PAGAN LOVE AND WILDING HEARTS

18.  Artistic Desire

        A couple miles from Tucson I hiked far up Sabina canyon, returning to the pool where I had fasted for five days in 1970. That fast had been a turning point, hungry and sick as I was before ever starting it. My friend Casey had given me a pod of belladonna; he’d enthusiastically pushed it on me—said what a great trip it was, and how the Indians considered it sacred, and how he had done it many times! So we had split the pod between us. A few hours later he was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance. I also was in a bad way and I could have gone to the hospital too, but I didn’t want to do that so I had hiked five miles up to the pool, deep in Sabina Canyon, to fast for five days and nights without food or water.

        Sitting amidst all that water and not drinking any! After the fast I had returned to my mother’s home where the FBI had come and taken me prisoner. So, it was the completion of a full cycle for me to be sitting on the edge of the beautiful pool again in November of 1973. I dove in and swam. The icy water was a shock.

        Demetrious made more friends than I did in the parks of Tucson, the rascal. One thing that was kind of nice was that as big as Demetrious was getting, the cops didn’t seem as anxious to mess with me. He developed a dislike for them, too, and whenever cops showed up around the hippies Demetrious’ sonorous bark and resolute demeanor made the cops treat people more courteously. He chased the cops around a few times too which humiliated them. All the park people sure had a laugh—and Demetrious stood there basking in their applause and affection like a dutiful and noble canine centurion. Such a face! Such an attitude! And a cop up in a tree screaming at him and me and everyone to get that dog away from him. Yes, it was funny. But the cops threatened to shoot him if they ever saw him off his leash again so everyone had to look out for him too. Everyone fed him. Everyone used him for a pillow. He didn’t mind. He romped and wrestled and tried to fuck poodles. You just had to love him.

        But sleeping still remained a problem. I visited Roland Pasternac, my old prison pal. His family lived in Tucson and although he seemed to be trying to remain a friend, he found my lifestyle incongruous with his own and I think his parents didn’t encourage our friendship. The reason it dissolved had more to do with the fact that a couple of times I desperately needed a place to sleep where the police would not molest me and I went to him and he allowed me to sleep in a family car parked out on the street. I also slept in that car a couple times without telling him. One night I walked all the way out to his distant home so tired I could hardly move in a straight line. I was pathetic. It was too late to wake him up and ask permission—and what would I do if he said “no”? So I just crawled in and went to sleep. His mother came out to use the car the next morning and was maximum frightened to discover someone sleeping on the seat—and a big dog, too. Roland got into some trouble over that.

Basically I wasn’t the caliber of person he thought he should be seen with. He drove a Porshe and I was a park-people-pedestrian. His father was a well-to-do doctor and I was just a homeless guy. But we had been such close friends in prison... I felt betrayed that he dismissed me so easily now that we were both free. He never even ever invited me inside his home. We always stood talking out on the front steps or in the carport.

All in all, Tucson was once again an experience of disillusionment—so I harnessed my thumb to a westward wind and gave Southern California another try.

***

        The little red MG still sat in front of my sister’s place. It might never run again; a mechanic had looked at it and said it needed a complete engine overhaul, and new carburetors and all kinds of expensive stuff. Plus Joey and Pat’s landlord had told them to move it. I asked everyone in my family if I could store it with them but got no takers.  They all suggested the same thing—call a wrecker. That’s what I finally did, sadly. I think he gave me thirty dollars for my pretty red toy. What a rotten deal. He hitched the MG up to his truck and I stood there with money in my hand and felt like crap as I watched it roll down the road out of sight.

        So I remained a pedestrian or a hitchhiker, whichever was my preference. I went to see my mom.

        My mother and my step-father Earl, were considerably more conciliatory now that they’d had a year of my absence and what with the occasional frantic telephone requests for financial assistance from all over the country they understood that my life out there in America’s hinterlands was not always safe. In short, they hoped I was home to stay; they encouraged me to finally settle down and get a job. And they volunteered to help me get into an apartment of my own.

        I slept a few nights there on the living room couch. My little brother Eric, eleven years my junior was fifteen years old at this juncture and he thought Demetrious was a great dog. They never called him “Demetrious” though; they figured out a name for him they thought sounded more like a dog’s name. I forget what it was.

        I began to leave Demetrious in their care sometimes when I had things to do where he would be a problem, like when I was looking for an apartment. Demetrious made a good house dog huge as he was getting to be, and he gave them a lot of laughs.

        The only problem with that, of course, was the same old thing: My mom and Earl began arguing with me whenever I arrived to take him away.  They wanted him to stay with them permanently. Especially Earl. And that made me mad. It wasn’t so bad at first but later when I had the apartment and dogs weren’t really allowed, Demetrious spent weeks at a time with them and they became quite attached. But when at last I brought him to Laguna with me he was really happy to get out from under their strict rules. In their home he’d had almost no opportunity to chase pussies and they refused to allow him to wear his sunglasses. (A habit he’d developed on the motorcycle...)

        Demetrious had an attitude among other dogs as if he were some sort of important Hollywood agent looking for talent; poodles in particular had to worry. I never let on to any of his hair-bag buddies that he was in reality just a bum like me. I think he told them I was just a charity case he took care of because every dog needs to do something useful occasionally to keep his nose clean. Truthfully I think he just used me to meet poodles. I remember his disdainful reproaching looks when I removed him from some of his more notorious confabulations.  But he usually came when I called.

        I used him too, I suppose, in similar ways. Especially in Laguna Beach where I found an apartment a block from the ocean. I’d take him out for a walk on his leash and if I saw some woman I’d like to meet I’d let him loose. He’d saunter up to her and she would invariably stop whatever she was doing and give the big St Bernard some affectionate ear-scratching, and he just loved that. If it happened to work out that she also ended up scratching me pleasantly where I itched before the day was out I had Demetrious to thank for the introduction. Me and Demetrious were a team, two of a kind; the same insatiably curious nose.

***

The apartment was a hundred and ten dollars per month, cheap rent even in those days, especially in Laguna Beach. I got lucky. Today the place probably rents for a hundred and ten dollars per day. It wouldn’t surprise me. Laguna is a millionaire’s town. It was then, too, but it was borderline survivable for struggling would-be artists which is the catagory I thought was my own. I hoped. I still had my jewels. I had some good oil paintings that I had done in prison, too. I put them up on my wall and they helped me feel real. And I had my musical skills.

I bought a nice catgut classical guitar from a local shop and I was never without it wherever I went. I played for hours every day and often found myself surrounded by other musicians and of course Laguna 's sweet-scented sisters.

I set up a simple gem-grinding apparatus in my pad and created some nice gems, among them an enormous star ruby from my largest piece of ruby rough. The massive finished stone weighed thirty-eight carats and had a full sized brilliant six-rayed star. It was half an inch tall and about three-quarters of an inch long and a half an inch wide. Huge. I figured at a measly ten dollars a carat it had to be worth $380. But I was sure it was actually worth far more than that. I could have sold it I suppose, but it was more important to me to have some fantastic gem-piece on me at all times that would represent my abilities. I figured that ruby would do nicely. In a city like Laguna if you have some things that reveal a hidden potential you get treated considerably better than if you are just a scraggly tumbleweed rolling through their posh fenders.

I also made the acquaintance of a man named Thomas who had a successful jewelry store on a prime downtown corner. He was a very normal person; nonetheless, and he liked my gemwork right away and took time whenever I stopped in to talk with me. He looked with genuine interest at whatever recently finished stone I brought in my pockets and one day he offered to cast me up a silver ring for my giant ruby if I wanted to carve the wax form. All I’d have to do is pay for the silver, which was about seven dollars per ounce. So I carved a massive silver ring—big enough to hold the thirty-eight carat star. I carved a nude couple entwined around the stone, and flowers and a vine. The finished silver ring weighed a ton and it was enough to blow anyone’s mind.

So I had me an amazing ring, a good guitar, a lovable St Bernard, and a sweet Laguna Beach apartment. Not Bad. Between Demetrious’ pussy-chasing talents and my artistic abilities—bikini-land Laguna Beach became an orgy of opportunities.

***

I noticed a certain fine young woman walking by my apartment every day and so I started leaving my sidewalk level door open at the time she usually passed. Demetrious fetched her in before long.

Tammy had long auburn hair down to her tiny waist and the most silky-soft, bright red pubic hair I ever tasted. She weighed about ninety-five pounds and her breasts were about lemon sized and pert. We were making love within our first hour together, which in my experience always happens to me with the women who end up meaning the most to me.  It’s like if the effect we have on each other is that strong, if the impression is that significant, that powerful—then there must be something to it. Also it takes a certain strength later when she sits at home rethinking the episode for the woman to justify willfully abandoning her usually cautious principals. So, when she comes back smiling and lusty the next day I know she has accepted our relationship and is ready for a fun friendship. Tammy and I could have done something with what we had if we had ever gone out for a date, or even left my apartment, or even gotten out of bed. But our entire relationship existed right there. Every day when she arrived she was out of her clothes in seconds and I out of mine and we were fucking and sucking and osculating like the ocean licking and pounding the shore a block away. There’s the rhythm. A little sunlight would have done us good though.

        She was a young virgin, twenty years old, a beauty, immaculately composed, fashionably dressed, well educated. She lived with her well-to-do family in a fine two-story house a few blocks away from my pad. Until she met me she was quite a “proper” young lady. I seem to naturally bring out the best in girls.

        She told me that many significant young men had tried their best—but no one had ever gotten to first base with her before—and I hit my home run within the first hour and hit it again and again on the days and nights that followed. I quickly taught her every move I knew and I guarantee she never lacked knowledge on the subject again. She was another of those wildly fast moving sprites whose phenomenal final speed excells anything a man can match and who claws him if he tries to pull out and screams into his ear:

        “—PLEASE. PLEASE, give it to Me. PLEASE! "

        and who thanks him tearfully afterwards when he has pulled out regardless of all her plaintive pleading. We were hardly ready for children!

        Tammy had a wiggle that could bust any condom ever manufactured.   She busted every one we ever tried. I was thinking of personally making up a special batch that would defeat her—out of truck inner tubes. But I knew it was hopeless. Her flurry could waste those too. So, back to nature.

        Then she almost killed me. If I had done what she wanted me to do I would have surely been dead. She wanted me to prove my love for her by climbing the trellis on the side of her house late some night and crawling stealthily through the window into her room and having a sweet escapade in her own bed. She used to leave her window unlocked and slightly open every night in case I decided to do it. Oh, I’ve done stuff like that before—(yeah, way back when I was sixteen...) —it can be fun; a sexy Peter Pan adventure—but I could just imagine some neighbor or late-night passer-by noticing me on that trellis and calling the cops. Her neighborhood was not only ritzy—it was highly populated and continually patrolled. But the biggest trouble with her “fun idea” was that I had already met her father by that time. I’d gone calling on her one day and he’d come out to have a good look at me before he summoned his daughter.

        The look on his face as he gaped at me was just about the same as the look on a parent’s face who has just observed a poisonous spider on his baby’s neck in the crib. He was almost rational for his first few words and then he lost all control. He swore that if he ever saw me with his daughter again he would get his gun and shoot me dead and he sounded very convincing. Later I asked Tammy about it. She told me I shouldn’t pay any attention to her dad. She said she never did. He wasn’t threatening to shoot her though.

        His threat did not worry me enough to terminate my affair with Tammy. Besides, Tammy had just learned to appreciate the taste of cum and was a real joy to have around. But she wanted me to fullfil that fantasy of hers. She wanted me to come to her through her bedroom window, to wake her with a kiss—and make love to her in her own familiar bed., with clean sheets and stuffed animals. Oh yeah…. I had to give that some thought.

        I think I can safely attribute the fact that I am here alive today to my ability to not go along with every whim wished-for by a beautiful woman. Those sisters are hard to resist but what is a man if he is not strong in his resolve?

        So we continued as best we could without any further contributions from her father. And her lithe and spirited sexual acumen swiftly came to equal or surpass my own. Young people learn so fast!  However, regardless of the sexual wisdom I imparted to her, it was she who taught me about friendship, for it was Tammy who finally realized we hardly knew what we looked like in sunlight and that we had missed all opportunities to expand into areas more compatible with life in these United States. She also finally realized I might never have any real money or even a real job. She had never known anyone like me before. And she began wondering where our relationship was heading.

        After two months of this blissful if sedentary habitation I suddenly discovered I would lose my apartment. The landlords didn’t want Demetrious around but mostly they were angry that I had put a thousand holes in one wall of the apartment, thumb-tacking to it several hundred pictures of nude women which I’d snipped from Playboy and Penthouse magazines. It was probably the gauchest thing I ever did in my life but for some reason—I needed it. I even thought it was inspirational art—but mostly I just liked it. Good passion is no small thing. It sweeps you away as though you are caught in a breaking ocean wave ten foot tall.

I’ll explain the nudes on my wall in a nutshell: I knew that at some point in my life I wanted to create nude art. I had traveled with a great book the previous year, The Amorous Drawings of the Marquis Von Bayros, and had cut much of it up to make decoupages. It was a really wonderful book I thought. He really knew how to draw the human female form. I wanted to draw and paint and sculpt the female form someday too, but I worried that it would all turn out to be just a pipedream if I never went to art school and studied it. However I was pretty good at teaching myself how to do things. I resolved to create my own study program for the female nude. So whenever I found a nude photograph that had something in it that I wanted to study I cut it out and tacked it to the wall. The collage on the wall spoke of art to me. It was a very personal thing. Tammy just thought it was funny, another of my neat idiosyncrasies. But the Christian landlords were furious. They notified me I had until the end of the month to find somewhere else to live. I was evicted—and no cleaning deposit would be returned.

        Spring was just around the corner and—inasmuch as it was seriously doubtful that I would find another reasonably priced apartment in the vicinity—I decided that when my last day’s rent was used up and I had cleaned out the place and moved my stuff back over to my mother’s garage I wanted to hitchhike up into northern California and check out San Francisco. I asked Tammy to come along. She thought about it for a couple days without giving me a definite answer. We walked barefoot in the surf hand in hand on the day she told me she wouldn’t be coming. It was goodbye.

        Too bad. It would have gotten her out from underneath her father’s scrutiny; would have given us a wonderful chance to get to know each other on those real gritty levels that are part of traveling on the fringe. She shoulda done it. But she had college classes to attend and her future on her mind, where I just wanted to see Haight-Ashbury again, and do some wandering by thumb, and sleep beneath the stars in distant places... I think if Tammy had given it a try she would have loved watching those stars at night with me... Maybe would have gotten something out of it as valuable as college in a way... We each have to make our choices in life...

        Springtime! The scent of all the flowers of Laguna mingled with the salty spray of the sea and poured their mighty essence into my heart in great rushes sweeping me away upon my journey...