I don’t want to play in your yard, I don’t like you anymore, You’ll be sorry when you see me, Sliding down our cellar door, You can’t holler down our rain barrel, You can’t climb our apple tree, I don’t want to play in your yard, If you won’t be good to me
On the subject of decency, Senator, the Bolsheviks took power with the slogan, “an end to the war.” Within six months, they made good their promise to the Russian people. Now, the present President of the United States of America went to this country in 1916, on a “no war” ticket. Within six months, he’d taken us into the war, and 115,000 young Americans didn’t come back. If that’s how decent, God-fearing Christians behave, give me atheists anytime.
By the way, Senator Overman, in Russia, women have the vote, which is more than you can say for this country.
Gene, if you’d been to Russia, you’d never be cynical about anything again. You would have seen people transformed. Ordinary people.
Jack and I are both perfectly capable of living with our beliefs. But I think someone as romantic as you would be destroyed by them. And I don’t want that to happen. It would upset Jack too much.
He has the freedom to do the things that he wants to and so do I. And I think anyone who’s afraid of that kind of freedom is really only afraid of his own emptiness.
Excuse me. Excuse me, now here’s the thing. I’d be a God damned fool not to take you up on this offer. So, here’s what I want. I want to sign my own name to my own stories and I don’t want to use a double byline. I want to be responsible for my own time and my own actions. I want to be referred to as Miss Bryant, and not Mrs. Reed, and I want to keep an account of every cent we spend so that I can pay you back. Now, I assume you know that I’m not going to sleep with you, so just don’t confuse the issue by bringing it up. That’s it.
You don’t have to go. You want to go. You want to go running all over the world ranting and raving and making resolutions and organizing caucuses. What’s the difference between the Communist Party and the Communist Labor Party except that you’re running one and he’s running the other?
To what? To the fine distinction between which half of the left of the left is recognized by Moscow as the real Communist Party in America? To petty political squabbling between humorless and hack politicians just wasting their time on left-wing dogma? To getting the endorsement of a committee in Russia you call the international for your group of 14 intellectual friends in the basement who are supposed to tell the workers of this country what they want, whether they want it or not? Write, Jack. You’re not a politician, you’re a writer. And your writing has done more for the revolution than 20 years of this infighting can do, and you know it.
Boy, you’ve become quite the critic, haven’t you, Gene? Just leaned back and analyzed us all. Duplicitous women who tout free love and then get married, power-mad journalists who join the revolution instead of observing it, middle-class radicals who come looking for sex and then talk about Russia. It must seem so contemptible to a man like you who has the courage to sit on his ass and observe human inadequacy from the inside of a bottle. Well, I’ve never seen you do anything for anyone. I’ve never seen you give anything to anyone, so I can understand why you might suspect the motives of those who have. But whatever Jack’s motives are, how…
