the verge of suggesting that we spend the night in the woods, even though there it would be impossible for Joel to plug in his electric blanket.

Then this voice came out of the woods to our left. Over a bullhorn yet. You boys pick yore stuff up and start walkin down that rode and get outer this town.

Joel looked at me. "I guess I'd better take back all the nasty things I've said about Easy Rider," he said.

Undaunted, I turned toward the woods, feeling not a little silly to be talking to a bunch of trees. "Excuse me." I tried, "but we're lost. Could you tell us where Q Street is?"

There was only silence.

So, praying that a mess of buckshot wouldn't punctuate the aforementioned command, we picked up our junk, turned around, and began retracing our steps back into the city, all the while trying to avoid the occasional car that would try to sideswipe us off the road.

In short, we were scared.

One hour later, though, we were back in front of Frank's, the place from which we had originally started.

In the interim, we had been picked up by a VW jammed full of people, just missed participating in one near car crash, hunted out an all-night theatre only to find it mysteriously closed, and prowled around the grounds of the National Cathedral in search of someplace to sleep.

And, now, at Frank's house the lights were out.

But, being the resourceful streetfighters that we were, we knew that there was only one solution if we were to avoid waking up everyone in the house. Careful not to rustle the sidewalk's leaves, we divided ourselves into three scouting parties and began searching up and down the street for Frank's car. And suddenly thank godthere it was, Frank's white Rambler with its B-school parking sticker on the rear window. Within seconds, we had all crawled inside, rolled up the windows, and locked the doors. Only three hours and it would be dawn. Joel played taps on his kazoo.

As I lay, scrunched up on the front seat of the car, watching moisture form on the windshield, and feeling cramps develop all over my body, I began to smile with a quiet sense of vindication.

For, I hadn't come to Washington to save the country. I had just come to save myself. The country was too deep into its war to be averted by a wayward Woodstock, a gigantic camp meeting where the words love and peace were just as debased and about as obscene as the word fuck .

And neither did I come to initiate the revolution. For revolutionaries are simply too human to be trusted with carrying out a revolution, however badly it might be needed.

No, I had simply come to Washington because on November 3rd, Richard Nixon had tried to persuade me not to do so. To persuade me he had used sloppy metaphors and cheap historical lies. That was untenable. I came to Washington out of hate, because hate, unlike love, is the only pure emotion that one can rely on.