Ecotopia (28 page)

“What do you mean? Go back to New York, of course.” But precisely as I said that a great twinge of pain throbbed through my head. “My God,” I said, “I have this awful headache.” I staggered over to the bed and lay down. Vince brought a cold cloth for my forehead. Paranoid fantasies: the baths must have screwed up
my circulation or something! Never had anything like this happen before. They seemed pretty worried. Vince went to the office and found a doctor who was staying at the resort. She came in, checked me over, gave me the names of some tests I should have made when I get back to the city, but said the chances were 99 to one that it was psychological. Certainly not due to the baths.

By that time it was midafternoon. The headache subsided. We went down to the baths again. Ron, as if thinking it might make me feel better, suggested I file by phone, at their expense, one of the briefer stories I’ve got stockpiled. So I polished one up a little. Not one of my favorites; but it felt good to be working again. Toyed with the idea of tacking on a message to Max about my kidnapping. But decided it might risk some kind of international confrontation, and I don’t after all seem to be in any personal danger.

WORK AND PLAY AMONG
THE ECOTOPIANS

Gilroy Hot Springs, June 22. The more I have discovered about Ecotopian work habits, the more amazed I am that their system functions at all. It is not only that they have adopted a 20-hour week; you can’t even tell when an Ecotopian is working, and when he is at leisure. During an important discussion in a government office, suddenly everybody will decide to go to the sauna bath. It is true they have worked out informal arrangements whereby, as their phrase has it, they “cover” for each other—somebody stays behind to answer phones and handle visitors. And it is also true that even in the sauna our discussion continued, on a more personal level, which turned out to be quite delightful. But Ecotopian society offers so many opportunities for pleasures and distractions that it is hard to see how people maintain even their present levels of efficiency.

Things happen in their factories, warehouses, and stores which would be quite incredible to our managers and supervisors. I have
seen a whole section close down without notice; somebody will bring out beer or marijuana, and a party will ensue, right there amid the crates and machines. Workers in Ecotopian enterprises do not have a normal worker’s attitude at all. Perhaps because of their part ownership of them, they seem to regard the plants as home, or at least as their own terrain. They must be intolerable to supervise: the slightest change in work plans is the occasion for a group discussion in which the supervisors (who are elected and thus in a weak position anyway) are given a good deal of sarcastic questioning, and in which their original plans are seldom accepted without change. The supervisors try to take this with good grace, of course, even claiming that the workers often come up with better ideas than they do; and they believe that Ecotopian output per person hour is remarkably high. It may be.

Incidentally, many rather intellectual people seem to be members of the ordinary factory and farm work force. Partly this seems to be due to the relative lack of opportunity for class differentiation in Ecotopia; partly it is due to a deliberate policy which requires students to alternate a year of work with each year of study. This is perhaps one of the most startling arrangements in the whole Ecotopian economy—for not only is the students’ education prolonged, but their ideological influence is responsible for many of the new policies that prevail in Ecotopian enterprises. (I was told, for example, that it was students who were originally behind the whole movement toward workers’ control.)

Ecotopians are adept at turning practically any situation toward pleasure, amusement, and often intimacy. At first I was surprised by the ease with which they strike up very personal conversations with casual strangers. I have now gotten used to this, indeed I usually enjoy it, especially where the lovely Ecotopian women are concerned. But I am still disconcerted when, after speaking with someone on the street in a loose and utterly unpressured way for perhaps ten minutes, he mentions that he is working and trots off. The distinction between work and non-work seems to be eroding away in Ecotopia, along with our whole concept of jobs as something separate from “real life.” Ecotopians, incredibly enough,
enjoy
their work.

*    *    *

Unemployment does not seem to worry Ecotopians in the slightest. There were many unemployed just before Independence, but the switch to a 20-hour week almost doubled the number of jobs—although some were eliminated because of ecological shutdowns and simplifications, and of course the average real income of most families dropped somewhat. Apparently in the transition period when an entirely new concept of living standards was evolving, the country’s money policy had to be managed with great flexibility to balance sudden inflationary or deflationary tendencies. But the result now seems to be that, while enterprises are not seriously short of member-workers, there is also no significant number of people involuntarily unemployed. In any case, because of the minimal-guaranteed income system and the core stores, periods of unemployment are not considered disasters or threats by individuals; they are usually put to use, and sometimes deliberately extended, for some kind of creative, educational or recreational purposes. Thus in Ecotopia friends who are unemployed (usually through the collapse of their previous enterprise) often band together and undertake studies that lead them into another enterprise of their own.

If it is sometimes hard to tell whether Ecotopians are working or playing, they are surprisingly generous with their time. I was told, for instance, that many workers in factories put in extra hours to fix machines that have broken down. They evidently regard the 20-hour week quota as applying to productive time only, and take the repair of machinery almost as a sideline responsibility. Or perhaps it is just that they enjoy tinkering: despite the de-emphasis of goods in Ecotopia, people seem to love fixing things. If a bicycle loses a chain or has a flat tire, its rider is soon surrounded by five people volunteering to help fix it. As they do during many casual social encounters, someone will bring out a marijuana cigarette and pass it around; people joke, touch each other, and take turns helping with the work.

The propensity of Ecotopians to touch one another is remarkable. To most Americans, it is offensive to be touched familiarly by a stranger, except under special circumstances, and even friends
do not have a great deal of physical contact, which is reserved for lovers and children. The Ecotopians seem to have abandoned such proprieties, and are virtually indiscriminate in their contacts. Adults will pat children approvingly as they go by. Acquaintances routinely shake hands whenever they meet, even if they have seen each other a few hours before, with a novel arm-to-arm clasp. When people sit down to talk, they snuggle up to each other or interlace arms or legs quite intimately. And I have even seen a man in the street walk up to an attractive woman, say something to her with a smile, give her a hug or a stroke on the shoulder, and walk on; the woman continued on her way, with a friendly glance back.

To us, such behavior is a forbidden fantasy. The Ecotopians act out such fantasies all the time. They bathe and take steam baths together freely. Both men and women, not to mention children, stroll public streets arm in arm. Old friends who have not seen each other for some time customarily give each other a warm and extended embrace, and occasionally they even excuse themselves and go off to a private place, evidently for sexual purposes. Naked massage is a common group amusement.

Such looseness in personal contact may be a result of widespread marijuana usage; certainly it is associated with it. One of the riskiest experiments of the new government was to deliberately make marijuana a common weed. Not only were legal prohibitions ended, but free top-quality seeds were distributed, in a campaign aimed at providing “do-it-yourself highs.” The result is that every house and apartment can have its own garden or windowbox where the hemp is grown. It is as if, among us, we had a third tap in the kitchen which provided free beer. But most Ecotopians seem to smoke marijuana with considerable discretion, and it is likely that the worst feature of the policy is that it deprives the government of a large source of tax revenue.

(June 23) Last night I made my move. Nerves must have woken me about two o’clock; suddenly felt overwhelmingly anxious to get out of here. Looked around cautiously, surprised they would all be asleep at once; they’ve grown lax about watching me. Marie, I
noticed with a tic of envy, had crawled in with Ron: damn. I felt around for my clothes, wormed into them under the covers. Picked up my shoes, slid softly to the door, and got out. Quiet outside, no wind stirring. Went barefoot for a while; it felt good. Headed away from the concentration of buildings, uphill—once over the brow of the hill I’d be in the clear. There was a half moon, so I could pick my way all right.

Coming to a clearing on top of a rise, found a small square structure raised on posts, a kind of pavilion with a roof but no walls. Fascinated for some reason, I crept up the ladder for a quick look around. It appeared my route was well chosen. In the moonlight the scene had an unearthly beauty. Saw a huge owl coasting along silently, and realized I could hear the creek, even though it was 50 yards away.

Suddenly there was a rustle and thump directly below the floor of the pavilion, and then a heartstopping scream. I froze utterly, against one of the posts that supported the roof—not daring to look down through the ladder hole. Dogs instantly began barking in the resort, and in a moment I saw a large tan shape loping off toward the woods—a mountain lion, carrying the rabbit it had seized under the pavilion! By the time I grasped what had happened, and my blood had unfrozen a little, it was too late—two large dogs appeared barking and sniffing, and a few yards behind them was Wince. I wasn’t sure if he had spotted me, but clearly my absence had been noticed; the game was up. I crawled down, rather shakily. “Lion killed a rabbit right under the platform,” I said. “That set the dogs barking.”

“Scary, isn’t it?” Wince said. “Nice night though. How do you like the moon-viewing porch?” “So that’s what it is. Actually I was sitting on it, viewing the moon, when that damned monster struck.”

He eyed me quietly. “Out for a little walk, huh? Nasty scare number two.” “For me, anyway,” I said.

“For all of us.” We walked back to the cabin. Evidently the others were out searching for me too, but after a bit they came back. Nobody accused me of anything, but a kind of disappointment
merit hung in the air. I felt depressed and confused. For the rest of the night somebody sat guard, reading a paperback in the corner. Marie went back to her own bed.

After breakfast, finally decided I must face the fact I will stay depressed for a while, and could use some company—so I phoned Marissa. She isn’t at all worried my captors are up to anything sinister; didn’t exactly make light of my anxieties, but seemed to imply they were pretty excessive. She is doing heavy tree-cutting today, but will come down late tonight or tomorrow. I must get myself together a little, somehow.

(June 25) Dream: I am at home in New York, in my apartment. It must be night, and I am working on a column. I get a tremendous urge to talk to Marissa. I pick up the phone. I give the international operator the instructions, and there is a pause. “I’m sorry, sir, but we cannot complete that call.” “Why not?” “We are not allowed to carry traffic to San Francisco at this time.” We argue about a possible Vancouver routing, me feeling increasingly frustrated and desperate, the operator driving me crazy with her mindless “I’m sorry you feel that way, sir.” Is something wrong? Has war broken out? All she will say is that she is doing her job. I wake up, furious, thinking of that maniac Jerry in the San Francisco wire office, who used to piss me off because he’d
never
just do his job. Jerry would have given me a hard time, maybe, but he would have worked out some clever way to get my call through, even if it had to go via Timbuctu, because he could tell it mattered.

After that dream, lay awake for a while. Looked around the cabin; my captors were, surprisingly, all asleep again. Maybe they no longer cared. In my imagination I saw myself getting up, sneaking off, hiking to the train, probably making it across the border near Los Angeles by the time they woke up. Could be back in New York by dinner time! Max would still be at the office. I could get hold of Francine, we could hit the town, celebrate my safe return.

Why didn’t it sound more inviting? I goaded my imagination on a little, toward the end of the evening with Francine, and the Jelicious new tricks she was always coming up with. Nothing. All I
felt was the warmth of my blankets, the slight chill of country air on my face, and an enormous inclination to just lie there, snug, waiting for dawn, waiting for whatever would happen next.