The Great Perhaps by Joe Meno Page A

can do, trying to frighten their oppressors.”
    “Fuck that noise,” Max said. “I can’t sympathize with people who cut off other people’s heads.”
    “Sometimes violence is the only answer,” Amelia whispers.
    “What?” Heather coughs, her white face turning red.
    “Think of like all the great revolutions in history. They were all violent.”
    “What about the civil rights marches?” Heather asks.
    “Besides those. Like the Revolutionary War and all those other ones.”
    “Gandhi. He wasn’t violent,” Max says.
    “Besides him.”
    “Like who?” Max asks.
    “Like I dunno, like the revolution in Cuba. Or like Malcolm X.”
    “Malcolm X got shot,” Heather whispers, taking another drag.
    “I think it’s totally naïve to think that you can accomplish something that big, that important, without hurting other people.”
    “Wow,” Max mumbles. “That’s some serious shit.”
    “It’s because people are like so afraid to wake up and see what’s going on in the rest of world. It’s like everyone is in total denial. That’s why people take pharmaceutical drugs and everything. Everybody is like in this total fog. The opiate of the people. Except it’s like actually like opium.”
    “I hear that,” Max says, exhaling, laughing hard, his voice echoing from an empty cavern in his chest.
    “Violence is like, it’s like the only thing that frightens people anymore. It’s like the only way to motivate people to change. Because everyone is totally comfortable with like rich white men being in charge of everything.”
    “Hey, what’s wrong with white men?” Max asks, still laughing.
    “White men have like ruined everything on the planet. They’re responsible for everything bad that’s ever happened. Like pollution and genocide, everything that’s wrong in Africa. White men are totally the problem.”
    “Too bad we’re all white,” Heather says, sadly smirking.
    “Well, I’m not,” Amelia says proudly, taking the joint and then inhaling.
    “Yeah, right,” Max mumbles.
    “No, I’m serious. I’m part Native American.”
    “Sure you are.”
    “No, for real. On my mother’s side. I’m like one-eighth Cherokee,” she says, completely and utterly lying.
    “So?”
    “So what? So nothing,” Amelia says with a frown.
    “So what does that mean? You’re one-eighth Cherokee. Big deal.”
    “It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just my heritage. One day people of color are going to rise up and overthrow the white power machine. And I’m going to be part of it. And we’ll create a new world, with one flag that represents everybody, in like total harmony.”
    “Except white men,” Max says, smiling.
    “Yeah. Except them.”
     
     
    A MELIA HAS ALMOST had sex three times with three different boys. Each time, she changed her mind just before the act itself. The last time was with Max, in his parents’ enormous Lincoln Park home, while they were away for the weekend at some wedding, and at the last possible moment, when Max ran up to his parents’ room looking for a condom, Amelia, lying with her black skirt shoved hastily up around her waist, decided she would rather not. She decided to give each of the three disappointed young men blowjobs instead. She did not let them cum in her mouth. She forced the first one to ejaculate on his pants, the second onto the car seat, and Max onto a bedspread. For some reason, Amelia believes giving someone a blowjob is less intimate than actually having sex, and also more mature, more grown-up. She imagines hardworking feminist journalists all over the world giving their lovers blowjobs. This is what she tries to tell herself. Amelia does not know why, but she just wants to get her first time over with. She wants it to be with someone she never has to see again. Ever.
     
     
    O NE DAY, A MELIA writes a column in the newspaper about how stupid the American flag is and why every flag in the country ought to be burned. The next week, in her editorial,