PAGAN LOVE AND WILDING HEARTS

5. Sinister Taos

        As I walked down those snowy highways with my backpack and my dog I got to wondering why that community had been so stupid and rotten to me and I came to the conclusion it was largely because they had a real shortage of women. With no women to warm their spirits the winter storms had frozen their humanity.

        Isolation from women is not a natural state for men. Women soften men’s wayward attitudes; give them a taste of the straight and true purpose for human life on this planet—and of joy and peace of mind too. When men and women find each other they may feel moments of perfection, the universe is complete—orgasm equates cosmic Oneness...

        I thought about other communes and communities I had visited. Shortages of females had never been much of a problem in them, communes in northern New Mexico, southern Colorado. Wisconsin, Toronto, etc., etc.. No! In ‘68 and ‘69 and ‘70 the sisters had shared our alternative lifestyles in fairly equal numbers with the brothers. But in late 1972 it was easy to see that things had taken a change. After that realization I began talking to some of the sisters. Whenever I’d run into one I’d ask her what had happened, why was there such an unbalanced proportion of male to female energy in all the experimental communities? They told me what was on their minds and this is what I learned:

        Sisters weren’t into hitchhiking the highways anymore. There had been too many bad trips -- too many rapes in particular. Without the old ability to travel on the wind the communities couldn’t be accessed.  Hitchhiking was our culture’s ace in the hole. We used to be able to go anywhere—and fast—thanks to our ability to hitchhike. It was like an art form. In some ways it was like an athletic sport. It was adventurous.  But mostly it got us out of the ruts of our hometowns and out into the broad world. Hitchhikers gathered together in waysides and town squares and city parks, set down their packs and bedrolls under trees or against benches and happily compared notes of where they’d been, what they’d seen, who they’d met... The camaraderie was excellent. There had always been many sisters in those groups. —But that was before... Not so anymore!

        Now, if women were seen even at communes, they were always with somebody. Brothers snapped them up fast; like there was a waiting line.

        Sisters were rarely single and free-spirited anymore, and even when they were single they weren’t nearly as sexually free as they used to be either. Now it was partnerships—even marriages! And free sisters were getting hard to find even in cities or around college campuses. Like the hippy-free-love thing was out of vogue. If you were still into that trip you must be a masochist because the world had proven it was determined to dish you out a whole lot of pain. I knew that. But it didn’t stop me, so for awhile I couldn’t figure why it would stop anyone else. I guess I was pretty tough at twenty-five. But on the other hand I knew only too well just how vulnerable I was out along those lonesome highways. I really needed some dear human company. The puppy was a good friend but I needed to find a woman to truck with.                                                 

        So I figured I would have to go somewhere where the female species was still abundant and pluck one of those beauties from the tree and tote her back to the communes with me. I reasoned if I set my mind to it I aught to be able to find some chic in southern California—a land teeming with wild chics—who would be adventurous enough to want to hitchhike around New Mexico and Colorado or wherever with me. So I returned to southern California on a quest.                                     

        Back in my mother’s home everyone took a liking to Gush-gush. Sometimes I left the St Bernard with them for several days at a time. I didn’t hang out there much myself. My mom talked about fixing up the garage as a room for me but my stepfather wanted to put all kinds of stipulations on it about having girls over. Plus, they had lousy feelings about hippies and I knew if I brought any real authentic long-haired brothers or sisters into the vicinity of my parent’s barbed perspectives my friends would be in for some unkind ear-bending—and maybe even get the cops called on them for any pot in their pockets. So, that idea didn’t work out. I’d rather sleep on the beaches anyway.

        I’d been out of prison for less than two months and already covered a little bit of territory; but basically I was still stuck in California. Winter had barely begun and several months must pass before any far and wide hitchhiking could be accomplished without discomfort. However, if there had to be a choice between the discomfort of winter weather and being stuck in California   I wouldn’t hesitate too long in gathering up some cold weather gear at a local Salvation Army Center and hitting the road. But not yet. The important thing to me was to be able to hang out in some hip California scene long enough to meet a girl who would like to go wandering with me.

        The wandering lifestyle was something many people would love to try—if only they could get into it in the company of someone who knew the ropes. In hippy scene’s like Laguna Beach homebody hippies listened in awe to the stories told by a few far-wandering cousins who were passing through the town—they especially wanted to hear about communes. Those travelers enjoyed a certain celebrity and often when they left they took people with them. All kinds of young people wanted to jump out of their ruts and run with the wind. But they were almost always too afraid to do it alone.

        So all I had to do was keep my mind open and it was inevitable I would find a traveling partner. Had I not minded whether the person was male or female I could have left on any given day with two or three brothers. But although I know how hard it is for some people to understand—my heart loves the closeness of sharing life with a womanfriend. It’s the way I’ve always been. I don’t appreciate the way hard-hearted men and women have always tried to make me feel guilty about it. Some men fit perfectly with the opposite sex and I’m one. I personally believe this is the natural way human beings are created and that I am totally normal in my intentions. If anyone is abnormal it is all those people who try to force men together into groups and convince them that they are unworthy of female companionship, (i.e. “What makes you think some woman would want to be with YOU? You have nothing to offer!” or “All you think about is SEX! There’s more to life!” or “If you just want to fuck somebody why don’t you go ask George over there. Maybe he’ll fuck you? Why does it have to be a woman?” —If you stop and realize how impressionable and vulnerable young men were -- especially in those days of two thousand mike hits of Purple Double Dome and Orange Sunshine LSD -- you may understand why I blame this last variety of vixen for half the male insanity that developed in those years. I wanted a womanfriend as my traveling partner, pure and simple. I waited.

        With two months worth of beard on my face and a large portion of the institutional insecurity mollified by free spirit road miles I was in considerably better shape for meeting women than when I first got out of prison. And so I met a few chics.

        My sister, Joey and her new husband Pat lived in an apartment off Beach Boulevard. I threw out a mattress and some blankets in their garage and towed my MG over into their yard where I could work on it. Mostly the red car just sat there. And I only showed up late at night and didn’t stay long in the mornings. It was just a place to crash. They had their own lives and were usually pretty busy working at their jobs. Occasionally I brought some girl over, especially if I could have their house to myself for a few hours.

        There was a tall slim girl with long blond hair to her waist whose name I have forgotten. She was a real looker though—and as homey as me -- wild is the word. It seems weird to me that I can’t remember her name. And there were a couple others too. But the girl who stuck was an eighteen year-old named Georgia, one of Joey’s friends. She had wanted to meet me so my sister had brought us together. The result was absolute satisfaction. We had planned to go out on a date but the electricity between us was instantly an all-consuming magnet and within moments of meeting all plans were changed. Alone in the house, we didn’t leave my sister’s living room couch for many hours. Sweet Georgia... We even thought we were in love. We were certainly in heat.

        So that became the major development for a week or so. By then I was convinced I had found my traveling partner and therefore there was no need for us to remain in California. I asked Georgia if she would like to hit the road with me and it blew her mind. She told me excitedly how lately she had been feeling really anxious to discover something to do that was more interesting than her boring job. She didn’t even want to take the time to tell her boss that she quit. We quickly gathered together some gear and packed a mess of egg salad sandwiches and. the following morning we pointed our thumbs down the highway.

        We stayed a week in Tucson. It was the same as what I had observed a month before, a little colder maybe; and cold weather makes people more frustrated, especially homeless desert people. Georgia was too prone to need the creature comforts of life; a habit that needs breaking if a would-be wanderer doesn’t want to become resucked back into the system and end up permanently institutionalized to civilization’s cubicles. When I noticed she wanted to sit in the drop-in center all day, long like a lump I persuaded her to get back out on the highway with me. Well, I might not have been able to persuade her if it wasn’t for the fact that we were caught sleeping in the shed behind the drop-in center again.

        We headed east; it was February and very cold. We went to the Hog Farm! I figured they would so appreciate having another sister around them that everything would be forgiven. Well, it didn’t quite work out that way although the Hog Farmers weren’t nearly so mundane as they had been. They marveled that I had returned though; said it took guts. But the place wasn’t for us; we only stayed a couple days. They came to us as a group and said there wasn’t room enough for so many new people. They said they’d had a vote... Georgia could stay if she wanted to—but I would have to GO.

        That’s a kind of humorous situation which constantly reoccurs in experimental communities. I have personally had it happen to me at least ten times in ten different communities. It’s so silly. Like it takes a three year old’s mentality to be so obviously selfish and manipulative. It just goes to show that our alternative culture’s so-called enlightenment is all too often just so much hyperbole: What a bunch of animals they were! And to think how much stock we all used to put into how peyote raises human consciousness! If their consciousness had been raised up to that level where they were when we met them—I’d hate to have known them before they ever “turned on”! Ha!

        So, Georgia and me hit the road again. We headed north for Taos, New Mexico.

***

        Taos was one of Haight-Ashbury’s first psychedelic colonies at the end of the sixties. I’d been there in those days. Taos is a wonderful gathering place for artists and anthropologists and people involved with experimental communities. There once was at least five or ten large communes all thriving at the same time around there. Some were bad—notoriously bad, like “The family”—which got burnt to the ground by townspeople—and some were beautiful, like New Buffalo and Llama Foundation.

        The place I always want to visit first when I get to Taos is the location of the old Five Star commune. It’s up on a hill near the abandoned hot springs, five miles out a bad road just before you get into town. When Georgia and I arrived I was surprised to find the commune barely existent, looking almost deserted compared to the bustling group of flap-jack-eaters who would forever swarm that hill in one of my heart’s favorite memories. A burly fellow stood talking to me in front of the old communal house. He explained that they’d had hard times over the previous years. He was about the last member left: he and his two girlfriends. He had them both pregnant. When I suggested that we might stay awhile he indicated that there was no room. He wanted the place to himself—although he told Georgia she could stay if she wanted. Oh, sure. No, he wasn’t very sociable really. He seemed to be trying to claim the hot springs as his own property, like homesteading it.

        But Georgia and I walked over to the springs and took a dip in the pools anyway, whether he liked it or not. Snow surrounded the steaming water. The Olympic sized swimming pool, refurbished by the Hippies in 1969, had been re-dynamited by someone and was now empty again. But there were a couple of eight foot deep ten foot by ten foot pools—with foot-long lush green algae growing thickly on all sides.  Beautiful. Georgia and me added about an inch of cum to the waters and made them considerably hotter.

        Cops showed up in the morning. We saw them coming from a distance and ducked stealthily out the lower end of the canyon and made the five mile walk cross-country into town. I was still hoping to find an interesting commune in the area that would like to add our energy to their own.

        I made some inquiries and heard of one a mile outside of town. The girl in the cafe who told me about the place looked at me real skeptically; I wondered why? Georgia and I trudged out to the community through thick snow.

        Let me picture this place for you: It’s a kind of log cabin—It looks like some Indian farmer built it for his animals. It might be fifteen feet by twenty feet. The place has a hard-packed dirt floor...

        Rows of crude bunk-beds are everywhere—filled with people snuggling together under piles of blankets; some are doing craftwork by kerosene lantern light. There are no visible windows, blankets and cardboard cover them. The place is perpetually dark. People are gathered around a smokey woodstove; two long-bearded men are sullenly sitting on stools chopping wood. A newborn baby is always crying. At least twenty people are living inside, mostly young adults, a couple small kids. It’s extremely crowded.

There’s a lot of bad vibes circulating. Glum looks. Pointed questions:

“Who are you?” “What are you doing here?”

 My own questions bring forth some scant information. A tyrannical father-ruler reigns powerfully in the center of the community. He says he is the reincarnation of Jesus Christ. He is also the father of the howling baby—and the only man allowed to have sex with the women in the community. The other men are like eunuchs. They chop wood and cook and so-on.

They grudgingly gave Georgia and me a temporary bunk we could use. Its usual owner was gone for a couple days. People peered suspiciously at us and whispered in ominous tones. The weird father-figure holyman tried to preach a sermon at us about how I was too imperfect a creation to be having sex with a woman like Georgia and how she really deserved him instead.

What can I say? It was the sort of scene that makes a guy proud to be a hippy! Hey! What could the silly old world possibly have against us hippies with folks like that running round representing us? Yikes!

Our welcome didn’t last too long. We hadn’t been there an hour before they were talking about cooking up Gush-gush: saying how useless such a large dog was for anything but eating—and discussing recipes. I just couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I had to attempt to argue some sense into that clan. —Which may have been what caused them to all turn on me abruptly, and angrily. And I began to worry we ourselves might end up in tomorrow’s soup! I told Georgia I thought we’d better leave while we still could. But she was too tired and cold. She refused to leave the bunk. But the riled up commune members were yelling in my face that I wasn’t welcome there anymore. I had no choice but to flee out into the dark with my pack and my dog. I stood outside looking back at the steaming log cabin. The men who had run me out seemed very dangerous to me. There was no way I was going back in there again, at least not until they cooled off. But what was I to do about Georgia? No doubt she would be safe, quiet and unassuming as she was. Besides, they could always use another woman. They wouldn’t harm her. So I rolled out my sleeping bag in the snow not far from the cabin and spent a long night shivering and worrying. It snowed but once I was thoroughly covered I was considerably warmer.

In the morning I packed up my gear neatly and when I detected signs that the community was getting up I quietly went back inside. No one said much to me at first or even seemed to notice me. Most were still sleeping. I told Georgia I was all for hitchhiking back to southern California and if she wanted to come along she’d better get her stuff together fast. She gathered her things quickly.

A bearded fellow came up and hissed that she wasn’t going anywhere with me. Then he yelled out,

“Hey! That guy from last night is back in here!”

A gruff male voice from somewhere off in the dark answered,

“HE IS? Well hold him there while I get my pants on! Don’t let him get away!”

I told Georgia to hurry. She picked up her stuff and we headed for the door. Two men blocked our way.

“You aren’t going nowhere!” one blared.

People started rising up out of the darkness surrounding us. My hand clutched Georgia’s and we bolted past them. They grabbed at us and there was considerable confusion in that dark corner for a few moments but we made it outside. We ran hurriedly from the cabin through the new snow—a few people chased us with sticks but they were in stocking feet and without coats and we outdistanced them with our determined flight. Out on the road a pick-up truck was passing and I managed to flag him down. My breath wheezed as I told him we were being chased by some crazy people and would he pleazze give us a lift away from there. He agreed and we piled in. He dropped us off in town.

        The snow was falling on the Indian adobe walls. Inside the cafe the scene was warm and happy, intelligent, homey— kind. What a contrast. Taos is so beautiful in winter—but of course, like in everything else, that depends on your perspective.

        But Georgia seemed to have lost faith in my dreams. She wanted to go home.