Our Hearts' Desire (The Monkees Family Vol. 2)

Chapter 32

It was early February and Robert had taken over as Gabby's assistant at the National Organization For Women. The first thing on the agenda was to have a photographer come out and take photos for a press release to be prepared, with a couple of quotes from Robert about how he felt as a man working in favor of advancing women's rights. It would be distributed nationwide, hopefully to be picked up by a wire service and thus appear in small papers across the country. Then he was put in charge of doing outreach to recruit more men to the cause. This was not unenjoyable for Robert, as he was given a small budget to host social events around town, including bowling parties, pub nights and various other types of events that would attract dudes. As long as they were in good taste and didn't turn into complete sausage-hangs – or in other words, some women would be present to keep things from turning too crude, rowdy or off-message – Robert had free rein to manage the recruiting campaign as he saw fit.

Robert decided to ask Gabby about a way-out idea he had that she was sure to want to reject at first but he thought he could get her to think twice about it. She motioned him into her office and offered him a seat. "Okay, Robert, what's this great idea of yours for your recruiting campaign? I assume by the fact that you have waited until after hours and brought a bottle of wine into the office to butter me up that you think I'm going to say no right away." She opened the bottle of red and poured each of them a glass, then waited for Robert to make his pitch.

"Well, here's my idea, Gabby. I think we need to get not just any guys, I think we need some celebrity guys. Some guys who can lend an aura of coolness and social relevance to this recruitment. I was talking to Micky..." Here he waited for Gabby to cringe and maybe even throw him out of her office, but she just sat quietly with only a flicker of discomposure passing over her face for a moment and then it was gone.

"Yes, you were talking to Micky. And?"

"Well, he invited me to one of those softball games with his Hollywood Vampires."

"He's still thick with those degenerates?" Gabby cried.

"Gabby, you've got it all wrong. Yeah, some of them are hardcore drinkers, but not all of them, and they all respect Micky for getting sober. They've been very supportive of him and he's even gotten a couple of them to start going to AA meetings with him. So he's spreading the good word with them. But listen. Regardless of what you think of what they do in their free time, there's no question that most of them are cultural influencers, stars and in some cases, icons. I think we ought to have them host a charity softball game in favor of NOW and publicize the Equal Rights Amendment. We could have a membership table set up, even get a voter registrar on-site and help people register to vote. We'd get a hell of a lot more publicity if we had folks like Alice Cooper, Keith Moon, Micky Dolenz and maybe we could even get one of the Beatles to make an appearance. We'd also be reaching out to the demographic we need, which is young people who will hopefully vote for the rest of their lives, and who will go do our grunt work for us, like knocking on doors, pass out flyers, organize pressure campaigns for their legislatures, that kind of stuff. So what do you think?"

"I assume you've already got Micky filled in on this idea of yours?"

"No, of course not! I would never do that unless I had your permission. I'm just saying I went to one of their softball games, played and saw possibilities. And you know, a lot of those guys have wives and girlfriends, or "old ladies" as they usually call them. You could get them in on the deal and maybe be an influence for good on their guys if that's what's bugging you."

"No, it's not really that. It's just that they're not exactly good role models, Robert. What will the national office say if they find out I let a bunch of drunk ass druggies help us out?"