“Of course I’m a natural blonde,” Norma replied, a bit rankled at my having doubted it.
“Uh, I’ll have to make sure of that for myself,” I told her.
“Is that what this is all about? Is that what you’re up to? Are you so hard up you go through this whole involved pitch just to get me to drop my pants? Man! You’re really too much!”
I assured her that I wasn’t pulling any such trick. It took a lot of assuring. I had to talk for about an hour before she’d believe I was anything but a Joe on the make trying out a new approach. Finally, still dubious, Norma agreed to let me see the proof.
We strolled into the shadows. Here, almost defiantly, she braced herself squarely on her feet, threw back her shoulders, and lowered her blue jeans. It was too dark to see clearly. I had to drop to my knees to get a look at the area in question. I peered myopically and waited for my eyes to adjust to the dim, flickering light from the small fire behind us.
Ah, yes! Norma was a “true blonde”! She was a true blonde hippie and then some! Her pubic hair had been cropped and sculpted into a circle with the familiar three-pronged figure inside it. The silky blonde down formed a perfect peace symbol!
My nose brushing the tendrils as I studied it, I was suddenly distracted by a hand on my shoulder. I looked up at a couple of yards plus of Chicago plainclothes bull. He was waving a badge in my face.
“I caught you, you Commie prevert!” The steel claw of his hand pulled me to my feet. “You’re both under arrest for immoral conduct in a public park.”
“Pee-eace and lo-o-ove everywhere!” Norma told the bull gently as she pulled up her pants.
I decided she was definitely a hippie. Only a flower child could have expressed such sentiments in the face of his bristling hostility. Holding us each firmly by an arm, he started to lead us out of the park:
“Infiltrator!” I yelled loudly. “Police finks!
Instantly a small crowd surrounded us. “Pig! Pig! Pig!” they started chanting. The crowd grew larger as others! picked up the chant.
The cop looked around nervously for help. There was none at hand. Intimidated, he let go of us. “I’ll let you off this time,” he muttered. “But don’t let me catch you again.” He walked off and lost himself in the crowd. The last I saw of him he was screaming “Pig!” at the top of his lungs and shaking his fist at the National Guardsmen. Just before I lost sight of him, he stooped to pick up a rock and let it fly in the direction of the Conrad Hilton Hotel.
“You can’t tell the provocateurs from the Yippies without a score card,” Norma observed beside me.
“Come on. Let’s get out of here.” I took her arm.
“What do you mean?” She didn’t budge.
“I mean I can have you on your way to Arabia before morning,” I promised her.
“Oh, no! I’m not leaving Chicago until this farce is over. I came here to spread peace and love at the convention and I’m staying just as long as it takes.”
“But___”
All my “buts” were to no avail. She was determined. It was damn frustrating. Norma filled the bill perfectly. But I couldn’t deliver her to the Sheikh until the Chicago scene, ended. She was set on doing her thing!
I did the only thing I could do under the circumstances. Having found the perfect girl for Ali Khat’s harem, I wasn’t about to take any chances of losing her again. I decided to stick to her like glue until she was ready to leave Chicago.
I spotted Austin in the crowd and explained the situation to him. He appraised Norma, and then agreed that she was definitely worth the effort. A blonde ringer for Raquel Welch28 , she was the best that either of us had come up with yet.
Sticking to Norma meant spending the rest of the night in Grant Park. Neither of us slept. We listened to the speeches and joined in the singing and the chanting until daylight came.
With its coming, about half the National Guard troops pulled out. Small groups of demonstrators were moving over the park, picking up the debris and placing it neatly in trash cans. We helped them for awhile, and then I prevailed upon Norma to cross over to the Hilton with me. We intended to get a cup of coffee in the hotel coffee shop.
Our intentions were thwarted. Nobody with human nostrils could stand to get anywhere near the coffee shop. In the lobby outside it some anonymous Yippie had accurately labeled the politics of the day by aroma. A stink bomb had been planted there, and no amount of frantic early morning cleaning by hotel employees seemed able to dissipate the odor. It smelled like a diarrhea epidemic was in progress.
Norma agreed to come to my room instead. She couldn’t resist my offer of a hot shower. It relaxed her antiwar zeal, and after it she curled up on the sofa for a nap. Exhausted, I climbed into bed myself and was asleep, before my cranium hit the pillow.
When I woke up, Norma was gone. I swore at myself and looked at my watch. It was after seven o’ clock —- Wednesday, August 28. I figured Norma must have gone back to Grant Park to rejoin the demonstrators. I scrambled into my clothes and set out after her.
I should have looked out the window or my hotel room first. That, I found out later, was what Norma had done a short while before I awoke. What she saw was the beginning of the confrontation between demonstrators and the army of police and Guardsmen, the opening of the major battle of the War of Chicago. And she’d cut out to join her fellows on the firing line.
I, however, wandered into the action more innocently—-casually, almost. I emerged from the lobby of the Conrad Hilton with no idea of what had been happening. The first whiff of tear gas woke me up in a hurry.
As I hit the street, the police riot was just beginning. Late shoppers and innocent pedestrians were caught in it. Delegates and their families, starting out for the evening session of the convention, were trapped m the confusion. The rampaging bulls were making no effort to distinguish among antiwar protestors, members of the press, and inadvertent bystanders.
It was impossible to get back into the hotel. The entrance was sealed off by a combination of panicky guests, cops, and TV technicians. It was equally impossible, of course, to spot Norma in the melee. Like everyone else, I was forced this way and that by crowd pressures and police action without really being able to see the larger picture.
‘Then suddenly I was in the middle of it. Tear-gas canisters had exploded in the distance, but the wind had changed and the gas was floating back up Michigan Avenue. The cops were retreating from it and turning their wrath on those crowded on the sidewalks in front of the Sheraton Blackstone and the Conrad Hilton. The police shyness must have spread, for virtually no officer that I saw was wearing his badge or nameplate.
The cops were truly going berserk now. I saw two of them beating an alternate tattoo with their clubs on the skull of a middle-aged, gray-haired woman carrying a shopping bag. A reporter tried to come to her assistance. Two other cops descended on him and sprayed Mace in his eyes. As he was sinking to his knees, they continued spraying the chemical indiscriminately, felling a line of eight or ten people who had tried to back away against the front of the hotel.
There was the crash of plate glass as cops swung their billies at a second group trapped in front of a restaurant window. The cops were screaming profanity. They cleared a path with their clubs until they had isolated a press photographer, and then stomped on both him and his camera until he was lost to view in a sea of blue shirts. They were completely out of control and stayed that way for an hour or more.
It ended sporadically. Some of the white-coated medics with the demonstrators tried to carry the wounded into the Hilton, where McCarthy Headquarters had set up an emergency dispensary. They were met by more police from inside the hotel who came charging out to beat both medics and patients. Caught in the middle, I knew panic. I spotted a break in the police ranks and dashed across Michigan Avenue to Grant Park. Here most of the demonstrators had retreated to relative safety. Leaders like Sidney Peck were moving among them with bullhorns, trying to calm them, successfully preventing the kind of panicky flight which had already resulted in police action a number of times during that afternoon and evening. These leaders were also appealing to those in charge of the police to bring their men under control. Eventually this was done, and some time later lines of National Guardsmen moved in to replace the blood-crazy blue-coats. Relative order was restored.