I’M FINALLY MEETING HIM, Rocker thought.

The snow fell from the pitch black sky, falling atop the large Rhode Island pinewood trees, the ground already packed with snow, and a long narrow road illuminated by heritage lamp posts. A pre-1930s Bugatti Royale drove towards a house in the distance. In the spacious backseat of the car were Randall “Rocker” Rodriguez and Laura Farnsworth, cuddled and bundled in raggedy winter wear, with their satchels and bags on the floor in front of them. Laura rubbed Rocker’s cheeks as she gazed into his soft eyes. Rocker hadn’t shaved in weeks, with no bother to make a decent attempt at trimming it or working on his cosmetics. Rocker was a man in his mid-30s, born too late to be lumped into generation X, but too early to be considered a genuine millennial. His undergraduate studies at Rutgers, then eventual law degree from Brown University, once gave him a flicker of hope to restore democracy and civil liberties throughout the U.S., but in the last year or so he had begun to feel discouraged. The current system in the United States, which he would describe as a malignant oligarchy, made his and the efforts of many of his peers doomed for failure. The systemic corruption just ran too deep, to the point where it felt like democracy had turned to ash. But, it was no matter; he had Laura.

“He can’t hear us,” she said, alluding to the driver, separated from them by the glass.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, watch.” She cleared her throat then said much louder, “Cunt. Fuck. Pussy. Jizz. Cum sucking,” she kept uttering as she broke into laughter.

“Okay, okay,” he said, laughing along with her.

In the hallways of Brown University three years ago, Rocker had first courted Laura, a sharp legal student with political ambitions. Their love and lust grew rapidly; they had a divine connection that made them inseparable. She had a very similar worldview to Rocker’s. She was a true free spirit who had a passion for the common man and his struggles; she was determined to plow through corruption with her might and tactical methods. But it wasn’t their interests that bound them together; it was their ineffable and ethereal love built from a total empathy for one’s flaws, without being afraid to point them out, their ability to strip themselves down to the bones, showing all vulnerability, and simply staring into each other, feeling as if they were one soul that was misunderstood by every other being on the planet.

“Come closer,” Laura whispered. Rocker moved his head down toward hers and kissed her, right before his eyes wandered back toward the road ahead of them.

“Nervous?” she asked. Rocker smiled and shook his head, but her warmth subsided into a tinge of fear.

“I am,” she said to his surprise.

The two stood there in silence until she giggled, which broke any tension that there may have been. They kissed again.

“I love you,” Rocker said.

“I love you, too.”

Aside from their deep love and sense of duty, they had a soulful itch for the wild side of life that they believed was intertwined with the way they saw the world. They took LSD for days at a time in bed, ate mushrooms while gallivanting around town taking in daily activities, and licked molly off each other’s tongues at music festivals. As Rocker became more pessimistic about the world and his ability to change it, while at the offices of Pittsburgh’s American Civil Liberties Union, Laura tried to hold him by the hand, telling him to keep moving forward and realize that pragmatism and incremental change is the best one can do in the struggle for a more just society. Rocker, for the first time since they met, felt miffed by her buoyancy.

He had sometimes wondered if he was just jealous, and that she simply felt this way because she had more influence than he did. She was a quick hire for a staffer to Congressman Paul Yates, a Democrat running for a seat in Pennsylvania’s 18th district, just outside of Pittsburgh, where the two lived. This position could have been due to a favor that Congressman Yates owed her father, Dr. John J. Farnsworth. For Rocker, skepticism of Congressman Yates’ platform, which he saw as aligned more with establishment Democrats and undermining of the working class, was growing within. Though he was open with conveying these thoughts to Laura, the longer she worked for Congressman Yates, the more his irritation at the thought of her becoming everything they stood against had grown. All of this, however, was ultimately overshadowed by the intensity of the skepticism Rocker had of Laura’s mysterious father. She spoke of him often. Laura would promise, both to Rocker and to herself, that she wouldn’t end up like her father. Lately, however, these sentiments were being expressed less and less often.

“Remember, I really want you to get into it with him. I’m tired of being the only person who argues with him. And I want him to understand you,” Laura said.

“I’m not afraid to argue with anyone,” Rocker quipped back.

“I know. But I just want to be sure you don’t hold back. Ever.”

**********

Dig deeper into the dangerous world of Rocker in SN13 | The Ides of March.

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