How Streaking Saved My Life

Prelude

I began my senior year of college full of that wide-eyed wonder more often associated with toddlers and idiots. I had spent the summer bumming rides around the country; I'd just discovered the psychedelic power of dextromethorphan; I'd shaved most of my head bald and I thought I looked awfully cool with my new mohawk. I was a freak of the first magnitude.

The specter of graduation loomed large, but it cast no shadow across my mental horizon. While my classmates prepared resumes or applied to graduate schools, I was dreaming of the revolution. What the baby boomers did in the '60s was nothing, a mere fillip; a continuous revolution was possible; indeed, it was necessary -- and (it seemed to me) imminent, so close that I could almost taste it. Soon people everywhere would be quitting their jobs, leaving their homes, banding together and roving the country to spread the New Word....

It was a simple matter of formulating the Word that would open their eyes, a task to which I devoted all my mental energies. I studied mystical religious texts and took drugs for inspiration. In the meantime, I did all I could to stir things up and let my freak flag fly.