My Beautiful Hippie

by Janet Nichols Lynch

  I hardly saw anything of Rena. She was performing in summer stock in Santa Maria. Martin tried to come over a few times, but there were rules. He was banned from our house when my parents weren’t home, and he was not allowed in my room ever. When we watched TV in the den, there was no touching. That last restraint wasn’t exactly a rule, but it felt like one.

  We preferred to meet at the coffee shops on Haight Street, usually the Tangerine Kangaroo. Once when Martin was there playing his guitar and singing, he invited me to join him onstage. We sang in harmony, him taking the top part. Coins and a few dollar bills were dropped into his open guitar case.

  “I’m hungry. You want anything?”

  I shook my head. “I had lunch at home.”

  “Cool. You can take over.” He set his guitar in my lap.

  “Martin, no!” I whispered. “I can’t do this by myself.”

  He stooped to collect the money in his case before going to order at the counter. “You’re a pianist! This is much easier than Beethoven.”

  He was right about that. I launched into “Little Boxes.” Then I played “Leaving on a Jet Plane” and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” A group of tourists happened in, and were generous in their donations to Martin’s case. As I was scooping out the money, Martin said, “You made a killing. You can donate some to the Free Clinic.”

  “Not a chance. This is the first money I’ve made as a professional musician, and I’m keeping every cent of it.”

  “Whoa, Joni, I didn’t know you were such a capitalist pig,” said Martin, but he was laughing.

  I tried to get him interested in rehearsing together. “We could be like Simon and Garfunkel.”

  “That’s two guys.”

  “Okay, then. Peter, Paul, and Mary, without Paul. Or Peter.”

  Martin just shook his head. “Spontaneous is better. Rehearsing would take all the fun out of it. Soon we’d be at each other’s throats like Gus and the guys in Roach.”

  Everybody worked to get Eugene McCarthy nominated as the Democratic antiwar candidate. Martin was one of the many hippies who trimmed his hair in order to campaign door to door as part of the “get clean for Gene” effort. Maxine had gotten Denise a secretarial position in the women’s studies department at Cal, and Denise had applied to a scholarship program that sponsored “returning women students.” In her spare time, she wrote editorials promoting McCarthy, which appeared in the Oracle, the Berkeley Barb, and other publications under the byline D. Donnelly.

  Our efforts were wasted. In August, amid a violent clash between ten thousand protesters and 23,000 Chicago policemen and National Guardsmen, the 1968 Democratic National Convention named Vice-President Hubert Humphrey its party’s candidate. Humphrey seemed unclear about what he would do about the war. Whatever he decided, it was probably be too late for Dan. He’d been drafted and was expected to be deployed in early December.

  Denise and Jerry kept their separation private to avoid having their parents interfering in their affairs. I was almost sure Mom was on to them because it seemed so obvious. Denise and Jerry had invited us to dinner at least once a month, and those invitations had stopped. If Denise or Jerry accepted an invitation for both of them from Mom, Denise came alone and made an excuse for Jerry, or vice versa, or they both canceled at the last moment.

  Jerry had to get a part-time job at the copy shop to cover his rent. It was a good thing I had taught him to make hot dogs, because that was about the only meat he could afford. I went over to Berkeley about once a week to continue his liberation lessons: cooking, laundering, vacuuming, waxing, and window washing. His biggest obstacle was scouring out a gunky frying pan. As soon as he approached it, he started gagging. Wimpfield! I had to buy him a Teflon pan with my own money.

  At the end of August, Jerry got the nerve to invite Denise to dinner. I came over in the afternoon to supervise as he cleaned the apartment and made the meat loaf, baked potatoes, and tossed green salad. Everything was ready on time. Ten minutes ticked by, and no Denise.

  “Is this her game? Getting me all excited about seeing her, then not showing up?”

  “She’ll be here.”

  Jerry flipped through an old Berkeley Barb and pointed to an editorial by D. Donnelly. “Do you read this guy? He’s pretty good.”

  I looked over to what he was pointing at. “That’s Denise.”

  He laughed out loud.

  “It is. I thought you knew.”

  Jerry read over the article, smiling proudly. “She can write, that’s for damn sure. D. Donnelly, for God’s sake. Has she gone back to her maiden name legally?”

  “She wasn’t sure you’d want your name on her writing.”

  “It’s her name, too!”

  “I think if she gets back with you, she’ll want to go by Denise Donnelly hyphen Westfield.”

  Jerry grimaced. “Hell! What’s this world coming to?”

  “Smile. I hear her coming.”

  Denise had lost weight and wore a chic minidress, bursting with yellow Pop Art flowers. She’d cut her hair into a shoulder-length pageboy with long, sexy bangs that dipped over her dark, smoldering eyes. Jerry looked at her so long, I thought he was going to drool on his shirt.

  Denise noticed me and her eyes narrowed. “What’s going on?” She looked into the living room as if she expected to find our whole family there, waiting to ambush her in some sort of intervention.

  “I’m here to chaperone,” I said cheerfully. Actually it was to referee.

  She sniffed. “And you cooked dinner?”

  “Nope. Jerry did.”

  “Jerry can’t boil water.”

  “That was lesson one,” he said. “Joanne taught me. I can’t guarantee how good the meat loaf will be. This is my first try. Have a seat.”

  Jerry pulled out a chair for Denise, thought better of it, then pushed it back so that she nearly landed on the floor. Denise and I seated ourselves, and Jerry served us before taking his place.

  “Everything looks beautiful,” said Denise.

  “Thanks.” Jerry took a bite of meat loaf and began looking around the table.

  “Oh, the salt,” said Denise, starting to rise. “I’ll get it.”

  “Harrumph! Harrumph!” I cleared my throat loudly, and Denise sat back down.

  Denise looked at Jerry, and Jerry looked at Denise. I think it hurt them both a little that Jerry got up to get the salt, when Denise had gotten it for him dozens of times in their short marriage.

  “Does your aunt come in to do the apartment?” asked Denise.

  “Joanne is my slave.”

  “Oh, I am not! Jerry cleans the apartment himself.”

  “Yep, yep,” said Jerry. “It’s all true. I cook, clean. Just your regular little houseboy, I am.”

  I jabbed him with a flying elbow.

  “Ow!”

  Denise giggled.

  Jerry took her hand. “You look really pretty.”

  “Pretty?” I exclaimed. “Knockout gorgeous.”

  Denise smiled back at Jerry. “You look pretty good yourself, but you’ve got a little scorch under your arm.”

  Jerry checked his sleeve under his armpit. “Damn! Ironing isn’t easy.”

  When the main course was finished, I rose to help Jerry clear the table. “I got it, Beethoven. Just relax. Ice cream is coming up.”

  “Certainly I can help our gracious host clear.”

  “Let him do it, Joanne. I’m enjoying this.” Denise gazed up at Jerry, who leered down at her. Who needed ice cream? They looked ready to have each other for dessert.

  I was trying to think of a graceful exit when Denise asked, “How’s your dissertation going, Jerry?”

  “A little slower now that I’m working at the copy shop, but it’s going.” He set dishes of ice cream before us and sat down.

  “I wish it weren’t on Freud,” said Denise. “He’s done so much harm to women.”

  “Not true. He was a great comfort to many women suffering from hysteria. T
hrough psychoanalysis he was able to alleviate their symptoms of hallucinations, amnesia, and paralysis.”

  Denise’s prim mouth tightened. “This so-called hysteria in women was brought about because in Freud’s time women were prohibited from doing important work.”

  “They could do important work. They just didn’t have any.”

  Denise let her spoon drop with a clatter. “Freud thought the female sex was an incurable disease!”

  Jerry paused and looked under the table. “Just checking to see if you still shave your legs.”

  “I still shave my legs! And you’re still a chauvinist pig!” Denise grabbed her purse and stalked out of the apartment, slamming the door so hard the salt shaker fell over.

  “That went well,” said Jerry.

  I raised a forefinger. “Up to a point.”

  Chapter

  Nineteen

  At sunrise, tambourines and drums echoed through Buena Vista Park, where Martin and I stood with about a hundred other people. It was October 6, three days after my seventeenth birthday, and we were participating in another hippie celebration, “Birth of the Free Spirit.” Like other “Happenings” in Haight-Ashbury, it was street theater, partly serious, partly burlesque. The important thing seemed to be that individuals were a part of something bigger than themselves, many people becoming one, the same kind of feeling you got on LSD, illegal now for two years.

  We lit candles and began to process down Haight Street, which was decorated with banners reading BIRTH OF THE FREE SPIRIT.

  Martin raised his fist in the air and shouted, “Be free! Be free! Be free!”

  I felt shackled. Only a month of my senior year had passed, and it felt like an eternity until I graduated. “The crowd is pretty thin,” I said. “Not like last year.”

  He waved his hand. “But look at all these impostors still hanging on. The real hippies got crowded out by all the plastic ones. It’s time to just be people again. Real people. Individuals.”

  At the intersection of Haight and Ashbury, I looked up at the street sign and marveled at such a landmark being so close to my own home. The procession continued into Golden Gate Park and onto Hippie Hill, people chanting, “Be free! Be free!” Some people yanked off their hats, bandanas, love beads, and other articles of clothing and flung them into the trees.

  Martin threw his beads, and they caught on a high branch. “Now yours,” he said to me.

  I tucked mine under my shirt. “I could never part with these beads. They’re the first thing you ever gave me.”

  “Celebrate, Joni! The Age of Aquarius is over. It was all just a dream, a lovely dream.”

  “Say it was more than that, Martin.”

  “Peace and love and brotherhood? We can still hope for these things, but everything comes to an end.” Martin looked down at the ground and then back up at me. “There’s something else that has to end, Joni. Byron quit Roach, and Bread is pretty much useless. They’ll never cut that album. They’re a one-hit wonder. Gus still doesn’t see it. He can’t let go. He wants me to join the band, and you know how I feel about that. It’s best I move on.”

  My heart was beating fast. “What do you mean ‘move on’?” I asked cautiously.

  “There are some people I know who have a house in Sacramento who will let me stay with them.”

  My vision blurred with my tears. What about me? I wanted to scream at him. What about us? I knew we’d have to part someday, but I was not expecting it to be so soon or so sudden.

  “Hey, this isn’t good-bye, Joni. I’ll still come down to the city to see you, and you can come see me.”

  He reached for me, but I crossed my arms and twisted away. I looked up into the tree where his beads hung, far out of my reach. I knew how it would be. Martin would promise to come visit me, stick out his thumb, and end up someplace completely different. Whole weeks and months would go by in Martin time while I sat waiting, waiting, waiting.

  “You’re wrong, Martin. It is good-bye.” I faced him and stuck out my hand to shake. “So long. It’s been nice knowing you.”

  “Joni, Joni, don’t be that way.” He scooped me up in his arms and somehow my arms went around him. I sobbed and sobbed and wondered how I could ever let him go.

  I looked into those beautiful eyes of my beautiful hippie, and even as angry as I was with him, I wanted one last kiss. It was sad and sweet, long and loving, and then I broke away and ran down Hippie Hill, across Stanyan, and up Frederick Street.

  I didn’t stop until I reached my very own pink bedroom. I had intended to throw myself on the bed and cry some more, but Mom had set a letter on my desk. It was in a thin, pale blue par avion envelope used for overseas mail, but it wasn’t from Jimmy. I tore it open. Its author introduced himself as Jimmy’s sergeant. He said he knew I was Jimmy’s girl; Jimmy had talked about me all the time. The sergeant felt this letter would be a kinder, gentler way of letting me know. The news was hard enough for me to take. It would be harder for Dan.

  I found him in the den watching TV. I shut off the set, and when he opened his mouth to protest, he looked at me and didn’t speak.

  I sat next to him on the sofa. My tears for Martin’s leaving and Jimmy’s dying were all mixed up and flowing down my face. “I’m sorry, Dan. I have bad news. It’s Jimmy Howe. He . . . didn’t make it.”

  “That can’t be right! Where’d you hear that?”

  I set the letter on his knee. “At your New Year’s Eve party, Jimmy asked me to write him, just as a pen pal, you know, and well . . . this one is from his sergeant.”

  Dan looked down at the letter a long moment. “I don’t want the fucking thing! Get it off me!” He slapped the envelope, and it fluttered to the carpet.

  Chapter

  Twenty

  At first I couldn’t believe Martin was really gone. He’ll miss me, I thought. He loves me too much to leave me. I moved like a zombie from school to home to piano lessons and master classes to home again, going through the motions of living, waiting for Martin to come back. It amazed me, actually, how much I hurt. Wasn’t I an independent girl, leading a rich, full life? How could Martin’s leaving matter so much? Love happens. It’s hard to understand what all it can do to a person.

  At school, Rena had eased into Lisa’s place in the in crowd, yukking it up with Candy Lambert. Rena and I were friendly, but the closeness we’d once shared had evaporated. Isn’t that the way with friendships? One person is your best friend one year, and then it’s someone else the next. But I’d thought Rena and I would be for always, even when we were old ladies. Some days I looked across the school yard expecting to see Suyu in her usual spot, waving her arms, caught up in her imaginary practice. I thought of her far away at MIT and hoped she was happy working with her computers.

  One day I opened the Ravel “Sonatine” Dr. Harold had given me nearly a year ago. I’d done nothing but picked at it on occasion, never taking it in for a lesson. Now I began to practice it in earnest. Is it possible to live inside a piece of music? I could say I lived in the Ravel. That piece was my consolation, my shelter, my purpose. Still, there were times when I couldn’t concentrate at the piano. I caught myself playing more and more softly so I could hear my thoughts, and sometimes my hands slipped off the keys and I was just sitting there, staring vacantly at the music but seeing Martin’s face.

  One afternoon, I was startled to find my mother beside me on the piano bench as if we were about to launch into “Heart and Soul.”

  “Did you and Martin break up?”

  “We were never going steady.”

  “Did you stop dating?”

  “We never went on dates.”

  “I don’t see him coming around anymore.”

  “He moved away, Mom.”

  She patted my shoulder, which made me cry. “You’ll have other boyfriends, Joanne.”

  “Oh, Mom, it hurts. I never thought anything would hurt this much.”

  “I know, honey.” She kissed my hair. “Give it some time.” />
  She didn’t tell me to stop moping, and she didn’t say what a lazy good-for-nothing Martin was. I was impressed by how sympathetic she was. Later that afternoon, though, I overheard her on the telephone gloating to Thelma, “The hippie’s gone. Good riddance! Joanne is pretty broken up about it, but she’ll snap out of it.”

  I wished I could snap out of it. My problems seemed so much smaller than everyone else’s. Denise and Jerry were still separated. In November Nixon was elected president. Another Dick. It seemed the Vietnam War would rage on. Dan stopped doing push-ups. He stopped going out drinking with his buddies. He stopped saying much at all. Sometimes late at night I heard Mom helping him change his sheets. He had night sweats that soaked his entire bed.

  I forced myself to get out more. I roamed the neighborhood, which was much quieter. By then the Free Clinic had closed its doors, and so had the Matrix and the Trip Without a Ticket. In all, I counted eighteen vacant storefronts on Haight. Love Burgers was still around, and so were Tracy’s Donuts and the Psyche Shop. I tried not to superimpose Martin on all our favorite haunts.

  One afternoon after school while drinking tea in the Tangerine Kangaroo, I got to playing the Ravel in my mind, as I often did. I came to a part I wasn’t sure of, and it annoyed me that I couldn’t think what came next. I eyed the piano sitting alone in the corner. I went up to it and started playing Ravel. Over the past year, something had happened inside me, so that a slip of the finger or the sound of a shutting door no longer bothered my performance. I just didn’t care anymore that I wasn’t perfect, and that changed my playing. Being an accomplished pianist was no longer a destination, but a process. Each time I sat down at the piano I tried to make music, and sometimes I would be satisfied with my efforts, while other times I would be discouraged, but that’s just the way it is with anything worth doing.

  I reached the section of the Ravel that I was wondering about, and having played what came before it, I had no trouble continuing. When I finished the movement, I was startled to hear applause. I turned around and bowed. Practicing in public, I suppose, was a kind of performing.