SICK OF THE
REVOLUTION.
BY DEB OLIN UNFERTH,
THE AUTHOR OF VACATION, HER FIRST NOVEL,
COMING THIS SEPTEMBER FROM McSWEENEY'S RECTANGULARS. HER WORK HAS ALSO APPEARED IN HARPER'S, NOON, AND OUR 145 STORIES IN A SMALL BOX (WITH SARAH MANGUSO AND DAVE EGGERS). THIS SUMMER SHE'LL BE POSTING REPORTS ON AN EARLIER VACATION OF HER OWN, A TALE OF FAILURE
IN EIGHT PARTS
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Part One
My boyfriend and I went to join the revolution. Nicaragua had the best revolution, he and I agreed. There were several other revolutions in the area—in El Salvador and in Guatemala, in Honduras, in Panama (sort of). My boyfriend said we should get shots and malaria pills and that we would ride the bus there.
I knew my mother and father were not going to go for this so I didn't tell them. I wrote them a letter from Mexico. Actually I wrote the letter in Nogales on the American side of the border, then I crossed the border and mailed it from the Nogales post office on the Mexican side.
The letter went something like:
Dear Mom and Dad,
I'm sorry to tell you in this way but I've left school and I am going to join the revolution. I'm going to first go to the one in El Salvador, then to the one in Nicaragua, due to the layout of the land. I have been called by God.
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Two things: I was 18, and I had recently become a Christian. I was heavy into John Calvin and Kierkegaard and liberation theology. I may not have understood any of it, but my older boyfriend did (he was 20) and that's all that really mattered—that somebody around there knew what was going on even if it wasn't me.
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My father still tells the story of the time I went to join the revolution.
That girl told us nothing, he says. I had no idea. I open the mailbox and there's a letter from Mexico saying she's off to foment the revolution.
He used to shout it, She told me nothing! and point at me—there she is, the traitor, the tramp.
Later he said it sadly, shaking his head: I had no idea.
Later he said it with pride. His loony girl, a bit like him. Do you know he once owned a Communist bookstore?
Now he tells it like an old joke. So one day I open the mailbox ...
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As it happens, it was the very end of the revolution, the year my boyfriend and I went, but the way it looked to us, we were arriving at the very beginning. It was a new world order. Everybody in the world was talking about it. The revolution was coming over the ocean. It was floating up through Texas. It could spread over America. People were writing their ideas in the papers. But a year later the Berlin Wall came down and soon after that the Sandinistas were gone, the Cold War was over, and the FMLN signed a peace accord. By the time we arrived, the decay had set in but we didn't know. There were a lot of us like this on the scene.
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OTHER McSWEENEY'S FEATURES:
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Sick of the Revolution By Deb Olin Unferth
The Best Bastille Day Party Ever By Jim Stallard
Funny Letters From Summer Camp and Their Not-So-Funny Responses By Mike Sacks
An Overheard Conversation at the Suburban Neighborhood Pool, If the Suburban Neighborhood Pool Were in Deadwood By Kari Anne Roy
Shed Camp By David Jasper
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