Summer of Love, a Time Travel (17 page)

“Shut
up, Harold,” Ruby says. “Starbright and me, we’re rapping.”

“Chiiiick,
chick-chick-chick,” Professor Zoom says in a falsetto. He chuckles in his
deadpan way. “He-ere chickie-chickie-chickie.” He presses his thumbs together
and flaps his fingers like wings in Susan’s face.

She
recoils. “Chick. Like a stupid little bird.”

“Like
prey,” Ruby says, nodding. “Wolves go after them.”

Professor
Zoom starts to chant, “Chick, bird, broad, bimbo, gash, pussy.” He laughs,
getting into it. “Witch-bitch. Chick-chick-chick.”

“God!”
Susan stares at Ruby, openmouthed.

Ruby
stares back. Their eyes connect.

“Dig
it,” Ruby says. “Once ‘chick’ was Beat talk. But I guess ‘chick’ isn’t very hip
anymore. Let’s you and me not use that word.”

“Okay,”
Susan says. And it’s another revelation, a Summer of Love revelation. “What
shall I call you?”

“Call
me Ruby,” she says and formally shakes Susan’s hand. “Come on, Starbright.
We’ve got work to do.”

They
stand and stride into the house. Someone has plugged in an amp and picks out
screeching notes on a guitar. Fawn is still stripping on the coffee table.
She’s taking her time, down to her panties and cowboy boots as the guys hoot.

“Know
where Stan keeps my calculating machine?” Ruby shouts in Susan’s ear.

“I
sure do. In his room, on the desk by the door.”

“Think
you can help me go get it?”

“Sure.
My overnight bag with all my stuff is up there, too. I think I want to go get
that.”

“I
think you should.”

“But,
Ruby,
they’re
up there.”

“Don’t
worry. You help me, I’ll help you.”

They
steal up the stairs to the third floor. Susan cannot believe her nerve, but
Ruby closes her hand around the doorknob and silently opens the door. Marilyn
from Mill Valley moans in loud, long sobs. Ruby puts her fingers to her lips,
Ssh!
She hands her shoulder bag to Susan and creeps inside. Susan holds the door
ajar, turning her eyes away. Ruby creeps out, cradling the calculating machine
in her arms. She sets it down on the floor with a thump and creeps in again.

“Aaah!
Aaah! Aaah!” Marilyn screams.

Ruby
hurries out with Susan’s overnight bag, and Susan eases the door shut.

“Who’s
there?” Stan calls out in a slurred voice.

They
steal down the stairs and out of the house. Made it, they made it!
Aaah!
Aaah! Aaah!
they mock. Susan slaps hands with Ruby, flushed and laughing.

“Damn,
this thing must weigh thirty pounds.” Ruby grunts, resting the calculating
machine on the stoop.

“What
monster dost thou cradle in thy arms, oh witch?” says Professor Zoom, his
irises almost black from his dilated pupils.

“Go
back to Harvard, Harold,” Ruby says.

“Don’t
call me names,” he says.

But
Susan can’t help it. Her laughter vanishes. Tears well in her eyes before she
can stop them.

“Hey,
flower child,” Ruby says. “He’s not worth it.”

“That’s
easy for you to say.”

“Kid,
you don’t know. Stan and me, we once had a life. At least, I thought we did.”

“Oh,
Ruby, I don’t know what I’m going to do!”

“Find
somebody better. We all do. You will, too.”

“I’m
pregnant.”

Susan’s
cheeks burn. She clutches her purse and overnight bag. Teddy bear comforts. But
there is no more comfort in childish things.

Stan
dashes out the door in barely zipped-up jeans, towing Marilyn, dazed and naked,
on his arm. “Say hey! I’m not through with that!”

“Yeah,
you are through with
that,
” Ruby says. “Let’s go, Starbright,” she says
to Susan. “You come along with me.”

*  
*   *

Ruby
hoists the calculating machine in both arms and hikes as fast as she can down
the quiet way on Page Street. The machine is heavy, but not nearly as heavy as
the sharp repentance in her heart. Regret is the worst because there’s nothing
you can do about it. You can’t change the past.

The
kid trails three steps behind, dragging her feet and her overnight bag, her
eyes glued to the ground. Ruby can’t catch the kid’s glance, let alone flash
the sympathetic smile waiting on her lips.

Chick-chick-chick.
She should’ve belted Harold in the chops. Those stoned Harvard drop-out dudes,
they’re the worst.

Up
the block, Haight Street is crammed with the Saturday night crowd. Stragglers
returning from the Festival of Growing Things. Folks heading to the Fillmore
where Eric Burdon and the Animals, Chuck Berry, and the Steve Miller Blues Band
are playing. Hustlers and hunters, bikers and dealers, tourists and college
kids, heads and hangers-on grooving for free on the street scene, which can be
as entertaining as a paid-for engagement.

Regret.
Ruby recalls Golden Gate Park only too well, how she lashed out at the kid. A
lamb thrown to the wolf with the most bodacious appetite in the neighborhood
for Little Miss Red Riding Hoods.

Ruby
could have been cool, if her head had been on straight. She could have guided
the kid to the Print Mint or Huckleberry House. Hell, Ruby could have put her
up on the couch. She took in Chi, and he’s worked out fine. Now the couch is
taken. So where else? She’s got lots of space in her house. What about in her
heart?

Sometimes
flower children fresh off the bus have a friend and a friendly place to stay.
Sometimes they don’t. Now look at the trouble she’s in. Who knows what dope
Professor Zoom turned her on to. She’s lucky to be as coherent as she seems.
She might have the clap and not know it. These kids from the burbs are
unbelievably naïve. And Stan. The man has gone too far this time. Getting a kid
pregnant. That’s statutory rape. Does he know?

Pregnant.
Ruby doesn’t doubt it. She got pregnant once, not a whole lot older than the
kid, no less miserable, and under circumstances equally unsavory. “Never again,”
she mutters to the evening sky. “Never ever again.”

She
sighs and grips the calculating machine tighter. Just goes to show you. She
wouldn’t have acted so stupid if she didn’t still feel so lousy about Stan. She
feels ill, a knot of sickness heavy in her gut.

Because
there
was
a time when he wasn’t like this. And that time, their loving time
together, is all mixed up with her longing for the way things were before the
crazy Summer of Love.

For
the time when Ruby was happy.

*  
*   *

She’d
been juicing it up at Vesuvio’s in North Beach. Jazz was blowing, and the ’60
edition of
Beatitude
had just hit the bookstores. She and Bob Kaufman
were whooping it up in the John Wilkes Booth on the mezzanine. Her poem “Hot
Bitch” had got published in the collection, and there were rumors the Heat was
going to bust City Lights for peddling pornography. After studying Emily
Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay at Mills College, Ruby felt positively wicked.
She was still dumb enough to be proud of a line like, “Her nipples burn, hot
bitch.” And so on. Bob had been kind.

In
strolled this fine young dude, tall and rangy as a racehorse, in boots and
jeans and a leather jacket. He wore his hair cropped, his face clean-shaven.
Vain about the chin and the cheekbones, well, why not? He went by the name of
Harry Orr, which made a sophomoric joke or a lousy come-on. Harry. . . .or? He
toasted her literary success—and disappeared.

He
was working the bicoastal thing, which should have been a tip-off he’d turn out
no good. Working the underground: dope and stolen cars, broken paroles and
broken hearts. Still, when he showed up on the Beach a year later, he hadn’t
lost his illusion of purity.

Ruby
was turning thirty, an intense age filled with fate and magic. She could have
had anyone she wanted. When the Beats lusted after spades, they dug the Haitian
in her. When the hipsters lusted after Native Americans, they dug the Cherokee
in her. When the suits lusted after Southern cream, they dug the belle in her. She
was one fine babe, and she knew it.

He
was now known as Stan the Man, possibly on the lam. Their paths crossed again
at Vesuvio’s. This time he went home with her to her view apartment on Vallejo
Street.

When
Ruby split to the Haight-Ashbury in ’62, Stan went with her. Ma had died of
lung cancer, though she’d never smoked, and Ruby made a stink about working conditions
at Marinship with the wartime shipyard’s successor, a rich construction
company. The construction company settled for fifteen grand. Ruby sprang Ma’s
savings and pension out of probate and opened the Mystic Eye with ten thousand
in cash.

Get your
own, Daughter, Ma always said. Ruby did. The shop was her dream after a
lifetime fascination with herbs and the ancient ways.

Stan
grew his hair long—sweet Isis, he was beautiful—and helped her set up 555
Clayton Street. He built the shelves and display cases by hand. Ruby hoped he’d
pursue his carpentry and woodworking talents. He moved in with her upstairs and
stayed true for nearly four years.

It
was no secret how women panted after him, even the squares in their spit curls
and girdles. He and Ruby joked about it: Harry or Stan?

But
could they last?

In
those days? The Pill and rock ‘n’ roll and bikinis and James Bond movies
unleashed an avalanche of pent-up female lust. Cigarette ads urged women to let
loose. Booze ads showcased gorgeous dames lapping bright drinks from tall
glasses. Tampon ads insisted nothing should hold a woman back from doing
whatever she wanted to do. Even the ads for Dial soap with AT-7 showed a girl
in the shower, her pursed lips ready for fellatio, soapsuds ejaculated all over
her face.

There
was no stopping the media assault of freewheeling sexuality in those days.

Grandmother Says:
Kaou (Temptation)

The
Image:
A hot wind arises under heaven, disrupting the world and
its rulers.

The
Oracle:
The maiden is bold. The man delights in her and does not
recognize her power. He is seduced, then finds he cannot control her.

Hexagram 44,
The
I Ching
or Book of Changes

to
fuck with love

to
fuck with all the heat and wild of fuck

the
fever of your mouth devouring my secrets and my alibis

leaving me pure        burned into
oblivion

nipple
to nipple we touched

and
were transfixed

by a
flow of energy

beyond anything I have ever known

we TOUCHED!

the
energy indescribable

almost   
    unendurable

the
barrier of noumenon-phenomenon transcended

the
circle momentarily complete

the balance of forces perfect

I
kiss your shoulder and it reeks of lust

the
lust of erotic angels fucking the stars

and
shouting their insatiable joy over heaven

the
lust of comets colliding in celestial hysteria

SCREAMING DELIGHT over the universe

we
lie together, our bodies wet and burning

and
we WEEP we WEEP we WEEP the incredible tears

that
saints and holy men shed in the presence

of their incandescent gods

we are transmuting

we
are as soft and warm and trembling

as a new gold butterfly

at
night   sometimes   I see our bodies glow

“To Fuck with Love”
by Lenore Kandel

Underground Press
, 1964

Who
married? Why marry? No one married anymore. Who was faithful? Why stay
faithful? What did faithful mean, anyway? Nothing. Or at least, not very much.