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corny pack of lies, too! You're not even slick enough or smart enough for anyone but a cretin to believe that I said any of this bullshit, that anyone even talks this way! You two-bit motherfuckers ! "

"Well, why don't you write your own version of what happened and we'll print both of them to let . . ."

"You'll print shit! Nothin'! you hear! Not one fuckin' word about me, ever!"

The two of them looked at one another, and realizing that Emmett wasn't going to give them back the galley proof of the article, the handlebar moustached publisher grabbed for it and Emmett shoved him away, sending him crashing into a pair of file cabinets. Skinhead only moved his hands to adjust his glasses, apparently trying to call Emmett's attention to the fact that he was wearing them, and the look on his face seemed to say, "New York State gives persons twenty years in prison for hitting a man with glasses." The founder-publisher stood his distance well behind the desk and nervously threatened, "Listen, if you don't give us back that article and leave this office without any more trouble, I'm going to call the police ! "

Emmett had to laugh. Here he was, standing in the middle of a room whose wallpaper pictured cops as vicious storm-trooping Nazi animals, and the publisher of the East Village Other was going to call them to arrest him! Incredible! Emmett continued to laugh as he tore the galley proof into tiny pieces and threw them into the air. Walking toward the front door and the street, he kept laughing, and the founder-publisher twitched his handlebar moustache and trembled furiously as he tried to make like he was really dialing for the cops. Emmett tried to encourage just that by prompting him to "go 'n fuck your dead mother!" as he walked out the door into the brisk, early spring afternoon, wondering whether he had provoked the punk-faced dude into actually completing his call to the police.

Emmett didn't intend to lose any sleep over it, and for the next couple of days, he roamed around the Lower East Side looking up the people he met at the loft meeting and checking out their various activities. He spoke about guerrilla theater with the Angry Arts, a group of politically conscious artists, and described the Communication Company operation to the Black Mask, a band of radical pamphleteers who were printing leaflets. He talked about how to finance economic collectives and business cooperatives to achieve financial independence and token autonomy from the state with [end page 330]