Sort of how I got there

We were the Baby Boomers, the first Atomic Age children.  We learned to hide under desks, to duck and cover.  I lived through the Cold War with fear in my heart that there would be no fallout shelter for me.  My mother was young, different.  I was the daughter of a divorced woman, definitely not cool in the 1950s.  I was cast adrift early, seemingly without the moorings of the normal families around me. I bidded my time.  I held my breath and hoped to be included in someone's circle of play.  I dreamed of the Bomb. There was hardly a time in my life when there was no war, although not real wars like WWII.

As children, we were herded and channeled through school...lunch lines, lines for class, lines for immunizations.  We dressed alike and talked alike.  When TV became a household fact, we all watched the same programs. Ozzie and Harriet, Leave It To Beaver, and Father Knows Best were our models for right living. Girls went to college to find a rich husband, a boy with a future.  Girls became perfect companions and accomplished homemakers.  If we questioned this, someone reminded us of our place, or told us that we would grow out of it. Sooner or later we would settle down.

On the other hand, we were spoiled and pampered and given things our parents never dreamed of having.  Our lives were materially comfortable with the promise of better things in the future, as long as we didn’t ask too many questions or rock the boat.  And some of us wanted more, something else. 

It wasn’t long before the rips in the curtain became larger. The Civil Rights movement got press on TV.  Beatniks writing poetry became the butt of sitcom jokes, but oh how interesting those people looked.   There were vague references to a war and the draft.   Then we picked up copies of On the Road, Catch 22 and science fiction paperbacks with lurid covers, passed surreptitiously from hand to hand, often underlined with margin notes to make sure we got the good parts. There was folk music and art and jazz and none of it was part of our parents’ world.  Some of us slipped away on the weekends to very different lives.

Via an older boyfriend who played tenor sax and wore a trench coat, I hung out in the jazz clubs of LA and started smoking pot.  He also told me about taking LSD, and warned me that it was very powerful, that he saw walls move.  Rather than run away, I couldn’t wait to try it.  Then came my escape, 18 years old, hitchhiking up the highway to San Frnacisco.  It didn’t take long before I was lost in the cosmic ozone.  The Haight was full of broken souls running from families that didn’t fit them, looking for a better home.

We learned new ways to be together in the Haight.  We got sick together and got high together, and had fun together.  We discovered things at the same time, as if we were taping into a giant over-mind;  group consciousness.  I had nothing but spare time so I read voraciously; Gestalt, Jung, eastern mysticism, poetry, the Beats. Winnie the Pooh took on a whole new meaning.

The legalization of the pill in 1960 meant women could have sex without the fear of pregnancy.  For the first time we took responsibility for our own bodies and our own sexuality.  We stopped being victims, no longer relegated to the chairs by the wall, waiting to be asked.  We experimented with many types of love; women for women and men for men, group love, nothing was forbidden.  We changed partners frequently and tossed around phrases like open relationship, group marriage, non-attachment.  In that tiny microcosm of time, we experienced entire relationships in a few days.  We lived every day as if it was our last.  Time was suspended.  Food and shelter only distracted us from the important stuff, the real stuff, the street, the intrigue.  It was enough just to be; just to be on the street, in some funky commune, dancing our crazy day-glo asses off, caught in the music, the wild and rocking music.

The streets of the Haight abounded with characters, little magnets that attracted and repelled. We moved quickly from person to person, because it was okay to change your name, your past, your story.  The pain and joy and sorrow of connecting and parting happened daily.  Those feelings were so real and so intense that they still call to me.  I still hunger for that power, the recognition of kinship and feelings of rapport.  This was Family.  To accept a person as someone you have known for years because you have, but not for these years...these waking years...but from previous incarnations because reincarnation was real.  How else could we explain it?  We tested our boundaries, our limits, physical and emotional.  How much can a body endure and still carry its spirit through the night?  For many of us the answer was not much.

No matter how much LSD I took, my feet were set firmly on this path way before I took my first puff of pot or my first psychedelic adventure.  I saw these experiences as part of a great spiritual journey.  I wanted more from drugs than escape.  I was not escaping from something, but rather to something else, to something more.  I sought to enhance the ordinary and suffuse it with divine enlightenment.  I longed for grand revelations and grander journeys.  I wanted them to be magnificent, profound!  I believed that the endeavor to become enlightened was the only worthwhile pursuit in life.  It transcended everything in importance and I believed that everyone in the Haight was on the same spiritual odyssey.  I was wrong.  Many passed through that time and place untouched.  Many of my acquaintances became the people I despised and embraced the things I sought to change.  I sought a deeper meaning, but I was young and insecure and thought the people around me had it all figured out.  They were smarter, quicker, and more enlightened than me, they had all the answers when really they had none and weren’t seeking any.  Acid was a game for them, a fun trip.  They were just as fucked up, just as confused as me, but they didn’t care.  And while I had my moments of soaring delight, I had a fair share of the Inferno.  Where to sleep, what to eat, what to do?  Eating food wasn't the issue, you know, eating life was much more important.  I learned to bite off more than I could chew, to wash it down with cheap wine, wipe the excess off my chin and toddle on my way. 

My Favorite Bands

Just a short snippet as I tried to describe my feelings about the bands.

Of all the bands my favorite bill was The Grateful Dead, Big Brother and Quicksilver.  The Airplane seemed aloof, although Grace’s voice was very powerful and Jorma’s guitar work simply phenomenal.  The Dead were an evening unto themselves, never quite comprehensible unless you were on acid.  They were the ultimate acid band, explained only in the most arcane metaphors, never verbal, never predictable and yet always a comfort on the long journey out and the perilous one back.  Competent is the word that comes to mind.  Of all the bands, the Dead were the ones who connected most closely with the audience.   They never translated to recordings and never lent themselves to pigeonholing.  They were the unspeakable epitome of what was going on.

And then there was Big Brother.  Big Brother had Sam Andrews, Dave Getz, the sleek and skeletal James Gurley and, of course, Janis.  In the twisting and winding of those psychedelic melodies, maudlin meanderings and stringed journeys into the night, Janis was rock solid, gutsy blues, heavy hearted, heavy handed, spilling her guts out over the audience and into the ether world, galaxies away, light-years gone.  Her music reached right down inside your bowels and wrenched something in you as she gripped the mike stand in one hand and turned herself inside out, contorting and writhing, sweating and crying, for you, reaching out, thrashing, hair flying with every fiber of her being.  She didn't just sing a song or belt one out, she was the song, she got right down inside of it and became it, vibrato, whining and wailing, balls to the wall.  Her voice was like no other I have ever heard, before or since and when someone sings her songs today, no matter how sincere, I have to turn away and I cannot watch, I cannot listen because I saw her do this and do it the best, not once, but time and time again.  It wasn't a happenstance of the odd good night, a rare good performance, nor was it the Acid Trick, it was consistently what it was, raw meat to the lions, raw flesh, voice flayed, soul flayed wave after wave slapping you in the face with the vibrations of her heart, again and again and again.  That's rock 'n' roll, that's sex and drugs, that's soul, that's art.

The Houseboat

Across the Golden Gate Bridge in Sausalito, a whole other world unfolded.  It was almost always sunny and hot.  There was a lively arts scene and rich hippies bought property in Marin County early on.  Off the grubby fog encrusted streets of the Haight was a whole new world.

Teddy and John lurked around Kendalhang, coming and going, bringing people to meet Eddie, contributing to the upkeep of the flat.  I knew that their business was dealing dope and that meant that Eddie had to be some sort of supplier.  It didn’t matter.  In fact, it meant that we had regular meals and the rent was always paid.  As far as communes went, Kendalhang was discreet.  It wasn’t noisy.  We never had loud parties.  No drunk or freaked out drug crazies running up and down the stairs, it was just a nice flat with a lot of people living there.  We knew that this was technically illegal in 1967, but no one complained because everyone lived in these loose, fluid arrangements.  My problem was that I shared a room with two other people and I longed for some privacy.

Teddy and John seldom spent the night at Kendalhang.  Teddy lived across the Bay in Sausalito on a houseboat at Gate 5.  John had a sporadic job on the railroad and lived in a small apartment in a giant rambling Victorian apartment house on California and Fillmore in the cheap rent part of Pacific Heights.  One evening Teddy asked me if I wanted to come and stay with him. 

I jumped at the chance to get out of the Haight.  Teddy was handsome.  He was a successful dope dealer and had lots of money.  He was nice to me.  The houseboat sounded very romantic, like an exotic escape from the tension and bustle of the City.  It would be a luxury to have my own room, to sit in the sun on the deck of the houseboat, no fog, no noise.  It was always warm in Sausalito. 

I packed up my few belongings and followed Teddy one afternoon.  Eddie stood at the top of the long stairway with his hands in the pockets of his dressing gown.

“Sally, you always have a place here.  Remember that.”

I looked up and smiled.  I had a little twinge of regret as I closed the door and hopped in Teddy’s red MG convertible.  As we drove across the Golden Gate Bridge, I leaned my head back and looked up at the orange girders that disappeared into the fog that was rolling in over San Francisco Bay.  Halfway across the bridge the fog curtain lifted revealing a brilliant blue sky.  Heat enveloped the car and I turned to Teddy.

“It’s a sign, a good omen.” I saw the outline of a smile around Teddy’s mouth.

The houseboat wasn’t as funky as I thought it might be considering what I knew about men keeping house.  Maybe dope dealers kept women around to do that for them, cook, clean house, make beds, like hippie maids.  Was that what I was supposed to do for Teddy?  It didn’t look like he needed a maid. 

I discovered that Teddy actually cleaned his own house. He also kept food in the cupboards and clean sheets on the bed.  There was no second bedroom, nothing but a nice couch in the front room.  But I pushed the sleeping arrangements to the back of my mind and made a place for myself and my bags in a corner of the living room.  Teddy was on already on the phone doing business. 

When he hung up, he turned around to me, “I have to split.  I’ll be back soon.  There’s the stereo and don’t answer the phone.  Dig?”

“Yeah, sure, groovy.  I’ll just hang out until you’re done.  Do you want me to do anything?  Should I cook?”

“No.  Just chill out until I get back.  Oh, the dope tray is in that bottom cabinet by the bed.”

He grabbed his keys and took off.  I took the tray out of the cabinet and rolled a joint.  A sliding glass door led to the little deck that ran along the side of the houseboat.  I sat in a deck chair and watched the sun set over the bay.  The island of Tiburon and the Oakland Bay Bridge were in the distance.  The lights looked like strings of diamonds, a little psychedelic, kind of sparkly, as I got higher.  The fog fell over the edges of the hills and as it reached the lights, they shattered into prisms of colors on the drops of salt water.  A damp chill settled in so I went inside and pulled a book out of my bag, grabbed a bag of Fritos from the cupboard and lay on the couch reading until I fell asleep.  I woke up long enough to grab a blanket and tuck it around me.  I didn’t hear Teddy come in that night. 

Teddy spent his time on the telephone making connections and doing business.  We never connected.  Sleeping with him turned out to be just that, sleeping.  He took a lot of speed and stayed up all night, either on the houseboat or out.  I think the speed made him indifferent, or impotent.  I knew about that.  But he was tidy, and clean, and very very quiet, so I never flirted and we seldom had long conversations.  I read a lot.

One afternoon, Teddy drove me in to Sausalito to have sashimi at the Trident.  It was my first ever experience with raw fish.  Teddy carefully showed me how to eat sushi and sashimi, pouring the soy sauce into little dishes and dipping a slice of tuna then placing it in my mouth.  He laughed at my surprise in the taste and approved when I realized I enjoyed the new experience.  I loved the Trident.  It was right on the mudflats, with broad decks and lots of very hip people drinking cocktails.  The super fashionable waitresses called Teddy by name and buzzed around him like bees around a particularly juicy flower.  It made me feel special to be the lady on his arm.

Teddy also took me shopping at a very hip little boutique in town.  He bought me a new outfit; suede mini skirt, and a paisley body suit, the newest thing, that zipped up the front.  With my knee high Italian boots and short bob, I felt the equal of any weekend hippie around.  But by the end of the week, I was restless.  I didn’t love Teddy and found that I didn’t even really like him that much.  There was no sex, and while that was okay all things considered, I felt kept and purposeless.  There was no one to talk to, no Haight Street excursions to amuse me.  It was too far to walk into town from Gate 5, and I ran out of books.  I was an ornament on Teddy’s arm, but there was no real connection. 

The next time Teddy got ready to drive into the City, I took my bag of belongings and got in the car.

“What’s this? What’s the deal?”  Teddy looked confused.

“I don’t think I want to be here.  It just doesn’t feel right.  I’m bored.”

“Well, do something.  I mean, I have money, you can do whatever you want.”  He was almost pleading with me, and I was confused because his indifference made me feel like it didn’t matter much to him what I did.

“I want to go back to the City.”  Now I felt guilty.

“Fuck.”  Teddy slammed the car into gear and we took off.  The trip back across the Bay was accomplished in silence.  We hit the fog bank halfway across the bridge and it seemed fitting that he drop me off in a damp, drizzly afternoon in front of Kendalhang.  As he drove off, I was so relieved.  I didn’t want to make a scene.  I just wanted to split and to do it fast.  I rang the buzzer and Eddie stood at the top of the stairs.  It felt like he hadn’t moved since I walked out.  As I took my bag down the hall to Nancy’s room, he patted me on the back.

Nancy was delighted to see me.  “Cool!  Hey, wanna go to the park?  We’re going to take pictures this afternoon.”  She hugged me.  It was like I’d never been gone.

If Nancy was curious about my stay with Teddy, I wasn’t talking. Things were changing. Teddy still came and went, but we treated each other just the way we always had.  I was surprised he didn’t hold it against me.  But when John asked if I wanted to come and stay with him I was smart enough to say no.