My Beautiful Hippie (7 page)

Together we walked down Beach Street, past the marina, and through the Presidio, talking as we went. I told him I had lived my whole life in the same house on Frederick Street, and he said he and Gus had lived with Max and Vivian all over the world: the Florida Keys, Majorca, Casablanca, and Bennington, Vermont.

“Are Max and Vivian your parents?” I asked.

He frowned. “They're Max and Vivian. Anyways, in January me and Gus came out here for the Human Be-In in Golden Gate Park, liked the vibes, and decided to stick around for a while. Gus put Roach together, but I'm a vagabond. One day you'll see me here, next day I'll be gone to Timbuktu.”

It was disappointing to think of Martin leaving just as I was getting to know him. “I've heard of Timbuktu, but I don't know where it is.”

“Mali.” He looked out across the expanse of the ocean. “My head is really into this place for now.”

“How old are you?” I blurted.

“Is age important?”

“No,” I said, thinking that was the cool answer. But why should I say what I thought he wanted to hear, when I believed he
could understand the real me? I needed to be myself, but that was an act of bravery. “Age is kinda important,” I admitted tentatively. “Like, my dad is forty-six, and if you were in your forties it would be too weird, like there'd be the generation gap between us.”

He laughed. “I'm not even in my twenties. But I don't believe in the generation gap. There's hip people of all ages.”

“I haven't met too many.” My new piano teacher, Dr. Harold, was cool, and I decided Maxine was, too. It was strange to think of a friend of my mom's as being with-it. Martin got me thinking about a lot of things.

When we reached the Golden Gate Bridge, I hesitated. “We're going to
walk
across the bridge?” I had never thought to do that. Maybe it was because my mother had read me too many newspaper articles about people jumping off.

“You look freaked out,” said Martin.

“No! I mean . . . kinda.”

“Come on, lady.” He took my hand. As we walked, our arms swung lightly between us. The sea breeze whipped our hair into our mouths, and the sun sinking over the hills painted the water gold and magenta. I forgot about jumping off the bridge or falling, because now Martin held my hand.

We sat on the sandy Marin headlands, shoulder pressed to shoulder, watching a massive cruise ship, freighters, fishing rigs, and sailboats drift by.

“I used to think ‘Golden Gate' was the name given to the bridge,” I said, “but then I found out the entrance of the bay was called that before the bridge was here. I think of all those Oriental people sailing, sailing, sailing on the Pacific, and then finally they get here to pass through the Golden Gate.”

“You've given me an idea,” Martin said. “I'm going to look for photographs of what it looked like before the bridge was built.”

The wind caught our hair and wove it together. I tried to hook mine behind my ear so I could see, and pulled some of Martin's. We laughed together.

He took the peanut butter sandwiches out of the pack and offered me one. I was ravenous and took a huge bite.

“Chew,” he said.

“I am.”

“Chew more. Don't swallow any of those little chunks of peanut without grinding all the goodness out of them.” He took the canteen out of his backpack and offered it to me. “Here, drink. The best beverage in the world.”

The water did taste especially fresh and sweet. “Are you a health food nut?”

“I enjoy good, simple food. ‘Simplify! Simplify! Simplify!' That's a quote.”

I rolled my eyes toward him. “That's a word.”

“When it's said thrice, it's a quote.”

“Thrice? Nobody says ‘thrice.' ”

“You've never heard anyone say ‘thrice'? How old are you?”

Too young for him, probably. I cocked my head and looked at him out of the corner of my eye. “Age isn't important, is it?”

“Just tell me.”

“I'm not even twenty yet.”

He laughed. “You're a wiseass, Joni. An old soul.”

“Oh! You're a Buddhist?”

“Naw, Buddhists think it's a terrible fate to be kicked back into another life, and I love life so I can't be one of them. I don't believe in reincarnation, but isn't ‘old soul' a beautiful expression?”

“That's what some people say about Mozart. Since he could play and compose like an adult, as a child, he lived previous lives.”

“Is that what you think?”

“Naw, I'm an Episcopalian.”

“What's that?”

“Don't exactly know, but they stick plastic Jesuses into plaster of Paris. Do you go to church?”

“Naw. But I'm very spiritual.”

“What religion?”

“Hmmm, Transcendentalist, I guess.”

I had not heard of Transcendentalists, but I had heard of Transcendental Meditation, like what the Beatles were into. “Oh! Who's your guru?”

His laugh came out like a hoot. “My guru? Henry David Thoreau!”

“The Walden Pond guy, who lived his whole life in a log cabin?”

“Just two years.” He shook his head. “Nothing to sustain it. Like this party going on here, the whole Hashbury hippie scene.”

“My brother Dan thinks hippies are a Communist plot. I can't believe I'm sitting here right now with a hippie!”

“Where?” Martin looked around him. “What's a hippie?”

“A bum with long hair and bad hygiene!” I laughed. “That's my dad's definition.”

“I take regular showers. What's your definition?”

For over two years, I'd lived among hippies. I thought I knew exactly what one was, but it was hard to explain. “Someone who gets to do exactly what he wants to do and doesn't care what people—older people, society—say about him.”

“Don't all people do what they want?”

“No. Some of us have to go to school and work.”

“Don't you want to?”

I saw what he meant. I wouldn't want to be a high school dropout, so I guessed I wanted to be in school. “Have you taken a lot of drugs?”

He shrugged. “Some. I was a caffeine addict, but I went cold turkey.”

“Never heard of it.”

“It's an upper, in coffee and Coke. Bad stuff. Made my hands shake and my heart race. Now I just drink chamomile and mint tea. My own blend.”

“I'd like to try grass,” I said timidly.

“I'll turn you on sometime.”

I was thrilled by the idea, not just because I'd finally get to smoke pot, but because Martin seemed to indicate that he wanted to see me again.

“Do you smoke a lot of dope?”

He shook his head. “Moderation. That's where my head's at.”

“I'd like to try LSD, but the idea freaks me out.”

“Acid freaks a lot of people out. It's not meant to party with, I don't think.” He dangled his fingers and shook them. “Far out, man, look at all the pretty lights and colors,” he said in a high, spacy tone, then returned to his own voice. “I don't go as far as Timothy Leary, who calls dropping acid a religion, but it is a soul-searching, mind-tripping thing.”

“I've read about Leary's church—the League of Spiritual Discovery.”

He shrugged. “Uh-huh. He preaches against ‘nonsacramental' use. But it's more psychological than spiritual. It's a head trip, and if you're afraid of what you might find in your own head, you'll freak out. You gotta have your shit together.”

I had never heard that expression. I imagined turds in a toilet. I had heard of people jumping out of windows, tripping on LSD and thinking they could fly. I looked out at the bridge, imagining myself taking a swan dive off it. I shuddered.

“I'm glad I'm beyond acid,” Martin said.

“Huh?”

He smiled. “I've found it's just the same after a few times. I'm not going to learn anything else by doing more. Sure, it's beautiful—a good trip is. The mind expands to show you a million possibilities. You feel ‘one' with everybody. There's an amazing awareness of the beauty of the world. But then you come down. Every time, you come down, and you're the same, with your same problems.” He swept his arm across the expanse of the headlands, the bay, the city. “Look at this place. Why go mind-tripping and come back thinking it's not as good as before you left it? Bummer!”

“I still want to try it once.”

“Then do it.”

The sky was completely dark when we made our way back, but the steady stream of cars across the bridge lit our way. It was still early, around nine, and I knew I could sneak home before my parents returned. Martin gave me a long hug good-bye.

“It was good rapping with you,” he said.

“Thanks for dinner.”

I looked deep into his lovely eyes, searching for something to
take away with me. I hoped he would offer some future plans, but he merely whispered, “Peace,” his breath warm on my ear. Then he was gone, across the street and behind the gate, leaving me alone in the dark, hoping some Hells Angels gang rapists wouldn't come along before my trolley did.

Even as the streetcar rattled across town, I was far from peace. I was already gone, gone, gone on Martin, and yet he had not even mentioned getting together again. We had talked about a lot of things, but he was as mysterious as ever. What next?

I was bursting to tell Rena my news, but it was too confidential to report over the phone with my mother possibly listening in. The next afternoon Rena and I got away for a walk in Golden Gate Park. I thought there couldn't be anything more exciting than my visit with Martin and meeting Gus Abbott of Roach, but Rena assumed her news was more important than mine.

She had landed the part of Susanna Walcott in the ACT production of
The Crucible
. “I've got six lines,” she said proudly, “and some of the girls don't have any. In the courtroom scene we pretend Mary Warren is possessing us, and I say, ‘Her claws! She's stretching her claws!' ” She raised her arms and bent her fingers, ducking her head fearfully. I was getting worn out, waiting for my turn to talk. Finally she asked, “Did you go see that hippie guy?” I started to tell my story and she blurted, “I knew it was Gus Abbott! Your boyfriend is his brother? Far out!”

“He's not my boyfriend!”

“Well, you went on a date.”

“Not really a date. We just went for a walk and rapped.”

“You rapped?”

I laughed at the way Rena screwed up her face, as if I had just confessed an obscene act. “That's what Martin calls talking.”

“That's so funny! Does Roach all live together in one house like the Grateful Dead?”

“I don't know. But it's a big house. It seems like lots of people live there.”

“Oh, take me to meet Gus!” Rena jumped in front of me, clasped her palms together, and pretended to flop to her knees.

“Sure.” I didn't want to talk about Roach. I wanted to talk about Martin. I began again and Rena interrupted again.

“Did you find out how old he is?”

“He said age didn't matter, that we're all just people.”

“What school does he go to?”

“None.”

“Then he is old! Did he try to make love to you right there on the beach?”

“Rena, no! Keep it down!” I exclaimed in shock, looking around to see if anyone had overheard her loud, dramatic voice. “He didn't even kiss me. I wanted him to, but we just talked. He knows a lot.”

“Maybe he was homeschooled. Homeschoolers get to think what they want, not the way teachers say we're supposed to. I may need to be homeschooled if my acting career takes off.”

Six lines in a play didn't sound like stardom to me, but I didn't say so.

“Just wait until Candy and Lisa and those guys find out I'm a professional actress with ACT and you're friends with Gus Abbott.”

I stopped and clutched her arms. “Oh! We can't tell them! If it gets back to my mother she'll stop me from seeing Martin!”

“Oh, right. Hey, Jo, maybe sometime we can go hear Roach at the Fillmore or the Avalon.”

Those dance halls were famous for the Acid Tests that took place before October 6, 1966, the day LSD became illegal. Vats of Kool-Aid laced with acid had been offered to hundreds of people at a time, but now the trips were merely staged with light shows and psychedelic rock. Big-name bands like Big Brother and the Holding Company and Quicksilver Messenger Service were still featured at the dances, but you had to be eighteen to get in.

“It will be hard not to tell,” said Rena, still thinking about her role. “I want to brag to everybody.”

“I'm just happy inside. Ever notice how if you tell something really good that happened to you to somebody who doesn't care about you, it doesn't seem as good to you anymore? I tried so hard to be popular last year, and Candy Lambert made fun of me so many times.”

“Do you think kids would think she's funny if she wasn't Candy Lambert?”

“Who cares? The person I was trying to be the last two years wasn't me at all. This year I'm just going to be myself and not care what anybody thinks.”

“It's not that easy,” said Rena, her eyebrows scrunched together. “When I saw Lisa and Candy at Denise's wedding, I hated them and was dying to impress them at the same time.”

At least Rena and I had each other. Since we couldn't share our far-out news with anyone else, we developed a code to remind each other about it. Whenever we met or talked on the phone, Rena would say, “Her claws! She's stretching her claws!” and I'd reply, “Rap, rap.”